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Kelly McParland: Souring Americans say Biden was better

Americans may have begun to grasp the heavy cost of returning Trump as president

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Nine months before voters are to pass a sort of judgement on Donald Trump’s second term, Americans may have begun to grasp the heavy cost of returning him as president.

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There are polls and polls and polls, and more of them are indicating a distinct sense of buyers’ remorse. The Gallup organization revealed that the 47th president has the lowest average approval rating in 80 years of measurements. That puts him at the bottom of 14 presidents. He’s behind Richard Nixon, forced from office over the Watergate scandal, Jimmy Carter, historically dismissed as a good hearted but ill-suited failure, and, perhaps most surprisingly, he’s now even trailing Joe Biden.

Kelly McParland: Souring Americans say Biden was better Back to video

Three separate polls comparing the current president with his predecessor found more Americans think Trump’s doing a worse job. That’s a monumental rendering considering  that Biden’s deeply disappointing performance, and the catastrophic re-election bid he mounted, convinced millions of Democrat voters to stay home on election day, opening the way for Trump’s return.

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Within MAGA, Biden remains the dragon Trump slew to rescue the U.S. from disaster. Trump in office has turned time and again to belittling the man and his record. The “Walk of Fame” Trump had installed at the White House singles out Biden as “by far the worst President in American History” who “oversaw a series of unprecedented disasters that brought our Nation to the brink of destruction.” Yet if the polls hold “Sleepy Joe” may get the last laugh.

The shifting sentiments can’t help but cause fitful nights for the 240-plus Republicans facing re-election in November. Midterm votes are always dangerous times for incumbents, but Trump’s tumultuous record gives cause for particular concern.

It’s not that Republicans were unaware their leader’s activities were upsetting apple carts across the planet or that everyday Americans were paying a price, it’s just that they were afraid to say so. Trump’s stranglehold on the party put their own jobs at stake and brought out the deep instinct for self-preservation that so often belies politicians’ declarations of devotion to their duty.

That even a few of them are tentatively prepared to brave his ire suggests a degree of erosion in the anxiety the president has been able to instil.

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The causes are rooted in Trump’s own actions. Voters may have been willing to ignore, or applaud, the administration’s tough policy on immigrants, its insulting treatment of allies, its insistence that tariffs would be paid by outsiders and maybe even the transformation of the presidency into a money-spinning machine for the benefit of Donald Trump and his family.

But Trump is a man who likes to test limits, and it’s possible he’s found some. Perhaps it’s a coincidence, but the array of bad numbers coincide with the chaos in Minnesota and the killing of two American citizens by ICE agents; and the broad, cross-partisan disgust expressed over a posting on Trump’s Truth Social depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes.

“Praying it was fake because it’s the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House,” commented Sen. Tim Scott, the one and only black Republican in the Senate, dangling the implication he’s had other racist events to use in comparison.

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Trump blamed the post on someone else, left unnamed, though it remained up for 12 hours. Accepting responsibility for mistakes is not a White House habit. Border czar Tom Homan, sent to cool the rage in Minnesota, announced the “surge” was to end, not because two Americans were shot to death but because it had been so successful in arresting undocumented immigrants. Nonetheless, survey after survey show that while Americans still support a tough stand on illegal immigration they strongly object to the extremes of the Trump approach.

Hints of a shift in public attitudes have existed for some time, as it became increasingly difficult to ignore the seemingly never-ending dramas of the Trump White House and the impact it was having on their lives.

Last week, for instance, a report by a Reserve Bank of New York research team concluded that, no matter how fervently Trumpites may claim otherwise, Trump’s tariffs are costing them money. “U.S. firms and consumers continue to bear the bulk of the economic burden of the high tariffs imposed in 2025,” it said. In the first eight months of Trump’s second term, “94 per cent of the tariff incidence was borne by the U.S.”

Also last week, a coalition of 40 agricultural groups launched a drive in support of the Canada-U.S. and Mexico free trade agreement (CUSMA), declaring it “vital to the U.S. economy and an important economic engine for rural America.”

The farm group’s website credits the pact for almost US$2 trillion in trade, US$60 billion in exports, 13 million jobs and 31 per cent of trade-related rail traffic.

“If your country was a successful company … and you had a business partner that was your largest customer by far, your biggest investor and most important supplier, would you scrap that partnership?” asked Kevin Brady, a Texas Republican who was involved in trade talks during the first Trump mandate.

In a rare show of open defiance, a handful of Republicans joined Democrats in supporting a measure denouncing the tariffs and demanding they be cancelled, despite intense lobbying and the usual threats from the Oval Office. The vote reflected the rising chorus of complaints from consumers and businesses about higher prices and the pain they cause.

Whether it persists is anyone’s guess, but there’s been a palpable sense that Americans expected more than they’ve received. A January survey found disapproval near 60 per cent on immigration, the economy and foreign policy, all key elements to Trump’s victory a year ago. Tracking polls show the president’s rating lower than his first term, worse than Obama’s or George W. Bush’s, and declining as the days past.

While his belligerent approach animates devotees, the administration has been forced into retreats on one battle after another. Attacks on Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell were curtailed after senior Republicans pledged to block Trump nominees if the campaign continued. The renaming of the Kennedy Centre for the Arts sparked a revolt among performers and a two-year shuttering of the building. National Guard troops were quietly withdrawn from Chicago, Los Angele and Portland following fierce local opposition and a Supreme Court ruling that went against the White House.

Trump’s sudden enthusiasm for seizing Greenland managed to perplex everyone from the King of Denmark to the billionaires of Davos before fading when financial markets signalled the high cost the crusade would carry. “Who gives a s–t who owns Greenland? I don’t,” professed malleable Trump apostle Sen. Lindsey Graham. The Wall Street Journal dismissed Trump’s threat to block the Gordie Howe Bridge as “bad for business, shoddy treatment of an ally, and bad politics too,” though not before explaining “Who was Gordie Howe?”

The Journal says 92 per cent of Americans who voted for Trump in 2024 think he’s doing a good job. But that eight-point difference could have been enough to make Kamala Harris “Madame President.”

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