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White House source hounds Trump as 'demented old man with tacky tastes'

RADAR Online confirmed source information from a new book that President Donald Trump likes to wander around the White House gluing goldish bits and gewgaws onto walls — but it doesn’t sound much better the way anonymous White House sources frame it.

Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump, a book by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, claims Trump has been personally decorating the White House by using a tube of super glue to jam gold ornamentation over the historic building. But RADAR’s sources say Trump’s little glue pen is nothing new.

"A source familiar with the White House told Radar the episode reflected Trump's highly personal approach to the presidency rather than an isolated incident,” reports reporter Aaron Tinney.

"People around him understand that if he has an idea about how something should look, he's likely to carry it out himself. It has become part of the way the White House operates under this administration,” said one source. "But it comes across as the behavior of a demented old man with tacky tastes."

"The president likes to oversee every detail of his surroundings. Whether it's a major construction proposal or a decorative flourish inside the Oval Office, he wants the final result to reflect his own taste and vision,” said another source, speaking of Trump’s arty tidbit additions.

Another insider said Trump's involvement in the décor had become well known among staff members.

The book has already unleashed several revelations about Trump's second term and it “portrays a president driven by grievances, instinct and an intense desire to reshape Washington in his own image,” according to Radar.

Revelations include just how impenetrable Trump’s “hermetically-sealed bubble,” of misinformation and flatter is in his second administration.

“His aides are not eager to bring criticisms to him — in fact, mostly they keep them away from him, because they know there's a limited amount of capital that they're willing to spend by being the one to say, ‘Hey, here's some bad news,’” Swan told an MS NOW anchor on Wednesday.

Other disclosures include Trump’s habit of letting trash collect around his living quarters, his isolation from the First Lady and his habit of throwing out expensive silver White House cutlery and utensils.

Trump is a compulsive all-night social media crawler, as indicated by his outlandish, hours-long chain posts and his perpetual narcolepsy during meetings and press engagements. But Haberman and Swan say all that overnight online raging comes complete with a long string of fast food and the resulting trash and wrappers.

Book claims to have Biblical evidence 'Trump will save America' — and MAGA is furious

President Donald Trump and his supporters have a habit of claiming he was chosen by God. Yet one book that took this argument to a literal conclusion is receiving angry reviews — because, as it turns out, the evangelical-raised author intended it as a joke.

Titled “Scriptual Evidence That Trump Is Set Apart by God: Biblical Proof That Trump Will Save America,” author Rihanna Teixeira included 73 pages but left them all blank. At least one angry Amazon customer did not seem to have actually opened the book.

“It was barely usable as toilet paper,” complained one user on Amazon. “I love a good fiction book but this was AI slop.” Similarly a reviewer posted on Amazon that the book is “Blasphemy!!” and “an absolute insult to God.”

Another Amazon poster did actually open the book and wrote, “Blank book don’t fall for the ‘joke.’” Still another said that “it’s a joke. The book is blank. It’s been done before save your money it’s a money grab.”

Other comments included “be so for real right now” and “not what I learned in Sunday School.”

Intriguingly, there are also many Amazon reviews that praise the book for its supposed glowing commentary about Trump. It is unclear whether these are jokes or come from Trump supporters who sincerely want others to believe they actually read a book.

With a five star review and under the title "Honestly, this is top tier research!", a user called DCDoc4200 posted “I'm a doctoral student, and I know firsthand how intense, difficult, and, honestly, grueling quality research and writing can be. Yet, this book centers such rigor. The author meticulously combs the pages of the ancient text, and thoughtfully synthesizes the all of the evidence proving why our dear leader is truly anointed for such a time as this. And to her credit, when the evidence isn't robust enough, it's clear that she refused to include it. This is true scholarship. This is sound science. This is what real faith looks like. Kudos!”

Two five star reviews, one by “Leticia” and another by “amazonbuyer19866,” labeled it as a “must read.”

“One of the more thorough and factual books about scripture as it applies to modern times I have ever read (especially in reference to our God appointed president, Trump),” Leticia wrote. “So wonderful I insisted my coworkers also read it. They loved it too. Even the one that never reads thought it was a great and accurate book. Proud to own a copy of this historically accurate book. Thank you for taking the time to write this!”

The other wrote, “What a profound and moving read that is so inspiring! Highly recommend to those that might be wavering in their faith and beliefs.”

Meanwhile a five star review by an Amazon customer named John Schoenstein called it “a thorough investigation into Scripture,” gushing that “this is a wonderful book! It goes into detail, giving each book of the Bible its own section to show exactly where it is told that DJT is the Chosen One. Although it's kind of fast to read, it's going in the reading room (aka the crapper) for all to enjoy.”

While this book is a joke, there are people who sincerely believe Trump was chosen by God. The 2018 film “The Trump Prophecy” makes this argument, as has Trump’s personal spiritual adviser Pastor Paula White-Cain. Trump sold self-proclaimed “Trump Bibles” to many of his followers, and former Trump supporter ex-Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) has bluntly stated Trumpism operates as a cult of personality. Walsh doubled down on this claim when Trump supporters continued to back him after he waged wars against Venezuela and Iran despite promising during the 2024 campaign that he would wage no new wars.

“I thought you wanted him to end wars all over the world,” Walsh said. “You said you wanted him to end American entanglement in conflicts and wars around the world. America shouldn’t be involved in these wars, you said. That’s why you’re voting for Trump, you said.” Then, despite Trump’s actions against Denmark, Venezuela and Iran, they still support him.

He added, “And you don’t like when people call you a cult, Trump voters? What else are people to think when you voted for Trump to get us the hell out of wars around the world, and instead he gets us involved in wars around the world and starts new wars, and you still sing his praises and support him? What are we to think, MAGA, but that you are a cult?”

Walsh concluded, “You’ve got no argument against people calling you a cult. And if he takes us to war against Iran, and you clap and applaud and throw him flowers, Trump supporters, I will be at the front of the parade calling you a cult.”

She pulled a fast one on MAGA — and paid off her medical debt

In April, Rihanna Teixeria self-published a book with the extraordinary title “Scriptural Evidence That Trump Is Set Apart by God: Biblical Proof that Trump Will Save America.” Judging by its cover, it appears similar to other texts idolizing President Donald Trump that have practically become their own genre in recent years. When you open this one, however, you find only blank pages.

MAGA buyers who weren’t in on the joke are furious, with 1-star reviewers blasting it as “blasphemy,” “delusional,” and “terribly inaccurate.” One called it “the first book I have ever truly wanted to burn.” “Not what I learned in Sunday school,” declared another.

Mad as they may be, ironically, their purchases helped Teixeria pay off her medical debt as the book sold better than she expected — roughly 1,000 copies within two months — helping her earn enough to clear the $4,000 she owed.

According to Teixeria, it only took her a few hours of fooling around on Canva to make the cover, then the book was up for sale on Amazon. She explained that her goal wasn’t merely to make a buck, but to point out the hypocrisy she saw having grown up a Christian.

“There’s prophets in that [religious] world that make prophetic videos about how Trump is being called by God to change and save the nation,” Teixeria, a 40-year-old woman living in Florida, told HuffPost. “So, because it’s now been close to 10 years of [me] seeing the church idolize this man, it popped into my head… because I could never wrap my head around what evidence they have. Like, to me, this guy is not representative of Jesus or Christianity as it’s supposed to be at all.”

Prophetic messaging has been a core feature of Trump’s political movement from the beginning. Not only has he described himself as a champion of Christian beliefs, but Christian leaders have frequently preached Trump’s ordination. As a result, he has garnered overwhelming support from evangelical and conservative Christians, just over 80 percent of whom voted for him in all three elections.

According to HuffPost, “Teixeria grew up in the evangelical church in Arizona and attended a private Christian school. She voted for Trump in 2016, but after she asked church leaders to explain some of Trump’s choices, like his cabinet appointees, she said she began deconstructing her beliefs. By 2017, she stopped attending church, and today she makes videos on social media about her upbringing.”

While Teixeria says she is still a Christian, she rejects the Trumpist currents that have swept through the religion, saying, “In the evangelical church, he’s always presented as this strong warrior, like a white American Jesus. And if I go back and I read the Gospels now with a different perspective, I see him just as a man who was against government and people who were thirsty for power, and I just see him as a man who cared for the sick and the hungry and the poor, regardless of political affiliation or nationality or gender or any of those things.”

“I feel like I have a sweeter relationship with Jesus,” Teixeria added. “He represented how we’re supposed to be acting as Christians, which I feel like in America, we’re acting like we just want all the power and to control people, when simultaneously we’re voting for a man who’s also cutting funding from the hungry and not protecting women and children and not protecting people in minority groups.”

While Teixeria’s book may have prompted outrage from MAGA buyers, the vast majority of reviewers expressed support for her message, often with a tongue-in-cheek tone.

As one reviewer declared, “I’m a doctoral student, and I know firsthand how intense, difficult, and, honestly, grueling quality research and writing can be. Yet, this book centers such rigor. The author meticulously combs the pages of the ancient text, and thoughtfully synthesizes the all of the evidence proving why our dear leader is truly anointed for such a time as this. And to her credit, when the evidence isn’t robust enough, it’s clear that she refused to include it. This is true scholarship. This is sound science. This is what real faith looks like. Kudos!”

Trump is rotting away in an ignorant bubble of ‘flattery’: biographers

President Donald Trump is failing at his presidency because he is ensconced in a bubble of “flattery,” according to a pair of authors who wrote a bestselling book about his administration.

“He is living, to some extent — to a large extent — in a hermetically-sealed bubble,” The New York Times’ Jonathan Swan, who co-authored the book “Regime Change” with his colleague Maggie Haberman, told MS NOW’s Katy Tur. “I mean, all this comes back to the information flow. In the first term, at least he would scroll Twitter, and so he would be exposed, through Twitter, to random things coming across the transom. He is really someone who watches Fox, cable news, the old — you know — newspapers and things like that. And when he hears from people, it's on the patio at Mar-a-Lago, and they're mostly just flattering him. It's actually quite rare that he hears from critics.”

He added, “His aides are not eager to bring criticisms to him — in fact, mostly they keep them away from him, because they know there's a limited amount of capital that they're willing to spend by being the one to say, ‘Hey, here's some bad news.’ So really, the inputs are all, you know, to whatever extent positive and reinforcing, and that's how you get this detachment from the way the public's feeling.”

Tur asked Swan and Haberman who the people are surrounding Trump and whether they are losing faith in him because of his failures on issues like implementing tariffs and waging war against Iran.

“They do believe in him,” Haberman replied. “I mean, you know, even if they don't — even if they're not full true believers, as in the people from 2021 to 2024 — they absolutely believe in him more than the old Republican Party, and certainly more than Democrats.”

When Tur inquired as to whether they see anything about Trump as dangerous, both Haberman and Swan immediately and emphatically said “no” repeatedly.

“They believe that many of them have been so radicalized by being in with him in this campaign, by these investigations,” Haberman said. “I mean, one of the things that we write about in the book is how his own advisers would say, very plaintively, after he was indicted federally in 2023 — which at that point, I think, was the second or third indictment — ‘He has to win, he has to win.’ If he did not win, he was facing prison, and they saw themselves as imperiled too. And they believe that he, through whatever frequencies that he hears that others can't, lifted himself there.”

Haberman added, “And he benefits obviously from luck. As you know, his advisers often talk about how he is the luckiest man in the world. That’s a quote that has been said to us by innumerable advisers.”

Trump’s bubble is in part the product of his narcissistic tendencies. Less than a week before Election Day 2020, former Yale University professor and psychiatrist Dr. Bandy X. Lee warned this journalist for Salon that Trump’s inability to accept bad news would pose a threat to democracy if he was defeated. Throughout his life Trump has always claimed to have been robbed if he lost something he wanted, whether it was getting an Emmy nomination for his reality TV show “The Apprentice” and winning the 2016 GOP Iowa caucuses to winning the popular as well as electoral vote against Hillary Clinton in the 2016 general presidential election.

“When there is an all-encompassing loss, such as the loss of an election, it can trigger a rampage of destruction and reign of terror in revenge against an entire nation that has failed him,” Lee said at the time. “It is far easier for the pathological narcissist to consider destroying oneself and the world, especially its ‘laughing eyes,’ than to retreat into becoming a ‘loser’ and a ‘sucker’ — which to someone suffering from this condition will feel like psychic death.”

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Trump’s fear of midterms is boiling into 'blind rage': report

President Donald Trump launched into a punishing shouting match with Republican senators on Capitol Hill week, furious that his normally devoted GOP are refusing to pass “The Save America Act”, which requires all voters to present identification and proof of their US citizenship in order to cast their ballots.

iNews reporter Simon Marks said the explosive hour-long lunch was filled with Trump talking over Senate Majority Leader John Thune as he “tore into his own party’s leading figures in Congress, accusing them of betrayal for backing legislation earlier this week that would prevent him from waging further war on Iran.”

The shouting match included a blazing, face-to-face row between Trump and Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana — who Trump got removed in the GOP primaries. Marks reports Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) telling reporters that Trump was “mad as a murder hornet,” during the fight while Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) called the discussions “spirited.”

But Trump’s fury is coming from a place of fear, said Simon.

“His blind rage on Wednesday reflects his party’s dimming prospects in November, and his own desperate determination to do whatever it takes to bully, bluster and bludgeon his own party into supporting his efforts to rig the election,” said Simon.

While already passed by the House of Representatives, many Republican senators remain unwilling to back the Save Act, which challenged the constitutional rights of the nation’s 50 individual states to run their own elections.

Thune says he has told Trump over and over that the Senate votes aren’t there to pass the bill: “That’s not a conclusion, obviously, he would like to see us draw, but that’s what I have to say,” he told reporters, because Democrats oppose the legislation. Dems say the SAVE Act is a deliberate effort to disenfranchise millions of minority voters by making it harder for them to show up at the polls.

But Republicans have already been engaged in “feverish efforts” to shape elections by shaping who votes, said Simon, having already redrawn congressional maps after an April Supreme Court decision eviscerating the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and giving a loving kiss to undemocratic gerrymandering.

“Across the south, Republicans are now forcing minority voters, who usually back Democrats, into new districts where their voting power will be diluted,” said Simon. “… [and] Trump is making no bones about his determination to only respect the outcome of the midterms if Republicans win. He knows that if the Democrats take control of the House, they will have the power next year to launch impeachment proceedings against him and his top cabinet officials.”

Trump’s 'lame duck' life is probably going to get ugly — for everybody: analysis

Political authors Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan say President Donald Trump’s likely fall from Congressional dominance could involve a constitutional crisis as the budding autocrat refuses to acknowledge a Congress that is no longer beholden to him.

Trump think himself the most powerful person to walk the Earth, thanks to a report hashed together not by a historian but by the caddy of retired South African professional golfer Gary Player, according to Haberman speaking to MS NOW anchor Katy Tur.

“If he believes he's all powerful and he's the most powerful person has ever walked the Earth and he always wins. There is that open question of whether he leaves office after all,” asked Tur. “He's gilding it, he's remaking Washington. That ball room is only supposed to be finished a couple months before he leaves office.”

“We talk about this a fair amount in this in a presidential cycle, in a lame duck term, which this is. You can see where an unpopular president's party is headed and it's not for good or good results on Election Day, in the midterms and then the control of the House flips, maybe control of the Senate flips, and then what follows is a lot of subpoenas and oversight, hearings and so forth. If I'm sure if the House flips if the Senate flips one or the other or both. There obviously will be attempts by democrats. To do all of that.”

“But what we haven't seen before is what happens if a sitting administration across the board does not respond to those subpoenas, does not supply witnesses,” asked Haberman. “Now we have had instances where that has happened. You know in specific cases before under Obama, under Trump, on and so forth. What happens is if it's everything. Congress's ability is to actually engage in any accountability, if that's true, is pretty hamstrung. They don't have a jail in Congress, they will have to refer contempt of Congress, subpoenas, referrals to the DOJ, which will be led by a Trump appointee.”

“And not just a Trump appointee,” said Swan. “Trump's own former personal lawyer.”

And Swan added that if Republicans are in any kind of position of control in either the Senate or the House they will doubtless work in Trump’s favor over the health of U.S. democracy, likely out of self-preservation.

“You are seeing the Senate operate in a slightly different way than the House. But that's largely because Donald Trump has so aggressively alienated a few Senators,” said Swan. He added, however, not to expect the GOP to find its backbone, even in retirement.

“You know when it turns out, when you run them into retirement and defeat them and run opponents against them, they don't tend to retain their loyalty. But it's also instructive pretty much all these people who went against him are out of the job after the election,” said Swan. “So, this idea that, like Donald Trump, is losing all his power, I don't know. I kind of question that a little bit. He's still in the Republican Party, he's still the colossus and he still ends people's careers. So, we shouldn't get like too delusional about that.”

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'I would rather die': Inside the politics of spite driving Trump voters

President Donald Trump’s supporters actively oppose democracy, according to a recent ethnographic study, and actively want to make things worse for people they dislike.

“As a wise man once said: They are who we thought they were,” wrote The Bulwark’s Jonathan V. Last on Thursday about a May study sponsored by the Johns Hopkins Agora Institute that studied Trump voters in Michigan, South Carolina and Wyoming. “I want to go deep on this question because the people in the study describe a remarkable consistency about why they dislike democracy. It’s not that they’re misled, or mistaken. They have a coherent worldview. It’s just not very nice.”

Reviewing how 14 out of 21 study participants immediately reacted negatively to the idea of democracy, Last observed that the participants perceived themselves as “a minority under threat from a tyrannical majority” who “believe that there is a cultural schism in America, with good, God-fearing people like themselves on one side and the wicked majority on the other. They detest this imaginary majority and fear that ‘democracy’ would allow that majority to gain political power.”

Last quoted a number of study participants who bluntly stated that they feared democracy would mean people they dislike — generally defined as racially diverse liberals who do not subscribe to the ideals of white conservative Christians — would exist with full rights. To rationalize this, they define democracy as a form of mob rule, ignoring that the Constitution created institutions like the Senate and the Electoral College for the precise purpose of preventing mob rule.

“Sarah put this directly, ‘I don’t value democracy, because we wouldn’t be heard. Wyoming’s the smallest state on the map, right? If we were a democracy, then we wouldn’t have a voice,’” Last quoted from the study. “Kyle (mid 20s, WY), a delivery driver, extends the logic: ‘Every single small town would be outvoted by every single city. We wouldn’t be able to feed people cows. We’d all be eating seaweed.’ Patricia (50s, SC) offered up a common conservative metaphor: ‘[Democracy is] two wolves and one sheep deciding who’s for dinner. I hate that word [democracy]. I mostly hate it when people who think they are educated about our style of government use it to say, ‘Save our democracy.’ No, there's no democracy here. Praise God. If there were then California and New York would make all of our electoral choices.’ Steve (60s, WY) describes it directly: ‘Democracy rules . . . is mob rules, okay?’”

Last added that these voters “very explicitly do not want majority rule. They want minority rule.” The study found that they viewed Democrats as immoral because of issues like supporting racial diversity, backing LGBTQ rights, believing in feminism and opposing the imposition of Christianity on society. They also feel frustrated by what they perceive as young people overwhelmingly turning away from these values.

“I’m not sure how Democrats win over a voter who’s motivated not by unemployment, or the the Iranian nuclear program, or the price of eggs—but is rather lashing out because they’re angry that their children rejected their political views,” Last wrote.

He added, “We are firmly out of the realm of policy here. Or reality, even. So long as there is a trans activist in San Francisco posting on BlueSky, these people will be aggrieved. Even if their preferred political party holds the presidency, controls Congress, and has an openly corrupt majority in the Supreme Court. Domination of the political system is not enough; they want the people who disgust them to disappear.”

This means that “if ‘democracy’ produces anything they dislike, then they are ready to be done with democracy.” A hypothetical “Cletus” supports Trump regardless of economics because “he’s mad that the brown girl at Starbucks with the nose ring and the pronouns on her apron exists. And even if she doesn’t work at his local Starbucks, he’s sure that she’s out there, somewhere. He doesn’t like it and he thinks that he should be able to rule over her, even if there are more of her and her ilk than there are of him.”

The recent study treads the same ground as the landmark 2019 book “Dying of Whiteness,” written by psychiatrist Jonathan Metzl, who in the Boston Review published an anecdote about a conservative named Trevor who had to quit his job as a cab driver because he was dying of hepatitis C. Despite the fact that his state of Tennessee denied him access to health care that could have saved him, Trevor was staunch in his opposition to the Obamacare exchanges that could have provided him with help in the form of the polymerase inhibitors, a lifesaving liver transplant or other treatment options.

“Even on death’s doorstep, Trevor was not angry,” Metzl wrote. “In fact, he staunchly supported the stance promoted by his elected officials. ‘Ain’t no way I would ever support Obamacare or sign up for it,’ he told me. ‘I would rather die.’ When I asked him why he felt this way even as he faced severe illness, he explained: ‘We don’t need any more government in our lives. And in any case, no way I want my tax dollars paying for Mexicans or welfare queens.’”

Despite opposing social programs as “welfare” when given to other people, Trump supporters nevertheless do hope for this assistance for themselves. On Thursday Trump announced a possible $17.3 billion relief package for farmers who have been overwhelmingly hurt economically by Trump’s policies of mass deportation, raising tariffs and declaring a war against Iran. These rural voters still back Trump by massive margins, even though they connect his policies to their economic distress, and polls show they hope to make up the difference in their economic relief through bailout packages.

When a different conservative commentator, The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, described this as a form of “welfare,” economist Ed Gresser — Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at the Progressive Policy Institute — pushed back to AlterNet against the idea that helping farmers should be opposed as “welfare.”

“Tariffs have been quite bad for farmers in two ways,” Gresser said. “One is that they have led to reactions against American products overseas, sometimes by governments and sometimes by public opinion. In a typical year, American agriculture exports about $180 billion worth of stuff that typically makes up about one-fifth of US farm income. So it's quite a lot: half the exports go to, or at least historically went to, China, Canada, and Mexico.”

Gresser added that Trump’s tariffs have hurt farmers in each of those markets.

“The exports to China have shriveled up because the Chinese retaliated very hard and hit back again directly against American farmers,” Gresser said. “Mexico has kind of held up. Canada is off, not so much because the government of Canada has taken any particular steps but because Canadians have looked for American goods so as not to buy them.”

“The tariff program has badly screwed over American farmers,” Gresser added, and because "farmers are definitely in trouble,” he concluded that “the idea that the US government would respond to that in the abstract is not a terrible one in my opinion.”

Ted Cruz may be running for president again —and even CNN thinks it's hilarious

Ted Cruz is probably running for president. It's a headline that is so unsurprising that even CNN found it amusing.

Reporting on Thursday, hosts made it clear that "many of the signs are there" that he's likely to run in 2028, setting up the intra-party battle between Vice President JD Vance and Cruz.

Cruz, who ran in 2016, has spent the subsequent years promoting himself on his own podcast was the butt of the joke for Vance when he was speaking to Megyn Kelly.

"Well, I think committed, non-interventionist, America First Ted Cruz could be a representative for that wing of the party," Vance said.

It isn't shocking after Cruz was caught trashing Vance and President Donald Trump in a secret recording reported in January.

Cruz was infamously referred to by the late Sen. Bob Dole (R-Ks.) as someone "nobody likes." Ironically, Dole also remarked that he thought Donald Trump could likely get legislation passed because he's a "dealmaker."

Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) famously wrote in his book, "I like Ted Cruz more than most of my other colleagues like Ted Cruz. And I hate Ted Cruz."

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) was forced to apologize publicly after he quipped in 2017, "If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you."

Even former Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), who didn't even serve in the U.S. Senate with Cruz, said, "I have never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in my life."

Democracy Docket went so far as to refer to Cruz as the "most hated man in Washington."

CNN reporter Steve Contorno explained on Thursday that Cruz's calendar is peppered with trips to states that have early primaries and caucuses. He's there to help fellow Republicans up for elections in 2026, but they're in states like Iowa and South Carolina.

Bob Vander Plaats, an Iowa Republican and co-chair of Cruz's 2016 campaign, said, "I'd be shocked if he doesn't run" in 2028.

Contorno said he's been watching these candidates because the open question is what Trump will do when it comes to handing over what he considers to be his movement to someone else. In the past, Trump's "deference" has been Vance or Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Cruz is already setting himself apart from Vance by opposing the Iran War, while Vance has been carrying Trump's water over the war.

Contorno went so far as to call it an "unofficial kickoff to 2028" after Vance published a new book while Cruz was so publicly outspoken against the administration on Iran.

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'They staged the cannibal's banquet — and they were on the menu'

Political consultant and author Stuart Stevens has no sympathy for Republicans who were forced to contend with President Donald Trump, who didn't care much about them during their elections.

In the new book by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, the authors addressed Trump's having "some satisfaction" seeing Republicans on the ballot lose when he also wasn't running for reelection.

"The next month, when Republicans performed badly in the off-year elections, Trump would say he was 'honored' that people were saying that they couldn't win without him on the ballot," says the new book, Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump.

MS NOW host Katy Tur asked Stevens about it, but he couldn't possibly care less about the plight of the GOP.

"Look, I have zero sympathy for these Republicans," he said frankly. "You know, they staged the cannibal's banquet, and in a surprise, they were on the menu. What do you expect from Donald Trump? This is the same erratic, self-centered guy who doesn't care anything about governing."

This week, Republicans are facing off against the president, killing one of their only pieces of legislation to address the affordability crisis.

"I think that we sort of grade on the curve here if we start saying, well, they haven't done everything that Donald Trump wanted to. They are supposed to be a coequal branch of government," Stevents said.

He noted that there's a tendency of the political establishment and pundit class to "both-sides" a Congress that fails to pass legislation. Fewer than 40 bills passed the House and Senate in 2025. It set a modern record for the lowest legislative output in the first year of a new presidency, according to data gathered by C-SPAN and Purdue University.

The legislative session for 2026 is still going, but thus far, it isn't looking great. Most legislation focuses on naming post offices, approving nominees from the president and authorizing veterans hospitals. There have been 186 roll call votes, meaning the members indicated whether they were present in the chamber.

Stevens remarked, "Democrats actually are trying to govern. Republicans, for the most part, are just doing what Donald Trump says, and Donald Trump could not care less about the midterms; he could not care less about them; he could not care less about anything but what is immediately in front of him that his name is going to be on," something or something that "involves getting him richer."

He said it was like that in 2016 and it will be true this time around as well.

"They all kind of try to pretend this is otherwise and ultimately it just doesn't work, because Donald Trump isn't that person that they keep trying to think he might," Stevens closed.


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Trump is 'miserable' and alone as MAGA coalition hinges on 'fear of his wrath'

Among critics of President Donald Trump — liberals and progressives as well as right-wing Never Trump conservatives and libertarians — there is a widely held view that his second presidency is considerably worse than his first. The second Trump White House is the focus of "Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump," a new book by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan. Sean Woods, in a late June review for Rolling Stone, describes "Regime Change" as "essential reading" for those who want to understand why Trump's second presidency is so chaotic and dysfunctional.

"President Trump, the most powerful man in the world — maybe in history — comes off in these pages as among the most miserable of humans, surrounded by sycophants and toadies, living in a gilded palace, filled with rage and bile," Woods says in Rolling Stone. "It's an unpleasant and chaotic portrait, one that could almost be satirical but for the fact that his wars, police-state tactics, and pettiest grievances have affected all of our lives."

One of the anecdotes in "Regime Change" that speaks volumes about Trump's state of mind, according to Woods, describes Trump's reaction to Tesla/Space-X head Elon Musk attacking Trump's Big, Beautiful Bill Act as an "abomination." Trump commented, "They always leave me. They always do this. This is why I can't have friends."

Trump didn't view Musk's criticism of the Big, Beautiful Bill as a major policy disagreement — he saw it as an act of betrayal.

"With Trump, it's always one d– – thing after another: Musk's DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) destruction of the federal work force already feels like another era, and that was barely a year ago. We are light-years away from the man who ran for office in 2016. Too much has happened in those 10 years. Swan and Haberman show why Trump, and his deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, have returned to Washington with vengeance on the mind and a ruthless desire to wield and abuse power…. It's immediately clear in Trump 2.0 that all the safety checks that existed in Trump 1.0 are long gone."

Woods adds, "Turns out, the presidential Cabinet really matters — and if it's staffed with the Pete Hegseths and Kristi Noems of the world, nothing good will come of it."

Another thing "Regime Change" brings out is how many people on the right have turned against Trump.

"As the Year 1 barrels along," Woods notes, "Swan and Haberman document the fallout. MAGA loyalists Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massie and Tucker Carlson split with Trump over the mishandling of the Epstein files and the Iran war…. Former allies, Mike Pompeo, Bill Barr, and Mike Pence are now hostile to the White House and John Bolton has been targeted by Trump for vengeance."

Woods continues, "Bad blood and feuds surround MAGA, a coalition only held together by the president's will and fear of his wrath…. It makes for grim reading. No president, perhaps no person in public life, has ever fully embodied the Seven Deadly Sins the way Trump does. You see them all in him, even at 79, throughout these pages: lust, greed, pride, anger, envy, gluttony, and sloth…. 'Regime Change' is essential reading to understand how, in just 18 months, Trump's presidency reached this dreadful precipice, and why, in the end, everyone leaves him."

Exposed: MAGA is buying the 2026 midterm elections

On Thursday, the Washington Post launched a new tool that tracks campaign donations for the November midterms, and what it revealed is stunning. At this point, with just four months until the election, 9 out of 10 of the top megadonors are directly linked to the MAGA movement, and they're out-funding the Democrats by a long shot.

According to the Post, the top 50 individual donors have so far contributed $1.37 billion to campaigns for the upcoming races. $294 million of that has gone to Democratic candidates, $200 million has gone to unaffiliated candidates, and a whopping $875 million has gone into the Republican war chest. As the Post notes, all that cash “could prove critical for the GOP to maintain control of Congress in November.”

The top individual donors are comprised entirely of billionaires and “newly minted trillionaire” Elon Musk, who, along with eight other top GOP donors, are explicitly MAGA-oriented. While Musk was the top Republican donor in the 2024 election, currently that title goes to venture capitalists Ben Horowitz and Marc Andreessen, who have contributed $91.2 million to President Donald Trump’s MAGA Inc Super PAC and a pro-cryptocurrency Super PAC called Fairshake.

Other top individual contributors include financiers Jeff and Janine Yass, Miriam Adelson (widow of Trump ally and megadonor businessman Sheldon Adelson), shipping magnates Elizabeth and Richard Uihlein, OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman and his spouse Anna, hedge fund manager Paul Singer, cryptocurrency investing brothers Comeron and Tyler Winklevoss (who, incidentally, claimed Mark Zuckerberg stole the idea for Facebook from them), and businesswoman Diane Hendricks. Between them all, they most frequently contributed to MAGA Inc as well as the Republican Congressional and Senate Leadership Funds, in addition to donating to groups that promote specific issues like AI, cryptocurrency, and school deregulation.

The Post’s tool also lists the top 10 organizational donors, and here again, Republican and MAGA groups dominate. Six of 10 groups are specifically GOP, a number of which are directly linked to Trump, like Securing American Greatness, Stand Together Chamber of Commerce, and the crypto company Foris Dax. While the top two organizational donors — cryptocurrency companies Coinbase and Ripple Labs — aren’t technically political groups, they are aligned with the Trump family’s crypto business and primarily fund Republican candidates. Of the remaining two donor groups, one is AIPAC, which gives to candidates on both sides of the aisle.

As NPR notes, Republicans “have more money to spend, but they’ll need it.” Part of the reason there has been such a rush to dole out cash on the part of conservative donors involves the major headwinds faced by GOP candidates going into the midterms. Trump’s disastrous war with Iran, abysmal economy, brutal immigration crackdown, and mishandling of the Epstein files have proven so unpopular that many experts predict that the Republicans will lose their majority in the House and maybe even the Senate.

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