The real reason Trump's poll numbers are 'in the toilet'

The sensational headlines are all over the place: "Trump job approval drops to 37%" (CNN); "Donald Trump's approval rating has hit a new low" (Forbes); and don't forget the elegant "Donald Trump's approval rating is in the toilet" (Huffington Post).

First, let's clarify that not all the polls show President Trump at "burn the house down" bad levels. Gallup does indeed have him at 37 percent approval which is not only dangerously low for any president at any time, but is shocking for a president in his first 100 days. By contrast, Trump is at 49 percent approval in the Rasmussen poll. That's better of course, but still historically low for a new president.

The bottom line is that Trump's poll numbers are weak. And while he weathered the election storm despite one bad poll result after another, forwarding his agenda will be much harder to achieve unless he stops the approval poll bleeding. So, here are some suggestions for President Trump and his team to win back the momentum:

1) Don't stop tweeting, just tweet a bit differently

Let's not beat around the bush, much of President Trump's recent slide in the polls is because of this now-infamous early Saturday morning tweet from March 4th.

Tweet

The conventional wisdom about President Trump's accusation that President Obama wiretapped Trump Tower is that the president should never have discussed the issue at all and certainly should not have mentioned President Obama by name.

But that conventional wisdom is only half right. It comes from the same mistaken thinking that says President Trump should stop tweeting, period. With an established news media dead set against him, President Trump would be making a big mistake to suddenly go silent or even relatively silent on Twitter, where has a direct and unedited line of communication to the voters.

That said, President Trump could have avoided a lot of grief had he indeed refrained from using President Obama's name and simply tweeted about his anger upon seeing stories that some kind of government surveillance was used during the election and he wanted to get to the bottom of it.

Not only would such a tweet get the focus and attention he wanted, it would have been based on an election narrative most of the news media and a lot of the public already took for granted.

Instead, the focus became all about the current president accusing his predecessor of a serious potential crime. That was the kind of ugly focus that turned the American people off. We like the idea of a president who wants to stop and get to the bottom of intrusive government surveillance. We don't like a president who seems all too focused on beating down his personal enemies.

2) Do some more TV interviews, just not on FOX

Speaking of personal friends and enemies, President Trump is starting to hurt himself by playing extreme favorites with FOX News. FOX News hasn't completely fawned over the president, but it's clearly more favorable to him than any other network. Here's the thing: FOX will likely continue to be that way whether President Trump gives it a lot of exclusive interviews or not.

Instead, President Trump should try to revisit the success he enjoyed after he did his first post-election TV interview on 60 Minutes. As combative as he can be on Twitter and at rallies, in one-on-one interviews President Trump is more agreeable and even likable.

It's time for him to make a trip back to a non-cable outlet like the Today Show or even a prime time special with someone like Diane Sawyer. His fans will follow him to those networks and it will give reasonable moderates or even some anti-Trumpers a chance to hear his side of the story in a different venue.

3) Figure out why your supporters are embarrassed

And the final piece of advice for the White House team is to remember their current reality. There's a reason why President Trump does so much better in all-automated phone polls like Rasmussen Reports than polls that use live human pollsters. That reason is because it's still a little embarrassing for Trump supporters to come out publicly and say they voted for him and still support him. Once the Trump administration really examines the reason why that embarrassment persists, they'll have a much better chance of eradicating it.

And along the way, the president's poll numbers will go up too.

Commentary by Jake Novak, CNBC.com senior columnist. Follow him on Twitter @jakejakeny.

For more insight from CNBC contributors, follow @CNBCopinion on Twitter.