For the past decade, President Donald Trump has built a norm-defying political career upon persuasion and narrative control. When scandals loomed, he flooded the zone. When his approval ratings dipped, he changed the subject. When facts were inconvenient, he overwhelmed them with “alternative facts” (or, as the rest of us call them, lies). For years, he seemed to prove that controlling the story could matter more than reality itself.
Now, just over a year into his second term, that persuasion strategy is breaking down, and Trump is reaching for something else: coercion.
There is a standard practice in politics: Cite the polls you like and challenge the methodology of the ones you don’t. In one of his signature 2 a.m. social media rants, Trump proposed a different maxim: If you don’t like the poll, sue.
After The New York Times published a survey conducted with Siena University that showed his approval hovering around 40% — with majorities dissatisfied with the economy and the country’s direction — the president took to Truth Social to denounce the results as “fake” and “fraudulent.” He then announced that the poll itself would be folded into his ongoing lawsuit against the paper. According to Trump, measurement should now be considered misconduct.
In one of his signature 2 a.m. social media rants, Trump proposed a different maxim: If you don’t like the poll, sue.
On its face, this looks like familiar behavior. Trump has spent years attacking unfavorable coverage and threatening litigation against outlets that report stories he doesn’t like. But the context has changed for the bruised lame duck president, and that matters. He is not a candidate trying to steady his numbers ahead of an election. He is a second-term president with declining public support, a fractured coalition and no future campaigns left to organize incentives around. The old tools — spectacle, narrative dominance, relentless counterprogramming — are no longer producing the same results.
Earlier this week, Trump went so far as to blame his own communications team for Americans’ frustration with skyrocketing prices. “I mean … maybe you have bad public relations people, but we’re not getting it across,” the 79-year-old president whined. Despite the administration’s insistence that the current affordability crisis is a “hoax” made up by Democrats, the Times/Siena poll and others like it prove voters are no longer buying what Trump is selling.
Days later came the escalation: a legal threat aimed not at political enemies, but at the institutions documenting public dissatisfaction. The progression is telling. Persuasion failed, so the tactic shifted to force.
Political denial is hardly unique to Trump. Democrats have dismissed bad polling too. President Joe Biden did so repeatedly during the 2024 campaign, insisting that voters would eventually come around to embrace Bidenomics. But Biden merely waved away bad numbers — Trump is trying to punish the people who publish them. That difference matters. Trump is showing what leaders do when they no longer tolerate any constraints (even those of reality).
Suing over a poll does nothing to address the conditions that produced its results. A lawsuit won’t lower grocery prices, steady housing costs or improve consumer confidence — all while unnecessary global conflicts escalate.
The lawsuit is meant to change the incentives of the institutions that measure and report public opinion. It signals to pollsters, editors and newsrooms that publishing unwelcome information may come with legal and financial consequences. Trump has tested this approach before, suing newspapers, warning networks about interviews he dislikes and so on. Some organizations have resisted. Others have given in. But mounting a defense against even the most ridiculous lawsuits still costs money, time and emotional capital.
That is how coercion operates in systems that still formally protect speech: You can’t outlaw criticism, so you make it risky and costly. We are witnessing the political inevitability of a term-limited presidency in decline. Trump has lost his ability to move public opinion, but he still controls the machinery of government — lawyers, agencies and the power to make life difficult for critics. That is how coercion operates in systems that still formally protect speech: You can’t outlaw criticism, so you make it risky and costly. Trump once thrived in the chaos of permanent campaigning, redirecting attention and overwhelming naysayers. A second term offers no such escape hatch. There is no reset button, no coalition left to reassemble, no looming election to refocus the media. Dissatisfaction has become a fixed condition for Trump, not a messaging problem. It seems like even the increasingly confused Trump understands this, since he recently mused that the country “shouldn’t even have an election” in 2026 (a remark his staff hurriedly rebranded a “joke”). At the end of last year, his administration also released a controversial National Security Presidential Memorandum aiming to target and silence dissent. It’s the same Trump 2.0 strategy as suing over a poll: When public judgment turns hostile, the temptation is not to win it back, but to ban its expression at all. The president is threatening to sue over his bad polling because he can no longer reliably bend public perception to his will. That’s telling. Trump once treated reality as a marketing challenge. Now he treats it as a legal offense. His all-caps social media rants and bogus lawsuits don’t show confidence — they show fear that the party’s just about over.
Kaivan Shroff
Kaivan Shroff is a senior advisor to the Institute for Education and a political commentator. He previously served on the advisory board for Dream for America, a progressive Gen Z-led non-profit. He is an alumnus of the Hillary for America digital team, holds a joint degree from Harvard Law School and Harvard Kennedy School, an MBA from the Yale School of Management and a BA in Political Science from Brown University. 
