00:00We are now six months and about three days into this Trump administration.
00:04The president is touting it as some of the most successful six months any president has ever seen.
00:10But what do the voters think about that and his job in general?
00:15CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten is here.
00:19So the president says things are great. What do the voters say?
00:23No, I think is the answer.
00:25Six months in, the rules of political gravity absolutely apply to Donald Trump and the USS Donald Trump is taking on a lot of water.
00:33What are we talking about? Trump's net approval rating.
00:34Look, he started off back in January plus six points on the net approval rating.
00:38Minus three in March, minus seven in May.
00:41And now he's at a term too low at minus 11 points.
00:46His net approval rating has dropped nearly 20 points in the aggregate since the beginning of his presidency.
00:51The American people do not like what they're seeing.
00:54And Donald Trump's administration is in a ton of trouble at this point in the minds of the American voters.
00:59Well, on what issues do the American voters seem to disapprove of him?
01:03They disapprove of him on all of the issues.
01:06He's underwater on all the major issues of the day.
01:08Trump's net approval rating on all the major issues.
01:10Minus five points on immigration is best issue.
01:13He's underwater.
01:13How about the economy?
01:14That was what he was elected for.
01:16Minus 14 points.
01:17How about foreign policy?
01:18Minus 14 points.
01:19How about trade in those tariff wars?
01:21Minus 15 points.
01:22And, of course, the Epstein case, the lowest of the bunch.
01:25Minus 37 points.
01:2637 points below water.
01:29My goodness gracious.
01:30On every single issue, Donald Trump is below water on all the major ones.
01:36They're all dragging him down.
01:37No matter, it seems, what Donald Trump does, the American people do not like it.
01:42And that is why, at this particular point, he's at a term too low.
01:46It's interesting because this is the issue that may be on the top of many people's minds
01:49as members of Congress head home for this extended summer recess.
01:53And it's his worst one.
01:54I'm not sure that House members will be excited to see that number as they leave Washington today.
01:58So where does his overall approval rating stand compared to other presidents?
02:02Okay, I do have one piece of good news for Donald Trump and that there is one other presidency
02:07that has a lower net approval rating at this point than this one.
02:11The bad news is that it was Donald Trump's other presidency, his first presidency.
02:16Net approval rating six months in.
02:18The worst was in 2017.
02:19Donald Trump was 16 points underwater.
02:21The second worst, however, is this Donald Trump presidency.
02:2511 points underwater.
02:26The average president at this point since 1953 has a plus 27 net approval rating.
02:34John, do some quick math.
02:35It seems to me that Donald Trump is about 40 points lower than the average president at
02:40this particular point.
02:41He has the second worst net approval rating at this point.
02:44He is underwater on all the major issues of the day.
02:46The bottom line is six months into this administration, I think that most Americans would apply the word
02:52or words, disaster, terrible, awful, horrible.
02:59I think that is the way that the American people would see it at this particular point.
03:02He is so far below underwater compared to the average president.
03:05The only one he beats out is him in term number one.
03:08And I don't think that's exactly the metric he wants to be applying to himself.
03:11Interesting to see which direction it will go next.
03:14Harriet, and thank you very much.
03:16Thank you, my friend.
03:16Six months since President Trump returned to office.
03:19He says it has been a massive success.
03:21What does the rest of the country think?
03:22My panel joins me now to discuss Congressman Richie Torres, Democrat of New York.
03:27Six months in, what do you think?
03:29Well, the majority of Americans disapprove of Donald Trump.
03:32You know, he promised to end the war in Ukraine, and so far has failed.
03:37He promised to release the Epstein files, so far has failed.
03:40He said he would never touch Medicaid.
03:42He's cutting it by a trillion dollars.
03:44And his economic policy has wreaked havoc on the U.S. economy since Donald Trump's inauguration.
03:52We've seen an 11 percent decline in the value of the dollar, the steepest decline in more than a half a century.
03:59And a 10 to 11 percent decline in the value of the dollar raises the cost of imported goods by 10 percent.
04:04So it's the equivalent of a $300 billion hit in Trump tax on American families and businesses.
04:10So it's been a disaster.
04:11Former Republican Congresswoman Herrera Butler, I assume you disagree?
04:15Well, I think that he's doing the things that they expected him to do.
04:19Whether or not they're feeling the impacts of that yet is what remains to be seen.
04:22Inflation went up last week from June, right?
04:24So these are things that are coming.
04:26Double-digit premium increases for health care, I saw in several states next year.
04:30So people will feel it.
04:31But right now, he's actually, he took the chainsaw to things that they believe were broken anyway.
04:36I mean, the government's broken.
04:38This further Epstein, you know, debacle is evidence that it's broken.
04:42So I don't think, I don't think, I think it's way too soon to say that they think they're unhappy with what he's doing.
04:47I think he's doing what they expected.
04:49Let's go to the polling, if we could, in the control room there for number two.
04:52The CNN poll shows that nearly 60% of Americans disapprove of his job as president.
04:58And he is losing ground on some key issues.
05:0142% approve, 58% disapprove.
05:04And when it comes to key issues, disapprove 60% on the economy and 58% on immigration.
05:11I'm surprised to see numbers like that on the economy and immigration.
05:14Are you?
05:15Very much so.
05:16But I'm not surprised in the sense that if you look in the first term,
05:19when they tried to pass the first tax package, it was very unpopular then,
05:23and you saw his numbers take a hit.
05:24But then you sort of fast forward 18 months later, you saw the result of that package,
05:28and his numbers improved significantly in the economy.
05:31I think it's still too early to tell.
05:32I think for his base, a lot of it will say mission accomplished, promise made, promise kept.
05:37And he's done that.
05:38You know, Doge, there's other factors.
05:39You know, he's invested more in Ukraine, which is something that the base didn't want to do.
05:45But I think overall, the first six months, they've got to be very happy where they are,
05:49especially if they believe what took place in the first term.
05:52There was a lot of criticism with the tax package.
05:54I think it was less than 55% of people approved it.
05:56And it turned out to be the most popular thing that took place in his administration.
05:59They're banking on that same result.
06:01I want to bring up the Epstein files, because, Karen, you and I were talking offline about this.
06:06And to you, this is reminiscent of a different scandal.
06:11And one, actually, you and I talked about when it happened.
06:13It is reminiscent of the scandal in the Catholic Church,
06:17because ultimately that was about an institution trying to protect itself over children who had been harmed.
06:24And we are again in a situation, it feels like, we're talking about girls who were trafficked, raped, assaulted, abused.
06:34So, in this moment, you know, the Trump administration has the opportunity to say,
06:41are you going to stand with the powerful, the men who are, were the clients?
06:46Are you going to protect these girls?
06:49And we've seen, these young women.
06:50And so, I think that, and I think for his base, that's part of what we were hearing this week.
06:56Not just the promise made, you know, this is a broken promise.
06:59But this sense of the powerful, once again, getting one over on people who are more vulnerable.
07:07And I'll just say, in talking about this poll, part of what I think is interesting when we look towards 2026,
07:12so, if they're not able to satisfy some portion of that base,
07:17I'm not saying they'll vote for Democrats, but they may not vote for Republicans.
07:21And then across the board, on the issues we've just been talking about,
07:25and I would disagree with you that what the polls have been showing consistently for months,
07:30people don't like the way he's going about what he's doing.
07:34They may say he's doing what he said,
07:35but he's actually increased support for comprehensive immigration reform among Republicans.
07:42And when these doge cuts hit, and when these Medicaid cuts hit,
07:46those impacts people, you know, it's only going to increase the people who are going to be,
07:51I think, looking for someone else.
07:53But Democrats have to do the work to earn the trust back in 2026.
07:58I mean, that's the key point.
07:59In this poll, they're talking about Democrats having the lowest favorability
08:03since polls have been taken by CNN.
08:0628%.
08:06So all that you say could be true if Democrats could find their,
08:10the leadership could find their backside with both hands.
08:12That's the one thing that's propping this up right now,
08:14is that they're not showing that leadership.
08:16Yeah, and let's talk about that,
08:17because there's this Democrats 2024 autopsy that is happening,
08:21and a New York Times story says that it is described as avoiding the likeliest cause of death, as it were.
08:27The audit, which the committee is calling an after-action review,
08:29is expected to avoid the questions of whether President Biden should have run for re-election in the first place,
08:34whether he should have exited the race earlier than he did,
08:36whether Kamala Harris was the right choice to replace him.
08:39Congressman Torres, isn't that a mistake?
08:41I mean, isn't what happened with Joe Biden, his abilities, the hiding of his abilities and all that,
08:48isn't that part of the reason that your party's approval ratings are so low?
08:52Look, we should be open and honest about the failures that led to the 2024 debacle.
08:58An autopsy should address the actual cause of death.
09:02And I felt like if the Democratic nominee, including Vice President Harris,
09:06had had the benefit of a full primary process,
09:09she would have emerged from it from a better candidate.
09:12You know, a wise person once said,
09:13that which does not kill you makes you stronger.
09:15And I feel like we're all made better, stronger, and wiser by the rigors of a full primary process.
09:19I think it was Nietzsche and it was also the title of Bruce Willis' second album, also, by the way.
09:25The thing is, is excluding those things,
09:28it goes back to the issue of the Democratic Party
09:29and why they don't have the people's trust right now.
09:32You know, it's a trust issue.
09:33They have no path to regain that trust.
09:35This autopsy could very much be that first step.
09:37But they say, trust us, but we're going to take the key components of why we lost out.
09:41So actually, in this story, there's three different things happening.
09:44There's the DNC one.
09:45There's two other efforts.
09:46But what I would agree with is part of the reason we lost is we're not doing our job.
09:51We're not talking to voters.
09:53We're getting outmanned and outgunned in digital spaces.
09:57So I hope that those efforts come back and hold on and show us that.
10:02Because one of the things many of us have said,
10:04you cannot show up six months before an election in certain communities
10:08and just expect we're just going to show up.
10:10Republicans spend off years spending money doing persuasion.
10:14We need to run a permanent campaign and we're not doing it yet.
10:18I think you've just got to be focused on the issues of the American people.
10:20They've had enough.
10:21They don't trust institutions covering up the whole Biden thing
10:24and not answering the question further.
10:26What about the Epstein files?
10:27I mean, the slogan of the Trump administration is promises made, promises kept.
10:31Do it.
10:31He made a promise to release the files.
10:33He should keep it.
10:33Okay.
10:34Thank you, one and all.
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