WSJ What’s News - WSJ Poll: Voters Want MAGA Lite From Trump

Episode Date: January 17, 2025

P.M. Edition for Jan. 17. WSJ reporter and editor Aaron Zitner discusses a new Wall Street Journal poll showing where voters stand on President-elect Donald Trump’s agenda shortly before he takes office. And the U.S. Supreme Court rules that a law that would ban TikTok can stay in effect. We hear from Wall Street Journal Supreme Court correspondent Jess Bravin about what that means for the app’s possible future. And Israel’s security cabinet approves the cease-fire deal that would pause fighting in Gaza. Alex Ossola hosts. Sign up for the WSJ's free What's News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is sponsored by Northern Trust Wealth Management. There is more to being a successful entrepreneur than just good business practices. What is it about an entrepreneur's childhood that helped fuel their entrepreneurial spirit? What are entrepreneurs doing to cultivate this spirit in their own children and build a legacy beyond their business? Tune in each month to the Road to Why podcast by the Northern Trust Institute, where host Eric Schapea dives deeper with leading entrepreneurs on these topics and more. Find the road to why where you listen

to your favorite podcasts. The US Supreme Court upholds a law that could ban TikTok starting Sunday. And a new WSJ poll shows what voters think about Donald Trump's policy agenda shortly before he takes office. Voters like the general direction that he's going in on immigration, on reforming government. They want change, but there are a lot of warning signs in here.

Plus, for corporate leaders, Trump's inauguration is the hottest ticket in town. It's Friday, January 17th. I'm Alex Osela for The Wall Street Journal. This is the PM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories that move the world today. Let's start with the Middle East. Israel's security cabinet has approved a deal that would pause fighting in Gaza and free Israeli hostages. The full cabinet met later in the day to discuss and vote on it. The prime minister's office told the families of hostages

that preparations were underway for the possibility of the deal going into effect as soon as Sunday. The US Supreme Court has ruled that it's okay for TikTok to shut down. In a ruling today, the court upheld a federal law that requires the Chinese company that owns the social media app to sell or shut it down by January 19th. The ruling means that

without any further intervention, the platform could go dark on Sunday. TikTok had no immediate comment. And its CEO, Shou Chu, is expected to attend President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration on Monday the 20th. For more on this ruling and its implications, I'm joined by WSJ Supreme Court correspondent Jess Braven. So Jess, what happens now? You know, the law doesn't apply only to TikTok. It applies to other companies and entities that help it reach Americans. For example, the app stores that you might see on Apple or Google. And so those organizations, those companies are probably much more concerned than TikTok is with keeping on the right side of the law in the United States. The Biden administration issued a statement today saying that the law goes into effect on Sunday. They

are leaving town on Monday. And so it will really fall to the incoming Trump administration to enforce the measures. Right. I mean, Trump did say on social media that he plans to make a decision about TikTok soon. He talked to President Xi about it very recently. So is there anything Trump and his allies can do? Well, there is something that, of course, that ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, can do. They can sell it. And in fact, that is what the law envisions.

We don't expect that China will want to do that, and perhaps they expect that Mr. Trump, when he is president again, will be more flexible. Mr. Trump filed a brief with the court saying that his own incredible negotiating skills would be able to find a solution that was satisfactory, which has eluded U.S. officials for years and years, including his own first administration. What kind of precedent does this ruling set? What was interesting was that the court said its decision is narrow. They don't want to embarrass themselves in future generations in an area of fast-moving technology. So there is not a major free speech or internet law precedent here.

At least the court wanted to signal that they are looking at the very specific circumstances of this case. Also, what was important is that they focused on one of the two prongs that the government cited as justification for the law, and that was the massive data collection that TikTok undertakes. The area that they sidestepped was the other justification, which was the ability of China or the Chinese owners or the Chinese government to manipulate the information that TikTok serves up to Americans so that China can take advantage of that. The court really walked past that argument. They said that whether or not that was a legitimate reason or justification for the law, the data

security justification by itself is enough to justify this law. And that clearly is not in any way intended to interfere with anybody's free expression rights. That was WSJ Supreme Court correspondent Jess Braven. In other news, we exclusively report that IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel said he would resign with nearly three years left in his term. He plans to leave his post on Monday when Trump takes office. Trump last month announced his plan to replace Werfel with former Republican Congressman

Billy Long. The national debt will reach 99.9% of GDP later this year and surpass its post-World War II high as a share of the economy by 2029. That's according to updated projections from the Congressional Budget Office out today. And Goldman Sachs gave CEO David Solomon an $80 million bonus to stay for five more years. The bank's stock, including dividends, has more than tripled since Solomon took over and today closed at a new record high. The U.S. stock market just launched its best week since the election in November.

Investors this week were buoyed by muted inflation data and positive U.S. growth projections. Today all three indexes were up, pulled forward by big tech companies and chip firms. The S&P 500 closed up 1 percent, the Dow was up about 0.8%, and the Nasdaq was up about 1.5%. Coming up, what do voters think of Donald Trump shortly before he takes office? We'll look at a new Wall Street Journal poll after the break. This episode is sponsored by Northern Trust Wealth Management. There is more to being a successful entrepreneur than just good business practices. What is it about an entrepreneur's childhood that helped fuel their entrepreneurial spirit?

What are entrepreneurs doing to cultivate this spirit in their own children and build a legacy beyond their business? Tune in each month to the Road to Why podcast by the Northern Trust Institute, where host Eric Schapea dives deeper with leading entrepreneurs on these topics and more. Find the road to why where you listen to your favorite podcasts. A new Wall Street Journal poll out today takes voters' temperature about Trump's agenda and how he's expected to go about accomplishing it. Wall Street Journal reporter and editor Aaron Zittner is here to tell us more about it. This survey looked at a lot of the policies that Trump outlined during the campaign and afterward

and some of them are very specific as he laid them out and some of them are kind of fuzzy and how they're implemented will depend on the details of what he does with his flurry of executive orders and what we found is voters like the general direction that he's going in on immigration, on reforming government. They want change. But there are a lot of warning signs in here. Trump said that his election gave him an unprecedented and broad mandate to govern. Voters in this survey are not so sure.

It depends on how he carries out the goals that he's set out to accomplish. Immigration is one of Trump's key agenda items. And he said that he wants to take sweeping action to deport undocumented immigrants. What do the voters say about that in the poll? They like the general thrust, but they don't like all the details.

We know that Donald Trump was elected in large part because of concerns about illegal immigration and disorder at the border with Mexico. Well, people are on board with dealing with the border. The border wall along the border with Mexico still draws majority support. And when it comes to the deportations, it depends on who is being targeted. There is overwhelming support, close to 75%, for targeting only those people in the country illegally who have criminal records. When it comes to what should happen to someone who's been in this

country for a long time, has paid taxes on earnings, and does not have a criminal record, 70% say do not deport that person. Another controversial issue that was brought up in the poll is Trump's relationship with Elon Musk. Half of the people surveyed say it's a bad idea for Elon Musk to serve as an adviser to Trump on things like federal spending cuts, while 39 percent say it's a good idea.

Why are people so divided? Well, part of that change probably has to do with how people view Elon Musk. And there's been a change in his public image. People have soured on him to some degree, and now those who have an unfavorable view of Elon Musk outnumber those with a favorable view by 11 points. So as his public image has soured a bit and tarnished,

people have come to say maybe it's not such a good idea that he seems to be in the room with Trump on so many of decisions. What about Trump's recently stated intentions regarding Greenland and Canada? One of the things that's come up since the election is Trump's territorial ambitions, which took a lot of people by surprise. It wasn't an issue in the campaign. And voters are pretty skeptical of it. Trump has refused to rule out using economic coercion or military force in his plans to get

control of Greenland, which he wants for shipping routes and natural resources, and to retake control of the Panama Canal. So this is something that's new on the agenda and we kind of don't know where it fits with all of Trump's priorities, but voters initially don't want to at least use force to accomplish these goals. That was WSJ Reporter and editor Aaron Zittner. And you can see the results of our poll in more detail on wsj.com. We'll leave a link for you in the show notes.

Before Donald Trump can tackle his agenda, he needs to get sworn in as president. And his inauguration on Monday is the biggest ticket in town. Official inauguration festivities, including dinners, receptions, and balls, have been at capacity since early January. And some six-figure donors have been turned away.

So far, the event has raised more than $200 million, far more than it did in 2017. Here to tell us more is WSJ Investigations reporter Rebecca Ballhouse. Rebecca, how common is it for companies to make six-figure donations to a presidential inauguration? It's very common to see major companies give a million dollars to an inauguration.

And many companies just do the same thing every four years, regardless of the party of whoever's coming into the administration as sort of a gesture of bipartisan support and obviously a way to sort of make inroads with an incoming administration. What's unusual here is just how many companies are donating such large amounts. You usually have maybe a couple dozen companies

that are giving in the million range. And this time, we're just expecting it to be way, way more than that. What are these corporate leaders and companies hoping to get out of their donations and appearances at inauguration? Well, there are a number of policy issues where they really want to make sure

that the administration is hearing their side of things. The crypto industry, for example, has been very vocal about what kinds of policies it's hoping to see from this administration. Trump has also threatened to impose tariffs that would affect quite a few corporate industries. And we also have just seen over the last four years that many companies, when Trump left office, spoke up about his role in inciting the invasion of the U.S. Capitol on January

6th and were extremely critical of him. And I think some companies feel like they have some ground to make up. Is there anything we can glean about how some of these businesses plan to work with the Trump administration and potentially vice versa? A lot of these companies just want to make sure that they're in the room with Trump and that they don't give him any reason to target them.

As for how the Trump team wants to deal with companies, I think it's very clear that Trump is enjoying the enormous amount of interest he's been getting from corporate America. That was Wall Street Journal Investigations reporter Rebecca Bauhaus. And that's What's News for this week. Tomorrow, you can look out for our weekly Markets Wrap-Up, What's News in Markets. Then on Sunday, we'll be discussing the dynamic between Trump and lawmakers and what that means for the incoming president's agenda.

That's in What's New Sunday. We're off on Monday for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, but we'll be back to our normal schedule on Tuesday. Today's show was produced by Anthony Bansi and Pierre Bienamay, with supervising producer Michael Cosmides. Michael Laval wrote our theme music, Aisha El-Muslim is our development producer, Scott Salloway and Chris Zinsley are our deputy editors, and Falana Patterson is The Wall Street Journal's head of news audio.

I'm Alex Osala. Have a great long weekend, and thanks for listening. This episode is sponsored by Northern Trust Wealth Management. There is more to being a successful entrepreneur than just good business practices. What is it about an entrepreneur's childhood that helped fuel their entrepreneurial spirit? What are entrepreneurs doing to cultivate this spirit in their own children and build a legacy beyond their business? Tune in each month to the Road to Why podcast by the Northern Trust Institute, where host

Eric Schapea dives deeper with leading entrepreneurs on these topics and more. Find the Road to Why where you listen to your favorite podcasts.