31 January 2026, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)
On 11 November 2025, Trump’s Approve/Disapprove rating was 42.6%/54.4%, and yesterday, on 30 January 2026, it was 42.6%/55.1%. Whereas the same percentage in the consensus of all polls at RealClearPolling regarding “President Trump Job Approval” said on November 11th as said on January 30th that they “Approve” of Trump’s job-performance, only 0.7% more now than on November 11th are saying that they “Disapprove” of his job-performance; and this is remarkable steadiness over that 80-day time-period. It is, at least till now, a very solid, impervious, MAGA base of U.S. political support for Trump.
I had checked this information out today, January 30th, because I periodically monitor that consensus-of-all-polls in order to determine whether the latest extreme scandals in Trump’s second term are having any overall political impact; and, at least during the past 80 days, the answer is decidedly no — none at all (at least none that is sufficiently big to indicate anything other than remarkable steadiness in Trump’s approval-ratings). I checked it today because a newspaper that represents U.S. Democratic Party and UK Labour Party billionaires, the Guardian, headlines “Trump’s post-truth agenda beaten back as Americans refuse to accept ICE lies: Effort to manipulate killing of Alex Pretti collapsed after footage torpedoed ‘domestic terrorist’ claim – could this be a turning point?” What I found is that it hasn’t been “beaten back” at all.
Whatever other people might happen to think of Donald Trump’s performance as the leader of the U.S. empire, Trump’s appeal within the U.S. itself has remained above 42% throughout, and shows no indication of going below that bottom.
Articulate and well reasoned arguments (such as this) have been put forth that what Trump is in the process of doing is that he’s trying to achieve in his country an imposition of martial law but under a different name (such as “ICE enforcement”) so as to make his fascism acceptable to his base as being fascist (but ‘necessary’), which percentage of the public would then be (at present) 42.6% of the population accepting their fascism, which would then probably be a larger percentage than any of the political Parties to his left. I have argued that what is needed, in orde to produce a democacy, is to outlaw political Parties altogether.
As I have documented many times, electoral democracies degenerate into aristocracies — governments that are controlled only by their super-rich who get a bigger bang for their bucks of spare cash by funding and (by their media and academics) propagandizing for their preferred politicians than they would do by their buying more stocks and bonds — and America is just another such instance of a democracy having become a dictatorship by the super-rich, and it gives every indication of being even more like that over time — stably a dictatorship by the billionaires.
Public elections and competing political Parties are not the way to achieve and maintain a democracy. Germany was an electoral democracy and had elections when it elected Hitler as its Chancellor in 1933. His party got 43.9% of the vote in his last election, March 1933. Fearing the Communists, as Germany’s billionaires did, Hitler was appointed Chancellor and gradually seized more power and became widely popular as he reunited the German people by blaming Germany’s loss in WW1 on ”the Jews,” NOT on the billionaires nor on their Generals. In Parliamentary systems such as Germany, it is common for the head-of-state to get only a plurality not a majority of the vote. It’s still called ‘a democracy.’ But it isn’t any more of a democracy than America’s system is. On November 7th, I headlined “America’s founders warned against political parties. They were right.”, and documented that ONLY a lottery-based system, no election-based one, can achieve an authentic democracy, which is to say, a Government whose policy-priorities are the same as those of the general public, INSTEAD of of the political donors — ultimately of just the billionaires (the few people who can compete in political contests of, actually: Which group of billionaires can fool the most voters?).
What needs to be regime-changed is not any of the countries that America’s billionaires want to add to their global empire, but is instead their U.S. regime itself, and it could be done simply by adding one Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
—————
Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.
Citizens United was arguably the worst Supreme Court decision in American history. Politics has become a spectator sport in which billionaires compete against billionaires, and public opinion is bought. All legislation benefits only the top one percent.
"What needs to be regime-changed is not any of the countries that America’s billionaires want to add to their global empire, but is instead their U.S. regime itself, and it could be done simply by adding one Amendment to the U.S. Constitution."
There is nothing simple about adding an Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would eliminate the Deep State. That will never be done peacefully!