> he is one of the more popular presidents in US history.

Published today: "Trump's approval rating on the economy hits record low 31%"[1]

> President Trump's approval rating on his longtime political calling card — the economy — has sunk to 31%, the lowest it has been across both of his terms as president, according to a new survey from The Associated Press-NORC.

"Trump's Approval Rating Drops to 36%, New Second-Term Low" [2]

> his all-time low was 34% in 2021, at the end of his first term after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

The man is only two points above where he was when every reputable institution on the planet was running away from him as fast as possible, and he was nearly convicted in the senate. Less than a year into the term.

[1] https://www.axios.com/2025/12/12/trump-economy-inflation-aff...

[2] https://news.gallup.com/poll/699221/trump-approval-rating-dr...

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reactordev 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

So it’s only downhill from here?

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roenxi 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Yeah it'd be a wild view to call him among the most popular. But he is actually [0] pretty standard for a modern president - probably the least popular [1] but he doesn't stand out that much among the Bush/Biden/Obama polling except that it appears people understood what he was going to do before he entered office instead of discovering it on the way through.

And there is an interesting argument that most modern presidential approvals have more to do with the media environment and better visibility on just how bad their policies are.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_app...

[1] I'd argue better than that loser Bush who was probably the worst president in modern US history and who's polling showed it, but for the sake of keeping things simple.

	▲	mullingitover 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		> And there is an interesting argument that most modern presidential approvals have more to do with the media environment and better visibility on just how bad their policies are. I think you can go further, the ratings are also heavily tied to things like gasoline prices and the overall economy, and generally things the president has little control over. So actually not much to do with their policies at all. I think Trump knows this and it's why he's done some strategically stupid things to the US fossil fuel industry in order to tactically bring down gasoline prices to juice his ratings. This likely also explains the 2024 election, because it happened in the context of vast sums of money being sucked out of the economy as the fed tried to fight inflation. Incumbents globally got an absolute thrashing that year regardless of what their actual policies were.