Americans to Trump: You’ve Gone Too Far
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Who voted for Trump and who opposed him?
My name is Emily Haraldson, and I voted for Donald J. Trump.
My name is Darrell Davis. I'm a never-Trump Republican. I voted for Kamala Harris. I voted for Kamala Harris.
I voted for Trump. I voted for Trump. From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily.
I think the first 100 days has been great. I just wish he had more backing.
His first 100 days have been disastrous. probably the worst 100 days of any president in history.
The question hovering over President Trump's first 100 days in office is whether his extraordinarily aggressive approach to everything from tariffs to deportations is exactly what most Americans wanted.
I can see in the short term things seem a little crazy, but I think change is good.
The best thing he's done
Doge is, like, the best thing he could have done. Or I don't love all the tariff stuff.
You know, it's been harmful to people's pocketbooks. When it comes to immigration, you did it, but damn how you did it, though. That's the part that hurts. If he's simply gone too far. I feel that he's already done more harm in his first hundred days than he did in the four years he was in office in his first term.
Today. In a major new nationwide poll, voters tell The Times exactly how they feel about Trump's agenda so far. My colleague Nate Cohn is our guest. It's Monday, April 28th. Nate. Michael. Welcome back. Thanks for having me. You kind of went into a post-election hibernation of sorts, and now you have awakened.
I'm sort of dozing in and out. Haven't gotten all the way, haven't gotten my coffee yet.
Thanks for making time for us. This is a pretty big occasion for you and the world of New York Times polling. You're now out with our first poll since the election, timed to President Trump's first 100 days in office. You're basically taking the country's temperature on most of the major facets of what he has done so far in the first three months. So high level, what did you find about how Americans are feeling about this presidency 100 days in?
At a high level, we found that the public has a lot of reservations about Donald Trump's first 100 days. In fact, I think it's pretty hard to find a single number that's good for Donald Trump in this poll. We can debate about how bad some of the numbers are, but almost every question that we asked voters offered, to varying degrees, a negative reaction to the way he's handled his job, whether overall or on the issues.
And what is that top line not good number that we should hold in our heads?
The simple number to hold in your head is that 42% of voters say they approve of Donald Trump's performance as president compared to 54% who disapprove.
In political journalism, we call this being underwater. More people disapprove of you than approve of you. It's not a good thing. And it comes so soon after Trump won the presidency with what I remember was a number meaningfully higher than 42%.
Yeah, that's right. And when this represents a pretty marked decline from where he was standing in our poll and taking in January before Trump actually entered office, when he was still riding high in his post-election honeymoon. Historically, this now gives him the lowest approval rating of anyone at this stage of his term, with the possible exception it's close of himself eight years ago. And of course, Donald Trump did go on to lose four years later. So this is not a, he's not in great company.
So given all that, how are you thinking about this number at this moment, given everything that has happened in these first hundred days?
Well, Donald Trump, there's almost always two ways to look at his numbers. On the one hand, they're usually pretty bad. They're under 50%. They're usually among the worst for any president. And on the other hand, they're not catastrophically bad. His base is usually still on his side. There's a reason why he only narrowly lost in 2020 and then actually won in 2024. And so these are two ways that we can always look at Donald Trump. And he finds himself right back where he sort of has usually been in his career. I think that this go around, I would be inclined to take the more pessimistic interpretation to dwell on how weak he is so soon after his victory and given the political opportunities that he has rather than focus on the glass half full case.
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