Trump’s Hobbesian Honeymoon
Chaos drives discontent in Trump's short and brutish honeymoon
Donald Trump’s polling honeymoon has been nasty, brutish, and short.
During the English Civil War, Thomas Hobbes described in Leviathan a life without government: chaos and people in constant fear of violent death. After a month of DOGE nastiness, the chaos is real and the “death” of new public servants brutish, as their careers were cut short.
It’s starting to catch up to the recidivist president, who is likely now underwater on job approval, as it catches up to his personal ratings, which are also tanking. The current averages from 538 show Trump with a 1.6% positive on job approval and 1.6% negative on opinions of him, personally.
Basically, it’s a wash and well within the margins of national survey error.
You can pick out polls where Trump is up and where he’s down, but look at the overall trendlines. You don’t need 30+ years of polling experience like I have, the eyeball test points to bad.
Short Honeymoon
A fair question to ask is how does Trump’s honeymoon compare to previous presidents? The TL;DR here is simple: short.
Trump likely won’t make it past the next round of polling to be viewed negatively in the job and personally. Possibly by the end of this week.
Former president Joe Biden, who spent most of his presidency underwater in terms of approval ratings didn’t cross the streams until September 2, 2021, one week after the disastrous exit from Afghanistan.
In contrast to Trump, Biden’s personal favorability took a bit longer to go negative — September 17, 2021. Ultimately, Biden never recovered on either metric.
Afghanistan undid his presidency.
If Trump’s ratings turn negative, that’s a full six months before Biden lost the American people due to a singular disaster in the Afghanistan withdrawal. Remember, Biden was also dealing with a national vaccination effort in the face of a persistent pandemic and an economy that was rebooting. Trump came into office with a relatively clean slate.
Chaos King
Instead of focusing on unifying issues including inflation and peacemaking, Trump has taken his barely-a-majority victory and tight margins in Congress to unleash mass chaos in the federal government and around the world.
His quasi-appointment of Elon Musk to lead the DOGE effort to find waste, fraud, and abuse has turned into a daily stream of WTF stories. It has gone beyond weeding out DEI officials to “find me someone I can fire” regardless of importance or performance. Two examples: DOGE fired then tried to rehire nuclear weapons workers at the National Nuclear Security Administration and key personnel working on bird flu at the FDA.
As with Biden, the tipping point may come through a self-inflicted wound internationally.
Trump’s statements against Ukrainian President Zelenskyy, calling him a dictator, while giving Russian President Vladimir Putin a pass on his electoral legitimacy. Right now Europe is reevaluatinghow they will proceed forward without the United States’ support, which has eroded, particularly among Republicans, reflecting Trump’s viewpoint on the war.
Trump might be in step with the GOP right now, but this might change very quickly if Russia overruns Ukraine like the Taliban overran Afghanistan. Worse, if Trump completely sells out Ukraine to Russia and Europe decides to step up and defend it, it would mark the de facto end of NATO and chaos could easily ensue.
The darkest example of this was outlined by Jonathan V. Last The Bulwark, arguing persuasively that our allies are likely to decide they need their own nuclear weapons because they can no longer rely on American security umbrella. If that happens, Ukraine will be the least of our worries and the chaos will spread to Japan, South Korea, and elsewhere.
The Two-Year Presidency
Chaos reigns home and abroad, and we haven’t even discussed the likely negative impacts of the upcoming fight over reconciliation on Medicaid or Trump’s assertion that Gaza should become a beachfront resort without its current inhabitants. What is the point of all of this, and does Trump even care?
Trump likely sees his honeymoon, as in his personal life through three marriages: fleeting. He has a short window in which to act, take his retribution, and remake government and the world, before a judgment arrives from the American people during the midterms.
This is why he is moving fast and breaking things.
But this is short-sighted.
Once the narrative shifts with Trump’s tanking poll numbers, we will begin to see the slide toward the midterm elections, where his administration’s performance will be on the ballot.
The Senate seems safe for the GOP but the House is, as Cook Political Report’s Erin Covey and Matthew Klein said, will be a knife fight.
If Trump loses the House, he can surely find himself on the other end of an impeachment or at least a complete legislative roadblock and executive oversight. Trump knows this is coming — it’s any minority party’s playbook, even the politically hapless Democrats.
Trump isn’t looking at four or eight years: he’s looking at two. He doesn’t think long-term. It’s all crisis management, even and especially when it’s of his own making.
By delegating retribution to Elon Musk this first month allows him, not Trump, to take all the direct hits when things go south. If you think that Trump vs. Musk isn’t going to happen because the latter has been so loyal, you haven’t been watching the two-term president for the past ten years.
No one is immune from being dumped, when necessary.
There are additional signs to watch. In a recent poll by Reuters/Ipsos, 59% of Americans support DOGE’s efforts to downsize the federal government, which includes a third of Democrats. And yet, almost the same percentage (58%) said they were concerned about cuts to popular programs such as Social Security and student aid payments.
If DOGE goes too far, and let’s be real: it will. Trump’s honeymoon will end but not with voters. Trump will end the nasty, brutish, and short-lived DOGE effort. He will thank Musk on the way out because, after all, MAGA still needs to buy those black hats. Maybe we’ll even get a post on X from Elon saying he’s leaving to spend time with his growing family or just exile him lead the first expedition to Mars.
Michael Cohen, is the author of the book Modern Political Campaigns, president of Cohen Research Group and a 30-year veteran of the polling industry. He writes The Level regularly for 24sight News, analyzing polling and campaign trends with a keen eye and level-headed approach.
And what’s particularly striking is that Trump is oblivious to it all—the uproar he hears is of approval to his stopped ears.
I think ALL of Trump’s honeymoons have been “nasty, brutish and short.” (Nice, on point description!)