Trump’s approval drops 2 points in 2 weeks: Reuters/Ipsos poll

Trump’s Job Approval Hits Historic Low as Iran War Drags On

Provpnadvice.com – President Donald Trump’s standing with the American public has slid to its weakest point of either presidential term, with just one in three adults endorsing his performance in office. A fresh Reuters/Ipsos survey, fielded over a four-day window from Friday through Monday, placed his approval at 33 percent among 1,166 adults polled, while 64 percent said they disapprove. The margin of error for the survey stands at three percentage points.

The figure represents a two-point decline from the previous Reuters/Ipsos reading released on August 3. More significantly, it matches the nadir Trump reached during his first term in December 2017 — meaning the president has now touched the floor of public confidence twice across two separate administrations.

A Steep Slide from Inaugural Optimism

The trajectory of his second-term numbers tells a story of rapid erosion. When Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, the same polling partnership recorded 47 percent approval against 41 percent disapproval — a modest but genuine lead. Within less than a month of his return, however, disapproval broke past the 50-percent threshold and has never fallen back below it since.

By the days immediately preceding the launch of military operations against Iran alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the president’s disapproval mark had climbed to 58 percent. The war, which Trump initially framed as a roughly one-month campaign to achieve all American objectives in the region, has instead stretched through the spring and into much of the summer with no durable agreement curbing Tehran’s nuclear program — the very rationale the president cited for initiating hostilities.

Economic Fallout Hits the Pump and the Grocery Aisle

The prolonged confrontation has carried tangible costs for ordinary Americans, most visibly through Iran’s tightening of shipping lanes in the Strait of Hormuz. Those restrictions have disrupted global oil flows and pushed average U.S. gasoline prices above four dollars per gallon for the entirety of summer. By contrast, AAA had reported national average prices below three dollars just two days before the war began.

Broader energy inflation has compounded the strain. The consumer price index showed energy costs rising 14.7 percent year-over-year in the most recent monthly reading, after annual energy price inflation peaked at 23.5 percent in May. For households already feeling pressure on food, housing, and fuel, the cumulative effect has been a sharp tightening of disposable income.

Trump Defends the Price Tag

Speaking Friday at an event in Garden City, New York, the president framed the higher pump prices as a small and acceptable trade-off for keeping a nuclear weapon out of Iranian hands.

“So remember that, when you have to pay a little bit more, you’re at $4, it’s OK. … I’ll never apologize, I did the right thing.”

He added that Americans were willing to absorb what he called “a tiny, little bit more” at the gas station in exchange for the security guarantee the conflict was meant to deliver.

Public Expectation: A Long War Ahead

Most Americans do not expect a quick resolution. Eight in ten respondents in the latest survey said the Middle Eastern conflict would continue for a long time. The sentiment cut across party lines: 71 percent of Republicans, 80 percent of independents, and 87 percent of Democrats shared that expectation. The near-universal pessimism about a near-term end state underscores how deeply the war has reshaped the political landscape.

Midterm Stakes and the GOP’s Dilemma

With congressional elections approaching, Republican candidates nationwide are navigating the downstream economic consequences of the ongoing fighting. Many have attempted to redirect voter attention by characterizing recent primary wins by left-leaning Democrats as evidence that the opposing party has embraced “socialism,” hoping to flip the narrative from economic anxiety to ideological alarm.

The polling math, however, remains unfavorable. As of Monday, Decision Desk HQ projected a 66 percent probability that Democrats would reclaim the House and a 45 percent probability of capturing the Senate — the latter figure up three points from a month earlier. For a president whose approval now sits at the lowest level recorded in either of his two terms, the combination of sustained economic pain, a war without a visible exit strategy, and a partisan electorate that largely expects the conflict to persist creates a challenging environment for the remainder of the year.

The central question for voters heading into the fall campaign is whether they will attribute the economic disruption to the war’s necessity or to its management — and whether Trump’s insistence that he “did the right thing” will resonate with a public that is watching its gas bills climb while no diplomatic off-ramp appears on the horizon.