GOP in 'absolutely dire straits' with 'no end in sight' as Trump implodes: report

The Republican Party is trapped "in absolutely dire straits," according to a veteran Washington reporter, as President Donald Trump crashes to catastrophic new lows and tanks all of their plans to revive their prospects over the summer, with "no end in sight" for the bad news.

Evan McMorris-Santoro is a well-traveled national politics reporter who helped launch the outlet NOTUS, and this week, he appeared as a guest on host Molly Jong-Fast's political news podcast, "Fast Politics." During the conversation, the pair discussed the catastrophic new report about Trump's approval ratings, with Jong-Fast comparing the numbers to the "Bush Line," in reference to former President George W. Bush's horrendous approval ratings by the end of his second term, which left him a lame-duck pariah that the GOP abandoned in droves.

As Newsweek reported, three major polls this past week showed Trump cratering to historically low approval ratings. AP-NORC found just 33 percent of registered voters approved of Trump's performance as president, its lowest finding from his second term. A Quinnipiac poll, meanwhile, found just 32 percent approval, the lowest finding that the university has found throughout both of his terms in office. Finally, a CNN poll conducted by SSRS gave Trump a 34 percent approval rating, matching the low point from his first term.

Reacting to Jong-Fast's take on the news, McMorris-Santoro said that Trump had not quite fallen to the Bush Line — as Bush bottomed out with approval ratings in the 20s — but noted that his nonetheless abysmal popularity has been "especially bad for the Republicans, because... their entire electoral project in 2026 is really like hinging on Trump." He further noted how Republicans had been hoping to turn things around over the summer, putting particular emphasis on a strong July 4th, but now, all of those plans have fallen apart.

"I remember a few months ago, I was talking to some Republican strategists about the plan for the summer, you know, like what they were going to do," McMorris-Santoro detailed. "And some of them even said that they thought that maybe July 4th would be a highlight for them, that there should be this great moment where they could talk about, you know, America and being patriots and how unpatriotic the Democrats are and have this great divide. And they had sort of had this vision that this Iran war thing would kind of be behind them... and July would be a time when gas prices will be able to come down... And it would be like Trump will be back as a viable party leader for them, and really, this month has ended with them in absolutely dire straits."

He continued, explaining that Trump's numbers are now "very, very bad," and the party's allegiance to him has left midterm candidates across the country "boxed in," unable to get distance from him without angering the base of voters that still loves him. "Running towards him," on the other hand, is also a bad idea, as it would make them look more "toxic" to Trump-hating swing voters in the general election.

"So, this is basically as good a position for the polls as Democrats could get, really," he added. "Like this is like what they really, really wanted to see happen as now happened. And there's more to come. I mean, you know, the thing is, the things that made the polls bad, like the Iran war and other things like that, those are still going on... There's no end in sight for these negative poll numbers."