Saturday, June 20, 2026
Has the Felon's “White Working Class” Base Finally Had Enough?
Donald Trump threw himself a great big birthday party over the weekend, targeted to appeal to the famous white working-class voters who have formed the core of his base since the moment he came down that golden escalator. He transformed the White House lawn into a makeshift Colosseum and held a modern-day gladiatorial spectacle, officially called UFC Freedom 250. One participant vomited on himself and later made offensive comments about Michelle Obama, to the great amusement of the assembled crowd. But there are signs that this sort of cultural signifier may not be enough to keep the MAGA faithful on board anymore.
It’s always been a bit strange that this spoiled, Richie Rich-style heir to a real estate fortune could possibly become an avatar of the working class. He’s never known a moment of physical labor in his life and has nothing but contempt for any of the hard-fought regulations and rights that protect workers from the predations of the moneyed elite and give them a chance at the American dream.
One might have thought that all his ostentatious displays of wealth, compared to the squeeze working people have faced for at least the last generation, would at least make them skeptical. But as we’ve all discussed ad nauseam over the last couple of decades, tribal grievance tends to trump material self-interest among a large faction of the American electorate.
But a big part of Trump’s appeal, and perhaps what binds him so closely to this group, is not so much that he has his finger on the pulse of blue-collar workers’ cultural gripes but that he also personally shares them. His wealth represents a sort of aspirational model for many people of that class, even though he inherited his wealth, mostly thank to the reality show that portrayed him as a hugely successful self-made businessman. If that guy can become a billionaire, the thinking went, so can I!
Everything about that was fake, of course. But cults are generally led by charlatans, so that’s not surprising. When people want to believe in something badly enough, they disconnect their bullshit detectors to block out the dissonance. . . . . But despite Trump’s big fight-night birthday party and his upcoming Fourth of July celebration on the nation’s 250th anniversary, it seems possible that MAGA followers are waking up to the reality that their Dear Leader isn’t all that.
Trump’s big problem is that his lies about the economy are catching up to him. It was one thing when the detested Joe Biden oversaw a brief period of high inflation during the post-pandemic recovery. They knew who to blame. . . . But after a year and a half of the second Trump presidency, even they can’t lie to themselves anymore. He promised to banish inflation and it’s only gotten worse.
The latest Reuters/Ipsos poll found that Trump’s approval rating among his base rural voters is now at 50%, down from 60% in February, with a disapproval rating of 48%, up from 34%. That voting bloc that went for Trump by 40 points in the 2024 election, but are now feeling the pinch of tariffs, high gas prices and the soaring cost of living in general. They’re not too happy about the Iran war either, whether there’s a “deal” or not.
A new Fox News poll has similar findings. Trump’s approval rating among his white rural base is now all the way down to 44%, a startling 33 points lower than at the beginning of his term. Only 16% of respondents said their financial situation had improved in the last two years, while 49% said they are worse off. Almost two-thirds of those polled, or 64%, said the cost of living is the most important economic problem they face, and fewer than one-third (30%) said they thought Trump was handling the issue. And there wasn’t much faith that he’s likely to make things better
This discontent isn’t found solely among rural voters. Trump is in trouble with blue-collar workers across the board. A New York Times analysis by Shane Goldmacher showed “an extraordinary swing … among white voters without college degrees between his first midterm election and now.” Back then, “working-class white voters approved of his management of the economy by margins of 30 percentage points or even more. Now, recent polls show them disapproving by anywhere from 14 to more than 30 points.” . . . . Republicans are responding to this problem by touting their tax cuts, and that’s not likely to get them anywhere. Everyone knows the bulk of those cuts went to the rich, and they certainly haven’t offset inflation. But what else do they have?
There isn’t a lot of positive news except for the soaring stock market, and that’s not much of a winning argument with blue-collar workers. Those who run focus groups report that working-class voters are well aware of Trump’s obsession with the White House ballroom and all the monuments to himself, and it’s not going down well. If he thinks the Marie Antoinette strategy is a big winner, he’s wrong.
This past weekend’s birthday festivities at the White House seem to have been a hit with mixed martial arts fans, a group that definitely overlaps with Trump’s voter base. . . . But the non-college-educated voters who have traditionally been his bedrock supporters are facing so much financial strain these days that his cultural affinities, even when they’re somewhat authentic, just don’t cut it. As the Emperor Nero could have told Trump, bread and circuses are a great combination, but they don’t work without the bread.
Trump in Defeat in Iran
[A] compelling column calling [the Felon's]
President Trump’struce with Iran less a deal than a debacle. I couldn’t agree more. But doesn’t it perfectly fit this presidency’s pattern? Trump blusters about restored American greatness — about our country being the “hottest” in the world, whatever that means — while making it look smaller, sillier and stupider by the day.
An second column in the Times describes the debacle in these words:
Surely something about this preliminary agreement between the United States and Iran must have felt familiar to America’s real-estate mogul president. After all, it reads like a real-estate bankruptcy filing — an act of financial capitulation.
It is a measure of how much Iran had [the Felon]
Trumpover a barrel, and how thoroughly it cleaned his clock, that Iran’s lead negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, told Iranian state TV after the details were announced: “The agreement is a record of U.S. failure. People will see it and judge.”You don’t need to be a foreign policy expert to see what happened here. You need to be a domestic policy expert. Trump sold out America’s ally in the war, Israel, and the Arab Gulf states for the swing states of Pennsylvania, Georgia and Michigan. Trump knew that the food inflation and high gasoline prices triggered by this war were a prescription for a Republican wipeout in the midterms.
The Felon, of course, is claiming "victory" even though none of the supposed objectives of the war have been realized and Iran knows that control of the Strait of Hormuz provides never ending blackmail opportunities. Meanwhile on the home front, a Fox News polls shows the following:
Only 12% say they are getting ahead financially, most think the economy is in bad shape, more than half think President Donald Trump’s policies benefit people who have money, and their outlook on the economy is negative. . . . Some 59% of voters feel pessimistic about the economy, . . . . Forty-four percent say they’re falling behind financially. . . . . Big picture, 37% are satisfied with the direction of the country.
Both the de facto surrender to Iran and the mess on the domestic front are the direct fault of the Felon who (i) has pushed policies and tax cuts that benefit the very wealthy while punishing the working and middle classes (e.g., safety net spending cuts) , and (ii) launched his war of choice despite warnings from experts. A piece in The Atlantic looks at the Felon's defeat:
[The Felon]
President Trumplost. The war he waged against Iran promises to conclude in a humbling whimper with the signing of a cease-fire agreement later this week. The United States is left weaker, diminished militarily, strategically, economically, and perhaps morally.The war, which the United States fought alongside Israel, accomplished none of the goals that Trump named at the outset. Instead, it only empowered the hard-liners in Tehran and arguably emboldened them to someday seek a nuclear weapon. Despite that, the president was so desperate for the war to end that he repeatedly backed off his threats—allowing Iran to call his bluff—and upbraided his close ally Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for responding to attacks in the region in a manner that jeopardized the negotiations.
[The Felon] Trump won’t admit to any of this. He has spent recent days furiously spinning the tentative deal as a clear win, and has seethed at unflattering comparisons with the deal that President Obama struck with Iran more than a decade ago, aides and outside advisers told me. Trump, they said, has privately denounced Iran hawks, some of whom are among his closest allies in the Republican Party, for questioning the strength of the agreement. Within the administration, there is a divide on the deal, but Trump sided with those advocating for the war to wind down, no matter the terms, as fears mount about the economic toll on Americans and the political costs for Republicans in the midterms.
Trump’s own anger masks a desperate desire to find an off-ramp from a conflict that did not go the way he had planned, an outcome that has threatened to leave the United States—and Trump—reduced in the eyes of the world. For a decade, Trump has dominated the global stage and wielded extraordinary executive power. But now he is saddled with low poll numbers and unhappy Republicans, and he may soon have to contend with a Democratic Congress.
His evolution into a lame duck is accelerating, and the political world is poised to soon look beyond him and focus on the 2028 contenders hoping to succeed him. World leaders, who were once cowed, have begun to defy him. Trump’s defeat in Iran, and the way he lost, may hasten his irrelevance.
It’s not usually a vote of confidence for your deal when you won’t let anyone else read it. But Trump and his team have threatened to not release the Iran agreement until after it is signed in Geneva on Friday. Officials have said that the deal will extend the cease-fire over the next 60 days and that Iran will reopen the Strait of Hormuz, allowing the U.S. to drop its naval blockade and oil to flow from the region again. Although Iran has agreed to not collect fees on the strait for the next 60 days, it has (according to Iranian state media) left open the door to doing so afterward—and the deal delays addressing Iran’s uranium-enrichment program, despite Trump having cast it as his urgent motivation for war.
The deal has also alarmed the GOP’s Iran hawks. Mark Levin, the right-wing radio host who championed the case for war, posted on social media his disbelief that Trump had rebuked Netanyahu and that the agreement remained shrouded in secrecy: “I have asked for days, why can’t we, the people, see the damn MOU?’” Senator Lindsey Graham has also made his reservations known, although he has carefully avoided blaming Trump and tried to pin responsibility on Vance, who was the lead American negotiator in the early stages of the talks. Erick Erickson, a conservative commentator, went so far as to declare that “Trump has surrendered to Iran.” And Marc Thiessen, a former President George W. Bush aide with whom the White House consulted during the war, has been one of many conservative voices warning that Trump’s emerging framework looks a lot like the Obama deal.
That notion has infuriated the [Felon]
president.A longtime Trump confidant told me that Trump “was incensed by the dissent”—particularly the Obama comparison—from once-loyal Republicans. Trump has reflexively tried to tear up anything associated with the former president.In the first days, the strikes, which were pushed by Netanyahu, killed Iran’s supreme leader and inflicted extraordinary damage on its military and artillery. But Iran proved resilient, attacking its neighbors in the Persian Gulf, seizing control of the Strait of Hormuz, and plunging the world into an energy crisis. The price of gas skyrocketed globally, including in the United States. Trump’s poll numbers, already teetering, fell further, and he began looking for a way out. He tried to intimidate Iran into taking a deal, at one point vowing to destroy its “whole civilization,” but walked away from each threat, leaving him open to mockery from Tehran.
The hard-line regime in Tehran appears poised to sell oil again and receive up to $300 billion in funding from Gulf states that it could use to rebuild. Iran has tightened its grip on the Strait of Hormuz and demonstrated that it can close the waterway at will. Although Tehran has promised not to build a nuclear weapon, no enforcement mechanism has been established. And to the shock of some Iran hawks, Trump yesterday seemed to back off his previous pledge to seize the uranium, saying, “You could make the case, ‘Why are you even bothering?’ Because it’s not really valuable.”
Iran has seemingly come out of the conflict with an ability to check Israel’s freedom to strike Lebanon and potentially elsewhere; in recent days, Trump has blasted Netanyahu for endangering the cease-fire and demanded that he call off an attack on Beirut. Trump’s broadsides, including calling the prime minister “a very difficult guy,” threaten to widen a rift between the U.S. and its longtime ally in the Middle East. Despite Trump’s reprimands, Netanyahu has insisted that Israel will continue to authorize attacks that it deems necessary for self-defense.
The war has cost Trump. It has rattled the nation’s economy. The Pentagon estimated that it had spent roughly $29 billion on the conflict by mid-May, but independent experts believe that it has spent tens of billions more. The U.S. military’s munitions supply has been depleted, putting at risk its ability to defend its interests in Asia and Europe. The United States’ failure, despite its overwhelming military might, to bring Iran to its knees could encourage China, Russia, or North Korea to take aggressive action. In the eyes of many, Washington has hurt its moral standing around the globe; promises to help the Iranian people rise up went unfulfilled, and more than 170 people, mostly children, were killed by a U.S. strike on a girls’ school in the war’s first hours.
Back home, Trump is still the most powerful figure in politics. But those small acts of Republican defiance are adding up. He has had a series of losses in the courts, including in his efforts to remake the nation’s capital in his own image. Democrats are favored to capture at least one house of Congress this November, which would give them the ability to slow Trump’s agenda and open investigations into his administration. Once the midterms conclude, the race to replace Trump will begin. Although that will further diminish Trump, it is unlikely that he will go out with a whimper.
Friday, June 19, 2026
Thursday, June 18, 2026
Wednesday, June 17, 2026
Tuesday, June 16, 2026
Trump Celebrates While America Capitulates In Defeat
As a result, the energy market is changing, the energy mix is changing and the energy players are changing.
The profound vulnerability of countries throughout Asia, Europe and elsewhere that depend on imported energy is supercharging the hunt for alternatives. In some places, like South Korea and Japan, that has led to an increased use of dirtier fuels like coal. But over the longer term, this energy shock — the second in just four years — is likely to accelerate a transition to renewables like solar and wind as well as nuclear power.
The push to build out and diversify energy networks is going to continue long after the war ends. And China is poised to benefit most from the expected boon in renewables. It is leagues ahead of the rest of the world in producing wind turbines, high-voltage cables, transformers, solar panels, batteries, software to manage energy flows and more. . . . “China looks to be an out-and-out winner,” analysts from Wood Mackenzie, a global energy consulting firm, concluded.
Much of this was predictable and combined with a de facto military defeat leaves America weaker than when the war was foolishly started by the Felon against all warnings of what could happen. True, the Felon will try to claim "victory" but many will see this as just another of his endless lies. Adding to the mix is the prediction by some that gasoline prices will remain higher helping to drive up other consumer prices. A piece in The Atlantic looks at the Felon's defeat and Iran's victory. Here are article highlights:
President Trump has announced that the United States and Iran have reached a deal to end their war. “Congratulations to all!” he said in a posting on his Truth Social site this evening. He then headed off to oversee the garish public spectacle he’d arranged for his birthday on the South Lawn of the White House. The United States, however, has little to celebrate: Trump and his team, in record time, just lost a war to a militarily mediocre—but nonetheless extremely dangerous—adversary.
The details of the agreement remain unconfirmed, but the president, of course, is eager to spin the outcome as a victory. (Trump was in a hurry to sign the deal on his birthday; the Iranians, who now seem to be in charge of this whole business, instead said they will send someone to a meeting in Switzerland on Friday.) But even before we have the details, it is clear that Trump has failed to achieve every one of the goals he put forward for this war of choice, and now he is determined to sign, seal, and deliver America’s capitulation as quickly as possible.
If defeat seems a strong word, consider what we do know about how this war will end. Iran has suffered significant damage from U.S. and Israeli military action. But as I and others warned at the outset, killing people and bombing things do not by themselves produce victory. The reality is that the war will close with the regime in Tehran intact and in the grip of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps; the Strait of Hormuz will remain under the threat of Iranian attacks; Iran will continue to possess significant drone and missile stocks; the regime will maintain the capability to be a state sponsor of terror; and many sanctions will be lifted and billions of dollars in unfrozen assets will flow to Iran. In other words, the Iranians have achieved their key strategic aims—regime survival above all—while the Americans have achieved none of their own.
Indeed, the United States has perhaps done worse than gaining nothing. Iran, while temporarily weakened, is now an even more powerful political actor: The regime in Tehran stood up to a massive U.S. onslaught, survived, and then inflicted pain on various states in the Gulf as punishment for going along with Trump’s war.
The Israelis, for their part, have been left out in the cold. It is difficult to shed any tears for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who unwisely encouraged Trump to attack Iran, but he, too, is feeling the sting of humiliation. The Iranians cagily linked Netanyahu’s war against Hezbollah in Lebanon to Trump’s war in the Gulf, and Trump is now angry at Netanyahu for making it harder for the United States to get out of the conflict.
Reportedly, the upcoming agreement requires a cessation of hostilities in the region, including in Lebanon—and Trump is negotiating as if he can deliver on that demand while leaving Jerusalem out of it. Today, the Israelis said that Hezbollah had launched weapons into Israel. Rather than calling on the Iranians to restrain their proxy, Trump took to social media to tell the Israelis to calm down, noting that the attack “was very small and meaningless, nobody was hurt, injured, or killed, and should not disrupt this important process.”
The Trump administration will claim that it achieved a victory because it got an Iran without nuclear weapons. But this claim is both silly and redundant. Tehran had already pledged 10 years ago in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action not to seek nuclear weapons. No one should trust the Iranians, but before Trump unilaterally canceled the agreement in his first term, the JCPOA seemed to be working. More to the point, at the time Trump chose to go to war, Iran was nowhere near getting a bomb, and certainly not within weeks of a weapon, as Trump asserted. The effort to claim that this war has defeated Iran’s nuclear ambitions is merely an effort to distract from the administration’s failure to achieve regime change, which was always its main goal.
The agreement—if it actually gets signed on Friday—will then initiate a two-month period of further negotiations, and Trump could argue that he’ll get more in that process. But how?
Trump has for weeks talked about getting rid of Iran’s “Nuclear Dust”—his odd term for the uranium now lying under the rubble produced by U.S. bombings—and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth claimed this morning that the United States has multiple plans for removing this material. The Iranians, however, are busily planting booby traps around the uranium to ensure that it stays where it is, and despite Hegseth’s blustering, America is not going to march into Iran and dig it out without Tehran’s consent. If anything, the Iranians now have every incentive to sprint to a bomb, and can do so with far less transparency than they had to endure under the JCPOA.
Meanwhile, the Strait of Hormuz will “open,” but it was already open, at least to those the Iranians allowed to pass. In his celebratory message, Trump said: “I hereby fully authorize the toll free opening of the Strait of Hormuz.” That’s terrific, but such a statement has about as much effect as I or my wife or my cat declaring the strait open; only Iran can make that decision. Trump also declared that the U.S. Navy’s blockade of Iranian ports is over, something that is indeed within his power, but that only means America will withdraw while Iran remains.
Meanwhile—and again, these are the terms that so far have been leaked to the press, mostly from the Iranians—Iran claims that it will not only get some $12 billion up front, but get another $12 billion within 60 days. Down the line, the Iranians are claiming that they will get a $300 billion fund for reconstruction. . . . . The war leaves Iran battered, but more powerful and with more cash at its disposal, while it leaves America weaker, with important stocks of weapons depleted, and with its consumers paying the price for the war at the gas pump.
Trump today also claimed that he is perfectly willing to restart hostilities if the Iranians don’t cooperate. Tehran, however, can be forgiven for smirking at the idea that Trump is going to tie down U.S. forces and then ignite a second conflict just weeks from the midterm elections, especially because the American people—and, perhaps more important from Trump’s perspective, the international markets—have soured on the conflict.
Trump began this war by promising the Iranian people that they would be able to seize their government from the theocratic tyrants who oppress them, and he repeatedly said he would settle for nothing less than “unconditional surrender.” Had Trump toppled the regime in Tehran, he would have had the thanks of most of the world—and congratulations from even his most dedicated critics. Instead, the United States has been defeated, and this evening found Trump out on the lawn waiting for the rain to clear so he could begin his party.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)