Get back to sorting out the economy, voters warn Trump across polls

Americans broadly want Donald Trump’s administration to focus on improving the U.S. economy over the president’s escalating threats of foreign intervention, according to a pair of polls released this weekend.

In a Wall Street Journal poll, majorities of respondents said that the economy was weak (57 percent) and similarly believed that it had grown weaker during the first year of Trump’s second presidency (49 percent). Only a little more than one-third of voters, 35 percent, said that the economy had improved over the past 12 months. By a 12-point margin, Americans said that they feel constrained by cost-of-living pressures.

And a CBS poll found that a broad majority — 74 percent of Americans — say their incomes were not keeping up with rising costs despite Trump’s insistence that inflation is “almost nonexsistent.”

Trump’s personal performance numbers continue to plunge. The Journal’s poll found the president’s disapproval rating at 54 percent, its highest rating ever, while his issue-based polling numbers continue to drop and suggest that he now faces criticism from voters on topics like the economy and even immigration where historically the president has seen his highest trust ratings.

On border security, Trump enjoyed his only positive rating of any issue that the Journal asked about. On immigration more broadly the president was four points in the negative, and on the economy and trade policy the president was 10 points in the negative. On inflation, the percentage of voters who disapprove of Trump’s performance was 17 points higher, while 65 percent of respondents on the CBS poll gave him a disapproving grade in the same category.

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His lowest marks came in response to his handling of health care in a poll that was conducted just days before the White House released the “Great Healthcare Plan”, a framework for legislation to respond to the expiration of subsidies for plans on the Affordable Care Act that drove premium prices lower for millions of Americans.

Led by Trump, Republicans refused for months to negotiate with Democrats on an extension of the subsidies and now face the prospect of being unable to pass any legislation to replace them through the House and Senate.

These poll numbers follow criticism levied upon the president for months by some of his own followers and former allies. Skeptics of the president’s deep involvement in peace talks aimed at ending wars in Europe and Asia reacted with horror as the president escalated a deadly campaign of military strikes against small boats in the Caribbean to include a raid that resulted in the capture of Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela’s president, and his extradition to the United States on drug trafficking charges.

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Now, the president is publicly threatening military action to seize the territory of Greenland if Europe and Denmark in particular refuse to acquiesce to his desire to buy it.

He has also suggested repeatedly on Truth Social that he could use military force to intervene in Iran on behalf of anti-government protesters amid reports of hundreds slain by security forces. Trump told reporters Wednesday that he was informed that “the killing in Iran is stopping, and there’s no plan for executions,” suggesting that he would not launch an attack.

The president’s foreign policy remains broadly unpopular as a result, even though the Journal’s polling indicated that a slim majority approved of the raid to capture Maduro, who is now awaiting trial in New York. Nearly half of respondents supported the operation, and 47 percent opposed it.

On “foreign policy,” the president is 11 points in the negative in the Journal’s issue-based polling and his handling of Russia-Ukraine in particular is 14 points in the negative.

When asked whether the president went “too far” in threatening the governments of Colombia, Cuba and other countries, 53 percent said yes.

Only 17 percent said the president was not going far enough, and 27 percent said the president’s warnings about further military action in Central and South America were on the money.

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Voters are wholly uninterested in getting involved in Iran. According to CBS, 67 percent of U.S. adults oppose the idea of using military force against the regime, while only 33 percent support that plan.

Overall, the CBS poll found that 53 percent of Americans believe that Trump is too focused on events overseas.

The president was largely absent from shutdown negotiations in the fall, when Democrats attempted to force Republicans on board with an extension of health care subsidies for millions of Americans before the year-end deadline.

At the same time, then-Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene publicly attacked her party for lacking a plan to deal with rising health insurance premiums and deductible costs. Republicans battled that criticism, but the White House shelved its own plans to call for an extension of the subsidies altogether.

The CBS poll was conducted between January 14-16, among 2,523 U.S. adults with a 2.3 percentage point margin of error. The Journal’s poll was conducted Jan. 8-13 among 1,500 registered voters, with a margin of error of 2.5 percentage points.