There’s nothing much to say here other than The New York Times is seething that Donald Trump’s approval numbers are rebounding. In truth, they were never in danger. How many times are we going to do this? These legacy pollsters underestimate Trump’s strength or don’t know how to gauge it.
They’ve tried for years and failed due to their pervasive animus for the man. Trump and the markets have rebounded from the market adjustments in April. With nowhere to go, the media is saying that the president’s approval numbers are stable because people aren’t paying attention. I’m not kidding (via NYT):
President Trump’s strategy to “flood the zone” may be working to keep his approval rating from sinking even lower.
Voters who have not heard much about some of the many major news events from the first 100 days of Mr. Trump’s second term have a higher opinion of the job he is doing, according to the latest New York Times/Siena College poll. A little under half of the 42 percent of voters who approved of the job Mr. Trump is doing as president said they had not heard much about at least some of the ups and downs of his administration’s decisions.
Mr. Trump has traditionally done well with lower-information voters, so it is perhaps not surprising that they are more inclined to support his presidency. These voters are also notoriously difficult for pollsters to reach, making it challenging to track their exact impact.
And the blitz of news can be hard to follow even for the most engaged voters. In his first 100 days, Mr. Trump signed more executive orders than any other modern president, part of a strategy to make changes at such velocity that people could not possibly pay attention to all of them.
In total, about one-third of voters said they had not heard much about one or more of the major events of Mr. Trump’s first 100 days in office, such as the mistaken deportation of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia to El Salvador, fluctuations in the stock market or cuts made by Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency, also known as DOGE. Still, most Americans say they are closely watching news coming out of the Trump administration — more than the share who were closely watching the early days of the Biden presidency.
As Mark Mitchell aptly noted, they're losing power and don't know what to do.
Their ability to influence opinion is gone, and they know it. pic.twitter.com/FaISR4X13H
— Mark Mitchell, Rasmussen Reports (@honestpollster) May 18, 2025
It's Trump—everyone follows what he does. It’s not that people aren’t paying attention; they don’t care what you people think anymore. The legacy media can’t influence the press. Their censorship mechanisms within social media have been wiped out. They can’t control anything anymore.
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