Commentary by Stephen Macaulay
Let’s get something straight.
And it is really quite simple.
According to Nate Silver’s Silver Bulletin as of September 25, 2026: “Donald Trump has yet again hit an all-time approval rating low. As of today, his net approval is sitting at -22.4. This far into his first term, Trump was all the way up at -11.6, while Joe Biden was at net -9.6 at the same point in his presidency.”
Silver’s number is an aggregation of several polls that adjusts things based on “its pollster rating, its sample size, its recency, and how often a pollster is publishing numbers.”
So this isn’t like Trump citing some singularly obscure polls that say he’s more popular than ever.
He isn’t.
Breaking it down, Silver Bulletin has it that he’s down 13% on immigration, down 28.3% on trade, down 32.1% on the economy, and down 46.4% on inflation.
Weren’t these the items that he claimed he would make better before he was elected?
Last week Trump banned Politico, CNN and MS NOW from the White House because he didn’t like their reporting.
A federal judge has temporarily gotten their credentials back.
So Trump and his minions found a loophole.
On Saturday the 26th he flew on Air Force One to Knoxville, Tennessee, for a college football game between the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Tennessee.
The judge’s ruling specified the three news outlets’ right to cover the White House.
So because the airplane is a different thing, CNN was left off the plane.
Instead of CNN, Real America’s Voice and LindellTV were put on the plane.
Trump has complained about the bias exhibited by outlets including Politico, CNN and MS NOW.
How is it that Real America’s Voice and LindellTV are unbiased?
Clearly, this is another of Trump’s petty moves because Politico, CNN and MS NOW haven’t bowed to his now-diminishing pressure.
And that’s the point here.
Donald Trump is a lame-duck president, a “Trump 2028” red baseball cap notwithstanding.
(And really: at what point will people finally realize that it isn’t appropriate for an 80-year-old man to wear a ball cap in public unless he is (a) at a baseball game or (b) a farmer? It is an embarrassment to the country that he even wears that hat while wearing a suit.)
It is time that people no longer tolerate his petulance and lies.
The news media — the actual news media, not these fringe outfits that do nothing but bow and scrape to his every flatulence — should continue to report on him but with less deference than has been exhibited heretofore.
When he makes a statement, that should be accurately reported.
But if he claims the Iranians want to make a deal and that its “close” or “imminent” or that, as he said on Saturday, he rejected a proposal from Tehran, then the reporting should clearly point out that he’s made that claim some 40 times since the start of the war.
When he talks about absurdly low gas prices that he happened to see somewhere, those quotes should be followed by the highly respected numbers from AAA that provide accurate national figures. (As this is being written on September 27, know that the current average is $4.4798; it was $3.1375 a year ago — a 42.78% increase.)
When he talks about how the price of groceries has come down, point out that according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics’ “Food at Home” index, a $100 grocery basked in 2021 now costs $125.66.
When he talks about Canada “ripping us off,” it should be pointed out that were it not for all of the energy we buy from Canada — yes, we buy crude oil, natural gas and electricity from that country — the US would have a $63.2 billion trade surplus with the country.
This is not a suggestion or recommendation that any outlet become disrespectful. After all, this is The Hustings, where we believe in civil discourse.
But it is to say that the facts are facts — regardless of whether or not he’d prefer that they be considered “fake” — and he needs to be held account for what he says in the same way that all public officials ought to be.
This is long overdue.
Macaulay is pundit-at-large for The Hustings.