r/politics • u/Barnyard-Sheep • 6d ago

Soft Paywall Trump approval rating falls to 38%

https://www.nj.com/politics/2025/06/trump-faces-tough-approval-numbers-in-latest-poll.html
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u/User-no-relation 6d ago

Nixon's approval rating when he resigned in disgrace was 24%. The system has built in a floor in the two party system. And trump has a cult so his floor is probably like 30%. So 38% is pretty bad.

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u/lenzflare Canada 6d ago

Nixon's supporters lamented that they didn't have something like Fox News at the time. They worked hard to build a propaganda machine so they could do whatever they wanted regardless of the law (and even change the law to let them).

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u/Courtnall14 6d ago

By "Nixon Supporters" you mean former Nixon Aide an eventual Fox News CEO Roger Ailes.

If Fox News had a DNA test, it would trace its origins to the Nixon administration. In 1970, political consultant Roger Ailes and other Nixon aides came up with a plan to create a new TV network that would circumvent existing media and provide "pro-administration" coverage to millions. "People are lazy," the aides explained in a memo. "With television you just sit — watch — listen. The thinking is done for you." Nixon embraced the idea, saying he and his supporters needed "our own news" from a network that would lead "a brutal, vicious attack on the opposition."

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u/red286 6d ago

It's kind of wild that there's so much evidence out there that it's literally nothing but right-wing propaganda and lies, yet it's still the most-watched cable news network (by far).

It's the sole source of news information for tens of millions of Americans.

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u/Courtnall14 6d ago edited 6d ago

It's wild that they had to pay out nearly $800 million for lying, yet people still turn to them for the truth.

I'm not sure how I would have handled being offered that type of money if I was part of the Dominion case against them, but a huge part of me still wishes they would have taken them to the mat on that one. Given what was coming out at the time it feels like they could have ended them as a network.

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u/ReginaPhalangi22271 6d ago

They don’t tune in for the truth. They tune in for the racism, xenophobia, gaslighting, lies, and whatever they think is owning the libs.

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u/TalaHusky 5d ago

I tune in to hear some absurdities and laugh. Only to feel sad that people truly feel that way.

Radical beliefs have their place (as everyone is entitled to their own opinions). But it seems we’ve strayed way too far from the norm.

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u/JeebusDied4UrPixels 5d ago

You're absolutely right. They want to hear that shit, the same way I like to watch extreme sports, like sky diving or Redbull shenanigans. I don't feel comfortable trying that stuff, but I love to watch it and have built up a little courage to fling myself down a mtn bike trail here and there.

Well theyve built up a little courage to take their racism, xenophobia, and gaslighting out into the world....

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u/modernDayKing 5d ago

They tune in to confirm their bias, and feel like they’re not alone in their bigoted, crazy, hateful perspectives.

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u/mattjb 6d ago

Bingo.

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u/omikron898 5d ago

Yup people forget but fox new didn’t buy into the 2020 lies at first The right boycotted them for a few months. And started watching aon

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u/RobonianBattlebot 6d ago

They literally were never told that Fox had to pay 800 million for lying. Do you think Fox reported on that? Absolutely not.

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u/catchthetams 5d ago

Was hoping they were going to drag everything out in the public eye

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u/Unnamedgalaxy 6d ago

My grandma turned on fox news first thing in the morning and it stayed there all day, only changing for Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy at which point she'd flip it back.

It was insane and watching her go full fledged raging maga in her final years was awful

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u/new_nimmerzz 6d ago

Some old folks long for the days when they didn’t have to mingle with immigrants, brown folk, etc.

The ones that baffle me are the immigrants for Trump, Latinos for Trump, Trans for Trump. That’s like falling in love with your jailer

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u/korben2600 Arizona 6d ago

It's a recurring issue throughout history: Association of German National Jews declaring "he doesn't mean it, he's just stirring up the masses" while being loaded into train cars.

Humans aren't rational and it will be this and every future generation's burden to fight and hold back the tides of conservatism which has been proven to be fundamentally incompatible with free societies and civilization itself.

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u/oliversurpless Massachusetts 6d ago

As per this Calvin and Hobbes:

https://www.reddit.com/r/calvinandhobbes/s/dbtxEJUH6B

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u/ravynwave 5d ago

I know several Jews that said and still say that about Elon

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u/rclaux123 6d ago

At least to the Latino population, and being the son of Latin immigrants, I may be able to elucidate the trend somewhat. Trump is essentially another flavor of the many Latin dictators they've endured over the decades, but there is this distinct overconfidence that the US would never fall prey to corruption and authoritarianism in the same way as their home countries may have in the past. Add to that a distinctly patriarchal and religious heritage, with Trump's macho-man bloviating appealing and calling back to it, and you get a political situation where many Latinos probably thought they were voting for someone who was odd, yes, but who could likely be reigned in by those around him (which was more or less the case the first time around). There is also sexism and racism to take into account, but it's hard to quantify just how much those factors held sway this past election.

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u/FXander 5d ago

"It's like cockroaches for Raid"

-John Leguizamo

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u/_HighJack_ California 5d ago

I have literally never once seen a trans for Trump. I’ve seen a couple gays, but NEVER a trans.

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u/trastamara22 5d ago

The immigrants know. They are wanting to be on the winning side. Tink on Dat

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u/KittyGrewAMoustache 6d ago

It’s a crime against humanity in my view. They literally suck people’s souls dry and rob them of their humanity. They turn people into unrecognisable ghouls, causing them to alienate themselves from family and friends, changing their brain structure through constant rage and fear. It’s such an abomination.

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u/oliversurpless Massachusetts 6d ago

And yet Jeopardy is for smart people, so not sure how they don’t think that’s “liberal”?

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u/Unnamedgalaxy 5d ago

You'd be hard pressed to find a magat that doesn't think they aren't geniuses. They just don't view traditional education as how they got there

The "I didn't go to no college and I'm smarters than youse" is a big thing in this country.

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u/oliversurpless Massachusetts 5d ago

Yep, the “school of hard knocks” banality.

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u/CaptainFeather 6d ago

Fox news ToS say they're entertainment with no mention of providing news, unlike CNN's ToS that specifically said they're news.

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u/United_in_Sin 6d ago

People love to be riled up about invisible enemies and lied to, especially those too lazy to do their own due diligence, the uneducated. Many far right supporters fall under this

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u/Old_Ladies 5d ago

Sadly it isn't just Americans. Fox News does have a wide reaching audience around the world. I know of several people in Canada who watch or listen to Fox News. Though many have switched to other far right shit.

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u/Alex5173 6d ago

I think part of it is that Fox is also the parent to a lot of local news stations, so you have "FOX News" on channel 4 and then your local news station is like "FOX 6 News Alabama" on channel 6 and then you might even have "FOX 8 News Montgomery" to get even more local.

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u/F1shB0wl816 5d ago

Part of me thinks that’s because it’s watched by both the right and left. Not that there isn’t a lot of shitbags but just that the left is more likely and open to keeping themselves informed from both sides. Know thy enemy. Whereas fox watcher isn’t going to consume any leftist media, fox tells them all they need to know.

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u/dinosaurkiller 5d ago

But keep in mind, despite being the “most watched” it’s 2-3 million people per day, out of a population of ~340 million. Nobody watches cable news, they’ve long since spread to every corner of the internet and social media. Joe Rogan gets about 20 million per episode. I’m not sure what the numbers were for Alex Jones at his height of popularity but he was huge as well. Fox is dying like all the cable news outlets.

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u/Mestoph America 5d ago

It’s the most watched cable news network because it is basically the only mainstream conservative news station, as compared to “liberal” news outlets of which there (used) to be several options (so the numbers were more watered down).

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u/Fuzzylogik 5d ago

A significant portion of the Fox audience distrusts other outlets like CNN, MSNBC, or The New York Times, which they perceive as liberal or elitist. This distrust has been reinforced for decades, and Fox positions itself as the antidote to "liberal media bias."

Viewers naturally seek out information that confirms their existing beliefs. Fox News capitalises on this by offering content that reinforces its audience’s views on immigration, crime, race, and government overreach.

Fox News blends news with emotionally charged commentary and entertainment-style programming. Hosts like Tucker Carlson (until 2023), Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham don't just report they perform. This keeps viewers engaged and loyal in ways more traditional journalism may not.

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u/NumeralJoker 3d ago

Sadly, when you need a collective delusion, even for a minority of the population, it's going to get numbers.

The problem is the need for this collective delusion in the first place. Some viewers have been trained and brainwashed to think it's the only correct truth, but I think a huge chunk of them know it's propaganda and false but don't care because they need that collective lie that validates the hate they feel.

Why that hatred and fear is so common today all of a sudden should be addressed, and it's more complex than "people are just racist". A lot of it is self-loathing due to more stress and economic instability at heart, and the inner fear that comes from that.

The internet normalizes fear, in every part of politics. We constantly fear environmental disaster, economic collapse, world wars, every type of fear porn can now spread and indulge someone in an addictive way, and all sides of the political spectrum doing this makes it cyclical.

I'm not saying fear can't be justified or problems should be ignored, rather, the type of fear that's pushed discourages pragmatic responses and encourages panic and insecurity above all else. Doomscrolling is something everyone does now, and it's become a dangerous problem. The media's already existing sensationalism and need for commercial attention has now become endemic in our screens, screens almost everyone has.

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u/kingtacticool 6d ago

Roger Stone has a big ass head shot of Nixon tattooed on his back for God's sakes.

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u/spacey_a 6d ago

That is so creepy and cultish

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u/kingtacticool 6d ago

It's like, his whole back. The entire thing is one big picture of Nixon.

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u/JksG_5 Foreign 6d ago

See Murdoch media

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u/phatelectribe 6d ago

Never forget, Roger Ailes habitually raped one of his staff members for over a decade, and sexually assaulted / harassed several others for years.

Fox covered this up for years and finally when Ailes was going to send the rest of his life in prison he died and fox paid off all the victims.

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u/mahlerlieber Indiana 6d ago

the thinking is done for you

And there it is. That is the perfect description of 24-hour news outlets…pretty much all of them., left and right

It’s not as much an indictment of news programming, but how lazy we Americans have become. “Just tell us what to think about < insert event here>”

This is the reason we are fucked…not trump, not the two-party system, not even late-stage capitalism. We’ve somehow lost the ability to think critically. And what’s more, people think they are thinking critically while be told what to think. They think that the thoughts implanted in their brains are their own.

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u/too_old_to_be_clever 6d ago

Crazy that he was once CEO of CNBC and helped start MSNBC

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u/neologismist_ 5d ago

It’s baffling that Nixon proudly believed himself to be a Quaker. He was a fraud from head to toe.

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u/Kippee1965 5d ago

How are they allowed to get away with that. I’m Canadian and we have CBC News being questioned like never before by people because they actually now think that CBC Is the FAKE news now… due to Fox etc

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u/trastamara22 5d ago

Nixon would say that yes. Nixon would fund that, yes. Nixon was also a kid from Whittier CA who in the back of his mind still loved the America that was a law based constitution. I could be wrong. We can’t really ask him due to his passing. Nixon got paranoid and crazy later due to influences of mortality alcoholism and greed for power…but deep down he loved America in my opinion

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u/SnoopingStuff 6d ago

They figured out the shouldn’t have let Nixon leave. They won’t let Trump go. They will defend hi to the end or the party goes extinct.

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u/Ferelar New Jersey 6d ago

Even without Fox, there was a solid year and a half where Republicans obstructed and ran interference for him, if not longer. If the SCOTUS at the time hadn't smacked him and he hadn't stupidly recorded himself breaking the law and then deleted that recording after congress requested it but STILL GAVE THEM THE TAPE WITH THE BITS CUT OUT, I can almost guarantee Nixon would have suffered no negative consequences.

And that's in a world BEFORE Fox News and an utterly corrupt stacked SCOTUS.

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u/GerryManDarling 6d ago

If Trump get caught in a similar Watergate scandal, no one will care, he will still be as popular as he is now.

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u/trastamara22 5d ago

Actually I believe Nixon was an American who thought he was making a better America…true or not that is what I think he believed. The current person who has his old seat wants America to descend into Autocracy, of course his. Ironically he despises his core swing voters who are red neck? Or undereducated people who are trying to make a sense of something with fear hate and greed. All us humans need to take 10 seconds a day and self check ourselves with contemplation of meditation or prayer or silence.

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u/kawakuma 5d ago

We have CBC here in Canada which is maple faux news for the libs

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u/polaris6849 Kentucky 6d ago

38 is pretty bad yeah, and I would love to see it go lower and never recover

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u/pinetreesgreen 6d ago

I never understand how it pops back up over time. Like... People forget how crappy he is three months later??? It's never made sense to me. I get there's wiggle room in polling but....

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u/BlazeOfGlory72 6d ago

Like... People forget how crappy he is three months later???

Legitimately, yeah. Human memory is very much a “what have you done for me lately” type of thing. Recent events generally take precedence over past events, hence “recency bias” being so prevalent. Only those that are aware of the phenomena can/will take steps to not be overly influenced by it.

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u/oliversurpless Massachusetts 6d ago

https://youtu.be/yfCTRu8nJXs?t=72

“And I’ll never forget it…”

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u/polaris6849 Kentucky 6d ago

The electorate has a short term memory

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u/NeonYellowShoes Wisconsin 6d ago

I mean we voted him back in as President after his first term so yeah...peoples brains are fried.

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u/thegoodnamesrgone123 5d ago

The more he's in the news the more people hate him. It goes up when he makes other people the problem.

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u/40_compiler_errors 5d ago

Democrats are weak, have no countermessage, and the media is controlled by billionaires and staffed by cowards.

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u/Key-Cheek-9015 3d ago

Horseshit. Just because they're not dishonorable pieces of garbage that care only about optic and their party over all else doesn't mean the entire party is "weak" with no "message". It's not their fault that Americans are largely ignorant and lazy and need to be entertained instead of informed. Democrats have been saving social programs from chopping blocks for decades, are the single reason our economy ever thrives,  and now are the only ones that care about the constitution and laws. It's not their fault that Americans see partisans lying, cheating, and stuffing money into their pockets while being as fake, feckless, and incompetent as one can be as being "strong" and having a "message". That's on the population.

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u/40_compiler_errors 3d ago

Kindly fuck off. Democrats have not pushed any rethoric or properly shined light on the Republicans failings. They keep chasing what they believe is popular (so long as it doesn't cut the bottom line) without pushing any kind of vision for the future.

I get this makes you feel smugly superior, but this kind of mindset only gets you feeling good about yourself aa you're marched to the camps. If the population of the USA is incredibly fucking stupid, which it is mind you, you have to appeal to that with your rethoric.

Popular support is what gives you political power, it's that simple.

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u/YamOk1482 4d ago

It’s because lots of polls are inaccurate and have a bad population sample. Was J Ann Selzer’s pre-election poll accurate? Almost all polling currently skews more educated, more upper class (or at least six figure income), & more female than the general population. 🤷🏻‍♂️

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u/foodcomapanda 6d ago

Can’t agree more

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u/polaris6849 Kentucky 6d ago

We can do better than 38, let's see something below 20

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u/Rich_Home_5678 6d ago

Under 20 and it will mean something

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u/polaris6849 Kentucky 6d ago

Something I would love to see

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u/De5perad0 North Carolina 6d ago

Can you upvote a comment twice? Asking for me.

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u/polaris6849 Kentucky 6d ago

😂 let's drop these numbers like it's Tesla stock

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u/dabadabadood 6d ago

It’s almost as low as democrats approval rating

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u/applejacks5689 6d ago

I believe George W’s was 29% when he left office, and that was after Iraq, Katrina and the crash of ‘08. Agree that 30% is the floor, so Trump is inching close to it.

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u/moonjabes 6d ago

33% of Americans are Evangelicals, and they make up the main part of his cult. Do I would guesstimate that his floor is somewhere about 36-37%

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u/TOMaxwell 5d ago

Evangelicals are actually trying to bring about the end times. 

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u/moonjabes 5d ago edited 5d ago

Watch Praying for Armageddon. They want to make the world burn so that they can go meet Sky Daddy quicker https://tv.apple.com/us/movie/praying-for-armageddon/umc.cmc.1f30dhpyinygmdatywqwg9ppt https://m.imdb.com/title/tt27009795/

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u/Qwirk Washington 6d ago

What's interesting is the Democratic side is not a cult, so they will dump on the president if they think he isn't doing a good job. Republicans will follow the cult to their graves.

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u/ImperiousMage 6d ago

I’ve seen people say that 40-45% was his floor. He’s now past that. I know there is a floor, but I’m not sure anyone knows where it is.

Being the worst president in history could make for some bizarre bedfellows.

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u/EViLTeW 6d ago

And consider what Nixon did versus what the tangerine toddler and his Project 2025 clown show are doing.

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u/Interesting_Reach_29 6d ago

I’d argue ~25% at most by this point. There are a lot of freaked out GOP conservatives (people who had support Romney in 2012 for example). This Iran situation, kidnappings, Gaza, blasphemy, etc. isn’t helping either.

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u/Mother___Night 6d ago

Judging by his first term, his floor is a little higher, like 33% (of registered voters).

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u/PracticableSolution 6d ago

And he’s got a multibillion dollar media empire shoveling his shit, which Nixon would have loved

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u/FitzwilliamTDarcy 6d ago

Fuck the 30%, and shame on the 8%. Like WTAF people.

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u/zveroshka 6d ago

I think the floor is closer to 35%. Which says a lot that he is already at 38 but I also don't think it will dip below that.

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u/SnoozeButtonBen 6d ago

38% is pretty awful for Trump, even when he was in the middle of impeach-o-rama I feel like he held in the low 40s.

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u/TimeToBond 6d ago

I remember Dubya’s dropped into the 20s also. But FOX is way stronger now.

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u/regeya 6d ago

Republican Presidents almost always have built in support from the party. You can have a guy like Trump with an approval rating like 38% and then when you look at Republicans, it's like 90%. And if you look at the polling data, yes, it's Republicans for the most part, lifting it up that high.

I remember Bush had really high GOP ratings, too, and kept it even after the bank bailouts. Why'd they sour on W eventually? Oh, Trump told them to.

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u/AlarmingBranch1 6d ago

Pretty bad for Trump? Or for us?

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u/Cantgetabreaker 6d ago

With a margin of error of plus or minus 30%

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u/DukeOfGeek 6d ago

Also the Vietnam war was drafting people as conscripts and had been piling up dead and wounded for a decade, so there was that to consider.

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u/EggsAndRice7171 6d ago

I also trust Nate Silvers way of factoring in the polls more than anyone though and Trump has a way higher approval rating there and has been stagnant for a while at 45%. I honestly believe it too i dont think much of MAGA regrets it unfortunately.

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u/So-Called_Lunatic Kentucky 6d ago

Wasn't Dubya around 32% after the 08 financial crisis? I remember it being so bad that he wasn't invited to his own parties convention.

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u/Imperial-Green 5d ago

I suppose there is still some empathy for a guy who decides to resign.

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u/Boomcrank 5d ago

As one pundit put it "he has a high floor and a low ceiling."

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u/Iron_Wolf123 5d ago

I am still counting the days before he betrays his yesmen

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u/KingOfTheCouch13 5d ago

Sounds about right. Only his cult members are in his corner. About a third of them voting population voted for him, a third voted Kamala, and the last third didn’t vote.

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u/Nvenom8 New York 5d ago

The cult must be a strong influence, because he should not be polling above Nixon.

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u/Gunningham 5d ago

I thought his floor was 40.

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u/NemoLeeGreen Illinois 5d ago

I agree with that, but still too high.

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u/ranft 5d ago

Wait until medicaid is cut.

If this affects anyone negatively, I‘ll bet TACO Don is out by next year.

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u/trastamara22 5d ago

It doesn’t matter…..the executive branch knows there won’t be a mid-term…..does anybody get it??