Slowguy is correct though that a hiring freeze including the rescinding of existing job offers is out of the playbook of the first Trump administration. Also from the first Trump term is restricting all travel and international communications.
The probie RIF and fork in the road is DOGE.
Sounds like they’d like to be at least interns, and I apologize for not proof reading my voice to text. I’ll try to do better so you understand
Are you sure it’s not just his pure MAGA base that feels like they are winning? The ones who are cheering about tearing down the US govt, deporting immigrants, and laws against transgender people? How does this make their lives better or improve the economy, lower the price of eggs? I suppose it’s very powerful when Trump hates the same people as these MAGA voters.
My impression is that more than half the US is very worried right now with all this idiocy. I don’t think I need to list it all out. I do believe if this keeps up, Dems will take back the House in 2026. That is how it usually trends anyway.
So sorry about your daughters. That is awful. A good friend is worried about her grown children who work for NIH. I still don’t understand how Musk has this power without going through Congress and presenting evidence of fraud or wrongdoing. Aren’t all the funds already approved by Congress to fund these govt agencies? I feel like not enough federal judges are stepping up to challenge Musk. Some are, but not enough. Again, so sorry. This all sucks so badly. I sometimes feel like I’m living in a really bad movie.
His MAGA base is not that big, but the people that want those policies is growing, at least it is more popular in the voting public than the democratic ones (see 2024 election results)
Overwhelmingly many Americans want government spending to be reduced. It does not mean they are 100% on board with how it is being done, but not many are tied to the news like others are. They hear about cuts and savings and are like “cool”, this is good.
Not a lot of people care about transgender issues. This is in part why the dems lost a lot of the independent votes.
Trump has deported less immigrants than Biden did his first 2 months.
Price of eggs is coming down where I am currently, people are happy.
My impression was that more than half the country did not want Trump back in office., He won, including the popular vote and flipping ALL swing states.
But yes, if this is all so unpopular then Dems should have very blue big wave in 2026 and Trump will truly be a lame duck president for his final 2 years.
He is barely more popular than his first term and less popular than Biden and Obama were at this point.
And also, his approval is continuing to go down and negative:
Claiming he had done a “masterful job” of making the American people think they are winning is a joke and you can’t possibly be serious, can you?
I’m seeing polls showing support for trump and the R’s is falling fast among Hispanic voters. I am Jack’s complete lack of surprise. 2026 could be grim for the R’s.
Using your RCP polling, he is 4 points HIGHER than this time in his first presidency.
Biden lost 16 points from beginning to end in his presidency. Trump lost 8 points in his first presidency. He is up 10 points today from the end of his first presidency.
How the hell are his numbers this high with how god awful our country is right now?
Dems make me feel he should be 30% or below on approval, yet he is in fact close to 50.
Sincerely a Biden/Harris voter
Sure I’m all for govt efficiency and most people would agree it’s a good thing. But what Musk is doing is insane and probably illegal and maybe even unconstitutional. History will not look kindly on this. And the crazy thing is by blindly firing half the govt workforce without actually looking at ways to improve efficiency, govt is now going to run even slower. Even minor things like waiting for a new passport will take 6 months instead of 6 weeks (just spit balling). I don’t think we have even begun to see the ripple effects of a severely gutted federal govt and how it will effect many different aspects of our lives and the things we love and care about. So yeah, primaries will be interesting.
Biden might have deported more immigrants but it was happening at the border mostly What’s happening now is more terrifying being so internal. Have you seen the news about non-criminal immigrants (some even white people - Germans and Canadians for example) being detained by ICE for weeks in terrible conditions. Trump 2.00.
This wasn’t happening under Biden:
He voted for Trump. Then ICE detained his wife.
I agree with everything you said.
But I am not saying what I think, I am saying what a lot of Americans that don’t tune into the news and talk about it at leisure on forums on the downtime think.
And having the second approval worst polling of any modern president and having that approval continue to decrease and disapproval to increase is “masterful” according to you?
You were the one making the claim it was masterful, just pointing out that claim was idiotic.
Again, if he was this awful he should never have been re-elected, but he was. He sure as hell is more masterful than Harris purely from winning public votes and opinion.
I think the guy is a fucking idiot and should have an approval of under 10, the fact that he is polling even better then the end of his first presidency with everything he has done since is masterclass in getting people to buy into him.
To be clear I do not mean masterful in any way of getting the “right” thing done, purely getting votes and keeping an approval as high as he is with his background is in my (idiotic) opinion masterful.
Now what would have been really masterful is if dems could have won the 2016 election, had Biden have higher approval ratings at the end of his term, Jesus just have them higher than Trump, or not lost to Trump twice.
You are the one claiming:
Show he has done a “masterful job in making Americans feel like they are “winning”, this is the “right” path, etc.”.
Do you not know what “masterful”? There is no way to point to those polls and say he is doing a “masterful” job.
If that is a masterful job, how would you describe Joe Biden?
Joe Biden is a fucking idiot. Dude waited til the last second to pull out because he ego was too big to step down. Dude fucking lost the election for dems.
Who is your president? Who after inciting an insurrection is your president? Who after a 34 time felon is your president? Who after fucking up COVID so bad is president again?
Masterful:
powerful and able to control others. (He is, has and has the power)
performed or performing very skillfully (Again with his past and current actions, the fact this approval is even this high would say so.
I believe there were many factors that brought Trump to victory in 2024
He had Musk backing him and investing close to $300 million of his own money. Paying people $1 million dollars to vote for Trump in swing states seems like it should have been illegal but no one stopped him.
Republicans want to win no matter how repugnant the candidate. Dems are too fussy and demand political purity generally speaking. I agree Biden should have stepped aside much earlier and a primary should have been held. Harris only had a few months to prepare. I like her but she didn’t win the primary against Biden back in the 2020 election. And I’m not sure the US is ready for a female president yet, sadly.
The free Palestine people! I am really angry with this demographic. They voted third party or stayed home. This was a significant loss for Harris. And now Trump is talking about a Gaza Riviera and kicking Gazans out of their own country. Trump is so much worse for Gaza than Harris ever could have been. I wonder if they regret their votes or inaction.
The right-wing media machine is another factor that strongly influenced voters. And don’t count out foreign interference flooding social media with false information and false news regarding Harris and Dems. And right-wing pod casters really influenced white young men.
And of course, the economy. Not everyone had the critical thinking skills to see that the US recovered from covid better than any other G7 economy. And that tariffs and trade wars might wreak havoc with the economy. The pandemic fucked up so much, but people have short memories. And an elderly man who comes off as feeble leading the country is easy to blame.
Culture wars was another aspect that helped Trump and hurt Dems. Again I’ve said it before but Trump hates the same people as his MAGA voters and that is powerful. (brown skinned people, LGBTQ, Liberals, “lazy” (their words) govt workers, pronouns, green technology, science, anything woke)
His approval is almost as low as any other president at this point in their term. The president with a lower approval was trump.
So you are saying it is very skillful that he has achieved the 2nd worst approval for the start of a term in history?
I suspect that Trump’s approval rating right now will be the highest it will ever be during his presidency.
It’s still the honeymoon period, where voters will forgive him for tons of excesses, and he can throw executive orders left and right willy nilly giving the appearance of getting things done, but I doubt most of his orders actually get things done and many for sure will be turned back by the courts.
Right now, Republicans are just gleeful that there is someone giving the finger to the Dems. If you want any proof that it’s not the economy they cared about, look at their 100% about-face, the moment Trump took office - it went from nonstop complaining about the horrid Biden economy, to 'let’s buckle down and take a recession for American manufacturing!" across the board (Fox News especially.)
The reality though, is that Trump’s policies are just asinine and he has no good vision of where his policies should take America, except for a Russia-wannabe autocracy, and at some point, even Republicans are going to start to get fed up with it as the tariffs continue to kill the stock market, our allies grow further away, no real manufacturing gets started, and the the DOGE cutbacks that they so gleefully cheer for because it’s sold to them as curbing Democratic Party excess, start to directly impact their lives (Dept of education cuts will hit hard in poor Red states, they were a huge source of resources for special needs and poor kids.)
The one thing Trump did manage to accomplish is basically solve the border crisis, I’ll give him that one, but even there, he’s doing it in such an intentionally cruel and heartless way that there will inevitably be backlash down the road. It was also the easiest for him to do - he’s great at attacking the most vulnerable of people who can’t hit back. But he’s going to need more than this win to keep his roll going, especially with all the nuts policies he’s trying to drag America into.
Don’t forget the planned 10% layoff from the Social Security Administration workforce, the expected closure of dozens of field offices, and the requirement for in-person verification for payouts.
He’s 2 1/2 months into his second term. the economic impact of his stupidity won’t be felt for a few more months.
Nvm I’m an idiot. Carry on. Sorry Ken.
