Even Trump voters are mad

0:00Hi, and welcome to Today Explained Saturday. I'm a Stead Herndon, and every week I'll be talking to someone in the news, in the culture, or just exploring an idea I can't get out of my head. This week, I've been thinking about the president's poll numbers. It may not feel like it, but Trump's approval rating is some of the lowest in recorded history, and has fallen to new lows in recent weeks, as the nation reels from the recent killings of two anti-ice protesters in Minnesota. Still, even with all the chaos, the Trump White House shows no signs of slowing its agenda or moderating to reflect public opinion.

0:36Since coming back into office, Trump has shown some willingness to change his mind upon controversy, but those moments are few and far between, like after the stock market plunged because of tariffs or when he caved on the Epstein files because of his base. So this week, I decided to do a little pulse check on MAGA. I looked at focus groups, talked to pollsters, and even checked in with some of the voters I met on the campaign trail, particularly in Minnesota. Is MAGA really defending all this? I brought that question and more to two people who follow Trump's base even more closely than I do. How real is the backlash against Trump?

1:13And how much will it matter?

1:23Now, I'm excited to talk to John Fredericks. Every good political journalist needs a good MAGA guy in their back pocket or in their DMs. And I am glad to have John. He's a popular conservative radio host who goes by my favorite nickname, the Godzilla of truth. We met years ago on the campaign trail as Fredericks often hosts his show from the road, broadcasting from events. like the RNC Winter Meeting, the CPAC convention in Washington, D.C., and you have the finger on the pulse, which is what I love. You interact with tons of Trump supporters on your call-in show, and Trump appears on your radio show pretty consistently.

1:57And so this week, as I wanted to try to get a temperature check on kind of where MAGA world is or where kind of Trump supporters are, I decided to start with you. We haven't talked in a while. How are you doing, John? Hey, I'm doing great. It's great to be on with Vox again. It's always entertaining. So thanks for having me. I really want to compare the first term of Trump to the second term of Trump. What do we think has changed over the last year? And how do we think this is different than the first time he was in office? Let's start with you. If you could rate the Trump second term on a scale of one to 10, what would you give it?

2:3010. 10. I mean, he's done. He's delivered on virtually every promise he's made. The economy is booming right now. The number of refunds you're going to get back are going to be off the charts. He closed the border. We're not getting any more illegals in. That has been done. That was a major promise. That's been done. The one big, beautiful bill got passed. He's put the right people in place. He hasn't had the turnover. You haven't had anywhere near the ridiculous leaks and backbiting in the White House that you had in Trump 1, which hampered the whole effort, etc. So, 10, I can't think of anything he didn't do.

3:06What surprised you most? Did anything? Yes, his focus on foreign policy. I really didn't see that coming. And that there lies one of his risks now going into the midterms. He spent an inordinate amount of time on it. That's great. Stop wars. But the risk of this is people elected him not for foreign policy views. They elected him for affordability, getting prices down, fixing the economy, getting housing, getting interest rates down, doing the things they need to do to improve their quality of life. That hasn't come yet. And the window is closing, going to the midterms. I want you to put on then your kind of pulse of MAGA hat then, because I can see how you are giving him a 10 out of 10, have defended each of his actions.

3:54But the numbers tell us that Trump is growing more unpopular. He's hit a new low in approval ratings. He's fallen 20 points with independents in just one year. The gains we saw in the election year among non-white Americans, among young people, have seemed to reverse, if you believe, the polling. If things are going as well as you kind of believe they are, why aren't we seeing the numbers reflect that? The economy has not reflected the success that's coming. So people aren't feeling the affordability. They're not feeling the optimism of what I think we're going to feel going into going into the spring and summer when some of these things take hold.

4:36They're not feeling that the messaging of the Republicans, as usual, sucks. They couldn't message their way out of a paper bag if their life dependent on it. Are Americans buying that story, though, because most, you know, Americans are not kind of blaming Joe Biden for this economy state. They're blaming Donald Trump. It seems as if you were saying that there is at least some form of concession you'll make here that maybe the economy has not turned around in the way that Donald Trump had promised in this first year. OK. The all that the electorate needs to know as far as economic statistics is their grocery bill.

5:16That's all you need. And if that continues to go up, as it is for all of us, right, if the price of cars go up, everything is going up. then, you know, Trump's economy's failed. Doesn't matter whose fault it is. He's there. He's got to fix that. If you can't buy a home, right? You can't get a mortgage. Interest rates are too high. You can't pay it. Trump's fault, as it should be, because he's now going to be accountable. He's got a very short period of time to turn this around. I'm optimistic that he's going to do that. But right now, when you go to the store and you feel your card up, you're feeling the pinch.

5:50You're feeling the pain. And that's why his numbers are down. I want to ask about two other areas that the numbers tell us have been issues for Trump over his first year. The Epstein vows have unleashed a wave of anger even among some Republicans. I'm thinking about folks like former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. I actually listened to an episode of your show from last summer where one of your callers was kind of expressing some anger around Trump's handling of those files and wondering if justice, as they put it, was going to come to those victims. Do you think that Trump's handling of the files has caused him some issues, even among some conservatives?

6:28They should have released all the files on the same day immediately. Why haven't we gotten that? It's the biggest mistake he's made. I really don't know. I really don't know what the hell Pam Bonney's doing in there. I mean, we got this thing going on in Minneapolis and she's making speeches at the Israeli American Conference. Like, get your tail to Minneapolis. Find out what's going on with that fraud. Epstein files should have been released immediately. What's ever in there are in there. You know, there is some perception by some liberals who, you know, have described Trump's support as like a cult like that, you know, whatever he says, folks will follow.

7:01I don't think that that's always necessarily true for you in this conversation. But can you tell me something that Trump has done in his first term? Can you tell me that something Trump has done in his first year returning to office that you haven't liked? I didn't like what just happened in Minneapolis. I think if you say you're going to send in the troops and do the Insurrection Act, you back it up. Had he done that, truth be told. Had he done that and he sent those 1 ,500 troops in a month ago, both of these young people would be alive today because the purpose of sending the troops in was to have checkpoints and separate ICE agents from the protesters.

7:46But had he sent those troops in originally, both those people would be alive today because they wouldn't have been able to confront ICE agents. They would have been cauldroned off with a checkpoint. You guys stay there. ICE is there. That's interesting. I hadn't necessarily heard, but it's kind of an argument you're making from the right, saying that if Donald Trump was going to threaten the Insurrection Act or is going to make a priority of rounding up what is supposed to be violent criminals in Minnesota, that he should have followed through on that and should have used federal troops. And in doing so, would have actually protected the community in a better way than what we've seen so far.

8:24But it does feel as if America is reacting to the dramatic scenes they see in Minneapolis and maybe feeling as if that's not necessarily the Trump policy they signed up for. But I don't know if necessarily people thought that meant folks would be walking through Target rounding up anyone who has an accent. You know, are those things different? Like those things might be a little there seems to be a gap between the expectation and the reality. You know, Estet, you make a great point and you really sum this up, the disconnect that's going on here, because you nailed it. Yeah, we voted to get the illegals out.

9:07But then when we see on TV the way they're getting them out, they don't like it. It's uncomfortable to people. Well, we try to get them out. We offered them a thousand dollars. We often self-deportation. Some of them went a couple of million. Right. But now. You said you're going to get them out. They're here illegally. You're not getting amnesty. You got to get them out. And it's uncomfortable and it's going to continue to be uncomfortable. And come November, people are going to have to make their mind up. That's kind of where I want to leave this is looking across looking down the line to November.

9:39I wonder, why aren't Republicans seeming to sound the alarm about some of this when it comes to the midterms? You know, should there be a little more concern? I'm ringing the bell. I'm like Paul Revere. If we don't get this thing going, we're going to get wiped out. I mean, you've got everything working against you right now to save Congress. And the thing is, Democrats are tough. They win. Trump's getting impeached on probably day three, maybe four, if they have another vacation day. He's done. So the administration's over. They won't be able to do anything. What has to happen? The economy has to get better immediately.

10:21The focus has to be on the domestic agenda immediately. Republicans have to get tough immediately. You can't back down because if you back down, you lose. So you got to stand up to this stuff. Short answer, just so we can wrap this quickly. Do you think the scenes out of Minneapolis helped or hurt Republican efforts to win elections in November? Well, obviously it hurt. I mean, nobody likes seeing innocent people killed regardless of the circumstance by law enforcement, period. Nobody likes it. So of course it hurt. Is there time to turn the narrative around, fix things, do this in a way that isn't as severe that you're seeing on TV?

11:04Nobody wants to see people die. So we got to find a way, the MAGA movement, President Trump's got to find a way to get the illegals out without what the scene you're seeing in Minneapolis. On the flip side of it, if you let the mobs win, you're done. So that's why you have to stand up to it, but you can't do it in a way that causes innocent people to die. And I think we can all agree on that. John, thank you for your time. We really appreciate it. And we appreciate you being a helpful pulse check for us about the minds of MAGA. You're a breath of fresh air. And thank you for having me and giving us an opportunity to have just a great convo.

11:47Thank you. We need more conversations in this country.

12:02A lot of us have spent a lot of the last week watching videos of what's happening on the streets of Minneapolis and understanding what it is that we're seeing, but also what's real and what isn't and what's AI and who is taking these videos and how we're supposed to understand the source feels harder than ever. So this week on The Vergecast, we're talking about what's happening in Minneapolis, how information moves in an AI age, and what it means to make sense of it all. All that, plus what's new with the new TikTok, why everything feels like it's falling apart on TikTok, and more on The Vergecast, wherever you get podcasts.

12:43Now we're joined by Sarah Longwell, publisher of the digital publication The Bulwark. Sarah runs a podcast called The Focus Group Podcast, in which they regularly hear from swing voters, Trump voters, all of the above. And they recently convened a group of Biden and Trump swing voters to talk about everything under the sun, including Trump's handling of ICE protests in Minnesota. Thanks so much for joining us, Sarah. We wanted to talk to you because one thing we're focusing on this episode is digging into the backlash against Trump. At least that's what the data tells us. You know, the numbers would say that there is a kind of growing sense of folks upset with the administration's actions.

13:21And we wanted to get into possibly its potential political impacts. Now, I know you spend a lot of time listening to voters in your focus group podcast. So I wanted to put this question to you. How seriously should we take these numbers that tell us that Donald Trump is going increasingly unpopular, historically unpopular? Have we seen the peak of his political powers behind us? Yeah, I think so. And I think obviously people are very focused on the backlash right now specifically to what's happening in Minnesota. But the discontent has been brewing for a while, and it is largely about prices and affordability.

13:56And that's not going to come as a shock to anybody. This is something people are talking about quite a bit. But the reason they're talking about it so much is this is the thing that ate Biden's presidency, and it is increasingly starting to destroy Donald Trump's presidency. And I think that because Trump ran specifically by telling voters, I'm going to lower your grocery prices on day one, there is a heavy sense of betrayal from voters. And I want to talk about, you know, in the first year, because we do focus groups every single week, often multiple groups a week. And so you're able to track how people are thinking about things over time.

14:28And one of it is that, like, people have patience in the beginning. And so for a long time, what we heard from voters was, you know, Rome wasn't built in the day. You got to give him time. He just got in there. And so when people talk about the honeymoon being over, that's where Trump has been on affordability. And it's not just that people are upset the prices aren't going down. It's specifically that they think that Trump is focusing on the wrong things instead of prices going down. And so every one of these major stories, whether it's invading Greenland or whether it is, you know, even sort of the bombing in Iran, and then you get to some of the excessive things around immigration for you have to look at it not just in the context of whether voters are upset about that specific thing, but whether or not they want him to be doing those things instead of focusing on lowering their costs, which is what they feel like they hired him to do.

15:26Yeah, I mean, I want to get back to the question about people's priorities and specifically affordability, which you mentioned. But I do want to look at the recent shootings we've seen in Minneapolis and try to get a sense of the public reaction to it. Now, as you said, we've seen data that says largely that the public is not on the White House's side, that they have not taken the opinion that this was that the protesters actions were to blame. We have seen some voters give a little bit of a mixed bag in response. We wanted to play a couple of clips from your podcast. We should note that this focus group took place before the most recent killing in Minneapolis of another observer, Alex Preddy.

16:00This was in response to the killing of Renee Good. It is very unfortunate that it happened. But it's also unfortunate that the ICE is being blamed for, like, just murdering somebody who was just so innocent, which isn't the case whatsoever. A, they were provoked. B, he got ran over. Because there were so many officers there, and because this is more of a controlled situation, there was a way to get it back in control in another way. Like when someone's driving away from a cop, the cop doesn't just roll up and pop them just because they drove off from a police officer on a traffic stop. So to me, because there was a way to get back in control, I do feel like some force was necessary, but I don't know if he needed to immediately just shoot her.

16:44When you're kind of been looking at what Republicans are saying in response to this killing, have you heard voters change their tune specific to the question of immigration over the last year of Trump being in office? I have not heard them change their view on immigration. I have heard them change their view on the way ICE is enforcing their immigration policy. Can you lay that out? Voters, sometimes they hear what they want to hear, but their belief about what Donald Trump was going to do was, one, secure the border, which is broadly very popular. People want a secure border, swing voters, all kinds of different voters, lots of Democrats, right?

17:19People think that if you're going to come into the country, you should do so legally and they want the border secure. Two, they want dangerous criminals deported. OK, those were the two things voters wanted Donald Trump to do. They did not want bands of masked agents roaming the streets, knocking down doors, waiting outside of schools, holding kids as bait, deporting people who had been here for 20 years and hadn't broken any other laws. There's a lot of sadness and confusion in the voters. It's not just a do they think it's do they side with the officers? Do they side with the people who were killed?

17:54It's a lot more like this is bad. This feels bad. It looks bad. I don't like it. Yeah, I mean, it does feel as if some of that we did some checking in with people and it was a it was a feeling even that from someone who voted for Trump and lives in Minnesota said to me, it doesn't feel like this is getting us closer to illegal immigration being less of a problem and that they were kind of resentful of the show of it all. But you mentioned something, I think, at the beginning that was super important about this framework of affordability being the lens that basically everything is colored through.

18:25You know, polling tells us that Trump's disapproval is driven by economic concerns, is driven by things like displeasure over tariffs. Now, you mentioned that, of course, but I kind of just wanted to say the question directly. Like, do we think a lot of this backlash we're seeing is really comes down to someone who was elected over egg prices not focusing on egg prices? I think it's this. I think that voters will forgive you a lot if the economy is doing well and they feel like they are getting ahead in their own lives. Like they will tolerate. The first term is a great example. That's right. It's a good example.

19:00Right. They're like, well, people are working and and it feels like the economy is good. And so I don't care if he is in tweets are insane. Yeah. There's an element so much back then. And you heard it again when people were upset about prices, upset about cost at the end of Biden's term. And like they basically, well, Trump's a businessman. I remember the beginning of Trump's term before COVID hit. Things were really good then. I want that time back. And so, yeah, I do think that when things are not going well for them and they do not feel the personal benefits, they do not find prices are lower than everything else compounds on that.

19:40And so they're like things they might have forgiven him for or might have written off. They don't now. That makes sense. I wanted to know how much do we know now about whether the current sentiment of Trump discontent will lead or has the possibility of helping Democrats come November? Are those two things the same? We should think about them similarly or different? Yeah. So here's how I would think about it. The backlash against Trump is going to help enormously in 2026, and it's going to matter much, much less in 2028. And let me explain why. A lot of it has to do with the makeup of the voters who vote in midterms.

20:19Yes. I love this stuff. This is the right thing. Democrats have a huge structural advantage in off year elections now. They just do right there. Folks turn out in off years. They tend to be much more attuned to sort of mainstream media. They are up on politics and also because of political realignment. A lot of the college educated suburban voters who used to vote for Republicans now vote for Democrats. And those people turn out and vote. And so it's a structural advantage. It's a numbers game. It's about turnout. So if we want the Republican Party, this, I think, very dangerous MAGA version to fail as a long term political proposition, then we want Trump to leave office in the low 30s.

21:01And so it's not enough for him to be at 40 percent right now. We got to keep you want to keep pushing that down. And then you want Democrats to emerge with a real sense of here's who we are. Here's here's what you can expect from us. Here's our plan. The last question I have is the forward looking one. I mean, the question that me, you and so many others get all the time is, you know, what is this red line for Trump voters? Will there be an action or a policy that comes around that's too far for them and that fundamentally breaks his grip on the party as they have to find a new leader in years to come?

21:32When we think about the question that you're kind of hinting to in your answer before this, what comes next after Trumpism? I guess my question would be where should we start looking for those answers? Do you think that there's any place starting right now that will start to give us seeds to where that answer goes? Oh, man, it's such a big question to end on. I have like endless thoughts on this. I'm sorry. But OK, let me just lay one thing on you. One is I do think that you're watching the Republican Party in real time wrestle with what does it look like in a what does itself look like without Trump?

22:08And I know that's why they talk. That's why they joke about 2028, because they don't actually have a vision going forward. And the party is splitting a little bit into my the way I define it is America first Republicans, which is sort of your Marjorie Taylor Greene's, your Tucker Carlson's versus your MAGA establishment, which would be J.D. Vance, Marco Rubio, Mike Johnson. And those are starting to get in tension. And Trump has been able to sort of hold that messy coalition together for a very long time by anybody who puts on the red hat is in. And without him, I do think they're going to be a bit at sea, especially if J.D.

22:46Vance is the one who is sort of carrying the ball forward because I'm listening to voters. They do not care for J.D. Vance. I mean, some Republicans, they like shrug like, yeah, he's probably the guy and they like that he's younger. But like women, women who voted for Trump think he is. All they remember is the childless cat lady comments and they just they don't like him like they don't find him compelling. Thank you so much for your time. We appreciate you like helping us dig into this and always love your work. Thank you so much. Thanks, man.

23:20That's Sarah Longwell of The Bulwark. And earlier in the show, we heard from John Fredericks of the John Fredericks Radio Show. Every Saturday, we'll be in your feeds with an interesting interview in culture or politics. And you can also watch these Saturday interviews this week and every week on the Vox YouTube channel. Just go to youtube.com slash Vox or click the link in the show notes. This show was produced by Jesse Ash, fact-checked by Andrea Lopez Cruzado, and mixed by Shannon Mahoney. Our art director is Kun Nui. Thanks to David Tattashore, Supervising Engineer. Vox's Head of Video is Christina Vallis.

23:57And the Executive Producer of Today Explained is Miranda Kennedy. I'm Estet Hernden. And this is Today Explained.