President Donald Trump’s approval rating sank to the lowest level of his current term, as Americans increasingly soured on his handling of the cost of living and an unpopular war with Iran, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll.
The four-day poll completed on Monday showed 34% of Americans approve of Trump’s performance in the White House, down from 36% in a prior Reuters/Ipsos survey, which was conducted from April 15 to 20.
Why so high? Well, when it comes to the economy it’s getting into unrecoverable territory:
His popularity has taken a beating since the U.S. and Israel launched a war against Iran on February 28 that has led to a surge in gasoline prices. Only 22% of poll respondents approved of Trump’s performance on the cost of living, down from 25% in the prior Reuters/Ipsos poll.
And guess what they’re talking about today?
Trump on the White House ballroom (February):
“We did this with no charge to the taxpayer whatsoever. This was all donations by friends of mine and people who love our country, love the White House.
If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer… And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please.”– Hannah Arendt
We happened to have a conversation with a workman yesterday which meandered into a political conversation. This nice young guy, Mexican American, obviously wasn’t particularly political and didn’t have strong view. But he said something that I think may be at the heart of a lot of what’s going on with people who aren’t as politically engaged as we are: “I just don’t know what to believe. I don’t know who to believe.”
In the past past busy people who weren’t particularly interested in politics and current events just didn’t have access to the information beyond their own local paper so they tended to go with whatever the authority figures in their community would tell them. Today, the problem is that there’s too much information and they are presented with a cacophony of opinions and noise. This has happened at the same time as we’ve seen a breakdown in government, religion, academia and even parental authority. Some people, naturally, are then drawn to someone they see as a strongman to fill that void. But I think there are many who are exactly like that young guy I spoke with yesterday.
I thought about all this when I read the big piece in the NY Times today (gift link) interviewing regretful Trump voters. They’re in transition, trying to make sense of it all and they are all at least somewhat aware of what’s happening in our politics and seem to be opening up to the idea that Trump is a con man. But the bigger question is what to do about the people like the young man I spoke to yesterday and I have absolutely no idea what to do about it.
NORAH O’DONNELL: What did security tell you about what may have been his motives?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, see, they– the part– the reason you have people like that is you have people doing No Kings. I’m not a king. What I am– if I was a king I wouldn’t be dealing with you. No, I’m not a king. I– I get– I– I don’t laugh. I don’t– I– I see these No Kings, which are funded just like the Southern Law was– funded– you saw all that? Southern Law is financing the KKK and lots of other radical, terrible groups. And then they go out and they say, “Oh, we’ve gotta stop the KKK.” And yet they give, you know, hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars.
NORAH O’DONNELL: They were –
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: It’s a total scam run by the Democrats. It shows you that– like Charlottesville. Charlottesville was all funded by the Southern Law. That was a Southern Law deal too. And it was done to make me look bad, and it turned out to be a total fake. It basically was– a rigged election.
This was a part of the rigging of the election. And that’s what you really should be doing. I mean, I hope one of your 60 Minute episodes, which really hasn’t changed very much for the last few years. I’m surprised.
Charlottesville was a hoax? Who knew? And it was part of rigging of the election. Hmmm. Charlottesville took place in 2017.
Trump’s always been a little bit scattered but if you think he would have said something that disjointed five or six years ago you need to go back and look. His mind is much more disordered and he gets worse when he’s stressed.
RESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, I’ve also– I’ve also won a lot of money from fake news media where they write falsely about me. And– not that I wanna sue people, ’cause I don’t. But I bring lawsuits against the fake news. I brought lawsuits against your network and you paid me $38 million because you did something that was so horrible with– Kamala.
You put an answer down that wasn’t responsive to the question because her answer– her real answer was so bad it was election-threatening. And– you paid me a lotta money. And you tried to pull one off. It was terrible. It was a terrible thing that you did.
They hid that Charlottesville drivel on his behalf. I guess he made his point.
Trump’s new overarching theory of everything is that any criticism or opposition to him is rigging the elections. How’s he going to carry that forward I wonder?
It looks like Donald Trump is taking on yet another side gig. In addition to his day jobs running the most powerful nation on earth, overseeing his family’s fortune and serving as general contractor for the rebuilding of the White House and Washington, D.C., he is taking on yet another full-time responsibility. The president plans to take over America’s worst airline, turn it around and sell it for a profit. If there’s a more perfect illustration of the Trump era, I don’t know what it would be.
Hemorrhaging cash and in bankruptcy court, Spirit Airlines is on the brink of liquidation. The nation’s largest budget airline has been struggling for years and has been forced to drastically downsize by selling planes and cutting routes. With the federal government reportedly close to stepping in with a $500 million bailout plan, Trump apparently wants to buy it outright and run it.
The president does, after all, have experience with bankrupt airlines. Nearly 40 years ago, he ran one into the ground. Between 1989 and 1992, he owned the Trump Shuttle, which ran routes between New York, Boston and Washington. He bought the fleet from Eastern Airlines as it was going out of business and immediately rebranded it from business-oriented flights to a luxury airline, retrofitting it with gold-plated fixtures in the lavatories and offering free champagne and steak dinners.
Trump Shuttle never turned a profit. His timing was bad, having bought an airline at a time when corporate customers were cutting back. And, by 1990, with America on the verge of the first Gulf War, jet fuel prices were through the roof. At the same time, Trump’s casinos were in trouble and his bankers were taking over his businesses in order to avoid personal bankruptcy. The airline defaulted on its debt in less than a year.
If you have a sense of deja vu, it’s understandable. Trump now wants another bite of that apple, this time on the American taxpayers’ dime. Much like his refurbishing of the White House and building the ballroom, which he and MAGA influencers are touting in the aftermath of Saturday’s shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, he is using the presidency to re-do his early failed career. Instead of investing in branded casinos, he and his family have joined the cryptocurrency craze and are raking in massive profits. As he said just the other day when quizzed about the soldier who was indicted for betting on the prediction market, “The whole world is a casino, it is what it is.”
Spirit Airlines has been in trouble ever since the pandemic and has filed for bankruptcy twice, most recently in August. Most analysts consider the company unsalvageable at this point, and even the Trump administration’s bailout plan, which has been in the works for a while, appears to be a bipartisan nonstarter. As Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., pointed out, “If Spirit’s creditors or other potential investors don’t think they can run it profitably coming out of its second bankruptcy in under two years, I doubt the U.S. Government can either.”
Sen. Ted Budd, R-N.C., added, “Americans shouldn’t be on the hook for another failing business as its competition thrives.” Across the aisle, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., wondered what the American people will get out of this, asking, “Will the failed airline executives be held accountable?” Even Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy sounded skeptical, telling Reuters, “What we don’t want to do is put good money after bad, and there’s been a lot of money thrown at Spirit, and they haven’t found their way into profitability. And so would we just forestall the inevitable and then own that?”
Well, yes. That’s the story of Donald Trump.
As the Bulwark’s Catherine Rampell noted, “this would not be the first time our president has replaced the invisible hand with his own grubby paws.” His “command-and-control, right-wing-socialism-style economic agenda” has already resulted in the government purchasing $21 billion worth of equity stakes in private companies including U.S. Steel, Intel and the mineral company M Materials. As Rampell pointed out, “if a President Bernie Sanders or AOC had attempted Trump-style market interventions (aggressive tariffs, attempted price controls, partial nationalization of private companies), Republican politicians would be screaming ‘Communism!’”
But Trump is just doing what he said he was going to do, which is to run the government like he runs his businesses — badly. The head of the allegedly free market GOP has no ideological qualms with his new model of privatizing the state while socializing the private sector.
It’s not that Trump is doing anything particularly unusual in bailing out a company, but such action is typically taken to protect an entire sector of the nation’s economy, or even the overall economy itself. (There is talk of using the Defense Protection Act for any takeover, but it would be tough to explain why Spirit Airlines is vital to national security.) The first bailout took place in 1792 when Alexander Hamilton saved the Bank of New York and the Bank of Maryland with funds from the U.S. Treasury. Throughout the 1800s and early 1900s, the federal government stepped in repeatedly during banking panics to stabilize the system.
But depending on your definition of “bailout,” things changed in the mid-20th century. The Great Depression saw more sophisticated economic theories that informed President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal policies, and a new paradigm emerged about government intervention in other industries to prevent collapse of entire sectors and ameliorate the human suffering caused by economic volatility. It has since been a non-stop source of controversy.
In 1971, Congress passed the Emergency Loan Guarantee Act, and its first recipient was defense contractor Lockheed, a move that sparked widespread protest that the company that had been more or less profiteering during the Vietnam War should be bailed out by taxpayers. Soon came the bail out of Chrysler, the entire savings and loan sector, and even New York City, with each drawing objections that were partisan or bipartisan depending on the objective.
The last 25 years have seen historic bailouts. After 9/11, the government stepped in to bolster the airline industry, and in 2008 it propped up a variety of industries and businesses during the Great Recession. Since that was largely caused by malfeasance on the part of many of the very entities being bailed out, dissent was widespread — especially when responsible executives and business leaders not only escaped accountability but ended up being rewarded with massive golden parachutes.
On the other hand, the biggest bailouts in American history came just over five years ago during the Covid-19 pandemic and spanned both Trump and Biden’s administrations, and they almost certainly saved the economy. In fact, Biden’s American Rescue Act engineered the so-called soft landing that prevented the nation from spiraling into a recession and made America’s recovery the envy of the world.
Just over a year into his second term, Trump has pretty much reversed those gains. America’s economy is teetering due to his obsession with unnecessary tariffs and the war he started in Iran for no good reason. Now he wants to reprise his early business failures by buying an airline in the middle of an oil shock that he caused. It doesn’t get any more Trumpian than that.
As Rampell archly observed, if he’s going to create a national airline, the least Trump could do is find one that isn’t a national joke. Other countries have flagship luxury airlines like Emirates, or excellent brands like Scandinavian Airlines. The U.S. could soon have the “universally detested Temu Greyhound of the Skies.”
Sadly, I’m afraid that’s the perfect metaphor for our time. Trump is running the country like a business all right — his own, which went bankrupt six times and ended up being nothing more than a celebrity brand propped by a reality television show. Welcome to America, Inc.
Somewhere in my dimming memory of high school, I recall a pep rally cheer that went:
Whomp ’em up! Side ‘o the head! I said, whomp ’em up side ‘o the head!
It comes to mind this morning in the context of predictions that those needing to brace for a womping are American drivers. Donald Trump’s periodic brags about ending the war he started Feb. 28 may sway oil markets momentarily. But a reckoning is on its way (Politico):
Supply of oil — especially in Europe and Asia — is dwindling and a price shock is coming, said Dan Pickering, chief investment officer at Pickering Energy Partners.
He said that when the summer driving season begins there will be another gas price shock that “hits people in the face.”
“There’s a day of reckoning coming,” he said. “It will be painful because I can tell you that the stock market’s ignoring this.”
The rubber will hit the road, in a manner of speaking, in just a few weeks.
Another spike in prices around Memorial Day could be a fatal blow to Republican chances for holding onto the House next year, as Americans’ confidence in the economy continues to drop.
Trump on Monday was reviewing Iran’s latest peace proposal, which arrived after he canceled his top negotiators’ planned trip to Pakistan for talks. He continues to maintain that a quick resolution to the war with an agreement to reopen the Strait of Hormuz is within reach.
Uh-huh.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz isn’t buying it. He told some secondary school students on Wednesday that “there is a sense that a whole nation is being humiliated by the Iranian leadership, particularly by these so-called Revolutionary Guards.”
No one needs it spelled out which nation Merz means, but what the hell (The New Republic):
“It is quite obvious that the Americans have absolutely no coherent strategy whatsoever,” Merz said to students in his home district of Marsberg. “And the fundamental problem with these kinds of conflicts is always the same: It is not enough to simply get yourself in—you must also figure out how to get yourself out.”
Trump had trouble getting himself out of the Hyatt ballroom on Saturday, even with lots of help.
Trump won’t be getting any help from Germany in exiting Iran:
“If I had known that this would go on for five or six weeks and keep getting worse, I would have made my point to him even more forcefully,” Merz said. Rising fuel prices as a result of the war are affecting economies all around the world, especially Germany, the leading economy in Europe, a point Merz stressed in his remarks.
“This war against Iran has a direct impact on our economic performance and must therefore be brought to an end as soon as possible,” Merz said.
Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz has given it the upper hand in the conflict with the U.S., and the world is noticing that Trump hasn’t produced any results from negotiations in Pakistan. The longer this conflict drags on, the worse it reflects on the president.
Trump’s disenchanted MAGA base will begin evaporating despite the intense gravity of his black-hole-like grip. All they need do is stay home in November.
Beltway press members continue to relive their WHCD trauma from Saturday night. Over and over again. They obsess over details that don’t matter, a reader laments, while Trump’s Iran war grinds on virtually wiped from the front pages and with the Epstein files a memory. Outside the Beltway, ordinary Americans are processing grinding trauma of another kind.
Gallup’s annual Economy and Personal Finance survey this morning reports that Americans instead obsess over the cost of living. The survey finds that 55% cite recent price increases which make it harder to maintain their standard of living:
Less than half continue to rate their financial situation as “excellent” or “good” (currently 46%), and more than a third call it “only fair” (35%). Relatively few say their situation is “poor” (19%).
The recent dip in people’s confidence about their finances contrasts with 2016 through 2021, when half or more typically rated their finances positively. Today’s readings are more in line with 2008-2015, although not quite as negative as the ones during and immediately after the Great Recession from 2009 to 2011, when about four in 10 were positive.
These sorts of numbers make Republicans’ prospects for November look even bleaker.
Americans’ financial outlook in 2026 is also historically poor, with a record 55% now saying their financial situation is getting worse. While similar to last year’s 53%, this is up from 47% in 2024 and marks the fifth consecutive year more Americans say their finances are worsening rather than improving.
The only similar multiyear period when the larger share felt their financial situation was worsening was during the Great Recession.
We know how badly the 2010 midterms went for Democrats. Republicans are looking at the same. That is, assuming Democrats don’t snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
For anecdotal evidence that MAGA Joe (with anger management issues) is feeling acute economic pain, review Sign Guy’s recent close encounters with men driven ape-shit by cost reminders.
There is a divide between the activist left and the Democratic establishment visible in the kinds of signs spotted at No Kings rallies. The signs are all about democracy, ICE, Trump, and the Iran war. The Democratic establishment wants to run on “kitchen table” issues. Somehow the party needs to keep activists engaged while campaigning on economic issues that ordinary voters vote on. Normies may care about those other things, but it’s issues closer to the grocery store and gas pump that drive them to the polls more than what’s happening in distant Iran or Minneapolis. Feeling poorer is pretty immediate.
Republicans will stoke fear like it’s going out of style, of course. The last thing they want is to draw attention to an economy the Trump Gang torpedoed like an Iranian frigate.
Elections are about whom you trust to have your back, about the answer to “Is this person on the ballot like me?” Voters need to feel Democrats have their backs more than Trump and his billionaire friends. Stay out of the sandbox. First make sure voters feel seen.
As you know, ICE has a bit of a reputation problem in that the entire country is outraged by its thuggish behavior and excessive spending. Donald Trump is determined to change that once and for all and he’s come up with a comprehensive plan to reform the agency. Well, actually not:
President Trump on Sunday endorsed the idea of changing the name of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to National Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which would give the agency the acronym NICE.
The idea was promoted by conservative influencer Alyssa Marie last month.
“I want Trump to change ICE to NICE (National Immigration and Customs Enforcement) so the media has to say NICE agents all day everyday,” Marie wrote in a March post on social platform X.
Late Sunday evening, the president publicly endorsed the switch.
Now, according to the law, Trump can’t just do this because changing the name of an agency requires legislation but Trump has shown that we don’t need no stinkin’ rule-o’ law having unilaterally changed the Department of Defense into the Department of War (just in time to start a couple.) So I fully expect he’ll do it.
Blanche: "Many people in this room have done it as well. They're just as guilty as a lot of people on X. When you have reporters, when you have media just being overly critical and calling the president horrible names for no reason and without evidence, it shouldn't surprise us… pic.twitter.com/3QXVKZ9l6X
That may be the most grotesque statement coming from an Attorney general I’ve ever heard. he’s making Bondi look like a straight arrow by comparison. He is a dangerous man.
The American people and the press have a right to criticize our president all we want, and even “call him horrible names for no reason.” It’s called freedom of speech you cretin. This guy is worse than I originally thought although I should never assume anything but the worst with these people.
Blanche also extolled the virtues of the Big Beautiful Ballroom which is so far out of his lane as to be over a cliff. But then he is now the Justice Department’s acting head cheerleader as well as Attorney General, working overtime to prove to Dear Leader that he is deserving of the top stop permanently.
Paul Waldman ably dispatched that fatuous nonsense in a great piece at Public Notice today. An excerpt:
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has sprung into action. He sent a letter Sunday to the lawyer representing the National Trust for Historic Preservation, demanding that the group drop its lawsuit challenging the way the ballroom steamrolled over the normal process for such projects.
“Your lawsuit puts the lives of the President, his family, and his staff at grave risk,” Blanche wrote.
How we survived this long as a country without it is hard to fathom; the memory of the Founding Fathers will forever be tainted by their failure to include in the Constitution a ballroom provision.
“Fight! Fight! Fight!”
If you asked Trump and his movement to select one image to encapsulate everything important about him and his movement, it would be the photograph taken as he was led away from the stage in Butler, blood streaming down his face from a nick to his ear produced by the would-be assassin’s near miss.
Ever the showman, in that moment Trump knew all the cameras were on him, and he stopped to raise his fist to the crowd and shout (or at least mouth; the audio is unclear): “Fight! Fight! Fight!”
It’s impossible not to think of that image after Saturday, even if Trump’s exit from the dinner was rather less vigorous (he tripped and fell as Secret Service agents bodied him from the dais).
Immediately after Butler — and ever since — Trump and his supporters put that image everywhere. It hangs, poster-sized, in the Grand Foyer of the White House. The Treasury Department is considering putting it on a commemorative coin, without the blood but with the words “FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT” around the perimeter. You can buy a “Fight Fight Fight” Trump-branded watch for $499, with payment accepted in the president’s now nearly worthless meme coin.
The message of “Fight! Fight! Fight!” is not that political violence has become a national crisis, or even that it is wrong. Speaking to reporters after returning to the White House on Saturday evening, Trump himself didn’t say so; instead he characterized this latest incident as one more testament to his greatness.
“I’ve studied assassinations, and I must tell you, the most impactful people, the people that do the most … they’re the ones that they go after,” he said. “And I hate to say I’m honored by that, but I’ve done a lot.”
The message of “Fight! Fight! Fight!” is that violence must be met with more violence, and the moral valence of that violence is solely determined by the political affiliation of the perpetrators and victims.
Liberals being targeted is either no big deal or the subject of comedy. And then there’s this:
Violence committed by MAGA itself, on the other hand, is heroic. The January 6 insurrectionists all get pardons, their attempt to overthrow the government recast as a patriotic “day of love.” Kyle Rittenhouse, who killed two people and wounded a third in Kenosha, is invited to Mar-a-Lago and held up as an example for others to emulate. An army of masked thugs is sent into every corner of America and given free rein to treat those they encounter with maximum brutality. And when some of those thugs gun down Renée Good and then Alex Pretti in the street for the crime of standing up for their neighbors, the immediate response from the administration, before the details are known, is to call the killings not regrettable but the brave actions of heroes.
The idea that violence is good when directed at those we hold in contempt is a signature of this administration, at home and abroad. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth literally prays to God for “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy,” and seems to take an almost erotic thrill at the killing, whether those being ripped to pieces by American missiles are Venezuelan fishermen (aka “narcoterrorists”) or whoever happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time in Tehran.
They wallow in violence and love to threaten their enemies with it. This idea that they are solely victims of such behavior is gaslighting on a grand scale.
And Waldman gets it exactly right that Trump is thrilled that he has yet another narrative at hand to push his Christlike martyrdom and exhort his followers to recommit their fealty and exact vengeance in his name. I haven’t seen him and happy and energetic as he was at that press conference after the attack on Saturday night in months. These attempts give him life and nourish his empty moral center.
Two of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s most formidable political rivals said on Sunday they were joining forces in a bid to oust his coalition government in the upcoming election expected later this year.
The former prime ministers – right-wing Naftali Bennett and centrist Yair Lapid – issued statements announcing the merger of their parties, Bennett 2026 and There is a Future.
The Reuters Iran Briefing newsletter keeps you informed with the latest developments and analysis of the Iran war.
“We are standing here together for the sake of our children. The State of Israel must change direction,” Lapid said standing alongside Bennett at a joint news conference.
That was key in Hungary. Magyar won in no small part because the opposition fell in behind him instead of fighting among themselves. If Israel manages to do this and then hold Netanyahu accountable, there’s a chance that the country can begin the arduous, lengthy task of regaining its moral center.
It is impossible to list all the times he has wished violence on his enemies. It’s nothing but a mindfuck that they insist otherwise.
Counterpoint: Here’s Trump threatening violence, calling for his political enemies’ executions, celebrating the deaths of people he didn’t like, and otherwise casually promoting political violence. Also there was the small matter of Jan 6 and subsequent pardons for violent felons https://t.co/TvopcmnFx6pic.twitter.com/B8jE1JCW6w
“I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.”
“We pledge to you that we will root out the Communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical-left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, that lie and steal and cheat on elections … The threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous, and grave than the threat from within. Our threat is from within.”
“And I’ll tell you something—that’s the way it has to be. There has to be retribution when you have crime like this.” — September, 12, 2020, in a Fox News interview, praising police for killing the antifa supporter Michael Reinoehl, who was accused of killing a right-wing protester
“I would bring back waterboarding. And I’d bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding.”
“Any guy that can do a body slam, he is my guy!” –October 18, 2018, referring to then-Representative Greg Gianforte, who pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge for physically assaulting a reporter
“I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump—I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad.”
“If I don’t get elected … it’s going to be a bloodbath for the country.”
“Can’t you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something?”
“You take the writer and/or the publisher of the paper … and you say, ‘Who is the leaker? National security.’ And they say, ‘We’re not gonna tell you.’ They say, ‘That’s okay, you’re going to jail.’ And when this person realizes that he is going to be the bride of another prisoner very shortly, he will say, ‘I’d very much like to tell you exactly who that leaker is!’”
“IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!”
“Very simply, if you rob a store, you can fully expect to be shot as you are leaving that store. Shot.”
“It’ll be bedlam in the country. It’s a very bad thing. It’s a very bad precedent. As we said, it’s the opening of a Pandora’s box.” — January 9, 2024, to a group of reporters after a court hearing in which his team argued that presidential immunity should protect him from criminal prosecution for attempting to subvert the 2020 election
“If you had one really violent day … one rough hour—and I mean real rough—the word will get out, and it will end immediately.” — September 29, 2024, proposing a violent crackdown by police to deal with crime, during a rally in Pennsylvania
Those are just a few random examples on top of those in the video above. He’s an incredibly violent person and has consistently made threats against all of his perceived enemies. Everyone knows that. It’ was about a third of the country votes for when they pull the lever for him.
There are lefties like this moron who tried to shoot up the WHCD who want to commit violent acts. There always have been. But we’ve never had a president whose rhetoric is so consistently violent and provocative. And his cult knows this because they can hardly stop smirking when they try to portray his as the prince of peace and the left as a violent mob.
