SINCERETALK

Conservative Dispatch columnist Nick Catoggio says non-MAGA mutiny is finally burying President Donald Trump and his Republican machine, and of course Trump has only himself and his venal personal interest to blame. Well … that and war. Interpreting polls is usually a “fool’s errand,” said Catoggio, but there’s no denying the numbers when they’re splashing one bucket of slop after another on your head, as Trump’s personal popularity appears to be doing. Trump’s job approval frequently dips below 40 percent, but it’s very unusual for him to fall as low as 35 percent — and he’s done it three times in the last nine national surveys. This, said Catoggio, means some “meaningful segment of his base appears to have left him,” and Fox News knows exactly who it is. “I’m tempted to speculate that the mutineers are … Reaganite conservatives whose tribal tether to the GOP has been snapping, strand by strand, over the past 10 years as the weight of their disgust at the state of the right has ...

The Trump administration dropped its case against a former Olympic canoeist charged in connection with damage to the Reflecting Pool, late Friday after admitting their allegations against David “Davey” Hearn “don’t hold water,” as NBC reported. In a filing Friday afternoon, a supervisor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, which is headed by Jeanine Pirro, wrote that officials obtained information that undermined “the evidentiary basis for the indictment” against Hearn. “Prosecutors said that after the indictment, the Interior Department ‘provided additional documents to the USAO-DC indicating that damage to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in June 2026 was the result of flawed installation by the contractor, Atlantic Industrial Coatings,’” NBC reported. Critics on social media could not wait to pounce. “Where does Dave Hearn (smeared as a vandal) go to get his reputation back?” demanded Vanity Fair writer Paul Farhi on X . “There it is ... the Reflecting P...

President Donald Trump’s former press secretary Sarah Matthews told MS NOW that her former boss can’t help but beat the drum of his debunked claim that he won the 2020 election. He can’t help it, she said, because it’s a kind of brain damage — and she watched it break. “Donald Trump has always been a broken man, but I do think that him losing the 2020 election fair and square to Joe Biden permanently broke his brain,” Matthews told MS NOW anchor Nicole Wallace. “I don't think he's ever been able to recover from that, because he looked at someone like Joe Biden and thought, ‘how could I lose to this guy?’ I mean, he called him ‘Sleepy Joe. And then obviously it affected him because he's a narcissist. His ego won't allow him to see the facts for what they are, that there was no election fraud and that it was Biden who was the winner of the 2020 election.” This, she said, is the fuel behind Trump focusing on bogus claims of 2020 election fraud just four months away fro...

CNN Anchor Pamela Brown was on a roll Thursday, taking a rare opportunity to correct President Donald Trump’s director of the National Economic Council, Kevin Hassett to his face on several falsities — eventually grinding Hassett down to an empty denial of facts. Hassett began his defense of the Trump economy claiming that Americans have experienced “real income growth of about $3,000 per family since Trump took office,” as well asan “incredible investment boom because of artificial intelligence and other things.” “And so, if you dig down deep into the numbers, one of the things you can see is that final domestic demand, which is sort of the amount of stuff that actually was purchased in the U.S., was up a really healthy 3.9 percent or about 4 percent,” Hassett said. Brown accused him of “throwing around … so many numbers.” “But when you talk to the everyday American, they will tell you that prices at the grocery store are up, mortgage rates are higher,” Brown pointed out. “You have ...

President Donald Trump’s tariffs have already cost thousands of manufacturing jobs and are so unpopular that only three out of eight Americans support them. Yet he is doubling down on them, an act that a conservative economist described as literal “insanity.” “Albert Einstein famously remarked that a sign of insanity was doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different result,” wrote American Enterprise Institute senior fellow Desmond Lachman , a former deputy director for the International Monetary Fund’s Policy Development and Review Department, in a Thursday editorial. “We must wonder what he might have made of the Trump administration’s import tariff policy.” Lachman described how US trade representative Jamieson Greer announced Trump’s plan to levy new tariffs on dozens of countries, including a 50 percent import tariff on many Canadian products, even though Trump’s earlier tariffs did not achieve his stated goals. “A key objective of Trump’s tariff policy was to elimi...

CNN anchor Pamela Brown let no inconsistency fly in a Thursday interview with U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio). Browns first confrontation involved Jordan’s denial that Trump AG nominee Todd Blanche failed to deliver a death certificate of President Donald Trump’s controversial proposed $1.8 billion slush fund and the immunity it provided Trump’s family. “Well, it seems to be pretty clear that they want assurances that the anti-weaponization fund will not move forward and that they have issues with the agreement that the justice department made to make sure that the trumps are not audited by the IRS. Are you supportive of that settlement? “Well, Todd said it's dead. I think he said that multiple times. So, I don't know what is going on in these negotiations. The guy who's going to be hopefully the next attorney general has said this thing is finished.” Jordan said. “Well, he told a house committee that he wouldn't put it in writing.” “He said it's dead. They're n...

Fox Business is not universally known for holding Republican or MAGA sources accountable for falsehoods when they’re in front of cameras. That’s why a quick correction of bloviation from Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) was such a shock. On Wednesday, armed with thousands of pages of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s private pandemic diaries, Senate Republicans had planned to grill Fauci over alleged inconsistencies as the science of the COVID-19 pandemic continued to evolve over the pandemic’s history. But Fauci, the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, pleaded the Fifth and refused to answer questions as he squared off square off with committee Chairman Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and the hearing devolved into a letdown for Paul and Republicans. Paul indicated during the hearing Wednesday that he plans to hold a committee vote next week to declare Fauci in contempt of Congress. And other Republicans ranted their frustration before reporters later that day. “He ...

President Donald Trump’s refusal to work cooperatively with the Senate has caused many to complain that it has become a “circular firing squad.” Now he has refused to endorse his Senate Majority Leader, John Thune of South Dakota, for reelection — and Thune sarcastically slapped him back. "Alright,” Thune said when confronted about Trump’s betrayal, according to Punchbowl . “Well, that’s nice of him. I GUESS. I don’t know what do you say on that. That’s a decision that’s made by my colleagues!" Earlier on Wednesday, The Hill reported that Senate Republicans are conflicted on how to handle their wayward president. "GOP senators are divided over whether to cut short the five-week break, which would take vulnerable Republican incumbent Sens. Susan Collins (Maine), Jon Husted (Ohio) and Dan Sullivan (Alaska) away from the campaign trail," The Hill wrote. "They’re also at odds over whether to dive into what Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) warned would ...

President Donald Trump has previously fumed at the Supreme Court, which includes three judges he appointed, for differing from him on issues like his tariffs , his attempted suppression of mail-in ballots and his opposition to birthright citizenship . Now he has cited a right-wing commentator notorious for having been secretly funded by the Russian government to attack one of his own appointed justices, Judge Amy Coney Barrett. “Amy Coney Barrett is clearly terrified of the left,” Tim Pool posted in a comment that Trump shared. In 2024 Pool was discovered by President Joe Biden’s Justice Department to have accepted money from two RT employees, Konstantin Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva, as part of their nearly $10 million plan to fund an unnamed Tennessee-based company that would influence American politics through pro-Trump commentators. “Should these allegations prove true, I as well as the other personalities and commentators were deceived and are victims,” Pool wrote at the ti...

President Donald Trump and his first lady, Melania, are accused of having long known that one of their staffers had beaten his then-girlfriend and their then-press secretary — and doing nothing about it. That staffer, Rep. Max Miller (R-OH), is now facing renewed accusations of domestic violence. “Miller's represented Ohio's heavily Republican Seventh District since 2023, after first holding several jobs in Donald Trump's first administration,” Nikki McCann Ramirez, a reporter from Rolling Stone who has long covered the Miller case, told MS NOW’s Chris Hayes on Tuesday. “Trump called him a great guy, supported his campaign for Congress. But multiple sources at the time told Politico that Miller's prior romantic relationship with former Trump press secretary Stephanie Grisham — remember her? — ended when he pushed her against a wall and slapped her in the face in his Washington apartment.” Miller denied those allegations, but Ramirez drew attention to a long-overlooked ...

President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and foreign policy adviser, real estate developer Jared Kushner, has always aroused controversy, from making money during his government globetrekking and trying to build a controversial resort in Albania to initially failing to be approved for a national security clearance . Now it appears Kushner is trying to develop a large financial stake in the world’s most popular sporting league — and the president himself stands to benefit. “Thrive is looking to build a globally diversified investor base by relying on sovereign wealth funds, along with other blue-chip institutions from Europe, Asia and Latin America,” reported Politico’s Sophia Cai and Ben Johansen on Tuesday . “Already, Jared Kushner’s investment firm, Affinity Partners, has drawn congressional scrutiny for raising billions of dollars from foreign sovereign wealth funds, including those controlled by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. The Kushner brothers operate separate b...

In President Donald Trump’s ongoing campaign to rig the 2026 midterm elections , he has done everything from target Republicans who refuse to go along with him to delivering a controversial speech claiming to have proof of election fraud that was widely derided by both sides . Now a Georgia official who Trump targeted for political destruction has written an editorial for a prominent state publication denouncing the president’s claims — while carefully avoiding mentioning him directly. “In an era when confidence in elections is too often shaped by partisan rhetoric rather than proven results, Georgia has taken a different approach: Build the nation’s gold standard for election administration and prove its success at every election,” Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger wrote for the Atlanta Journal Constitution on Tuesday. “The recently completed statewide primary and runoff are the latest examples. Millions of Georgians cast their ballots, votes were reported promptly, post...

Lawyers trying to mount a class action lawsuit against Elon Musk and America PAC, a super PAC he funded to support President Donald Trump and other conservatives, say the defendants aren’t cooperating in turning over key documents. “We’re getting the run-around,” said attorney Shannon Liss-Riordan, who is based in Massachusetts. “We’ve been delayed in getting discovery.” The cases against Musk and America PAC stem from a promise to pay $47 for every successful referral of a registered swing state voter to sign a petition in favor of “free speech and the right to bear arms.” The amount was later raised to $100 per signature. “Easy money,” Musk posted on the social media site X, which he owns, in October 2024. One proposed class action case was brought by an anonymous plaintiff who says, while working as an hourly canvasser for America PAC, he was encouraged to refer people to sign the petition for additional pay. The plaintiff, listed as John Doe, says he’s owed more than $20,000 and ...

“Two years ago our country was dead. Today we are the hottest country in the world. America is respected like it's never been respected before…. Our stock markets are at their highest point of all time..” The American public has gotten so used to Donald Trump’s bizarre hyperbolic rhetoric that we usually don’t pause to try to understand what it means. By bizarre I mean his apparently compulsive need to constantly speak in[ glittering generalities, meaningless hyperbole, and superlatives. It’s closer to what George Orwell called “Duckspeak” than normal speech [In 1984, Big Brother mandated a language that was English, but was also mindless, repetitive, with hardly any conscious thought]. And as Trump tells it, in such instances he is always the hero of the story. There is hardly a speech in which Trump does not use phrases like “the likes of which nobody’s ever seen before,” “Numbers we’ve never seen,” or “Like nobody ever thought possible.” One news agency reported that he had us...

We have been subject to the sociopath for a year and a half — 18 months of the most loathsome, least competent, and most corrupt person ever to be president of the United States. We’ve watched him take a meat-axe to every major institution of our democracy, draw the nation into a never-ending war, establish a murderous domestic police state, reject renewable energy in favor of the dirtiest possible fossil fuels, make billions off his presidency, and cause most Americans to become poorer and less economically secure. But here’s the good news. The sleeping giant of America is finally awakening. Trump’s poll numbers are plummeting. They’re now at record lows. Even many Republicans have had enough. Progressives are winning election after election around the country. The sleeping giant has always remained asleep until some venality becomes so noxious, some acts so disrespectful of the common good, some brutalities so noisy, that the giant has no choice but to awaken — blinking both eyes an...

President Donald Trump remains trapped in a stalemate over the war in Iran, and as one prominent conservative commentator noted recently, he has been left "genuinely shocked" in the face of an enemy he cannot simply pay off . Charlie Sykes is a notable anti-Trump conservative, best known for helping co-found The Bulwark, for which he also previously served as editor-at-large. In the latest edition of the "Fast Politics" podcast, Sykes spoke with host and fellow commentator Molly Jong-Fast about the deteriorating state of Trump's war , and why his fundamental flaws make him uniquely ill-suited to ending it peacefully. Iniitially, Sykes noted the absurdity of how often Trump and his Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth have declared that the operation in Iran has been a sweeping success, with Iran left in shambles and the U.S. good to leave soon. Despite all of those claims, however, Trump still finds himself in a "widening, escalating war that he can't f...

A federal appellate panel on Saturday rejected the Trump administration’s request to lift a lower court’s injunction blocking the US Postal Service from enforcing President Donald Trump’s March executive order targeting mail-in ballots as part of Republicans ’ broader attack on voting rights . A three-judge panel of the Boston-based 1st US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 against a motion by the administration seeking a pause on US District Judge Indira Talwani’s June order blocking major portions of Trump’s directive , which is aimed at restricting postal voting, including by directing the USPS to ensure that mailed ballots have unique barcodes and envelope logos. “Under the Constitution, state and local officials are responsible for administering federal elections,” Judges Gustavo Gelpí and Julie Rikelman—both appointed by former President Joe Biden—wrote in a joint opinion. “In the spring of 2026, President Trump issued an executive order with nationwide effects on how state ...

On Tuesday, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine appeared before the Senate Appropriations Committee, hats in hand. The Pentagon is burning through appropriations , with both Navy and Air Force 2026 operations budgets set to run out by the end of July. The war in Iran has depleted key weapons stockpiles, reducing U.S. inventories of interceptor missiles and stealth cruise missiles to less than half and costing over $37 billion to date. To the naked eye, these costs reflect disastrous mismanagement of an unauthorized and escalating war. On Wednesday, the GOP-led House approved a whopping defense funding bill anyway, authorizing an unprecedented $1 trillion for military spending. Not only did the MAGA wing reward Trump’s incompetent war in Iran with a massive spending boost, it codified Hegseth’s rebrand of the “Department of War,” snuck in Trump’s voter suppression bill , and blocked hormone therapy coverage for gender care just as Hegseth ...

The typically conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board ripped into President Donald Trump in a new piece , lambasting him for an "obsession" he cannot quit despite the major "harm" it is causing mere months from the midterms . Owned by conservative mogul Rupert Murdoch, the Wall Street Journal's editorial board is often viewed as a leading voice reflecting the stances and temperaments of the modern conservative movement. In a piece published Friday evening, the board published a new piece questioning the wisdom of Trump's decision to reinstitute several tariffs, despite the import tax policies being widely viewed as one of his least popular with voters . "Tariffs are an obsession for President Trump, much as climate was for the Biden Administration," the board observed. "How else to explain his imposition of yet another round of border taxes three months before the November election despite their political unpopularity and economic ha...

Daily Mail White House columnist Andrew Neil says he is in direct talks with people working around President Donald Trump and they fear they are watching his mind wither away as international forces that he aggravated gather against him. “‘Donald is deteriorating before our very eyes,’ I was told in Washington this week by a close confidant who sees him regularly. ‘His physical and mental health is in decline. Those around him don’t know what to do about it. It can only get worse. He’s 80 – and it’s showing,’” wrote Neil on Friday . The war isn’t just consuming Trump’s presidency, said Neil. It’s taking its toll on the President himself. “During a recent meeting in the Oval Office, he ranted against Iran’s leaders, calling them ‘scumbags’ and ‘lunatics’ in an expletive-ridden diatribe. There is growing concern for his physical health and mental stability,” said Neil. “… But it’s not just age – or the decline in cognitive capabilities that can afflict those entering their ninth decad...

The New York Times reports that President Donald Trump on Friday ordered warning signs and exhibits installed outside the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History to alert the public that the museum does not, in his view, accurately reflect American history. The executive order is “an escalation of the president’s dispute with the Smithsonian and its history museum, which was the subject of a recent 162-page report,” said the Times. “The report accused the museum’s director, Anthea M. Hartig, of ‘radical activist ideology’ and the museum of undermining ‘faith in American institutions.’” Trump’s EO directed the signage to “notify visitors that the museum exhibits should be renovated … and direct visitors to locations and resources for accurate information regarding America’s history.” “Because the museum has failed to appropriately honor the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence during this 250th anniversary year of the founding of our country,” the order continues, ...