Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
Julia Azari: Thank you so much for having me.
Azari: No, they’re not. They’re not entirely unexpected, but they really do underscore the point that I’ve been trying to make since the November election, which is that there’s not a lot of conclusive evidence that Trump’s specific agenda is very popular. In a context in which there’s a lot of distrust of government, it’s not obvious that strong executive overreach is the answer to that distrust.
Azari: It feels wild to say yes to the answer to that question because we have seen Trump before. But I think there are two pieces of this. The first one is something I’ve talked about quite a lot since the November election, and that is nostalgia for past presidents. Normally it’s just a curiosity, but Gallup has recorded this. Past presidents get a bump. They have different bumps, but Trump got a 12-point bump between 2021 and 2023. People remember positive aspects of his presidency, particularly because of the years that Biden was in office were so troubling.
Sargent: Yes, I think that’s right. What’s been missing is a big argument about why Trump’s authoritarianism is bad. On the other hand, we are seeing this polling here, which shows majorities are troubled by the authoritarian rule they’re seeing. I would like those numbers to be higher and maybe they’re not higher because of what you’re pointing out, which is the lack of the counternarrative explaining it all. Nonetheless, majorities are unhappy with it, and that seems significant to me. What do you think, Julia? Should we take at least a tiny bit of solace from the fact that majorities are already seeing Trump as an overreacher and potentially even an abuser of his powers?
Sargent: Yeah. I think the key point here that you’re getting at is: Now that we see that majorities are rejecting the overreach, it’s time for Democrats to really step up and prosecute that case a little more strongly against that. By the way, speaking of unpopularity, let’s talk about Elon Musk. The Post poll finds that only 34 percent, and only 26 percent of independents, approving of Musk’s role. Even worse, Americans disapprove by 2 to 1 of Musk shutting down government agencies, and 63 percent are concerned by his team’s access to sensitive government data.
Azari: There’s a couple of things going on there. Another piece of data that I think is useful is a Pew Research study from 2023 that shows that Americans are pretty concerned about cybersecurity, about government access to private information, and about their information. I was somewhat surprised that the issue was as salient as it was.
The other thing I can’t stop thinking about has actually been the 2009 backlash about Obama and the White House czars. You remember this? There was a big media freak-out about who are these czars that Obama is appointing. Which again, these were dull people with policy expertise and not controversial media figures like Musk. But there was this real pushback of, What is a czar? How many of these czars are Senate confirmed? And some of them weren’t. Is this an illegitimate power grab? So there are narratives out there that that suggests that people are quite nervous about these expansions of presidential power through the appointment of these personnel that are not elected.
Azari: Yeah, particularly, the thing that I keep coming back to is they’re tangling with veterans, both concretely, substantively, and also symbolically talking about the government in that way. That strikes me as a potential real pain point. Although, we’ll see how that unfolds because this anti-fascist majority doesn’t always materialize.
Azari: “Destruction” is such an interesting concept in American politics because people want it. And we have had a lot of recent elections where the incumbent party has done badly and where people clearly want change. Then when change actually happens, inevitably there are losers. Inevitably, there are people who are either affected in a negative way or who are suffering from trade-offs, and that’s true even under much more normal political circumstances. You add in this element of policies that are actions that end with people losing their jobs without warning, that end in an interruption of services? People do not like those kinds of disruptions. Those strike me as fundamentally unpopular disruptions. So yeah, we shall see. And I meant to raise this earlier, we’ll see if this persuades Democrats that Trump doesn’t actually have a magical popular opinion mandate—that belief seems to be driving some of Democrats’ behavior.
Azari: Yeah, it’s hard to get a handle on exactly what’s going on in the Democratic Party right now. But certainly, the Democratic identifiers seemed pretty unsatisfied with what the party is doing. To take this to a really meta level, I keep going back to how old the two parties are, how many times they’ve both readapted, and how it seems like they’re ripe for rethinking. And it does seem like that is driving some of what’s happening in the Democratic Party. On the one hand, you have a very institutionalist, preservationist, cautious element. On the other hand, you have people who really want to see serious structural change—in this case, that’s manifesting and wanting to see a much more strenuous objection to the current administration.
Azari: I think it’s tricky because they need to use the powers of influence that they have. There’s a long-standing hesitance to either go too far and be seen as obstructionist or to embrace out-of-the-norm solutions; Democrats have been, in particular, really hesitant around that. So I think the Democrats are going to have to decide what strategy or, maybe more importantly, strategies they use to push back on the administration.
Sargent: I really hope that Democrats listen to you on that. Julia Azari, thank you so much for coming on with us today.
Sargent: You’ve been listening to The Daily Blast with me, your host, Greg Sargent. The Daily Blast is a New Republic podcast and is produced by Riley Fessler and the DSR Network.
Hence then, the article about transcript trump suddenly slips in 3 new polls musk looks even worse was published today ( ) and is available on The New Republic ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Transcript: Trump Suddenly Slips in 3 New Polls—Musk Looks Even Worse )
Also on site :