NEW POLLS: Trump’s Iran War is Deeply Unpopular

0:00Hey, everybody. Tim Miller from the Bollard here with Publisher Sarah Longwell. We have a whole slate of polling coming in already on Iran. And Sarah, I think I just want to caveat this. I've been hesitant to just be overreactive to polling and stuff in this times in part because, you know, Trump has over performed his polling a lot to times and, you know, this stuff's all moving and, and, you know, it's happened very fast. But I think we see enough of a direction here that we can, we can talk pretty intelligently about how the public is reacting to this. So I sort of pop in with a couple things right off then we'll get your top line thoughts. Prior to the strikes at times that asked people if they were interested in initially, the US initiating an attack on Iran, only 21% had said yes. Now here we are post strike. And CNN poll just go over that one first is most recent. We had 41% of adults saying that they approved. So Trump picked up about 20% of his cultists, 59% disapprove.

1:03The independence number, I think, is the most telling 32 approved, 68 disapprove among independents. We have a couple other polls to get to. But what are your top line takeaways? Top line takeaways are that those numbers map pretty closely. Trump's approval rating. And so, you know, with Trump is going to wage a war entirely by himself. Then one of the things you're going to see reflected in the numbers is basically do people trust Donald Trump. And so when you've got about 60% of the country that has a negative impression of the job that Donald Trump is doing. And specifically when a bunch of those people who voted for Trump because they wanted him to lower prices, basically everything he does that is not directed at lowering prices for people, that is where you're going to see people being like, I didn't want you to do that. The other thing or just observation I want to make is that part of the reason that Trump is going to see people be negative about this is because Trump has been teaching people to have a negative view on foreign interventionism.

2:03Donald Trump, JD Vance, Tulsi Gabbard, the vast majority of mega influencers online. They have been out there saying now for years, but especially going into this election that foreign adventurism is very much specifically not on the Trump agenda. And so there's a lot of people who voted for Trump. It's not like the dominant thing, but it was part of the campaign where they're saying, look, we're not going to do these stupid wars. We're not going to get involved in these places. We're America first. And America first isn't a slogan. It's a statement of prioritization. We're going to focus on our veterans here at home. We're going to focus on lowering your prices. We're going to focus on eggs. Whatever it is. And the fact that they're not doing that, I think, is going to meet with disapproval, especially from the people who were on the fence, but tip to Trump. They're kind of the last in first out proving of Trump, and they don't approve of this war. Yeah, and I, look, ideally in politics, what you're trying to do. Well, what you're trying to do is advance your ideology and improve people's lives, but looking at just at the campaign politics side of

3:07things, what are you trying to do? You're trying to unite your side, motivate your side, and divide the other side, right? That's why it's called a wedge issue. You create a wedge with the other side. Going to the Washington Post poll here, which maps closely to the CNN poll, it has 39% overall support for the air strike, 52% opposed. Among Democrats, nine support, 87 opposed. Among Republicans, 81 support, 12 opposed, among independents, again, 28 support, 59 opposed. So independence overwhelmingly against this. And, you know, to me, I don't know really that there's anything that could happen at this point, that would rally Democrats to Trump's side on this. And so the risk, when we get into some of the details of this risk, what did you laid out is him doing the opposite of what you're supposed to do, wedging his own side. He's fracturing, fracturing his own side, and unifying the opposition. And I think that's true. Obviously, Democrats are also independents. I think sometimes that there's a mistaken view of independence, like what they're, a lot of independents are people that don't don't pay that close attention and are instinctually against foreign wars, you know, and have

4:12kind of more left views and form wars or right views and other cultural issues. And so it's not surprising that the independent number is so bad. Yeah, it's not surprising to me at all. I also think when you say, you know, wedge and danger and where could the danger be, I think it's pretty clear that right now, right, people are kind of retreating into their camps on Trump. But there's, we're in this weird moment, like these are flash poles taken within a few days of this happening. So people are just orienting themselves. And so they're basically reacting to their theory, the theory of us bombing Iran. Well, so far, what have we had? We've had the point at which we clearly didn't obliterate their nuclear program, but we bombed Iran. And it was kind of like, it happened. And then everybody was able to walk away. We grabbed Maduro. It was a big news story for a little bit. And then as far as the American public is concerned, they're like, okay, no harm, no foul. Like I haven't seen anything horrible happening, you know, the media kind of walked away from that story. And so I think the question is, is like, what will happen when more Americans die?

5:17What will happen when our embassies, it becomes clear that embassies abroad are getting bombed? What happens when Trump says four or five weeks, which by the way, not dissimilar from the way that the Bush folks talked about Iraq in early days, right? This is going to be a short campaign. Yeah, we might need boots on the ground. Like it sounds strikingly similar at the moment. And I will tell you, once you start getting into something that is more intractable, then I think you really run the risk of starting to see people who are just rushing to Trump's defense right now, the rally round Trump effect, those people can bleed out. Yeah. And that risk, see, mentioned Bush in the Iraq war, I'm not going to use your term about the line that Trump might need to get to in order to really suffer political consequences. But it's an approval rating similar to what George W. Bush is approval rating was after the Iraq war. And you look at how that could, how this could lead us there. And you know, as you mentioned, or as I mentioned, the, you know, before the war started only 21% of Americans, like that is his floor, right?

6:18So depending on how things turn out, you could see, you know, things start to creep back down to this floor. I just couple of the sub questions in these polls, I think, tease us out a little bit more in the Washington Post. Do you think the US should continue military strikes against Iran or stop? Only 25% say continue, right? So that was 40% said that they supported it. But, you know, a decent percentage of that, like not quite half or like, okay, I supported it, but the I told it's gone. Let's stop now, right? So not like a huge well of support for the broader mission there. Similarly, if you go to that CNN poll, I thought this was interesting. This military action will make Iran either more of a threat or less of a threat to the US. Only 28% said less of a threat. And that was 48. And in that same poll, 41% approved of it. So there's a group of people who like approved of it, whatever, because either approve of anything Trump does, or because they're anti-Iatola, but they don't see this as a critical US, you know, safety

7:19issue that is being addressed. And so, you know, right there, like those two groups, the ones that approve of it, but don't think this is made a safer or approve of it and not want to quit. Those are mostly Republican voters. And Trump has a very tenuous hold on their support for this mission, at least. Yeah, and you know what it reminds me of. So, first of all, I would say we could start calling it the W line. And maybe that would make you happier than the bush line. Okay, if we just started doing the W line, then we know what we're talking about. But I, I do a hand signal. We could do a hand signal then for the W line. That wouldn't have anything, anything gross attached to it. You know, if I bet if I called it the penis line, you would like it. I wouldn't get mad about it. Yeah, that would be funny. Bohr takes a sponsored by ZockDock. Finding a doctor you actually like feels like discovering a diamond in the rough. You want someone in network nearby with open time slots, but that's just the start. You also deserve someone who

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9:24Z-O-C-D-O-C dot com slash Boer Takes. Thanks to ZockDock for sponsoring this message. The extent to which it's interesting that you're talking about this floor of 20% because that I think is the like actual appetite of people who are saying, whatever the circumstances, yes, we should be bombing Iran. That's a pretty small percentage of Americans that really want to do this. I think it has a lot to do with what happens next and what's crazy is it reminds me of tariffs, actually, where Trump offered a lot of different reasons why tariffs. His casemaking was, we're going to pay off the national debt. We're going to resure manufacturing. We're going to give money to everybody. It's going to boost the economy. People who were trying to defend Trump, who were flexively defend Trump on tariffs, they didn't all have the same reason. They were all kind of had different reasons. This is like this. We're Trump not having a coherent case to make,

10:30actually makes it harder for his supporters to reflect a case back. They end up with what are we doing here? Why is this? They can say, well, we trust Trump for right now, but if Trump can't offer and make a serious case, if he can't make it clear to them why they should be arguing, that's when that stuff starts to crack because there's not like a one argument about what we need to be doing there that's in America's interests. We have some data on this front. I have a semantic data. I was just on with Peer's Morgan. We did the Peer's Morgan shit show. If he booked three mega folks, three Trump voters, and one of them was unapologetic and whatever possible to end the Iranian regime. One of them, Jack Pasobics, when a long-time Trump supporter was really waffling on this and hedging. Then one of them was like an America first guy,

11:31the Dave Smith, that was basically like, this is crazy. It's going to ruin Trump's presidency. On the other two side, the two of us that were Biden, Harris voters, we were very much thinking from the same him book. That's just a little encapsulation. Here's some data from the voters that encapsulate your point about how they don't have a clear unified message. Washington Post asked, what do you think the Trump administration's main goal is in Iran? This is crazy. No answer gets about 14%. The top answer was show power, take control of 14%. Number two answer, unsure of goals, 13%. Change Iranian regime, 12%, help Iranians, or stabilize the region, 12%. Stopping nuclear program, nine. I think it's money or oil, nine percent, distract from Epstein, eight percent, protecting the US, seven percent. By the way, so there you go. Only seven percent of the people thought we did this because it's in our national security interests and we need to protect ourselves. That tells you all you need to know. Nobody knows what they're doing. This is where you see that the one thing that Trump and the people who

12:38love to carry his messages like Scott Jennings are putting out there is actually Iran's been waging a 47 year war against the United States and we're putting an end to it. And like, okay, like let's weaken laugh about that. That's worth laughing at. But also, if that's your case, then maybe both Trump and everyone in his cabinet shouldn't have all run saying specifically we wouldn't go to war with Iran, specifically that other presidents who've gotten into things with Iran. It's just because they were dumb. It was not like they were making the case at any point. If it's been a 47 year problem, what was different two years ago or 18 months ago, right? It doesn't make sense. Or the first term. Why didn't you deal with this in the first term? You've been president before. That's right. That's right. So I think that part of Trump's problem is that until Trump can offer a coherent narrative, his supporters who want to just like be on his side can't offer a coherent narrative. That's one point. Then the second point, which is

13:38what I started with, which is Trump and Maga and America first has literally been agitating against this. And so they taught a lot of voters to be specifically against it. They shouldn't be surprised now that when they go and do it, a bunch of Americans are like, yeah, no, I'm not on board with this. You told me the exact opposite is how you were going to run this country. And like people, there's, there's cliche and political consultants like people don't really vote on foreign policy. Most Americans don't know a lot about the various countries and the players couldn't tell you about the shea versus the Suni and they don't vote on foreign policy. That's true, but it's just their exceptions to it. And there've been exceptions and their exceptions at the Cold War with HW Bush and Reagan and the Democrats really harm themselves back then, then HW Sun W but really cost himself in the O6 midterm, for example, with what was happening in Iraq. And then you know who gained voters talking about foreign policy, Trump in 2016. I know

14:39Obama in the late first, I should have mentioned with that going into Iraq war is probably what allowed him to eat Hillary that it be in 2016. And one of my canary in the coal mine conversations because I just, I was in a bubble and I was young and whatever. And I didn't understand what's happening with Trump in 2015. I remember talking to one of my uncles who was kind of surprised me that he was for Trump very early in the primary. And I was like, why? And he said, the wars, the wars were stupid, Bush did the wars are stupid, all the other guys are for the wars. And I'm going to be for Trump. And so I think that like, while yeah, Trump's in a cult, and you see this in the focus, so I want to ask you about this, Trump's in a cult and some people will go along with with whatever he does. This might be one area like where there's some core Trump voters are like, no, actually like this was literally the reason why I was for Trump was I didn't want to do these stupid wars. And obviously event, depending, I do think it could be the one thing that really actually gets them down below that the where he's been in 80, 90% support with Republicans. So, so there's two points on this I want to make. And you know how much if,

15:42as soon as I make one point, I'm going to forget my second one. But, but my first one is about the second one is right now. So we can remember to your question. Yes. The second one, see, I've already forgotten it. Let me just do the first one first, which is accumulation. Oh no, the second one is on the economy. Bring me back to the economy. So the first one is on accumulation, which when you take Epstein, which Trump specifically campaigned on the idea that he's going to be a transparent president, right? We're going to put all this stuff out there. All the people who were going out there talking about Epstein, we're going to release these files. We're going to tell everybody everything. We're going to be transparent. Part of the reason that his own voters are frustrated with him on the Epstein files is because it goes to the heart of a promise that he made them. This is similar, right? And so once you had the Epstein files and then when Trump made a promise, no more foreign entanglements, JD Vance ran on this, Trump's not going to get in support specifically on Iran. In fact, like, oh no, we're going to be great negotiators. Again, goes to the heart of a promise he made to his people. So that's reason danger with his base on the flip side. And I try to,

16:44I keep trying to hammer this home because it's really important. It doesn't matter so much whether or not people care about foreign policy. What they care about is the economy here in the United States. They carry about affordability here in the United States. That's why Donald Trump was hired. And so they're frustration. And this is what I hear in the focus groups all the time. Their frustration with the economy means that they are not tolerant of anything that he does that doesn't directly translate into a better economy for them. And so Trump, they see it as a distraction. This is why one of the things that's all over the polls, it's all over the focus groups. Trump is not focusing on the things that I want him to be focused on. They see like him shooting Americans in the streets in the overzealous enforcement. Even if they wanted him to secure the border, the number one thing he got it elected to do was to lower prices. And so everything he does that is not that frustrates people for whom that was the central promise. All right, polling numbers aren't good early. But I think the big story, the headline for me is like a lot of danger warning signs and some softness among supporters who really have stuck with

17:49them for 10 years now. So we'll keep monitoring that. That's Sarah Longwell. Go subscribe to the focus group podcast if you have it. Me and Sarah are in Austin together. Also March 19th, we still got some tickets. Come join us there at theborg.com slash events. Subscribe to this feed, comment, tell us what we got right or wrong. We'll see you guys later.