As Donald Trump’s second term hit the 100-day mark, a slew of national polls all reflected his plunging popularity. The Washington Post/ABC survey, for example, gave him an approval rating of 39 percent, the lowest score for any president after three months in office since modern polling began about 80 years ago.
Even a Fox News poll showed that only 38 percent backed the president’s economic performance, while 56 percent disapproved. As “the Trump administration tries to find its footing, many still see our leaders as unresponsive to their main concerns,” reported Republican pollster Daron Shaw, who helps conduct Fox News surveys.
Trump’s reaction to these polls has been both totally predictable and deeply revealing. He denies the facts and attacks the truth-tellers. On Truth Social, the president denounced Fox’s Shaw as a “Trump Hating, Fake Pollster” and called other independent professionals “Negative criminals” who “should be investigated for ELECTION FRAUD.”
Trump of course has denounced the mainstream media as “fake news” for years; during his first term, he embraced the doctrine of “alternative facts,” a shady and shambolic justification for making things up. For example, that COVID-19 would “just disappear,” or that Russia didn’t meddle in the 2016 election.
But during the start of his second term, he has conducted a more calculated and comprehensive campaign against a wide range of professionals, not just pollsters who deliver bad news. Scientists and economists, professors and journalists, judges and lawyers — they’ve all felt his wrath.
And they all have one trait in common: They all believe there is an independent reality apart from partisan posturing and propaganda that can be measured and described, investigated and evaluated. That reality can provide the basis for a civil and sensible debate over policy alternatives.
If these truth-tellers have one unifying maxim, it would be the wisdom once voiced by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the Harvard professor-turned-U.S. senator who insisted: “You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts.”
In the realm of King Trump, however, only one person gets to define reality. “As part of his revenge campaign, he has waged a war of intimidation against dozens of scholarly, commercial and legal institutions,” writes David Remnick in the New Yorker. “The Trump administration is carrying out a coordinated assault on first principles.”
Take federal judges, including some appointed by Trump himself, who have blocked may of his initiatives and even threatened to hold administration officials in contempt for defying their orders. Trump has retaliated by proposing to impeach judges who buck the White House, while his attorney general, Pam Bondi, has even suggested that arrests might be a proper remedy.
Another example: Trump has purged countless career federal employees, from inspectors general, who are charged with investigating corruption, to lawyers who focus on issues like climate change and civil rights.
“They have self-consciously and successfully eliminated all internal executive branch legal and norm-based constraints on Trump’s will, period,” Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard law professor who worked for President George W. Bush, told The Economist.
Trump’s denial of reality and rejection of professional advice has been particularly alarming in the economic sphere, where he’s embraced high tariffs and trade wars as national policy.
“Fundamentally, investors and business executives are jittery, and economists have profound concerns about the potential damage being done to the United States as well as countries around the world,” writes New York Times financial columnist Jeff Sommer. “Economists have scrambled to comprehend the logic behind the Trump policies, many of which seem self-destructive.”
Trump has even fumed about firing Jerome Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve, who has dared to warn that the president’s policies could lead to “higher inflation and slower growth.” As the Wall Street Journal icily observed, “The problem for Mr. Trump is that Mr. Powell spoke the truth.”
Some professionals, and their institutions, are starting to fight back against Trump’s assaults. After several Ivy League universities capitulated to the president’s demands for greater control, Harvard (my alma mater) stood up and said no.
The administration’s crusade, stated Harvard President Alan Garber, “threatens our values as a private institution devoted to the pursuit, production and dissemination of knowledge. No government — regardless of which party is in power — should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.”
More leaders and more institutions should follow that same sturdy example. Like Jerome Powell and Alan Garber and Daron Shaw, they have to tell Trump the truth.
Steven Roberts teaches politics and journalism at George Washington University. He can be contacted by email at [email protected].
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