Trump’s Approval Average of 43.6 Percent Is Better Rating Than Presidents Obama or George W. Bush Had at This Stage

President Trump is having the most successful second term of any president in history. Yet his opponents, who have had a pretty lean year as he has completely dominated the headlines all over the world and secured the adoption of most of his program, are doing their best to simulate winning athletes high-fiving, doing cartwheels, and throwing headgear in the air over what they purport to regard as the disintegration of the administration’s popularity.The more knowledgeable and civilized of his adversaries like the estimable Karl Rove keep within walking distance of the facts by referring to alarm bells and portentously stating that the president’s approval averages 43.6 percent. So it does but this is a better rating than President Obama or President George W. Bush, whom Karl Rove served, had at this stage in their second terms.“Affordability” became an issue in the off-year elections in New Jersey and Virginia, which are usually Democratic states anyway, and that word is now being conveyed about the political landscape like the Infant of Prague: an invincible source of miracles for the president’s opponents. This is just the latest fantasy conjured by those psychiatrically incapable of imagining that Mr. Trump could be a legitimate and successful president.It is like the supposedly colossal joke that occurred when he and his wife descended the escalator at Trump Tower in June 2015, or the solemn national agreement that Secretary Hillary Clinton would be elected president in 2016, or the Stalin-show trials-certitude of the national political press that the walls were closing in on Mr. Trump’s collusion with the Russians in the 2016 election.President Trump arrives at a press event where he announces his run for the White House at Trump Tower on June 16, 2015. Christopher Gregory/Getty ImagesOr the happy mass funeral of the Trump movement after the trespass at the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, or the unctuous affectations of relief as the district attorney at Manhattan invented a criminal offense for the ex-president and the FBI replicated the amphibious D-Day landings at Mar-a-Lago and rummaged through Mrs. Trump’s underwear drawer looking for classified documents.The Biden administration took Mr. Trump’s inflation rate of slightly less than 2 percent and raised it to 9 percent. Mr. Trump, in the first year of his second term, has brought it back almost to the Federal Reserve goal of 2 percent from a little more than 3 percent while he has reduced the taxes of 85 percent of American taxpayers and arranged for unprecedentedly large flows of foreign and repatriated capital to reenter the country and promote job creation.Because most of the national political press greeted the president’s position on tariffs with dark visions of skyrocketing prices and empty store shelves and rampant inflation recalling Germany’s Weimar Republic when a wheelbarrow of currency was necessary to buy a loaf of bread, the anti-Trump press gallery has had more than its usual difficulties assimilating the facts.The tariffs have generated cash for the United States Treasury that will substantially reduce both the trade and the budget deficit, at no cost to Americans, even as the inflation rate continues to settle downwards and the president has taken remedial action to strengthen farm income and moderate inflationary pressures on food prices. With more than ten months before the midterm elections and inflation closing in on two percent on the way down as incomes and job creation continue on the way up, it is challenging to see why the president’s opponents are so convinced that he is walking barefoot through a minefield. The Gaza War has been de-escalated by his efforts and also by his efforts there is finally semi-plausible talk of peace in Ukraine.President Trump with leaders of European nations and NATO at the White House on August 18, 2025. Win McNamee/Getty ImagesRelations with Communist China have improved even though the United States has just agreed to an $11 billion arms sale to the Republic of China on Taiwan. The president gave an effective address from the Oval Office last week, finally supplanting in public memory the unfortunate occasion in his first term when he spoke live to the camera despite having a head cold and each sentence provoked a distracting struggle within his nasal passages.He continues to lead on the main issues, and the public continues to have a low opinion of the Democrats. There remains a widespread nostalgia for the elegant management of the presidency of a Reagan or a JFK or, for history buffs, FDR. Yet Mr. Trump has completely mastered the impromptu press conference, almost never has any need to walk back an Internet statement, and most of those who disapprove of his public personality recognize that he is unlikely to evolve further towards a personality that he has never been.Substantive policy is more important than stylistic infelicities and outstanding presidents are not sent over by casting studios. In the meantime, Mr. Trump is still having the most successful second presidential term in history (though Lincoln’s was shaping up well when he was assassinated). There is no good reason to think the voters will forget this in November.

Trump’s Approval Average of 43.6 Percent Is Better Rating Than Presidents Obama or George W. Bush Had at This Stage

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