Will the Iran Attack Change Trump's Standing with the Public?

Photo by Ussama Azam on Unsplash

As has been the case since day one of this administration, Saturday brought a head-spinning change in the news agenda when the United States opted to join Israel in attacking Iran’s nuclear development sites. While the policy and security implications of the attack will take time to unfold, including how Iran retaliates and whether Saturday’s actions pull the United States into a protracted war, it is not too soon to consider the domestic political implications of Donald Trump’s decision.

For a president who does everything to enhance or project his power, it should be reasonable to assume that his decision was influenced at least in part by how it would make him look. Policy motivations aside, the strike fits Trump’s pattern of deflecting from a losing path by escalating somewhere else. And when you consider the miserable state of his presidency ahead of last weekend, it shouldn’t be too difficult to conclude that Trump was looking for a new dog to wag.

In this instance, he reached for the biggest dog out there. But it’s a dog the country wanted left alone.

Let’s consider how the attack is likely to affect public opinion by looking at Trump’s public standing prior to last Saturday, how Americans felt about bombing Iran before the attack, and how the public typically reacts to crisis events.

1. Trump is floundering everywhere

The Trump presidency has been chaotic, so it should not be surprising that the line tracking his public support resembles a roller coaster. But it is a roller coaster on its way down.

After starting out with the lowest net approval ratings of any president in polling history other than himself in his first term, Trump has experienced two rapid slides in public support. The first took place amidst the market chaos following his so-called “Liberation Day” tariff announcement. The second is happening now in the wake of his directive to establish a military presence in Los Angeles.

According to the Economist/YouGov tracking poll, Trump’s job approval just prior to the attack was an ugly 41%, with 53% disapproving, for a net approval rating of -12%. This figure was down 3.3 points in just one week as the public absorbed the events in California and moved his standing on par with where it was at the comparable point in his problematic first term.

These top line figures were driven by net disapproval on every major policy category. The Economist has Trump underwater on inflation, jobs and the economy, taxes and spending, civil rights, and—notably—immigration, all of which have fallen considerably since the start of his second presidency.

To compound matters, disapproval of his performance is not being driven by blue state voters. Estimates from the YouGov data suggest Trump now has net disapproval scores in every swing state he won last November (WI, -12.6%; PA, -11.8%; NV, -11.6%; AZ, -11.6%; MI, -10.7%; NC, -8.3%; GA, -5.7%) and is holding on to positive job approval scores only in fifteen small or medium-sized states in the South, Mountain West, and Alaska. He’s even struggling in Texas and Florida.

2. Trump’s effort to deflect from his problems by militarizing Los Angeles was a failure

These evaluations reflect how the country is absorbing the administration’s reality television twists and awful policy choices.

As Trump tries to change the agenda by deflecting attention away from his unpopular actions, he finds himself jumping from one public opinion cul-de-sac to another. If his decision to militarize the Los Angeles protests was motivated by the urgent need to change the subject from his public breakup with Elon Musk, it was a colossal failure.

On CNN, political analyst Harry Enten spoke to data showing the public disapproves of his actions in L.A. by a net 15 points, with independents objecting by a net 24 points, and concluded, “I think we can say that Donald Trump has lost the political battle when it comes to what has happened out in Los Angeles.” This is on the issue where Trump is theoretically at his strongest. But the CNN data, which was taken after the L.A. protests, shows that Americans by a nine point margin feel Trump has gone too far with arresting immigrants and conducting ICE raids at workplaces.

And it’s not like Trump has an obvious way to turn things around. Looming in the background is the budget bill he is trying to push through Congress by July 4, but that, too, is a public opinion disaster. CNN looked at four recent polls showing the public opposes the legislation by an average 55%-31% margin and concluded that it would be the most unpopular major piece of legislation of the past 34 years—surpassing the bill from Trump’s first term that established the tax cuts this bill would extend.

So now he’s changed the subject again. But in attacking Iran, Trump chose to do something people clearly do not want.

3. Before the attack, Americans said don’t do it

When people were asked their opinion about getting involved in the Iranian conflict before Saturday’s attack, their responses made Trump’s domestic agenda look like a winner in comparison. The Economist/YouGov poll put support for American involvement in the conflict at a minuscule 16%. The Washington Post found only one in four Americans supportive of launching air strikes against Iran.

Data journalist G. Elliott Morris compared this low level of support with how approving the country was just before the interventions in Afghanistan in 2001 (+78% support), Iraq in 2003 (+44% support), and against ISIS in 2014 (+13% support). And recall that support for military actions like the one in Iraq fell precipitously over time from these lofty figures as the country soured on what felt like endless war.

By moving ahead, Trump ignored public opinion and his own campaign promises that he would avoid foreign entanglements. In fact, he ignored the isolationist portion of the MAGA base, which vocally split with him over the prospect of attacking Iran. Prior to the attack, pressure to stay out was coming from the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene, Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson.

4. Crisis events can cause the public to rally—to a point

This leads to the question of how much this strong opposition to an attack might blunt a potential rally effect that can materialize when a president takes military action. We will have to track polling in the coming days to look for shifts in public sentiment, but if there is a bounce in support for the attack or an uptick in Trump’s overall job approval it would most likely come from Republicans who were previously opposed to the action but feel compelled to rally around a Republican president.

The long-term effects of the bombing are likely to be far different. The underlying structure of public opinion in Trump’s second presidency is now fairly well set, and it will provide the backdrop for how people view his actions over time.

With dismal job approval numbers, strong opposition to his domestic agenda, dislike of his use of the military to quell domestic protest, and a strong predisposition against involvement in the Iranian conflict, Trump faces a potential public opinion collapse if conditions worsen on any of these fronts.

He has tried once again to escalate and deflect, and has now put the country in a situation where unintended consequences could shape the immediate future. That is never a good place for presidents to be, to say nothing of what it could mean for the nation. Perhaps the most disconcerting part of it is that if Trump’s support continues to sink he will again be tempted to escalate. But what will he do next after engaging in one of the most consequential actions a president can take?