Donald Trump’s approval rating is sinking again, and one columnist says the crash that follows will be more than just another bad poll for a deeply unpopular president. He thinks it will mark the unraveling of what he calls “one of the greatest and most destructive cons in American history.”
In a USA Today column, writer Rex Huppke argues that Trump’s second term is entering a final phase, with voters increasingly fed up and the president more interested in side projects than governing.
This fall, Huppke writes, is “going to be spectacular” as Trump remains “horrendously unpopular and [a] swiftly deteriorating lame duck focused more on building a glitzy ballroom or possibly invading Venezuela than on making life better for Americans.” He frames Trump’s grip on his supporters as a long running deception that is finally running into a wall of reality.
The latest Gallup survey helps explain the tone. According to the most recent numbers, Trump’s approval rating stands at 36 percent, with 60 percent disapproving, a new low of his second term. That kind of 20 point gap is the kind of political air pocket that usually sets off panic in any White House, especially one already staring down a tough midterm map.
He describes Trump’s project as a con built on grievance, spectacle, and promises that never quite materialize, from replacing the health care system to rebuilding infrastructure “bigger and better” to restoring some lost, undefined sense of national greatness. With each passing month, he argues, the distance between the big talk and most people’s lived reality has grown harder to ignore.
For many Americans, the headline indicators only deepen the frustration. Prices are still high, borrowing remains expensive, and the much touted stock market highs mean little to families who feel squeezed every time they go to the grocery store or pay their rent. Trump’s insistence that the economy is “booming” collides daily with voters’ own bank accounts.
By calling the Trump project “one of the greatest and most destructive cons in American history,” he is putting it in the company of the largest frauds and political deceptions the country has seen, and he suggests the damage reaches far beyond dollars and cents. In his view, the real cost is the erosion of trust, norms, and basic expectations of honesty from elected leaders.
The column also takes aim at what Trump chooses to focus on as his standing erodes. The image of a president “focused more on building a glitzy ballroom or possibly invading Venezuela” is meant to capture a sense of drift and distraction, a leader consumed by vanity projects and headline grabbing threats instead of the unglamorous work of governing.
That doesn’t mean Trump’s loyalists evaporate overnight, as 36 percent is still a huge number of people, and Trump has weathered storms that would have sunk plenty of other politicians. But if the trajectory holds, the collapse Huppke predicts might not be a single moment; rather, it could play out gradually, as the bond between Trump and some of his backers wears down through bad polling and growing frustration.
