Trump's Approval Ratings Just Hit Something Nobody Expected

Ultimize. Let me start with the least believable number in American politics. According to the latest American Research Group poll, Donald Trump is sitting at 34% job approval and 33% approval on the economy. Now, first you hear that and think, wow, that's low, really low. But then the real shocking number is this. It hits you. 34% of Americans still approve of this man. That's the mystery. That's the plot twist. That is the part where you stop reading the poll and start checking the water supply. Who are these people? What exactly are they approving of? The gas prices, the wars, the recession vibes, the attempt to treat Greenland like it's a distressed golf resort? Because the same poll says 63% disapprove of Trump overall, 64% disapprove of his handling of the economy, 62% think the country is in a recession. It's not technically in a recession, but people believe it is. And 70% think the economy will be worse a year from now. So just to be clear, the country is basically saying, we hate this. We think it's getting worse. We think it will keep getting worse. And then 1 out of 3 Americans is still standing there like a guy defending the band on the Titanic. No, no, keep playing. The iceberg is fake news. And let's get specific because the abstract version lets him off too easy. Trump promised economic strength. Well, how'd that work out? The national average for regular gas today is $3.97 a gallon. A month ago it was $2.95 a gallon. That's a jump of over a dollar in one month. One month. That's not drill baby drill, that's cry baby cry. This is not energy dominance. This is getting mugged by a nozzle. And if you want the Biden comparison, the EIA says regular gas averaged about $3.30 a gallon. In 2024. So Trump inherited a national average around the low $3, and now we're basically at $4. He was supposed to bring prices down. Instead, he turned the gas pump into a subscription service. And why are prices up? Because oil is up. On March 24th, Brent crude was around $101.77 a barrel, and WTI was around $90.34. Why? Because we're in the middle of a war. Back in just— actually, we're not going to go back. I want to continue this. We're in the middle of a war with Iran that this genius was supposedly elected to avoid. This is the same Donald Trump who campaigned like the human embodiment of no new wars, the same guy whose whole sales pitch was, hey, I'm the peace guy, I'm the America First guy, I'll end wars, not start them. He said he could end the war in the Ukraine in 24 hours. 24 hours. That wasn't a plan. That was an Uber Eats delivery estimate. We're now in late March of 2026. The Ukraine war is not over. Reuters reported that talks are on pause, in part because of the war in Iran. Just to recap, he didn't end the old war in 24 hours. He helped create a new one. It's like a plumber showing up, failing to fix your sink, and then flooding the basement. And even inside his own administration, people are bailing out. Joe Kent, Trump's own National Counterterrorism Center director, resigned over the Iran war and said Iran posed, quote, "no imminent threat to the United States." Think about how bad you have to be for your own counterterrorism chief to quit and basically say, this war is nonsense. That's not liberal criticism. That's your own guy standing up in a meeting and saying, sir, this PowerPoint is insane. Not that Trump would ever know how or want to use a PowerPoint. And if you're a conservative, how are you OK with this? You were promised strength. You got chaos. You were promised lower prices. You got $4 gas. You were promised no new wars. You got a war that helped shove oil over $100 a barrel. You were promised stability. You got a presidency that feels like a raccoon locked out of Costco overnight. And if you're a libertarian, some of my friends are, this should be your supervillain origin story. You wanted less government insanity. Instead, you got a president who, according to Reuters, wouldn't rule out using military or economic force to pursue control of Greenland and the Panama Canal. Greenland and the Panama Canal. That's not limited government, that's Grand Theft Auto foreign policy. This is not constitutional restraint. This is a guy looking at the map like he just won a prize at Dave Buster's. Greenland. A normal president wakes up and thinks, how do I lower inflation? Trump wakes up and thinks, what if America bought an ice cube? And it gets worse or worse, mostly worse. Reuters also reported in January that Trump's advisors were actively discussing options for acquiring Greenland, and the White House said the US military was always an option. Always an option? That's a real sentence. That's not a rejected South Park script. That's actual government language. Folks, it's a huge, huge mystery to me why this man doesn't have a support level of zero, much less 34%. It does raise the question, what would he have to do to actually lose that 34%? He famously said back in the first campaign he could shoot somebody in the middle of Fifth Avenue, he wouldn't lose his base. It looks like that is where we're going, if we haven't reached there already. Back in a moment. Filtered is brought to you by the following. Get the deeper takes I don't post anywhere else. Subscribe now at substack.com/filter. /tjwalkersuccess and stay in the loop. For years, people have asked how they could get one-on-one coaching from me inexpensively. Well, now you can anytime, anywhere with the TJ Walker AI clone. It's like having me in your pocket, ready to help you prep for a speech, polish a pitch, or calm your nerves before a big meeting. You talk to it, it responds like I would. Based on my real-world coaching of thousands of leaders and communicators. Check it out at tjwalker.ai. It's not just smart, it's personal. More on this latest Trump polling showing he has 34%, which in my lifetime, I don't remember a president getting below that. Maybe Nixon, but that's extraordinarily low levels of public support. Again, let's look at, let's look at why. Imagine being an ally and hearing that you're going to just be taken over. You're Denmark, you're in NATO, you're supposedly our friend, and America is suddenly talking like a drunk billionaire at a yacht party. Nice island you got there. Shame if freedom happened to it. And this is why I keep coming back to that 34%, not because 63% disapprove. That part makes sense to me. The shocking part is that 34% can look at all of this and still say, yep, that's my guy. This man has managed to turn every promise into performance art. He promised cheaper gas. Gas is nearly $4. He promised peace. We're in new wars seemingly all the time. He promised competence. His own people are resigning and saying the rationale makes no sense coming from the White House. He promised to end wars in a day. He can't end one and help start another. He promised to put America first. Now we're talking about annexing Greenland like he's a colonial realtor with impulse control issues. He's taken the Republican Party, the conservative movement, the anti-war movement, and even libertarian rhetoric, thrown them all in a blender, hit puree, and poured the result directly into the gas tank. And let's talk about the economy beyond the gas. The same poll says only 10% of Americans think the economy is getting better, and only 10% think it will be better a year from now. 10%! In polling terms, this is not confidence. That is a support group. And 78% rate the national economy as bad. Very bad or terrible. That's not a mixed review. That's not room for improvement. That is Yelp if Yelp covered presidencies. One star. War was bad. Gas was expensive. Would not annex Greenland again. And what makes Trump so uniquely exhausting is that every single day comes with some new absurdity. And because it's him, people stop noticing the insanity. If another president had floated taking Greenland, it would be the defining joke of his entire career. With Trump, it barely makes the top 10 for the month or sometimes even the week. That's his superpower, I guess. He commits so many ridiculous acts that your brain develops scar tissue. The man creates scandal inflation. You can't even keep up. One week it's the economy, next week it's Iran, then Greenland, then the Panama Canal, then some statement that sounds like it was written by a sleep-deprived casino manager at 3:00 AM. And the tragedy is that behind all the absurdity, there are real consequences, real prices, real deaths, real instability, real allies wondering if America has finally lost its mind. That's why I don't buy the excuse that it's just his style. No, style is whether you wear a blue tie or a red tie. Style is whether you use a teleprompter. Starting wars you said you wouldn't start, sending gas prices soaring, threatening allies, blowing up your own economic message is not style. It's failure with branding, and that's why the 34% is so amazing. It means a third of the country can watch a man promise peace and deliver war, promise lower prices and deliver higher ones, promise seriousness and deliver Greenland, and still say, yep, more of that. At this point, supporting Trump is like staying loyal to a restaurant where the chef keeps setting the kitchen on fire and serving you the menu as the entree, and you're still telling your friends, you gotta try this new place, the owner's very entertaining. No, he's not a genius. He's not a mastermind. He's not playing 4-dimensional chess. He's a chaos machine with better lighting. And the only truly mysterious thing left in American politics is why most people do not disapprove. It's why 34% are still clapping. That's the truly bizarre thing going on in politics. Ultimize.