President Donald Trump won re-election with a big boost from younger men — but many of them are apparently already regretting their choice last November.
A new CNN poll found 40 percent of men younger than 35 approve of Trump's job performance and 60 percent disapprove, down from 44 percent approval and 54 percent disapproval in February. And 65 percent of men under 35 are dissatisfied with the government's handling of the Jeffery Epstein case, while only 10 percent are satisfied with the information that's been shared.
“You said you were going to show us (the Epstein files), now you’re just being the very thing you said you were going to end,” said Ben, a chemical worker from Battle Creek, Michigan, who asked CNN not to use his last name. “Not as transparent as what I thought.”
Trump issued a lengthy Truth Social post over the weekend calling on his followers to drop their outrage over the Epstein matter, which left many supporters feeling insulted. Ben told CNN that he now regretted his vote.
If given a chance to go back to November, Ben said, "Maybe I just wouldn’t vote,” he said.
Ben attended a standup comedy performance by Theo Von, who helped cement support from younger men with a viral podcast interview of Trump last August. The comedian has since become a vocal critic of the president who invited him to the VIP section at his inauguration.
“You just really start to feel very disillusioned pretty quickly,” Von said in a recent podcast.
Another fan, 21-year-old autoworker Justin Centers, expressed dissatisfaction with his first-ever presidential vote.
“Completely being honest, I’m a little iffy now,” said Centers, who lives in the Detroit suburbs. “One of the things I primarily voted for was ‘No new wars,’ and unfortunately, that has been a big lie to my face. So, it’s extremely disappointing to see that.”
Other Trump-backing Von fans voiced skepticism for Trump's $5 trillion tax-and-spending package, but not all of them were jumping off board just yet.
“When you go into your first year, you’re not going to do what everybody wanted you to at the beginning, because there are going to be things that you have to retract on, that you have to take care of,” said Tyler Goldsmith, a 32-year-old lawn-care business owner from Constantine, Michigan.
The softening support for the president among younger men should theoretically provide an opening for Democrats to scoop them up in next year's midterm elections, but pollsters are skeptical.
“When a voter has just gone a different direction, they’re the ones that can go back the other way,” said David Winston, a veteran Republican pollster. "They just made a decision and now they’re going to see if that worked or it didn’t work. The idea that they could bounce back to Democrats is certainly very possible. Having said that, they left for a reason.”
Centers, the autoworker from suburban Detroit, told CNN he's concerned that Trump's position on electric vehicles will hurt the value of his recently purchased Tesla, and the expectant father said he's worried that the economy isn't improving – but he said he'd unlikely to vote Democratic.
“A lot of stuff I identify with falls along the conservative agenda,” he said.
