Jay Weber Show transcript 12-18-24
New as of yesterday: Donald Trump is seeing a positive overall favorability rating for the first time-ever.
Some people tend to forget that -for everything that has occurred here, over the last ten years, including two successful bids for the presidency-
Donald trump has never had a net favorability rating above 50 percent.
This guy has always had more than half of the country telling pollsters that they disapprove of him and/or the job he was doing.
One measure comes from CNN: 54 percent of Americans say trump will do a good job when he returns to the white house for term two.
Fifty-five percent approve of the job he’s done so far with his transition. That’s a sharp contrast to 2016, when only 40 percent approved of trump and his cabinet choices.
And so, this is a milestone worth noting-and i believe it is another sign that most Americans are genuinely ready to see a restoration of America. A restoration of the American dream.
A restoration of a more prosperous, optimistic, traditional American outlook, if you will.
Since trump’s win in November- a few polls have shown that 55 to 60 percent of Americans approve of the way he’s handled the transition.
Here’s some more positive news in the latest Marquette University Law poll:
Which isn’t just a tacit endorsement of most of his cabinet nominees- but is an endorsement of this posture he’s taken to-basically- slide in and fill a leadership void that Joe Biden and his team have left.
Aside from trying to secretly cram more left-wing activism into place before they leave...via hidden executive orders... Joe Biden and his team aren’t doing-any- leading- in any way.
Many DC insiders and DNC donors are angry with Biden and his team for this complete lack of leadership- and even angrier over the fact that it is helping to boost and legitimize Donald trump and the republicans as the serious adults who can get things done....and will rise to the occasion and restore the country....
Now that it’s been proven Joe Biden and today’s democrats can’t. We’ve just come off a ridiculous democrat presidential campaign with an unserious person topping it-
And it came after four years of feckless, unserious, truly awful leadership from a man who spent nearly all four years looking lost...when he appeared in public.
All of this helps explain the newly positive feelings toward trump. And its’ not just from American voters: we’ve seen the European and world leaders suddenly want to be seen with trump. Ingratiate themselves to Trump.
We’ve seen some democrat governors and mayors say they are willing to cooperate with trump on crime and illegals...etc.
Suddenly, Donald Trump is popular, and most of the country- at least- is optimistic about the next four years.
Do you know that consumer spending is up following the Trump win?
This Christmas season, retailers are literally seeing more last-minute spending because trump won and surveys show that a higher number of Americans feel good about their family budgets and their financial prospects moving into 2025.
Folks. Nothing has changed yet.
The fed meets again today to talk about another small rate cut, but we were just told that inflation ticked up again in both October and November. The inflation rate is now closer to three percent than two percent.
Our price and ‘cost’ problems are still far from over. Interest rates are still too high. This is a continuation of the Biden-era economic conditions.
None of the basics of this economy have changed.
What has?
Trump won.
Everything about this little run of economic optimism that we’ve seen over the last four or five weeks has to do with the ‘hope’ of what a second trump term will bring.
He delivered a truly historical and powerful economy during his first term, until covid hit. He and his advisors had it ramping up nicely again when they turned it over to Biden and the democrats-
Who then promptly snuffed it out and delivered the worst inflation in 50 years.
Most people and investors-assume- the Trump economy is going to be better in his second term, too, and ‘how can it not be’?
Trump had never set foot in Washington DC-in any role- before he shocked the country and won the presidency in 2016. There was a steep learning curve, and he naturally made some early mistakes. Trusted some of the wrong people. Etc.
He returns to dc-this time- knowing how Washington DC works. Knowing who he can trust and who he cannot.
Very importantly-he returns with a coalition of fellow republicans who generally support him-and want! - to help him achieve his agenda. He decidedly-did not- have that in 2016- when he even had most congressional republicans wanting to fight him on nearly everything.
That made Trump’s first term even more difficult than it needed to be.
Still- he managed to get the largest tax cut in American history passed- which helped supercharge the economy. He and his team did a massive amount of de-regulating, killing off eight old left wing, big govt regulations for every-one- conservative minded regulation into place.
Even without congressional cooperation, Donald Trump managed to find ways to close and control the border and replace 500 miles of crummy border fence with real, high, border wall.
Imagine what trump can do when DC republicans are working with him this time.
But if we look at the reasons for Trump’s higher approval ratings now, they aren’t hard to define:
The most important factor is-genuinely- four God awful years of Joe Biden.
This is the single biggest factor when it comes to this new optimism surrounding Trump. The American people now have a side-by-side comparison for how Donald Trump republicans and Joe Biden democrats run the country. And Biden was a blooming disaster.... who followed a ‘booming’ trump era.
Most Americans want to get back to the booming.
The second reason for more Trump optimism is that-he- and the GOP are promising to focus on the American people’s wants and needs- like lowering crime. Deporting illegals. Getting costs down...
Joe Biden and the dems just spent four years ignoring all those things and/or making them worse- as they pursued other efforts that the American people were completely disinterested in-and have made it clear-they do not want.
Things like forcing wind and solar on us. Forcing EVs on us. Banning gas stoves and taking away consumer choices. And forcing transgenderism and anti-science at us. In short- marching to the leftist’s drums.
And by the way- the way the democrats have sold their agenda is via a relentless campaign of doom and gloom and alarmism....and man... The American people are super-sick of that, now.
Trump’s also ‘winning’ so early here, because he and JD Vance are the ones with the optimistic vision for the country. They have the vision that the American people want-and need-to hear.
After all- why go on? Why even participate in this society if it’s been so badly broken that, according to the democrats, it cannot be fixed?
Nope- we can’t do anything about runaway crime. That’s just the new normal, now.
Nope- we won’t stop flooding the country with illegals. Ever. So, you may as well stop asking.
Nope- you will not be allowed to keep certain freedoms and consumer choices. Nope. By God-you are going to be driving a little crack box electric car within a few years-or be forced to take a train...into your grey little jobs...as you live your grey little government-controlled life. So just...submit to it.
Those were all the signals-and more-that today’s democrats have been sending out to us-since the Obama era. And the pessimism and government lawlessness of the Biden era really drove it home for all sorts of Americans: we can-and need- to do better.
We need someone who believes that America’s best days are still ahead of her- and who has an optimistic vision to get us back there. Back to prosperity and to continuing toward being that shining city on a hill that Reagan described not so long ago.
And I know Trump isn’t even in office yet-and so I know this is projecting-
But i really don’t see how trump and the GOP-don’t- close the border, and rebuild the military, and re-spark the economy, and make the Trump/Ryan tax cuts permanent, and have doge deliver in some very significant deregulation...etc.
And I don’t see how Trump and the republicans don’t get that all done within the first six months of Trump taking office.
Genuinely.
Take it from me, your lovable cynic, I see no reason not to be optimistic over what is coming for the country and the American people over the next six months.
photo credit: Getty Images
audio version of the segment here > Trump offers a new sense of optimism in America