How Trump Completely Lost Touch with the American People
Trump has completely lost touch with the American people. He is on the wrong side of the American people on issue after issue after issue.
One explanation for this can be found in an observation by Maggie Haberman of The New York Times who, along with her colleague Jonathan Swan, has written the definitive book analyzing Trump’s presidency.
Haberman told Axios that “70 percent of President Trump’s mindshare” (“maybe plus or minus 5%”) goes to his gilding, construction, renovation, renaming and tribute projects.”
In other words, Trump has a narcissistic obsession with his projects and monuments to honor himself.
A Washington Post/Ipsos poll this summer found that Americans, by 65 to 32 percent, were dissatisfied or upset with Trump’s projects.
Another explanation is in the billions of dollars Trump has made since he took office on January 20, 2025.
Trump and his agents have made nearly 28,700 securities trades from the date of his inauguration until June 30 of this year, according to Bloomberg. This substantially exceeds the combined total of 22,200 trades made during the same period by all members of Congress. And it comes on top of the $1.4 billion that Trump made from cryptocurrency in the first year of his second term.
According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll, “a majority of Americans [63 to 32 percent] believe President Donald Trump and his family have inappropriately profited from cryptocurrency since his return to power and that his policy decisions [69 to 27 percent] are influenced by his private business dealings.”
Meanwhile, the American people have been struggling with the increasing costs of gas, food, health care, and housing. A poll this summer found that 95 percent of Americans believe the U.S. is facing an affordability crisis. Nevertheless, Trump continually insults them by claiming that the affordability crisis is a hoax and fake.
In a speech to his faux midterm convention earlier this month, Trump claimed, according to Business Insider, that “food prices and almost every other item are rapidly going down,” even as consumer prices have increased by 4.3% since January 2025, with groceries up 3.4% and gasoline up 31% amid the ongoing crisis in Iran.
Trump is a Hall of Shame con man. But he cannot persuade Americans that their basic costs are not rising when they are the ones paying the bills.
Trump is also wrecking the Kennedy Center, an institution dedicated to honoring our assassinated president, John F. Kennedy. Trump has demanded that his name be added to Kennedy’s name on the building. A federal district judge correctly ruled that this would violate the federal law that named the building in honor of the assassinated President. Trump, as usual, could not care less about the law or about his disgraceful actions.
As chairman of the Kennedy Center, with a hand-picked board, Trump has ordered the Center shut for two years so that the renovations he alleges are needed can be made. But he has refused to go forward with the renovations unless HIS NAME is added to the building. Congress has already provided roughly $257 million for the renovation work. In other words, repairing the Kennedy Center has no necessary relation to putting Trump’s name on it.
This week, Trump threatened to have the Center “ripped down” if his name wasn’t placed on it. That is an astonishing attack on an institution that explicitly honors an assassinated President. It is extraordinary Trump narcissism to the nth degree. U.S. District Judge Cooper today required the Administration to give at least 30 days’ notice if it intends to demolish the Center. That will allow the courts to decide if an effort to demolish is legal.
And yet once again, Trump is out of touch with the American people. By 54 to 24 percent, or better than 2 to 1, the American people approved of removing Trump’s name from the Kennedy Center.
Then there is Trump’s war of choice against Iran. Trump says it is not a war, then he says it’s a war. He says the war is over, then he says the war goes on.
According to a poll this week by Nate Silver, Americans oppose the war in Iran by 58 to 34 percent. According to the New York Times/Siena poll this week, 64 percent of Americans think Trump’s decision to go to war with Iran was wrong.
Well then, what about data centers, which Trump strongly supports? In the New York Times/Siena poll this week, Americans oppose the centers by 61 to 34 percent.
What about health care? Trump’s tax bill for the wealthy last year did serious damage to the health care system. The Times/Siena poll found that by 60 to 36 percent, or a margin of 24 percentage points, Americans trust Democrats more than the Trump-led Republican Party on the health care issue.
And on and on it goes.
Trump is not only out of touch with the American people, but he is also out of touch with reality. He appears to be operating in an alternative universe in which he spends most of his presidential time creating projects and monuments to glorify himself.
Bad news awaits Trump. These projects and monuments are all coming down as soon as possible after he permanently leaves Washington on January 20, 2029.
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Fred’s Weekly Note appears on Thursdays in Wertheimer’s Political Report, a Democracy 21 newsletter. Read this week’s newsletter, and other recent editions, here. And subscribe for free here and receive your copy each week via email.
