CBS News poll — Trump has positive approval amid "energetic" opening weeks; seen as doing what he promised

It's not just CBS, 538's running average of many polls has his net approval at +5. It's why I posted the link to begin with, it was their latest listed. You wouldn't know it looking at lemmy but on average Americans think Trump is doing a fine job.

Accepting that reality and figuring out how best to handle it is probably the most important question in the world right now because so many other problems in need of a solution are dependent on getting it right.

In this case, that's:

Most Americans say the administration isn't focused enough on lowering prices.

You know, the reason they said they voted for him.

Fox News has been talking non-stop about how good a job he's doing. I don't think it goes any deeper than that.

Push polling

Find out what people are upset about. Go put on a large performance and get in the news in such a way that you give the impression that you're doing that. Most people will not go looking for data, rely on their gut impression from the tone of news coverage.

His campaign for his first term was primarily run on protectionist US trade relations and stopping illegal immigration via building a wall.

He put on a major act out of "killing" TTIP and TPP, which had negotiations that had already failed. He slightly tweaked and renamed NAFTA. He used very aggressive phrasing, broke norms for communication, acted extreme, kept himself constantly in the news, and after the fact, stated that he did a great job. Few people go look at actual data. People who wanted these things had the vague idea that he'd dramatically changed things. What he'd done was to provide them with political theater aimed at giving voters the impression that he'd done that.

He spent a lot of time in the news talking about The Wall, fighting for The Wall. The typical voter got the impression that he was going to build a wall along the whole border, and talking about how he wouldn't spend anything on it, how Mexico would pay for it. He broke social norms for communication, used aggressive phrasing, acted extreme, kept himself constantly in the news. The federal government paid to build a little wall, principally maintenance of existing fencing. Mexico did not pay for it. What he'd done was to provide them with political theater aimed at giving voters the impression of what he'd done.

He spent a lot of time in the news talking about illegal immigrants, fighting them, staying in the news on it. He broke social norms for communication, used aggressive phrasing, acted extreme, kept himself constantly in the news. And what actually happened:

In 2020, the removal of illegal immigrants from the interior of the United States was the lowest as an absolute number and as a share of the illegal immigration population since ICE was created in 2003

What he'd done was to provide voters with political theater aimed at giving voters the impression that that's what he'd done.

Right now, Trump is constantly in the news for breaking communication norms, using aggressive phrasing, constantly staying in the news over eliminating waste. I think that Musk did say that he'd eliminated some dollar amount of waste, albeit without specifics as to that waste. Ditto for illegal immigrant deportations -- lots of photographs and strong phrasing, not a lot of data. Probably other stuff, didn't pay attention to his campaigning for second term, so don't know what supporters were promised. Oh, right, foreign aid.

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/what-every-american-should-know-about-u-s-foreign-aid/

Opinion polls consistently report that Americans believe foreign aid is in the range of 25 percent of the federal budget. When asked how much it should be, they say about 10 percent. In fact, at $39.2 billion for fiscal year 2019, foreign assistance is less than 1 percent of the federal budget.

This means that a lot of Americans feel that they're being taken advantage of, are upset about that 25% of the federal budget.

Trump "destroyed" USAID, was constantly in the news for doing so, said a lot of extreme things. Musk said something about "feeding it into the wood chipper". In practice, he was in the news for suspending operations and a small number of layoffs, and IIRC there was a reorganization that placed it under State, so for some definitions, it ceased to exist. I have not seen anything about long-run actual dollar value change to foreign aid, but if I had to guess based on his past MO, it won't change a lot. But I bet that at the end of his term, a lot of voters will have the impression that it has.

What was the purpose in tagging me?