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\n\tIf you\u2019re an optimistic person, 33 percent can look pretty good. If you\u2019re buying a raffle ticket, say, a one in three chance to win is incredible. Unfortunately for the GOP, Donald Trump<\/a> isn\u2019t buying raffle tickets.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tA new poll from Reuters and Ipsos released on Tuesday<\/a> showed that Trump\u2019s approval rating had bottomed out at 33 percent. At the end of July, Trump was hovering around that mark in the low 30s<\/a>, meaning that American dissatisfaction with his performance hasn\u2019t improved in weeks.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThe chief reason is clear: it\u2019s the Iran war<\/a>. Reuters found that 80 percent of American adults think the war will go on for a long time, which means that almost no one is buying Trump\u2019s repeated insistences that the war will soon end in a total U.S. victory.<\/a> That number includes 71 percent of Republicans, even, that think we\u2019re in for a long, drawn-out conflict.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tAnd the costs of that conflict are only getting more and more apparent for the average American. The national average for a gallon of gas is $4.10, something that most Americans are feeling on a daily basis. That pressure is so acute that Trump himself had to address it \u2013 in the most defiant, Trumpian possible way.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cFor you to pay a tiny little bit more for your gasoline, just remember you\u2019re doing it so that a very evil country cannot have\u2026 a nuclear weapon,\u201d Trump said at an event in Garden City, New Jersey<\/a>. \u201cYou\u2019re at $4\u2026 It\u2019s ok\u2026 I will never apologize, I did the right thing.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThat\u2019s not exactly a convincing message to voters. While Trump claims the Iran war is going well \u2013 at times in this speech referring to the U.S. naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz as \u201ca wall of steel\u201d \u2013 the U.S. has, in reality, suffered tactical defeat after defeat. We\u2019ve exhausted critical reserves of both defensive and offensive munitions<\/a>, re-created a much stupider version of the Tanker War of the late 1980s<\/a>, and put our sailors in such awful conditions that they are literally jumping overboard to escape their interminable deployments<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n