A 12-point rise in three months

The Washington Post-ABC poll's trump enrich himself poll finding sits at 66% of Americans who say Donald Trump is using the presidency to enrich himself, with 34% of Republicans agreeing. That is a 12-point jump from September 2025.

Approval at 33% as midterms near

The same poll puts Trump's approval rating at 33%, a new low ahead of November's midterm elections. He continues to crisscross the country as part of his campaign blitz for embattled Republicans. Trump is due in Kansas on Monday to stump on behalf of Roger Marshall, followed by events in North Carolina, South Carolina, Iowa, Florida, Georgia and Michigan.

Economy weighs on respondents

Trump returned to power in January 2025 and promised a "new golden age" for the US economy. The poll suggests voters are not persuaded:

• •48% say they are financially worse off than when Trump returned to office - the highest percentage saying this about any president in this series of polls since 1986.
• •75% rate conditions as either "not so good" or "poor".
• •37% of respondents said they trust Democrats more on the economy, compared with 28% who said they trust Republicans.

Doubts on press and elections

Two-thirds of respondents - 67% - also said Trump is not committed to protecting freedom of the press. The finding follows an effort to ban CNN, MS Now and Politico from the White House grounds; a federal judge has subsequently issued a preliminary injunction blocking the administration from enforcing the ban.

On elections, 61% of Americans said Trump is not committed to free and fair elections, up five percentage points compared to October 2025. That reading comes after the justice department sued California over citizenship status data for about 20,000 people the administration claimed to be non-citizens, without providing an explanation for how they created the list of names.