I’m doing great, how are you?

One of the great tragedies of Donald Trump’s populism is that he’s convinced countless millions of lower-income Americans that he cares about their financial well-being.

You don’t have to look very far for evidence to the contrary. Trump’s a man whose entire pre-political life was a case study in the pursuit of material splendor, often at the expense of others. Ventures like “Trump U,” for example, were flagrantly exploitative, according to court documents.

But since ascending the US presidency, and particularly since 2021 or so, Trump’s penchant for bilking (legally, I should add, but bilking all the same) the under-educated and the under-paid has manifested in an ever-expanding portfolio of petty grifts which, when considered together, have delivered to Trump-related ventures consistent financial windfalls.

Trump’s made millions over the past four years selling everything from NFTs to sneakers to watches to perfume to cell phones and even branded Bibles. It’s safe to suggest a majority of that merchandise is purchased by Americans of limited financial means.

The signature legislation from Trump’s first term and, now, the centerpiece of Republicans’ legislative agenda during his second, both favor the rich disproportionately. In the case of the so-called “big, beautiful bill,” Trump’s actually taking resources from the poor to help fund tax cuts for the well-to-do, a cruelly ridiculous reverse Robin Hood scheme.

I doubt seriously the reality of Trump’s indifference (at best) to the plight of lower-income Americans and “regular” people in general will ever truly dawn on his Main Street support base, but it’s worth noting that Trump’s approval rating slipped to just 37% in a new Gallup poll, the lowest of his second term and only 3ppt higher than the 34ppt nadir from his first.

In a testament to… well, a lot of things, his approval among Republicans hasn’t moved at all in the Gallup poll. It sits at nearly 90%. On the other side of the aisle, just 2% of Democrats approve of Trump, down from 6% in January. The number to watch is Independents. Trump’s approval among those voters is down a remarkable 15ppt in just a few months, as shown above.

It’s best to look at a cross-section of polls. On that score, the RealClearPolitics average is now more or less back to the April lows, which is to say Trump’s floundering as badly now as he was just after “Liberation Day.” That perhaps suggests he’s losing some support among voters who can’t be placated by new records for stocks.

“Wall Street’s favoring Trump’s pivot to lower US tariffs, taxes and rates [but] Main Street’s less adoring,” BofA’s Michael Hartnett remarked, in his latest, editorializing around the chart on the left, below, which plots the RealClearPolitics average with the S&P.

The figure on the right plots small-caps against a collection of what Hartnett calls “bro billionaire” tickers, including Meta, Tesla, Palantir and Bitcoin.

“Trump’s ‘bro billionaire’ stocks are up 71% since the election [while] Trump’s small-cap ‘base’ stocks are down 1%,” Hartnett went on to remark.

Surprised? I certainly hope not. Trump cares about his “base” — the “forgotten” steelworkers, coal miners, conspiracy theorists and so on — when he needs them to show up at the ballot box. Other than that, those people don’t matter a single thing to Trump, because unlike billionaires, industry lobbies and well-funded special interests, they have no day-to-day, direct bearing on his presidency.

So, unless it’s Election Day — or a coup day — let the base eat cake. Specifically, Duchess honeybuns and Bon Appetit bear claws from aisle four at the nearest truck stop where, just two aisles over, you can pick up a chintzy, made-in-China bandana featuring a bald eagle draped in the stars and stripes.

Coming full circle, the sad reality is that no matter how clear this all becomes over the next three years, Trump’s base will never see the grifter in him. They’ll never understand why it’s absurd to suggest, as they so often do, that people like me are somehow biased against Trump not because he’s a threat to democracy, but rather because he’s on a mission to take back America from the rich and return it to “the people.”

I get email to that effect on a weekly basis, and in some cases from regular readers. I hate to be the bearer of bad news for that crowd, but people like me are doing just fine under Trump (I can give you details if you want, just ask), and we’re very likely to do better still as his second term progresses.

That’s because, as Hartnett noted, Trump will “pivot” to policies that favor people like me at the first sign of trouble. Maybe you’re willing to take some “pain” to realize the re-industrialization pipe dream and otherwise turn the clock back to a time when everyone had a fair economic shake, but as we’ve seen already, Trump isn’t.