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Today, with just over five weeks to go before the midterm elections, I want to point out a critical distinction that’s not being picked up in the media — between people who voted for Trump in 2024 but do not identify as part of the MAGA movement and people who voted for Trump in 2024 and still do identify themselves as part of the MAGA movement. According to data from sources like the Economist /YouGov Poll , roughly 53 percent of Republican voters describe themselves as “MAGA Republicans” or consider themselves part of the MAGA movement. That leaves a considerable number of non-MAGA Republican voters. How do these two groups of Republican voters line up on the central issue of affordability? A recent Politico poll showed that just 28 percent of voters who describe themselves as being part of the MAGA movement say expenses have become less affordable since Trump took office. These MAGA voters are far more likely to say the economy has gotten better since Trump took office. On the ot...
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Trump ignoring huge 'time bomb' after he raged about it a decade ago

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President Donald Trump once warned against a huge "time bomb" facing the country while he raged on the 2016 campaign trail, but according to a new piece from The Hill , he now seems content to completely ignore it . Writing for the outlet on Sunday, legal scholar David Wippman and historian Glenn C. Altschuler noted that Republicans have been fussing about the national debt for decades , harkening back to warnings from Ronald Reagan in 1981 when it surpassed $1 trillion for the first time. They also noted that Trump himself said that the U.S. was "sitting on a time bomb" of debt when he first ran for president, pledging that he would eliminate it within eight years. As he reaches the halfway point of his second term a decade later, he has come nowhere close to that lofty promise, with the debt hitting the $ 40 trillion milestone last month . In fact, Wippman and Altschuler explained, he is doing considerable work to worsen the debt severely. "Since January 202...
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Collapse: Grim conservative media trend proves Trump is losing his grip

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I feel optimistic about the midterm elections, just over five weeks away. But my stomach aches when I think of what’s at stake. Call me nauseously optimistic. I suspect you’re in a similar place. If it were only the polls, I’d feel reasonably good. Here’s one that stuck out for me: The share of Republicans who say the economy is better than a year ago has collapsed from over 70 percent in January to 29 percent in September, according to last week’s New York Times /Siena poll . Here’s another: According to a Wall Street Journal poll , just 37 percent of Americans approve of the job that Trump is doing — the lowest approval rating of any president heading into a midterm election in Journal polls dating to 1990. Another good sign: Because of Trump’s unpopular war, his dreaded tariffs, and their effect on prices, Republicans in tight races are starting to tiptoe away from Trump. In recent days, Maine Senator Susan Collins and Kansas Senator Roger Marshall have distanced themselves from...
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Biographer: Foreign dictators play Trump 'like A fiddle' exploiting weakness

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Biographer Michael Wolff walked through the knots the White House staff must untangle as they try to get President Donald Trump to focus on tangible outcomes in meetings with foreign leaders. Over the past week, Trump welcomed China's leader, Xi Jinping , and it appeared their activities were centered around the president showing off his construction, his military and what appeared to be his first trip to the National Archives as president. Meanwhile, the visit from Xi was said to be a "summit," which would focus on trade, avoiding a crisis with Taiwan, discussions over minerals, market access, guardrails for artificial intelligence and arms control. Trump’s approach to meeting foreign leaders puts his aversion to detailed briefings on full display at a time of high-stakes diplomacy. It's a "difficult moment for a president" who must hold a lot of information in their brain about customs and gestures all while remembering the specifics about policy and in...
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Trump just previewed '2-year temper tantrum' that lies ahead: legal expert

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President Donald Trump got a strong legal pushback from three major media organizations — CNN, MS NOW and Politico — after banning them from the White House press pool ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to Washington, DC. In an article for The Atlantic, legal expert Quinta Jurecic warns that the media ban is a "preview" of the "two-year temper tantrum" that lies ahead during the second half of Trump's second presidency. "The whole kerfuffle was a display of both Trump's power and his impotence: damaging to democracy yet also undermining of his own authority," Jurecic explains in her Atlantic article. "What prompted this particular round of White House abuse of the press is not entirely clear. But Trump often resorts to attacking the media when he receives news he dislikes — and between rising fuel prices caused by the war in Iran, sinking poll numbers for the congressional GOP, and Trump's own declining popularity, there i...
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Trump Treasury secretary set off Wall St. revolt he can't control

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During a speech at Southern Methodist University in Texas on Tuesday, September 8, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had a message for the bond market : "I am the house now." But according to journalist Joseph Zeballos-Roig, "the house is getting a lot of egg on it ." In a late September op-ed for MS NOW, Zeballos-Roig argues that Bessent "dared traders to cross him" during that September 8 speech — and is getting more than he bargained for. "The $32 trillion American bond market is generating a flood of headlines lately," Zeballos-Roig writes on MS NOW's website. "Why? The instrument that the U.S. government uses to fund its own activities is going haywire. The 10-year Treasury yield is trading at its highest level since the run-up to the financial crisis in 2007, and a similar spike has been recorded for the 30-year yield, which reached its highest point since 2004. These bonds influence mortgages, auto and corporate loans, so it carri...
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Geraldo tears apart Trump’s media ban —and points out one 'appalled' irony

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In the past, television journalist and former Fox News pundit Geraldo Rivera was on very friendly terms with President Donald Trump. But Rivera, now 83, lashed out at Trump when he refused to accept the results of the United States' 2020 presidential election. And now, Rivera is highly critical of Trump's ban of three major media organizations — CNN, MS NOW and Politico — from the White House press pool. The ban came days before Trump's White House meeting with visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping. During an appearance on MS NOW , Michael McFaul — who served as U.S. ambassador to Russia under former President Barack Obama — was appalled that reporters for CNN, MS NOW and Politico were kept out of the White House while members of state-owned Chinese media were granted access. In a Friday, September 25 post on X , formerly Twitter, Rivera wrote, "President Trump's ban on WH media was as badly timed as it was Unconstitutional. He wanted maximum exposure of his grand...
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