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“President-elect Donald Trump’s approval rating has reached a seven-year high, and a majority of Americans approve of his handling of the transition process,” Forbes recently reported. “Most respondents to a CNN/SSRS published survey They said Wednesday they think Trump will do a good job when he returns to the White House next month (54 percent),” the story continued, “and approve of how he’s handling the transition so far (55 percent).”
These figures are in stark contrast to eight years ago when donald trump he was “president-elect” the first time. The Pew Research Center conducted a national survey from Nov. 30-Dec. 5, 2016 and found that among 1,502 adults polled at the time, only “40 percent approved of Trump’s Cabinet picks and top-level appointments, while 41 percent approve of the job he has done so far to explain its policies and plans for the future.”
It’s not an apples-to-apples comparison, but the level of approval today is much higher than it was eight years ago. The big and significant question is: why?
The easy and perhaps all-too-obvious answer is that President-elect Trump 2.0 is not President Joe Biden, while President-elect Trump 1.0 was not President Barack Obama.
Obama left the White House, again using Pew’s numbers, with a job approval rating just below that of Presidents Reagan and Clinton when they left. “58% approve of (Obama’s) job performance, while 37% disapprove,” Pew told us eight years ago.
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Biden’s approval number at the end of November this year, turning to Gallup this time, is 37%, and part of that sample came before widespread criticism of Joe Biden’s pardon by Hunter Biden. Could Biden fall further? Absolutely.
So “not being Biden” (or Vice President Kamala Harris, for that matter) is helping former and future President Trump’s numbers.
But this is not the explanation in my opinion. 55% may represent a new “ceiling” for the approval of all new presidents in our deeply divided nation these days, but why have Trump’s numbers soared from 40% eight years ago to today’s pass rate?
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Two additional possible explanations beyond “It’s not Joe or Kamala.”
First, Trump’s upset in 2016 was shocking and even painful for the media and Manhattan-Beltway political elites. I know this first hand having been on the set of 30 Rock’s “NBC Election Night Coverage” eight years ago. As events unfolded on that memorable night in 2016, it was much more than a surprise that swept through the NBC studios. It was a thunderbolt of a reality that a legacy news organization had no idea could come, and it left a stunned and disbelieving newsroom in its wake. (Actually, two floors of newsrooms, since MSNBC was one floor lower than NBC News’ election night set.) Much of the shock and pain among the legacy media elites became a kind of “referred pain” among the general population. The country was shocked by Big Media being shocked in 2016, and as the legacy media’s anger and disbelief spread, much of the country was shocked by these elites.
How bad would this Trump presidency be? The media elites had not really considered the possibility of Trump winning, and so what they said or implied that night out loud, or through appearance or body language was absorbed. People with platforms—at least the vast majority of them within legacy outlets—instantly concluded that a Trump presidency would be terrible for the country, and their collective sigh brought down the futures of shares The markets recovered their balance quickly, but not the psyche of the Manhattan-Beltway media elites. The onset of “Trump derangement syndrome” was instantaneous. And until Trump’s victory this November, “TDS” only got worse.
Trump had never spent a night in DC this time eight years ago, and the shock of his 2016 victory was followed by death prophecies from the usual suspects that never stopped, and the “Resistance” was already taking their stations in the media The “pink hats” were booking their flights for Trump’s inauguration a day after the counter-demonstration. “Hillary was supposed to win, dammit,” and when she didn’t, media elites and the political left swung into action to persuade America that Trump was, at best, thoroughly corrupt and possibly authoritarian Eight years later, after endless research and years of legislation, it turns out that most Americans are no longer buying what legacy media is selling.
But it’s not that either. Trump’s previous highest approval rating leading up to this new “honeymoon season” of 2024 was 49%, and that figure was only reached in early 2020 as three years of low taxes and deregulation combined with increased energy production had America cooking on gas…until COVID hit.
That Trump is now at 55% is hardly surprising, as the past five years since that 49% have been, well, eventful.
President-elect Donald Trump reacts during his meeting with Prince William, Prince of Wales at the residence of the United Kingdom Embassy on December 7, 2024 in Paris, France. (Oleg Nikishin/Getty Images)
The facts themselves, neither January 6th nor especially the catastrophic failures of the Biden presidencyexplains the “Trump jump”. The comparison of 45-47 to a weak and failed president certainly helps Trump, as does the cratering of trust in the legacy media and perhaps a reversion to the norm of good wishes for an incoming president. The media is not as hysterical as it was eight years ago.
Rather, Trump’s new approval rating is due to, wait for it, Trump.
The fact is that people now have a side-by-side comparison of the government under the leadership of a property developer and brash TV star fueled by superlatives and grand aims against the prospect of further left-managed decay along with a mandatory change. to electric vehicles and children playing sports for girls. America got a heavy dose of “United States of Europe” versus the United States of America, and it turns out we prefer the latter. We like our presidents to be unapologetically patriotic, optimistic and full of bonhomie.
Don’t mistake my meaning. The legacy Manhattan-Beltway media elites are shocked by Trump’s triumph, and very angry again—infuriated even—but the public’s willingness to share in the referred pain of those elites has fallen, precipitously. Having lost the public’s trust in an almost incomprehensible but very thorough way, the reporters’ grumblings not only matter a lot, they’re actually helping Trump get his second presidency off to a good start.
Most of America has simply rejected the media legacy of the conversation it is having about Trump. Legacy media is no longer trusted, period. Do you hate Trump? And what? The collective influence of the legacy media is now below that of the “public health authorities” and that is at the bottom.
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My take: Trump is more popular today than ever because Americans like optimism, and Trump doesn’t just sell hope, he believes in it. Combine that affection for an elected leader who believes in the country and its essential goodness with the crumbling into dust of the credibility of Trump’s critics and the disasters of the Biden years, and you get 55% instead of 40%.
The only question that remains to be answered is how high can that number go as Trump delivers on the border, the defense rebuild, the return of deregulation, and the extension of Trump’s tax cuts? If you want to wish the country well, you should expect Trump’s numbers, like the markets’, to continue to rise.
Hugh Hewitt is the host of “The Hugh Hewitt Show,” which is heard weekday mornings from 6:00 AM to 9:00 AM ET on the Salem Radio Network and simulcast on the Salem News Channel. Hugh Wakes America to over 400 affiliates across the country and on every streaming platform where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on Fox News Channel’s News Roundtable hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6:00 PM ET. A native of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a professor of law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996, where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt has appeared frequently on all major national television news networks, hosted television programs for PBS and MSNBC, written for all the newspapers -important Americans, has written a dozen books and moderated twenty Republican books. candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump during his 40 years on the air, and this column previews the top story that will drive the his radio and television program today.
