Even Fox News Admits It: Trump’s Presidency Is in Free Fall

A threshold has definitely been crossed in these last couple weeks as Trump shrinks his MAGA base down to its molten core.

After Donald Trump launched his war on Iran, a spirited debate broke out among a small set of public intellectuals over an unexpectedly relevant question: Is Trumpism dead? The case for Trumpism’s passing rested on the idea that the war is so contrary to his promises to the base that the movement can’t survive such a betrayal. The counter-argument held, correctly, that Trumpism isn’t actually antiwar, and its deeper impulses within right-leaning America aren’t close to spent.

But a bunch of recent events suggests that Trumpism as a broad ideological project has suddenly sustained a new kind of damage. The findings in this week’s poll from Fox News—a major institutional ally of Trumpism—combined with fresh levels of exasperation at Trump among GOP lawmakers leave little doubt: Some kind of new threshold has been crossed.

The Fox poll’s most brutal finding is that Trump is losing major ground among both his most loyal constituencies and among those he made surprise inroads with in 2024. On the former, Trump’s approval is underwater with working-class whites (46-54), rural voters (43-57), and even white men (48-52). On the latter, he’s tanking among young voters (31-69), Latinos (33-67), and working-class voters of all races (40-60), suggesting he’s squandered his gains with nonwhite working people entirely.

His numbers on the economy are even worse. Only 29 percent of voters approve of his handling of it, while an extraordinary 71 percent disapprove. On inflation it’s an eye-popping 24-76. All his aforementioned core voter groups disapprove of Trump’s economic performance as well—in very large majorities.

Just look at Fox’s write-up of its poll. It reports that Trump’s disapproval is at a........

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