Media

Note to the decision-makers at the Gallup Organization, which for nearly 90 years has tracked presidential approval ratings: Capitulation never works.

I learned this the hard way as a teen playing basketball on D.C. playgrounds. I regretted my fecklessness.

Gallup last week admitted it would no longer survey Americans’ sentiments on how the commander in chief was faring, though I couldn’t find news of that major switch on the company’s website.

The organization’s latest presidential barometer, in December, placed Donald Trump’s approval rating at an abysmal 36%. The worst was 34%, another honorific Trump earned as he was leaving office at the end of his first term. It was right after the Jan. 6, 2021, siege on the U.S. Capitol.

Yes, other companies conduct surveys nowadays about the presidency. Gallup, though, held a unique place in the industry.

A Gallup spokesman told The New York Times the company was shifting strategy. He also used other corporate-speak that, frankly, doesn’t justify Gallup’s cowardice.

As The Times noted, the polling firm’s decades of data gave “historical context to what amounts to a monthly snapshot of Americans’ views.” The independent barometer has been valuable.

It’s curious the company didn’t make the change under then-President Joe Biden, but is doing so now under a thin-skinned president.

Trump and his administration have targeted journalists with criminal indictments, filed lawsuits against media outlets and often lied about the actions of violent federal immigration agents – even when video footage and witness statements proved the contrary.

My questions to Gallup’s media folks, including what role Trump’s attacks on journalists played in the polling decision, weren’t returned by my deadline.

Gallup’s groveling reminds me of when I relinquished my chance to play a playground basketball game – even though I’d earned it – to a guy bigger, stronger, and a little older than me. “I’m taking your spot,” he declared, with a hint of menace.

The shame was I didn’t fight for it, even if I would’ve gotten bloodied. I couldn’t return to that court because no one would respect me. As I got older, I stood up for myself more, no matter whether it made me uncomfortable.

That a private company like Gallup would cave so dramatically to this administration is reprehensible. Why is it acting beholden to officials who disrespect law, precedent and common decency?

The capitulation is a stain on Gallup’s reputation and legacy, and it leaves Americans with less information on how we all feel our top government executive is faring.

A conservative columnist is blasting President Donald Trump for continuing to spread the baseless conspiracy theory that he actually won the 2020 presidential election.

“Donald Trump’s belief in widespread fraud in the casting and counting of 2020 ballots is entailed by his belief that it is theoretically impossible for him to lose at anything,” wrote George F. Will, a former adviser to President Ronald Reagan and columnist to The Washington Post. “His certitude infects millions of Americans, some of whom think it inconceivable that he could ever be mistaken. Others doubt that anyone could win the presidency while obsessing about a complex conspiracy for which there is no evidence.”

Will correctly pointed out that Trump has a long history of claiming something was stolen from him when he loses — and it started well before politics. During a 2016 debate, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton accurately pointed out Trump accused the Emmy Awards of being rigged against him when he was snubbed for his work on the reality TV show “The Apprentice.” Earlier that year, after losing the Iowa caucuses to Ted Cruz in the 2016 GOP primaries, Trump baselessly alleged fraud and demanded a new election. Throughout the 2016 campaign Trump said he would only accept the result if he won, and after winning the Electoral College but losing the popular vote that year, he falsely blamed millions of illegal ballots and established a voter fraud commission that eventually disbanded without finding evidence of his allegations.

In 2020, Trump preemptively attacked mail-in voting, prematurely declared victory on Election Night and falsely claimed votes were being "dumped" against him. Biden ultimately won by a clear margin in the popular vote (81.3 million to 74.2 million) and the same Electoral College margin (306-232), but despite this Trump attempted a coup on January 6, 2021. To this day, Trump continues to falsely claim he won the 2020 election.

“Someone should read to him ‘Lost, Not Stolen,’ a 2022 report by eight conservatives (two former Republican senators, three former federal appellate judges, a former Republican solicitor general, and two Republican election law specialists),” Will wrote. “They examined all 187 counts in the 64 court challenges filed in multiple states by Trump and his supporters. Twenty cases were dismissed before hearings on their merits, 14 were voluntarily dismissed by Trump and his supporters before hearings. Of the 30 that reached hearings on the merits, Trump’s side prevailed in only one, Pennsylvania, involving far too few votes to change the state’s result.”

Will concluded, “Trump’s batting average? .016. In Arizona, the most exhaustively scrutinized state, a private firm selected by Trump’s advocates confirmed Trump’s loss, finding 99 additional Biden votes and 261 fewer Trump votes.” Therefore he wrote of Trump, “The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.”

The Pulitzer Prize-winning Will is not alone among conservatives warning about Trump’s authoritarian election-denying tendencies. Linking his 2020 denialism to his efforts to discredit Democrats if they win the 2026 midterms, a Republican who served as Maricopa County, Arizona county recorder explained Trump’s strategy.

"Almost every single Republican that I spoke with after the 2020 election ... knew that there was very little to Donald Trump's allegations of a stolen election,” Stephen Richer, who served when Trump attempted to steal the 2020 election, recently told The Atlantic. “At best, they stayed quiet. At worst, they went full-throated along with it because they knew it was a path to political riches."

He also said Republicans are planning to dispute however many number of Democratic victories they need to stay in power, then demand House Speaker Mike Johnson reject their seats.

“Speaker Mike Johnson, the outgoing speaker, will choose not to seat the new members, because they’re in allegedly disputed elections,” Richer said.

Conservative historian Robert Kagan expressed the same concern, arguing Trump has trained Republicans to oppose democratic outcomes unless they get what they want.

“I am worried, as I have said and others have been pointing out, about whether we will even have free and fair elections in 2026, let alone in 2028,” Kagan said. “I think Trump has a plan to disrupt those elections, and I don't think he's willing to allow Democrats to take control of one or both houses as could happen in a free election.”

Since returning to the White House, Donald Trump has picked many former Fox News hosts for key positions — from Jeanine Pirro (now a federal prosecutor in the District of Columbia for the U.S. Department of Justice) to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. Another is Dan Bongino, who is back at Fox News and resumed his podcast after leaving his position as deputy FBI director.

In a February 10 column, MS NOW's Steve Benen describes a "revolving door" linking Trump officials and right-wing media. And he stresses that although Bongino was an "embarrassment" at the FBI, that didn't stop Fox News from rehiring him.

"The precise number of former Fox hosts, anchors and contributors who have joined Donald Trump's team is open to debate," Benen explains, "but by any fair count, the total is roughly two dozen. One of the notable things about revolving doors, however, is that they can be used to go in both directions: As a wide variety of figures leave Fox to join Team Trump, some members of Team Trump have also left the administration to join Fox…. Bongino's tenure at the FBI was an embarrassment. The president thought it might be interesting to put a volatile podcast personality in charge of running the bureau, and the result was a failed experiment in amateurism: Bongino did a job he didn't like badly."

Benen points out that Bongino "is in a unique position."

"While the revolving door has spun quickly since Trump returned to the White House," the "Rachel Maddow Show" producer observes, "Bongino is one of those rare people who went from conservative media to the administration and then back to conservative media — all within the span of about 10 months."

President Donald Trump, in what appeared to be an attempt to pressure two major cable news networks, warned against booking two prominent former officials from his first administration.

Trump targeted CNN and MS NOW — formerly MSNBC, which he called “MSDNC” — while denouncing attorney Ty Cobb, a former member of the White House legal team who reported directly to the president, and former Department of Homeland Security Chief of Staff Miles Taylor.

The president called Cobb “one of the Worst Lawyers in Washington, D.C.,” and a “WHACKJOB, who I hardly knew,” and said Taylor is “another major Loser … who I have no idea who he is.”

He charged that both “make livings talking about me like they know me well.”

“So, when you watch these two guys on Television, which, fortunately, doesn’t happen often because there’s very little audience at either CNN or MSDNC,” he wrote, “remember, they know nothing about me — Just two DOPES trying to make a ‘buck’ by pretending to know something about someone who turned out to be very famous.”

Trump already was the president when they served in his administration.

“These two Networks are forewarned not to put them on the air again, because they have no knowledge or credibility with respect to anything have [sic] to do with DONALD J. TRUMP.”

Last month, Cobb “claimed President Trump is experiencing a ‘significant decline’ in his mental faculties,” according to The Hill.

“I think the dementia and the cognitive decline are, you know, palpable, as do many experts, including many physicians,” Cobb said.

Trump’s social media post came just about the same time that he or someone with access to his social media account deleted what many, including several prominent Republicans, denounced as a racist meme that depicted former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama as apes.

The New York Times is being destroyed over a since-deleted excerpt in its report on President Donald Trump sharing racist imagery online.

Trump shared an AI video spreading conspiracies about voter fraud that depicted former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama as monkeys, a trope often used refer to Black Americans in a disparaging context.

The Times report included the passage: "It was unclear if Mr. Trump was aware that the clip had been included in the video before he shared it. It was unclear how the clip was made, although it appeared to have been generated by A.I. The clip appeared to have been taken from a video that was shared in October by a user on X whose watermark is shown with the caption 'President Trump: King of the Jungle,' and an emoji of a lion."

The beginning of that paragraph has since been removed by The Times, but not before activist Oliver Willis copied it and posted the initial screenshot online.

"The New York Times has finally covered the Trump video of Obama as an ape — and they are still providing cover for him. F—— the Times," Willis added as a comment.

Long-time attorney Max Kennerly wrote, "Love how the presumption here is that the President doesn't know what he's sharing and that's fine and normal. Sorry, no, if the President doesn't know what he's sending out, then that is indisputable proof of gross incompetence, cognitive unfitness, or both."

When Ben Bagdikian, an esteemed journalist and early FAIR contributor, published his groundbreaking book The Media Monopoly in 1983, he painted a troubling picture of US media consolidation, reporting that 50 corporations controlled the media business. With each reprint, that number dwindled (FAIR.org, 6/1/87). When FAIR replicated his analysis in 2011 (Extra!, 10/11), it stood at 20.

Now, over 40 years after the initial release of The Monopoly Media, the media landscape has transformed drastically. Even Bagdikian’s later editions, written at the dawn of the internet, could not fully anticipate how profoundly digital technology would reconfigure the media oligarchy.

“News” is increasingly synonymous with online news. Over half the US public (56%) say that they “often” get news through their digital devices—compared to less than 1 in 3 (32%) who often get news from TV, 1 in 9 from radio, and only 1 in 14 from print publications like newspapers or magazines (Pew, 9/25/25).

Which raises the question: Who owns the leading online news sites—and, by extension, largely shapes the ideas and information that reach millions of Americans?

The pervasive presence of billionaires and the entrance of private equity firms in FAIR’s Top 7 suggest even further shifts away from democratic, truth-telling media.

Each month, Press Gazette, a London-based magazine for the journalism industry, ranks the top 50 news websites in the US in order of monthly visits, based on data from the marketing firm Similarweb. FAIR tallied Press Gazette‘s results over a 12-month span, from December 2024 to November 2025, to get a figure for total US visits to major news sites over that period: 45.6 billion.

More than half of those visits, nearly 25.5 billion, went to news sites controlled by just seven families or corporate entities.

1. Ochs-Sulzberger Family (New York Times): 5.54 billion

The owner that commands the largest share of news site viewership–a staggering 5.5 billion over one year—is the Ochs-Sulzberger family, the media dynasty that acquired the New York Times in 1896. Control of the Times has since passed through four generations, cemented by a family trust; over a century later, scion A.G. Sulzberger currently sits as the chair and publisher. As its reach greatly expanded in the digital age, the paper continues its tradition of allegiance to the establishment and opposition to what it sees as excessively progressive policies.

2. Murdoch Family (News Corp, Fox): 5.46 billion

The No. 2 spot (just under 5.5 billion views) is occupied by the Murdoch family. Billionaire right-winger Rupert Murdoch built an expansive global media empire encompassing Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, and British tabloid the Sun, all of which made the US Top 50 list, as well as many other media outlets in the US, Britain, and Australia.

The empire is now under two corporate umbrellas, News Corp (the papers) and Fox Corporation (TV); both are led by Rupert’s billionaire son, Lachlan Murdoch, who inherited the role following a messy succession battle. He was apparently chosen for his dedication to maintaining the right-wing political advocacy that has long characterized the Murdoch media portfolio.

Rupert Murdoch, who has always cultivated political connections, has a relationship with President Donald Trump going back decades, with Murdoch even acting as an informal adviser during Trump’s first administration. That chumminess has not been enough to protect Murdoch from Trump’s assault on the news media: Trump is currently suing the Wall Street Journal for $10 billion for publishing an incriminating birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein that features his signature. Still, Murdoch and Trump were recently reported to be dining together at the White House.

3. Warner Bros. Discovery (CNN): 4.0 billion

Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), a US media and entertainment conglomerate, comes in third in terms of news audience reach (4 billion), solely on the basis of its ownership of CNN. (The media group also owns extensive non-news holdings, including the Warner Bros. movie studio and HBO.)

WBD accepted a buyout bid from Netflix for an estimated $83 billion, but the deal does not include CNN or any of Warner Bros. cable networks, which would be consolidated into the separate corporation Discovery Global next year.

The Netflix-Warner Bros. deal appears to have survived numerous hostile takeover bids by Paramount Skydance that sought to include CNN. But there are more obstacles ahead: Aside from antitrust concerns raised by Democrats over the streaming giant taking over a major Hollywood studio, Trump’s connections to Larry and David Ellison of Paramount—and the fact that ownership of CNN is still very much up for grabs—means that the battle over this set of influential media properties is far from over.

Warner Bros. already has a track record of capitulating to the demands of the Trump administration, but a loud and proud Trump ally at the helm of CNN would be a major escalation.

Trump has pledged personal involvement in the federal government’s review of the merger, warning that “it could be a problem.” He has insisted that CNN be sold in any Warner Bros. deal, signaling his intent to install pro-Trump ownership and steer the network’s political angle.

Gaining control of CNN would bring Paramount to the No. 3 spot, and would grant David Ellison—son of billionaire technocrat Larry Ellison, both vocal Trump supporters who have pledged to use their power to further advance Trump’s own—a new level of control over the US media landscape. Warner Bros. already has a track record of capitulating to the demands of the Trump administration, but a loud and proud Trump ally at the helm of CNN would be a major escalation.

Consider the rapid changes implemented at CBS following Skydance’s August 2025 acquisition of Paramount, which hugely expanded the Ellisons’ media empire. As documented by FAIR (7/24/25, 10/9/25, 11/6/25), this merger has resulted in blatant “ideological restructuring,” with the appointment of “anti-woke” ideologue Bari Weiss to CBS editor-in-chief, the cancellation of the famously Trump-critical “Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” and a wave of politically motivated layoffs.

4. Apollo Global Management (Yahoo): 2.7 billion

At No. 4 is private equity firm Apollo Global Management, which since 2021 has owned the Yahoo group. Yahoo News and Yahoo Finance together generated 2.7 billion views during the analyzed period. These sites primarily aggregate content from other news outlets, with occasional original articles, and rely heavily on algorithm-based personalization. Apollo’s current CEO, billionaire Marc Rowan, has recently donated millions to Republicans.

Rowan was also heavily involved in developing Trump’s “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” a proposal, as the New York Times (10/3/25) reported, that would provide financial incentives and preferential treatment to schools that sign and, in turn, agree to limit international students, protect conservative speech, generally require standardized testing for admissions, and to adopt policies recognizing “that academic freedom is not absolute,” among other conditions.

5. Brian Roberts (Comcast): 2.4 billion

Ranked No. 5 with 2.35 billion visits during the analyzed period, Comcast is a media and technology company with extensive holdings—of which NBC News, CNBC, MSNBC, and Today all made appearances in the Top 50. Comcast’s billionaire CEO, Brian Roberts, is the controlling shareholder.

FAIR (6/11/16, 4/23/18) has long criticized the corporate skew of Comcast-owned media. More recently, however, this bias has devolved into patent deference to the Trump administration. Trump has repeatedly criticized Comcast and its news subsidiaries for bias against him. In February 2025, his FCC targeted Comcast for its “promotion of DEI.” Comcast quickly “confirmed it had received [FCC chair Brendan] Carr’s letter,” noting that it will be “cooperating with the FCC to answer their questions.” (The Hill, 2/12/25).

Changes to accommodate Trump’s demands were swift and severe. As covered by FAIR (3/6/25), MSNBC overhauled its staff soon afterward:

The news channel has nixed or demoted their most progressive anchors, all of whom are people of color. These are the hosts who have drawn the most ire from Donald Trump’s online warriors, according to Dave Zirin of The Nation (2/28/25).

Comcast further demonstrated its subservience to Trump with a recent donation to the new White House ballroom.

In January 2026, Comcast completed its spin-off of many of its news and cable holdings, including CNBC and MSNBC (rebranded as MS Now), to Versant Media—a company that Roberts retains control over.

6. Microsoft (MSN): 2.1 billion

Coming in at No. 6, Microsoft, the technology conglomerate that owns MSN, also donated to Trump’s ballroom. Similar to Yahoo, MSN is an algorithm-based republisher of news stories, which pulled in 2.1 billion views over the studied time frame. Given Microsoft’s obsession with AI, it is perhaps unsurprising that MSN has started to lean heavily on auto-generated content, coming under fire for promoting unreliable sources and publishing blatant misinformation.

Microsoft’s ownership is dominated by institutional shareholders, with mutual fund giant Vanguard leading the way at 9%. Microsoft’s billionaire CEO, Satya Nadella, is known to have a friendly relationship with Trump—they have met and dined together on several occasions. In fact, before helping to fund Trump’s East Wing ballroom, Microsoft contributed $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund.

7. IAC (People): 1.9 billion

No. 7 IAC Inc. owns numerous media and internet brands, including Top 50 sites People and Daily Beast. Taken together, these two sites generated 1.9 billion views over 12 months. Billionaire founder Barry Diller serves as chair, senior executive and the largest individual shareholder of IAC. It should be noted that Diller has publicly criticized Trump on several occasions, standing out as the only one among the Top 7, aside from New York Times publisher Sulzberger, to do so.

Old Wine in a New Bottle

While not a replica of the original Bagdikian study, which took into account all major forms of media rather than focusing on the dominant medium (then television), FAIR’s research shows the continuation of the dynamics he described in a pre-internet age. The internet has not democratized news in any meaningful way; instead, the media monopoly has simply migrated to digital spaces.

At the same time, the pervasive presence of billionaires and the entrance of private equity firms in FAIR’s Top 7 suggest even further shifts away from democratic, truth-telling media.

The growing presence of private equity in media is a relatively new phenomenon, highlighting the usefulness of expansive media portfolios as vehicles for profit extraction. Along with the burgeoning influence of billionaires on the media landscape, the control of capital over media has become, if possible, even more apparent.

Almost three decades ago, the late media scholar Robert McChesney (Extra!, 11–12/97) wrote presciently of the globalization of media behemoths in the digital age:

It is a system that works to advance the cause of the global market and promote commercial values, while denigrating journalism and culture not conducive to the immediate bottom line or long-run corporate interests.

Some once posited that the rise of the internet would eliminate the monopoly power of the global media giants. Such talk has declined recently as the largest media, telecommunication and computer firms have done everything within their immense powers to colonize the internet, or at least neutralize its threat.

What is tragic is that this entire process of global media concentration has taken place with little public debate, especially in the US, despite the clear implications for politics and culture. After World War II, the Allies restricted media concentration in occupied Germany and Japan because they noted that such concentration promoted anti-democratic, even fascist, political cultures. It may be time for the United States and everyone else to take a dose of that medicine. But for that to happen will require concerted effort to educate and organize people around media issues. That is the task before us.

Research assistance: Priyanka Bansal, Saurav Sarkar, Lara-Nour Walton

President Donald Trump appears to have moved forward with a major change in strategy after hearing about the idea on Fox News Monday morning, according to an analysis of the events from leading media reporter Brian Stelter.

On Monday, Trump announced that he would be sending border official Tom Homan, one of his leading advisors on immigration enforcement, to Minnesota. While Trump only mentioned allegations of welfare fraud in the state, the move comes amid the historically large ICE and CBP enforcement surge in the Twin Cities area, which has soured Americans on Trump's mass deportation agenda considerably and led to the deaths of two American citizens at the hands of federal officers. The move was largely interpreted as a ploy to regain control in the state amid widespread criticism of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem's handling of the operation.

"I am sending Tom Homan to Minnesota tonight," Trump posted to Truth Social. "He has not been involved in that area, but knows and likes many of the people there. Tom is tough but fair, and will report directly to me."

Notably, Stetler, a leading media correspondent for CNN, observed that Trump made the announcement about Homan not long after Fox News morning host Brian Kilmeade suggested the idea several times on the air, first mentioning it around 6:15 a.m EST.

"Kilmeade, a Trump booster who knows the president often watches the morning show, volunteered the idea again at 7:15 and once more at 8:10," Stelter explained. "Homan, the border czar and a former Fox commentator, would 'settle things down' and help Trump, Kilmeade said."

“What I would do is just bring Tom Homan in," Kilmeade said, later adding. "The bottom line is, these images are not the ones that are going to help you keep the majorities [in the House and Senate]."

Trump's announcement post went up at around 8:30 a.m. EST.

This timeline fits the pattern of Trump seeming to take policy and strategy suggestions from Fox News, which he is said to watch a lot of each day. Michael Wolff, a veteran reporter with inside sources near Trump, recently suggested that, due to the president's unwillingness to read or listen to official materials, White House staffers have taken to laundering their plans through Fox News in order to actually reach him.

"The people at Fox News would then echo what the White House wanted them to say so that Trump would hear this and, and he would he would listen and appreciate and understand, because it was on television,” Wolff explained. “A very closed circle was being created. He was running a White House that was largely a reality television show. And the television itself was supplying him with much of the script for this show.”

With the 2026 midterms nine and one-half months away, Democratic strategists are looking at President Donald Trump's weak approval ratings in a long list of polls and hoping that the midterms will become a referendum on his presidency. A New York Times/Siena College poll conducted January 12-17 found his approval at 40 percent, but only 32 percent of respondents believe the U.S. is "better off than it was a year ago." Meanwhile, a YouGov/Economist poll released on January 20 found that only 37 percent of Americans approve of Trump's job performance either "strongly" or "somewhat."

Trump often dismisses negative poll numbers as "fake news." And according to MS NOW columnist Steve Benen — a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show" — another response is filing lawsuits.

In a column published on January 23, Benen describes a pattern with Trump: filing frivolous lawsuits after seeing poll numbers he doesn't like.

"Once in a while, when the president is especially frustrated by Americans' attitudes, he reaches out to his lawyers," Benen observes. "In June 2020, for example, during Trump's reelection bid, his operation sent a cease-and-desist letter to the president of CNN, demanding that the network retract and apologize for a poll that showed him trailing Joe Biden — who, roughly four months later, defeated the Republican incumbent. CNN ignored the demand, and Trump failed to follow through on his threat to sue."

The Maddow producer/MS NOW columnist continues, "Four years later, after winning a second term, Trump filed an unprecedented lawsuit against the Des Moines Register for publishing the results of a pre-election poll that he didn't like…. As 2026 gets underway, Trump is taking further steps down the same ridiculous path. After The New York Times published the results of its latest national poll, which also showed horrible results for the White House, the president published a tirade to his social media platform."

In that January 22 post on his Truth Social platform, Trump referenced a "lawsuit against The Failing New York Times" that he filed — threatening, "They have to pay a price for FAKE AND FRAUDULENT NEWS and, hopefully, in the not too distant future, they will!"

"In a normal and healthy political environment," Benen comments, "American presidents struggling with sinking public support, especially in their second term, have options: They can predict a future turnaround. They can argue that they don’t consider public opinion research to be especially important, since they can’t run for a third term anyway. They might even adopt a longer view and insist that they expect history to vindicate them. They might even consider changing course and moving away from the policies that are dragging down their popularity. In 2026, however, Americans are not living in a normal and healthy political environment."

Steve Benen's full MS NOW column is available at this link.

President Donald Trump’s coalition is “falling apart,” according to columnist Matt K. Lewis, who writes at The Hill that Trump’s list of accomplishments seems more like “a cry for help.”

Pointing to Trump’s rapid subject-changing, Lewis noted that the president kicked off the new year by invading Venezuela and capturing Nicolás Maduro.

“From there, things escalated briskly,” he wrote. “He defended an ICE agent who shot and killed a protester in Minneapolis named Renee Good. He threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act. He threatened to take Greenland — possibly by force. He threatened to slap tariffs on European allies over Greenland. He suggested his failure to win the Nobel Peace Prize justified taking Greenland. And he almost failed to issue any acknowledgment of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, waiting until bedtime to do so.”

Lewis says that while somewhere there is a “constituency” for each of these individual actions, “taken together, they resemble a blitzkrieg against public opinion.”

He summed up Trump’s low poll numbers and concluded, “America has seen this movie before, has been reminded of how it ends, and is already edging toward the exit.”

So, if the 2024 election held today, it’s “not at all clear” that Trump would win. he said, in part because “Trump’s winning coalition was so sprawling and incoherent that pleasing one group would automatically enrage another.”

So what’s happened in the past year?

“Trump is very good at campaigning and very bad at governing. This explains almost everything that has happened since he took office one year ago this week, including the nation’s rising consumption of Rolaids.”

Disappointment from the “newer members of his coalition” came from “the ultimate realization that Trump’s most electorally appealing promises — such as lowering grocery prices on day one — are never actually going to happen. Indeed, Trump’s policies — tariffs, for example — were almost custom-made to increase grocery prices, which is generally frowned upon by people who eat.”

As it turns out, “Trump’s true superpower … only works when he is not actually in charge.”