How Low Can He Go?
Republican Approval Sets the Floor
Thereās a mistake people keep making when they look at Trumpās approval numbers. They keep treating national approval like itās the whole story. It isnāt. It never has been. It can go no lower until, and unless, his approval among Republicans declines.
Trump can be hated by a majority of America and still be just as dangerous. He can sit at 35 percent nationally and continue to do enormous damage forever. The number that mattersāthe only number that actually restrains himāis Republican approval.
Thatās the floor. And the whole system is balanced on it.
Right now, Republican approval of Trump is still absurdly highāhovering around the high 80s, flirting with 90 percent. Thatās down from the mid-90s where it sat for long stretches of his political life, and yes, it has been decaying slowly since January. Slowly at first, then with a bit more momentum. But letās be clear about what that still means: the Republican Party remains overwhelmingly loyal to a man who attempted a coup, stole classified documents, openly promises retribution, and has no unleashed lawless armed goons on its own citizenry.
People keep waiting for the moment when āRepublicans finally break.ā But history tells us that moment is rareāand when it happens, it happens only under very specific conditions.
Republicans have broken with a president before. They did it with George W. Bush. After the financial crisis, Bushās approval among Republicans collapsed into the 60s and 50s. Party elites abandoned him. He became toxic. That happened at the very beginning of the modern polarized eraābefore identity fusion hardened, before right-wing media became a sealed epistemic loop, before grievance replaced ideology entirely.
We are now at the opposite end of that story.
Todayās Republican Party is not just polarized; itās fused. Identity, grievance, and power are bound together. That means the breaking point is higher. Much higher.
In this environment, Republican approval doesnāt need to fall into the 30s to matter. It probably never will, even when he starts shooting people on 5th avenue. What matters is whether it can fall into the 60s again, like it did for W., because thatās the zone where political incentives of Republican members of the House and senate start to change.
This is where David Mayhewās thesis still rules everything. Politicians are single-minded seekers of reelection. Always have been. Always will be. And hereās the part that a lot of very engaged, very online analysts miss: the reason some Democrats sound fearless and strident is not because they are morally superiorāitās because they are electorally safe.
Members in deep-blue seats donāt face general election risk. They face primary risk. Base positions, defiance, and purity are rewarded. But members in swing districts face an entirely different math. They need voters who are not ideologically aligned. They need people who are uneasy, conflicted, persuadableāor at least movable.
Thatās why people get furious at swing-district Democrats for votes they donāt like. They read it as betrayal. It isnāt. Itās rational behavior in a system where majorities matter more than unicorn-fart wish lists. You want Democrats to be rational in swing seats if you ever want Democrats in power at all.
The same logic appliesāmuch more starklyāon the Republican side.
As long as Trump sits at 85ā90 percent approval among Republicans, GOP officials have no reason to resist him. None. The primary threat outweighs everything else. But if that number slips toward the low 60s, suddenly the general election re-enters the picture. Silence replaces defense. Hedging replaces loyalty. Not courageānever courageābut self-preservation.
Thatās the theory. Now letās talk about why Trump is suddenly in trouble.
Part of the erosion weāre seeing is coming from Epstein. And letās stop pretending we donāt know why Trump is blocking the release of the Epstein files. The media keeps asking āwho is he protecting?ā like itās a mystery. Heās protecting himself. First and foremost. The sheer number of times Trump appears in those files makes that obvious. Heās also protecting donors, allies, cabinet-adjacent figuresāyes. But this is self-interest, plain and simple.
Still, Epstein alone doesnāt explain whatās happening. Immigration does.
What we just watched in Minnesota matteredānot because Americans suddenly oppose border enforcement, but because they recoil from lawlessness. The average voter does not know what an administrative warrant is. They donāt understand the Fourth Amendment implications. They donāt know how often ICE is breaking into homes without judicial warrants.
And yet, even with partial information, theyāre saying: this feels wrong.
Trumpās so-called āde-escalationā is a mirage. No one was fired. No one was held accountable. Agents were shuffled, not restrained. Tom Homan was elevated and rebranded as normalcyādespite the fact that Trump previously shut down an investigation into Homan allegedly taking a cash bribe from undercover FBI agents. On its own, that would have ended a presidency in any other era.
There is no real pullback. The violence continues. The stories accumulate. Another catastrophe is inevitable. This is not speculationāitās math. A lawless political police force operating with impunity will eventually produce another horror.
And hereās the bind Trump canāt escape: he canāt stop.
If he actually reined in ICE, the fascist base would revolt. Roughly 30 million votersāfully committed to Great Replacement ideologyābelieve heās already capitulating. They donāt want fewer deportations. They want everyone out. Including naturalized citizens. Including children born here. For them, what happened in Minnesota wasnāt restraintāit was betrayal.
So Trump is bleeding support from two directions at once.
On one side, right-leaning independentsācloset partisans who rarely vote Democraticāare recoiling from police-state aesthetics and visible brutality. On the other side, the fascist base is furious that he hasnāt gone far enough.
That is a historically unstable position.
Which brings us back to the question this piece canāt escape: How low can he go?
I donāt know if Republican approval can fall into the 60s in the polarized era which really only got going after 2010. History gives us reasons to doubt it. January 6 showed us something terrifyingāthat a party can erase its own memory, rewrite reality, and sanctify violence retroactively. If they could do that once, they might be able to do it again.
But I do know this: for the country to survive whatās happening, Republican approval has to break. There is no other internal brake left. Courts are slow. Institutions are compromised. Elections are months away.
Waiting for Republicans to save democracy is not a plan. But it may be the only lever left.
Thatās the floor. And weāre all standing on it.




New subscriber. Here's the GOP platform for 2026:
If you can't compete,
You gotta cheat.
Excellent post.