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A new CBS poll confirms what previous data suggested: Americans increasingly see Trump’s proclamations as detached from reality, writes John Bowden
Monday 24 November 2025 00:42 GMTComments
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Joe Biden spent roughly three of his four years in the White House trying to sell Americans his view of his presidency: An economy that was roaring back to normal after the Covid crash, and a country once again respected on the world stage, helmed by a president just as spry and fit for duty as his opponent.
In the end, voters did not believe him. A disastrous debate with Donald Trump blew the door open for speculation about his mental faculties, while consumers still felt squeezed by high prices on gasoline and Covid-era inflation and price hikes on other commodities that stretched their paychecks thinner than in years past. On the foreign policy side, his image was further marred by the withdrawal from Afghanistan, which involved one of the deadliest attacks on U.S. forces in the country in years as well as a retaliatory U.S. strike that caused significant civilian casualties.
Now, his predecessor faces a starkly similar scenario. One year into Trump’s second term, the president is beset by rising grocery and energy prices, while he falsely proclaims that inflation is practically nonexistent and grocery prices are coming down. Abroad, his efforts to broker a ceasefire in Gaza appear to be crumbling fast and he’s been similarly unsuccessful so far at forcing Russia to make peace with Ukraine without significant concessions, ones which Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky is unwilling to accept. Instead, he’s taken credit for orchestrating peace in other conflicts, most of which the average American would not know about.
Then there’s the Jeffrey Epstein issue. After months, years even spent by the likes of Vice President JD Vance and Kash Patel ginning up speculation about the contents of the Department of Justice’s Epstein files, Trump’s attorney general reversed course and declared in July that the FBI and DOJ would end an effort to make the files public. This came after Pam Bondi summoned eager conservative influencers to the White House to receive binders of files with the flashy “Epstein Files: Phase one” title printed on the front.
On Sunday, a CBS News poll confirmed what other past surveys indicated: Voters now specifically say that Trump is falsely claiming the economy is better than it really is.
open image in galleryA new CBS poll finds that voters believe Trump talks about the economy in better terms than it deserves (Getty Images)The survey found that six in ten Americans believe that Trump makes things sound “better than they really are” when speaking about consumer prices and inflation, which they give him underwater marks for handling. And 65 percent said they believed it was Trump’s own policies making grocery prices go up, suggesting that his insistence that his tariffs are making America wealthier is falling flat, too.
In the same poll, 55 percent of Americans said that releasing the full Epstein investigation files was “very important” to them, a repudiation of Trump’s demands for his own supporters to drop the issue; the president has even resorted to calling some of his supporters “stupid” over it. And Americans are nearly unanimous in thinking that powerful members of society will be revealed to have been involved with the child sex trafficker and well-connected financier Epstein if those files go public.
Meanwhile, there’s a second problem lurking for Trump: Venezuela. As the Trump administration escalates military strikes against boats in the Caribbean Sea, which it claims are ferrying drugs and builds up forces in the region, a clear majority of Americans say the president has failed to make a case for military action against Nicolas Maduro’s government.
open image in galleryFormer President Joe Biden lost some political momentum in 2021 with a withdrawal from Afghanistan that many critics argued was poorly-managed and planned out after a deadly attack on American troops (Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)Seventy percent of Americans would oppose military action at this point, and an even greater share (76%) says that Trump hasn’t clearly stated his position on the conflict with Maduro, whom the U.S. government has designated a cartel leader.
The message is clear: Trump risks wading into a war opposed by voters in both parties, even though a slim majority of Americans support the ongoing campaign against suspected drug smugglers.
His potential misadventure in Venezuela is indicative of the dynamic underpinning Trump’s other problems at this stage: They are all largely self-made. In contrast to Biden, who was dealt a rough hand with an economy still in the throes of Covid lockdowns and even an Afghanistan withdrawal process begun by Trump in his first term, second-term Trump is dealing with price hikes largely attributed to his trade policy and souring views of his relationship with Epstein — both fueled by speculation stoked by his allies in the past, and complicated by an abrupt U-turn.
Trump, however, still has almost a year before his first true electoral test and the opportunity for Democrats to reclaim one or both chambers of Congress. With new reporting indicating that he is plotting a bill to deal with an impending price hike for health care plans on the Affordable Care Act exchange, the president may have taken a lesson from a drubbing Republicans faced in Virginia, New Jersey and Georgia earlier this month and will seek a different fate than Biden’s.
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