Latest polls show Trump's supporters are deserting him, but he still "flooded the zone with s--t" in SOTU, weaving a trail of deceit that could trip up Americans

Trump gives the longest SOTU in modern history (NPR)

If you took yesterday's advice from Robert Reich, you chose to ignore Donald Trump's State of the Union (SOTU) address. That should have you feeling pretty good right now. After all, Reich helped ensure that you did not waste your valuable time listening to the worst president in American history -- and that poll of presidential historians was taken before Trump's nightmarish second term began.

Now, we have more nuggets of hope for those who yearn to see the reins of American government return to the hands of a relatively sane person. That good news comes to us courtesy of Bill Kristol, a one-time Republican who decided around 2016 that the thought of Donald Trump in the White House was more than he could stomach. Kristol now writes opinion pieces for The Bulwark, a center-right news site that caters to "politically homeless" conservatives, those who reject the GOP's current direction and regularly criticize Trump and his allies.

In the lead-up to last night's SOTU, The Bulwark published a Kristol op-ed that offered soothing numbers for those of us who dream of the day America escapes Trump's authoritarian clutches. Let's take a look at Kristol's insights from a piece he wrote before Trump's speech :

Let’s be honest: Tonight will be depressing. When the sergeant at arms proclaims in a stentorian voice to the House chamber, “Mr. Speaker, the president of the United States,” we will be reminded, vividly and unavoidably, that Donald Trump is the president of the United States.

Which is depressing.

But there is a silver lining to that undeniably dark cloud. When President Trump spoke to a joint session of Congress almost a year ago, on March 4, 2025, he was in decent shape politically. Four months before, he’d won the presidency with 49.8 percent of the vote to Kamala Harris’s 48.3 percent. Six weeks into his second term, his support was holding steady: The New York Times polling average had him at 49 percent approval, 48 percent disapproval.

That is only the beginning of the grim statistical picture facing Trump. Kristol writes:

Today, almost a year later, the Times average has Trump at 41 percent approval, 56 percent disapproval. Trump has lost about one sixth of his approval in the last year. A new poll from CNN is even more dramatic, showing Trump at 36 percent approval today, down from 48 percent in that same poll a year ago. That suggests one in four of his original supporters deserting him. And this morning G. Elliott Morris reports on his new poll, which has Trump at 37 percent approval, 59 percent disapproval.

So Trump has lost considerable ground. One of course wishes that even more of the public had changed its mind even more quickly. But as our Declaration of Independence reminds us, the people are often slow to move: “Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves.” The people tend to be characterized more by “patient sufferance” than quick rethinking.

But eventually the people can be brought to see what is happening. Eventually they come to notice “a long train of abuses and usurpations” and the “repeated injuries” of their rulers. Eventually they can say, “Enough.” There’s lots of evidence they’re en route to decisively saying “Enough” at the polls this November. (The new G. Elliott Morris poll has the Democrats up ten points on the congressional generic ballot.) And it’s more likely that public opinion will continue to move in the direction it’s been going than that it will reverse course.

Now it’s true that the public might conceivably reverse course if Trump changed course. But he seems to have no interest in doing so. As was the case with "Mad King George III" of England, when the public has “petitioned for redress in the most humble terms,” those petitions “have been answered only by repeated injury.”

Like Kristol, I struggle to understand how a substantial number of Americans ever came to believe that a man convicted on 34 felony counts in a criminal trial, adjudicated a rapist in a civil trial, and caught on tape admitting to being a sexual abuser should serve as president. Heck, I'm not sure a person with such a record would even be allowed to tour the White House, much less Occupy the Oval Office. Consider this information from AI Overview:

Mandatory Background Check: All visitors over the age of 18 must submit to a background check, which requires a full legal name, date of birth, and Social Security Number.

• Automatic Denials: The system likely flags individuals with active warrants, pending felony charges, or multiple convictions for violent crimes or serious drug offenses.
• Prior Convictions: Generally, past non-violent convictions do not guarantee a denial, but they are reviewed on a case-by-case basis.

It is tempting to write off Trump supporters as ignorant rubes. But I, for one, have a slight problem with that: Over the years, especially during my days in Alabama (although Missouri isn't much different; I call it "Alabama with snowballs"), I've come to know a large number of people -- people I like and respect -- that I feel certain have voted for Trump. And I know terms such as "ignorant," "stupid," "unethical," or any similar pejorative do not apply to these folks.

On top of that, my wife Carol and I might be the only liberals on my side of our family. My niece, Dr. Erin Gerhardt, is a physician in St. Louis, and she seems to have progressive sensibilities. She and I have never had any political discussions -- I learned a long time ago that is a subject best avoided on family occasions -- so I'm not sure where she stands on the right/left divide. But I'm confident she is a fine doctor and a swell citizen -- and she tends to get five-star ratings from her patients, so I think that's pretty cool. In fact, I have a number of nieces and nephews that I think either are -- or will turn out to be -- swell citizens. And whether they agree with me or not, I find it hard to put political labels on them. 

As for Trump, I will admit my feelings toward him fall into the "hatred" range. And I will further admit that probably isn't terribly healthy. But I also don't think it's healthy to stay silent regarding someone who slings insults at my family's heritage -- and the heritage of many other American families -- who have seen loved ones put their lives on the line for U.S. democracy. 

I've written before about my father, William J. Shuler, who was part of a squadron that arrived at Normandy Beach three days after D-Day. My late father-in-law, Mark Tovich, served in the South-East Asia Theatre in World War II, especially in India and Burma, contracting a near fatal case of malaria or yellow fever. My late aunt Imogene Stamps, my late uncle Carl Stamps (both of Arkansas), and my late uncle Henry Shuler (of Aldrich, Missouri) all served in WWII. 

To have Trump refer to my relatives, and millions of people like my relatives who served as "suckers" and "losers" is hard to forgive in my mind -- especially when Trump has never acknowledged that he was in the wrong.

Did last night's SOTU help Trump? It might, but only if Americans allow themselves to be conned by a president who lies with impunity. NBC News conducted a fact check that showed Trump's claims related to tariffs, drug prices, inflation, global investments, tax cuts, mail voting, and election fraud were false. Claims related to Trump ending wars, fraud in Minnesota, new construction jobs, and crime in D.C. were exaggerated or lacked evidence.

For closing thoughts on Trump, let's give the last word to Bill Kristol:

Tonight, we’ll see a president who will speak—at length!—making the case for the path he’s chosen. But this speech is no more likely to help Trump than his address a year ago, which helped him not at all. It was a week after his appearance before Congress that Trump’s approval and disapproval lines crossed for the first time since he returned to the presidency. Since then his approval has steadily continued down, and his disapproval has steadily gone up. Those trends are likely to continue.

It’s worth noting that this public rejection has happened without war and without a recession, two common proximate causes of a decline in presidential popularity—though we may be teetering close to both. On the economy in particular, it turns out not to be always true that it’s the economy, stupid. After all, it doesn’t seem to have mostly been the economy in 1776. Almost none of the charges in the Declaration is about the material well-being of the colonists. The indictment there is that “a prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.” 

That’s surely the case today.

But it’s also worth noting that unfit rulers can sometimes hold on to power. The publication of the Declaration of Independence didn’t achieve independence. That took years of war. And like Mad King George, Trump will not give up easily. He has many levers of power in the executive branch at his disposal. He and his supporters have tons of money to spend on the coming elections. They have the acquiescence of many elites outside of government. They will not go gently into their well-deserved night.

Tonight Trump will, as Steve Bannon memorably put it, “flood the zone with shit.” The good news is that the American people seem increasingly sickened by the odor. But we have a long struggle ahead to get rid of it.