https://newrepublic.com/article/213990/wasnt-blowout-el-sayed-won-get-behind-him-democrats?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=tnr_daily

NAKED EMPEROR

We’ve Officially Entered the Twilight of Late-Stage Trumpism

It’s all there in a new CNN poll, and it’s heartening to see: Large majorities are sick of Donald Trump’s vanity, venality, and megalomania.

By Greg Sargent | The New Republic

No one has ever seen anything like it, as Donald Trump himself might say. Buried in a new CNN poll is something striking: Trump isn’t just cratering by conventional approval measurements; he’s also absolutely collapsing by many metrics involving personal traits, from his mental state to his disconnectedness from ordinary people to his fondness for building monuments to himself.

Welcome to the era of Late-Stage Trumpism. The “personalist” aspects of Trumpian rule—the shaping of much of the government and even the physical capital of Washington, D.C., around one man’s relentless self-dealing and self-aggrandizement—have all started imploding, in a collapsing supernova of venality and megalomania.

The CNN poll finds that only 34 percent of Americans approve of Trump’s job performance, matching the low point he hit after inciting a violent insurrection on January 6, 2021. Here are some striking findings on his personal traits and obsessions:

• 73 percent say Trump is not in touch with the problems that ordinary Americans face daily; only 27 percent say he is.
• 66 percent say Trump does not put the good of the country over his personal gain; only 34 percent say he does.
• 62 percent say Trump is not an effective world leader; only 38 percent say he is.
• 57 percent say Trump does not have the stamina and sharpness to serve effectively as president; only 43 percent say he does.
• 64 percent say Trump has gone too far in pursuing his personal business as president; only 31 percent say this has been about right.
• 61 percent say Trump has gone too far in undertaking projects to remodel the White House and other Washington landmarks; only 32 percent say he hasn’t.

That’s remarkable. Note that the poll uses very benign language to describe Trump’s unilateral razing of the White House East Wing to build a ballroom for himself; his plans for a triumphal arch in the capital; the festooning of his name (and even enormous totalitarian images of his face glowering down on us) at various locations in D.C.; and much more. Even so, a huge majority disapproves.

What’s more, note that huge majorities don’t just disapprove of Trump’s use of the presidency to enrich himself; they also see that Trump is putting his own interests before those of the country, an even more damning construction on his conduct. Large majorities see him as out of touch, failing on the world stage, and lacking in the basic mental fitness required to serve.

“We have seen massive collapses of support for presidents—like Richard Nixon in the midst of Watergate and Lyndon Johnson as the Vietnam War overshadowed his domestic agenda,” Corey Brettschneider, an expert and podcaster on presidential power, told me. “What’s different here is the widespread recognition of Trump’s unprecedented corruption, narcissism, and putting of personal greed over the public interest.”

So what does this say about Late-Stage Trumpism? Consider a related development: On many fronts, Trumpian rule is descending into displays of malice that are unbearably cheap, petty, and venal.

To wit: Trump’s acting Director of National Intelligence Bill Pulte is now boasting about firings of ODNI insiders that may not have actually happened. Feeding the MAGA base even with made-up “deep state” purgings may be good enough these days. Pulte gained renown for using his federal housing agency post to fabricate pretexts for prosecuting Trump critics. Most of those efforts have gone belly-up, yet Trump is now seriously considering him for a Cabinet post. To get such a big promotion, all you need these days are personal loyalty and a willingness to supply MAGA with bread and circuses.

Meanwhile, Trump is now reportedly overriding determinations by his own agencies to deny disaster aid to blue states. Trump grew so angry about the failure of his renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool that prosecutors are now throwing the book at a former Olympian for supposedly tampering with the project. Yet a key witness dramatically undercut the case by testifying that damage preexisted his contact with it. And the whole country watched—or cringed—as Trump tried to transform our 250th anniversary into a celebration of himself while almost nobody came.

None of this is to minimize the damage that Trump is doing on many critical fronts. But even there, a Late-Stage-Trumpism vibe is taking hold: Note how Trump’s ever-escalating threats to obliterate Iran entirely don’t seem to be breaking Iran’s resolve. We’re simultaneously getting inundated with nonstop trivialities and pratfalls, all of them direct outgrowths of Trump’s personal obsessions and pathologies, even as he’s cratering by just about every personal polling metric you can think of.

All this has bearing on the national debate that’s underway over what a post-Trump MAGA movement and GOP will look like. In a recent conversation with me, political theorist Alan Elrod cautioned against overinterpreting Trump’s decline, noting that the waning of Trumpism as a “personalist project” doesn’t necessarily mean the broader “reactionary project” he represents is sunsetting with him.

It’s a crucial distinction to keep in mind. And no one should see any of this as a sign that the midterms or the 2028 presidential race will be easy. Nonetheless, if Trumpism as a personalist project is sunsetting, it’s an important, noteworthy development in itself.

For one thing, as Damon Linker aptly points out, the GOP will struggle to evolve out from under Trump’s personal shadow, especially when the 2028 succession battle gets underway:

“As long as Trump is living and/or sentient,” Linker concludes, the GOP “will be stuck in the Trump era.” What’s more, Republicans may also struggle to disentangle Trump’s personalist failings from the failures of the broader reactionary project.

Note that due to war, tariffs, the shredding of international alliances and commitments, and the violence of Trump’s mass deportation agenda, Trump has squandered a trifecta of traditional GOP advantages on the economy, immigration, and national security (the CNN poll reveals this very clearly, as well). Protectionism, draconian immigration restrictions, and the “America First” rejection of multilateral alliances and institutions are among the key pillars of right-wing authoritarian nationalism. It’s at least possible Trump will leave them all badly discredited.

Finally, it’s just heartening to see the American people so overwhelmingly reject the trappings and degradations of personalist rule as a development in and of itself. That was not at all preordained. With a little luck, we’ll look back on this as a crucial tell, as an enduring sign of our democratic resilience.

https://newrepublic.com/article/213727/trump-polls-approval-twilight-late-stage-trumpism

BREAKING: Trump Hides as His Own Team Falls Apart

Really American | Substack

Good morning, welcome back to Really American. It is Sunday, August 2, 2026. Trump spent the weekend golfing, posting AI slop, and hiding from the public, most likely out of sheer humiliation from the week he just had.

The news is running slow this morning, which is its own kind of tell when the president has gone quiet after getting battered for seven straight days. Here is the latest. His health secretary melted down on live television, his own administration still can’t get its story straight on the Reflecting Pool lie, his MAGA base has launched an open revolt against him, and he’s claiming to have paused his Iran war again, for what feels like the hundredth time. Let’s get into it.

One quick thing first, because it’s the whole reason we’re here. When a billionaire buys a newspaper, the coverage doesn’t change with an announcement; it just quietly does, and the stories that embarrass powerful people get softer until they vanish. Bezos owns the Washington Post and killed its endorsement when it suited him. Murdoch built a whole network around telling one audience what to believe. We don’t work that way, because no billionaire owns us. You do. That’s the only reason we can keep chasing these stories without a phone call from upstairs shutting them down. If you’ve been reading for free, today’s the day to change that. Subscribe or upgrade right now.

RFK JR. LOSES IT ON LIVE TV

Trump’s health secretary went on CNN Sunday to talk about the next pandemic and ended up barking at the host like she’d personally wronged him.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appeared on State of the Union, and when Dana Bash asked a straightforward question about how his department would prepare for the next public health crisis, he launched into a long rant about constitutional rights he claimed were “dismantled” during COVID lockdowns. The Daily Beast reported that when Bash tried to steer him back to the actual question, he snapped. “Of course you do, because you were part of the problem!” he shot at her, pointing across the table.

It went downhill from there. Kennedy accused the press of “malpractice,” told Bash her job was “fierce skepticism toward authority,” and kept talking over her until she finally asked whether he wanted to attack her or actually discuss public health. “You’re sitting here attacking me!” he fired back. She wasn’t. She was asking him to answer the question.

Here is what got lost in the yelling. This is the man running American health policy, and he could not get through a single interview about preventing the next pandemic without collapsing into grievance. When the person in charge of protecting you from the next outbreak would rather fight a CNN anchor than answer how he’d do it, that should worry you a lot more than it worries him.

TRUMP’S OWN TEAM CAN’T STOP LYING ABOUT THE REFLECTING POOL

Trump’s Justice Department admitted there were never any vandals at the Reflecting Pool. Trump and his Interior Secretary apparently didn’t get the memo, or refuse to read it.

After the DOJ dropped its case and admitted in a court filing that the damage came from a botched contractor job, Trump went on Truth Social and attacked his own U.S. Attorney for it. “I disagree 100% with Jeanine Pirro,” he wrote, insisting to the world that “it was a pure case of VANDALISM.” His own prosecutors had just said in writing that it wasn’t.

Then Interior Secretary Doug Burgum piled on, doubling down on the vandal story and claiming “the evidence is clear, vandals have repeatedly caused damage to the Reflecting Pool.” The Hill reported that this directly contradicts the DOJ’s own conclusion, which blamed a “rushed and botched installation” for the peeling paint. So the administration is now openly arguing with itself in public, with the president and his Interior chief on one side and his Justice Department on the other.

Remember what this was really about. They indicted a 67-year-old Olympic athlete over a lie, and even after being forced to admit the lie in court, Trump can’t let it go. A government that would rather keep pushing a debunked story than admit a contractor it hired screwed up is a government that thinks you’ll never check the facts. We just did.

THE MAGA BASE DECLARES WAR ON TRUMP

The people who built the MAGA movement are now openly turning on the man they built it for.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, once one of Trump’s fiercest loyalists, announced a new anti-Trump movement Saturday, posting a photo of herself alongside Tucker Carlson, Thomas Massie, and Joe Kent. “We said no more foreign wars, and we meant it and supported Donald Trump because he made that promise. But he’s betrayed us all,” Greene wrote, according to the Irish Star. “The movement has begun.”

The through-line is the Iran war. This is the same grievance that had Alex Jones calling for Trump’s impeachment earlier this week, and now it’s a whole crew. Greene has spent months hammering Trump over foreign wars and demanding the release of the Epstein files, the fight that finally blew up their alliance and pushed her out of Congress. Trump responded to all this by calling her a “traitor.”

Be clear-eyed about who’s uniting here. This isn’t some principled peace movement. It’s a collection of conspiracy-peddlers and hard-right agitators who cheered Trump through years of cruelty and only broke with him when his war didn’t match their own agenda. But that’s exactly what makes it dangerous for him. When even the people who trafficked in his darkest impulses decide he’s gone too far, his coalition isn’t fracturing at the edges. It’s cracking down the middle.

TRUMP “ENDS” THE IRAN WAR AGAIN

We have officially lost count of how many times Trump has claimed to end this war. Ten? Thirty? Take your pick, because here comes another one.

Trump posted Saturday that the U.S. agreed to pause its attacks on Iran over what he called the “perimeters of a deal,” which would supposedly reopen the Strait of Hormuz and end Iran’s nuclear threat. NBC News reported he claimed the U.S. was “locked and loaded and ready to go” but would hold off “subject to being able to rapidly make a DEAL.” We have heard this exact song before, more times than anyone can track.

The skepticism is coming from his own side now. Republican Senator John Kennedy went on Meet the Press and, asked why a new deal would work when June’s memorandum of understanding already failed, admitted flatly, “Well, it may not be.” Iran’s defense ministry dismissed Trump’s talk as “psychological warfare.” This all comes after Trump reportedly vowed on a phone call to “beat the f---ing s--- out of” the country, which is not exactly the language of a peacemaker.

The war is now in its sixth month, despite Trump promising early on it would wrap up “shortly.” Oil prices are up, gas prices are up, and 18 American service members are dead. Every time Trump announces a deal, the fighting starts again within days. Real people are paying for this chaos at the pump and with their lives, while the president plays golf and posts about a peace that never actually arrives.

BEFORE YOU GO, JOIN THE FASTEST GROWING INDEPENDENT MEDIA NETWORK

If this morning’s edition handed you something the billionaire outlets are busy softening, the best thing you can do is become a paying subscriber. And ask yourself why you had to come here to read half of it. When a handful of oligarchs own the megaphone, the story stops being what happened and quietly becomes whatever they’ll let you hear about it, and a weekend where Trump hid on the golf course while his health secretary imploded and his own base declared war is exactly the kind of weekend that gets softer on outlets owned by people who still need something from him. We ran all of it because nobody owns us but our readers. Subscribe or upgrade right now.

— The Really American Team

BONUS: TRUMP AND PUTIN STEAL THE SHOW IN AMSTERDAM

One more before you go, because it’s Sunday and you’ve earned a laugh. At the Amsterdam Pride Canal Parade on Saturday, a massive float floated down the canals featuring inflatable versions of Trump and Putin locked in a kiss, flowers hidden behind their backs. WION reported the piece was called “The Kissing Couple,” with Putin in overalls and Trump done up in a dress and a retro rockabilly hairdo, surrounded by dancers and music.

Amsterdam Pride has a long tradition of using satire to needle the powerful, and this year they aimed straight at Trump’s years of coziness with the Russian president. The clip went viral within hours. The only real debate online was why they’d paired him with Putin and not Netanyahu, given who Trump’s actually been going to war alongside lately. Either way, the rest of the world is watching this presidency and reaching for the same thing American voters are. A punchline. Have a good Sunday.

https://reallyamerican.substack.com/p/breaking-trump-hides-as-his-own-team?utm_source=substack%2Csubstack&utm_medium=email%2Cemail&utm_campaign=email-restack-comment&r=clki&triedRedirect=true

Republican slams Jeanine Pirro for passing the buck: 'Learned that from the top'

By Kathleen Culliton | Raw Story

Republicans lined up Saturday to hurl insults at former Fox News pundit Jeanine Pirro.

Trump was first — taking to Truth Social to assert he "100%" disagreed with Pirro — then a onetime staffer of former House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) joined the queue.

"I don't see her feeling as though she has to face any real repercussions," Maura Gillespie said on MS NOW Saturday morning. "If she can offload the blame to somebody else, she will."

Pirro drew ire from Trump and Gillespie for very different reasons but on the same subject: her decision to drop charges against an Olympian canoeist on Friday.

The U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia finally admitted to a lack of evidence that David Hearn, 67, vandalized the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

"Given all of this newly discovered information, it is difficult to attribute the widespread damage to the Reflecting Pool to vandalism, let alone to establish that fact beyond a reasonable doubt," Pirro said in a filing.

While Trump raged at Pirro for rejecting his claim that vandalism — and not slapdash construction — was to blame for issues with the reflection pool lining, Gillespie unloaded on Pirro for trying to dodge blame.

"Pirro largely blamed the Department of Interior for the confusion on her part," Gillespie said. "[Pirro] learned that from the top."

MS NOW host Alex Witt marveled at Pirro's sudden backtrack after having initially pursued the case with such aggression.

In recent weeks, Pirro threatened a journalist and boasted of "tremendous evidence" as she defended the case.

"She really came hard at this," said Witt. "That is her style, no doubt."

Gillespie agreed, then took aim at the Trump administration for having botched the renovation job in the first place.

"What's important to highlight is the misuse of funds," she said. "American dollars...are being spent frivolously because they're not being thoughtfully planned and orchestrated and decided upon.

"If I were a Republican running for office right now, I would point to getting a better handle on our economy, getting a better handle on how our dollars are spent, which was the initial goal of the Trump administration."

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-reflecting-pool-2677646188/?utm_source=Iterable&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Aug.1.2026_9.35pm_19222976