Damning Fox News poll contained a 'truly startling revelation': analyst

A media analyst who closely tracks Fox News says the network just published the most damaging poll of Donald Trump's presidency.

Writing in The New Republic, columnist Greg Sargent cited the reaction of Media Matters analyst Matt Gertz, who called this week's Fox News survey "certainly the most devastating Fox News poll of this presidency" and said it "portrays a presidency in free fall."

The poll, conducted May 15-18 among 1,002 registered voters, finds Trump's overall approval underwater at 39%. His economic numbers were devastating: just 29% of voters approve of his handling of the economy, while 71% disapprove. On inflation, it's even worse — only 24% approve, down from 35% in January. Trump's economic standing has steadily eroded for months.

Trump is now underwater with working-class whites (46-54), rural voters (43-57), and white men (48-52). Among Latinos, his approval sits at just 33-67, suggesting his 2024 gains with nonwhite working-class voters have largely evaporated. Analysts have called Trump's inflation numbers the worst ever recorded for any president at this point in a term.

Even border security, once Trump's strongest issue, has tipped into net negative territory for the first time this term, with voters now split 49-51.

Sargent argued the poll, combined with fresh signs of voter fury over the economy and new GOP resistance to Trump's $1.8 billion slush fund, signaled that Republican lawmakers are no longer willing to absorb unlimited political damage on his behalf.

"It's far too optimistic to conclude that Trumpism is dying. But its principal tenets and mythologies appear to be getting badly discredited, putting the whole project in considerable jeopardy," he wrote, concluding that Trump has shrunk MAGA to its "molten core" — yet "there's a whole universe of American voters outside of it — and in a truly startling revelation, it turns out that they matter too."