University of Virginia Center for Politics director Larry Sabato appeared on “The Jim Acosta Show” on Monday with approximately 80 days remaining before the November midterms and delivered an assessment of Trump’s historical standing that Jim Acosta found striking enough to respond to with a single word. “You’re going to have Donald Trump in last place,” Sabato said. “Not second to last, not third to last, last place for all time.” Acosta said “Wow.” The prediction comes from a man whose Crystal Ball has been one of the most closely watched election forecasting tools in American politics for decades, applied not to an election but to the verdict of historians.
Sabato’s basis for the ranking is the survey of presidential scholars that is conducted after each presidency, in which historians and political scientists rank American presidents on dimensions including leadership, moral authority, crisis management, economic management, and international relations. The rankings consistently cluster in ways that put Lincoln, Washington, and FDR at the top, that place Buchanan, Pierce, and Andrew Johnson at the bottom, and that put the modern presidents in contested middle positions that shift based on when the survey is conducted and what has happened since the previous survey. Richard Nixon, who resigned in disgrace, typically ranks in the lower third. Sabato argues Trump will rank below him.
“Nixon really was almost, not completely, a choir boy compared to Donald Trump,” Sabato said on the show. He placed Warren Harding and Ulysses S. Grant in the conversation for lowest rankings, noting that Grant presided over a corrupt administration, before arguing that Trump’s record separates him from even those candidates for historical ignominy. The specific dimensions on which Sabato’s argument rests include the January 6 events, the Iran war and its management, the approval rating trajectory, the relationship with constitutional norms, and the legal jeopardy the administration has generated across multiple domains simultaneously.
Trump’s approval rating sits at 33 percent in the latest Economist/YouGov poll, confirmed in Raw Story’s reporting. That is the lowest of either of his terms. It is also the lowest approval rating for any president at a comparable point in his administration in the polling era. For context: Biden’s approval was in the low 40s when his party lost the House in 2022. Obama’s was in the mid-40s when his party lost the House in 2010. George W. Bush’s had declined to the mid-30s by November 2006 when his party lost both chambers. Trump is at 33 with 80 days to go, which is the number that Sabato is citing when he says the midterm will be rough for Republicans.
The press conference on Monday produced a separate data point for the historical record. When CNN reporter Kristen Holmes asked a question at the White House briefing, Trump told her: “Be quiet! You’re a loud, boisterous person. Be quiet! You’re a fake reporter, and you report fake news.” Holmes had been asking about the USS Lincoln sailors who were allegedly trapped aboard a naval vessel. Trump denied the story was real. Raw Story’s reporting notes that Trump “tantrums at yet another female reporter,” Kristen Holmes being among the most prominent female reporters who cover the White House and who Trump has singled out for public dressing-down on multiple occasions. The specific incident added to a pattern of press conference behavior that historians will have documentation of.
Sabato has been a frequent Trump critic. He has predicted rough midterms for Republicans and has seen those predictions move toward confirmation as the approval numbers have declined and the Crystal Ball has shifted Senate and House seat ratings toward Democrats across the country. His prediction that Trump will rank last among all American presidents is not a neutral assessment. It is also not an unusual assessment among historians who are not Sabato, many of whom have published comparable views in academic and public forums since January 6. The question Sabato is answering is not whether historians will be harsh but how harsh, and his answer is: harshest of all.
The midterms are in 80 days. The approval is 33 percent. The historian survey comes later.
When the most prominent election forecaster in the country predicts the sitting president will rank last in history 80 days before the midterms, and the president responds to a female reporter’s question by telling her to be quiet and calling her fake news, what exactly is the historical record being written?
Sources
Raw Story: ‘Wow’: Jim Acosta jolted by expert’s grim prediction for Trump
