THE NORMAL PRESIDENCY OF DONALD TRUMP. There’s something interesting going on in President Donald Trump’s job approval rating. The constant attacks and negativity of the Democratic opposition, plus relentlessly negative media coverage, don’t seem to be having much effect. Trump’s approval, at this early point in his second term, is remarkably similar to the two other presidents, one Democrat and one Republican, who have served two terms in the past quarter century.
The RealClearPolitics average of polls keeps a running comparison between the polling of Trump and former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush at the same point in their second terms. Right now, Trump’s job approval stands at 46.6%. On this day in 2013, Obama’s job approval rating was…46.6%. And at this moment in 2005, Bush’s approval rating was a touch lower, at 45.6%.
The presidents and the events of their presidencies were entirely different. And yet, in mid-June of the first year of their second term, all were in almost precisely the same place in terms of job approval.
What does it mean? For one thing, it means the efforts to portray Trump as a uniquely dangerous threat to American democracy — to denormalize him — aren’t working.
Last year, the Left-wing journalist David Corn published a newsletter headlined “Trump Normalization Syndrome: A Threat to America.” The point was that Trump represented such a serious threat to democracy that normalizing him — that is, treating him as if he were any other politician — would lead to disastrous consequences. Trump’s “outrageous remarks have become less newsworthy,” Corn wrote. “Trump saying something hateful or inciteful is a dog-bites-man story. Sure, some Americans are enraged, but others either cheer him on or simply ignore it. Collectively, we’re experiencing Trump Normalization Syndrome.”
That was published in March 2024, when most Democrats still believed they would defeat Trump in November. Now, with Trump in the White House, a New York Times opinion columnist, Masha Gessen, recently said, “We’re entering the most dangerous phase of the Trump era: Normalization.”
The premise of such a critique is that Trump is doing outrageous things that Americans should never accept. The problem is that many Americans, in some cases, majorities of Americans, don’t think Trump’s actions are outrageous. They support what he is doing on immigration. They support what he is doing for the economy. They support what he is doing to cut federal spending on wokeism and Left-wing causes. That’s what is keeping Trump’s job approval numbers in the same place as Obama’s and Bush’s.
Another factor in this is that the Left’s protests appear to be having progressively less effect on public opinion. In a recent column, the Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley Strassel went down a list of protests, from the current immigration activism to a long list of protests in Trump’s first term. “These actions accomplished none of their stated aims — they didn’t move the Trump White House to alter a single policy,” Strassel wrote, “though they did prove effective at shoring up Trump loyalty and inspiring Republicans to tune out criticism.”
This weekend, we’ll be seeing a new run-through of the ineffective protest cycle with so-called “No Kings” anti-Trump protests around the country. It seems highly unlikely they will have any cumulative effect at all.
Just look at those comparative poll numbers. After all that has happened, Trump is in the same place that his two predecessors were at this time in their second terms. It’s almost… normal.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
