The Jeffrey Epstein issue has been a 'festering sore for US President Donald Trump, says Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Centre for Politics. Photo / Nathan Howard, Getty Images via AFP
United States President Donald Trump is substantially less popular than when he came to office just over a year ago. And what’s more, he knows it.
His favourability ratings have cratered in the last year, and it is the vote-winning issues that are starting to drag him down in the polls.
His popularity peaked on January 21, 2025, the day after his inauguration, then tipped in net disapproval by mid-March and remained underwater thereafter.
All presidents see their supporter base naturally eroded over the term. Trump’s position is in no way disastrous.
Nevertheless, Trump made promises on the campaign trail in 2024 that did not see even fleeting contact with reality, and he has made missteps on important policy issues.
James Johnson, the co-founder of pollster JLP Partners, believes the tipping point for the US President came in November, when the anniversary of the election crystallised the issue for voters. Campaign hyperbole didn’t live up to the hype.
Trump’s net favorability rating hit -15% in mid-November: its lowest number to date, although it has been careening in that direction since the start of this year.
Many, including Johnson, believe Trump’s fundamental appeal came from the perception of his strength.
But that image has been undercut by dozens of flip-flops on issues like tariffs. And strength is a double-edged sword when it leads to things like the unpopular, heavy-handed immigration enforcement in cities like Los Angeles and Minneapolis.
Trump, a former reality TV star, is more attuned to the currents of public opinion than many in his Administration and has shifted his position several times in an attempt to blunt his tumbling poll ratings.
Amid spiking concerns about inflation, he delivered an address from the Oval Office in a primetime address in December, stumbling over his words in an uncharacteristically wooden speech.
He has also softened his mass deportation programme, undercutting the hardliners pushing for aggressive tactics and withdrawing agents from Minneapolis.
Trump is secure in the White House for the next three years, and is sitting on an election victory, returning to power with all seven swing states.
The 2025 Midterms will be an important referendum on his presidency, and if the Republicans lose control of Congress, it will dramatically check his ability to enact his agenda.
We take a look at the issues causing Trump’s popularity slump, many of which were key areas of his 2024 campaign, and why they are slowly eroding his once-enviable voter base.
While issues like the economy and immigration are consistently tracked by pollsters, some believe it is the more specific issues, like the Epstein files, that have been more damaging for Trump’s popularity.
Christopher Galdieri, a politics professor at Saint Anselm College, believes that the perception of Trump as a strong president was fatally undercut when he was forced into an embarrassing volte face over the files in December.
At first, Trump tried to block the publication of the documents, aligning himself with the elites despised by his own Maga base, Galdieri said.
But in the face of a Republican rebellion, led by former allies like then-Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, and with Congress poised to force the release of all documents, Trump changed his stance.
He eventually signed legislation demanding their release. Trump’s concession showed him up as a “lame duck”, Galdieri claimed.
In the three million documents released by the US Justice Department in January, Trump and topics related to him are mentioned more than 38,000 times.
References to the US President range from contact logs to previously undisclosed and unverified sexual assault allegations.
The department said the allegations contained in the files were false and emphasised that Trump is not accused of any crimes.
Trump has consistently denied any wrongdoing in relation to Epstein, and said he cut ties with the paedophile before his conviction for soliciting prostitution from a minor in 2008.
However, Trump’s prominence within the files has renewed scrutiny of his past relationship with Epstein and complicated efforts to move past the issue politically.
It also appears to have dented public confidence.
A February poll by Economist/YouGov found that half of Americans believe Trump is trying to cover up Epstein’s crimes, while a similar share believes he was personally involved.
Independent voters are particularly sceptical of the President’s links to Epstein, suggesting the issue could have electoral consequences even if Trump retains strong support among core Republican voters.
The issue has been a “festering sore” for Trump, says Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Centre for Politics.
“Trump wants it to go away but it will not, partly because of the failure of his Justice Department to promptly release the information they possess,” he said.
“Rising prices are the most serious problem Trump faces domestically, but the Epstein files matter because this issue is costing him support in his own base.”
Signs of unease over the crisis have also emerged within the Republican Party.
And it’s not just Trump who’s under pressure.
Howard Lutnick, Trump’s Commerce Secretary, was revealed to have taken a trip to Little St James, where much of Epstein’s abuse of young girls took place.
Lutnick said he made the trip alongside his family and only ate lunch on the island, insisting that the only women he saw were Epstein’s staff.
Elon Musk, the former head of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), also appears in the files, apparently arranging a trip to the island over email. Musk insists he never visited the island.
Outside traditional political circles, influential media figures have only amplified criticism against the White House.
Joe Rogan, a prominent podcaster who endorsed Trump in 2024, rejected Trump’s repeated claims that the documents are a “hoax”.
“None of this is good for this administration. It looks f****** terrible,” Rogan said on Friday.
Recent polling data suggests that the Epstein files alone have not led to a complete collapse of Trump’s popularity, despite growing Republican dissent and sustained media attention.
But the issue has complicated his standing with swing voters and reinforced doubts about transparency and accountability that could matter in future elections.
Trump held a huge advantage over former Vice-President Kamala Harris, the former border tsar who bore the brunt of the blame for President Joe Biden’s disastrous migrant policy, when it came to immigration in the 2024 election.
After taking office, he hit the ground running, issuing an executive order to close the US border with Mexico on day one.
As illegal crossings slowed to a trickle, reaching their lowest level in decades, his immigration ratings shot up, peaking on March 5, 2025.
But this was followed by a gradual drop-off from June 7 to July 20, sliding from 4.6% to, what at that point was the nadir of Trump’s second term, -7.8%.
The aggressive tactics of immigration officers, overseen by “commander-in-chief” Gregory Bovino, were shocking to much of the US public.
“I think Trump is running into the reality that while many Americans dislike the idea of illegal immigration and want a tighter border, they also don’t like these sorts of large-scale paramilitary operations,” Galdieri said.
It was also in June that Trump’s immigration numbers fell off a cliff. While immigration has consistently been his best-ranked policy area, polling remains underwater.
This was followed by a gradual downward drop between January 13 and January 26 from -7.9% to -12.4%, amid unrest in Minneapolis, where two protesters, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, were killed by border patrol agents.
The Trump Administration initially dug in, painting both demonstrators as domestic terrorists, and irked Second Amendment supporters when they blamed Pretti for legally carrying a gun.
Mike Madrid, a Republican strategist, sees the violence in Minneapolis as a watershed moment that Trump will struggle to recover from.
“They were pivotal,” he said. “That was when public opinion changed.”
As the situation worsened, Trump took concise action, stemming the bleeding from his poll numbers.
Bovino was sacked and Tom Homan, the border tsar, dispatched in his place, reporting directly to the President. Trump even admitted his Administration could use a “softer touch”.
“Trump knew that he could not have that as an open sore at the Midterms,” Johnson believes.
That strategy appears to have worked, and there has been a modest recovery in Trump’s handling of immigration since late January.
His polling is still some 20 points shy of where it was this time in 2025.
Trump came to office promising to “end inflation” and put a stake through the heart of an issue that had bedevilled Biden.
It’s questionable how many people ever believed that was going to happen. From the start, Trump was barely keeping his head above the water: his best rating, just over a week after his inauguration, was 0.7%.
Although inflation was considerably lower than its peak during the Biden years in 2022, disaffection seems to have set in as it stayed stubbornly around the 2.7% mark.
Polling shows a long, gradual decline in opinion on Trump’s handling of inflation between June 5 and October 4, from -17.1% to -32.8%.
During those months, inflation started to gather pace again, rising to 2.9% in August and then 3% in September.
In November, Trump’s ratings collapsed again, spiralling rapidly from -27.5% on November 23 to -35.4%.
Johnson puts it down to the anniversary of the presidential election.
“I wouldn’t put it down to any one particular event in November, but I think instead, it was a sort of slow realisation among voters prompted by the one-year anniversary of the election,” he said.
“They looked back a year and said, ‘Do I economically feel any better off?’ And actually, for most of them the answer is no.”
Other polls from the same month recorded the White House was doing more harm than good on the economy, with a majority saying the cost of groceries, utilities, healthcare and housing had increased under Trump.
Ironically, although prices continued to climb, inflation actually decreased in November and came in below expectations.
What would have been a welcome piece of economic news didn’t emerge until mid-December as a result of the government shutdown, which became the longest in history.
The same month, voters delivered what many saw as a stinging rebuke to the President by electing a swathe of Democrats across the country, including the Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani in New York, in elections fought mainly on affordability.
Alarm bells are ringing ahead of the Midterms. But Trump repeatedly insists there is “no inflation”. At best, voters know the President is wrong, and at worst, it smacks of triumphalism.
“People know what they’re spending on gas, on groceries, and on other household goods, and it’s very hard to convince them things are improving on that front when their bank accounts say otherwise,” Galdieri said.
“And the messaging from the White House has been particularly bad on this front. They’re not engaging in spin or asking voters for patience.
“They’re generally just saying prices are down and inflation is down and that makes them look inept, at best.”
Danielle Vinson, a politics professor at Furman University, believes high energy costs in particular have driven away independent voters in the South who would otherwise have “taken longer to turn against him”.
There were signs of uncharacteristic panic in the White House in December when Trump disrupted the airing of an episode of reality series Survivor to deliver a speech on affordability concerns.
Since then, he has reverted to type, and Reuters counts that he has claimed at least 20 times in speeches since December that inflation had been beaten.
Madrid is highly critical of what he calls the “don’t believe your lying eyes” strategy.
“The problem is, he’s not able to pivot because he’s not able to acknowledge that he’s wrong,” he said.
Trump’s poll ratings on the economy have consistently outranked his handling of inflation, but his numbers saw a sustained, gradual drop between February 1, 2025, and May 2, 2025, from 8.2% to -14.4%.
After weeks of economic sabre-rattling, February was also when Trump launched a trade war against Canada and Mexico.
Then, in early April, he launched his “liberation day” tariffs on virtually every US trading partner.
Even the Heard and McDonald Islands, which have plenty of penguins but not a single human inhabitant, were not spared by the President.
“On liberation day, you could literally see the polling numbers start to drop when we began announcing tariffs,” Madrid said.
Others believe the real damage was done not by “liberation day” itself, but by Trump’s haphazard tariffs policy that followed. He delayed the imposition of levies by 90 days and cut rates to 10% following a fierce economic and political backlash.
A Financial Times columnist, noting Trump’s limited threshold for economic pain, coined a nickname that would stick, much to the President’s displeasure: “Taco”, or “Trump always chickens out”. By July, Forbes had counted 28 flip-flops on the policy.
Voters in focus groups were questioning what had happened to “the strong Trump that we know, that sticks by his guns”, he said.
Many believe the saga damaged perceptions of the President, whose economic stewardship had been strongly favoured over his Democratic opponent in the 2024 election.
“Changing directions on tariffs once or twice can pass for negotiating strategy,” said Vinson.
“But at this point, it just looks impulsive and petty. People and businesses would like certainty and predictability.”
March was also the month when Trump pointedly failed to rule out a recession when asked by a Fox News interviewer, and began launching sustained attacks on Jerome Powell, the chairman of the Federal Reserve.
In December, as the President rated his economy an “A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus”, reports surfaced that 2025 had been the weakest year for job creation since the pandemic.
To combat what was regarded as a dangerous vulnerability ahead of the Midterms, the President has returned to the campaign trail, travelling to Pennsylvania, Michigan and Iowa to tout his work on the economy.
Days after his trip to Pennsylvania, there was a sudden polling drop between December 16 and December 21 from -15.4% to -21.7%.
His ratings have partially recovered since then, but at this point have been unfavourable for more than a year.
Madrid sees Trump’s economic policy as an example of the “over-reach” that has isolated voters on his return to the White House.
“He’s upside-down – way upside-down – on the economy. The tariffs were always his most unpopular policy position,” he said.
“This is really not about those issues that matter in the minds of most Americans anymore. It’s simply this over-reach. It’s this government that has gotten out of control.”
Sign up to Herald Premium Editor’s Picks, delivered straight to your inbox every Friday. Editor-in-Chief Murray Kirkness picks the week’s best features, interviews and investigations. Sign up for Herald Premium here.