Trump doubling down on 'haphazard,' 'incompetent' plans as reality hits

President Donald Trump gestures as he speaks to the media on the day of a NATO leaders' summit in Ankara, Turkey, July 8, 2026. REUTERS/Umit Bektas

President Donald Trump could have taken the easy way out after his resounding rejection from voters, but according to the D.C. insiders at Pod Save America, he has instead opted to double down on his most "haphazard, ill-conceived, [and] incompetent" ways.

In the latest episode of the popular liberal podcast, co-hosts and former Obama administration staffers Jon Favreau and Dan Pfeiffer opened the show with a montage of Trump's new reactions to the "blue wave" that wiped out the GOP in the midterms. In it, Trump claimed once again that his absence from the ballot was the reason Republicans lost so badly, and also claimed that, despite all the evidence of his own toxic approval ratings, his "level of popularity maybe is higher now than it was."

Favreau also shared Trump's recent Truth Social post calling Democrats "corrupt and evil," despite his previous indications that he might be willing to work with them. All of this, he argued, was yet more evidence that Trump has ultimately refused to learn anything at all from the midterms.

"So, now that we know for certain that this 80-year-old dog will not be learning any new tricks, how do you see Trump's last two years playing out?" Favreau, the former director of speechwriting for Barack Obama, asked. "What can we expect from our lame adult duck of a president?"

"I think there was a world in which Trump would sunset, and I mean that in every sense of the word, quietly on his presidency and just kind of — not that he could ever fade in the background, but he just really focused on his true passions of home renovation and self-enrichment and just kind of did that and spent less time trying to remake the federal government, prosecute his enemies, implement some sort of agenda, deport everyone you could possibly deport," Pfeiffer, a former seniors comms advisor to Obama, responded.

He continued: "And it seems like he's chosen the latter path where he's going to, in his own haphazard, ill-conceived, incompetent way, continue to just double and triple down on all the things that got him into this mess. Like, obviously, he was never going to be self-reflective in any way possible. He's not had any moment of introspection his entire adult or, frankly, child life. But the extent to which he is just totally blowing past what happened — that he has apparently convinced himself, I guess, that it's not his fault he lost... And so I think we're just going to end up with a lot of what we've had before just done more erratically and more incompetently than even than before."

From Your Site Articles