It’s been four weeks since President Donald Trump was sworn into office and he has been on a tear.
His administration has tried to end constitutionally protected birthright citizenship, earned a judge’s ire for violating an order stopping a spending freeze and overseen mass firings, to name a few of his more controversial actions. Yet polls have shown his favorable numbers are higher than when he took office in 2017.
There have been protests, news conferences, lawsuits and media appearances galore, but they appear to have landed flat with the American public.
Plenty of blame has been tossed around, with some blaming Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Democrats debating whether their countermoves have been strong enough or whether they should abandon issues such as foreign aid and immigration to hit Trump harder on pocketbook issues.
It is nearly impossible for anyone not in the news business to follow the day-to-day events.
As for Trump, he keeps signing executive orders, allowing folks like billionaire Elon Musk to stir up the pot further and creating a new crisis for the media to cover every day. It is an understatement to say that it is nearly impossible for anyone not in the news business to follow the day-to-day events.
But what the resistance is missing about Trump — and why his favorable numbers are up — is that he is doing what he promised.
While people who supported the president may not like everything he is doing — and some recognize that it might be unconstitutional — there is a feeling out there that at least something is getting done in Washington. So, as Trump steamrolls over Congress to the public, his supporters think he has broken through the gridlock and is doing what he said he would do — at least for now.
Trump has also leaned into PR victories rather than focusing on solving the nation’s bigger challenges. For decades, almost every politician has declared that waste, fraud and abuse must be cut from the federal budget. Nonetheless, it hardly happens, and when it does, it rarely makes a splash in the news cycle.
What does make news is uncovering programs funded by the State Department (which were wrongly attributed to the U.S. Agency for International Development), such as $1.5 million to advance diversity, equity and inclusion in Serbian workplaces, $70,000 for a DEI musical in Ireland, $47,000 for a transgender opera in Colombia and $32,000 for a transgender comic book in Peru. While these programs are less than a drop in the bucket in the State Department budget, these are precisely the type of thing that many American taxpayers say they are fed up with.
According to a 2024 study, the average American pays $524,625 in taxes over their lifetime. So when Trump announces massive cuts to USAID or Musk posts on X that “DOGE has now saved taxpayers over $1 billion in crazy DEI contracts,” it resonates with these voters.
While reckless and dangerous, Trump’s spending freeze and mass firings are exactly what Americans want.
While reckless and dangerous in its implementation, Trump’s spending freeze and mass firings are exactly what Americans want. A recent Reuters poll showed that 49% of Americans support imposing a hiring freeze on all federal government agencies, 47% oppose, and 61% support downsizing the federal government.
However, they aren’t particularly fond of Musk and are growing less so as time goes on.
The job for Democrats, then, is to focus the conversation. They need to stop talking about those large federal agencies that nobody likes and start talking about the individual programs that benefit you. They need to turn the debate from whether Trump should cut the size of government to whether Trump should be cutting back the Veterans Affairs office in your hometown. And they must tell the stories of hardworking park rangers, cancer researchers and others who were let go without warning.
All too often, we see elected officials from both parties, and usually from safe districts, try to make a name for themselves by yelling the loudest to boost themselves in the public eye. Right now, Trump is winning the PR battle, and people are getting hurt. It’s time for Trump’s opponents to start making the case for why his actions are hurting their communities — and how much worse it can get if he is not held accountable.
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