
Consumed by Epstein, Trump Has Lost Ground on the Economy and Immigration
A year ago, voters saw Trump as a better steward of the economy than Vice President Kamala Harris. His tough talk on immigration appealed to many voters who saw the southern border as out of control and who blamed the Biden administration for the huge influx of undocumented migrants. Now he's getting negative reviews on both.
A new Gallup poll shows a remarkable turnaround in public sentiment about aspects of immigration policy. Other recent surveys find significant dissatisfaction with Trump's handling of the economy. When he was sworn in, Trump promised a new 'Golden Age.' It's clear that, six months into his presidency, the public isn't buying all the hype.
Trump would like nothing better than to point to successes in his second term, and he has had some. The swirling Epstein controversy makes that difficult. Trump has tried to dismiss the controversy as Democratic-manufactured fakery, though this was always an issue generated by conspiracy theorists in the president's base.
He wants Attorney General Pam Bondi to seek the release of pertinent grand jury testimony, a dodge that doesn't address demands for full transparency. For now, he seems stuck, unless his threatened lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal over a story that says he sent a risqué 50th birthday note to Epstein (which he denies) consolidates his base.
The White House would like to change the subject, but when press secretary Karoline Leavitt tried to do that at the top of her Thursday briefing, her lengthy opening statement helped to highlight apparent concerns about public sentiment on both the economy and immigration.
Leavitt reeled off statistics trying to make the case that the economy is working for people. She provided citations of arrests as evidence that Trump is ridding the country of migrants with violent criminal records. It will take more than that to drown out the Epstein controversy and change public opinion about his other policies.
This comes at a moment when the president has notched some clear successes. Congress approved the big tax cut and immigration bill. The Supreme Court has given him some victories, including a green light to fire thousands of federal workers. The airstrike on Iran's nuclear facilities has brought a ceasefire between Iran and Israel and set back Iran's nuclear program. NATO nations have agreed to increase defense spending.
This past week Trump agreed to send Patriot air defense systems to Ukraine, paid for by the Europeans. That decision came after his public complaints about Russian President Vladimir Putin's continued assault on Ukraine and public perceptions that the Russian leader has played the American president on the issue of a ceasefire and settlement of the war.
Trump also has delivered on his campaign promise to tighten security at the U.S.-Mexico border. Illegal crossings are at a low point. His problem is that people don't like other aspects of his immigration policy: the aggressive roundups of undocumented and sometimes legal migrants, the deployment of U.S. military forces to Los Angeles to quell protests, numerous legal battles over the deportations that have pitted the administration against the courts.
All have contributed to the reshaping of public opinion. The result is something Trump could never have imagined when he was sworn in: The public now sees the value of immigration more positively and widespread deportations and the administration's enforcement tactics less positively.
Last year, 55 percent of Americans said they wanted a reduction in immigration, according to Gallup. Today, that's dropped to 30 percent. Gallup also notes that a record 79 percent of Americans say immigration is a good thing for the country. That's a 15-point jump in the past year.
Meanwhile, support for hiring more border agents, which is supposed to happen under the new 'big, beautiful bill' the president signed on July 4, has declined by 17 points in the past year. Support for deporting all undocumented immigrants has dropped nine points, to 38 percent.
In the Gallup poll, support for allowing undocumented immigrants to become U.S. citizens has risen eight points to 78 percent – though that's a bit lower than the 84 percent in 2016. The percentage of Republicans who support a path to citizenship has risen from 46 percent a year ago to 59 percent today.
The Post's average of high-quality polls shows a clear deterioration in Trump's approval rating on immigration. In May, the average showed Americans evenly divided. The average so far in July shows 42 percent saying they approve and 54 percent disapproving.
The protests that erupted in early June appear to be the catalyst for a reappraisal of Trump on immigration. Before the protests, his immigration approval rating was 49 percent positive, 49 percent negative. Since then, the average of the post-protests polls shows his standing at 42 percent positive, 54 percent negative.
Before he was sworn in, public expectations for Trump were highest on the economy and immigration, according to a Washington Post-Schar School poll of swing state voters. In that survey, 62 percent said they expected Trump to do an 'excellent' or 'good' job on the economy and 59 percent said they thought he would do an 'excellent' or 'good' job on immigration. Also, 46 percent said they thought his presidency would help their finances, with 31 percent saying it would hurt them financially.
Until the pandemic took hold in the spring of 2020, Trump enjoyed relatively strong ratings on the economy. Things deteriorated during the pandemic and judgments were about evenly divided just before the 2020 election. Today the public is dissatisfied with his economic performance. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs survey last week showed that 38 percent approved of his economic management and 60 percent disapproved. A Quinnipiac University poll put his economic approval numbers only slightly better: 43 percent approving, 55 percent disapproving.
In the AP-NORC poll, nearly half (49 percent) said his policies have done more to hurt them than help them. About 1 in 4 (27 percent) said they have done more to help them. The rest said the policies have not made a difference. A majority said the new tax bill will do more to help the wealthy and that it will hurt people with lower incomes. In the Quinnipiac poll, 40 percent said they approved of his handling of trade, with 56 percent disapproving.
Predictions that Trump's tariffs will trigger a major new bout of inflation have not been borne out, though all the tariffs are not in place. The Federal Reserve has been cautious about cutting interest rates because of the uncertainty around the tariffs.
Trump continues to badger Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell, whom he would like replaced, to cut those rates substantially. Many economists say a cut of the size Trump wants would risk an inflationary spike. There's history to buttress those concerns. In 1972, President Richard M. Nixon pressured Fed Chair Arthur F. Burns, and the subsequent loosening of monetary policy helped unleash an inflationary rise.
Trump continues to accumulate power in the presidency and exercise it to change government and major institutions. He plays a dominant role in the world. But his six-month report card provides indications that the public hasn't fully bought into his program, warnings that he can't easily ignore.
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As The Yomiuri Shimbun's Washington Bureau Chief, I covered the 2016 U.S. presidential election in which the MAGA movement, then called the 'Trump phenomenon,' arose for the first time. Trump mobilized 'forgotten people,' mainly white people who suffered from the effects of liberal political agendas on issues such as globalism, diversity and climate change. The Democracy Fund Voter Study Group found in 2016 and 2017 surveys that Trump voters had anti-immigrant, anti-globalism and anti-Clinton feelings. About half of them, who were core Trump voters, felt frustrated with agendas advanced by the establishment or political elites, such as building up the global economy, transforming industries that emit carbon dioxide and putting emphasis on diversity. Such policies pursued by the administration of President Barack Obama, which were likely to have been continued if Hillary Clinton had succeeded him, ultimately had negative impacts on MAGA supporters' lives and incomes. The Obama administration had been seen as not caring much about manufacturing bases moving abroad, taking a hostile view of the coal industry, and prioritizing diversity over religious beliefs. That's why they got really excited about Trump's 'America First' campaign pledges. A feeling of being excluded, ignored or not spoken for by the political elites is something that MAGA and Sanseito voters have in common. After the death of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and especially after Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba took office, these voters have been feeling the LDP has weakened its conservative and hawkish stances on foreign policy and policies regarding foreigners. They regard the Ishiba Cabinet as 'panda huggers' who are not stern enough toward China. Feeling frustration over an increasing inflow of foreigners, they have baselessly claimed that foreigners have taken advantage of Japan's social system and receive better treatment than Japanese. They have also claimed foreigners cannot obey Japanese rules and customs. In short, they fear that Japan's land and culture will go unprotected and be destroyed by foreigners because the weak-kneed Ishiba administration and old parties such as the LDP, Komeito and the CDPJ have put forward no measures to deal with the problem. Economically, they regard the LDP as a defender of establishments including big companies, rather than ordinary people who have suffered from inflation, especially after revelations that LDP Diet members had underreported revenue from political fundraising parties. So conservative voters including LDP supporters — especially those who voted for former economic security minister Sanae Takaichi, known for her hawkish stance, in the last LDP presidential election — ran out of patience and went looking for a party that would speak for them. Sanseito won them over to its side with hawkish campaign slogans such as 'Don't destroy Japan anymore' and 'At this rate, Japan won't be itself.' Another commonality between the MAGA and Sanseito movements is that they are driven by social media. Before now, newspaper and TV programs decided which topics had news value in a responsible, fact-based manner, but now social media makes those decisions in an irresponsible manner, sometimes swayed by foreign influence operations, based on the rules of the attention economy. In the United States, the government disclosed that Russian organizations conducted influence operations through social media in the 2016 presidential election and following ones. In Japan in this upper house election, social media expert Ichiro Yamamoto reported that Russian organizations carried out the same type of influence operations, trying to spread critical opinions about the government's policies on foreign nationals by using bots, which are digital tools that can be used to automatically perform repetitive tasks like reposting or giving out many 'likes.' How will Sanseito's leap affect Japanese politics? It's too early to be sure, but Sanseito voters will likely continue to show their presence in elections to come, just as MAGA has done. This means Japanese politics will become more divisive, confrontational and populist rather than rational, conciliatory and responsible, echoing the way MAGA has affected U.S. politics. On top of that, as Japan has a parliamentary cabinet system, its politics will become more and more confused, as has happened in European democratic countries. Political Pulse appears every Saturday. Satoshi Ogawa Satoshi Ogawa is the deputy chief of the President's Office of The Yomiuri Shimbun.