Breaking Through the Noise
CORRECTION: In my Monday post announcing a new page on the Wolves and Sheep website containing all 15 entries in my Project Democracy series, I forgot to include a link to the page. You can find it here.
We know Donald Trump thrives on chaos.
He understands how easy it is to overwhelm people by flooding them with more outrage than they can process. He gets that people have a short attention span—if they’re paying attention at all—and he works that to his advantage by being abhorrent in so many ways that it’s difficult for people to process it.
Trump’s behavior is relentlessly outrageous. And any number of outrages he committed during this abominable administration might have been enough to bring him down—if people had time to absorb what’s happening.
But by committing multiple overlapping abominations all the time, it becomes white noise that shrouds his incompetence, corruption, venality and perniciousness.
The Trump formula is clear. Commit an act that exceeds authority, violates norms, and trashes basic decency. Before pushback can take hold, deflect with another act that exceeds even more authority, violates even more consequential norms, and crushes basic decency into the dust.
Deflect. Escalate. Repeat.
If this formula is successful, people forget the last outrage as they focus on the latest. Over time, they may just give in to exhaustion and quit caring. If authoritarians can’t win you over or get you to capitulate with fear, they’ll try to immobilize you with fatigue.
But it hasn’t entirely worked out this way.
The memory hole has consumed or conflated much of the barrage, but some things have broken through. And when they do, Trump sinks to unprecedented depths of disapproval.
We know this because we have enough data at this point to identify a pattern. Several times during Trump’s second presidency, we’ve seen a steep decline in his job approval that coincides with actions so outrageous they cut through the cacophony.
We can identify five such moments by layering the news agenda over the trajectory of Trump’s approval ratings.
Mid-February: DOGE
Donald Trump started his second presidency with higher net approval ratings than he had the first time around. The Economist tracking poll, which offers a daily measure of changes in presidential approval and is my source for the data reported here, clocked in at +5 on February 17, putting Trump a full ten points ahead of where he was at the same time eight years earlier. That was also his high water mark.
Amidst the mayhem of the administration’s first few weeks, Elon Musk’s manic dismantling of the federal government broke through as the waves of layoffs he initiated drew high-profile condemnation. His accessing of sensitive personal information from millions of Americans generated pushback from the courts.
Between February 17 and March 17, Trump’s net job approval dropped seven points, entering negative territory faster than any new president—except Trump in his first term.
Mid-March: Market Crash and Abrego Garcia
On March 24, with Trump’s tariff “Liberation Day” just more than a week away, his job approval had recovered slightly to a net -1. Then markets began to roil amidst the uncertainty of Trump’s policies and the potential for a global trade war. Kilmar Abrego Garcia sued the federal government for illegally deporting him to El Salvador. On the day Abrego Garcia filed his suit, the stock market crashed. These events combined to send Trump’s job approval into a freefall. Within a month, it had dropped 10 points, to -11.
Early June: Los Angeles Invasion
In very early June, Donald Trump and Elon Musk had a public breakup that saw Musk relentlessly skewering Trump on social media. Trump needed to deflect and escalate, so he chose a massive overreaction to anti-ICE protests taking place in Los Angeles. But he miscalculated. Between June 2 and June 19, Trump’s net job approval fell six points, to a new low of -13.
July: Epstein Files
After recovering slightly, Trump’s net approval slipped again by three points in July after the Justice Department announced on July 7 that the administration was not going to release the Epstein files despite Trump’s repeated promises that he would. This one angered Trump’s base, and the story grew so hot that on July 22, Speaker Mike Johnson announced that he was sending Congress home early for the summer to prevent Republican members from forcing a vote on releasing the files. One week later, Trump’s approval stood at -15.
Mid-September: Jimmy Kimmel
If you want political news to break through the fog, mess with popular culture. When the administration squeezed ABC to suspend Jimmy Kimmel over remarks he made about the murder of Charlie Kirk, the story was draped in front of people who may not otherwise pay much attention to politics. And polling data suggests they didn’t like what they saw. It’s early and Kimmel is now back on the air, but Trump’s net approval dropped almost three points in one week, to a new low of -17.
That translates to a 39% approval rating, with 56% of the country disapproving of Trump’s job in office.
Trump has worked feverishly to spin away his abuses. And what has it gotten him?
DOGE: A seven-point drop.
Tariffs and deportation: An 11-point drop.
Militarizing Los Angeles: A six-point drop.
Epstein: A three-point drop.
Jimmy Kimmel: Three points down and counting.
Amidst everything this administration has done to damage the economy, undermine rights and liberties, destabilize international alliances, and attack public health, some events do cut through the chaos and register with the public. When they do, Trump’s support suffers. And it suffers irreversibly.
We have sufficient data now to illuminate this pattern, and the pattern is clear. Trump has been unable to overwhelm us into apathy or distract sufficiently from his failings. He may escalate when he’s losing—and, yes, every escalation is dangerous—but that shouldn’t be confused with a successful strategy.
Trump is losing the country one set of voters at a time. And the effect is accumulating. When people withdraw their support for this administration, they don’t come back.
Lacking the capacity or the inclination to change direction, there is no place for Trump to go but down.
Thank you for this hopeful report. Now, we could use some sign that Democrats are doing some advance work on the next election, as well as a couple of smart, resourceful, savvy, decent potential Democrat presidential candidates.
I think the basic principle is this: People remember when Trump harms them or threatens them. We may have to ignore most of Trump’s actions — but constantly call attention to how Americans are suffering from billionaires like him. I believe that is all that people need to process to turn against him.