Adam Lynch

'The dam is breaking': MTG says Trump's 'iron grip' on the GOP is weakening

U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) says “the dam is breaking” on President Donald Trump’s popularity and many Republican Party members are now in survival mode with their constituents over the unpopular president.

“Thirteen Republicans voted with Democrats to overturn one of President Trump's executive orders, which enabled him to fire federal workers,” Greene told CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins. “We also saw Indiana Republicans vote against redistricting ... But I would like to say that that is a sign where you're seeing Republicans entering the campaign phase for 2026, which is a large signal that lame duck season has begun and that Republicans will go in all in for themselves in order to save their own reelection.”

Greene generated a huge MAGA following in the run-up to the 2020 election for divisive rhetoric, political stunts and enthusiastic support of Trump. But after growing disagreements with Trump during his second term, Greene announced she will leave Congress in January before her term is up.

In her CNN interview, Greene continued to criticize Trump and Republican leadership in the House for failing to come up with a plan to cover millions of Americans who are about to see their health insurance costs skyrocket with the expiration of Affordable Care Act (ACA) tax credits, adding that “I have 75,000 [constituents] that are on ACA tax credits,” and a “large portion of those 75,000 people are Republican voters.”

When Collins asked if the dam was breaking in terms of the president's “iron grip” on the party Greene pointed out that “those 13 Republicans that voted to take down [Trump’s] executive order last week, “literally that same evening, put on their tuxedos and their evening ball gowns and went to the White House Christmas party.”

“That's pretty bold,” she explained.

“Do you think that message is being received at the White House?” Collins asked.

“I'm sure it's being received. And there's a lot of pushback happening. You're seeing it all within the conference.”

Watch the segment below:

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Vanity Fair writer dares Trump admin to 'challenge a single fact' in bombshell interview

Vanity Fair writer Chris Whipple — who authored a bombshell profile on White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles — told CNN that the White House should know better than to deny the facts of his article.

“Everything in the article was on the record, Whipple told CNN anchor Anderson Cooper. “I recorded every interview.”

Several disgruntled staffers in President Donald Trump's administration are now complaining about Whipple’s Vanity Fair piece. Wiles remarked that Trump had an "alcoholic's personality," that Vice President JD Vance was a "conspiracy theorist," and she called Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought a "zealot." She also confirmed that Trump uses the Department of Justice against his own personal enemies, and said Attorney General Pam Bondi "completely whiffed" on the matter of the Epstein files. Unnamed staffers told Politico that Wiles revelations were “extremely demoralizing.”

Whipple said it was astonishing the extent to which Wiles “was unguarded and freewheeling on the record all the time,” but he said “everything was scrupulously in context.”

“And I got to tell you, the giveaway, when you're a journalist and you hear you're the target, the subject saying talking about things like ‘context’ and ‘omissions,’ you know, you're on the right track because there isn't a single fact or a single assertion that they've challenged in the piece.”

Cooper mentioned Wiles’ denial of saying that Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk – whose Department of Government Efficiency rampaged through the federal workforce earlier this year — is an "avowed" ketamine user and that Whipple played a tape for the New York Times confirming her quote.

“It's on tape, as is every assertion that Susie made,” Whipple said. “… I interviewed the inner circle as well. I talked to J.D. Vance, I talked to Marco Rubio, [advisor] Stephen Miller and others. All of it taped all of it on the record. And the giveaway is that they haven't been able to challenge a single fact.”

Watch the segment below:

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Republican congressman refuses to defend constituents Trump called 'garbage'

The New Republic reports House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) refused to give a direct answer when asked if he agreed with President Donald Trump’s characterization of thousands of Somali residents — thousands of whom live in Emmer's district — as “garbage.”

Migrant Insider’s Pablo Manríquez confronted Emmer as he walked down a hall, demanding if he agreed with Trump that “5,000 Somali residents in your district in St. Cloud are garbage?”

The New Republic pointed out that the Republican majority whip “offered a weak, political non-answer.”

“I think what President Trump has done is raise an issue that is something that we’ve been trying to raise for almost three years,” Emmer said. “The press refuses to cover things that are right in front of them—”

“Donald Trump said that the Somalis are garbage, that’s what I’m asking you about,” Manríquez repeated.

Emmer complained that Manríquez was not letting him finish his statement, to which Manríquez replied: “Well, it’s a ‘yes’ or ‘no’.”

Eventually Emmer said: “Not all Somalis are bad,” but he followed that up with the claim, “90 percent of the … crimes that have been charged are from the Somali community, and there’s nothing wrong, and nothing racist, about calling out crime.”

Trump has singled out the Somali-American community in Minnesota, saying: “I don't want them in our country. Their country's no good for a reason. Their country stinks and we don't want them in our country. I could say that about other countries too."

“They contribute nothing. The welfare is like 88 percent or something. They contribute nothing. I don’t want them in our country,” Trump told reporters at a recent cabinet meeting. “Their country is no good for a reason. Your country stinks and we don’t want them in our country.”

"If we keep taking in garbage into our country. [U.S. Rep.] Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) is garbage. She's garbage. Her friends are garbage. … These are people that do nothing but complain," Trump added.

Read the New Republic report at this link.

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Federal judge reveals how he may order Trump's ballroom to be 'taken down': report

CNN reports U.S. District Judge Richard Leon (a George W. Bush appointee) will not halt work on President Donald Trump’s $300 million ballroom, but he said he would hear arguments early next year about whether to issue a longer-term preliminary injunction against the project.

“The National Trust for Historic Preservation sued last week over the sprawling, privately funded project, claiming the White House has been unlawfully carrying out the construction because Trump hasn’t gotten approval from Congress or submitted his plans to the National Capital Planning Commission and the Commission of Fine Arts for review, which would give the public a chance to weigh in,” CNN reports.

“It’s not about the need for a ballroom, it’s about the need to follow the law,” argued Ted Heuer, an attorney for the preservation group. He added that had the group seen the assessments that were revealed in court papers Monday sooner, “we would have sued” before demolition of the East Wing began.

The group asked Leon to issue an emergency court order that would pause any further work on the ballroom until Congress authorizes it, the commissions review it and relevant environmental assessments are completed. But Leon, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, said the nation’s top historic preservation group had failed to show how it was being irreparably harmed by the construction in a way that required immediate court intervention.

Leon added, however, that the Trump administration must follow through on a pledge to submit the project to the National Capital Planning Commission by the end of this year.

“The court will hold them to that,” Leon said during a packed federal court hearing in Washington. “They’ve got until the end of this month.”

CNN reports the judge also warned that underground work set to be completed in coming months “must not dictate the ballroom’s eventual size or shape while the early stages of the legal challenge unfold. If it does, he said, it would have to be taken down.”

Trump argues the ballroom project is not subject to any oversight from ither Congress or independent agencies and he should be able to continue with it without any serious scrutiny.

Read the full CNN report at this link.

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Vanity Fair interview may derail prosecution of Trump's enemies: ex-White House staffer

Former DHS Chief of Staff Miles Taylor says White House chief of Staff Susie Wiles may have helped build a case against the prosecution of former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James (D).

A federal judge has already dismissed indictments against Comey and James in November, and a Virginia grand jury has declined to return a repeat indictment against James. But Trump’s DOJ could continue to pursue repeat indictments against both, as well as pursue new indictments against even more of President Donald Trump’s perceived political enemies.

But Wiles admitted in a bombshell Vanity Fair interview that Trump does have a vengeful streak and is not immune to sending a politicized DOJ after his opponents.

“When I first read this, my immediate reaction was, ‘okay, Susie Wiles is admitting what we have long known about Donald trump, that the guy wears his heartlessness on his sleeve.’ But … she also blew his cover that he wears lawlessness as a badge of honor. I mean, she just gave that up completely and in ways that can materially affect some of the cases that they have against trump's enemies.”

“I mean, she said the quiet part out loud, that these prosecutions are basically vindictive. And I think she'll give people like Letitia James and others some of the legal support they need to make a direct connection between the president's official abuses of power and the actions being taken against them,” Taylor said.

Taylor, added that Wiles reflected one of two personality types that survive a Trump administration.

“There were two kinds of survivors: People who survived to protect the skin on their own necks, and people who survived to protect the United States Constitution,” Taylor said. “And you don't have to love them. But we now see very, very clearly — and in very stark relief — what happens when the only people you have left in government are the ones that want to protect the skin on their own backs. And what you see is the Constitution gets torched.”

“As bad as the first Trump administration was — and believe me, it was a pride swallowing siege every single day inside that thing — this is what people wanted to prevent from happening: The complete lawlessness from top to bottom that we are seeing now in just 11 months of this administration.”

Watch the segment below:

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Evangelical shares Trump's 'dirty little secret' that prompted Vanity Fair bombshell

Christian Broadcaster News Chief Political Analyst David Brody told MS NOW clip that nobody should be surprised President Donald Trump gave the go-ahead for White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles to be interviewed for Vanity Fair magazine.

The interview unleashed a host of shocking reactions, with Wiles telling Vanity Fair that Trump has an "alcoholic's personality" and Vice President JD Vance has been a "conspiracy theorist" for a decade. She also described former DOGE advisor Elon Must as “microdosing” ketamine while working for the White House

More interestingly, Wiles admitted that "there may be an element of" retribution in Trump's efforts to pursue criminal cases against political adversaries or perceived foes.

"I don't think he wakes up thinking about retribution," Wiles told Vanity Fair. "But when there's an opportunity, he will go for it."

The Hill reports Trump world is defending the interview, which potentially undermines the prosecution of former FBI head James Comey and state AG Letitia James, both of whom made themselves targets for retributive prosecution from Trump’s AG Pam Bondi.

Wiles herself has struck back at the Vanity Fair article, calling it “a disingenuously framed hit piece,” however Brody said Trump knew what he wanted when he approved the interview.

“The point is that Vanity Fair is not a conservative publication by any stretch, obviously. And so you wonder, well, why in the world did they do it? And here's the dirty little secret, quite frankly: All four of us know that … this White House, or any White House, craves legitimacy from the mainstream media. They just do. And I know he talks about ‘fake news’ all the time, but the truth of the matter is they want that good above-the-fold headline.”

“You can just see it right there in the Vanity Fair article,” Brody added. “I mean, my goodness, they were posing [on the cover] like it was … some sort of ABC … drama at 8 P.M. eastern or something, there on the desk. I mean, they had the whole look and everything. The point is, they wanted this. And now the White House is saying, well, actually we were misquoted or this or that.”

“I can tell you this, MAGA folks … are just saying, ‘you got to be kidding me.’ I mean, just why are you even going there is the big question,” Brody said.

Watch the segment below:

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'Things are not going well': Former GOP pollster details Trump's 'horrific' past 48 hours

Bulwark publisher Sarah Longwell recently gave a blunt assessment for the unfortunate list of events that have dominated President Donald Trump’s last two days.

“Last 48 Hours: Trump’s horrific Rob Reiner murder tweet, Wiles should-be-career-ending VF interview, Kash on Katie Millers podcast [with his girlfriend] while a campus shooter is at large, and Hegseth refusing to show Congress the tape of his potential war crimes,” Longwell posted on X.

Critics, and even former advisors, are slamming the president's controversial comments about the death of filmmaker Rob Reiner, calling them "indefensible" and warning of the impact of such conduct on the 2026 midterms.

Trump's chief of staff, Susie Wiles, also did a series of 11 bombshell interviews with Vanity Fair, revealing damaging inside secrets about the administration's chief personnel and goals.

Other social media commenters are similarly acknowledging that Trump has suffered a series of self-inflicted wounds from himself and his staff, possibly upsetting the administration’s policies for the next few weeks, or longer.

“Tipping Point USA,” posted attorney Brad Ketcher, who concentrates on political law.

“Shoutout if you saw this coming say ... December 16th, 2024,” posted podcaster Steve Anderson on X.

From across the ocean, in Germany, even Welt Chief Correspondent Clemens Wergin noted “Things are not going well for Trump.”

In Wiles’ denouncement on X of the resulting Vanity piece, one commenter noted Wiles “doesn't deny she made the statements (Trump was at Epstein's island, Trump has an ‘alcoholic personality’) and doesn't threaten to sue the writer because he's probably recorded the conversations.”

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'Unmitigated disaster' as House Republicans 'can’t get anything done': report

Punchbowl News Co-founder Jake Sherman says the Republican-led House of Representatives has been effectively derailed ever since the government shutdown and has been unable to right itself enough to pass the simplest legislation.

“At this moment, House Republicans are on the floor about to lose another vote, a key vote that would allow them to bring a series of bills to the floor of limited interest to most people on planet Earth, but of intense interest to me,” Sherman told MS NOW host Katy Tur. “They are losing a bill that would allow them to bring up a permitting reform bill. This House Republican conference ... is just an unmitigated disaster."

Passing the resolution would allow the chamber to consider several other environment-related bills, including a bill to amend the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 to remove the gray wolf from the list of endangered and threatened wildlife under the Endangered Species Act and another bill that would allow Trump regulators to halt the decommissioning of ageing power plants, including older technology plants that cause more pollution or burn inefficiently.

Democrats oppose the resolution, but Republicans are apparently unable to muster the votes in their majority to steamroll the minority party.

“I mean, it's just — we see right here with 206-to-210 [vote], six Republicans voting against the resolution. They cannot get anything done,” Sherman said. “On health care, they have a bill on the floor this week that's just a bunch of warmed-over Republican health care policies that they've already passed. Moderate Republicans, the majority makers, katy, the people that made Mike Johnson the speaker, and before that, Kevin McCarthy, the speaker. They want to vote on extending these premium subsidies for Obamacare — the same thing we've been talking about for 5 or 6 months.”

Sherman said Speaker Johnson is not allowing the Obamacare vote to happen becasue he wants them offset with other budget cuts and has “concerns about pro-life provisions in these subsidies.”

“And the moderates are just furious with him,” Sherman said. “But, the entire conference is getting pretty tired of this. I mean, ever since the shutdown, and frankly, ever since July, they have not been able to get their act together. And we're seeing that again right now. It's just a complete, unmitigated disaster for speaker Mike Johnson.”

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Jared Kushner is backing a 'hostile takeover' of US infrastructure: analysis

Salon reporter Sophia Tesfaye says “the speed and scale of Jared Kushner’s re-emergence can’t be overstated,” and neither can his corruption.

“In the first year of Donald Trump’s second presidency, his son-in-law is casually consolidating economic and political power with staggering speed,” said Tesfaye. “Kushner has positioned himself at the center of the biggest media merger in years and at the fulcrum of White House foreign policy, all while taking in multi-billion-dollar investments from autocratic governments.”

Tesfaye said Paramount Skydance recently launched a bid to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery through a hostile takeover. Paramount’s offer draws heavily from Kushner’s investment firm, Affinity Partners, and from the sovereign wealth funds of Middle Eastern autocracies Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. Which would give them — and Kushner — influence over some of America’s most powerful news and cultural engines

“The partnership is unprecedented,” said Tesfaye. “Not even Rupert Murdoch’s right-wing media empire was capitalized by foreign monarchies seeking political leverage.

Kushner raised over $3 billion for Affinity Partners at the end of the first Trump administration, said Tesfaye, including $2 billion from the Saudi government’s Public Investment Fund. The UAE and Qatar soon followed, “adding another $1.5 billion to the pot.”

The sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and Qatar amount to autocracies investing in the infrastructure of American political communication, said Tesfaye, and they are doing so through the president’s son-in-law — a man whose application for a top-secret clearance was initially rejected in Trump’s first term after an FBI background check raised concerns about potential foreign influence.

“You could not design a more direct conflict of interest,” she said. “Paramount is even trying to structure the deal to avoid federal review by arguing that foreign investors would have no ‘voting rights,’ a fiction so flimsy it should insult the intelligence of any serious regulator.”

The merger will affect CNN, HBO, Warner Bros. Pictures. And Trump “has long been obsessed with CNN,” said Tesfaye, while Kushner “is credited with orchestrating Spanish-language network TelevisaUnivision’s rightward shift ahead of the 2024 election, which saw Trump’s electoral performance among Hispanic voters subsequently improve.”

But Kushner’s influence is not limited to the media, said Tesfaye. Weeks ago, he proved a central actor behind Trump’s new Gaza initiative, and he’s quietly inserted himself into Trump’s Ukraine diplomacy, Tesfaye said.

“In late November, he and White House envoy Steve Witkoff met with Vladimir Putin in Moscow for five hours. Kushner and Witkoff, neither of whom hold formal government positions, were allowed to meet with the Russian president before even some Cabinet-level officials. The pair then joined Ukrainian officials in separate talks in Geneva and Miami,” Tesfaye said. “This is privatized foreign policy: diplomacy conducted by men whose incentives are not in the public interest.”

Republicans spent years wailing about former first son Hunter Biden’s foreign business ties,” wrote Tesfaye. “And yet here stands Jared Kushner: a man who has made a small fortune from a large one, who positioned himself as a ‘deal-maker’ while outsourcing U.S. foreign policy to the highest bidder, who now wants to help pick which news organizations survive and which are purged.”

“Kushner’s sudden, sweeping reappearance is not a coincidence or a comeback,” said Tesfaye. “It is a consolidation. He’s back to lead a hostile takeover of our information ecosystem.”

Read the full Newsbreak report at this link.

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MAGA fans demand Trump address rising costs as 'the biggest thing'

The top priorities of MAGA adherents attending President Donald Trump’s Pennsylvania rally were roughly in tune with those of the rest of American voters: Inflation.

Conservative media company Right Side Broadcasting Network, known for their live stream coverage of Trump rallies and America First events, sent host Matthew Alvarez to Trump’s Pennsylvania rally at Mount Airy Casino Resort on Tuesday to interview Trump fans waiting in line and inside the venue before Trump took the stage.

What they caught on tape was not exactly the issue Trump focused on.

“I would like to see [Trump] talk more about grocery prices because he’s the guy that can do it. And he’s done it,” said one woman Alvarez interviewed. “I would like them to say to the Democrats, you talk about affordability. Okay. What’s your policy that’s different than mine that’s going to help the American people? And if you have it, why don’t we work together in the Congress now and fix it? … So I’d like to see the golden age come, stock market go up, crypto go up, prices come down, wages go up, manufacturing comes back.”

Another fan, while demanding Trump “get rid of immigrant freeloaders,” also asked Trump to “lower fuel prices.”

“And that’s it?” asked Alvarez.

“That’s the biggest thing,” the fan confirmed.

But Trump didn’t really address his tactics for lowering U.S. inflation, be it fuel or groceries. Instead, he resorted to scolding voters who were unwilling to do with less.

“You can give up certain products, you can give up pencils because under the China policy, you know, every child can get 37 pencils. They only need one or two,” Trump told fans at the Pennsylvania stop.

This prompted one CNN anchor to call Trump “an out of touch, literally gold-gilded president who outright refuses to recognize the economic reality for the vast majority of Americans.”

“He’s putting 37 gold things on literally one [Oval Office] wall while he's asking families to tighten their belts at the holidays to live without more than two pencils or two dolls in the name of an economic policy that everyone knows is making inflation worse,” said MS NOW host Nicole Wallace.

Read the Newsbreak report at this link.

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Busted: 'Mean-spirited' Trump allies hid collusion to inflate grocery costs

On Friday, a nonprofit forced the Trump administration to unseal a damning complaint lodged by the Biden-era Federal Trade Commission against Pepsi for colluding with Walmart to raise food prices across the nation. New un-redacted information claims FTC Chair Ferguson and his colleague Mark Meador (both Trump appointees) were hiding the mechanics of Pepsi’s and Wal-Mart’s price fixing.

Pepsi is a “must-have” product for grocery stores, and Walmart is also massively powerful,” reports BIG Newsletter writer Matt Stoller. Critics say Pepsi allegedly engages in price discrimination to maintain the approval of Walmart, its biggest buyer — even going so far as to police prices at smaller rival stores. And it prepares reports for Walmart showing them their pricing advantages on Pepsi products.

When the “price gap” between Wal-Mart and its tiny rivals narrow too much, Pepsi tracks where consumers were buying Pepsi products outside of Walmart. It keeps logs on stores who would “self-fund” Pepsi product discounts, nicknaming them “offenders” and then raise their stock price, forcing them to carry those costs down to their customers.

“This dynamic is why independent grocery stores are dying,” said Stoller. “… It’s led to less competition, fewer local grocery stores, and higher prices. … To the end consumer, it creates an optimal illusion. Walmart appears to be a low-cost retailer, but that’s because it induces its suppliers to push prices up at rivals.”

Much of this information was redacted by Trump officials, however, including Ferguson and Meador. Normally, when the government files an antitrust case, the complaint gets redacted to protect confidential business information. Then the corporate defendant and the government haggle over what is genuinely confidential business information and complaints are eventually unsealed with some minor blacked out phrases, and the case goes on.

“In this case, however, … Ferguson abruptly dropped the case in February after Pepsi hired well-connected lobbyists,” said Stoller. “… Ferguson ended it the day before the government was supposed to go before the judge to manage the unsealing process. And that kept the complaint redacted. With the complaint kept secret, Ferguson, and … Meador, then publicly went on the attack.”

Ferguson released a “bitter and personal” statement against Biden-era FTC Chair Lina Khan — who had brought the complaint against Pepsi — implying that she was lawless and partisan, that there was “no evidence” to support key contentions, and that Ferguson had to “clean up the Biden-Harris FTC’s mess.” Fellow commissioner Mark Meador later echoed his comments on on X.

“And that was where it was supposed to stay, secret, with mean-spirited name-calling and invective camouflaging the real secret Ferguson was trying to conceal,” said Stoller. “That secret is something we all know, but this complaint helped prove that the center of the affordability crisis in food is market power. If that got out, then Ferguson would have to litigate this case or risk deep embarrassment. So, the strategy was to handwave about that mean Lina Khan to lobbyists, while keeping the evidence secret.”

But anti-monopoly group The Institute for Local Self-Reliance filed to make the full complaint public, and Judge Jesse Matthew Furman agreed to hear ILSR’s case, with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Pepsi bitterly opposed.

“Last week, Furman directed the FTC unseal the complaint. So we finally got to see what Ferguson and Meador were trying to hide,” Stoller said.

Read the full BIG report at this link

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Ex-lawmakers rip 'cowards' in Congress for letting Trump walk all over them

New York Times writer Lulu Garcia-Navarro says Congress’ approval rating is at a “dreadful 15 percent,” and President Donald Trump’s own polling is at dismal levels. Yet, Congressional Republicans can’t seem to release their death grip on the unpopular president.

Former lawmakers also accuse Congress of allowing President Donald Trump to walk over them and usurp power.

“Abdication,” said former Sen. Joe Manchin, when asked to describe Congress. “They’ve abdicated their responsibilities.”

“Those are … bleak words,” said Garcia-Navarro.

“You want us to call them cowards?” said former Sen. Joe Manchin.

Former Sen. Jeff Flake warned that presidents always push the limit in terms of executive orders, but added that “Trump is doing that in spades. That’s why you need a Senate willing to stand up.”

Retiring Democratic Sen. Tina Smith also called Congress “broken,” and said she was glad to be retiring with a host of political attacks and Trump saying “that two of my colleagues and four members of the House of Representatives should be tried for treason and executed.”

Flake recalled in 2005 when former Rep. Tom Delay demanded a GOP lawmaker be able to pass a piece of legislation with just Republican votes before bringing it to the floor for consideration.

“’And if it might gather bipartisan votes, then knock some provisions off so it won’t be attractive and then use that as a cudgel during the next election,’” Flake recalled DeLay saying. “You had people mature as politicians under that system, and some of them have gone to the Senate.

Manchin complained today of “guilt by conversation” in the House and Senate, where “you can’t even be seen having a conversation with someone who might not be on the same side.”

Flake said that, “in a functioning legislative body, you would think that the Democratic leader and the Republican leader would talk to each other all the time, to try to figure things out, to try to get things going. It just doesn’t happen anymore.”

Manchin and Flake both bemoaned a president who could bully lawmakers into ducking the will of their voters by threatening to field opponents to primary them if they “don’t do what I say.” Manchin called for congressional term limits but also open primaries.

All agreed that Trump was seizing power with the help of the Republican majority, but also felt they saw “cracks in the façade” with the departure of Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene, as people realize that “it’s popular now to be against the president on a couple of issues and in order to survive the general election.”

Read the New York Times report at this link.

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The movement that closed the MAGA mind goes back 70 years: analysis

Brookings Institution nonresident fellow and philosopher Laura Field says a 77-year-old book can explain the MAGA new right, and much of it deals with the rejection of truth.

Author Richard Weaver wrote a book in 1948 that describes the basic contours of the New Right’s closed philosophical approach. Field said you can hear the book’s title, “Ideas Have Consequences,” as a popular catchphrase among conservatives.

Field said Weaver explored a philosophical concept called nominalism, which involves the “rejection of universal concepts and absolute truths — including transcendental moral truths.” Nominalism believes that there is no universal objective moral reality, and “it does not exist as an expression of the divine,” said Field.

By challenging the idea of universal objective moral reality, Weaver said modern man had “succumbed to individualism, relativism, materialism, historicism and politics as will to power.”

“In my research on the MAGA New Right and in the countless hours I’ve spent in conservative academic circles, I’ve heard this Weaver-esque refrain again and again,” said Field. “It is hard to think of a single significant thinker of the MAGA New Right who would disagree with his assessment of the ways in which modern thought is inherently corrosive or who would dissent from his insistence that we must restore some kind of transcendental moral orthodoxy to our politics.”

But when Weaver argued that modern ideas are evil, Field said “he helped legitimate the repression of anyone who thinks about truth differently.”

“When the thinkers of MAGA New Right suggest that only conservatives — or as some put it, heritage Americans — have access to America’s founding principles or that America is a Christian nation, they are providing a justification for authoritarian actions on the part of the government.”

Israeli political theorist and conservatism advocate Yoram Hazony promotes Christian dominance in the United States, arguing that “the only thing that is strong enough to stop woke neo-Marxism, the religion of woke neo-Marxism, is the religion of biblical Christianity.”

“These ideas, to [Hazony], justify limiting immigration as a way to maintain cultural cohesion,” said Field.

Similarly, Field argues that President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance seek “to dominate a nation and impose their politics on those who don’t share [their] vision.”

“It is not the model that America’s founders aspired to,” said Field. “That country is a liberal democracy, and one of its major aspirations — and sometimes its achievement — is that it allows people who have different orientations and belief systems to live together in relative peace and freedom. That is the vision for our country that we must strive to achieve.”

Read the New York Times report at this link.

'Not what they voted for': Why swing voters are leaving Trumpism in droves

New York Times writer E.J. Dionne Jr., says a great many Americans who helped put Donald Trump in office have absorbed what’s happened since.

“They may not be glued to every chaotic twist of this presidency, but they do pay attention and have concluded, reasonably, that this is not what they voted for,” said Dionne.

Compared to Trump’s 49.8 percent of the 2024 popular vote, Trump’s approval ratings are a slide. A New York Times analysis of public polling this month found his net approval rating had dropped to 42 percent, while a A.P./NORC poll and a Gallup poll put him at 36 percent.

“This suggests that 15 to 25 percent of his voters have changed their minds,” Dionne said. “I think of these shifts as the triumph of reasonableness — and not because I agree with where these fellow citizens have landed (although I do). I’m buoyed by the capacity of citizens to absorb new facts and take in information even when it challenges decisions they previously made. It turns out that swing voters are what their label implies. The evidence of their own lives and from their own eyes matters.”

The shift dispels myths about Trump having “magical powers to distract and deceive,” said Dionne. It also proves that reality can still get through the breakdown of U.S. media and information systems.

Furthermore, Dionne said the decay of Trump’s standing is a rebuke to widespread claims a year ago that his victory represented “a fundamental realignment in American politics, akin to those led by Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s or Ronald Reagan in the 1980s.”

“The case for a Trump realignment was built in large part on Republican wishcasting and Democratic despondency, married to a few facts, including substantial Trump gains among Latinos and young men,” wrote Dionne. “True, the Republicans secured majorities in the Senate and the House. But the G.O.P. won two fewer seats in the House in 2024 than it did two years earlier — far from the sweeping gains typically yielded by realigning elections.”

But a nationwide trend in a single election is not a realignment, argued Dionne, and Trump squandered whatever opportunity the G.O.P. might have had to expand its map with his extremism.

In 2025, “Trumpian flimflam hit its limits,” Dionne said, with even the G.O.P. in the Indiana State Senate defying Trump’s demand for a midterm congressional redistricting.

“His power to intimidate is ebbing. A reasonable majority exists. It’s searching for alternatives to a leader and a movement it has found wanting,” Dionne said.

Read the New York Times report at this link.

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'Unmotivated donors' plague Republicans in pivotal southern state

Georgia Insurance Commissioner John King is sounding the alarm on party donations heading into the mid-terms.

“The usually low-key King posted a lengthy statement to social media, almost a manifesto, after Democrats managed to flip a Republican state House seat in Oconee and Clarke counties,” wrote Atlanta Journal Constitution Senior Political columnist Patricia Murphy. “That unexpected special election loss followed two 26-point Democratic routs in November for a pair of statewide Public Service Commission seats, which Georgia Republicans have dominated for decades.”

Murphy reports the PSC upsets came after another September special election to fill former state GOP Sen. Brandon Beach’s deep-red seat finished with the Republican contender winning 10 percentage points behind what the Republican incumbent won the year before.

“Georgia Republicans, we have a problem,” King wrote, before describing unmotivated GOP donors, unmotivated Republican base voters and a muddled party message that put other issues ahead of people’s difficult economic realities.

“Unless the party changes course,” he warned, Republicans will be outraised, outspent and defeated next year, too.

“Everyone behind the scenes knows it, even if hardly anyone is willing to say it publicly,” King wrote.

“As his statement ricocheted around GOP circles this week,” fellow Republicans reached out to thank him for speaking up, said Murphy.

“Somebody had to say something,” one said.

Georgia GOP Chairman Josh McKoon denies the party has a problem, chalking the PSC losses as the result of the timing of the races, which overlapped with off-year city elections that typically turn out more Democrats.

“These elections don’t have any predictive value,” McKoon said, but other party team players aren’t buying it.

Murphy reports “a communications vacuum” at the state level as Gov. Brian Kemp enters his last year in office and the state’s next top three Republicans — Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, Attorney General Chris Carr and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger — face off in a primary race to replace Kemp. Each one is trying to put affordability at the top of their list of issues, but they’re all competing against each other, including on messaging. And President Donald Trump’s own message operation in Washington isn’t helping, with Trump dismissing Americans’ affordability issues as a “Democrat hoax.”

“You’re doing better than you’ve ever done!” Trump said at a recent rally in Pennsylvania, but Georgia Democratic Party Chair Charlie Bailey called Trump’s comments “insulting and idiotic.”

“This isn’t rocket science,” said Bailey. “If you do things that hurt folks and make it harder for people to achieve the American dream, they might have a bad reaction to that. And that’s what we’re seeing in Georgia.”

Murphy said King had sought to run for Senate in 2026 but dropped out when he learned Trump was not giving him an endorsement in the GOP primary. Murphy said that snub has given King the freedom to be the Republicans’ very own Paul Revere, warning the GOP, “The midterms are coming!”

“Only Republicans can decide if they’re willing to listen,” said Murphy.

Read the AJC report at this link.
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'Scumbags': GOP digital team in epic collapse following party's humiliating remarks

Bulwark editors Sam Stein and Andrew Egger took on the epic collapse of the RNC social media team after humiliating remarks from RNC Chair Joe Gruters threatened to diminish donations and curb GOP voter turnout.

Gruters said out loud this week that the Republican Party is likely headed to “almost certain defeat” in the upcoming mid-terms, which sent the RNC’s digital team into an obscenity-laced panic with accounts insulting and name-calling critics about the claims.

The reason this sort of matters is because it can deflate your donors,” Stein told Egger. “It can deflate members of your own party.”

Stein then cited Obama White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs telling Sunday show, “Meet the Press,” that “no doubt there are enough seats in play that could cause Republicans to gain control.”

“It caused a multi-day crisis for Democrats,” said Stein. “Nancy Pelosi was p------. … Members were hot, hot, hot about it. He had to backtrack it. It was just bad. Again, this is not a normal utterance from a committee chairman.”

“But the funnier part of the story,” said Stein, “is how the RNC's digital team has handled it, which is not well.”

“You're a lying piece of s——,” RNC Research told Democrat influencer Harry Sisson. “Here's the full quote: ‘I LIKE OUR CHANCES IN THE MIDTERMS but let me put in perspective only three times in the last hundred years has the incumbent party been successful winning a midterm. We're facing almost certain defeat. The only person who can bring the nose up and help us win is the President of the United States Donald J. Trump.’ F—— loser.”

The same account then attacked the Democratic Party X account, beginning with: “Here’s the full quote you, (sic) scumbags … ”, and they responded to Stein’s own post about Gruters’ statement, starting with “Hey, Jack--- …,” before citing Gruter’s full quote, which Stein says was not a denial.

Then they went after CNN political reporter Aaron Blake, saying “This is fake news — here’s the full quote, scumbag.”

“They really like ‘scumbag,’” Stein added. “Oh, Bill Kristol. They went after Kristol. This is a good one: ‘How much does Harvard charge these days to learn how to report b——? Is Bill being paid by Harvard still? He's a graduate.’”

“I liked what Town Hall did,” said Stein, referring to another Trump subsidiary on X that went into defense mode after Gruters’ admission. “They accused you (Egger) of misstating or misgiving no context to chairman Joe Grutter's quotes, but then they mangled the quote.”

“Yeah, they themselves actually then did mangle the quote,” said Egger.

See the Bulwark podcast at this link.

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Republicans in populous state can't find candidates to run in midterms

The New York and New Jersey-based outlet Gothamist reports Democratic candidates in the Garden State are clamoring to run in what both parties see as competitive races in next year’s midterm elections. But the same cannot be said for the GOP.

“In a cycle when both parties have their eyes on the House majority, up to a dozen candidates are lining up to run on the Democratic side in key New Jersey congressional races, compared to just one or two from the GOP,” Gothamist reports, as Republicans anticipate “a wave election, and not in their favor.”

“When you have a party that has lots of really good candidates jumping out of the gate and chomping at the bit, that's usually an indication that they think the party has good chances,” said Micah Rasmussen, director of Rider University's Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics. “When you don't see people coming out of the woodwork, that's an indication that the candidates believe that the party is not going to have as good a shot.”

While there’s still time to file for the midterm elections, political experts say that any serious candidate from both parties should have at least hinted at running by now, but the sound is muted over on the GOP team. It’s conventional wisdom to expect the president’s party to struggle in the midterms, but races in the swingy 7th, 9th and 11th congressional districts in North Jersey have few Republican contenders.

In the 9th District, Democratic Rep. Nellie Pou is considered vulnerable, yet Pou has just two Republicans running against her. One has raised just $16,000, according to campaign finance records. The other’s grassroots organization endorsed Pou in the last election. Similarly, New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District is anything but safe for Democrats. Nevertheless, there are 13 Democratic candidates running, and only one Republican. Even New Jersey’s 7th Congressional District — a district Trump won by two points — has nine Democrats challenging its single Republican incumbent.

Dan Cassino, professor of government and politics at Fairleigh Dickinson University, said qualified Republican candidates “are going to bide their time and wait for an election in ‘28 or ‘30 when they think they've got a better chance.”

Kristopher Shields, director of the Eagleton Center on the American Governor at Rutgers University, said putting off a run until a future race can spare Republican candidates from having to align with President Donald Trump.

“… [T]here may be individual candidates who say, 'You know what, I'm comfortable with where I am for now. Let's see where this is all going,'” Shields said.

Read the Gothamist report at this link.

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'You have to be nice': Trump snaps at female reporter in tense exchange

The Daily Beast reports President Donald Trump has insulted yet another female reporter, this time dismissing NBC News’ Yamiche Alcindor as “aggressive” and telling her to take it “nice and easy.”

The exchange occurred as the president took media questions after signing a bill awarding congressional medals to the 1980 U.S. Olympic ice hockey team in the Oval Office.

Alcindor initially peppered Trump on the issue of Venezuela, asking if he intended to claim more oil assets from the country, following reports on Wednesday that the U.S. had seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela.

“It wouldn’t be very smart for me to tell you that,“ Trump answered. “We’re supposed to be a little bit secretive. You’re a very big-time reporter, and I don’t think I want to tell a big-time reporter, or a small-time reporter, that.”

Alcindor attempted to ask Trump another question roughly seven minutes later, but Trump told her, “Wait, wait, wait. You have to be nice and easy, nice and easy,” before addressing the men standing around him and saying, “She’s very aggressive.”

Trump eventually returned to Alcindor, which gave her the opportunity to ask him a question about the photos from Jeffrey Epstein’s estate released by Oversight Committee Democrats on Friday. The photos featured Trump and other rich and powerful men like Richard Branson, Bill Gates, and former President Bill Clinton.

“I haven’t seen them, but everybody knew this man,” Trump said. “He was all over Palm Beach, he has photos with everybody. There are hundreds and hundreds of people that have photos with him, so that’s no big deal. I know nothing about it,” Trump replied.

In the past two months alone, Daily Beast reports Trump has called a female reporter “piggy” while telling her to be quiet.

“[He’s] called another female reporter ‘stupid’ three times in quick succession, described another female reporter as ‘obnoxious’ and a ‘terrible reporter’ for asking him about his lethal boat strikes, and threatened to revoke ABC’s broadcast license after fielding a question from the network’s White House Correspondent, Mary Bruce,” the Beast reports.

Read the Daily Beast report at this link (subscription required).

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'Talking like a crazy person': GOP hesitant to put 'declining' Trump on campaign trail

Bulwark editor Jonathan Last and former Republican and Bulwark publisher Sarah Longwell say Republicans are wheeling President Donald Trump out early to visit Pennsylvania and other states to sell his economic policy because time is running out on his waning charisma.

“We need to talk about Trump’s age … and what it means for the next three years,” said Last, pointing out that the president’s hair is “really thinning” and nobody’s yet figured out how to get bronzer on his “albino white scalp.”

Longwell said Trump’s rapidly declining health and lucidity is going deal a blow to the Republican Party as the nation gears up for the midterms amid Trump’s unpopular economic policies.

“As he goes into these states, he starts talking like a crazy person … about the affordability scam and pencils. … He doesn’t even sound that good,” said Longwell. “The idea of putting him on the trail — the reason they’re doing it now is because he’s declining. They’re trying to get him out there early … and voters are so done with these old candidates.”

“The only way Trump got away with his age was because he was not as old as Biden,” Longwell continued. “You could tell they were roughly the same age … but Trump had big lunatic energy still. That is falling. That is going away. Now he’s doing this thing where he’s waking up in the middle of the night and ripping off 150 [Truth Social] posts at 3 am and falling asleep while Marco Rubio is talking. And it’s happening a lot where he’s napping in the day.”

Last said what will be obvious to voters over the next three years is that the U.S. “won’t really have a president, just a ceremonial head of state with “Stephen Miller trying to get what he can, Marco Rubio trying to get what he can and JD Vance trying to put himself in a position to hold everything together while also trying to figure out if there’ s a way to knife the old man.”

Longwell said Democrats should spend the next year not only thrashing Trump on his economy but also on his declining health.

“Hammering him on his age and the fact that he’s not in control matter a great deal because people hate Stephen Miller,” Longwell said. “They’re mid on JD Vance. There is nobody in the Republican ecosystem that can hold together this wild coalition other than Trump. The red hat is the biggest tent there is.”

See the video with a Bulwark account at this link.

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'National embarrassment': Former Indiana GOP gov celebrates 'rebellion' against Trump

Former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels — who faced personal attacks from President Donald Trump for opposing a mid-year gerrymander giving Trump two more Republican districts — ended the week celebrating Trump’s defeat in Indiana.

“My state’s Senate, not often the subject of national attention, earned some on Thursday by declining to enroll Indiana in the bipartisan national embarrassment of mid-decade gerrymandering,” Daniels told the Washington Post, adding that Trump-friendly Republican senators appeared to wage “an instinctual rebellion against being ordered around, especially by outsiders.”

“There has been no shortage of that, ranging from a White House-led arm-twisting campaign, including Oval Office wooing and social media name-calling by the president himself, to apocalyptic ads predicting national disaster if Indiana failed to steal one or two congressional seats for Republicans. Then came the now-common promises to launch and lavishly fund primary campaigns against any dissidents,” Daniels said.

The pressure also included so-called swatting of legislators’ homes, calling down police with bogus anonymous tips — and reports of death threats.

“This whole drama flowed from the confluence of two of the most unhealthy trends in today’s politics: The spread of one-party dominance at the state level, and the nationalization of everything,” said Daniels. “Indiana is one of the three-fourths of American states where one party controls the governorship and both legislative houses, and one of the near-half with supermajority control. Politicians accustomed to doing whatever they want in the absence of real competition often overreach.”

But had gerrymandering proponents succeeded, Daniels argues Trump might not have gotten what they wanted. Gerrymandering, he said, can be risky if voters are dead-set against a party.

“It’s not improbable that Republican majorities weakened to send voters into the two target districts, coupled with voter revulsion at the whole process, could have produced a result no better than the status quo,” Daniels said.

A fundamental reality, said Daniels, is that political or legislative majorities “must be earned, not engineered.”

“Many of my state’s senators stood firm for that principle this week, and through this small declaration of independence strengthened the case that their particular majority is one they deserve, and deserve to keep,” Daniels said.

Read Daniels' Washington Post column at this link.

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Republicans walking into 'historic buzzsaw' by defending hated Trump policy: conservative

National Review senior writer Noah Rothman said Republicans appear to be resigned to “a drubbing in next year’s midterm elections” by blindly following President Donald Trump.

Public opinion on Trump’s economy and his tariffs is crashing, “and that’s just the pro-Trump right,” warned Rothman, citing pro-Trump Republican National Committee chairman Joe Gruters.

“There’s no sugarcoating it,” said Gruters. “It’s a pending, looming disaster heading our way.”

But Rothman complained Gruters was acquiescent to that outcome, arguing “no matter what party is in power, they usually get crushed in the midterms.”

“Gruters is wrong about that,” Rothman insisted. “The GOP’s fate is not written in the stars. The party in control of all the levers of power in Washington has agency and purpose — it is the master of its own destiny. Republicans are simply choosing not to do anything to better their political circumstances.”

Rothman called the downward trend in the president’s numbers “consistent and alarming.”

“And Republicans are alarmed. But that’s about it,” Rothman said. “If the sentiment abroad within the GOP ecosystem is any indication, that sense of trepidation is translating not into resolve but resignation.”

While Trump has few tools to shape the economic landscape, Rothman said he could at least indicate that he has “heard the public’s disquiet and is attempting to meet them in the middle by abandoning his mulish affinity for tariffs.”

“Even if he only telegraphed his willingness to pare most of them back, it would send a signal to the public that would at least boost consumer confidence. But Trump is not doing that. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine Trump giving up on a policy in which he evinces near-religious faith. So, with Trump presumably immovable, Republicans are sauntering languidly into a historic buzzsaw,” Rothman said.

But it doesn’t have to be this way, he said.

“Republicans are not destined for disaster. But so long as they regard the president’s bizarre predilections as forces of nature that they must make peace with, they will traipse into an electoral disaster that could set the tone for the remainder of the decade — handing the reins over to a Democratic Party that is increasingly favorably inclined toward socialism,” Rothman said.

“What the GOP can do — what it must do — is evince some basic political survival instincts,” he continued. “If self-preservation is too much to ask, the GOP and its voters deserve the disaster that is now visible on the horizon.”

Read Rothman's National Review article at this link (subscription required).

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'It's a joke': Red state Trump voter slams president over 'gold fixtures' in White House

Two years ago, voters at the Bawcomville, Louisiana “Redneck Christmas Parade” were hopeful about then-candidate Donald Trump campaigning to lower prices and fix the economy. CNN sent reporter Elle Reeve back to the town for an update on attitudes and got a mix of reactions.

“To me, the tariffs that Trump started, I think is a joke,” said parade participant Tommy Wiltcher, joining a parade of four-wheelers adorned with rebel flags. “The American people are paying for it.”

Reeves also said he did not approve of “the big ballroom up there and wanting to inlay it with all the gold fixtures,” and admits Trump lied about promising to bring prices down, saying “politicians promise the world when they want to get elected.”

Nevertheless, Wiltcher said he still supports Trump.

Parade reveler David Salvent said he also continues to support Trump, despite him falling short on multiple issues.

“I'm not the biggest fan, but at least it's not Biden,” said Salvent. “I was just hoping for a little bit more personally, especially with like all the stuff happening with Epstein files and all that. That's got me really nervous as well … I really want it to come out. I mean, if he was there, I feel like we deserve to know that, especially if we don't want him in there. I mean, what Epstein did was horrible. That's really bad.”

Participant Theresa DelRio said it was “still too early” to judge Trump’s work on the economy, but she was nervous about Trump’s violent crackdown on immigration.

“I was watching the news last night, down in New Orleans, where the border control was active. And some of the things I didn't I was not comfortable with at all,” DelRio said. “… [T]hey fight hard for border control because the drug issue and things like that. But then I see some people that just seem so innocent. There was one particular girl who was born and raised here. And they chased her down the street into her house. That really upset me. They're citizens here that are being chased. And with the last name of DelRio, you know? Yeah. I don't want anybody chasing me down the road.”

Still, DelRio said she gives Trump a “seven” on a scale of one-to-10.

Other participants, like senior citizen Sandra LaCourse said she loves “the whole package.”

“He opened up Christianity again,” LaCourse told Reeve. “Things were just … being not as free to be a Christian.”

When asked, LaCourse called Trump’s deportation policy “harsh, but needed.”

“There was some of the people who've been deported, weren't criminals. … Do you feel like that reflected Christian values?” asked Reeve.

“Yes. It's a lot of prayer going on that he seeks wisdom and he tries.”

Parade participants like Scotty Adams cheered Trump's policies despite high grocery prices.

"We have some of the cheapest gas right now with the gas prices coming down lower, it should transfer over to food prices and other items eventually," Adams predicted. "I'm loving it."

Watch the segment below:

- YouTube youtu.be

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'All bets are off' in Trump’s next three years: analysis

Intelligencer write Adam Kilgore says four years under President Donald Trump last time felt "like 40,” but that was nothing "compared to his second administration."

Within one year Kilgore tells the Intelligencer that the nation saw the appointment “of some of the most controversial appointees in living memory, a blizzard of executive orders, and then the passage of the most sweeping single package of legislation in the history of Congress. Toss in the occasional military strike or domestic National Guard deployment, regular raids by masked ICE and border-control agents, and serial disfigurement of the White House, and you’ve got the show that never ends. Three more years could indeed feel like an eternity.”

Kilgore said Trump is determined to tip the balance of power, but the midterms could potentially upset that.

If history and current polling are an indication, Democrats are very likely to gain control of the U.S. House and "bust up the partisan trifecta that has made so much of Trump 2.0’s accomplishments possible," said Kilgore. With a Democratic House, there will be no more “Big Beautiful Bills” whipping through Congress on party-line votes, nor any more reconfiguring of the federal budget and tax code and remaking the shape of the federal government. A hostile House would also befuddle the administration with constant investigations of its "loosey-goosey attitude toward obeying legal limits, and its "self-dealing, cronyism, and apparent corruption."

But “conversely,” warned Kilgore, “if Republicans hold onto both congressional chambers, then all bets are off. Trump 2.0 would roll through its final two years with the president’s more audacious legislative goals very much in sight and limited only by how much risk Republicans want to take in 2028.”

The nation could see more “Big Beautiful Bill” packages replacing income taxes with "tariffs or consumption taxes," said Kilgore. "It could also mean a complete return to fossil fuels in a world that is wholly embracing clean energy. Additionally, it could mean the "total repeal and replacement of Obamacare and the decimation of Medicaid" and a "fundamental restructuring of immigration laws" and "radical limits on voting rights."

America could also get a full “MAGA makeover,” said Kilgore. This could mean a country of millions fewer immigrants, with immigrant-sensitive industries like agriculture, health care, and other services struggling, a “fully shredded social-safety net feeding steadily increasing disparities in income and wealth between rich and poor,” and cities "where armed military presence has become routine."

You can also expect Trump and the GOP to limit elections to Election Day, and in person voting, with strict ID requirements and armed election monitors on the scene during vote counts. There will also be a new “deep state” of MAGA-vetted federal employees devoted to carrying out the 47th president’s policies even after he’s long gone,” Kilgore warned.

It will also be a world where accelerated violent weather and widespread natural disasters have "no national infrastructure" to prevent or mitigate damage, said Kilgore. And "scientific and health-care research will be driven by conspiracy theories and cultural fads," and the public-education system "hollowed out by private-school subsidies and ideological curriculum mandates."

“And if Trump bequeaths the presidency to a successor (either a political heir like J.D. Vance or a biological heir like Don Jr.), then what American could look like by 2032 or 2036 is beyond my powers of imagination,” Kilgore said.

Read the Intelligencer report at this link.

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Indiana's rejection of 'ingrate president' proves Trump has lost Republicans: conservative

Jeffrey Blehar — a staff writer for the conservative National Review — praised Indiana Republicans for holding firm on Thursday and refusing President Donald Trump’s mid-decade gerrymander that would have given Indiana Republicans a clean sweep of all nine of its seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.

“… [A]s a conservative of the older school, I … want to salute the men and women of the Indiana State Senate for finding the steel in their spines today,” said Blehar, adding that Republican’s refusal did not come without cost and threat.

Donald Trump Jr. announced on X that he would be campaigning against disloyal Indiana legislators in their primaries next year. And mere minutes before the final Thursday vote in the Indiana senate, Blehar said Heritage Action — the lobbying arm of the Heritage Foundation — tweeted: ‘President Trump has made it clear to Indiana leaders: if the Indiana Senate fails to pass the map, all federal funding will be stripped from the state. Roads will not be paved. Guard bases will close. Major projects will stop. These are the stakes and every NO vote will be to blame.’

“The Trump administration turned the screws,” said Blehar, but the November elections had “provided the entire political world — and elected Republicans especially — with an electrical shock of voter feedback.”

“After ten months of the economic chaos of The Trump Show (and three months of the redistricting circus), the lopsided Democratic margins in every race hit a bit like an uppercut from reality, knocking Republicans out of their confident daze and forcing them to reckon with both the massive unpopularity of Trump’s economic agenda as well as their own political mortality,” said Blehar. “If the pro-Democratic shift in November 2026 tracks with that of November 2025 in any way, the GOP is going to lose its House majority by a margin well beyond the ability of redistricting to save.”

“Why,” asked Blehar, “should Indiana Republicans fritter away a well-balanced map to gain two House seats — and in so doing deny the state any sort of seat at the table in an upcoming Democratic administration?”

Blehar called it “a sucker’s bargain” that would have hurt both Indiana and the GOP in the near future, “and all … for the ephemeral political needs of an ingrate president whose power will inevitably be broken after the midterms regardless.”

“I credit the Indiana GOP for having more wisdom and foresight than that, and for looking after their state’s interests — and the likely shape of the political world a mere few years from now — rather than the panicked desires of a president whose sole need for a Republican Congress is as armor-plating to protect him from pushback to his executive overreach.”

Read Blehar's full National Review article at this link (subscription required).
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'Apocalyptic headlines' of Trump era make 'war on Christmas' seem quaint: analysis

Barbed Wire senior editor Brian Gaar says he misses the good old days of the ‘War on Christmas,’ when Fox News ran segments arguing that “’Happy Holidays’ was basically Sharia law in a festive font.”

“Honestly? I miss that absurd little era,” said Gaar, even if it was the “soft-launching … of ‘bathroom safety’ panics and anti-DEI crusades and whatever fresh authoritarian nonsense they’re road-testing this week.”

“Back then, the culture-war machine at least had the courtesy to be stupid on a small scale,” said Gaar. “You could roll your eyes at the guy in Walmart shouting about how the cashier’s ‘Enjoy your holiday’ was proof America was circling the drain, and then go about your day.”

“Now? We’re drowning in apocalyptic headlines,” Gaar said, referring to abortion becoming illegal “in basically half the country” and “diversity programs dismantled.” He also notes that today trans people are “targeted by bathroom bills designed to unleash vigilantes,” and Fox pundits “bend over backwards to avoid criticizing white nationalists.”

“It makes the old holiday hysteria look like a Hallmark movie compared to the political Mad Max franchise we’re currently living in,” said Gaar. “What I wouldn’t give for Tucker Carlson to come out of retirement and yell at me about a snowflake pattern on a coffee cup instead of whatever democracy-eroding nightmare he’s promoting with Nick Fuentes this week. … Let’s return to a flavor of stupid that doesn’t overtly threaten the structural integrity of the nation.”

The War on Christmas was a manufactured myth, said Gaar, but it was also “one of the last moments when a culture-war freak-out could still feel like a sitcom subplot instead of a constitutional crisis.”

“It was America’s final sweet, delusional, low-stakes meltdown” compared to “these bleak, turbocharged, democracy-optional times.”

“God help me, I miss it. Even if in hindsight, it’s like a frog missing the times when the water was only lukewarm,” Gaar said.

Read Gaar's full Barbed Wire column at this link.

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Ex-RNC staffer slams 'gold-gilded president' for telling Americans to cut holiday spending

Former Republican speechwriter Tim Miller and MS NOW host Nicole Wallace say the voting public has good reason to be angry at President Donald Trump for asking Americans to tighten their belts for the holidays.

While praising his tariffs, Trump recently suggested Americans surrender pencils from overseas and support domestic companies over foreign companies.

"You can give up certain products, you can give up pencils because under the China policy, you know, every child can get 37 pencils. They only need one or two,” Trump said.

But during her Thursday segment, Wallace pulled up a photo of Trump speaking with reporters in the White House.

“Consider this single photo — a mere slice of the Oval Office — one angle from a billet held in September. So, not 37 pencils, but according to our very unscientific count, there are 37 gold gilded items new to the Oval Office in this picture alone … not including the picture frames.”

“It's an in-your-face example of what more and more Americans seem to realize, and be frankly p—— off about,” said Wallace. “An out of touch, literally gold gilded president who outright refuses to recognize the economic reality for the vast majority of Americans, is putting 37 gold things on literally one wall while he's asking families to tighten their belts at the holidays to live without more than two pencils or two dolls in the name of an economic policy that everyone knows is making inflation worse.”

“He is giving us all of our material to criticize him with,” said Wallace, referencing comedians who are successfully dunking Trump in late night monologues.

Miller pointed out that Trump and his supporters “feed on” being called “racist” or “cruel,” but the president’s weakness is apparently mockery.

“And right now he's being mocked on the issue that was core to his campaign, which was the economy,” said Miller. “He was elected based on him saying that he was going to fix what he had criticized about Joe Biden's economy, … particularly inflation. And now here he is. We're a year in. We're coming up on Christmas. And his message is, you know, ‘fewer pencils’ and, like, that's mockable. It's extremely mockable.”

Watch the segment below:

- YouTube youtu.be

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'I was an idiot': Trump 'in significant trouble' as his own supporters regret their vote

“Runaway Country” Host Alex Wagner said President Donald Trump’s own voters are feeling increasingly betrayed as Trump’s slumping economy continues to turn on them.

Wagner offered her opinion following a clip of a U.S. veteran telling Congressional lawmakers of watching his wife, who had been in the U.S. for decades, get arrested by ICE months after he voted for Trump in this last election.

“Why did you vote for him?” a member of congress asked the veteran.

“Because I was an idiot,” answered the veteran. “Evangelical Christian people were lied to, if you really want to know the truth. And that's exactly what happened. They said ‘criminals [would be deported], and I believe criminals need to be off the street. … My wife and I, when we don't work, we're ministers. We help the needy. That's what we do. And that's who they're arresting.”

“If you look at the bottom of the screen, this is a panel about rising health care costs, which is like the double whammy,” Wagner told MS NOW Host Nicole Wallace. “[Trump] is debasing Americans. He is tearing families apart. And the central premise of his reelection, which was to make America more affordable, is a complete fallacy, a complete lie. In two weeks or thereabouts, Americans are going to see their health care costs skyrocket. I talked to someone whose health care premiums are going to go from $100 to $800 a month.”

“I mean, the center can't hold on this stuff,” Wagner added. “It is one thing to just not deliver, but to act in the way that he has, which is so dehumanizing, so cruel, and such a such a insult to not only the Americans who didn't vote for him but to the Americans who did, who believed in something — anything — about this man. This is why … we are seeing, I think, this week and in weeks prior, the beginnings of real cracks with this president and his base. I think that he is in significant trouble. And the stress is only going to increase in the coming month.”

- YouTube youtu.be

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Farmer blasts 'pathetic Republican sycophants' in scathing op-ed

Ben Palen — a Kansas native and a fifth-generation farmer and agriculture consultant — blasted President Donald Trump’s repeat tactic of putting farmers in distress and then dangling tax-funded salvation before them and hungry developers.

“[T]he Trump administration will provide several billion dollars in bailouts to farmers, with an emphasis on corn and soybean growers,” Palen wrote in the Kansas Reflector. “... Predictably, political dances followed the announcement, with various farm groups issuing statements supporting release of this money.”

“It’s pathetic,” Palen wrote. “It’s especially so when the Republican sycophants who represent Kansas farmers fall all over themselves to pay homage to Trump. How about some honest conversations about what this regime has done to American farmers via a patchwork of actions that show little understanding of international trade and so many other issues?”

Palen said there is no Republican “representative” from Kansas who is speaking the truth about the “folly from Washington D.C.,” like the damage Trump does to rural hospitals or the fact that people are going hungry because of the administration's policies. Meanwhile farmers “are receiving just a few breadcrumbs."

"The fundamental challenges of trade policy remain unsolved, and our competitors are gleeful as they take market share from U.S. farmers," he wrote.

“The peril in farm country is real,” Palen warned. “In less than 12 months, damage done to Kansas farmers and their peers across the nation is only just beginning to be felt. This latest bailout completely fails to address the underlying issues. Again, I will ask Kansas politicians: When are you going to do your job for the people who voted for you?”

Palen lamented that those same politicians are eager to spend millions of dollars and expend state resources to woo the Kansas City Chiefs to a new stadium and development of "entertainment districts."

“Let’s not kid ourselves,” said Palen. “Regardless of whether these deals are funded with grants, contributions from donors, tax incentives or other methods, there are adverse economic and social consequences often overlooked. … These large sums of money could be better spent. How about fixing crumbling infrastructure? How about encouraging companies to bring good-paying manufacturing jobs to the area? In the case of [Kansas University], how about big money donors helping students afford the high cost of an education, instead of being so focused on having one’s name on a sports venue?”

“Our society has some strange priorities. Maybe it’s time to focus on taking care of what we have instead of pouring enormous sums into brand new, shiny buildings,” Palen added.

Read Palen's column in the Kansas Reflector here.

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Former Republican official says Trump's 'monumental ego' responsible for GOP's downfall

Former Illinois Lt. Gov. Bob Kustra (R) says he is surprised President Donald Trump is mulling naming the Republican Party after himself at a time when the party should be going out of its way to avoid him.

“Some will write off Trump’s ruminations about changing the name to ‘Tpublican’ ... as another of his egomaniacal rants to distract the media from learning about playboy Trump’s earlier years with Jeffrey Epstein,” said Kustra. “Yet, few believed Trump would tear down the entire East Wing of the White House to create a Mar-a-Lago North."

“This is the American president who has plastered the Oval Office with gold, now converted to the Trump family cash register with real estate deals and crypto scams ringing up sales for the billionaire family,” Kustra added. “Most Americans would not expect a sitting president to approve a new dollar coin with his portrait on it, but it is in the planning stages. There seems no end to Trump disgracing the office of the presidency with his monumental ego and tacky taste.”

Instead, Kustra argued Trump’s latest attempt to stamp his name on the party ought to be the spark that finally “ignites a serious reconsideration of just what the Republican Party stands for and what the future holds for” the GOP.

There’s good reason to disavow the president now that the latest Gallup poll shows Trump and his party in trouble, with only 36 percent of Americans approving of his job performance. “Fair-weather Republicans” and independents who voted for Trump in 2024 are already turning to Democrats as of the recent off-year elections. And now Kustra said Republicans are in danger of losing control of Congress in the 2026 midterm elections.

“Once the law-and-order party, Republicans are now led by a president who just pardoned a Honduran ex-president serving a 45-year term for receiving millions in bribes and partnering with narcotics traffickers,” said Kustra. “Trump also commuted the sentence of a private equity executive who just began a seven-year sentence for a $1.6 billion scheme that defrauded thousands of investors. But Trump had no problem calling for the execution of U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly, a war hero, who reminded our military forces they did not have to follow orders that broke the law.”

Kustra said some Republicans are already catching on, with Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) stiffing Trump on killing the filibuster and Republican Armed Services Committee Chair Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) joining his Democratic counterpart to investigate allegations that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered survivors killed in recent U.S. strikes on boats off South America. The House Committee followed suit assuring bipartisan oversight in both chambers.

Meanwhile, Kustra said Trump is being outfoxed by Chinese President Xi Jinping on tariffs and “played for a fool” by war criminal Vladimir Putin.

“With an increasingly self-absorbed and unhinged president losing ground with some Republicans in Congress, it hardly seems the moment to attach any semblance of the Trump surname to their party,” Kustra added. “Now is the time to rebuild the Republican Party with Trump as a mere footnote of times gone bad.”

Read Kustra's Kansas City Star column at this link.

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Former Fox News host warns Trump 'can't lie his way out' of a bad economy

Former Fox News host Gretchen Carlson warned that President Donald Trump won't be able to deny the state of the economy to American voters, no matter how hard he tries.

“The one thing that doesn't lie is the economy,” Carlson told CNN anchor Anderson Cooper. “I mean, it's one of these things that Trump just can't lie his way out of or talk his way out of. And that is extremely problematic because when people go to the polls for the midterm elections, that are going to be here before we know it, they're going to be voting on how they feel on that particular day. And the economy is an incredibly emotional feeling.”

Issues like immigration — which is typically Trump’s favorite talking point on the campaign stump — are not landing as hard with voters when they enter polls.

“This is not necessarily about immigration, where you don't live on a border state, so you're not totally feeling it. But most Americans are feeling the economy,” Carlson said. “And that's what's problematic for him. Instead, he went on these rants last night against his political enemies, again. And if you're come from a Brown or Black country, you're not going to be welcome in this country. It's like, wait a minute, he could have nuanced this. He could have said, ‘I inherited a horrible inflationary economy’ and this is what I'm doing to try to fix it. And he's not doing that. And until he does that, it's going to be a problem.”

Cooper also spoke to Republican strategist and former RNC Communications Director Doug Heye, who said he was shocked that Trump was floundering so hard over the economy.

“I'm surprised at Trump, because he did message on this so effectively during the last presidential election,” Heye said. “And right now I'm watching him struggle. And it reminds me of the previous administration. Learn some lessons from your own recent past.”

There are ways for a president to talk about issues of affordability, said Heye, “but this sure is not it.”

Watch the segment below:

- YouTube youtu.be

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White House may deter Trump from future rallies as aides say he's not 'capable' of empathy

Politico reports MAGA is thrilled to see President Donald Trump back on the road and in his campaign rally element. But the things he’s saying at rallies are scaring them.

“Trump stirred up fresh concerns Tuesday at a Pennsylvania rally that was supposed to focus on easing Americans’ anxieties over pocketbook pressures,” reports Politico. “Instead, he veered off script, at one point urging austerity amid the holiday shopping season by resurfacing a line from earlier this year that American kids should be happy with ‘two or three’ dolls.”

“I think a lot more domestic events outside of Washington are great. Let’s do more of it,” an anonymous former Trump senior adviser told Politico. But, “unfortunately I just don’t think Trump is temperamentally capable of reversing himself and saying, ‘Yes, affordability is a concern.’ He’s stubborn.”

Trump was once a fiery crowd pleaser, but he is now an “imperfect messenger more apt to voice bullishness on his stewardship of the U.S. economy than he is to acknowledge the financial squeeze voters say they’re feeling,” reports Politico. This could present a problem as angry voters take to the polls next year and vent their frustration over the economy by ousting the political party in charge of Congress and the White House.

Critics are already calling Trump’s Pennsylvania rally “a flop,” particularly after a slew of off-year elections this month and last gave Democrats resounding success on their message of affordability and inflation concerns. Republican strategists are already rattled at how strongly voters have spurned Republican candidates within the span of a year.

“And there are signs the White House is looking to other surrogates to help carry the administration’s affordability push into next year, as Trump allies concede the president is unlikely to morph into a nuanced and empathetic messenger,” reports Politico.

Trump has called arguments that Americans are suffering under the economy a “hoax” and a “con job," but some Trump aides counter that the president’s “hoax” line is being taken out of context.

One White House official argued that Trump isn’t dismissing Americans’ pain, but is instead calling the Democrats’ affordability campaign “hypocritical” and a “con job” because the left is trying to “rewrite their own history” and “hijack the phrase.”

Read the Politico report at this link.

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