Donald Trump is so angry about his plunging poll numbers that he is having a meltdown, calling the pollsters "criminals" and stating they should be investigated. What caused Trump to melt down? It's hard to say because he always seems to be in a state of melting down. In this instance, the poll numbers indicate that roughly half of Americans are awakening to the reality that we put a "terrible" president in charge of the country. If the populace has decided the president's performance is terrible, maybe the cause of his angst is . . . Trump himself. We doubt that idea has occurred to Trump because he is known to never take responsibility for anything that goes wrong, which is quite a lot according to the poll. Still, we need to know why our president is angry and just how angry he has become. For an examination of those issues, we turn to a jointly published article at Rolling Stone and Yahoo! News under the headline "Trump Melts Down Over Plummeting Popularity, Says Pollsters Are ‘Criminals’" -- where Nikki McCann Ramirez writes:
President Donald Trump is fuming after a series of recent polls have found that his favorability rating among Americans has continued to drop — in some cases into the thirties.
In a wild rant, the president even wrote on Truth Social that certain pollsters are “criminals” and “should be investigated for ELECTION FRAUD.”
“They are Negative Criminals who apologize to their subscribers and readers after I WIN ELECTIONS BIG, much bigger than their polls showed I would win, loose a lot of credibility, and then go on cheating and lying for the next cycle, only worse,” Trump wrote. “They suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome, and there is nothing that anyone, or anything, can do about it. THEY ARE SICK, almost only write negative stories about me no matter how well I am doing (99.9% at the Border, BEST NUMBER EVER!), AND ARE TRULY THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!”
Trump seems particularly aggrieved by his poor numbers on handling of the economy, and that seems to be a major sticking point with poll respondents, many of whom voted for Trump because they thought he would be good for the economy. Now, it appears, that has not turned out to be the case. Ramirez reports:
Trump griped last week on Truth Social about a Fox News poll showing his handling of the economy, which he has thrown into chaos with his unhinged tariff regime, isn’t very popular. Polls released by Reuters and Gallup yielded similar results.
“Rupert Murdoch has told me for years that he is going to get rid of his FoxNews, Trump Hating, Fake Pollster, but he has never done so,” he wrote on Thursday. “This ‘pollster’ has gotten me, and MAGA, wrong for years. Also, and while he’s at it, he should start making changes at the China Loving Wall Street Journal. It sucks!!!”
By Monday morning, the president was livid, adding on Truth Social that these were “FAKE POLLS FROM FAKE NEWS ORGANIZATIONS,” and that the results being produced by pollsters were “unheard of numbers unless looking for a negative result, which they are.”
“We don’t have a Free and Fair “Press” in this Country anymore. We have a Press that writes BAD STORIES, and CHEATS, BIG, ON POLLS. IT IS COMPROMISED AND CORRUPT. SAD!” Trump wrote in a separate post.
No matter how much Trump gripes, the numbers on the economy are not good. A Gallup poll taken Feb. 3-16, 2025, shows 42 percent of respondents approve of his job performance on the economy, while 54 percent disapprove.
As for Trump's call for punishing pollsters, that probably is not idle talk. He has a history, Ramirez notes, of taking such actions:
The president’s desire to punish pollsters is not theoretical. In December, Trump sued the Des Moines Register and famed Iowa pollster J. Ann Selzer over the publication of a poll that incorrectly predicted a victory for Kamala Harris in the state shortly before the 2024 election. Trump has also leveled frivolous lawsuits against several prominent media companies, often pressing for settlements that benefit his companies and trusts.
Trump's lawsuit in Iowa has been moved to federal court, so an outcome might not be known for months, maybe years. Ramirez concludes:
Despite the threats, it’s clear Americans increasingly think the country is headed in the wrong direction under Trump, and no amount of Truth Social posts can mask the decline in approval.