Trump Starts Underwater In Initial Venezuela Poll, US Oil Industry Not Rushing To Return, Chaos Reigns This Morning

This week Democrats must remind the world that we are still fighting for freedom, democracy, and rule of law here and everywhere.....
Simon Rosenberg
Jan 04, 2026

Morning all. We got our first poll on Trump’s claim of seizing Venezuela and like almost every other major initiative of this first year he starts out underwater:




As you can see there are still many, 25% of adults, who, unsurprisingly, have not yet made up their minds as we are in the early days of whatever the f-ck is happening in Venezuela right now. I think it is unlikely that Trump gets a rally around the flag boost for his seizing of Maduro for 1) it didn’t happen with his invasion of cities or his attack on Iran 2) the country just isn’t on board some kind of extended military campaign in Venezuela 3) this morning it increasingly feels like Trump has no real plan for what comes next in Venezuela, and like Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, thought the government would just fall and he could waltz into the Capital.

We also must remember that with the flood of Epstein releases just before the holidays Trump’s job approval began falling again, and it was clear he needed to do something dramatic to change the national narrative. Here is what I wrote on December 23rd -

Over the past weeks here in the US Trump had seen a 2-5 point rise from his November lows in some reliable polls. But I am now wondering whether the Epstein scandal, his disturbing speech to the nation last week, and all this other recent ugliness has started to drag him back down again. We got these two polls yesterday each with interviews from last week (Trump job approval) that are among the worst he’s seen this year:

36%-59% (-23) Gallup

35%-62% (-27) ARG

The just released Economist/YouGov weekly track found Trump dropping 6 points from last week - a huge drop - from 42%-54% (-12) to 39%-57% (-18). This is one point from Trump’s lowest reading this year.

This morning’s Civiqs daily track, which does not often see sharp movements, found Trump dropping 2 points and also coming in at 39%-57% (-18). This is the lowest reading of the year for Trump in this poll.

Taken together the last few days of polling for Trump have been arguably his worst set of polls this year. Movement against him, new lows, closing 2025 ugly the orange guy is!

Continued https://open.substack.com/pub/simonwdc/p/trump-starts-underwater-in-initial