President Donald J. Trump appears to have gained modest ground with voters following his high-profile meeting with Vladimir V. Putin last week, even as critics derided the summit as light on substance and heavy on spectacle.
According to a new InsiderAdvantage poll conducted over the weekend, 54 percent of respondents said they approved of Trump’s job performance, while 44 percent disapproved and 2 percent remained undecided. The figure represents a four-point increase from July, when the same firm measured his approval at 50 percent amid the furor surrounding the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files.
The recent survey offers a comparatively rosier view of Trump’s standing than other national polls. A YouGov tracker released just weeks earlier found 57 percent of respondents dissatisfied with his presidency, with only 13 percent expressing a positive assessment of his record. Nate Silver, the polling analyst, has previously noted that InsiderAdvantage leaned slightly in Trump’s favor in surveys conducted during the 2024 campaign.
Still, the uptick is notable, given the absence of concrete progress at the summit. After three hours of talks, Trump secured no clear commitment from Mr. Putin on ending the war in Ukraine. Yet the images of the two leaders in dialogue appear to have resonated with segments of the American electorate.
Whether the boost lasts may depend on Trump’s next round of diplomacy. On Monday, he is expected to host Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, at the White House, alongside European leaders Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron, and Friedrich Merz. That meeting is already drawing scrutiny, as Trump’s previous encounter with Mr. Zelensky in February devolved into a sharp exchange. Then, Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance chastised the Ukrainian leader for what they described as an “entitled” posture toward Western allies.
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International observers condemned Trump’s tone, but domestically the incident barely dented his approval. An Emerson College survey conducted days later found his rating steady at 48 percent, with only a one-point rise in disapproval. By contrast, Mr. Zelensky’s standing among Ukrainians surged after the clash — jumping from 57 percent to 68 percent in polling by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology — as many citizens felt he had been disrespected by Washington and rallied to his side.
The episode mirrors earlier moments in Trump’s presidency when dramatic diplomatic gestures attracted global headlines but had muted effects on his popularity at home. His historic summit with Kim Jong-un in Singapore in 2018, for example, produced no significant shift in U.S. opinion polls.
For now, the InsiderAdvantage numbers suggest Trump has found a short-term lift from his latest round of statesmanship. Whether that bounce endures — or vanishes after his meeting with Zelensky and European leaders — will be the true measure of its political weight.