Kristol: …Welcome to Bulwark Live on Sunday. I’m Bill Crystal, joined by Sarah Longwell. I think we were on together, what, just two weeks ago? Is that right? Just two weeks ago. Yeah. Two weeks ago. But I thought it was really worth continuing that conversation and updating it because something I think big has happened in the last two weeks, but you’ll tell me is that it isn’t big. So how’s Trump doing? And particularly, what do you think the effect of the terrorist announcement, which has happened, what, 10, 11 days ago now? What do you think the effect of that has been, is, will be on his presidency and his approval?

Longwell: Yeah, well, look, we’ve got brand new CBS polling today that shows Trump down to 47% in his approval, but he’s got even worse numbers on the economy. And this is now getting very consistent across polling, which is that Trump’s normally, even when people don’t like him, and this is such a reversal.

I cannot tell you how different this is from the first term where Trump would have high approval ratings on the economy, but kind of lower overall approval ratings because people found him chaotic and, you know, didn’t like his personality or thought he was embarrassing us on the world stage.

This time it’s almost, it’s not quite reversed, but he’s getting, his overall approval while going down is higher than how people view him on inflation and on handling of the economy. And the reason that this is, I think, the worst case scenario scenario for Trump is that his mythology, right, central to it is the idea that he’s a businessman, that he’s going to do things that help the United States economically. And so the tariffs and the market freak out that followed tariffs and the myriad headlines that accompanied it, not just about the markets, but I mean, look, I don’t know that people quite understand the nuances of bond yields and whatnot, but they do understand the idea that things are volatile in the economy.

The other thing that I think is a lot of small business owners who I think expected Trump. I hear there’s people in the focus groups, a lot of them who are either small business owners or they work for a small business. And those people, they understand supply chains.

They really understand tariffs. And for those voters, a lot of them are not necessarily Trump fans so much as they thought he would be better for their small business in the economy. And those are the people right now who are like, well, this kind of uncertainty makes it impossible for me to run my business.

And I think this is the key. Trump is injecting an enormous amount of uncertainty not just into the market, but into sort of our entire economy. And when you have uncertainty, right, for any business owner, uncertainty is the worst condition for a small business because, you know, you got to order things in advance.

You got to be forward looking. Everything is about planning and costs. And oftentimes your margins are narrow. And so the pain points that I’m hearing in the focus groups right now, we did one with the Biden to Trump voters last week. And, you know, you get your people who are really into Trump’s idea that he is going to turn around the American economy and bring back manufacturing. And they believe that. And they’re like, I’m staying the course. Like, we’re going to do this and we have to stiffen our spines. And I’m pro. I think long term it’s going to be good.

That’s about a third of the group. The rest of the group is always in like a… I don’t know how to think about this. I’m nervous. I’m worried. And then there’s a third that is like, this is bad. I do not like this. And I think that that reflects the numbers that you’re seeing on both inflation and on tariffs, specifically where what people say is the vast majority do not. You get some Republicans who will say in the long term it’s beneficial, right? But literally every other number. So the vast majority of people do not think it will be beneficial in the long term. So that includes a lot of Democrats and independents.

And then on top of that, people think that the like the vast majority of people, overwhelming numbers, think we’re going for short term volatility and pain. And so, you know, it’s a lot to ask of people. And I think that of all the things and this is a sad commentary, I I don’t like that this is true, but I do think it is true, that for all the January 6th and the Trump cozying up to Putin and everything else, we’re a people now that… The only way they’re going to move off Trump is if there are negative personal consequences for them.

And the economy is the number one way in which Donald Trump can inflict negative personal consequences on people. And so I think if it keeps up and we continue to see this kind of volatility follow Trump, eventually the this guy’s the art of the deal, the smart businessman will start to slip away.

Kristol: You know, I do think someone put it to me 20 years ago when Bush’s numbers started to collapse in 2005 and they started to go down, obviously, because of the Iraq War, as well as Katrina and Harriet Myers and other things. But when his numbers started to collapse on how’s he doing in fighting the war on terror, that’s when one of the smart Republican types said to me, this is not fixable. I mean, you can’t have your strongest issue become a weak issue. You can survive other issues. People say, I don’t really like Trump’s case. The personal life meets too harsh, maybe even on all the bigotry, all the million, foreign policy, nervous about that.

But no, but the economy, the economy, the economy. So I do think it is interesting to say that he’s at 44% approval on the economy and 47% overall. It makes one think that 47% can come back. The 44% might be more of a leading indicator than the 47%. The 44, you and I were talking about this before, but I’d like you to share your thoughts on this. So the 44, he was at 51 approve on March 2nd, 48, March 30th, 44 now. So that’s about a point, almost exactly.

That’s on his economy. That’s the, he’s at 44% specifically on the economy.

Right, got to 47 approval. But on both cases, on the general approval, which was 53, 47, 50, 50, 47, 53 over these six, seven weeks, he’s gone down basically a point a week. And I guess part of me thinks, I don’t know, point a week, shouldn’t he be, this is a disastrous policy he’s embraced and it’s been disastrously executed. Shouldn’t it be worse?

But maybe a point a week is, if a point a week kept going a point a week, that would be a lot. So which, which are you, is the point a week good or is it annoyingly slow?

Longwell: I think it’s good. And this is just me exercising a theory here. But my theory would be that if his numbers sort of collapsed fast and like it was just this market signal that we don’t like this one thing, Trump reverses it, it probably comes back up.

I think a sustained drop that is slow, likely I think it’s harder to win those numbers back. I think that reflects probably the slow changing of minds on Trump overall. And I’m talking about his overall approval rating because his number on inflation, he’s at 40% on his handling of inflation. And so- I think what happens is your point about the leading indicator. And so he’s at 44 in the economy overall is that over time, Trump will go down to meet those numbers on the economy if it sustains. And once you’re down in 42 percent, last time I was on, I was talking about like, you got to get Trump.

I think I said 32 percent, 35 percent. And That number is really just a reflection of what I think Trump’s durable base is and where I think you have people who voted for him on the businessman mythology and the economy are.

And so if you sort of separate those two, you can assume that people with their red hats on Like they stick with Trump when they’re sort of naked on the side of the road, their house is gone. But like, as long as they’ve got that hat, they’re still pro Trump. It’s somebody else’s fault.

That’ll be the immigrants fault. That’ll be the left’s fault, whatever. But the people who voted for Trump out of purely self-serving reasons, just I want my groceries to be cheaper. I want stuff to be cheaper. I want housing to be more abundant, all of those things.

When that doesn’t happen, I think those people, as they peel away, then Trump goes from, boy, I’ve got an iron grip on so many voters, including independent voters, including these Hispanic and black voters who’ve been moving our way to the only people Trump has a super grip on is the MAGA base.

Now that and that ultimately represents a real quandary for Republicans, because that means, as it has now for some time, that Trump can sort of still own a majority of a Democratic or sorry, of a Republican primary and Republican primary voters. And so you continue to get really, really Trumpy people. But if Trump is wrecking the economy, the coalition that is sort of lined up against those types of people and no longer thinks they’re good for the economy, that becomes the vast majority of people.