LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Less than a month into his tenure and a lot of Americans are happy with President Trump. We called back one of his supporters, who we met last November, to check in. Here's Ben Wallace of Pennsylvania.
BEN WALLACE: I'm exceptionally pleased. I really like the fact that he has cut straight to the core of excess funding, spending and waste. I like the fact that he was ready to hit the ground running on a variety of issues.
FADEL: And Wallace isn't alone. The country's divided on Trump, but according to two recent polls, a lot, if not the slight majority of Americans, approve of the way he's handling his job as president. For more on this, we turn to political strategist, Sarah Longwell. She's the publisher of the conservative website The Bulwark. Welcome to the program.
SARAH LONGWELL: Thanks for having me.
FADEL: So I saw two polls that came out in the last few days - one from CBS News that showed the majority of Americans - 53% - approve of how Trump is handling his job and a Pew survey that found 47% approve of his handling of the job. As you look at these numbers, what policy decisions are driving these really positive results?
LONGWELL: Well, first of all, they are positive relative to Trump.
FADEL: OK.
LONGWELL: I mean, Donald Trump has never had particularly high approval ratings. Forty-seven percent used to be his ceiling, which is why I think people are surprised to see him up around 53% in that CBS poll. But at the same time, you know, in Joe Biden's first term, he was about almost 10 points higher...
FADEL: OK.
LONGWELL: ...Than what Donald Trump is now. So I think what you're seeing is Donald Trump is getting the honeymoon phase in a muted way, but that looks positive for him. Now, listening to voters - so I talk to voters and focus groups every week, multiple times a week.
FADEL: Yeah.
LONGWELL: And I think there's a couple of things going on. The first is they can see the action that he's taking. They're not sure about all of it. They can't parse, you know, shutting down this agency versus putting ICE trucks on the street. But what they see is action. And I think relative to Joe Biden, who people saw very little of toward the end of his presidency, I think just the sheer movement of all of it makes people feel like something is happening, which they feel good about. The other thing people reference is immigration.
People talk a lot. They're seeing ICE trucks in neighborhoods. Obviously, you know, out there in the world, people are seeing the impact of Donald Trump making good on his promise around mass deportations, which is more popular than one might think. And I've heard a lot of praise for that policy. People do want it done humanely. They don't like the idea of going into schools or to churches, but the idea that it is being done is something that people have spoken positively about.
FADEL: And something he promised. Another big promise from Trump, though, was about the economy, inflation, making things more affordable for Americans who are struggling. That hasn't happened yet. It's very early on. How's he doing with voters there?
LONGWELL: Well, I think voters are willing to give time on something like the economy.
FADEL: Right.
LONGWELL: You know, it's not something that they think turns around overnight. And obviously, Donald Trump is going to benefit from the fact that Joe Biden had put the economy on quite a solid trajectory. And so while there might be specific things right now like the price of eggs is going up because of bird flu and other things, generally, they're getting to ride a wave that was already going in a positive direction on the economy. But people don't think that in terms of, you know, big turnarounds or inflation dropping precipitously, those are not things that they think happens overnight. So he's still getting a grace period.
FADEL: What about the questions around the legality of some of his executive actions? Is that something voters are thinking about? You know, I'm thinking of, is it - the question of is it legal to try to limit birthright citizenship, to just cut federal agencies without Congress weighing in. Do Elon Musk and his team have the legal right to access sensitive information at the Treasury, State Department and USAID? I mean, do these questions matter to his supporters?
LONGWELL: You know, we've been asking voters this in the focus groups, and the No. 1 thing is that voters don't know what is legal and what is illegal. And for the most part, what they think is, if they're doing it, it must be legal. And so I think without Democrats affirmatively going out and explaining to voters that this is illegal, you know, you're not going to see people reacting with horror, right? They're sort of used to Donald Trump provoking a big reaction, but somebody needs to explain to them why what's happening right now is illegal if you want the American public to understand it.
You know, we asked about birthright citizenship, and people do not know that it is a constitutional amendment, that it's in the Constitution. It's a straightforward question. They tend to evaluate it on its current merits and whether or not they think somebody who came here illegally, who has a child, you know, whether that child should then allowed to automatically be an American citizen. And they don't realize, hey, that's just a constitutional amendment.
FADEL: Sarah Longwell, political strategist with The Bulwark. Thank you for your time.
LONGWELL: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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