That sound you hear -- blurp! blurp! -- is Trump's approval heading underwater as buyer's remorse seems to grip the public after one week on the job

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After only one week on the job, Donald Trump's approval ratings swirl down the toilet as right-wing voters (assuming we have a few rational ones left) seem to have caught a widespread case of buyer's remorse. The Daily at politicususa.com has the story under the headline "Trump's "Mandate" Vanishes As His Approval Rating Plummets In A Week; Once the American people got a dose of Trump, his approval rating plunged back underwater. Sarah Jones and Jason Easley report:

It was just a week ago when everyone from Republicans to the corporate media to Democratic strategists was telling the American people that Trump has a mandate.

We all had to stay quiet because Donald Trump and his agenda were what the country wanted.

Yeah, um, about that.

A new Reuters/Ipsos poll tells a different story according to Reuters:

Overall, the poll showed 45% of Americans approve of Trump's performance as president, down slightly from 47% in a Jan. 20-21 poll. The share who disapproved was slightly larger at 46%, an increase from 39% in the prior poll.

Some 59% of respondents - including 89% of Democrats and 36% of Republicans - said they opposed ending birthright citizenship.

Some 59% of respondents, including 30% of Republicans, opposed Trump's moves to end federal efforts to promote the hiring of women and members of racial minority groups.

Some 50% of poll respondents said the country was on the wrong track when it came to the cost of living, compared to 25% who said it was moving in the right direction. The rest said they weren't sure or didn't answer the question.

Events of Trump's second week suggest his poll numbers are not likely to improve soon. Jones and Easley write:

62% of respondents also opposed Trump’s 1/6 pardons, 54% opposed Trump’s tariffs, and 52% opposed delaying the TikTok ban.

This poll was taken before Trump tried to freeze all federal funding, so his numbers should be expected to get worse next week.

The “Trump mandate” never existed. A big red flag for Trump and Republicans should be that voters are still very angry about prices and inflation, and once they find out that Trump’s policies could very easily raise prices, that anger will grow.

As we reported in a post dated 1/15/25, popular-vote totals never supported the notion that Trump had a mandate:

How close was the 2024 race? Here is how we summarized the popular vote in a post dated Jan. 7, 2025:  

As for Trump's "mandate," it turned out to be weak. He received 77,284,118 votes for 49.8 percent -- or less than 50 percent of the vote. Kamala Harris won 74,999,166 votes for 48.3 percent. Trump's margin of victory was 1.5 percent.

Excluding Trump's 46.2 percent in 2016, you have to go back to Grover Cleveland's 46.1 percent in 1892 (124 years) to reach such a low margin of victory. A "commanding victory"? Not even by Grover  Cleveland's standards.

Trump repeatedly has referred to his victory as a "landslide," when he won by a whopping 1.5 percent. This is a fundamentally dishonest man, who in my view, resorts to lies and bullying because he simply cannot tell the truth.

Trump's "mandate" was so weak that Jones and Easley call it a "myth":

The idea of a Trump mandate was a myth, and many of those who voted for Trump didn’t do it because he promised to pardon insurrectionists and attack trans people while slapping tariffs on goods and raising prices.

Trump is trying to run a Fox News presidency when a majority of the country doesn’t watch Fox.

There is a disconnect between what voters think they elected Trump to do and what Trump thinks he was elected to do.

Donald Trump doesn’t have a mandate, and if he keeps going with his Project 2025 agenda, he will soon find himself even less popular than he was during his first term.

It has only been a week, but the American people are increasingly starting to sense that the new Trump presidency isn’t a good fit for them. Trump managed to increase his unfavorable rating by one point for each full day that he has been in office.

At this rate, the only mandate that Trump will have is a mandate to be impeached.

What do you think about Trump’s evaporating mandate? Share your thoughts in the comments below.