I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my daily politics podcast from WNYC Studios. It's Tuesday, January 19th. Today is

Donald Trump's last day in office.

The final Gallup poll of his presidency finds his lowest approval rating, just 34% plummeting from 46% on election day.

Gallup also says Trump has had the lowest average approval rating of any president since

Gallup started polling after World War II.

Trump's average approval rating was 41% of the people polled.

It's interesting to look down that list and see the next most unpopular president on

average, as measured by Gallup, two actually, were Harry Truman and Jimmy Carter at 45%, then Ford and Obama at 47%, then

W. Bush and Nixon at 49%. That's average approval over the course of their terms. Those presidents

who averaged above 50% approval during their terms were Reagan at 52, Clinton and Johnson at 55,

George H.W. Bush at 60% and Dwight Eisenhower averaged 65% approval during his eight years in

office, 1953 to 1960, different president, but also very different times. And certainly different from

Donald Trump's lowest average 41% approval over the last four years. I happen to see that

Gallup chart, thanks to Susan Glasser, who tweeted it. Susan's working on the final edition

of her weekly New Yorker magazine column called Letter from Trump's Washington.

How does anybody close out such a column when the last day ends with 25,000 National Guard troops

patrolling the streets against domestic terrorists who'd like to attack the Capitol in the outgoing president's name?

And when the last day coincides with the country hitting

400,000 coronavirus deaths and the death rate accelerating after he spent most of the year downplaying

the threat. Susan Glasser is also a CNN Global Affairs analyst and co-author of the man who ran

Washington, The Life and Times of Jim Baker.

So with the letter from Trump's Washington column about to be retired, Susan Glasser is an

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