President Donald Trump is off to a good start say the American people according to the latest average of presential approval polls compiled by RealClearPolling.com, showing Trump starting off his second term with a 51.3 percent approval rating, with only 43.5 percent disapproving, after just a week in office again.
That’s way better than former President Joe Biden, who left office with a dismal 39 percent approval rating, with 57 percent disapproving.
In truth these are the highest approval ratings Trump has ever had his entire political career, which began in 2015 including during his first term of office even after getting elected.
In 2017, as president, Trump’s approval averaged 40.5 percent, in 2018 it rose to 42.5 percent, in 2019 it rose to 43.4 percent and 2020 it was at 44.4 percent.
In other words, Trump is more popular now than ever.
Presidential honeymoons come and go, but what it usually means is that after a popular mandate is given to a new president—Trump was the first Republican to win the national popular vote in 20 years — he can expect things to move through Congress and get on his desk.
Besides getting his Cabinet selections confirmed — so far, five have been confirmed, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, Secretary of Treasury Scott Bessent and CIA Director John Ratcliffe — the House and Senate led by Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) are quickly getting to work on the budget reconciliation bill that is expected to include an extension of the 2017 Trump tax cuts, border security funding and other items.
Although for Republican presidents, deference only seems to go so far, with Senators Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) all voting against Hegseth on the floor of the Senate — Vice President J.D. Vance had to cast the tiebreaking vote.
Generally, some amount of moderate Senate Republicans deferred to every single cabinet choice by former President Joe Biden no matter how controversial they turned out to be, giving a safe margin for confirmation, with no Democratic Party defections.
In other words, some Republicans in knee-jerk fashion offer deference to Democratic presidents who they campaign on disagreeing with on Cabinet choices, but not for presidents of their own party. Are they really Republicans?
So too could there be some difficulty on the horizon in getting the budget bill or bills done in a timely fashion as usual party factions start pointing their knives at one another. Generally, the budget bill or bills are still expected to pass. A better question might be what gets stripped out of legislation to get to the majorities needed for passage.
For example, in 2017, a Republican attempt to repeal and replace Obamacare was defeated in the ostensibly GOP-controlled Senate and Trump had to settle just for his tax cuts and getting rid of the Obamacare individual mandate.
However, that outcome should be weighed against Trump’s current approval ratings compared to 2017 and whether Senate Majority Leader Thune wants to garner a reputation of his chamber either being helpful or hurtful to Trump, especially with the Congressional midterms next year.
In midterm elections dating back to 1906 through 2022, the party that occupied the White House lost seats in the House 27 out of 30 times, or 90 percent of the time, and in years with losses those averaged 34 seats. On the Senate side, the White House incumbent party lost seats 20 out of 30 times, almost 67 percent of the time, and in years with losses those averaged 6 seats.
In other words, midterms are hard enough — the opposition party’s voters are usually more motivated than the incumbent party’s voters — without party infighting.
Chances are, we’ll eventually get to that, but for now, with the American people behind Trump, he appears to get his honeymoon. The question is whether Congress will fully accept that. Stay tuned.
Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
