Famed GOP strategist Karl Rove issued a warning to President Donald Trump over the weekend that the president’s job approval numbers are in “very bad shape” as he approaches his first 100 days in office, adding that the American public already appears exhausted by the “chaos” of this administration.
The alarm bells sounded by Rove, a former adviser to the president who has become an on-again/off-again critic of Trump, come on the heels of his recent Wall Street Journal op-ed in which he insisted America has gotten “Trump fatigue” and that the president’s “frenzied pace and lack of focus leave many voters worried and confused.”
Appearing on Fox News’ weekend program Journal Editorial Report, Rove pointed to a recent Fox News poll that found that the president was underwater on nearly every issue with voters. He was especially struggling when it came to economic matters. According to the latest survey, only 38 percent of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of the economy, and even fewer felt he was properly addressing inflation and tariffs.
“Well, he’s off to a good start only on one issue, and that is border security, where his approval rating is 11 points ahead of his overall approval rating,” Rove told host Paul Gigot. “He gets reasonably good marks on immigration and handling of deportations, but even those he’s upside down on.”
Agreeing with Gigot that the president “is in very bad shape” when it comes to voters’ views on Trump’s handling of the economy, the former George W. Bush senior adviser expressed concern that Trump can turn around voters’ opinions down the road.
“It’s not only that he’s in the short term in bad shape, there’s also evidence in the poll that…even if he gets his way on certain things like tariffs, that he’s not good in the long run,” the longtime Fox News contributor declared.
Noting that a majority of poll respondents feel that Trump’s policies will damage the economy for a lengthy period of time, Rove said there’s “some very deep-seated skepticism among ordinary Americans” about the impact Trump will have on the country’s economic health.
With Gigot wondering what Rove felt attributed to “that new skepticism or real concern about the economy” considering that Trump was elected because voters “had more confidence in his ability” to lower prices and spur growth, the Republican strategist said he had a “slightly different view” of the situation.
“I think this was a hope. I don’t think it was based upon an explicit understanding of what he was going to do,” Rove said. “They just hoped that he would do better on inflation and jobs and economic growth. And then when he came in, just the sort of chaos and the inability of the administration to explain what they’re doing, I think it has hurt them very much.”
Meanwhile, Gigot asked why Trump wasn’t “getting a bigger honeymoon” from voters, given that inflation had already been a sore subject for Americans when he was elected. “Is it because of the tariffs, which are kind of frightening people, leading to uncertainty about whether businesses will invest? Are the tariffs the problem?” Gigot added.
“Well, I think the tariffs are a big problem because people understand that it is a tax and that it’s going to be a tax on them that they have to pay,” Rove responded.
Trump, meanwhile, is absolutely livid over the latest polls showing that his approval rating is tanking just three months into his White House return. In fact, he wants pollsters – including Fox News – to “be investigated for election fraud” for not publishing glowing results from their surveys.
“They are Negative Criminals who apologize to their subscribers and readers after I WIN ELECTIONS BIG, much bigger than their polls showed I would win, loose (sic) a lot of credibility, and then go on cheating and lying for the next cycle, only worse,” Trump raged on Truth Socil on Monday morning.
“They suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome, and there is nothing that anyone, or anything, can do about it,” the president concluded. “THEY ARE SICK, almost only write negative stories about me no matter how well I am doing (99.9 percent at the Border, BEST NUMBER EVER!), AND ARE TRULY THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE! I wish them well, but will continue to fight to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
