What do swing voters want? From the Politics Desk

Welcome to the online version of From the Politics Desk, an evening newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the White House, Capitol Hill and the campaign trail.

Happy Friday! Today, politics reporters Bridget Bowman and Dylan Ebs talk with eight swing voters to get their thoughts on the state of Trump’s second term and the big issues facing the country. Then, Kristen Welker raises a question Trump had tiptoed around in the past: Is this his economy now?

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— Scott Bland

Trump’s tariffs face another inflection point, and a court test

By Bridget Bowman and Dylan Ebs

Ray, a New York voter in his mid-30s, backed Donald Trump last year after having voted for Joe Biden in 2020, pointing to Trump’s pledges to boost the economy. Now, he is not happy with the results on all of those pledges.

“President Trump has made a lot of promises that he’s not really cashing out,” Ray said.

But Scott, a 29-year-old Missourian who also flipped from Biden in 2020 to Trump in 2024, said he’s “happy” with Trump’s presidency so far.

“In general, he’s keeping his promises,” Scott said.

The two men’s opposing views of Trump’s presidency underscore the wide range of opinions among swing voters who helped return Trump to the White House — and who may hold the key to the results of future elections, too.

Both men were among eight voters who spoke to NBC News again in recent days after having detailed their hopes for the Trump administration back in January. NBC News is not using the last names of some of the eight voters to allow them to speak more freely about national politics.

These voters, who participated in the final NBC News poll of the 2024 election and backed Trump after supporting Biden or not voting in 2020, were largely optimistic that a second Trump presidency would bring about change, especially on the economy and immigration issues.

Now, they’re split on Trump’s presidency.

Four of the recontacted respondents were happy with Trump’s performance so far, while two offered more mixed reviews and two disapproved of his first six months back in office. (The 10 other voters who participated in January were not reachable or declined interviews.)

Overall, public opinion polls have shown Trump’s approval rating declining since he took office (more on that below), though not as far as at this point in his first term. And critically, from a political perspective, voters may have negative opinions of Trump’s handling of the economy, for example, but be split on the question of which party would handle the issue better.

Read more from the eight voters here →

Is this Trump’s economy now?

Analysis by Kristen Welker

President Donald Trump has acknowledged that economic concerns, especially around high prices, propelled him to another term in the White House. And the latest jobs report, released Friday, along with more moves on tariffs raise the question of whether the president owns this economy now that he’s six months into his second term — the good, the bad and everything in between.

When I asked Trump back in May, during an appearance on “Meet the Press,” if this was now the Trump economy, he told me: “It partially is right now. And I really mean this. I think the good parts are the Trump economy and the bad parts are the Biden economy because he’s done a terrible job.”

On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released a jobs report showing the U.S. added 73,000 new jobs in July while revising gains in recent months, signaling slower-than-expected job growth.

(Trump responded by firing the BLS commissioner.)

And Trump imposed a new round of tariffs, some set to take effect next week, that formalized some recent trade agreements and levied higher tariff rates against trading partners that failed to strike deals with the U.S.

Trump has maintained that his tariffs will strengthen the economy, telling NBC News’ Garrett Haake in a phone interview last night, “We will be taking in hundreds of billions of dollars, and very quickly.”

The president dismissed concerns that his tariffs could cause prices to rise on some goods, telling Garrett, “The only price that’s spiked is the hundreds of billions of dollars coming in.”

But recent polling suggests that voters have soured on the president’s handling of the economy.

A Wall Street Journal poll released this week found a majority of voters (53%) disapproving of Trump’s handling of the economy, while 44% approved. A slightly higher share (57%) disapproved of his handling of tariffs, while 40% approved. The survey was conducted July 16-20 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.

We’ll delve into the economy and more on this Sunday’s “Meet the Press,” where we will be joined by Kevin Hassett, Director of the National Economic Council, and Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif.

That’s all From the Politics Desk for now. Today’s newsletter was compiled by Scott Bland and Dylan Ebs.

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