The Daily Brief
Today
Good morning. Donald Trump's approval has collapsed to a record-low 32% in a new Reuters/Ipsos poll, his own 2024 voters peeling away, even as he insists 'I'm doing great'. The bravado is thin: he threw a public tantrum over reports of a light crowd at his weekend rally in a 4,500-seat Ohio gym. A president who cannot fill a room is now trying to buy one. Trump said Monday he will start paying for the pro-Trump ads blanketing the airwaves through his super PAC, but only after intense pushback for funding them with public money. Behind the ad blitz sits a broader plan to buy votes before the midterms through Medicare and ACA payments and Republican checks.
Former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul told MS NOW that Trump's pattern of corruption and self-enrichment has reached a 'point of no return' that authoritarian despots hit. It is not idle talk: officials are reportedly being made to brainstorm legal arguments to institutionalize his personality cult permanently. The cracks reach his own party — North Carolina Republican Thom Tillis, who defended his vote to confirm Pete Hegseth last year, now calls that vote his biggest regret and demands Hegseth's resignation.
On the Iran conflict, Trump claimed a threat linked to Iran was why the U.S. withdrew its bombers from the Fairford airbase in Britain. Senator Mark Warner, vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, says the panel was not briefed on the bomber move and that lawmakers are getting no regular updates on the conflict.
Abroad, a White House adviser calls Trump's silence on Brazil's election strategic — reticence that may have helped Flávio Bolsonaro take the lead into the next round. In Germany, the government's elderly-care reform deepens the crisis with draconian healthcare cuts the union leaderships have failed to fight. At Cornell, students are protesting the university's handling of an alleged 2024 fraternity gang rape. And against the administration's crackdown, faith leaders are marching 96 miles against ICE detention — the resistance no ad money can buy off.
Zoom out: A president sitting at a record-low 32% approval is leaning on public money, ad spending and promised payments to voters while even a senator from his own party turns on his administration.
Share this issue
Facebook · X · Reddit · LinkedIn · WhatsApp · Email · Bluesky