There is no “crack up” among the Republican Party base over President Donald J. Trump, a popular narrative that has been churning in the news media since 2016. However, this storyline has become especially magnified due to Trump’s plummeting overall approval rating of 36%, his failed policy agenda, rampant illegal activity within the administration, and a wholesale embrace of mass corruption since his second inauguration.
Several days
before Thanksgiving, Trump pronounced on
Truth Social
that “The Republican Party has never been so UNITED AS IT iS RIGHT NOW!” This
may sound like the typical Trump hyperbole and balderdash, but he is correct if
we are considering the views of Republican Party voters and not just the
handful of Beltway Republicans willing to talk off the record with Beltway
reporters about their frustrations with the president and his chaotic
administration.
Sure, folks like
Senator Rand Paul and
Representative Majorie Taylor
Greene
have been more assertive in their pushback to Trump as of late, but they are
also a poor proxy for the mood of most Republicans in Congress who are
alarmingly loyal to him and Republican voters who remain steadfast in their
enchantment and compliance with Trump. Additionally, you have to consider that Paul
has long criticized Trump going back to Trump’s aggressive
takedown of Paul
in the GOP debates of summer 2015 and Greene is unadulterated kook that makes the old
John Birch Society look mainstream.
Yesterday, Axios
released a report by Neal
Rothschild bearing the headline, “Republican unity crumbles as America's mood
sours.” The truth is that Republican Party unity with Trump and Trumpism seems
unshakable when considering the party’s actual voting base. For full
disclosure, Axios is one of my most
preferred news sources about American politics and one that I recommend that my
students use both inside and outside of my classes. My criticism of them here
is less about what they are reporting and more so about how the narrative is being
framed. Allow me to explain.
America
under Trump 2.0 is a dog’s breakfast. The economy is faltering, consumer
confidence stinks, inflation is running rampant, tariffs are causing prices to
spike, the administration is engaged in illegal and dubious actives left and
right, the president is routinely threatening nations that pose no threat to
the United States, ICE is causing fear to permeate American communities, and
poor GOP policy is causing health care premiums to spike for millions.
Despite all of
this, actual GOP voters within the electorate are not abandoning—and I am
willing to predict—will never abandon their hero and leader, Donald J. Trump.
A poll released by IPSOS on December 5, 2025 told us that Trump is the King of GOP Land:
- Over 80% of Republicans approve of Trump (see table below from IPSOS).
- Despite the hullaballoo of the past 11 months, only 7% of those who voted for Trump in 2024 regret that decision. This is mainly driven by non-whites and voters 18-39 who uncharacteristically backed Trump last year and have buyer’s remorse.
- 77% of all Republicans say they “personally identify with the Make America Great Again (MAGA) Movement,” the same percentage who said this upon Trump’s inauguration in January.
Trump’s
problem is not with the Republican Party if you believe as I do that the
concept of “the party” is defined by the party’s voters. With that segment of
the electorate, he is rock-solid and likely to remain in that position. You can
see this by the way in with Speaker Johnson and the congressional Republicans meekly
follow his orders, candidates for GOP nominations in 2026 agonizingly kiss his
rings and FIFA Peace Prize, and the Republican media machine lionizes him more
than ever.
Realistically,
Trump’s problems include hemorrhaging support among Independents who lean
Republican, losing non-white and younger voters who defied past election
practices and backed him in 2024, and those who seriously doubt his administration’s
ability to make life in America more affordable as he promised
would be done by his administration “on day one.”
As of December
2025, the Republican Party is still the Party of Trump. It is unified in
support of the president, there is no evidence that the Republican electorate
is wavering, and Trump will undoubtedly be his party’s key player when it comes
to influencing GOP primaries in the 2026 midterm election cycle.
