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“Newly elected President Donald Trump’s popularity has reached a seven-year high and the majority of Americans approve of his handling of the transition process,” Forbes recently reported. “A majority of respondents on a CNN/SSRS poll released On Wednesday, they said they believe Trump will do a good job when he returns to the White House next month (54%), the story continued, and that they approve of how he has handled the transition so far (55%).
These numbers are in stark contrast to eight years ago then Donald Trump was the first time “president-elect”. Pew Research Center conducted a national survey from November 30 through December. On September 5, 2016, he concluded that of 1,502 adults surveyed at the time, only “40% approved of Trump’s Cabinet picks and high-level appointments, while 41% approved of the job he has done so far in explaining of its policies and plans for the future.”
It’s not an apples-to-apples comparison, but approval levels are significantly higher today than they were eight years ago. The big – and important – question is: why?
The easy and perhaps too obvious answer is that President-elect Trump 2.0 is not President Joe Biden, while President-elect Trump 1.0 was not President Barack Obama.
Obama left the White House — again based on Pew numbers — with an approval rating just below that of Presidents Reagan and Clinton when they left. “58% approve of (Obama’s) job performance, while 37% disapprove,” Pew told us eight years ago.
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Biden’s approval rating at the end of November this year — this time at Gallup — is at 37%, and some of that sampling came before the widespread criticism of Joe Biden’s pardon from Hunter Biden. Could Biden fall further? Absolute.
So “not being Biden” (or Vice President Kamala Harris for that matter) helps once and future President Trump’s numbers.
But in my opinion that is not the explanation. 55% may represent a new “ceiling” for the approval of all new presidents in our deeply divided nation today, but why have Trump’s numbers increased from 40% eight years ago to the current approval rating?
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Two additional possible explanations besides “He’s not Joe or Kamala.”
First, Trump’s 2016 unrest was shocking and even painful for the Manhattan-Beltway media and political elites. I know this firsthand because I was on the set of 30 Rock’s “NBC Election Night Coverage” eight years ago. As events unfolded on that momentous evening in 2016, it was much more than a surprise that engulfed the NBC studios. It was a thunderclap of a reality that an old news organization was completely unaware was coming, and it left a stunned, disbelieving newsroom. (Basically two floors of newsrooms, as MSNBC was one floor below the NBC News Election Night set). Much of the shock and pain among traditional media elites became a kind of referred pain among the population at large. The country was shocked because Big Media was shocked in 2016, and as the anger and disbelief of the traditional media spread, much of the country reeled along with those elites.
How bad would this Trump presidency get? The media elites had not really considered the possibility that Trump might win, and so what they said or implied that night out loud, or through appearance or body language, was absorbed. The people with platforms—at least the vast majority of them within traditional channels—immediately concluded that a Trump presidency would be terrible for the country, and their collective sigh sent stock futures plummeting. The markets quickly regained equilibrium, but not the psyche of the Manhattan-Beltway media elites. The onset of “Trump Derangement Syndrome” was immediate. And until Trump’s huge victory in November, “TDS” only got worse.
Trump had never spent a single night in DC this time eight years ago, and the shock of his 2016 victory was followed by prophecies of doom from the usual suspects that never let up, and the “Resistance” took all its positions in the media. The ‘pink hats’ booked their flights to Trump’s inauguration a day after the counter-demonstration. “Hillary should have won, dammit,” and when she didn’t, the media elites and the political left went into overdrive to convince America that Trump was at best completely corrupt and possibly authoritarian. Eight years later, after endless research and years of legal battles, it appears that the majority of Americans no longer buy what traditional media sells.
But that’s not it either. Trump’s previous highest approval rating until this new “honeymoon season” of 2024 was 49% — and that number wasn’t reached until early 2020, when three years of low taxes and deregulation, combined with rising energy production, had America cooking on gas… until COVID hit.
That Trump is now at 55% is nothing short of astonishing, as the past five years since that 49% mark have been, well, eventful.
President-elect Donald Trump reacts during his meeting with Prince William, Prince of Wales, at the Embassy of the United Kingdom Residence on December 7, 2024 in Paris, France. (Oleg Nikishin/Getty Images)
The events themselves, neither January 6, nor especially the catastrophic failures of the Biden presidencyexplain the ‘Trump leap’. The comparison of 45-47 with a weak and failed president certainly helps Trump, as does declining trust in traditional media and perhaps a return to the norm of well wishes for a new president. The media are no longer as hysterical as they were eight years ago.
Rather, Trump’s new approval rating is thanks to, wait for it, Trump.
The fact is that people now have a side-by-side comparison of government led by a brash real estate developer and television star fueled by superlatives and big goals versus the prospect of more of the left’s managed decline along with a mandatory switchover. for electric vehicles and boys playing girls’ sports. America got a big dose of ‘United States of Europe’ versus the United States of America, and it turns out we prefer the latter. We want our presidents to be unapologetically patriotic, optimistic and full of bonhomie.
Don’t mistake my meaning. The traditional media elites of Manhattan-Beltway are shocked by Trump’s triumph, and once again very angry — even enraged — but the public’s willingness to share those elites’ intended pain has precipitously dropped. Having lost the public’s trust in an almost incomprehensible but very comprehensive way, journalists’ grumblings not only no longer matter much, but actually help Trump get off to a good start in his second presidency.
Most of America has simply rejected the traditional media for the conversation they are having about Trump. Older media are no longer trusted, period. Does it hate Trump? So what? The collective influence of traditional media is now below that of ‘public health authorities’, and that is at its lowest point.
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My position: Trump is more popular today than ever before because Americans love optimism and Trump not only sells hope, he believes in it. Combine that affection for an elected leader who believes in the country and its essential goodness with the crumbling of the credibility of Trump’s critics and the disasters of the Biden years, and you get 55% instead of 40%.
The only question left to answer is: How high could that number rise if Trump delivers on the border, rebuilding defense, returning deregulation, and extending Trump’s tax cuts? If you wish the country well, you should hope that Trump’s numbers, like those in the markets, continue to rise.
Hugh Hewitt hosts “The Hugh Hewitt Show,” heard weekdays from 6:00 to 9:00 a.m. ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on the Salem News Channel. Hugh is waking up America on over 400 affiliates across the country, and on all streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on Fox News Channel’s roundtable hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6:00 PM ET. Hewitt, a son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, has been a professor of law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996, where he teaches constitutional law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio program from Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt has appeared regularly on every major national news television network, hosted television programs for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American newspaper, authored a dozen books and moderated about two dozen Republican newspapers. candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-2016 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio program and column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests during his four decades on the air, from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump, and this column previews the top story that will drive today are behind his radio/TV program.
