| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
the code on the right or go to c-span shop.org to order your copy today in a nation divided a rare moment of unity This fall, C-SPAN presents Ceasefire, where the shouting stops and the conversation begins in a town where partisan fighting prevails. | |
| One table, two leaders, one goal, to find common ground. | ||
| This fall, ceasefire on the network that doesn't take sides, only on C-SPAN. | ||
| Wednesday, watch C-SPAN's coverage of the 17th Annual Congressional Women's Softball Game, live from Audi Field in Washington, D.C. Join members of Congress along with the Washington, D.C. Press Corps, for more than just a time of friendly competition and camaraderie. | ||
| A shared mission to strike out breast cancer. | ||
| Don't miss the Congressional Women's Softball Game. | ||
| Live coverage starts Wednesday at 7.30 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN. | ||
| C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app, or online at C-SPAN.org. | ||
| Cliff Young is certainly no stranger to the Washington Journal. | ||
| He oversees polling and societal trend surveys at Ipsos Public Affairs. | ||
| Back with us today with a slew of new data on how Americans feel about President Trump's first six months of his second term. | ||
| So let's start with overall approval ratings. | ||
| Where does President Trump stand right now? | ||
| And then how does he compare with other presidents at the beginning of their second terms in office? | ||
| And so what we did, by the way, it's great to be here. | ||
| And yeah, great. | ||
| Great to be here. | ||
| What we did was take the average of the average, not just Ipsus polls, but polls across the board. | ||
| And Trump is around 40%, 45%, excuse me, approval ratings. | ||
| The question is, is that good or bad? | ||
| And I would say he's in a pretty good place. | ||
| Relative to 2017, he's in a much better place than he was in that first administration. | ||
| And if you look at the average decline across all administrations since 1948, he's right at the average. | ||
| He's declined about five or six points. | ||
| That is the average, which is six points. | ||
| He took a stronger dip a few months ago, as we know. | ||
| There was a lot of friction, especially around tariffs. | ||
| He paused a bit. | ||
| He stepped back as Trump stepped back a bit. | ||
| And he, from an approval standpoint, is in a pretty good place. | ||
| Is it an apples-to-apples comparison to talk about Trump's second term versus other two-term presidents because he had that four-year break between his first and second term? | ||
| Yeah, that's a great question. | ||
| It's a difficult one to find empirical evidence on. | ||
| I'd say probably he's a little bit different than the norm than the average. | ||
| But I think it's reasonable to compare his first term with his second term. | ||
| President Trump, at the beginning of this second term, making a big bet on the One Big Beautiful bill, which is now a law. | ||
| How do Americans feel about the One Big Beautiful law? | ||
| It depends. | ||
| If you ask Americans in general, if they're in favor of it, it's not so clear, only about a plurality or in support. | ||
| It really depends on how you phrase it, how you word it. | ||
| But somewhere between 20% and 35% of Americans are in favor of the bill. | ||
| We have some data that suggests about 20, 22%. | ||
| But the bill is not a monolith. | ||
| And when you peel away the onion, there are a lot of nuggets in there. | ||
| There are a lot of details in there that Americans are in favor of, especially as they have to do with the middle class, such as no tax on tips. | ||
| Do Americans feel like they understand what's actually in this bill? | ||
| No, it's still very distant. | ||
| It's not front and center. | ||
| They're worried about making ends meet. | ||
| They're worried about taking kids to summer sports. | ||
| They're worried about their health. | ||
| They're worried about being safe, et cetera, et cetera, with those more meat and potato issues. | ||
| So it is still distant. | ||
| But when we present them the details of the bill, that is the specific benefits, potential benefits of the bill, Americans tend to be more in favor of it than not. | ||
| So how do you do that with a piece of legislation, a law at this point, that is so big? | ||
| How do you choose what to pull out and present people with when you're asking them whether they support this law or not? | ||
| How do you do that as a pollster? | ||
| Yeah, that's a great question. | ||
| There's some sort of judgment involved. | ||
| We followed the script of the ACA. | ||
| We did the same thing with Obamacare. | ||
| We ask a general ballot question, like in general, are you in favor of this bill? | ||
| We don't put a lot of specifics there. | ||
| We make sure it's somewhat vague. | ||
| And then we go into the details of the bill. | ||
| Now, what we pull out or pince out is a judgment call. | ||
| We try to get those things we think will create consensus. | ||
| Those other things that will be more controversial. | ||
| And we lay it out and we ask the specifics. | ||
| So typically what we'll do is we'll ask a general question about the ballot that is abstract, more conceptual in nature, and then we'll ask the specifics. | ||
| Cliff Young with us is in charge of polling and societal trends for Ipsos public affairs. | ||
|
unidentified
|
A great person to ask your polling questions of. | |
| He's steeped in all of it. | ||
| With us for the next 35 minutes here on the Washington Journal until the end of our program. | ||
| If you want to join the conversation and you're a Democrat, 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| You've also been in the field polling since the U.S. airstrikes on Iran. | ||
| What did you find on that front? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That America is divided, that it's controversial. | |
| About a third of the population, especially Republicans, are very much in favor of the administration's actions. | ||
| Democrats aren't. | ||
| Like I said, it's very partisan. | ||
| There's a lot of queuing, right? | ||
| If you like Trump, you're probably in favor of the bill. | ||
| If you don't like Trump, you're probably not in favor of the bill. | ||
| I think more fundamentally, though, what we find is a huge age differentiation. | ||
| What we're finding, not just with Iran, but also with Gaza as well as the Ukraine across the board, foreign policy in general, young Americans are less in favor of a more muscular policy. | ||
| They're much different than baby boomers. | ||
| They're much different than Gen Xers like myself. | ||
| And that's a general trend we're finding independent of partisanship, and it manifests itself as well on the Iranian airstrikes. | ||
| Is that something that is cyclical, though? | ||
| Are those young people today going to be the older people of tomorrow who are a bit more okay with interventionalism than the young people of tomorrow will be against it? | ||
| What have you found over time? | ||
| Or is that something unique to this time that we are in? | ||
| Yeah, basically, as you get older, you get more conservative. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You get more cratchy like me. | |
| I become more cratchy over time. | ||
| No, actually, what's interesting is that when we compare younger people, let's say, to the Vietnam generation or to the Iraq 1 generation or the Iraq 2 generation, younger people today are definitively less interventionist in nature. | ||
| The question would be why, and there's a variety of factors, one of which I believe are the forever wars, the fact that Americans, young Americans feel like the government has lied to them over time. | ||
| And this is something we believe that is a significant generational difference that will shape America looking forward into the future. | ||
| Just for our visual learners, let me show the chart. | ||
| The question that was asked: do you support or oppose the recent U.S. airstrikes on Iranian military targets? | ||
| Overall, among all Americans, 35%, 36%, I should say, support it. | ||
| Among Gen Z, though, it's just 25%. | ||
| Millennials, 27%. | ||
| Gen Xers, 39%. | ||
| Baby boomers, 47%. | ||
| You can see those numbers creep up as individuals get older. | ||
| One more topic before we go to calls, and it's on the foreign policy front. | ||
| We're expecting an announcement from President Trump today on Russia and Ukraine. | ||
| What do you find in your polling about American support for Ukraine in its war with Russia? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, once again, it's more distant. | |
| Americans are concerned about bread and butter issues for the most part. | ||
| There is a partisan break there. | ||
| Basically, Democrats are more in favor of Ukraine, intervention, let's say more specifically, than our Republicans. | ||
| But it's one of those things that I believe is just a tertiary issue, really, relative to all the more fundamental issues like the economy, like political extremism, and like immigration. | ||
| And we can get to some of those other issues as well. | ||
| Let me bring in some calls, though. | ||
| We'll head first to the city of Tucson in Arizona. | ||
| This is Carolyn, Line for Democrats. | ||
| You are on with Cliff Young. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Excuse me. | |
| Hi. | ||
| Yes, those were fascinating points to me because I am a relic. | ||
| And so my political beliefs kind of stem from a humanitarian viewpoint. | ||
| And my observation of government is similar to the youth in that I definitely feel we're manipulated. | ||
| I'm disappointed, in fact, that in journalism, there's not one area, one, we have no venue where someone, for example, will take Project 2025 and read it, however boring, and speak of what that is, because I feel that war has become very transactional, | ||
| probably always has been transactional. | ||
| But what the media used to do was inspire, I wouldn't say patriotism, but an emotional, a visceral response, which indicated the trend, the heart of your nation. | ||
| So, Carolyn, what are some of the news outlets do you trust? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, that's what I'm saying, I think. | |
| I don't trust any per se, and that I would feel better if when the big beautiful bill arrives, someone would attempt to read the whole thing publicly, take 15 minutes of a broadcast. | ||
| So, Carolyn, they did read most of that bill publicly on the floor of the Senate, Chuck Schubert forcing Republicans. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I did. | |
| I did watch that, yes. | ||
| And that's very important, but that's not generally I'm talking broadcast news, not public information, because that will become more and more limited via Project 2025. | ||
| And it's unfortunate because most people don't pursue, don't have the time for that matter. | ||
| That's why we've gone to soundbite. | ||
| Well, Carolyn, let me take your point. | ||
| Cliff Young, give you a chance to respond. | ||
| Yeah, I think that she represents a broad trend in America today, which is people believe the system is broken. | ||
| They no longer believe traditional institutions, no matter what they are, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Media, science, big business, you can kind of list them out. | |
| And that's reflective in terms of what she's saying. | ||
| And it's not a partisan issue. | ||
| Republicans feel the same as Democrats. | ||
| They feel the system is broken. | ||
| They feel like the establishment no longer works for the average person. | ||
| Indeed, we can understand the political outcome today in that context. | ||
| Donald Trump specifically represents one threat in that thinking. | ||
| He's a champion for many Americans who believe the system is broken. | ||
| He's there to, in their minds, fix a broken system. | ||
| And obviously, on the other side, Democrats feel very much the same sort of thing. | ||
| Maybe their champions are different. | ||
| And it's a belief system that's not just here in the United States. | ||
| It's something we find at Ipsos all over the world. | ||
| And it's really ingrained in our politics today. | ||
| So through that lens, how would you view Donald Trump reaching out to his MAGA base via Truth Social over the weekend saying it's time to move past the Epstein case and how much consternation this case continues to cause? | ||
| Well, there's a couple things there. | ||
| The very fact that he has a direct connection with his base is something new. | ||
| I mean, he's bypassing more traditional media sources. | ||
| That's very much a hallmark of this anti-establishment movement, not just in the United States, but globally speaking. | ||
| And Epstein, in my mind, is one of those, let's call them, political proof points or problems with the base, right? | ||
| Because if the system is broken, maybe Epstein is an example of that. | ||
| And that is the base elected champions to fix a broken system. | ||
| And it creates noise. | ||
| And definitely that's what we're seeing right now. | ||
| The editorial board of the Wall Street Journal taking up the Epstein case, just the first two graphs of their editorial today. | ||
| Donald Trump has traded in conspiracy stories for years. | ||
| Barack Obama was born in Kenya. | ||
| Ted Cruz's father had a link to the JFK killer. | ||
| The 2020 election with stolen migrants are barbecuing people's pets. | ||
| He seems to think this is good show business with appeal in certain niches of a fragmented culture. | ||
| Yet now he's upset that the Jeffrey Epstein theories that he fanned are proving hard to tamp down. | ||
| Mr. Trump lamenting online on Saturday that his administration is taking heat over a guy who never dies, Jeffrey Epstein. | ||
| For years, it's Epstein over and over again. | ||
| His advisors are suggesting that this was a snipe hunt, but the MA base is in fear and disbelief since the same people pledged to catch some snipe. | ||
| Yeah, and the context is a broad base believed that the system is broken. | ||
| And again, I don't think in the grand scheme of things, it will weigh so heavily from a voting or public opinion standpoint. | ||
| But there is noise in the system today because the principal champion, President Trump, had been touting for a long time that he would fix the broken system. | ||
| And this seems to be contrary to that point. | ||
| Again, the context is such that these sorts of things are not easy for someone in a place like Donald Trump. | ||
| Back to the bluegrass state, Arlington, Kentucky. | ||
| Betty, Democrat, good morning. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He is the worst president that I've been through. | |
| And I'm 90 years old, and I've seen quite a few. | ||
| And he has the filthiest mouth I've ever heard of anybody as a president that people are supposed to look up to. | ||
| It only blows one word. | ||
| I, I, I, I. | ||
| And I is bull bully. | ||
| Betty, who's the best president you've seen in 90 years? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Jimmy Carter. | |
| What did you like about Jimmy Carter? | ||
|
unidentified
|
He was honest, and he didn't have a good Christian. | |
| And Kennedy was a good president, too. | ||
| I can't complain about any of them, hardly, except Trump. | ||
| And he's broke every law that can become, has ever been made. | ||
| And he is, we're hitting it, we're in socialism right now, and people don't know it. | ||
| I lived in 16 states. | ||
| I lived in every kind of there is. | ||
| And I wouldn't go overseas now because I'd be scared I'd be left over there. | ||
| What's Betty in Kentucky? | ||
| How would you respond to Betty? | ||
| Well, first, Trump is a polarizing figure. | ||
| It's very clear in the data. | ||
| You know, you either love him or you hate them, though. | ||
| There's individuals in the middle. | ||
| There's nuance. | ||
| We have to be careful with making, you know, overstating the point. | ||
| But he's not in a bad place from a popular perspective, as we were saying before. | ||
| He's at 45% approval rating, and that's a pretty good place, as we've already said. | ||
| It's within the historic average. | ||
| And so whether she dislikes him specifically, she represents a certain sort of segment of the population. | ||
| There are many other Americans that think the contrary. | ||
| Will Donald Trump, if he goes through with them on August 1st with a slew of new tariffs, are those tariffs supported by that same base and that same 45% that is approving his job right now? | ||
| Yeah, first I would say the tariffs in general are a risk, right? | ||
| Americans see them as inflationary in nature. | ||
| They're worried about making ends meet. | ||
| We just came off a very difficult inflationary moment that we know, obviously, things have gotten better over the last little bit, last few months, but that definitely is the fear of Americans. | ||
| But his base has supported him throughout. | ||
| You know, they understand, or at least their perception is, yes, there might be problems in the short term, but there are long-term benefits, like bringing jobs back to America. | ||
| And they've held steady and with steady support for him and his tariff regime. | ||
| I would say anywhere from 65% plus, depending on how you ask the question. | ||
| And that in part, in large part, is why he is where he is with his approval ratings. | ||
| An interesting question. | ||
| You asked Americans whether they expect prices of certain goods to increase due to tariffs. | ||
| And this is the percent of people that responded saying they did expect an increase in prices on personal and electronic phones. | ||
| 77% of Americans said they expected an increase in prices and that over the course of the next six months. | ||
| For automobiles, 73% expected an increase in prices. | ||
| The items you buy every day, 73% household appliances, 72%, fresh produce, 70%. | ||
| Home repairs and improvements, 62%. | ||
| Dairy items at just 56%. | ||
| Why did you want to ask and delve into specific items that people thought there would be price increases on? | ||
| Because Americans are discerning. | ||
| When you do surveys on their household purchase behavior, they're very discerning, obviously. | ||
| They know where every nickel and dime goes in terms of their expenditures. | ||
| But what we wanted to get at overall was, do Americans perceive tariffs as inflationary? | ||
| And the simple answer is yes, they do. | ||
| And in part, the sort of trepidation, unease we see in the polls in general, not in the approval ratings, but in relative optimism, in consumer confidence as examples. | ||
| They're more negative right now. | ||
| Americans are more pessimistic. | ||
| It's partially a function of this worry about future inflationary pressures. | ||
| 20 minutes left with Cliff Young of Ipsos Polling and taking your phone calls. | ||
| This is Tom in Philly Democrat. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| How are you today? | ||
| Doing well. | ||
| What's your question or comment? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, this is a core problem with the polling industry and the fact that all the media uses it in different reasons. | |
| Your polling industry uses percentage all the time, but very few times it actually tells you the number of people polled. | ||
| Look at any major news media graphic, and it'll say 70%, 60%, 30%, 20%. | ||
| And that seems like a big thing, but unless you know the sample size, it could be the people in an elevator. | ||
| So is it 10 people? | ||
| Is it 100 people? | ||
| Is it 1,000 people? | ||
| Is it 10,000 people? | ||
| The polling industry is all over the place. | ||
| And that's based on your economics and who you call and who you sample. | ||
| But the news media only uses the 70%, the percentage. | ||
| Tom. | ||
| Got your point. | ||
| Let me just come back and I'll let Cliff Young jump in on this. | ||
| But let me come back to that slide that I showed on Americans and how they feel about the one big beautiful bill. | ||
| So you saw the overall numbers there and the big bar charts. | ||
| If you look at the small print down on the lower right corner, they get to exactly the question that you're asking. | ||
| And most good polls, as I understand, will put this information right there on the front of the poll. | ||
| So this poll was conducted June 6th through 10th of 2025, a representative sample of 1,167 Americans age 18 plus. | ||
| That includes 336 Republicans, 371 Democrats, and 320 Independents. | ||
| A lot to dig into there, including why you chose those specific numbers of the different people, but I'll let you respond. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, well, this is a great point by the viewer. | |
| You have to be an informed and educated consumer of data. | ||
| I think what he's really saying is, is your poll representative of the population? | ||
| And you really have to dive in and deep and be a good citizen and a good consumer of information. | ||
| The industry in general applies similar methods typically. | ||
| Typically, when we talk about public opinion in general, we're talking about the general population. | ||
| We want to be representative of the general population. | ||
| When we start talking about elections, we're getting close to election day. | ||
| We're going to be talking about those who have registered to vote or those who are likely to vote. | ||
| That's a more prescribed specific population. | ||
| It's a smaller one. | ||
| But today, we're talking about Americans in general. | ||
| We're talking about all, you know, representative of all Democrats, all Republicans, all Independents and others. | ||
| And ultimately, ultimately, it is about what population of interest are you representing. | ||
| So for people who heard me read out those numbers, why were there 51 more Democrats than Independents sampled in this survey and 25 more Democrats than Republicans? | ||
| How do you get to those numbers? | ||
| Yeah, that's actually quite random, right? | ||
| That kind of falls out of the population. | ||
| If we do a representative sample population where we select individuals randomly, that's kind of the typical break of Democrats and Republicans. | ||
| It's closely or evenly split today in the United States. | ||
| Obviously, there are certain decisions as to how you classify a Republican or a Democrat. | ||
| But it's not our decision a priori to go out there and select so many Republicans or Democrats. | ||
| That's sort of what falls out naturally from the population. | ||
| No, it's a very important political variable, right? | ||
| And that's why we make it transparent so that anyone, including you, John, or anyone who wants to, can go and read and see what our distribution is. | ||
| And when it says Republicans, Democrats, and Independents, this is self-identified by people when they take this survey at the start of the survey. | ||
| You'll ask that question, what party do you? | ||
| Yeah, it would be you or I saying that we're an independent or a Democrat or Republican. | ||
| That is the respondent saying that it's not the pollster like ourselves, like me, Cliff Young, saying I think that this person is. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Gotcha. | ||
| To the Garden State, this is Eric Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| People were wondering why they would bomb Iran. | ||
| I want people to know it brought the president no pleasure to bomb Iran. | ||
| You know, he wasn't like jumping for joy. | ||
| And you got to understand that we've been fighting with Iran for 40 years. | ||
| And if they have the nuclear button, they would not hesitate to use it. | ||
| That's Eric in New Jersey calling as an independent. | ||
| If you come back to the Ipsos survey on this, 36% of independents, 36% of all Americans, I apologize, say that they supported the recent U.S. airstrikes. | ||
| That includes 71% of Republicans, 12% of Democrats, and 34% of Independents. | ||
| Yeah, it's very partisan, right? | ||
| And once again, there's a lot of partisan queuing. | ||
| I'll support my guy, Trump, or I won't because I don't like him. | ||
| Some of the age issue is there as well. | ||
| We're not seeing it in that data, but younger Americans on average are more against more muscular interventions, as we've already stated. | ||
| But really, these numbers, we have to be very careful. | ||
| They're typically a function of partisanship, and their breaks are as such. | ||
| That said, there still is nuance. | ||
| If we were to put conditions there, should we put troops on the ground? | ||
| A vast majority of Americans would say no. | ||
| Should we provide sort of technical assistance to countries in the region? | ||
| You'd have a strong majority saying yes. | ||
| So this very simple ballot question hides many times the more nuance that's actually there, and we have to be clear about that. | ||
| Now, we didn't share that data here specifically, but definitely there is a continuum of support depending on the conditionality, the specifics of the measures. | ||
| So it sounds like you know how the numbers would likely move if you asked the question a different way. | ||
| That's what you were just saying, if it's boots on the ground, that sort of thing. | ||
| What is in recent, say the past six months or so, what is the polling question that most surprised you? | ||
| That you had an expectation of where the numbers were going to go. | ||
| You asked the question, and it didn't go in that direction. | ||
| Is there one that comes to mind? | ||
| Yeah, before I go into the specifics, I just want to say, like, it's not just how you tweak the question. | ||
| It's basically you're tweaking the policy outcomes. | ||
| And so it's legitimate to be varying the question wording because the question, because the policy outcomes can be variable. | ||
| And so we have to keep that in mind, right? | ||
| But what's been most surprising is the issue of deportation. | ||
| Immigration is extremely controversial. | ||
| And it really, in my mind, based upon all the research we've done, it's the most important political determinant in America today. | ||
| It defines whether you're Republican or not, where you stand on immigration. | ||
| So it's very important. | ||
| But Americans are very nuanced on it. | ||
| So on the one hand, you have a supermajority of Americans saying, yeah, we should deport illegal immigrants who are criminals, but don't touch children. | ||
| You only have a, you have a weak plurality in favor of it. | ||
| So the point being is, even on a controversial issue like immigration, that really defines what side of the aisle you stand, there's nuance to the policy. | ||
| Just some numbers on that front. | ||
| Percent responding saying they support mass deportation of everyone who is in the country without legal status. | ||
| That's one of the questions you asked. | ||
| Overall, 40% of Americans say they agree with that. | ||
| 72% of Republicans say they agree with that, just 14% of Democrats, and 37% of Independents. | ||
| Yeah, and that just, that's kind of a softball item. | ||
| Like it's kind of the, let's call it one of the extremes of the issue. | ||
| But if we were to draw that out, we know that because we've polled on this as well. | ||
| If we put in there criminals, illegal immigrants who are criminals, you'd have 80 plus percent of Americans agreeing with it. | ||
| If you put in sort of DACA children, put them in, link them to that, you'd only have 30% or so of Americans agreeing with it. | ||
| So again, there's nuance to the issue. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We can't say everything's polarized. | |
| There's lots of polarization out there. | ||
| But Americans are differentiating as well. | ||
| About 10 minutes left with Cliff Young this morning. | ||
| By the way, if folks want to see these polls, all available at ipsos.com. | ||
| Everything. | ||
| Everything's out there. | ||
| I-P-O-S-O-S.com. | ||
| This is Cindy in the Show Me State Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I'm a little bit nervous. | ||
| I have a question that goes back to the beginning of the segment. | ||
| He showed the survey that said, you know, Donald Trump came with a 45% average approval rating. | ||
| And I noticed on the chart it was the New York Times, Washington Post, and I don't remember the third organization. | ||
| It was Real Clear Politics, New York Times, and Silver Bulletin were the three that were shown. | ||
| We'll put it back on the screen for you. | ||
| Silver Show. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, and my question is: did you include any like Breitbart or Fox or Heritage or any of the conservative-leaning organizations when you did your polling? | |
| Because if you didn't, it looks like it's a predetermined outcome. | ||
| That's actually a great question, right? | ||
| And we actually use RealColor Politics that has a right lean. | ||
| They tend to be right-leaning. | ||
| We definitely could have included any other sort of aggregator. | ||
| By the way, they're taking all the polls out there, each of these, and they're averaging them out. | ||
| Though there's different decisions in different places about how they put it all together, Real Clear Politics is sort of a poll of polls. | ||
| It's a poll of polls. | ||
| By the way, these are all polls of polls. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| None of this we're looking at specifically is a polling firm. | ||
| We did that deliberately, actually. | ||
| We wanted to sort of get a feel for the average, not just a single poll, not an Ipsus poll or a New York Times poll for sake of argument. | ||
| So what we showed was actually the poll of polls, the average of all polls, and we use Real Color Politics as more of the right-leaning aggregator in the mix. | ||
| We definitely could have used other ones as well. | ||
| I think it's pretty good representation of where he is today. | ||
| And as we said before, Trump is in a pretty good position. | ||
| This is Cheryl in Fitzgerald, Georgia, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Yes, I would call in just in response to a previous caller who was saying that Trump hasn't done anything in his second term. | ||
| But so far he has shut down the border to illegal immigration, which is a, I think, is a really big deal. | ||
| Illegals cost this country billions of dollars every year, hundreds of billions of dollars, actually. | ||
| And it seems like ever since the 1980s, it's been all about the needs, wants, interests, and desires of the illegal immigrants. | ||
| Meanwhile, Americans struggle with needing car repairs, home repairs, and everything else. | ||
| While we watch the illegals draining hundreds of billions of tax dollars. | ||
| Also, we can't forget about how Trump stopped the war between Israel and Iran, which saved so many lives. | ||
| And that was a really big deal. | ||
| That's all I have to say. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Cliff Young. | ||
| I think she represents, the caller represents, the mosaic called America, right? | ||
| And she's very much on the hawk side of the immigration debate. | ||
| There needs to be more restriction, stronger borders, more policing. | ||
| And there are many Americans that actually agree with her. | ||
| Our estimate is that she represents maybe a third of the American population today. | ||
| You have maybe another 20% that are, let's call it, strong anti-immigration and adjacent. | ||
| They come and they go depending on the specific conditionality of the measures. | ||
| But the caller definitely represents a wide swath of America and one which gives life to Trump and his administration, where immigration is the critical issue for the base. | ||
| Billy in Pueblo, Colorado, Independent, good morning. | ||
| Just a few minutes left with Cliff Young. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| How are y'all this morning? | ||
| Doing well. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| You know, I've been sitting here listening to this for quite a few minutes. | ||
| And when I first tried to call, it was, do you agree with the strike in Iran, you know, Donald Trump strike in Iran? | ||
| Well, you know, I was a Democrat. | ||
| Now I call myself an independent because I can't agree with most of what is underhanded being done by the Democrats with the immigration and with the LGBT scene. | ||
| But I know that when I see theater, you know, and what happened in Iran, what's going on in Israel, mostly what's happened here since last summer with that assassination theatrical event, it's all theater. | ||
| And I'm not, I'm blind. | ||
| I can't even see what's going on. | ||
| I can't see your charts. | ||
| I can't really talk about the polls. | ||
| I understand. | ||
| Billy, are you saying you don't think these things actually happened? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, I'm saying I think they were put on for theater just like we're sitting in a Shakespeare play, buddy. | |
| I know they happened. | ||
| I think. | ||
| So, Cliff Young, conspiracy theories and the rise of Americans who believe in conspiracy theories. | ||
| What do you find? | ||
| Well, first, once again, a big chunk of the American population believes the system is broken. | ||
| They believe that the establishment no longer cares about the average person. | ||
| The system is rigged. | ||
| And in a context like that, conspiracy theories have a lot of fuel, right? | ||
| Now that, obviously, we have to separate conspiracy theories from legitimate sort of beliefs that the system is not working for the average person. | ||
| I think they get confused a bit and they get conflated. | ||
| But definitely at Ipsos, there's a chunk of the population, a significant, but small polarity, but significant chunk of population that believes in a whole host of different sort of conspiracy theories. | ||
| But we can't understand that outside the context of the fact that trust is low. | ||
| Institutions are not believed in anymore. | ||
| They're not trustworthy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The House has been in recess, but is now gaveling back into session. | |
| We take you there live here on C-SPAN. | ||
| Motion to suspend the rules and pass HR 1709, HR 1770, and Senate 1596. |