a new poll was released by Monmouth University today taking the pulse on the Public's feelings about many of the proposed policy changes likely to happen at the start of a second Trump term Mass deportations tariffs on foreign countries and the president-elect's plans to address inflation senior political correspondent David Cruz takes a look at the poll and what it signals about the mood of the people the mammoth poll out today suggests some positive news for the president-elect while mostly still split among party lines 53% of respondents in the National poll expressed optimism for the president elect's policy initiatives up slightly over the 50% just before he took office in 2017 the poll also found that when looking back at the job Trump did in his first term respondents appeared to remember that time more fondly than you might have expected 50% approve of the job that he did the first time he never got anywhere near a 50% approval rate uh when he was actually in office I mean he topped out in the mid-40s but it usually was in the low 40s uh this is the first time in Mama's polling when we've asked a question about Donald Trump's job performance either while he was in office after he was in office it's the first time that he's ever hit that 50% mark it may seem quaint oldfashioned but this is a honeymoon period this is what a honeymoon looks like it's when um a lot of the country wants to president to succeed wants things to move in the right direction and so what's good for the country is what's good for the president and so we're sort of all pulling in the same direction 97% of Republicans expressed optimism for the next four years compared to 10% of Democrats but coming off of an Administration whose main achievement was having to save the economy from collapse after an international pandemic Americans appear ready to hear someone tell them that just treading water isn't enough it's time for winning again all of these policies will help us rapidly defeat inflation create millions of new jobs and put money in the pockets of the hardworking families of our country pay off debt we're going to be paying off a tremendous amount of debt we're $36 trillion you don't want to be there and uh we're going to be using a lot of the money that we make we're going to be opening up a lot of businesses are going to be pouring in because of our tax policy but how the president keeps his promises and what the repercussions could be will also affect how Americans see Trump in just a few months time tariffs a popular Administration buzzword would cut both ways say Business Leaders here tariffs do lead to inflation tariffs do lead to cost increases and that hurts everybody not just businesses that hurts the consumers going to the grocery store that hurts people going out to eat that hurts every small business emic cold says the same is true of the potential impact of restrictive immigration policies something which sounds good to the president's base but would also have a negative impact on business immigration is critical to the economy just like free trade is good for the economy immigration is good for our economy and so anything that limits immigration could potentially limit the workforce that we have but Dem RS should be reading something into these numbers too says John Harmon of the African-American Chamber of Commerce of New Jersey he says Trump is getting the benefit of the doubt from some of the Democrats base and with good reason I think it's time for black people to come to the table and renegotiate what's in it for us because we have not yielded what was expected we received a lot of promises a lot of overtures and they were articulated rather clearly but the deliverables have not been realized if a poll is a snapshot in time this one shows a president elect in some surprisingly good light with his critics maybe in the picture but kind of blurry and in the background for now I'm David Cruz NJ Spotlight news