According to most media accounts, Donald Trump’s presidency has been something between a four-alarm dumpster fire and a constitutional train wreck. Ever since Inauguration Day, media outlets on the left have sought to confirm that narrative and create the impression that those who voted for him on Nov. 8 are beginning to turn on him or are at least having second thoughts even before his nascent presidency reaches its 100th day.
As the headline from a recent New York Times piece put it, “Trump voters in a swing district wonder when the ‘winning’ will start.” The Times reporter was able to find a couple of voters in Bensalem, Pa., impatient for Trump to overhaul health care and fix the Department of Veterans Affairs. But for the most part the Trump voters quoted in the piece remain broadly supportive of the president.
And that seems to be the case for most Trump voters. They’re giving him the benefit of the doubt. According to a Washington Post/ABC News poll released over the weekend, 96 percent of people who supported him in the election continue to do so now.
Many journalists portray just about everything that Trump does or says (or doesn’t do or say) as proof of his unfitness for office and evidence that his presidency is failing. Many don’t consider him legitimate in the first place. But most of Trump’s supporters aren’t following every errant tweet, every pseudo-scandal, or every perceived policy flip-flop.
One example: the breathless prediction that Trump’s decision not to label China a currency manipulator will cause his base to turn on him. Or as the Financial Times put it in a headline, “Trump’s foreign exchange wobbles risk backlash at home: U.S. president abandons campaign pledge to brand china a currency manipulator.”
But most Trump voters just don’t care. To the extent that it matters to them at all, they are likely to buy Trump’s reasoning that he will use the threat of labeling China a currency manipulator as leverage to pressure it to help the U.S. solve the North Korea problem. More broadly, what these voters care about is that they have good jobs, decent schools, safe streets and a leader who they can be sure has their country’s best interests at heart.
Trump voters may yet sour on him, but it will take a long time, perhaps years, if it happens at all. It’s pretty ridiculous to think that they’d turn on him just 6 percent of the way through his first term.
Daniel Allott is deputy commentary editor for the Washington Examiner
