Trump schedule today. S. Korea military training, Oman threat, Blanche
President Trump threatened Oman. He ordered a scale-back of joint military training in South Korea. Todd Blanche refused to promise to be independent.
President Donald Trump’s polling woes continue as he fell to a new record low since his return to the White House, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos survey, with only one in three Americans approving of his job performance.
The poll, released on Aug. 17, found that only 33% of Americans approved of Trump’s performance, down 2 percentage points from another Reuters/Ipsos poll from earlier this month.
Trump’s performance on the Aug. 17 poll marks the lowest approval rating the president has seen in Reuters/Ipsos tracking since his return to the White House in 2025. The numbers also tie Trump’s worst approval rating during his first term in office, in December 2017.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted Aug. 14-17 among 1,166 U.S. adults. The poll’s margin of error was plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Iran sinks Trump
The president’s continued slump in the polls comes as an overwhelming majority of Americans said they were concerned that the war on Iran would continue for an extended period of time.
According to Reuters, the ongoing war has paralyzed a fifth of the global oil trade, causing gas prices in the United States to shoot up. According to AAA, the average price of a gallon of gas sat at $4.06 on Aug. 17, an increase of nearly a dollar compared to the $3.13 per gallon recorded on the same date in 2025.
In the Aug. 17 poll, 80% of Americans, including 87% of Democrats and 71% of Republicans, believed the U.S. involvement with Iran would continue for an “extended period of time.”
Americans’ pessimism about an end to the war comes as Trump threatened to bomb Oman, an ally of the United States, if its negotiations with Iran over the Strait of Hormuz interfere with U.S. efforts to reach a peace deal with Tehran.
What do polling averages show?
While individual polls vary, major polling averages continue to show Trump in negative territory overall:
USA TODAY’s Kinsey Crowley contributed to this report.
Fernando Cervantes Jr. is a trending news reporter for USA TODAY. Reach him at fernando.cervantes@usatodayco.com and follow him on X @fern_cerv_.