Republican strategist Karl Rove on Saturday urged the Trump administration to speak more about its accomplishments to shore up support ahead of midterm elections.
“The president will end this year at the lowest approval rating in modern times for a president … in the first year after his inauguration. He has got to get those numbers up,” Rove said during an appearance on Fox News.
“I am convinced a large part of it is going to be patiently explaining what it is he has done, explaining what is he wants to do particularly with regards to health care in a way that the American people can put their hand around it,” the Fox News contributor added.
Rove, for example, said President Trump should visit the southern border to tout his administration’s efforts to secure it with stepped-up immigration enforcement.
The former adviser to President George W. Bush has also been calling on Republican lawmakers to promote legislative wins to their constituency, citing the renewal of 2017 tax credits and new third quarter GDP gains as a sign of growth.
Still, he warned that low polling numbers can weigh heavily on the GOP’s success in the 2026 elections.
“He [Trump] needs to lower the expectations, and over-deliver. Under-promise and over-deliver ought to be the goal of the next year,” Rove said.
“Americans are not feeling the economy is great. For him to stand up and say — as he did first in Pennsylvania, then in North Carolina — that ‘everything is great,’ it does not resonate with the felt experience of ordinary American families,” he added.
Trump’s approval rating reached a second-term low of 41 percent last month amid the record-breaking government shutdown, according to Decision Desk HQ’s polling averages.
Since then, it’s ticked up to around 45 percent, which has been the rough average for him since taking office last January.
“Second-term midterms are never happy ones for the president except in 1998’s for Bill Clinton when the Republicans overplayed their hand. And the first term for George W. Bush, but those have been a rare moment midterm election has worked to the advantage of the party in power,” Rove noted on Saturday.
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