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Charlie Sykes, former editor of the conservative Bulwark, says a convergence of problems are descending on President Donald Trump, and the aging, frustrated president is clearly showing his anger.

When Trump brazenly admitted that “I love the inflation” it was not the low point of his day, said Sykes.

“As we are seeing, an increasingly frustrated Trump is realizing that he cannot escape either the Epstein Files or the Iran War he launched on a whim. … inflation is surging, his poll numbers continue to fall, his big Freedom 250 concert imploded, his slush fund is on hold, he doesn’t have his ballroom yet, (some) Republicans are defying him, and on Monday he was roundly and raucously booed in his old hometown,” said Sykes.

“It’s not your imagination,” added Sykes. “It’s taking a toll. We saw an angry, red-faced Trump crash out in an interview on “Meet the Press,” and now reports suggest that the brooding. sulking president is increasingly isolated and prone to (even more) erratic decisions. He’s standing by his bizarre appointment of Bill Pulte as acting Director of National Intelligence and lashing out at fellow Republicans who are telling him that the appointment is crazy with hair on it. His response? More middle fingers to Republicans in Congress.”

The president’s mood got no better on Wednesday, after the New York Times published an excerpt from the new book by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan revealing a divided White House, as well as “panicking and backbiting over the Epstein cover-up.”

“Then there is Iran, the war that he said was won on the first day,” said Sykes. “The war that would be quick and easy. The war he said would be settled any day now. Iran’s military was obliterated. Peace, he assured us, was just a couple of days away. By CNN’s latest count, he has said that an Iran deal is around the corner 38 times since March.”

But then came Trump’s gaffe that launched “a thousand” videos and Democrat ads.

“On Wednesday, as he held court in his gilded Oval Office, the man who promised to be the voice of the forgotten American was asked if he was concerned about new data that showed the annual inflation rate at 4.2 percent, a three-year high. He replied: 'The numbers were great. You know what I really love? I love the inflation. You know why? Because as soon as this war is over … when the war is over, it’s coming down, it’s going to come down like a rock,'” recounted Sykes.

“What stopped me was the ease. The complete absence of any visible awareness that the people who would see that clip are the same people paying $4.81 for a gallon of gas on the way to work,” said Sykes. “The same people who have watched their grocery bills climb every month for four months. The same people who were told, over and over again in 2024, that Donald Trump would end inflation starting on day one and make America affordable again.

CNN fact checker Daniel Dale is scorching President Donald Trump for employing a “time-tested conspiracist tactic,” namely, altering his conspiracy theory when the facts disprove it.

Dale reminds readers that when then-President Barack Obama in 2011 had to publish his long-form birth certificate, which proved decisively that he was, in fact, born in the U.S., Trump didn’t cease and desist — instead, he changed tactics and suggested that the birth certificate itself was fake.

“It’s a time-tested conspiracist tactic,” Dale writes. “And he’s now using it again when trying to explain why Steve Hilton succeeded in the California primary elections Trump had baselessly declared were a fraud and were being rigged against Hilton.”

“If you’re pushing the baseless conspiracy theory that the results of last week’s California primary elections were rigged against Republicans like gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton, it would seem highly inconvenient that Hilton has succeeded in qualifying for the November runoffs,” Dale argues. “But if you’re a seasoned conspiracy theorist, as President Donald Trump is, you don’t just stop telling a fantastical tale when it is contradicted by new facts. Rather, you simply adjust the conspiracy theory so that the new facts now fit within it.”

Trump is now alleging that “he had jawboned the riggers into submission,” says Dale, “but only in Hilton’s case, not the case of unsuccessful Republican Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt.”

For his part, Hilton hasn’t alleged any fraud, and, in fact, “he has said he has ‘seen nothing’ to justify any legal intervention.”

But Trump warned that California authorities had “approved” of Hilton advancing to the top tier for November.

“And then I hit them hard on that (Pratt’s defeat), but I started talking about Steve Hilton, who’s a fantastic guy,” Trump said, as Dale noted. “And I saw them say it was going to be two weeks before they knew, and I started hitting them. ‘It’s going to happen to Steve Hilton, too.’ It’s – ‘Watch, you gotta watch’ – and they approved Steve Hilton very quickly. They didn’t want, there was too much heat on them. The only reason he got approved – he had all the votes he needed, probably to be first place – but the only reason they approved Steve Hilton, it was going to be two weeks, they said, and then they approved him that night. Because the heat was on them, because they’re cheatin’ dogs.”

Dale calls Trump’s allegations “complete hogwash” and a “new round of foolishness.”

Despite widespread concerns that Social Security will soon be forced to reduce benefits, one economics journalist recently argued these fears are overblown.

“Few deceptions in American politics are quite so pernicious as the notion that the Social Security trust fund exists,” wrote The Wall Street Journal’s economics reporter Joseph C. Sternberg on Thursday. “Again this week we’ve received another warning that trust funds that are essentially nonexistent are on the verge of running out of money they already don’t have.”

Sternberg argued that, although the Social Security Administration’s two trust funds (for working-age disability and old-age retirement programs) will theoretically be empty by 2034, the program has overcome similar threats in the past.

“The programs for several decades received more income via payroll-tax revenue than they paid out in benefits,” Sternberg claimed. “Congress directed the surplus into the trust funds, on the theory that the pot of money would be available later if tax revenues fell below benefit payouts. But rather than invest those surpluses into the private sector as a large defined-benefit pension manager would, Congress directed that Social Security ‘invest’ only in special-issue U.S. Treasury bonds.”

He continued, “The trust funds therefore represent borrowing by one hand of government from another. This transferred the cash to Congress to spend in the flush years, while putting the Treasury on the hook to redeem the bonds out of general revenue or borrowing once Social Security payouts began to exceed payroll-tax revenue. The Treasury already has been funding a portion of Social Security benefits since 2010, the year in which benefit payouts exceeded payroll-tax collections for the first time. The cost in 2025 was $160 billion and will hit $300 billion a year by 2030.”

For these reasons, he characterized the current alarm over Social Security’s fate as misplaced.

“So when you get word that the trust funds will ‘run out of money’ soon, that’s a political rather than a fiscal warning,” Sternberg concluded. “The previous political-economy equilibrium regarding Social Security is expiring, and a new one will have to be found.”

He later added that America would benefit from “a relatively stable immigration policy and perhaps several years of information on how artificial intelligence will transform the economy’s productivity” before figuring out how to handle Social Security.

Speaking with AlterNet in May, former Social Security Commissioner Martin O’Malley similarly disputed the widespread concern that the program is headed toward insolvency.

“This isn’t true — but it is often repeated,” O’Malley told AlterNet at the time. “Social Security is a pay as you go program. It is not funded by deficit spending. It is more akin to an insurance company. People's premiums and benefits are paid out from those premiums. Even the surplus — which because of income inequality is being depleted sooner (2032) than thought in 1983, even that was built up by payroll tax, not borrowed money. “

He also said that “an utter devaluation of the dollar — which Trump is causing and risking in so many reckless and self/serving ways (bitcoin), would be really bad for everything in US including Soc Sec, it is not true that Social Security depends on deficit spending for its support or benefits. (Except a small portion of admin expenses).”

In contrast to the positions held by Sternberg and O’Malley, a June analysis by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) predicted benefit checks will need to be reduced by an average of $500 per month if the program reaches its “go broke” date. Without such cuts, the CRFB asserted, the Social Security Administration’s payments will eventually entirely deplete the fund.

“Applying this projected reduction to current state-level data, we estimate an across-the-board monthly cut would range from $459 to $556 across the 50 states and the District of Columbia,” the report explained.

A recent report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities also blamed President Donald Trump for weakening the Social Security program by gutting its staff.

“In just 15 months, the Trump Administration has pushed out more than 8,000 Social Security Administration (SSA) workers — causing SSA’s largest one-year staffing reduction on record,” the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities wrote. “This 14 percent cut has compromised SSA’s ability to reliably serve seniors, bereaved families, and people with disabilities. By January 2026, SSA had fewer employees than at any time since 1967, when the agency was not yet responsible for administering Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and served 52 million fewer beneficiaries.”

Republicans who have lost their primary races are blaming everyone but themselves, NOTUS found on Thursday.

Reporters Daniella Diaz and Reese Gorman spoke to some of the GOP House members who have fallen in primaries for other offices about what they think is going wrong.

"In just the last few weeks, Rep. Dusty Johnson didn’t make the runoff to be South Dakota’s GOP nominee for governor, Rep. Randy Feenstra lost his bid to be Iowa’s GOP nominee for governor and Reps. Ralph Norman and Nancy Mace both didn’t make a runoff Tuesday night to win the GOP nomination to compete to be South Carolina’s next governor," the report said.

Johnson complained about "the service," though it's unclear if he's complaining about the cell phone service or something else.

“The reality is there’s a reason House members are losing with a greater frequency than people expect,” he said when speaking to NOTUS. “And that’s because the service in the House is not a particularly big asset right now.”

He only got 23.4 percent in the governor's race.

He also blamed the GOP leadership for forcing them to take a number of tough votes that ended up in attack ads against them from GOP opponents.

“There was just a deluge of negative advertising around the whole RINO [Republican In Name Only] and career politician attack,” Johnson complained. “That’s a really potent argument to make with the base and so we didn’t do enough to inoculate ourselves against those D.C. related issues.”

Some of those issues are so difficult that there's no easy way to get a soundbite that explains those votes.

“These are really, really complicated issues, and I just don’t know that the normals are doing as good a job of messaging that nuance as maybe the extremist influencers,” Johnson said.

In the past, experience with government has been positive, but not this year. Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) stepped out of his seat to run for state attorney general, only to lose in the GOP runoff. Rep. Wesley Hunt came in third. Georgia Rep. Buddy Carter (R) is another one who didn't make it through the primary for the state's Senate race. They all left safe Republican seats to seek higher office, only to lose to other Republicans.

Norman and Mace both finished with low numbers in South Carolina's gubernatorial primary. Mace went so far as to pretend she always meant to leave her congressional seat.

On X she posted, “Headed back to the private sector at the end of this term, as the Founders intended. When I ran in 2020 I said I’d only serve 3 terms and my time is up. It’s truly been an immense honor and I wouldn’t trade it for anything else.”

Both Norman and Mace were among those who missed important funding votes to stay back and lose the primaries.

One Republican strategist told NOTUS that the common thread is anti-establishment sentiment against GOP candidates. For lawmakers who have been in Congress for years, the demand for "new blood" can be convincing to voters.

“Members of Congress are so easy to paint as these D.C. swamp career politicians, especially on the Republican side because our base already hates that,” the senior Republican strategist told NOTUS.

Wichita Eagle columnist Dion Lefler does not suffer idiots easily. He also has no patience for Kansas senators who blow lies on “propaganda network” Newsmax, blaming a long-gone president for President Donald Trump’s bad choices.

“Faced with a threat to the U.S. beef industry, Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall has leapt into action to do what he does best — blame Joe Biden and Hispanics,” writes Lefler. “Never mind that his heroes, Donald Trump and Elon Musk, probably bear more responsibility because they defunded an animal-health program that was preventing the threat.

Lefler said Marshall, who is a member of the Senate Agricultural Committee, got invited to Newsmax “to spout some Republican party-line rhetoric” about the screwworm fly, which has recently resurfaced in Texas cattle 60 years after other U.S. presidents had eradicated it from the U.S. border.

“I don’t have time to write a column every time Roger Marshall goes on right-wing TV and says something dumb, but his appearance this week on the propaganda network Newsmax pretty much demands response,” said Lefleur.

But Marshall could not wait to blame somebody — anybody — other than Trump for the nasty little maggot’s reappearance under his watch.

“We eradicated the screwworm in 1966 and we’ll talk about this, but this is another thing we can thank Joe Biden for, that when millions of people came out of Central America, they brought this screwworm with them, it was on their pets, maybe on their flesh as well,” Marshall told the Newsmax audience.

“The probability that this problem was caused by migrants trekking northward from Central America is somewhere between vanishingly small and nonexistent,” said Lefleur, who points out that scientists attribute the re-introduction of the screwworm primarily to organized crime and the smuggling of illicit cattle from Central America.

The screw worm is a live maggot that burrows into living flesh like a little monster. It most definitely would not be tolerated on a living, mobile human healthy enough to travel. We’re humans. We pick at spots, itchy patches and wounds. A wriggling, gnawing maggot would not stand a chance over the course of its 5-to-7-day cycle in a human’s arm or leg.

Perhaps Marshal was thinking about migrant dogs or cats traveling alongside their migrant owners, but that’s stupid, too, said Lefleur.

But if you want to seriously consider the root of the screwworm resurgence, look no further, says Lefluer, than the opinion of Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.): “Trump and Elon Musk got rid of the USAID program that helped contain screwworms to Central America. Now, thanks to them, our beef is being infected with parasites. We’re all paying the price for this insane, far-right radical extremism.”

Or consider the opinion of Rep. Darren Soto (D-Fla.): “This screwworm epidemic may have been avoided if DOGE folks actually communicated with our ranchers. Instead, a team of wholly unqualified interns recklessly cut the screwworm prevention program. Now ranchers will suffer and beef prices will continue to rise.”

[Of course,] confirming exactly how much DOGE cut from screwworm protection is practically impossible at this point,” added Lefluer. “While Trump administration officials struggle at eradicating screwflies, they’re experts at eradicating records of their mistakes. The website www.doge.gov, where the administration once proudly ballyhooed the supposed savings by Musk and his musketeers, is now a blank page.”

The Republican-run Pima County Attorney's Office issued a report that Sheriff Mark Lamb got special treatment when it came to sexual misconduct and other allegations.

Lamb, who is running for Congress in Arizona's Fifth District, was never investigated for the 2020 allegations under the previous county leadership and the Board of Supervisors, but GOP County Attorney Brad Miller's office did, the Arizona Republic said.

"The former county attorney also failed to document Lamb's own request to investigate and possibly charge two women who were posting sexual images and messages they say the sheriff sent them," the report said, citing a report filed on June 5.

According to Miller's office, there were "no written reports, investigative summaries, witness interviews, case referrals or documented findings" by the previous office.

"Public officials are not entitled to a different standard of review because they are politically connected, personally popular, or institutionally protected," Miller's spokesperson, Christy Kelly, said in a statement to the Republic. "Allegations involving elected leadership demand greater scrutiny — not less."

The Arizona Republic did its own investigation into Lamb, who has a "year-long habit of sexting" and allegations that he "preyed on women."

The investigation came after the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was told about Lamb when a woman came forward to church elders with allegations, the report said.

A report at the end of May exposed the LDS church for promising the accuser that they'd "take care of this." It never happened.

Jillian Stannard alleged that Lamb upended her marriage and that of another woman who worked for the county both before and after he was elected to the sheriff's office. Among the allegations against Lamb are those involving wife-swapping.

"One of the women said the sheriff told her he would send state police after her if she didn't stop posting about their relationship. She supported those claims with screenshots of texts and social media messages," the Republic reported last month.

After Stannard reported Lamb to the church, she said he "got in her face" to bully her into silence.

"He approached me, pointed in my face and firmly said, 'I have a bone to pick with you,'" Stannard said of Lamb.

Stannard refused to engage and he allegedly followed up via text message.

In a 2018 email to the elders, Stannard alleged, "He messed up my life so badly. I no longer trust anyone. My faith has been unmovable until recently. I'm reaching out to you for help."

The Republic published screen captures of Stannard's text messages at the time.

The new report indicates the sexual harassment allegations as well as claims that Lamb made racist comments, claiming Black people were lazy, when a border extremist used the N-word in a message, the records show.

The report noted that it's a very different person that Lamb has been in public and he's still on track to win the Republican Primary with President Donald Trump's endorsement.

"Lamb and his wife cultivated the image of a churchgoing power couple and touted family values while engaged in explicit photo exchanges, secret liaisons, sexting and casual affairs," the report said, citing Stannard.

She said that the evidence of it was all over her husband's phone and computer.

The ordeal began in 2017 when Stannard sdaid Lamb was at a farmers market and was showing off photos of his genitals. A friend told her what it was as Lamb worked the crowd for votes. "I thought she was kidding. I asked Mark if it really was and he said it was. I thought he was kidding, too, until he turned his phone and showed me."

Lamb denies all of the allegations.

"The campaign is aware that various false, misleading, and potentially defamatory allegations have circulated online for years," said Andrew Gould, a Phoenix lawyer and former Arizona Supreme Court justice, in a letter to The Arizona Republic. "They are repeated without verification and often to only cause great reputational and political harm."

Arizona's 12 News reported this week that Lamb has seemingly disappeared from the congressional campaign.

"Where is Mark Lamb?" the anchors asked. Lamb "has been under fire over allegations of sexting and wife swapping."

The other anchor alleged, "Lamb has been literally invisible on the campaign trail, but 12 News journalist Bram Resnick tells us he's been very busy at his new ranch in Tennessee." He also referred to Lamb as an "absentee candidate." The funding for the new Tennessee ranch is also raising questions, Resnick said.

The GOP primary in Arizona is set for July 21.

Lamb has become an online influencer by uploading videos of encounters on the job. Frank Sloup, a content creator and deputy sheriff, uploads police videos and does body camera breakdowns, and has done "ride-alongs" with Lamb, whom he praises for his police work and his ability to speak Spanish.

Inflation is primed to become catastrophically worse in one of the most important sectors, and according to The Washington Post, executives are still "doing everything they can" to get that fact across to President Donald Trump before it is too late.

As the Post laid out in a Thursday report, executives in the oil industry are sounding the alarm about prices at the pump shooting up to a degree even higher than they already have, and are working to make sure Trump hears those warnings as he attempts to negotiate a deal with Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

"Oil and gas executives have warned the White House that gasoline prices could surge in the coming months as fuel inventories fall to critical lows, complicating the Trump administration’s efforts to contain inflation that has already rattled American consumers," the report detailed.

It continued: "Industry officials say they are doing everything they can to sound an alarm that prices are about to soar as the commercial and government inventories that have mitigated price rises so far are rapidly depleting, according to multiple people familiar with the conversations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation from the administration. Some inventories could be wiped out within weeks, the executives have warned, coinciding with the peak summer travel season."

While the dwindling shipments out of the Gulf States has so far caused gas prices to increase well over $1 on average across the U.S., if the key shipping route remains closed or unsafe for much longer, it will quickly reach the point where stockpiles begin to reach critical levels. At that point, prices will potentially increase to astronomical levels, and gas rationing might also have to be implemented.

For the time being, some of the sources that the Post spoke to are trying to remain optimistic.

“I have absolutely no doubt the White House — from the president on down — is fully aware of the nearly universal alarm among oil companies and analysts about the direction of travel for oil prices this summer,” Bob McNally, a former energy adviser under George W. Bush and founder of the research firm, Rapidan Energy Group, said in a statement to the outlet.

“We’re sounding the alarm on these inventories going to record lows,” American Petroleum Institute CEO Mike Sommers said during an appearance on a Fox Business show that Trump is known to watch. “We should be concerned about what prices we’re going to see over the next few weeks. We have to solve this problem in the Strait of Hormuz.”

President Donald Trump let slip another disastrous gaffe during an Oval Office event this week, with The Hill reporting that strategists within the GOP are calling it "a doozy" and "extremely unhelpful" for the party's midterms strategy.

During a Wednesday event at the White House, Trump was pressed for a reaction to the newly released inflation report, showing that the rate had reached a three-year-high, despite the president's repeated insistence that he had "tamed" inflation after his return to power. In response, Trump said, "I love it, the numbers were great, I love the inflation," before going on a seeming tangent about oil barrels purportedly seized from Iranian ships, but the initial quote spread like wildfire online.

Given how much affordability is set to define the midterms for voters, and given how little empathy Trump has shown about the issue, many argued that he had let slip the perfect line for Democrats to run in attack ads for November.

Sources within the party are also echoing that feeling, from the opposite perspective, worrying that the president has once again made their lives more difficult heading into a make-or-break election season.

"Republican strategists tell Morning Report that Trump’s message runs counter to GOP efforts to communicate their focus on the economy to voters ahead of the midterms and puts members in the difficult position of having to defend the president’s comments," The Hill reported on Thursday morning, adding later, "Trump has on several occasions brushed off the economic and political fallout of the Iran war. He said last month that he wasn’t thinking 'even a little bit' about Americans’ cost of living in negotiating with Iran and doesn’t care about the midterms."

“It’s extremely unhelpful to any Republican who’s on the ballot,” former Republican National Committee communications director Doug Heye told the outlet. “If you wanted to proactively get messaging wrong, this is how you would do it.”

He also noted: “It’s hard to see any argument where this could be spun favorably.”

Ron Bonjean, a GOP strategist, told The Hill that it was vital for the Trump administration to "clarify very quickly that Trump thought the inflation number would be much higher and that he is confident the number will come down once hostilities end with Iran.”

“GOP members will need this air cover almost immediately so they can point to what Trump meant by this,” Bonjean said, citing the spin Trump himself gave in a New York Post interview shortly after the initial gaffe.

“Republicans have learned to shimmy and shake around the more colorful comments the President makes, and this one, admittedly, is a doozy. But his point is correct: A nuclear Iran is much worse than four percent inflation,” ex-Fox News host GOP political consultant Bill O’Reilly said. “If inflation is reasonable and trending downward in September and October, this quip will be forgotten. If it’s rising, we’ll be seeing about a billion ads on it before Election Day.”