Trump's favorite CNN analyst reports a 61-point economic reversal

Harry Enten, the CNN data analyst Donald Trump singled out two weeks ago as the best on the network, used a Labor Day broadcast to report that the president's economic standing among full-time workers had swung 61 points against him since the 2024 campaign.

Enten presented the figures Monday on CNN News Central, telling anchor John Berman that Trump's economic approval among the employed had done a complete reversal. During the 2024 campaign, full-time workers trusted Trump over Kamala Harris on the economy by 20 points, a margin Enten described as a major strength at the time. His net economic approval rating with the same group now sits 41 points underwater.

The critique arrived about two weeks after Trump praised Enten in a Truth Social post that otherwise attacked his network. On August 29 the president wrote that CNN was in a "DEATH SPIRAL" and that "Literally, nobody is watching," lumping in the rebranded MS NOW, before singling out one exception, "The best person on CNN is Pollster Harry Enten."

The numbers behind the reversal

Trump's standing on the economy had been a strength during the 2024 race, Enten said, when employed voters trusted him over Harris by a wide margin. The turn since then, he told Berman, was total, a change he described on air as "just a complete 180." The president's numbers, he added, had grown considerably worse.

Worker views of the job market moved the same direction. In the final quarter of 2024, 54 percent of people in the workforce said it was a bad time to find a job, Enten said. By the second quarter of 2026, that figure had climbed to 72 percent, a rise of 18 points.

The share of workers who called it a good time to find a job fell over the same stretch, from 46 percent to 28 percent, the mirror image of the rise in pessimism. Put simply, Enten said, people in the workforce do not think it is a good time to find a quality job, and that bad number has only climbed higher quarter after quarter.

It was not a happy Labor Day for the president, Enten said, when it came to how the employed view him on the economy.

Sentiment, not the jobs number

The pessimism held even after the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the economy added 162,000 jobs in August, a figure that surprised Berman on air. The point was about sentiment rather than the hiring number, the anchor said, "and that's not good." Sentiment, Enten replied, is what drives things heading into an election two months away.

To describe the net approval figure, Enten said it had sunk "down into the Hudson River."

He folded the 2024 trust advantage and the current deficit into a single figure, a 61-point move he called "a switcheroo in the wrong direction" on the holiday. The two are different measures, one a margin over a named opponent and the other an approval rating. These numbers, he said, had become considerably worse under Trump, and the trend showed no sign of easing.

Enten cast the shift as unwelcome news for Trump and Republicans ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, now roughly two months away.

How Trump came to praise him

Trump's endorsement marked a departure from a decade of attacks on the network. For years he has branded CNN "FAKE NEWS," tagged it #FraudNewsCNN, dubbed Jake Tapper "Fake Tapper" and repeatedly sparred with anchor Kaitlan Collins. The August post was also an admission that a president who tells Americans not to watch CNN does himself.

So those who are in the workforce, simply put, do not think it is a good time to find a quality job, and that bad number has only climbed ever higher.

The praise had a clear trigger. Days before the post, Enten had presented a poll showing Trump remains dominant inside his own party, with 53 percent of Republican respondents naming him the president they admire most. Ronald Reagan drew 18 percent in the same survey and Abraham Lincoln, ranked by many historians as the greatest president, drew 8 percent.

Trump recast that finding, claiming Enten had shown him to be six times more popular than Lincoln, George Washington or any other president. The comparison ran among Republican respondents only, and Trump led Reagan, the second choice, by about three to one rather than outpacing every president who ever served. Enten had delivered the numbers while appearing to stifle a smirk.

Enten's segments have often run against the president. In recent weeks he has shown Trump's push to rename Lake Ontario "Lake America" going nowhere, with searches for the lake's real name far outpacing the new one, reported that Americans are unhappy about his Washington renovation projects, and described his standing on gas prices as unpopular.

What it could mean in November

Full-time workers had been one of Trump's firmer groups on economic questions, and the reversal erodes that edge as the campaign begins. What matters going into the vote is how workers feel rather than a single month's hiring total, Enten said, and by that measure the president has lost ground he held only two years ago.

Trump may have his own stake in CNN's future. Paramount Skydance chief executive David Ellison signed a deal in February to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, which would bring CNN under his company. The merger, worth $110 billion including assumed debt, cleared the Justice Department in June before a dozen state attorneys general sued in July and froze it. Trial is set for March.

Ellison has cultivated a close relationship with Trump, the Daily Beast reported, which the outlet said added another layer to the president's sudden interest in who gets to stay on CNN's air. Trump closed his August post with an instruction to the network, "Don't fire him!"

Two weeks separated the compliment from the correction. On August 29 Trump vouched for the analyst, writing, "He's got Credibility," and saying CNN could be turned around with new leadership and anchors. On September 7 Enten used the next major news cycle to lay out one of his sharpest statistical cases against the president's economic record.

On air, Enten spends much of his time explaining why Trump's numbers are weak, a habit that predates the endorsement. The Labor Day analysis fit that record rather than breaking from it, and the president's praise had not softened the reading. If anything, the segment tracked the same downward line Enten had been drawing for weeks.

Trump, who is 80, has treated CNN as a brand worth saving even as he dismisses it. The network could be revived with new leadership and anchors, he wrote, because a "Great Brand can never truly be destroyed."

Where it stands

The White House has not commented on the segment.

Trump has not addressed the Labor Day figures publicly, and his praise of Enten stood as of the broadcast. His August post had asked CNN to keep the analyst on the air; two weekends later the analyst used that airtime to detail the president's slide with employed voters, the group he had counted on in 2024.

For now the arrangement holds. Trump keeps calling Enten the best voice on a network he calls a failure, and Enten keeps presenting data that cuts against the president's economic message.