Trump

Trump’s iron grip on his Republican Party remains unbroken, but some elements are starting to feel public fury at President Donald Trump’s $1 billion bunker, particularly as voters pay more at the pump and grocery stores.

“Republicans tell Punchbowl that the ballroom funding faces obstacles in the House, in part because it’s a tough vote for vulnerable House Republicans,” reports New Republic staff writer Greg Sargent. “As one put it: ‘A first-year poli-sci major would know not to ask members to take this vote, and we hope the speaker does too.’”

All of this, said Sargent, prompts questions about why Republicans in tough races are fearful about voting for the thing if the ballroom so politically toxic?

“In the wake of the shooting incident, pro-Trump and right-wing personalities pushing for the ballroom thought they’d struck propaganda gold,” said Sargent. “Many of them excitedly smeared Democrats who oppose the project as tacitly encouraging the assassination of Trump. At a meta level, the real MAGA game here was to get Democrats to equivocate in the face of MAGA rage, to bully them into genuflecting before Trump’s plan to build a Caesar-like monument to himself at the center of the nation’s capital — and by extension submit to his broader dictatorial project."

Sargent added that MAGA is asserting the power of fascist lies to remake political reality itself, but most Democrats appear to “grasp those stakes, continuing to vociferously oppose the ballroom even after the shooting incident.”

“They plowed right through MAGA’s fog of bullying propaganda and emerged on the other side unscathed. Result: The MAGA assault quickly dissipated and unceremoniously went poof. It’s a non-factor now — a big nothing," Sargent wrote.

The MAGA echo chamber is powerful and relentless, but Sargent said the enraging opulence of Trump’s gold filigree ballroom is driving public fury and sending it against a torn GOP. It’s also giving Democrats a very big cudgel with which to pound Republicans.

“In fact, the deeper subtexts of the ballroom tale — the corruption, the megalomania, the careless Gatsby-esque destructiveness, the Trumpian imperium — are surely a key reason it has broken through,” said Sargent. “It’s creating the type of meaningful moment in our politics that offers surprising political openings to the opposition.”

Voters delivered harsh news to President Donald Trump and his handling of the U.S. economy following his painful war on Iran.

When asked if there was “any way in which your life has gotten better during this second trump administration” one voter speaking with MS NOW in Minnesota said “F——, no. Not at all.”

“I don't think anyone's doing good right now. I don't know why people thought the economy was going to get better and stuff, and I don't see that happening at all,” Alaina Franczak added.

“Is like all prices, all prices for living and a lot of things, to buy groceries — all that's more expensive,” complained voter Isidro Estrada.

"We're going all the way down to hell, I might say to the grave,” said a Peter Ekame Moby. “So, to answer your question, did Donald Trump do something good since he got there? I don't think so, to be honest.”

Democratic strategist Adrienne Elrod, upon hearing the severe responses appeared to cringe with some degree of familiarity.

“Look, if you tell a voter, ‘you may be feeling like things aren't going great, but they're actually going great,' you're going to lose credibility with voters,” said Elrod. “That happened with President [Joe] Biden in 2024. And I will be the first to admit that I was somebody who was a spokesperson.”

“We would go on television, and we talked to reporters, we would talk to voters, and we would say, ‘actually, the economic stats are really, really good. You're wrong. You're not feeling this economy. There's no economic pain,’ essentially. And now you're seeing that happen with Trump and it's not working,” Elrod added. “People are just mad. I mean, that's they are. They are filling up their tanks two or three times higher than they were before.”

Elrod added also that Trump’s own voters are probably feeling more of the pain than Democrat voters, due to life situations.

“A lot of rural voters in America voted for trump. But they're the ones who are driving 50, 60 miles sometimes a day [to work]. They're the ones who are feeling it at the pump,” Elrod told an MS NOW “The Weekend” panel. “Those of us who live in Washington D.C. I drive maybe like three times a week. I'm not feeling it. But it's something when you're telling voters, at the end of the day, ‘actually things are good. It's going to be fine. Don't worry about it.’ You just lose a lot of credibility.”

Journalist David Wallace-Wells says Americans are going to be flabbergasted by just how thoroughly President Donald Trump’s blundering war in the Middle East is going to touch everything in our lives, and the lives of the world.

“[W]e spent much of the last decade telling ourselves that the era of globalization was over,” Wallace-Wells told a New York Times panel of writers in a recent podcast. “Covid-19 was supposedly pushing us toward more supply chain resilience. And here we find ourselves — as a planet, as a global economy — held hostage by one particular conflict in one particular part of the world. And I don’t think that anyone in the Trump administration adequately game-planned for that, which is a huge indictment of them.”

Wallace-Wells, who described Trump’s attack on Iran as an “everything war,” called the world’s resulting fertilizer troubles “most distressing,” with 70 percent of American farmers unable to afford fertilizer this planting season. But other nations without U.S. farmer’s adequate buffers are in even more trouble, possibly to the point of triggering “extreme hunger.” None of this, he said, was likely on “the Trump administration’s radar,” he suspects.

But further effects downstream are going to hit the U.S in some very unexpected places, he said.

From cantaloupes to condoms, there is hardly any modern amenity that will not take some kind of hit from Trump’s self-inflicted war on Iran and the subsequent closure of the Strait of Hormuz, he warned. Even though the U.S. has managed to increase its own production of sweet crude thanks to fracking and novel oil extraction methods, it is other nations that make the brunt of U.S. consumer goods, and other nations do not have U.S. oil resources.

“I mean, there’s almost no product that you look at and think that this is completely unaffected by the supply of any of the things that are tied up in the Strait of Hormuz. And that means that, to some degree, everything is going to get at least more expensive and maybe somewhat short of supply,” Wallace-Wells said. “Exactly how we manage that is an open question. But the experts are really ringing the alarm and telling us that quite a lot of stuff is going to be quite bad.”

“So, Donald Trump launched a war of choice, basically unprompted by, or unprovoked by — in my view — an adversary, and with very little understanding or appreciation for the fact that war is messy,” Wallace-Wells added. “And this war, in this place, against this adversary, would get especially messy.”

Former attorney and columnist David French warned Trump singlehandedly managed to risk plunging the “much of the world” into recession, “on a war of our choice that we did not consult with our allies on.”

“And right now [we] cannot turn around and look at those same allies and say, ‘Well, ultimately, you’ll thank us,’ … [W]e’ve got the instability from the war, but without the victory in the war,” said French.

Newsweek reports President Donald Trump is desperately flailing to connect with working-class voters with extravagant new policies that he thinks will speak to middle-income families, but his tactics don’t appear to be connecting.

“According to a CNN/SSRS poll from late March, Trump’s approval among white non-college graduates has dipped into negative territory — with 49 percent supporting and 51 percent disapproving of his presidency,” reports Newsweek. “A separate survey of nearly 2,000 Trump voters found that one in five do not plan to support a Republican candidate in 2028, a departure that the pollsters said was “concentrated among his working-class voters.”

With so many voters souring on him, Trump is now lauding policies that focus on affordability, which “a term he derides,” according to Newsweek.

Last week, Trump signed an executive order aimed at expanding access to retirement savings accounts for those without employer-supported plans, establishing the TrumpIRA.gov website that will direct them to low-cost IRAs, which brings with it a $1,000 matching contribution from the federal government. He’s also lauding his rom “no tax on tips” folded into his signature One Big Beautiful Bill Act. But neither of these are connecting with the voters he desperately needs to save his party in the midterms.

“These voters are not reading policy briefs or even paying much attention to policy talking points,” political scientist and Vanderbilt University professor Larry Bartels told Newsweek. “They will respond to how their lives feel at the time of the election.”

His other policies, such as his bid to ban mega investors from buying up single-family homes and free up supply, or his “seemingly abandoned” proposal to cap credit card rates also appear to be falling flat with U.S. households.

“I don’t think any of these policies will put a sufficiently big and visible dent in income stagnation or inflation or unemployment to move the needle much,” Bartels said. “President Biden’s economic policies were much bigger and arguably much more consequential for working-class people, but even they could not overcome the price of eggs.”

Trump's disconnect with working-class voters reflects a broader credibility gap. These voters experienced Trump's first term and remember promises about manufacturing jobs, wage growth, and infrastructure investment that didn't materialize as promised.

Many faced real economic hardship during his presidency, from trade war tariffs increasing costs to limited job growth in rural areas. Now, policy announcements alone lack persuasive power when lived experience tells a different story. Additionally, working-class voters are acutely sensitive to gas prices, grocery costs, and rent—immediate financial pressures that overshadow abstract policy proposals like retirement account matching or investor restrictions on home purchases.

The gap between Trump's rhetorical focus on helping working people and the tangible results voters have experienced creates skepticism toward new initiatives, regardless of how they're marketed.

Former Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall is ready to go back to the battlefield over the Trump administration’s attempted clampdown on ex-military who risked their lives defending their country.

“This week, I heard something that shocked me,” Kendell told the New York Times. “In a federal appeals court … the secretary of defense argued that military retirees were subject to freedom of speech restrictions because of their connection to the military, and that if they didn’t like those restrictions, retirees could forfeit their pension and benefits. Let that sink in. The Trump administration expects the people who have put their lives on the line for America to cede one of their basic rights, or forfeit the retirement pay and benefits they have earned over decades of service.”

Kendall, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, was in the courthouse with other veterans when the administration of President Donald Trump dared to grab at the freedom of people who risked everything to defend Trump’s.

As a young man, Trump received several military deferments as other soldiers his age marched off to war.

Last November Sen. Mark Kelly, (D-Ariz.), a retired Navy captain, released a video with other legislators reminding service members that they have the right and duty to disobey unlawful orders. But Trump was furious at the claim and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth instructed the secretary of the Navy to investigate Kelly and reduce his retirement rank and pay. Kelly fought the move in court and won, but the Trump administration has appealed the decision, which Kendall interprets as an attack on every American who bravely served their nation.

“Hegseth will lose in this court, too, but he has already indicated that he may appeal the case to the Supreme Court. This isn’t over, and it has implications far beyond Mr. Kelly,” said Kendall, who added that Trump and his apparatchiks are “sending a message to all military retirees: If you cross the Trump administration in public, we will come after you, and you will pay a high price for speaking out.”

“This administration has used and abused every tool it has to coerce businesses, universities, law firms, nonprofits, political enemies and private citizens to do as it desires. Now that coercive power is being used to intimidate military retirees, starting with Mr. Kelly,” said Kendall.

And if Trump wins over Kelly, he will clamp the tongues of “over a million Americans who have dedicated themselves to national service.”

A recent SEC filing reveals President Donald Trump’s Truth Social’s parent company, Trump Media and Technology Group, sloughed off more than $400 million last quarter and brought in only a few hundred thousand dollars in sales.

Trump’s family may be cashing in big through government contracts and federally-enabled crypto schemes, but the president’s own social media company appears to be bleeding.

The company reported only $871,200 in revenue in the first three months of 2026, but also revealed a nearly $406 million net loss in 2026, which amounted to a total $387.8 million loss after accounting for earnings, taxes, depreciation, and amortization.

The company blamed its $405.9 million net loss and a $387.8 million Adjusted EBITDA loss for “non-cash losses including unrealized losses on digital assets, digital assets pledged, and equity securities, accreted interest, and stock-based compensation.”

Despite the red ink, the company claims “a strong balance sheet” and that it will be “continuing to pursue all its strategic priorities, including expanding and enhancing its flagship Truth Social and Truth+ platforms.”

Company representatives also skewed optimistic claiming Truth Social “is currently developing or testing numerous new features,” which include expanding international offerings and updating the look of the platform.

TMTG Interim Chief Executive Officer Kevin McGurn added a personal note to the SEC submission, claiming Trump Media is using its “strong balance sheet and positive operating cash flow” to continue growing businesses and platform infrastructure while it works to merge TAE Technologies “as quickly as possible.”

Representatives insist Truth Social “remains a bastion of free speech with innovative enhancements coming soon.”

The Irish Star reports critics bushwhacked a White House social media post wherein it proclaimed to be an ally of small business when consumer satisfaction is historically low.

The mass attack came on the heels of a small business summit held at the White House, after which the White House posted on X, stating: "Small businesses are the backbone of America. They drive 40 percent of our economy, power American manufacturing and support working families nationwide.”

But hundreds of online critics swarmed the comments section to share their fury at President Donald Trump and the business environment he’s created for the small businesses he claims to appreciate.

“As a small business owner, you have made everything MUCH worse. You're the enemy of the United States and of the American people,” said one critic, according to the Star.

“Trump just gave small business the death sentence,” posted another. “With fuel doubled, family businesses will be going into bankruptcy from Trump's war of choice supporting a genocidal state.”

Even purported crypto advocates — long considered deep in Trump’s political corner — jumped in on the abuse: “Both my small business have taken a hit … no good health insurance for small business owners. All prices are up on all goods we use to make our products. Shipping is terrible since gas is going up. Quite the opposite and I voted for you 3 times … WTF is going on?”

“And they can’t afford gas because you felt it necessary to go to war with someone who couldn’t hold our jock strap,” howled another. “Where is my $2000 tariff check …?”

Another critic, presumably a Republican, complained that “If we lose the House and Senate, it will be because [Trump] turned his back on America First and put a foreign nation ahead of America. TRUMP turned on US ... not the other way around.”

As of right now, CNN anchor Jake Tapper says Republicans appear to “have the edge” in the gerrymandering arms race that President Donald Trump set off with his extreme mid-decade gerrymander in Texas. But CNN data analyst John King says there are some things that even the most extreme undemocratic tampering can’t fix.

With Republicans determined to lock in a permanent House majority by picking their own voters and the Supreme Court agreeing to let white-majority Southern legislators “go back and take away the majority Black districts,” King said Republicans look like they’re winning their gerrymander war.

But he added that “this is still a bad Republican year.”

“[B]ased on historical odds — it’s usually 25 seats on average since World War II — the party in power loses 25 seats in the House in a midterm election year. So the Democrats, on average, are still poised to get there.”

If Democrats have a “below average year,” King said Republicans could maintain their gerrymandering advantage, but the math, he said, is not looking likely.

Texas Republicans hope to grab five extra seats by corralling Latino voters into new districts because Latinos voted for Trump and Republicans in 2024, but King said “a lot of those Latinos in 2025 and 2026 come back to the Democrats.”

“So, the Republicans have put a heavy thumb — maybe even a foot — on the scale, but the voters still get the final say,” said King.

“This is what will decide the election,” King added, pointing to President Donald Trump’s awful approval.

“This has decided every midterm election since I've been alive. Here's the president: In 2018, he was at 41 percent at this point. And [Republicans] lost 40 seats. This is where he is right now,” said King, gesturing to an even lower approval number of 35 percent.

“He's historically low. We don't know where he's going to be in November. The Republicans, now have a money advantage. Now they have a bit of a map advantage. Can they really keep this to 5 or 10 seats? That's the challenge. History says ‘no.’” King told Tapper.

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Stuart Stevens, chief strategist for the 2012 presidential campaign of Mitt Romney says there’s a very clear reason why President Donald Trump can shamelessly flaunt his wealth and openly enrich himself and his family through corruption.

Steven kicked off his rant after MS NOW anchor Katy Tur asked him if Americans are “drawing a line” between Trump’s sumptuous balls and parties and their own difficulty buying gas during Trump’s self-inflicted Iran war.

“The claim that he's ‘for you’ while prices are going up, [food] costs are going up, gasoline is going up, the economy is struggling for people that are not very rich. It's doing great for people who are very rich. And now you have all of these very suspiciously timed [insider] trades where just a handful of folks are making a whole lot of money,” said Tur. “It doesn't feel very American.”

“One of … [Donald Trump’s] ironies is he clearly hates his base. Donald Trump doesn’t want anything to do with these people,” said Stevens. “My god, he's a guy from Queens who spent his life social climbing in Manhattan, someone who used to call in false stories about who he was dating. So, he wants to be accepted by these [rich] people. And there's no better way to be accepted by this group than to help them get even richer.”

As for Trump’s corruption, Stevens said Trump has been flaunting his dishonesty ever since he backtracked on a promise to reveal his tax returns to American voters to the point now where Americans “don't even talk about it” anymore.

“And this isn’t going to be investigated by the Justice Department because the Justice Department is a function of Donald Trump,” Stevens added. “So, it is beholden upon Democrats, when they get back in power, to have to have the will and the intensity and the purpose to go back and prosecute this. And it's going to be called partisan, because Republicans aren't going to be for it. And people are going to say, ‘what does this have to do with, improving people’s lives.’ It has a lot to do with that because faith in government is essential.”

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Democrats made a “fundamental miscalculation” in the redistricting wars and now have “little chance” in the November midterms, argues Eric Garcia at The Independent.

Calling the Virginia Supreme Court’s nullification of a voter-led ballot initiative that allowed the creation of four Democratic congressional districts a “massive body blow,” Garcia also points to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision “virtually nullifying the Voting Rights Act” by requiring Louisiana to redraw its congressional map. There is also the Tennessee legislature turning majority-Black Memphis into another GOP seat — erasing the only Democratic seat in that state.

“And this does not count the redrawing of congressional districts in Missouri and North Carolina before the Supreme Court decision, or Alabama, which is under a court order to not redraw its map until 2030,” Garcia says. He notes that California has been the only state to respond, doing so by adding five Democratic seats to the state.

Zachary Donnini, the head of data science at VoteHub, a political news outlet, “put it bleakly for Democrats.”

Donnini says that now, instead of having to flip just three seats to take the majority in the House, Democrats will have to flip an additional nine seats — a total of twelve in all.

Democrats tried to “lead by example,” but, Garcia says, they turned their states into “laboratories for democracy” by creating “unilateral” disarmament “on behalf of the Democrats” — an act, he labels, a “fundamental failure.”

But he offers Democrats a little hope.

Texas’s redistricting plan relied on Hispanic voters, “after flirting with Trump,” to stay aligned with the GOP. That might have changed. The situation is the same in South Florida, “where the state’s normally conservative Cuban Americans have been caught in the Trump immigration dragnet.”

Pointing to inflation, the economy overall, and Trump’s Iran war, Garcia says Republicans holding on to the House might be “even more difficult.”

Democrats, however, made a “fundamental miscalculation,” Garcia concludes. “By creating guardrails and rules, Republicans did not see a reason to compromise and meet them halfway. It made them targets for weakening. Now, Democrats have put themselves in a bind. They only have themselves to blame.”

Ohio-based sculptor Alan Cottrill had nothing good to say of the crypto bros behind the funding of gold-leafed statue of Donald Trump called “Don Colossus.”

“I usually deal with people that have everything organized. From the start, this was chaos,” Cottrill told the Miami New Times. “I have 400 life-size or larger statues around the country. The patron sets a date when they want it installed, and I have it installed on that date. And almost never, anytime whatsoever, does anyone miss a payment, because I always do what I say I’ll do, and the patron always does what they say they’re going to.”

But the Times reports that was not the case while working with the wealthy Trump backers behind the 22-foot statue of the president, what with demands to remove Trump’s “turkey neck” and make the statue skinner than Trump actually is—after already slimming it down once.

And don’t even talk about payment.

The Times reports Canadian-based cryptocurrency developer Ashley Sansalone and Republican strategist Dustin Stockton joined other “crypto bros” to pay Cottrill $500,000 for the creation of the statue. But somehow, between them all, nobody appeared to have money in their pockets when it came time to pay the bill. It took weeks for Sansalone and Stockton to make their final $90,000 payment.

Cottrill said he eventually had to hold the statue ransom to get his money.

“‘You were supposed to make these payments nearly a year ago. I can’t trust you to do that,'” Cottrill told his wealthy patrons, according to the Times. “So I held the statue. I put it in an undisclosed location and said it won’t be delivered until the final payments have been made.”

When asked if Cottrill would ever be willing to work with the Trump bunch again, he unleashed a response with plenty of expletives.

“Once somebody has shown that they can’t be trusted to do what they say,” he added, “you don’t work with them anymore.”

So, no work for the upcoming Trump Presidential Tower in Miami, for Cottrill, he said.

Former Republican strategist Rick Wilson is no friend of President Donald Trump. He also is no friend to the Republican Party that currently serves at Trump’s beck and call, shields him from legal consequences and enable his agenda.

This is why Wilson says he 100 percent wants Republicans to pass funding for Trump’s $1 billion ballroom and crow about their decision every day up until the November midterms.

“I want Republicans to vote for the ballroom,” Wilson told MS NOW anchor Katy Tur. “I want them to go out and cheerlead for the ballroom every day. I wanted to put that front and center because that is what they care about, and that is what Trump cares about. And the ads write themselves. You've got farmers in rural districts who are facing record farm bankruptcies and unbelievably high fuel costs. And I think that farmer looking straight to the camera saying, ‘we're going to lose the farm, we're going bankrupt, but at least I get to pay for a ballroom with my taxes.’ The suburban mom at the grocery store at the gas pump gets to say ‘at least I get to pay for a ballroom. I can't really afford to go to work, but I'm going to pay for the ballroom.’”

“I want them to do this,” insisted Wilson, founder of the Lincoln Project. “This is one of the stupidest political traps I've ever seen somebody walk themselves into. And the GOP, while they're nervous and leaking to Punchbowl News and saying ‘oh, we don't love this [ballroom] behind the scenes, they're still not going to publicly defy Trump. And if they if they cast this vote, it is going to get hung around their necks like a dead animal and it is going to stink all the way to election.”

Wilson showed particular venom for Trump voters who told reporters they are still supporting the president despite rising gas prices, an unpopular war in Iran and multiple broken promises, but he said the number of those recalcitrant supporters is shrinking every day.

“That clip you played in the beginning of the of the segment, he represents a part of the Republican Party that loves Trump and will always love Trump. But that is a shrinking part of the Republican base. And each week that goes by with this war, these tariffs and everything else, Trump's support is peeling away like layers of an onion.”

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President Donald Trump probably didn’t smell his own trap coming when he launched attacks on Iran weeks ago, but critics say he’s definitely in a hole now, and he’s pulled his Republican Party into it with him.

The worst thing about it: Iranian leaders see Trump’s hole — and they’re smiling.

“[Iranian leaders] can look right now and see that they have leverage and see that Donald Trump wants to get out of this war. And, so, you can be hard-nosed and pragmatic and say, ‘well, let's wait it out and see how much more we can get out of Trump,’” former Republican speechwriter Tim Miller told MS NOW anchor Katy Tur. “And … Trump is known to give terrible deals. And I think that puts Trump in a very tough situation. And that explains in part why he's calling up [Fox News entertainer] Bret Baier saying ‘we're going to get a deal’ every two days and nothing is coming because the Iranians see that he wants that deal badly.”

Zeteo reported last week that U.S. officials are already privately admitting Iran is nowhere “close to breaking, even after two months of war and a sustained economic assault,” according to four anonymous sources.

“Administration officials, citing US intel, have also warned that senior Iranian officials are keenly aware that if the war drags on much longer, it could further damage Trump and the Republican Party’s chances at the polls in November,” reports Zeteo.

“They know they can Carter him,” said one senior administration official, referring to how the Iranian hostage crisis tanked former president Jimmy Carter by the time of the 1980 U.S. election.

Former Republican Max Boot told Tur that Trump’s flailing has created the international image of “a clueless, wounded hegemon,” which looks terrible going into the midterm election. But Miller said Trump’s tactics just aren’t delivering the goods as they have in the past.

“[H]e's trying to win the micro news cycles and try to survive [but] … these two quagmires, the Russia/Ukraine war and the war that he started in Iran are cases where his little gimmicks … to convince people that something is true for a day in order to win a news cycle, in order to get a good headline on the New York Post — the regime in Iran doesn't care about that. Vladimir Putin doesn't care about that. They have much more deep-seated, entrenched interests. And I think he's running into the limits of what his madman tabloid style can, you know, can get for him.”

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The depths of conservative men's subservience to President Donald Trump reached a new low this week, after the release of what The Bulwark called the "absurd" and "absolutely wild" results of a survey exposing their strange stance on his physical strength.

On Friday, Bulwark publisher Sarah Longwell released a new video where she, alongside writer Catherine Rampell, reacted to an unorthodox new poll from YouGov. In it, the survey asked respondents if they believed that an 8-year-old boy, a typical American man and, finally, themselves, could physically defeat Trump in a fight.

As Rampell explained, the poll originated from an odd exchange Trump had with a young boy during an Oval Office event touting the return of the old Presidential Fitness Exam standards, in which he asked the boy if he believed he could take him in a fight.

"So it was Trump who threw down the gauntlet to begin with," Rampell said. "And YouGov was, let's see what America thinks."

And "what America thinks," it turns out, breaks down in a "funny" fashion along gender and partisan lines. According to the poll's findings, respondents who identified as Democratic women were more likely to believe they could take the president than those who identified as Republican men, painting a bizarre picture of the cult-like image of strength conservative men still appear to have of the president.

Breaking it down further, Longwell shared that 66 percent of respondents said that the average American male could beat Trump in a fight, while only 10 percent said that the president would win. Along party lines, 33 percent of Republicans said that they would win, compared to 75 percent of Democrats. Democratic respondents were also notably more down on Trump's odds against an 8-year-old boy, with 54 percent believing that the boy would win, compared to just 6 percent of Republicans.

"This is an interesting psychological experiment about partisan politics," Longwell said. "Because Republicans are like, 'Big daddy Trump could beat me, he could get me, I'm scared of him,' whereas Democrats are like, 'Man, an 8-year-old boy would kick that guy's a——."

Along partisan and gender lines, the survey found that 71 percent of Democratic women, and 84 percent of men, believed that they could beat Trump. By comparison, just 46 percent of Republican men, and 19 percent of women, said that they could beat him. Notably, about 29 percent of GOP men and 26 percent of GOP women said that they were unsure. The number of uncertain Democrats was much lower.

Longwell noted that these results paint a grim picture of the "need" Republican men have to believe that Trump could "dominate" them. Rampell said that it was unclear how much of the results were driven by self-esteem issues, versus the need to believe Trump is physically powerful.

In the spirit of the conversation, Rampell herself added that, while she is notably shorter and lighter than the president, and has no experience with physical fights, she also believed that she could best Trump, given the many obvious signs of his declining physical health.

President Donald Trump is growing increasingly "bored" with the Iran war, according to Jonathan Lemire of The Atlantic, describing comments from and "outside adviser" who speaks "regularly" with the president.

According to Lemire's Friday report, "Trump really, really wants the war with Iran to end."

It turns out the war is far more difficult than Trump anticipated, and it has lasted much longer than he expected, the report said.

"He doesn’t want to be bogged down in a Middle East conflict like some of his predecessors were. He doesn’t want it to upend his high-stakes summit next week in China. He is ready to move on," said Lemire.

Iran, on the other hand, appears to be enjoying its successes over the world's largest military giant, the United States. The ceasefire is on rocky ground, and advisors think that Trump can somehow "sell any sort of agreement as a win," the report said.

As of Friday, Washington is on hold as officials wait for Iran to agree to a one-page "memorandum of understanding" that Lemire described as little more than an extension of the ceasefire rather than a full treaty.

"Trump is left with a vexing question: How do you end a war when your opponent won’t budge? And while Trump grasps for an exit, the hard-liners in Tehran have used the war to tighten their grip on power. Iran seems hell-bent on pulling off something it’s historically done well: humiliating an American president," the reporter said, mentioning the propaganda and asymmetric warfare that Iran has deployed online.

In a number of videos, Trump and many of his Cabinet officials are ridiculed for being bumbling fools or outright drunk on the job.

Previous reports noted that Trump was on a high after his success swooping in to nab Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro. He passed his "One Big Beautiful Bill," achieved his tariff scheme, captured Maduro and turned to Iran, thinking it would be just as easy.

In a column for Foreign Affairs, Nate Swanson, a former Trump staffer and current senior fellow and director of the Iran Strategy Project at The Atlantic Council, wrote that Trump "cannot force surrender on a government that refuses it. Even after the heavy damage to Iran's military, the regime ... has powerful incentives to pursue continued conflict, and it retains a variety of tools to sustain a war of attrition."

A leaked CIA report revealed by the Washington Post said: "Iran can survive the U.S. naval blockade for at least 3 to 4 months before facing more severe economic hardship, a finding that contradicts those hailing an imminent collapse."

While the adage might claim that patience is a virtue, it isn't one Trump has.

So, the two sides are at an impasse, with the only resolution to escalate or cut and run. The latter is a possibility, the report said.

"Even without a formal agreement, Trump has considered declaring decisive victory and moving on. Secretary of State Marco Rubio went so far as to say earlier this week that the war was over. But doing so now would leave the conflict’s goals, as outlined at various times by the president and his aides, unfulfilled," wrote Lemire.

Aides also told him Trump doesn't want to resume the attacks. For all of Trump's bluster and threats to "wipe out" Iran or "bomb them back to the Stone Age," he's starting to worry about the U.S. supply of weapons.

"There is concern about the dwindling supply of American munitions, and Trump this week expressed reluctance about killing more people," the report said.

Technically, there is still a ceasefire, but when Iran fired on a U.S. naval vessel on Thursday, the U.S. hit sites in Iran. Trump swore it wasn't an indication that the ceasefire was over. He simply called it “a love tap.”

The most significant concern is if the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz continues. If it stays closed for several more months, the global economy would suffer, Citadel CEO Ken Griffin told the Semafor World Economy conference last month. The war has already surpassed the 60-day mark.

“Let’s assume [the strait is] shut down for the next six to 12 months — the world’s going to end up in a recession,” said Griffin. “There’s no way to avoid that.”

Biographer Michael Wolff said in March that Trump appeared to be "having a blast" with his war. It took only a few weeks for insiders to expose that Trump is "getting a little bored with" the war he started.

Republican lawmakers are growing concerned as they face angry constituents complaining about high fuel prices, increasing food costs and more. They're expected to lose the House in the 2026 elections, but the longer it continues, the more they fear they could also lose the U.S. Senate.