The Briefing with Jen Psaki
How to Lose a Country in 100 Days: Trump's Weak Poll Numbers
27 Apr 2025
Jen Psaki reflects on the tumultuous and chaotic first 100 days of Donald Trump’s presidency, as the country faces so many crises of his own making. Senator Adam Schiff returns to discuss the recent polling showing low approval ratings on nearly every issue, from the economy to the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case. They later discuss the Acting US Attorney for Washington DC, Ed Martin, who is awaiting senate confirmation and what Democrats like Schiff are doing to slow the process down. Representative Brittany Petterson joins Jen to analyze the hypocritical policy proposals the White House is considering to incentivize women to have more kids. And finally, Jen previews her new primetime show, “The Briefing with Jen Psaki,” which premieres on May 6th.Check out our social pages below:https://twitter.com/InsideWithPsakihttps://www.instagram.com/InsideWithPsaki/https://www.tiktok.com/@insidewithpsakihttps://www.msnbc.com/jen-psakihttps://bsky.app/profile/insidewithpsaki.msnbc.com
Full Episode
Okay, this week we will hit the 100-day mark of Donald Trump's presidency. If you can't believe how quickly time has flown by, that's not at all how I feel. But if that's how you feel, don't worry, everyone. There are only 1,361 days to go of this journey. Now, the first hundred days, though, is often the high watermark of a presidency. You're fresh off a political win. You have momentum.
You can finally try to implement the plans you talked about on the campaign trail. You're still in a sort of honeymoon phase of your presidency for most presidents. It's a time when the American people are most willing to extend some benefit of the doubt of what you're going to do.
But as we approach the end of Trump's first hundred days, it seems he was pretty quick to squander whatever goodwill he came in with. And that's not just me saying, I mean, poll after poll after poll. And I literally mean there's so many of them is making that all perfectly clear. There was a new NBC News poll out just this morning that shows Trump's favorability is at just 45 percent.
Now, Fox News poll put his approval a point lower at 44 percent, which, by the way, is the lowest rating that Fox has ever measured for any president at this point in their term. And those weren't even the worst numbers Trump saw this week. A Washington Post, ABC News poll showed his approval rating at just 39 percent. And then there are the numbers on the specific issues.
And this is where I think it gets very interesting. Like these from The New York Times. Trump's underwater by four points on immigration, an issue that typically had been his strength.
He's underwater by eight points on managing the federal government, underwater by 11 points on trade, by 12 points on the economy, by 14 points on foreign conflicts, underwater by 21 points on his handling of the war between Russia and Ukraine. And he's underwater by 21 points on his handling of the case involving Kilmar Obrega-Garcia.
And I think what we're seeing here very clearly is just how badly Donald Trump overplayed his hand. Part of the reason he overplayed his hand is because of his completely warped view of what the outcome in November meant. I mean, you might remember in the weeks and months following the election, Donald Trump and his allies claimed he had a historic mandate to basically do whatever he wanted.
America has given us an unprecedented opportunity. and powerful mandate. They're just upset. They're desperate. They're humiliated. They're embarrassed. But Donald Trump has a mandate. The president-elect clearly buoyed by his victory telling me in our conversation today that he believes he has a, quote, mandate.
Donald Trump has a mandate. He has the greatest presidential mandate probably since Reagan in 1984. The presidential election of November 5th was a mandate like has not been seen in many decades.
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