Donald Trump’s closest aides say that the fact he’s obsessing over pet projects while his approval ratings plummet shows he’s in total denial about the bonfire he’s made of his second presidency.
Trump, 80, dropped to 32 percent approval in a Quinnipiac survey released last week. That’s the lowest figure of his political career—lower, even, than his numbers in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol Building. Sixty-eight percent of voters now say he’s not paying enough attention to the issues weighing on most households.
A Trump insider told Axios on Thursday that the president has retreated into “the hobbies that distract from his terrible polling numbers, about which he is in denial.” New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman says roughly 70 percent of his bandwidth goes towards construction projects and statuary. “It’s a legacy thing,” she told her colleague Ezra Klein in a podcast appearance last week.
Trump’s war, his tariffs, and his relentless building of monuments to himself make for the three preoccupations eating up the vast majority of his time. All poll appallingly, Axios writes, and none look likely to grow on the public anytime soon.
The president’s distractedness has effectively surrendered what was once the GOP’s most reliable asset—the perception that Republicans are, broadly, a more reliable set of hands on the economy. Polling by Reuters this week found voters are now evenly divided over which party handles fiscal responsibility better, wiping out a GOP lead that had held for nine years.
Party leaders are privately grumbling about the roughly $400 million sitting untouched at Trump’s super PAC, MAGA Inc. Insiders told Axios that his refusal to write big checks into races that could still swing has drained the enthusiasm of donors.
Rather than change course, Trump has poured capital into the SAVE America Act, a bill that would force voters to document their citizenship and produce identification. Republicans have told him again and again that it cannot pass. Trump has instead pinned the blame on Senate Majority Leader John Thune and threatened to oust him over the debacle.
Aides say he prefers showing guests drawings of the ballroom going up at the White House, or a model of his planned Triumphal Arch. He talks up the new Air Force One, his designs for Dulles International Airport, and the helipad under construction on the South Lawn.
Senior congressional Republicans told Axios that their own numbers point to the loss of the House and possibly the Senate. Several have quietly urged him to talk about affordability instead. Privately, they doubt he is capable of the switch.
The president even admitted in a Wednesday interview that Republicans are very likely facing a bloodbath come November’s midterms—even if his response to that prospect, and the issue Democratic control of either chamber could create for his agenda, has amounted to little more than a shrug.
“They’re angry at Republicans,” he told Punchbowl News. “They’re not angry at me.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment on this story.
