Trump sinks in polls ahead of State of the Union
The Beat with Ari Melber
Ari Melber, MS NOW
4.6 • 4.2K Ratings
🗓️ 24 February 2026
⏱️ 40 minutes
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the beat. We are tracking Donald Trump reeling from the Supreme Court's strongest rebuke this term. |
| 0:06.8 | And tomorrow's State of the Union, as I just mentioned, gearing up for that, while the DOJ's Epstein files release has now led today to another arrest, |
| 0:16.2 | it's a story that Donald Trump cannot stop or control, not in the U.S. or abroad, and we'll be getting to that |
| 0:23.4 | tonight, plus the blizzard that continues to rock the East Coast. And maybe many people today |
| 0:32.2 | can agree on at least one thing. The state of our union is frozen. Now, I have a special report for you on Donald Trump's |
| 0:40.9 | seeking approval in a moment. It is the context for the headwinds of the state of the union. That's a |
| 0:47.4 | bad thing for Trump. And, of course, his top economic plan, the tariff trade war now decisively |
| 0:52.7 | struck down. The news today, Trump vowing even more |
| 0:56.2 | tariffs, at least the ones that he can legally do, but those are temporary. Under law, Trump is |
| 1:01.1 | powerless to make the kind of long-term sweeping tariffs that he likes on his own. He would have |
| 1:06.5 | to work with Congress, which he refuses to do. That is all part of driving Donald Trump's plummeting |
| 1:13.3 | support. The new polls show that now 60% of Americans disapprove of Trump's job performance. We're |
| 1:20.3 | told that we are this divided nation on every issue. Well, not this one. You can see the wide gap, |
| 1:24.9 | the public, souring on Trump as he heads into this big |
| 1:29.5 | address. He's hit an all-time low with independence, which is a key voting block for the midterms. |
| 1:35.3 | Trump says he's amazed that there is not more support, but he adds that he has silence support. |
| 1:42.2 | Well, consciously or not, he is echoing a claim made by the most unpopular |
| 1:45.2 | reviled president in modern American history whose scandals drove him from office early. Remember, |
| 1:50.7 | Nixon argued that even if he seemed unpopular, he actually represented a, quote, silent majority |
| 1:57.2 | that backs him, that backs what he was saying, just quietly. Well, few people seriously think |
| 2:03.2 | that Donald Trump and his MAGA fans are quiet or silent or shy in their support of him or |
| 2:09.9 | just about anything. We saw that on the campaign trail. We saw that at the MSG rally, |
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