Trump loses support as he becomes The Man

(Image credit: NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images)

published 20 January 2017

President-elect Donald Trump heads into his inauguration Friday with historically low approval numbers that have dropped from 40 percent earlier this week to as low as 37 percent via a Fox News poll released today. For comparison, President Obama's favorables were around 80 percent when he took office in 2009, and it is typical for presidents to enjoy a sort of honeymoon period around the time of the inauguration.

One theory as to why Trump's numbers are so low: He's now subject to the same public distrust of authority that got him elected. Reason's Jesse Walker explains:

[L]ong before Trump ran for office, Americans' confidence in everything from Congress to banks to the media has been sinking. For years polls have told the same story: People are putting less faith in authority. Now the polls are telling a new variation on that story. ... The public distrust that helped propel Trump into the White House isn't going to go away now that he's there. Americans may yet persuade themselves that Trump is making the nation's institutions great, but for now he's the face of another institution in decline. [Reason]

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.