We’re going to be very soon reaching a point where you need to stop looking at Trump’s approval rating to know how popular MAGA is. So does Trump. So in the year 10 A.E., I think a lot of Trump voters — that is part of their identity now. And from now on Republicans are going to be running without Donald Trump on the ballot. And so I think that the Trump position is going to be an artificially high indicator of the popularity of MAGA policies, that the actual indicator of MAGA policies is going to be much more indicated by in some senses, although I think issue polling is often kind of quasi garbage.

Source: New York Times January 17, 2026 15:00 UTC