The Briefing with Jen Psaki
How to Lose a Country in 100 Days: Trump's Weak Poll Numbers
Sun, 27 Apr 2025
Jen Psaki reflects on the tumultuous and chaotic first 100 days of Donald Trump’s presidency, as the country faces so many crises of his own making. Senator Adam Schiff returns to discuss the recent polling showing low approval ratings on nearly every issue, from the economy to the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case. They later discuss the Acting US Attorney for Washington DC, Ed Martin, who is awaiting senate confirmation and what Democrats like Schiff are doing to slow the process down. Representative Brittany Petterson joins Jen to analyze the hypocritical policy proposals the White House is considering to incentivize women to have more kids. And finally, Jen previews her new primetime show, “The Briefing with Jen Psaki,” which premieres on May 6th.Check out our social pages below:https://twitter.com/InsideWithPsakihttps://www.instagram.com/InsideWithPsaki/https://www.tiktok.com/@insidewithpsakihttps://www.msnbc.com/jen-psakihttps://bsky.app/profile/insidewithpsaki.msnbc.com
Chapter 1: What are the key polling numbers for Trump in his first 100 days?
Okay, this week we will hit the 100-day mark of Donald Trump's presidency. If you can't believe how quickly time has flown by, that's not at all how I feel. But if that's how you feel, don't worry, everyone. There are only 1,361 days to go of this journey. Now, the first hundred days, though, is often the high watermark of a presidency. You're fresh off a political win. You have momentum.
You can finally try to implement the plans you talked about on the campaign trail. You're still in a sort of honeymoon phase of your presidency for most presidents. It's a time when the American people are most willing to extend some benefit of the doubt of what you're going to do.
But as we approach the end of Trump's first hundred days, it seems he was pretty quick to squander whatever goodwill he came in with. And that's not just me saying, I mean, poll after poll after poll. And I literally mean there's so many of them is making that all perfectly clear. There was a new NBC News poll out just this morning that shows Trump's favorability is at just 45 percent.
Now, Fox News poll put his approval a point lower at 44 percent, which, by the way, is the lowest rating that Fox has ever measured for any president at this point in their term. And those weren't even the worst numbers Trump saw this week. A Washington Post, ABC News poll showed his approval rating at just 39 percent. And then there are the numbers on the specific issues.
And this is where I think it gets very interesting. Like these from The New York Times. Trump's underwater by four points on immigration, an issue that typically had been his strength.
He's underwater by eight points on managing the federal government, underwater by 11 points on trade, by 12 points on the economy, by 14 points on foreign conflicts, underwater by 21 points on his handling of the war between Russia and Ukraine. And he's underwater by 21 points on his handling of the case involving Kilmar Obrega-Garcia.
And I think what we're seeing here very clearly is just how badly Donald Trump overplayed his hand. Part of the reason he overplayed his hand is because of his completely warped view of what the outcome in November meant. I mean, you might remember in the weeks and months following the election, Donald Trump and his allies claimed he had a historic mandate to basically do whatever he wanted.
America has given us an unprecedented opportunity. and powerful mandate.
They're just upset. They're desperate. They're humiliated. They're embarrassed. But Donald Trump has a mandate.
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Chapter 2: How has Trump's approval rating changed since his election?
deporting or the administration deporting a four year old with a stage four cancer without giving the family a chance to keep that kid here. U.S. citizen get get the necessary treatment. The other number that really stood out to me, though, was. By a two to one margin, 50 to 21, people think that he has made their economic circumstances worse rather than better. Those are really damning numbers.
So but but even more broadly on immigration issues. What concerns me gravely, because now they're using courthouses as a fulcrum for immigration policy. They're using the IRS to enforce immigration policy. They're taking people's appointments with immigration to turn around and deport them, even when people go to get their citizenship, take their citizenship oath. What that's going to mean is.
fewer undocumented people willing to go to court. And most of the time when undocumented people go to court, they're not the defendant. They're the victim or they're the witness. So they're not going to participate in the justice system. Why file your taxes if they're going to use your taxes against you to deport you?
So it's going to mean a lot of people aren't going to be paying their taxes that would normally be paying taxes. People aren't going to show up for their immigration appointments because they'll fear they're going to be used to just grab them instead of whatever process they're in.
So it's going to mean millions of people going deeper into the shadows, which is not in the interest of law enforcement or tax collection or society. So in the bigger picture, I think it's a real mistake.
I've never thought about it exactly that way. It's interesting how it deters people from participating in aspects of the system, paying taxes and, again, going to courts when they need to be defended themselves. The arrest of the judge in Wisconsin, again, not isolated, felt jarring. I know that we should be charred by too many things these days. Do you think—
I mean, you've you've done the studying of Donald Trump for a long time. Is that to scare people, to deter judges from doing what their job is? What do you think the motivation is behind that?
I think it is, you know, in a normal, rational world, you would have immigration authorities work with a courthouse and decide, OK, how do we how do we work together or how do we at least not interfere with what each other are doing? You wouldn't have the kind of confrontation and arrests that we saw yesterday. But the administration relishes this. They relish the opportunity to go after judges.
They relish the opportunity to try to intimidate and shock people. They talk, you know, just gleefully about impeaching judges they disagree with. So it is part of a broader conversation. assault on the rule of law, a broader effort to intimidate. They're intimidating the universities. They're intimidating the law firms.
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