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Four possible reasons Trump's approval rating is suddenly on the rise



Let's not get carried away here. President Trump's latest approval rating of 43 percent isn't going to land him atop the list of most popular presidents ever. But it is a three-point jump from last month, and you can be forgiven for finding it extraordinary considering the constant pounding the president takes from the press and the influential-for-some-reason late night talk hosts. To listen to some of them, you'd think we had elected a completely incompetent, racist liar to serve as our president. How could it be that even 43 percent of Americans would approve of such a man?
I have four thoughts on why President Trump's approval might be rising:

1. The media attacks are starting to sound like "blah blah blah"

When you say something bold and brash once, people pay attention. When you say it every day, people yawn and shrug their shoulders. Even if you like watching CNN and MSNBC for whatever reason, you can't help but notice how predictable they are when it comes to everything President Trump does. It's always wrong. It's always insensitive. It's always unsophisticated. It's always a gaffe. Blah blah blah blah blah. After a while you recognize they're going to say the same thing no matter what he does, and it no longer influences your thinking. That might be affecting some people who were once influenced by media opinions, but now realize it's all just agenda-driven propaganda.

2. When they get to see the president in action, they're impressed

The problem with telling everyone that a guy is a big dummy is that eventually they're going to see him for themselves. You've set the bar so low for him that even a mildly solid performance might raise their eyebrows and cause them to reconsider what they've been told about the man. President Trump's speech on Afghanistan was excellent, as was his speech to the United Nations General Assembly. Even his remarks on the Charlottesville violence, if you actually saw them rather than listening to the media's mischaracterizations of them, showed us a president who was compassionate and concerned about people.

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What's more, he has shown both compassion and competence in his response to the recent hurricanes. We often noted while Hillary Clinton still had a political career that her numbers tended to be better when she was in the background and not in the spotlight. The more people actually saw of her, the less they liked her, whereas they found the way others characterized her far more appealing. With Donald Trump, the opposite may be true. You don't like what you hear about him, but when you see him for yourself, you like what you see.

3. He's getting results

The media focus on things like "legislative victories," and there is plenty we still need Congress to do - like repealing ObamaCare, passing tax reform and much else. But the people aren't stupid, and they've noticed that it's Congress, not the president, that can't get these things done. What's more, when he can act on his own, he does so decisively and with wisdom. He quickly approved the Keystone XL pipeline after Barack Obama spent seven years dragging his feet on it and ultimately rejecting it. He reversed the bans on offshore drilling in the Atlantic and Arctic oceans. He's been getting rid of unnecessary regulations with impressive speed. And while a lot of people didn't like the fact that Trump agreed to a spending deal with Democrats, the public liked the fact that the president wanted to get something done and wasn't going to let Republican ineptitude stand in his way. They sent him to Washington to govern, and he'll work with who he has to work with to govern. This is what the public expects. Oh, and that 3.0 percent GDP growth last quarter wasn't bad either. More of that and he'll be a lot more popular than 43 percent.

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4. Style aside, an awful lot of people agree with him

Forget about the tweets, the retweets of the GIFs and everything else. That kind of stuff gets attention, but it's not the real substance of the president's job. When it comes to taxes, spending, regulation, health care, energy, environmental policy and national security, President Trump's views are pretty mainstream and an awful lot of people agree with him. Plenty disagree as well, of course, which is why you probably won't ever see him at 90 percent approval. But no one should be that surprised that 43 percent of the population wants his agenda to succeed, because it's their agenda as well. Even if you have issues with his style, you can still appreciate the value of good policy and the president who is trying to enact it. In many ways, the criticism of President Trump was so outlandish and so overwrought, it invited a backlash. At some point people start tuning you out when you keep repeating the same ridiculous nonsense. That has begun, and people are now looking at the actual results from the man they sent to the White House even as the news media was screaming at them not to. And you know what? The results aren't too bad. In fact, they're pretty promising. I think 43 percent is only the start.


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