President Donald Trump’s standing with voters is often portrayed as an immutable fact.
But while it’s true that his hard-core supporters don’t appear to be swayed by much, recent events have shown that the public can and will respond to his mistakes — provided that it hears about them.
Trump endured weeks of negative coverage over the detention of Columbia University grad student Mahmoud Khalil and Tufts student Rümeysa Öztürk, among others, and the apparently mistaken deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador.
Legal challenges, grassroots protests and vocal Democratic criticism helped keep the stories in the news, focusing attention on the administration’s missteps. Voters soured on Trump’s performance on immigration — normally a strong issue for him — as his overall approval rating languished in comparison to other modern presidents.
The lesson is clear: If Democrats can keep attention on Trump’s missteps, public opinion can shift. He is not unstoppable.
Interestingly, Trump’s approval rating shows a significant split across a broad range of issues depending on whether the poll respondent has been paying attention to the news or politics.
According to polling by The New York Times, 46% of respondents who had heard of the Garcia case approved of his handling of immigration, compared with 55% among those who hadn’t heard about the case. Among those who had heard about Khalil, just 40% approve of Trump immigration policy, while 54% of those who hadn’t heard of the case approved of the policy.
Democrats helped keep these stories in the public eye through moves like visiting Abrego Garcia in El Salvador. After an internal debate over whether that was wise, the party abandoned a media strategy meant to draw attention to the president’s extreme immigration policies, and the news largely moved on. According to a daily average of polls compiled by the Times, Trump’s approval rating now seems to have stabilized.
For the most part, right-wing media has ignored the biggest controversies of the presidential term, and so those who consume news from conservative sources continue to support most of Trump’s agenda.
Still, there are limits. Trump’s elaborate tariffs had such an immediate effect on the stock market that it broke through the partisan filter. The worst drop in the S&P 500 since 1974, bond markets’ getting spooked and fears of price hikes — not to mention Trump’s constantly changing implementation of the tariffs — ensured that most Americans knew what he was doing. The ensuing public uproar led Trump to back off on some of them, even signing a disadvantageous trade deal with China in order to change the subject. Trump is already one of the most unpopular presidents in history, and despite the appearance Republicans tried to paint that he had an overwhelming mandate to implement his agenda, the White House response to polling shows that there are limits to what the regime can get away with. Now, Democrats just need to get voters to pay attention. Subscribe to the Project 47 newsletter to receive weekly updates on and expert insight into the key issues and figures defining Trump’s second term.
Katelyn Burns is a freelance journalist based in New England. 
