On Friday, before signing his massive domestic policy bill, President Donald Trump proclaimed at the White House that “it’s the most popular bill ever signed in the history of our country,” adding for emphasis that “this is the single most popular bill ever signed.”
That is an up-is-down reversal of reality.
The bill is wildly unpopular, poll after poll has found. While polls can be off, this bill wouldn’t be popular – let alone the most popular US bill ever signed – even with a massive and widespread polling error.
In a Fox News poll in mid-June, 59% of registered voters said they opposed the bill and 38% said they favored it, with another 3% saying they didn’t know. In a Quinnipiac University poll in late June, 55% of registered voters said they opposed the bill and 29% said they supported it, with another 16% not weighing in. In a Pew Research Center poll in early June, 49% of adults said they were opposed and 29% said they were in favor, with 21% unsure.
Reviewing these numbers and the similar findings of two other polls about the bill, CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten said on air on Monday: “You just never see numbers this poor. I have been trying to look through the history books to find if there was another piece of legislation that was on the verge of passing that was as unpopular as this one, and…I cannot find one.”
CNN senior reporter Aaron Blake reported June 20 that the polling numbers made the bill “more unpopular than any piece of major legislation passed since at least 1990, according to data crunched by George Washington University political science professor Chris Warshaw.” And in an analysis published Friday, before Trump spoke, data journalist G. Elliott Morris wrote, “On average across pollsters and methods, 31% of Americans support the One Big Beautiful Bill, while 54% oppose it. That net rating of -23 is, to put it mildly, absolutely abysmal.”
It’s possible that Trump has seen private polling that has found different numbers. And, of course, the popularity of legislation can improve after it passes and Americans feel its impacts; that’s what happened with Obamacare.
But if Trump has any evidence for his claim that this is the most popular bill in American history, he did not provide it on Friday.
The president also made other false claims in his White House remarks:
– A false claim that “we’ve delivered … no tax on Social Security for our great seniors.” The bill does not completely eliminate tax on Social Security; rather, it creates a temporary additional tax deduction of $6,000 per person age 65 and older every year from 2025 through 2028 (it’s a smaller deduction for individuals earning more than $75,000 per year). The White House has said that 88% of seniors will not pay tax on Social Security benefits with this additional deduction in place, up from 64% not paying tax on those benefits under current law, but even if the White House is right, the millions of seniors in the remaining 12% will still have to pay – and so will some Social Security recipients under the age of 65, who do not get this new deduction.
– A false claim, which Trump has made repeatedly, that President Joe Biden allowed in “21 million” migrants. Through December 2024, the last full month under Biden, the country had recorded under 11 million nationwide “encounters” with migrants during that administration, including millions who were rapidly expelled from the country. Even adding in so-called gotaways who evaded detection, estimated by House Republicans as being roughly 2.2 million, there’s no way the total is 21 million.