Popularity is an amusing game. If you need to be popular, there’s a problem with you. If you happen to be popular, then that’s a good thing. Being popular is also different from being liked. Most people wish to be liked I would imagine. Being famous is similar to being popular, but not really.

Already in just a few words we have mashed up likability, popularity, and fame. For this reason, interpreting political issue polling is sometimes complicated. The result of the latest Reuters/Ipso poll show 58% of Americans prioritize fighting inflation, but only 32% approve of Trump’s handling of it. Well, no wonder. He’s failed to deliver any of his promised price reductions or inflation busting.

Leading up to election day, Trump went wall to wall claiming he would immediately bring down “grocery” prices on day one. He even issued an executive order on his first day in office instructing “… the heads of all executive departments and agencies to deliver emergency price relief, consistent with applicable law, to the American people and increase the prosperity of the American worker.”

For a decade, MAGA voters have shown that they believe whatever Trump says. The red hats are all-in for his lies and overblown promises, no matter how absurd. (Spoiler: the US president has no control over the price of groceries at your local store.) But lately the spell is cracking like overpriced eggs. In that Ipso poll, only 50% of his Republican supporters believe Trump is doing enough to reduce inflation. Half of his cult doesn’t believe he can reign in high grocery prices. This is good news. Not the high prices, but his voting base are starting to see his promises for what they are: lies.

How about the Mediterranean Riviera? Sorry, I mean the brutally devastated Gaza, where 2M people are to be displaced, so Trump can build condo housing and luxury shopping outlets. Only 25% of poll respondents thought this was a good idea. With numbers this low the Gaza project has likely met its justifiable end, hopefully.

Gaza is mostly destroyed. Estimates are upwards of 50 million tons of debris. Hazardous waste, collapsed tunnels, unexploded bombs, and unrecovered bodies have yet to be seriously considered. There is at least a decade of rebuilding ahead just to get back to a livable space, much less some fantasy grifting condo development. Trump, besides being cruel, is so damned uninspired that he thinks the homes of 2M people should be bulldozed for some stupid real estate deal.

Across America, voters are turning out to Republican town hall meetings and just booing the shit out of the speakers. Videos are everywhere online featuring MAGA people realizing their lives are getting worse since voting for Trump. This one below shows the crowd booing when Dr. Rich McCormick of Georgia’s 6th Congressional District tries to equate authoritarian power to the Joe Biden administration, not the Trump regime, and gets an earful.

The federal Education Department is one of the agencies targeted for closure, and the people aren’t having it. A huge 65% of voters polled are opposed to his plan, including 40% of Republicans. The US Dept of Education shouldn’t be in the sights of MAGA because the states set education policy. The same 10th Amendment that prevents ICE from forcing local police to help them with immigration also prevents the federal government from setting education policy for the sates. But logic never matters to the chuds, so Trump wants to shut it down because the Education Dept does these entirely normal things:

• Establishes policies on federal financial aid for education, and distributes and monitors those funds.
• Collects data on America’s schools and releases research findings.
• Focuses national attention on key issues in education and develops recommendations for education reform.
• Prohibits discrimination and ensures equal access to education.
  

Clearly it is the last bullet point the right-wing Republicans want to kill. If it’s not a policy that supports white people specifically, it’s gone.

The fake Department of Government Efficiency is also disliked by 53% of the poll. Elon Musk is running roughshod through people’s lives and doing tremendous harm. Besides, tanking the economy in a few months, Musk is stealing data, accessing confidential files that belong to millions of people, plus there are reportedly rumors he is training the Grok AI on the government data.

The Musk situation is dangerous. He is clearly a drug abuser from what we see on video. He is generally hated throughout the government for his firings and the ‘what did you do this week’ email. I think the Elon Show is getting old and if Trump starts to get personal push back, the Ketamine Kid is gone.

Overall, changes to people’s lives and jobs will always be unpopular. Nobody likes to lose their job. People don’t appreciate an outsider coming in to ruin their workplace. Trump and Musk aren’t getting popular, they’re becoming disliked more and more every day. After 30 days in office Trump has attacked every social group besides white men, continued with his rage nominations (including the unbelievable nomination of Dan Bongino for Deputy FBI Director), and attack Vladimir Zelenskyy, so harshly the entire world besides Russia is coming to Zelenskyy’s defense.

Trump is a menace. Musk is a menace. All the cabinet secretaries are a menace. The entire Executive branch is one huge pulsating shitshow and the MAGA voters are starting to pay attention. When your base is questioning how you lead, there are only problems ahead.