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For months, I’ve been writing, creating videos, and making cable news appearances talking about how President Donald Trump is significantly weaker than he appears. Now, as cracks in his authoritarian facade continue to widen and fractures in his MAGA coalition deepen, it’s become unmistakably clear that Trump’s best political days are behind him, and the Republican Party’s worst are ahead.
From the enormous Republican losses in the 2025 elections to the GOP’s defiance on the Epstein files vote to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s public break from the president, there are plenty of anecdotal markers for President Trump’s loosening grip on the public and his party. New polling data reflects this reality.
President Trump’s latest Gallup approval rating is at a second-term low of 36% and a disapproval of 60%. That’s a net approval rating of -24 points. As Trump’s tariffs raise prices on Americans and his ICE raids terrorize communities, his approval numbers on the economy and immigration are also at 36% and 37% respectively. These were previously areas Trump polled strongest on. It can’t be overstated how low these numbers are for Trump.
To put that 36% approval in perspective, that’s only 2 points away from Trump’s all-time Gallup low of 34% in the immediate aftermath of January 6, 2021. You read that right. Trump is almost as unpopular as he was after a violent insurrection he incited.
Let’s be clear about what was happening at that time. In the days between January 6 and January 20, 2021, Republican lawmakers were outright condemning Trump and directly blaming him for the violence on January 6. This included GOP Leaders Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and former Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). Trump was being banned from major social media platforms and was essentially shunned from American politics.
Trump is now polling just two points away from where he was during that moment. That’s a remarkable fact.
The reason I think Gallup’s polling is particularly significant is its historic nature. Gallup has been releasing polls since 1935, when George Gallup pioneered the statistical representative sampling model that defines modern public opinion polling. They’ve been tracking presidential approval ratings since FDR. This finding from them is more than noteworthy.
CNN’s Harry Enten talked about this Gallup poll in a video clip he posted on Twitter/X. Enten said this Gallup poll “matches the trend that we’ve seen with other polls that has Donald Trump hitting his low for the second term. I was doing the count last night. I think we’re up to 10 polls in sort of the last 40 days, 10 different pollsters, who have said that Trump is at the lowest point in his second term.”
Enten compared this performance to past presidents and gave an outlook for the midterms: “Gallup’s poll = disaster for Trump. Nixon’s the only prez with a worse net approval at this point in a 2nd term than him. Trump must break history for the GOP to keep House control in 2026. No 2nd term pres’ net approval rose more than 5 pts from this pt through the midterms.”
When you dive deeper into the data, you can see why it’s so disastrous for Trump and the Republican Party more broadly.
In Gallup’s write-up of their poll, they describe Trump’s deteriorating support among Republicans and Independents:
“Both Republicans’ and independents’ ratings of Trump have worsened significantly since last month. Republicans’ approval has fallen seven points to 84%, while independents’ has slipped eight points to 25%. Republicans’ rating is the lowest of Trump’s second term, while independents’ is the worst in either term. Trump’s prior low point among independents, 29%, was last recorded in July and, prior to that, was only seen once before, in August 2017.”
Just last month, I wrote an article about how the MAGA base is fracturing when President Trump’s Decision Desk HQ polling average hit the lowest point of his second term, touching 41.1%. His numbers were dragged down by polls like the AP-NORC’s poll, which found Trump’s approval rating was also 36%. This decline, according to the AP, was primarily driven by reduced approval among Republicans.
That AP poll in particular caught my eye because of the significant disapproval numbers among Republicans. The poll, which surveyed 1,143 adults, found that only 74% of Republicans approved of Trump’s job as president, and 23% disapproved.
This new Gallup poll continues to showcase similar erosion among Republicans.
This comes as the 2025 elections clearly demonstrated that Trump has erased the gains he made with key demographics in 2024.
Will Republicans start to grapple with this reality? We could be seeing signs of that.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s sudden decision to retire could be reflective of a broader recognition of Trump’s weakness, which I noted when she first began breaking with Trump. Former Rep. Kevin McCarthy called her resignation a “canary in the coal mine,” and said that we could see even more retirements. Since McCarthy’s remarks, we’ve seen exactly that.
On Saturday, Rep. Troy Nehls (R-TX) announced that he will not seek re-election in 2026. Nehls is among 27 Republicans who are not seeking re-election, according to The Hill’s count.
Amid an increasingly narrow GOP House majority as we enter the 2026 midterms, these announced retirements put the Republicans in a position of political peril.
Instead of simply retiring, the politically smart thing Republicans could do right now is to begin to hold President Trump accountable for his abuses of power and failures on affordability. They could easily pass a bill with Democratic support to wrestle back control of their tariff power, but the GOP refuses to. They could easily pass a bill to rein in ICE, but they refuse to. They could easily pass the renewal of the Obamacare healthcare subsidies so millions of Americans’ healthcare premiums don’t double, but they refuse to.
While Republicans fail to hold Trump accountable at the legislative level, he is surrounded by yes men and women within the executive branch. We’re seeing the folly in that approach. Trump’s prioritization of loyalty above competence replaces expertise with thoughtless sycophancy, which breeds failure. Trump’s targeting of the guardrails that restrained him in his first term has backfired. Surrounded now by enablers instead of professionals, he’s overreached before consolidating power, a fatal mistake for wannabe authoritarians.
If Republicans were smart, they would see that more Americans are beginning to see through Trump’s farce. If they were smart, they would see that the Trump Administration is failing the public, and Republican lawmakers would begin to turn on Trump.
Trump can surely back primary challengers to a few Republicans, but does he have the resources to primary hundreds of Republicans if they made a concerted effort to defy him? I’m not sure.
Either way, there are clear ways Republicans can still represent the MAGA base while standing up to Trump. Rep. Thomas Massie walks this line. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene did so before she announced her retirement. We’ll see if more follow their example.
What I think is far more likely is more of the same subservient behavior from most GOP lawmakers.
If Republicans want to ride this sinking ship of overreach, cruelty, and incompetence until Trump plummets to George W. Bush levels of unpopularity (with approvals in the 20s), be my guest.
Prepare to get electorally obliterated in 2026 and 2028.
