00:00New numbers from a Harris X Harvard Caps poll, all from June. I want you to break it down for us.
00:06So let's start from the top. Let's start with President Trump's approval rating.
00:11Where does that sit right now, just a few months into his second term?
00:15Well, the president has had a pretty eventful month, and his approval rating is largely steady with what we saw in May.
00:24However, it is trending down, and it has been trending down since really he announced the tariffs in early April.
00:35So the president started a 52% approval rating in February. It largely held in March.
00:42Then it fell fairly significantly in April, and now he's at 46%.
00:47So things are steady, but with this slight downwards trend, and it's yet to be seen whether or not the president will break this downward trend in the next month or two,
01:03as he nears the six months in office mark, and really reclaim 50% approval or higher, as he had in the beginning,
01:11or whether, you know, all of a sudden we'll wake up and we'll find him at 40% approval or around 40% approval.
01:18So I think a lot of things are in play right now, and the public is in a cautious, wait-at-see attitude when it comes to Trump, his policies,
01:27but also the way that Democrats are countering Trump.
01:32We've been in wait-and-see for a few months now when it comes to these tariffs.
01:36So because you're seeing this downward spiral, does it seem like people are still waiting and seeing,
01:41but approving him a little bit less?
01:44And how does that really, historically, what does that really mean for Trump?
01:48Has he seen this before?
01:51Well, by historical standards, he's doing fine compared to himself in the first term,
01:59but also other presidents within the first, you know, six months of their time in office.
02:07The political reality tends to slap you in the face pretty hard and pretty quickly
02:13when you are the commander-in-chief and you're running the country.
02:18But I will read for the audience in terms of how he's doing in different areas
02:24and what the approval ratings are.
02:26So the highest approval rating that Trump carries is on immigration.
02:32In May, he was at 51%.
02:34Today, he's at 49%.
02:36He's had a high of 56% on immigration.
02:40Generally, the public approves of the goals of his immigration policies,
02:45even though, as we'll talk in a minute,
02:47sometimes they, you know, have reservation in terms of how they're approached.
02:51And you see this at play when we'll talk about the riots in Los Angeles.
02:57In a similar fashion, returning America's to its values,
03:0348% of voters approve of Trump's job in that regard.
03:09And he's garnered a high of 53% at the beginning of his term.
03:13And administering the government, reducing the cost of government, he's at 46%.
03:20More or less, foreign affairs, 45%.
03:24Where he's getting low marks is tariffs and trade, 41%, and handling inflation, 42%.
03:32Especially the inflation, the approval on handling inflation and the inflation issue
03:39is very important for Trump because this is one of the reasons why he was elected.
03:45And this is one of the reasons why the Democrats came crashing down before the presidential election.
03:51The inability to move the public on concerns around inflation.
03:57So there's a very wide range, as you would expect, with Trump.
04:03Slide downward trends across the board, but that's just government, right?
