As President Donald Trump prepares to deliver his second Address to a Joint Session of Congress on Tuesday night, he faces a barrage of warning signs from all sides. Public polls show declining approval, congressional town halls are boiling over with frustration, nationwide protests continue to mount, and economic reports paint a troubling picture. Internationally, his Oval Office attack on President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has sparked a global wave of support for Ukraine. At home, federal judges have repeatedly struck down his executive orders as unlawful, unconstitutional, and overreaching. Meanwhile, Elon Musk and his widely unpopular “Department of Government Efficiency” are adding to the administration’s troubles, and deepening fractures within Trump’s own party threaten to undermine his agenda.
Trump is also facing a high bar — one he himself set: nearly 48 million people watched his first Address to a Joint Session of Congress eight years ago.
Apparently aware of the stakes, Trump on Monday, in an all-caps post declared, “Tomorrow night will be big. I will tell it like it is!” And appearing to want to tamp down the viral videos of town halls across the nation being inundated with — often Republican — voters blasting their Republican members of Congress, Trump wrote: “Paid ‘troublemakers’ are attending Republican Town Hall Meetings. It is all part of the game for the Democrats, but just like our big LANDSLIDE ELECTION, it’s not going to work for them!”
(There was no “landslide election” — Trump won by a mere 1.5 percentage points, in one of the smallest popular vote margins in modern history. According to numbers from The American Presidency Project, Trump’s “mandate” ranks 32nd out of 51 elections.)
ECONOMY
Signs are pointing to an imminent recession — something President Joe Biden never had.
“The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s running forecast for first-quarter gross domestic product slid again on Monday,” Barron’s reported. “The Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow estimate now calls for a first-quarter GDP decline of 2.8%, down from a decline of 1.5% on Friday. As recently as Feb. 19, GDPNow predicted growth of 2.3%.”
On March 3, the #GDPNow model nowcast of real GDP growth in Q1 2025 is -2.8%: https://t.co/T7FoDdgYos. #ATLFedResearch
Download our EconomyNow app or go to our website for the latest GDPNow nowcast: https://t.co/NOSwMl7Jms. pic.twitter.com/FdSehrEcSg
— Atlanta Fed (@AtlantaFed) March 3, 2025
That means that there economy under President Trump is expected to contract. Earlier Monday, citing a contraction, Barron’s also reported that “it boils down to expectations that President Donald Trump’s plans to introduce tariffs will push imports way down, and the difference between exports and imports is a key part of the GDP calculator.”
President Trump campaigned on lowering the cost of “groceries” — a word he very proudly used repeatedly — on his first day. That has not come to pass, and Americans are angry about it.
Reporting that Trump’s approval rating is already falling and could “collapse” over inflation, New York magazine’s “Intelligencer” notes that “by far Trump’s greatest vulnerability is over his management of an economy where renewed signs of inflation are evident, and where his policies, once implemented, could make conditions worse.”
The Intelligencer’s Ed Kilgore writes that a Reuters-Ipsos poll “found that only 32 percent of respondents gave Trump a positive assessment on his handling of inflation. A mid-February Gallup survey found 54 percent of Americans disapproving Trump’s handling of the economy and 53 percent disapproving his handling of foreign trade. A February 24 American Research Group poll found 38 percent of registered voters approved of Trump’s handling of the economy and 57 percent disapprove, with this more specific data point: ‘Unprompted, voters disapproving of Trump’s handling of the economy complain that Trump has not reduced grocery, gasoline, and/or energy prices as he promised during the campaign.’”
On Monday, the financial markets reacted to Trump’s affirmation that his announced tariffs on Canada and Mexico will go into effect at midnight, tariffs that are being described as “one of the most self destructive economic policy steps in recent history.” The DOW plummeted nearly 700 points (1.58%), after dropping over 800 points in the hours before trading ended. The tech-heavy NASDAQ did even worse, dropping almost 500 points, or, 2.61%. CNBC reported the S&P posted its “biggest loss since December,” after Trump’s tariffs message.
APPROVAL RATING
A CBS News/YouGov poll that dropped on Sunday was also damning.
56% said things are going “badly” under Trump.
The issues that voters think Trump is focusing on the most (the border, tariffs, and the federal workforce/DOGE) are dramatically different from those they want him to focus on (the economy, inflation, government spending.)
Worse, the majority of respondents believe Trump’s policies are “making the price you pay for food go up.”
They are likely correct.
Trump’s tariffs are widely expected to dramatically increase to price of food. But instead of acknowledging that fact, Trump Monday afternoon gleefully declared, “To the Great Farmers of the United States: Get ready to start making a lot of agricultural product to be sold INSIDE of the United States. Tariffs will go on external product on April 2nd. Have fun!”
According to the USDA in January, “Imports play an increasingly important role in ensuring that fresh fruit and vegetables are available year-round in the United States.” Through 2023, “the percent of U.S. fresh fruit and vegetable availability supplied by imports grew from 50 percent to 59 percent for fresh fruit and from 20 percent to 35 percent for fresh vegetables.”
On another topic, the CBS/YouGov poll found that the vast majority of Americans (78%) want the U.S. to stay in NATO — something Trump has suggested he opposes. Elon Musk has stated outright he thinks the U.S. should pull out of NATO, and the United Nations.
“Senior White House adviser Elon Musk said on Saturday that he believes the United States should leave the United Nations and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization—two of the world’s most important intergovernmental bodies,” The Daily Beast reported.
DEMOCRATS
One other warning sign: President Trump may face is a decidedly less-packed house.
Some, including The Nation‘s Elie Mystal, are calling for Democrats to boycott Trump’s address.
Several Democrats have already announced they are. U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) says he will host a town hall instead of attending.
So has U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT), who told CNN Trump’s address will be a “farce” during which he will “spew a series of lies.”
“We have to fight every single day. Every single day,” Murphy declared. Republicans flood the zone, Democrats have to flood the zone. They flood the zone with lies, we flood the zone with truth.”
Watch the video below or at this link.
I went on @CNNSOTU this morning to explain my theory of the fight for our democracy.
When Trump floods the zone, Democrats flood the zone. We don’t quietly reserve power to be used at a future right moment. We fight the billionaire takeover of our government every day. pic.twitter.com/4pwkUq6xhC
— Chris Murphy 🟧 (@ChrisMurphyCT) March 2, 2025
Image: Trump 2020 State of the Union address/via Wikimedia Commons