The polls look bad for Trump – but tyrants don't depend on approval ratings

The Guardian

6 days ago

The fracas over the Jeffrey Epstein files – and declining poll numbers on every issue that won Donald Trump the 2024 election – indicate cracks in the Maga coalition and weakening support for the president's self-proclaimed mandate.
But reports of Maga's death are probably exaggerated.
Trump has cheated death, both physical and political, many times. And while every tyrant craves the adoration of the people – and claims to have it even when he doesn't – no tyrant worth the title counts on public support to stay in power.
Last week, when the administration pulled an about-face on releasing 100,000-odd documents related to Epstein – amid conspiracy theories of deep-state pedophile rings, which Trump promoted – it looked like Trump was on the ropes. 'Trump can't stop MAGA from obsessing about the Epstein files,' reported NBC. 'Trump meets toughest opponent: his own base,' declared Axios. Trump was 'on the defense', NPR said. The Guardian reported on Maga hat burnings.
Even after House Republicans blocked Democrats on a resolution to force a vote on releasing the files, even after the speaker, Mike Johnson, withheld from the floor a similar resolution, the far right would not be mollified. 'Dangling bits of red meat no longer satisfies,' the Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene posted on X. 'The People … want the whole steak dinner and will accept nothing less.'
Now some of the commentariat are predicting that even if Trump survives, the damage to the GOP is done.
In the Hill, Douglas Schoen and Carly Cooperman marshaled polls showing Trump's sliding approval from before to after the Epstein affair and conjectured that it could sink the Republicans in the midterm elections.
At the same time, the populace, including Republicans, is changing its mind on Trump's master plans. Six in 10 respondents to a CNN poll oppose the federal budget bill; approval of Trump's handling of the budget is down 11 points since March. On immigration, a Gallup poll showed a steep drop in respondents who favor more restricted admittance, from 55% in 2024 to 30% this June. The most striking change is among Republicans, from 88% who wanted fewer immigrants in 2024 to 48% in June 2025. Meanwhile, the percentage of Americans who think immigrants are good for America rose to a record 79%.
The flood of TikToks showing masked men kidnapping people from the streets and manhandling elected officials has turned many people against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice). Two YouGov polls showed the agency's favorability plummeting from a net positive of 15 points in early February to a deficit of 13 in late June. During Trump's first term, 'Abolish Ice' was the chant at tiny demonstrations by fringe-left organizations. Now more than a third of respondents to a Civiqs survey want to see the agency gone, including an uptick of six points among Republicans since November, to 11% .
And as David Gilbert pointed out in Wired, even before the Epstein flap, some of the president's most prominent supporters were defying him. The former Fox News host Tucker Carlson condemned the bombing of Iran. Trump whisperer Laura Loomer dissed his acceptance of a $400m plane from Qatar. Elon Musk defected over the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. And Joe Rogan deemed Ice raids targeting ordinary working migrants too much to bear.
But Trump is not backing down. In fact, he's doubling down on every policy. The deportation campaign has grown more vicious by the day. Florida's 'Alligator Alcatraz' is being rightly condemned as a concentration camp. A recent Human Rights Watch investigation of three Miami area Ice facilities found detainees denied food and medicine, held in solitary confinement, and shackled at the wrists and forced to kneel to eat, as one man put it, 'like animals'.
The president muscled his budget and rescission package through Congress without regard to the disproportionate harm they augur for red-state residents, much less the deficit, the public health, or the planet's future. His tariffs are barreling ahead, exasperating economists, hitting crucial US economic sectors and tanking entire economies overseas. General Motors reported second-quarter profits down by a third. In the tiny, impoverished nation of Lesotho, 'denim capital of the world', Trump's threatened 50% duties have shut down the garment factories, leaving thousands out of work, hungry and desperate.
Trump may feel insulted, which he does most of the time; he may temporarily lose his footing. But he's not relinquishing power without a fight.
Tyrants don't need high approval ratings. They intimidate voters, rig elections, or stop holding them altogether; suppress protest and jail, deport or assassinate their critics. The Nazis achieved peak support in 1932, at 37.3%. Of the 1933 plebiscite that ceded all power to Hitler, the German Jewish diarist Victor Klemperer wrote: 'No one will dare not to vote, and no one will respond No in the vote of confidence. Because (1) Nobody believes in the secrecy of the ballot, and (2) A No will be taken as a Yes anyway.'
Daria Blinova, of the International Association for Political Science Students, argues that autocrats cultivate approval while consolidating their own power through the 'illusion of substantial improvements', which are actually insubstantial. In 2017, for instance, nine in 10 Saudi youth supported Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman because of such reforms as allowing cinemas to reopen.
The Trump administration has begun deploying some similar tactics. The justice department is pressuring state election officials to turn over their voter rolls and give it illegal access to voting machines. The Republican National Committee is training volunteers to 'ensure election integrity' – AKA harassing voters and poll workers. It is trying to banish the opposition press. Homeland security is trying to deport the widely followed Salvadorian journalist Mario Guevera, who has covered Ice raids and protests. Migrants sent home or to third countries can face persecution, torture or death.
Still, none of this means that Trump is invincible, even when his administration uses violence to achieve its aims and terrify its critics. First – simplest and most difficult –the resistance must show up. Get bodies into the streets. The second nationwide anti-Trump rallies were bigger than the first; the third, fourth and 10th can be bigger still.
Gather bodies at the sites of injustice. Volunteers are swarming to immigration courts, where migrants who show up for mandatory hearings are being released into the clutches of waiting Ice agents. The court-watchers – experienced organizers and first-timers, retirees, students, clergy, elected officials, artists – are distributing 'know your rights' leaflets in many languages, writing down names and contact information to inform families of their loved ones' arrests or to connect arrestees to lawyers later on. Immigrants' rights groups are holding training sessions. Spanish speakers are giving immigration-specific language lessons.
This nonviolent gumming-up of the government's criminal machine draws press and social media attention, multiplying participation, amplifying anger and mobilizing greater organization. At every step, people are bearing witness, storing it up for future accountability.
The Epstein affair shows that no loyalty is unbreakable. The polls show that discomfort with Trump's policies is growing. Discomfort can mature to rejection of injustice, rejection to resistance, resistance to action. A tyrant does not need majority support to maintain power. But neither does the opposition movement need majority participation to take power back. No tyranny lasts forever.
Judith Levine is Brooklyn-based journalist, essayist and author of five books. Her Substack is Today in Fascism