Transcript: Trump Wrecked in Brutal New Fox Poll: “He’s in a Bad Mood”

The following is a lightly edited transcript of the April 23 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.Donald Trump pays close attention to Fox News polling, so surely he’ll see the latest one from Fox, and it’s a real doozy. His numbers on the economy are indescribably awful. And the poll also shows that Democrats have the advantage over Republicans on the economy for the first time in many years—a real milestone. All this comes as several new reports suggest Trump knows he’s in real trouble. He’s eyeing more purges of top staff. And his top lieutenants are feverishly searching for a midterm strategy.G. Elliott Morris, who runs the Strength in Numbers Substack, has been arguing for some time that Trump’s numbers are much worse than our mainstream discourse allows. So we’re talking to him about all this today. Elliott, always good to have you on.G. Elliott Morris: Hey, thanks for having me back, Greg.Sargent: So let’s start with this new Fox News poll. It has Trump’s approval on the economy at 34 percent of voters nationally, with 66 percent disapproving—I’ll do the math, that’s two thirds disapproving. His approval on inflation is even worse. It’s at 28 percent with 72 percent disapproving, which is almost three quarters. Elliott, can you put that in context for us? How bad are those numbers?Morris: So Greg, great question. The first thing I did was look up Joe Biden’s approval rating on the same question. Joe Biden bottomed out at a minus 32 net approval rating—that’s the difference between his approval and disapproval in this survey. That was in May of 2023. That’s like when inflation was at 8 to 10 percent and people were really stressed out about prices. Donald Trump hit minus 32 in this polling today. That’s the net rating for his approval on the economy. So if you’re getting lost in the numbers, I think that’s some really useful context. Donald Trump’s numbers on the economy—the thing that he won the 2024 election on—are as bad as Joe Biden’s were during the peak inflation crisis of 2022 and 2023.Sargent: Amazing. And let’s talk about those inflation numbers. I don’t think I’ve seen anything quite like this. Twenty-eight percent approving, 72 percent disapproving—again, nearly three quarters of the country disapproving of Trump on inflation, the issue that is easily one of the top two or three for people.Morris: Yeah, and this is kind of the same thing, right? Donald Trump won the 2024 election on getting prices down and getting the economy moving after COVID. Okay, arguably it was already doing that, but let’s just grant him that that’s why he won. He’s at minus 44 on this in the Fox News survey on net. In my polling, he’s at minus 46. So it’s not like this is an outlier number. Basically, three fourths of the public doesn’t like how the president is handling inflation. That is consequential—that’s the thing he won on. If he’s that low on the number one issue, then like, what is this White House even doing if that’s where they’re ending up on this question?Sargent: Well, we’re going to talk about that in a second, but there’s a real kill shot in the Fox poll. It finds that Democrats are favored over Republicans on the economy for the first time since 2010. Fifty-two percent pick Democrats and 48 percent pick Republicans. And on prices, again, it’s even worse—54 percent favor Democrats versus 46 percent who favor Republicans. Elliott, we’ve been told for a very long time that Democrats are in deep trouble because voters prefer Republicans on a range of matters. This seems to upend that. No? What are your thoughts on all that?Morris: Greg, I looked up the Republican and Democratic Party’s numbers on the economy for 2024. These numbers come from Gallup. Gallup found that on the question of which party was “better able to keep America prosperous”—I know, slightly different than who do you trust on the economy, but that’s the question wording they use—the Republican Party had a six-percentage-point advantage going into the 2024 election. So this Fox News poll shows what a 15, 16 percentage point swing. In my survey out this month in April, Democrats beat the Republicans on handling jobs and the economy by 10 points as well.Sargent: I do want to talk about your Verasight poll because it showed something similar in a bigger sense too. You found that the Republican Party is now more disliked than the Democratic Party is. The Democrats are at 45 percent approval to 48 percent disapproval—not great, but pretty close to parity maybe. But the Republican Party is at 39 percent approval to 55 percent disapproval. And I thought, fascinating number from your poll—Democrats are 11 points ahead of Republicans on who looks out for the middle class. It’s now kind of hard to dismiss what we’re seeing here because the pattern is starting to really emerge.