Name: Even Trump voters are mad | Today, Explained
Uploaded: 2026-02-01T17:17:48.000Z
Duration: 23 min 8 s
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Hi, and welcome to Today Explained Saturday.

Adverbs of degree

I'm Esteed 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.

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.

Since 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.

more to two people who follow Trump's base even more closely than I do.

How real is the backlash against Trump and how much will it matter?

Now 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.

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 figure 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.

And 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.

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?

On a scale of 1 to 10, what would you give it?

He's delivered on virtually every promise he's made.

The number of refunds you're going to get back going to be off the charts.

The one big beautiful bill got passed you.

You haven't had anywhere near the ridiculous leaks and backbiting in the White House that you had.

And Trump won, which hampered the whole effort, et cetera.

Now, going into the midterms, he spent an inordinate amount of time on it.

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.

And the windows 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.

But the numbers tell us that Trump is growing more unpopular.

He's fallen 20 points with independence 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 of 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.

They'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 depended on it.

Because most 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.

All that the electorate needs to know as far as economic statistics is their grocery bill.

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.

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 fill your card up, you're feeling the pinch, you're feeling the pain, and

I want to ask about two other areas that the numbers tell us have been issues for Trump over his first year.

The Epstein files have unleashed a wave of anger, even among some Republicans.

I'm thinking about folks like former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene.

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?

They should have released all the files on the same day immediately.

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Even Trump voters are mad | Today, Explained

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