Bulwark Takes - NEW POLLS: Tariffs Tanked Trump’s Approval

Episode Date: April 10, 2025

Sam Stein and JVL share their takes on Trump's recent poll numbers, which show a steep decline in his approval rating since "liberation day."

Bettering your business takes working with the best. With the James Hardy Alliance, you gain access to leads, training, networking, and support from the number one brand of siding in North America. Achieve new levels of success by joining the James Hardy Alliance today. Hello, everyone. I'm JVL here with my bulwark colleague, Sam Stein, and the polls are out for Trump liberation day is sad kind of a bust sam i want to read some numbers to you because nothing makes good video like reading numbers i thought the first of all bond markets you said don't make good video this morning

i think they make good video that's it i'm I'm playing the hits. I'm playing the hits. Trump's net approval down 7.3 points in a week following the announcement of the tariffs. His approval has a new low, 44.9%. Disapproval is a new high. Morning Consult has his approval at 46, which is the lowest point of his second term. We'll keep going on. But very quickly, not good, is it?

You want line go up, not line go down, right? Yeah, not good. I'm kind of wondering, we know where their bottom is, right? Or at least I think we know where the bottom is, right? Nate Silver least I think we know where the bottom is, right? Well, that's what we're talking about.

Nate Silver wrote a piece about this. We actually don't. What did Nate say? What does Nate think? Nate thinks that Trump's bottom has not yet been explored because he has not been president during a time of economic disruption that didn't have an exogenous cause.

Oh, so COVID, I get get it covid does not count covid doesn't count because it wasn't his fault somehow what does an exogenous cause mean is like was the stock market crash in 08 an exogenous cause i don't know so i think it just means recession so you know exogenous is something like like covid right it comes in you can blame it and say yeah that look right but just a normal recession we don't know what his trunk get blamed for covets i mean for the just not for covet but for the magnitude of covet nobody did people still don't to this day people still don't all right let's take a side track about that so we don't know things are going yeah right well i guess that's right.

These numbers – it's interesting. These numbers are about what I would expect. And I've been – Trump's been kind of treading decently in the sort of 48, 47 range. But the tariff stuff – and let's keep in mind, the tariffs didn't hit, right? Like that's the thing about this. We don't actually – we never actually lived with the impacts of the tariffs. What we lived with was the anticipation of the tariffs and the sense that things were chaotic and out of control. And so that's just a perception of chaos.

And so I guess I'm talking myself into Nate's thesis, which is let's say in theory that the tariffs hit and they're supposedly hitting, right, whether we were in a trade war with China, basically, and that the price of goods does start creeping back up. Yeah, I think these could get worse. But at this juncture, they're pretty bleak. Historically, there's only been one presidency that's been at this point this bad, and that's Trump's first presidency. let me hit you with some more data uh sure voters 31 more likely to hear negative economic news than positive economic news right the worst gap since may of 2023 which is funny because in may of 2023 things were okay but that's all right that's all right um that suggests that we are getting a new cycle that kind of is bad for Trump.

Well, what it suggests to me is that and we're always sort of looking for slippage among Republicans. Right. I mean, that's always what Trump's like. That base is so firm. And one of the reasons that his economic numbers early on were good, early on in the second term were good, is because there was obviously a quick reversal of sentiment, right? Conservatives, MAGA types who thought the economy was horrible under Joe Biden suddenly felt fairly good about the economy and then the reverse. This suggests to me – this is like the sort of siren for Trump is that your own people are now willing to concede that things aren't necessarily going in the right direction economically. They may not yet be willing to blame you for it or say you're doing a poor job because of it, but they're at least willing to recognize some reality in which you're not a hero figure. And that is a problem for Trump. Yeah. And I mean, let's be honest, he's going to have to put a lot more brown people into El Salvador and gulags in order to make it up to these people. Well, they love him on immigration still. They do.

His approval on immigration is always really... So many of them, they just voted for him for the racism, not for the tariffs. They voted for him for the racism. They voted for him for... Not the tariffs. Yeah. No, they assumed he'd bring down prices. In fact, so they voted for him explicitly not for the tariffs. For the deflation. Yeah, that's great. assumed he bring down prices. In fact, so they voted for him for the deflation.

Yeah, that's great. Because voters are so sophisticated. Here's one more thing. The youth vote. Yeah. Before this, Trump was plus five favorability net with young voters, which I find. find both astonishing and also once you think about it for five seconds it makes perfect sense because at this point we are a decade into the trump experience right so if you're a young voter there is no before times for you anymore right like trump is just this is this is politics this is the republican party this is all you've ever known so it's so funny to say that right i was thinking about this the other day about the obama era and like uh you know 2014 or whatever and how inconsequential those fights seem in but at the time of course it seemed deeply consequential and people who were what let's say they were 10 years old uh in 2012 you know they're just now in their mid-20s.

All they know is Trump in their formative political years. And so as a sort of political matter, this circus that they've been in seems like the baseline. And so, yeah. And so that's how they could have gotten to plus five. Exactly. But they're now at minus 29. Right. Well, that's –

Is it that bad? wow okay so what do you what do you make of that minus 29 oh what's your theories and i was gonna ask you because i i mean young young people are normally not terribly responsive to stock market news because they have less less capital right less stuff accumulated also that's too recent yeah maybe it is like the nintendo like the nintendo switch too i don't know if you know this sam yeah but it has been pushed back in america because uh you know it's gonna be a very big deal because of tariffs nintendo's now got to figure out what to do about nintendo went and inked an entire deal with the Dodgers. I don't know if you noticed this.

The Dodgers patch all season long. Their sponsorship patch is the Nintendo Switch 2. Maybe it's that. Maybe it's crypto. I am honestly, I am absolutely stumped. It's confusing. Crypto could be an interesting reason. As much as i want to think

it might be the stuff that they're doing cracking down on campuses i don't i honestly don't know i don't think so i don't think um he's not doing that kind of like you know exhaustive push in in the in the um podcast zone where he was trying to appeal to these people on a regular basis so maybe it's a little bit of that, that they're not hearing from him, but honestly, this one is just one. You think like,

could it be the stories of like, hold on, you're just, you arrested this guy in Maryland. Who's got a special needs. Well, that's a campus thing too. Right.

It's like, it's like throwing, you know, they, they look and they see this college kid who's like, you know, walking through the streets of Boston and come up and they're like, that's kind of fucked up. Maybe – I mean Rogan was upset over that, right?

Rogan was upset and he talked about it and he said this is messed up. And Portnoy who is a voice for them is upset over the crypto stuff and the self-dealing. And so maybe there's a bit of both of that. The question, I guess, obviously, is like, are these young voters going to go to the Democrats? Because that kind of would matter. Are they just getting out of politics writ large? It does matter.

Democrats need the youth vote. The youth vote is part of what saved Biden, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. It is hard for me to see how Trump gets the young voters back, though. That's the other thing. How?

I think that, right? I mean – Not by purchasing Greenland or a military parade. Right. Trump's plus five was basically just like people who are acclimated to trumpism thinking well he's president again so uh you know maybe at least the economy will be good right yeah and yeah that's not in the offing that's not coming through that door right as you would know if you watched our segment on the bond market that's it that's why the youth vote fled is the bond the bond mark yeah the youth vote is looking at the

10-year yields are out of control i gotta get out of there you know corporate bond rate downgrading is really concerning them the sax two billion dollar bond which has gone to triple c very very worrisome to the 18 to 24-year-old voter. Let's say – OK. To take your point a little bit further, let's say you happen to be in the White House in their political office right now. What would you tell them to arrest this slide right now? I mean more trans stuff, right? Find some trans person somewhere that you can demonize. I mean honestly, I don't know.

Fox News does it, right? Fox does it, right. When things are going bad with tariffs, they found some trans fencer out in England who they could demonize. They know what's going on. The problem that Trump has right now is that he's broken the world financial system and he can't put it back together. Like you can go back on tariffs. You cannot fix the bond market. You cannot fix people's assumption that America is a risky place to put capital and that it is, it is risky to make plans in the near term to spend money on your business

here, like by expanding. And I think that's the sort of macro theory that I have, which is, and, and you know, it sounds silly, And I think that's the sort of macro theory that I have, which is, and I know it sounds silly, but I think to your point, one thing Trump did miraculously well in the 2024 campaign was to convince the populace or a portion of it that in fact, things were relatively stable and prosperous during his presidency and that the real chaos had happened under Joe Biden.

And I think all of us obviously said that's preposterous. It wasn't that long ago. We know what happened. But enough people were convinced. And I think what's happened now is everything that we predicted in terms of the chaos and the uncertainty and honestly, the corruption is coming up to the surface and people are like, oh yeah, this is not great. And it's not, that's not something you fix if you're the White House, because that's a feature. It's not a bug. So real talk, how low do you think his approval could go? Well, I started thinking it was going to, he had a base of 42, right? Which is kind of where he was, maybe in the worst of times, 39, something like that. I mean, Biden got to 38, right? Which is kind of where he was maybe in the worst of times, 39, something like that. I mean, Biden got to 38, right? Yeah. And that was my sort of lived experience in Trump 1.0 is like things were happening and yet it never really could get, but you've kind of talked me into the Nate Silver idea. Like if we're in a fairly serious recession, because this, and I

will say like putting COVID aside, because obviously COVID, April, May of 2020 was bad and businesses were shuttering. But then there was a fairly steady reversal of that and that did continue through. But let's say in theory that there was a recession and it lasts for half a year and we're just really struggling and businesses, you know, people just don't have work and we have just mass unemployment. Yeah. I mean, I would imagine that we were talking low 30s at that juncture. Right. I mean, what was like what was the Bush low was like around there? Yeah, I think Bush hit like 36.

Yeah. I will say that if we get to that point the same people who spent the last 24 hours That's lowest of low. I mean, I just don't think Yeah, I think that's right. I think that's right. Because there's a certain segment of the population which, if you hit lowest low, will rally to him just to fuck the libs But the same people who spent the last 24 hours talking about how brilliant it was to slap these tariffs on and then kind of sort of take them off will tell us that the recession is really just all part of the art of the deal. Right.

The degrowth. Well, we'll come out of this thing. And once we come out of it, then you'll see how genius it was that he's playing. And that's always the case. And I was talking – this is totally off topic, but like Will Summer and I were talking for his piece, which is like, and I asked Will, like, don't these people ever get tired of like, you know, when Dan Bongino comes in and he's going to arrest Oprah and then he doesn't, or when the Epstein files are going to come out and they do, and there's nothing

in them. Don't they ever just get tired of being misled or lied to? And Will's point is like, no, they just assume that the person who they put in place was the wrong person. And they'll find another Dan Bongino. They'll find another Pam Bondi. And they'll just continue to lie to themselves. Let me ask you something.

This is a big, this is an expansive philosophical and theological question. All right. question all right why is it that republicans i think more constitutionally but specifically with trump are never disappointed and are you know willing to say anything and and democrats are like the opposite it's like boy that ob Obama presidency didn't get us all the things we wanted. Boy, this this Democratic politician disappointed me on these 15 different things. You know, the Biden student loan thing. That was not you know, we wanted more than that. Yeah, it's there's there are always Democrats often with their names stashed in the press, like complaining about, you know, I'm going to leave the party and, you know, I'm not pleased with Democratic presidential person X. And Republicans are like, we will line up to eat shit over and over and over again. And we don't care, you know?

It is a remarkable thing. I mean, my background is reporting on democratic politics. That's sort of how I came up. And, you know, the real divide in the Democratic Party is over people who believe that incremental progress is important and people who are Puritans and who will never accept incremental progress. And sometimes the stars align and you're willing to take half loaf. And this is, you know, the story of Obamacare is that, the story of the Inflation Reduction Act is that. But oftentimes they just shoot themselves in the foot and they demand purity. And two major presidential elections

are told through that prison, which is 2016 and obviously 2024. I don't see it with Republicans and I wish I understood why. I just don't. You know, at the commentator level, and I wish I understood why. I just don't. You know, at the commentator level, and I promise we'll get out of here after this, Matt Iglesias, I think this is his term. He talks about the hack gap between Democrats and Republicans. And this is something which I think didn't exist during the Clinton years. Like,

during the Clinton years, you would have Democratic, you know, talking heads who would just defend anything. Like they were there to line it up. Right. They would say anything. And that really went away, I think, during the Bush years

and into the Obama years. And, you know, like they were still partisans. But you could have a Democratic talking head on a cable show who would say yeah this thing obama did isn't great i think this was a mistake and he should have done xyz right and what we've had in fact in fact beyond that they get credibility if they felt like they would get credibility within their own social circles by criticizing their right like donna brazil could

could show up on television and basically shoot straight joe trippy could show up on television and basically shoot straight. Joe Trippi can show up on TV and basically shoot. And there isn't a Democratic version of Scott Jennings. You know, like the Baghdad Bob. And Republicans are basically all Baghdad Bob at this point. And I wonder what that is. Is that just an artifact of Trumpism, I guess. I think it's a Trumpism product because it's all about sort of a team sport, right? I think part of it for Democrats is cyclical, which is in 2019, in 2020, the whole mindset was like everything has to be about beating Trump. And so they were less willing to accept the type of self-criticism, which is why you had, you know, in the summer, very little talk, frankly, about Joe Biden and his infirmities because no one wanted to talk about that. They wanted to get rid of Trump. I would argue, it predates me a little bit, but Clinton probably was about that. It had been three terms of Republican presidencies. The party was just ready to like get a Democrat in office. And so when Paula Jones came out, like there was a bit of a rallying around the flag type phenomenon there. But when you're not in that moment, the Democratic commentariat is much more willing,

frankly, to just be hypercritical of Democrats. And you see that all the time. Let's just be honest with what they think. Oh, yeah, yeah. That's the other thing, right? They're going to be candid in ways that- Right. Like David Axelrod, Van Jones, because you mentioned Scott Jennings, I'll talk about CNN commentators. I mean, those are two very prominent Democratic commentators

on CNN who you probably will remember the most for when they put their spotlight on Democrats, when Van Jones is saying something critical of Democrats, when David Oxford is saying something critical of Joe Biden. And you do not expect that ever. And rarely do you ever get it from a pro-Trump commentator. All right. Well, hell, that was a journey, Sam. It was, but a good one. This is really, it was a good journey.

All right, guys, hit like, hit subscribe, get with us on the feed. We're here doing this all day, every day for only another decade, probably. Well into Trump's fifth term, we will be doing this here at the Bulwark. Good luck, America.