For those tens of millions of Americans who regard President Trump’s bull-in-a-china-shop decade of political life as a waking nightmare, what may be hardest to fathom is that tens of millions of their fellow citizens have viewed the very same spectacle and have said, in effect, “We are fine with it.”
And so it continues. A hundred days into Mr. Trump’s tumultuous second term, 42 percent of those in a recent New York Times/Siena poll not only approve of the job he is doing as president but describe his time in the White House so far as “exciting.”
True, only 43 percent of voters in the poll view him favorably, compared to 56 percent who view him unfavorably. Mr. Trump is also faring worse in the polls than any other modern president in his first 100 days.
And yet in the midst of the second-term chaos, Mr. Trump has suffered only a modest decline from the 48 percent of voters who viewed him favorably in the final Times/Siena poll before the November election. The numbers underscore that the durability of his appeal for his base cannot be ignored any more than Mr. Trump himself.
“He’s doing so much that the Democrats can’t keep up,” said Maria Libecki, a 68-year-old sales representative who was at the president’s rally in Warren, Mich., on Tuesday night. “It’s awesome.”
Whether or not Mr. Trump succeeds in his policy aims, he is once again the dominant force in American political life. Washington insiders could once shrug off his imperviousness to the laws of political gravity as a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence, like a two-headed cow. No longer. Now that same establishment has been forced to consider the possibility that, whatever Mr. Trump’s answers may be, many Americans think he is asking some of the right questions.
spoke with close to 20 supporters of Mr. Trump from across the country, including several who had participated in the Times/Siena survey. Many of them described the start of Mr. Trump’s second term with pronounced enthusiasm, and as a noticeable improvement over his previous one.
“When he came in the first time, he had no idea how things were in Washington and he got ripped off big time,” said Barbara Hahn, a retired anesthesiologist from Camden County, Ga. “This time around, he’s much more driven and focused.”
Several approvingly cited Mr. Trump’s senior staff and cabinet secretaries as telegenic loyalists who would not thwart the president’s agenda, as a number of his first-term appointees did.
“The people he chose for his administration, they’re like the Avengers,” Ms. Libecki said. “Pam Bondi, Kash Patel, Marco Rubio, they are just awesome, every single one of them,” she added, referring to the attorney general, the F.B.I. director and the secretary of state.
Others applauded the new administration’s frenetic locomotion. “He basically stopped all the illegal immigrants from coming in about two weeks,” said Bodie Catlin, a former truck accessory dealer living in Highlands, N.C. (Illegal border crossings significantly slowed in the last year of the Biden administration, then plummeted further when Mr. Trump took office.)
Mr. Catlin added that “everyone I know thinks this way, that Trump has done more in his 100 days than Biden did in four years.”
Still, some of Mr. Trump’s supporters suggested that he might moderate his pace. “His start’s a bit disjointed, trying to do too much too soon,” said Michael Craig, a retired upholstery businessman from Woodford County, Ill.
Another Trump voter, DeWayne Keith, 41, an engineer living in eastern Alabama, expressed reservations about Mr. Trump’s plan to dismantle the Department of Education. “He should be looking for ways to improve our educational system, not tear the whole thing down,” Mr. Keith said.
Mr. Trump has succeeded in politics, his supporters suggest, because of the skills he developed in his first profession. “He’s a businessman,” said John Richmond, a 57-year-old software developer in Coweta County, Ga. “And this is a capitalist country. And so he understands the U.S. better than Biden, who never worked in the private sector.”
It is also the case that Mr. Trump spent much of his adult life tirelessly cultivating an image as America’s quintessential deal-maker, despite the multiple bankruptcies of his companies. Well before he began his candidacy in 2015 by promising to “take the brand of the United States and make it great again,” Mr. Trump had cemented his own brand nationwide, in large part through his reality show, “The Apprentice.”
Charlie Kirk, the 31-year-old conservative influencer who is close to the president, has recalled that when he was in high school in Illinois, the president was the one billionaire his fellow students could name. “Most of the heartland thought of him as American capitalism defined,” Mr. Kirk said.
Mr. Catlin, the former truck accessory dealer, falls into that group. “Everyone knows that Trump is a master negotiator and deal-maker,” he said.
The president’s reputation has in turn bought Mr. Trump time from his voters as he seeks to remake the global economy by imposing historically high tariffs on America’s closest allies, which has roiled the financial markets and intensified fears of a recession and inflation.
“I’m going to sacrifice,” said John Lowell, a 63-year-old carpenter who was at Mr. Trump’s rally on Tuesday. “Do what we have to do. I don’t buy Chinese crap anymore.”
Other supporters say they are willing to defer to the president’s judgment on the matter. “I think a lot of us who voted for Trump did so because of his business acumen,” said Douglas Williams, 56, a banker and cattle rancher in rural Missouri. “And I trust his business sense more than I trust my own. So I’m willing to ride it out for a while.”
Besides, Mr. Williams said, more than the economy was at stake. “I feel like we’ve been taken advantage of,” he said, echoing a frequent Trump talking point. “This idea of America being everybody else’s helper is something that’s bothered me for a long time.”
Numerous other supporters cited Mr. Trump’s “America first” credo as proof that the president is not merely a brash and amoral wheeler-dealer but a patriot committed to their interests. They see him as a heroic class defector, one who despite his life of comfort is brawling on their behalf — and who, after the assassination attempt last July, could plausibly be described on campaign bumper stickers as “willing to take a bullet for his country.”
The Trump iconography ridiculed by the opposition as cultish or repellent — the president’s hug of the American flag or holding up the Bible — is viewed endearingly by his supporters. Or, as Mr. Craig said, “They’re just harmless stunts, him being brash.”
“It’s not like he’s going to war saying some country has weapons of mass destruction,” Mr. Craig added.
Mr. Trump has also benefited from the halting stage manner of his 82-year-old predecessor, President Joseph R. Biden Jr. “I feel like the Biden administration was a whole lot of inactivity, like the country was on autopilot for four years,” said Emily Haraldsson, a 35-year-old tech worker in Lexington County, Ky. “It’s great to see someone actually taking action. And he’s just in better shape than Biden ever was.”
Mr. Trump has of course made a second career out of obliterating the very political conventions that Mr. Biden embraced. His supporters interviewed for this story described him admiringly as a stranger to niceties, a blunt teller of uncomfortable truths and, as part of his shtick, sometimes a liar.
“Teddy Roosevelt said to walk softly and carry a big stick,” said Mr. Craig, 63. “Well, Trump’s got the big stick, but he doesn’t believe in walking softly.”
Unsurprisingly, the voters who believe in Mr. Trump’s dedication to them are more apt to shrug off his crassness and forgive his missteps. They also do not expect him to wholly succeed in his mission to transform America.
“There’s so much corruption in both parties,” Ms. Hahn said. “I don’t think he can do it by himself. But I also don’t think anyone else could do it.”
Mr. Catlin’s wife, Diann Catlin, a 75-year-old former business etiquette teacher, said that she was at peace with Mr. Trump’s prospects for success. “I’d love for him to be 100 percent successful, but I don’t have that expectation,’’ she said. “I think he’ll do the very best he’s capable of doing. I know he cares, and I know he has a heart.”
Ms. Catlin then cited a Bible verse from the Book of Esther: “And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?”
Mr. Trump, she said, “was destined to be here in America, for such a time as this.”
Luke Broadwater and Emily Elconin contributed reporting.
