Quinnipiac poll puts Trump approval at 32% as Leavitt plans to exit

Press secretary Karoline Leavitt to step down at month’s end

A Quinnipiac University poll released in late July found President Donald Trump’s job approval rating at an all-time low of 32%, with 58% of Americans disapproving of his performance. The same poll found six in 10 Americans oppose US military action in Iran, which reportedly costs taxpayers an estimated $1 billion per day.

The findings come as commentators and political figures have publicly voiced concerns about the political implications for the GOP ahead of November’s midterm elections. Past presidents including George W. Bush in 2006 and Barack Obama in 2010 faced similarly challenging midterms, according to commentators cited in the reporting. Both elections cost the incumbent president’s party control of one or both chambers of Congress.

Gas prices are reportedly at a record high for this time of year, partly tied to the Iran conflict. Trump reportedly hid in a catering truck and secretly swapped planes after a NATO summit in Turkey because of an alleged Iranian assassination plot.

Kurt Bardella, a political commentator and former congressional aide, said: “What we’re watching right now is the complete unraveling of everything that Donald Trump, Maga and Republicans said they were about. They were against endless conflicts in the Middle East and they started a conflict in the Middle East without an exit strategy. They were supposed to be about no more spending American dollars abroad; we’re spending a billion dollars a day on this war without an end.”

Government figures cited in reporting show that buying food to eat at home has become 33% more expensive in US cities since the beginning of 2019. Trump’s sweeping tariffs have been linked to cost-of-living pressures.

Trump has also overseen construction and renovation projects in Washington, including a proposed White House ballroom and helipad, a triumphal arch, and a makeover of the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool. The board Trump appointed to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts added his name to the complex, only for a judge to order that it be removed; this week the board voted to add “Restored and Renovated by President Donald J Trump” beneath the main sign.

Charlie Sykes, a conservative author and broadcaster, said: “You’re not seeing his ability to read the room. He seems tone-deaf on issues like the cost of living, the war, and the optics of gilding everything in sight and enshittifying Washington and he doesn’t care.”

According to Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, New York Times journalists who wrote “Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump,” the president has been seen with a tube of super glue trying to stick golden decorations to the marble fireplace in the Oval Office. Haberman estimated that Trump now devotes 70% of his mental space to renovation projects and “monuments to self.”

She told Axios’s Behind the Curtain video series that she and Swan visited Trump in the Oval Office in March. “You would think that on the 17th day of the war that he would have maps of the Middle East or maps of troop deployments — who knows,” she said. “He picks up these pictures, and they’re of maple trees, and he says: ‘I am choosing maple trees for the White House. I am good at picking trees.’ I’m paraphrasing here, but that is pretty much what he said.”

Trump reportedly made an estimated $2.2 billion during the first year of his second term through cryptocurrency holdings, foreign interests, and his Truth Social business.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, the youngest person ever to serve in the role, announced this week that she will step down at the end of the month. The 28-year-old cited a desire to spend more time with her young family.

Rick Wilson, co-founder of the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group, said: “You’ve got a very different visual from this White House and that visual is, we don’t care about anything else except for the ballroom and the arch and all the throw-away ephemera that he wants to focus on. It’s a terrible political look and it’s quite dangerous for the party because they have nothing to run on right now.”

Tara Setmayer, a former Republican communications director on Capitol Hill and longtime Trump critic, said: “Donald Trump has been an egomaniac, a narcissist his entire life. Even in the private sector he has slapped his name on buildings and a multitude of failed branding businesses from Trump steaks to Trump airline to Trump University to Trump water to Trump wine. Why is anyone surprised that he would take that same type of narcissism and bring it over to his role in his second-term as president when he’s spending other people’s money to do it?”