Summary
Overview
In this episode, Dan Pfeiffer and John Favreau discuss Trump's historically low approval ratings, the deteriorating situation with the Iran war and economy, and Democratic prospects in key Senate races. They analyze heated primary battles in Michigan and Wisconsin, debate the implications of AI safety incidents, and discuss the broader challenges facing the Democratic Party as it heads into the final stretch before the midterm elections.
Trump's Approval Ratings Hit Record Lows
With 95 days until the midterm elections, Trump's approval ratings have plummeted to the low 30s across multiple high-quality polls. The president has lost control of the Iran war now in its fifth month, the economy is suffering from sluggish growth and high inflation, and he's even losing control of his own party as two Republican senators continue blocking his attorney general nominee. Despite all this chaos, Trump spent time this week detailing a $22 billion airport renovation while using a laser pointer.
- Trump's approval rating is at 32-34% in recent high-quality polls, near record lows for either term
- The Iran war has widened to include Saudi Arabia, with no end in sight after five months
- GDP growth was only 1.5% last quarter, well under expectations, with inflation still a full point over the Fed's target
- Two Republican senators are blocking Trump's acting attorney general Todd Blanche over provisions in Trump's IRS settlement
" Whether you're a Republican or Democrat, you don't want to go and be subjected to this airport between the trams and the Star War thing that they call it the Star Wars and elevated buses. And nobody knows what's going on. It's a real mess. "
" Grass is like human beings. Grass is a life also. And we're changing. We're raking, cleaning, and changing all of the parks. "
DOJ Corruption and Vindictive Prosecution
The Justice Department's increasingly corrupt behavior came into sharper focus this week. Court documents revealed that the FBI interviewed mobster Sammy the Bull Gravano to prove Jim Comey's seashell Instagram photo was a threat, asked ChatGPT for help with their theory, and conducted warrantless surveillance on Comey. Meanwhile, the administration acknowledged terminating $7.6 billion in clean energy grants solely based on whether states voted for Kamala Harris, and Trump personally denied disaster aid to Democratic states at the highest rate in FEMA's 47-year history.
- The FBI changed Secret Service guidance to have 8647 count as a threat against the president on the same day Comey posted the photo
- The term '86' has appeared zero times in the FBI's database of communicated threats since 2007
- Federal government terminated $7.6 billion in grants for clean energy projects based solely on the political identity of recipient states
- Trump personally overruled his own agencies to deny disaster aid to four Democratic-led states just this month
" If this was 2017, there would have been a massive uproar about this because this would have been a norm that you do not make disaster relief political that Trump has overturned. Nine years later, we've seen some version of this a whole bunch of times with Trump where he's threatened this. "
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