I should start out by clarifying that headline. When I say "Trump Is Getting Weaker," I am not referring to the news today that Donald Trump is suffering from problems with the veins in his legs and the bruising on his hands. I speak not of physical weakness, but instead of political weakness. And I'm going to mostly set aside the continuing internecine battle among Republicans over the Jeffrey Epstein files as well, since although the issue has been making headlines for weeks now, there is something much more interesting going on in the background. While Trump flails around desperately trying to somehow pin all the blame over the Epstein files cover-up on Democrats (which isn't convincing anyone), the widening schism within his own party has happened independently from some much larger trends. Democrats are gleefully trolling Trump and the Republicans over the Epstein files fiasco, but no matter what the upshot of it all turns out to be, the fact will remain that Trump is getting a whole lot weaker on pretty much every other issue under the sun. Sooner or later, Democrats should start making some political hay out of this weakness (assumably, after the Epstein files tempest blows over).

First, let's look at the toplines. Public opinion polling on Trump has been heading pretty steadily downward since he took office. He was never very popular to begin with, starting his second term just barely above 50 percent job approval. Since then, he's never hit majority job approval again in the polling aggregates.

With the demise of FiveThirtyEight, I've been watching four separate sites that provide "poll of polls" averages of recent public opinion surveys: RealClearPolitics, G. Elliott Morris, Nate Silver, and the New York Times. All have different methodologies for calculating their rolling averages, so checking them all gives a sort of meta-overview of where things stand. Here are Trump's current job approval averages, according to all four sites:

[RCP] -- 45.7 percent approval, 51.2 percent disapproval -- net: (-5.5 percent)

[GEM] -- 42.6, 53.5 -- (-10.9)

[NS] -- 43.8, 52.7 -- (-8.9)

[NYT] -- 44, 52 -- (-8)

The New York Times site only reports whole numbers, I should mention. Averaging all four of these out leaves Trump a little more than eight points underwater, which sounds about right. This isn't quite as bad as his numbers were in his first term, but it is worse than every other recent president by far (who were all still well above water at this point in their terms).

The interesting thing, however, isn't just the topline numbers. It is how far Trump has fallen on individual issues -- including the ones that he campaigned heavily on. Ask most political pundits why Trump won last year and they'll cite (among other factors) a few big issues: the economy, inflation, and immigration. So let's check in to see how Trump is doing on those things, shall we?

On the economy, Trump is down by double digits. RCP puts him at 11.4 percent points underwater (42.9 approval to 54.3 disapproval). GEM puts him down by 12.8 points, and NS shows Trump 14.1 points down (the New York Times page does not break polls down by issue).

Inflation is the worst issue for Trump by far. RCP shows Trump only has 39.3 percent approval on inflation, with 59.5 percent disapproving, a net of a whopping 20.2 points underwater. The others are even worse -- GEM has Trump down 22.0 points, while NS has him 25.5 points below the waves (with only 34.2 percent support).

The real turnaround in the past month or so has been on immigration, though. Trump's bad numbers on the economy and inflation began soon after he took office and have gotten pretty steadily worse, but for much of his second term Trump has actually charted fairly good numbers on immigration -- at several points early in his term topping a 10-point gap of approval (10-plus points more approval than disapproval). This has collapsed, over the past month.

RCP has been somewhat dishonest in calculating this number, since they are still including a poll taken in May, where Trump was up a healthy 14 points on immigration (56-42). Even with this rather large thumb on the scale, they still report that Trump is now 3.5 points underwater on immigration. If you remove that oldest data point from the aggregate, however, you wind up with Trump being down 5.4 points, which is closer to the current reality. A Quinnipiac poll just released two days ago shows Trump down by 15 points (40-55). The other two aggregate sites (using more honest methodology) show Trump down by 6.3 points (GEM) and 7.4 percent (NS).

This is supposed to be Trump's strongest issue. But the American public is now seeing the reality rather than the campaign promises, and they are increasingly turning against Trump's "Round 'em all up!" tactics. Trump assured everyone that he would be starting by deporting all the "violent criminal" immigrants, but when it turned out there simply weren't enough of them to boost his deportation numbers to the level that Stephen Miller wanted to see, they began indiscriminate raids on workplaces, schools, courthouses, and places where immigrants gather (like Home Depot parking lots). The scenes of masked and unmarked secret police dressed in full battle gear brutally going after anyone they can snatch up are turning the tide of public opinion against Trump's grand immigration plans.

It's worth pointing out that this was Trump's only remaining issue where the public was behind him (right up until last month). Now that it too has fallen underwater with the public, Trump is unpopular on every single issue polled right now.

This is even now having the opposite effect that Trump probably intended. A recent Gallup poll was released last Friday which showed an all-time record high of Americans who think immigration is good for the country:

The finding from the Gallup survey that 79 percent of Americans consider immigration a "good thing" was one of multiple notable takeaways from the poll. It also showed that 30 percent of Americans said immigration should be decreased, a sharp decline from 55 percent in 2024.

. . .

The Trump administration has celebrated the strides it has made in securing the border, but the poll found Americans dislike Trump's handling of the issue by a wide margin. Sixty-two percent gave him negative marks on how he has managed immigration, while 35 percent graded him positively.

That's a whopping 27 points underwater, on what was supposed to be Trump's signature issue. Which is why the conclusion that Trump is getting politically weaker is inescapable, at this point.

So while I understand the Democratic impulse to hit Trump hard on the Epstein files fiasco right now (indeed, I admit that I have been gleefully joining in this effort myself), they should also realize that whenever the Epstein dust clears, there are other possibly more productive ways of scoring political points off of Trump. The Epstein thing is important to a relatively small slice of Trump supporters (although what makes it irresistible for Democrats is the fact that this small slice is actually the hardest of the hardcore MAGA types). There are much larger swaths of the public who may have voted for Trump who are now experiencing buyer's remorse. Trump promised to cut inflation -- but prices keep going up and the inflation rate is now rising again, reflecting Trump's pointless trade war tariff tactics. Trump promised the economy would boom, but plenty of people are still being left behind. And while Trump has kept his promise on closing the southern border, the rest of his immigration policy has been exposed for what it truly is -- and it is not what Trump promised everyone it would be. These are all issues which have a much wider appeal (politically-speaking) than Jeffrey Epstein's client list. Over the summer congressional break, Democrats would benefit from reminding the public about the vast difference between what Trump promised he'd do and what is actually happening. Because right now, Trump is at the weakest point politically in his entire second term. Which is a huge political opening for the Democrats to capitalize on.

Trump is getting weaker. So hit him hard: on the economy, on inflation, and (now) also on immigration. Democrats need to strike while the iron is hot.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant