Friday, May 08, 2026
NPR/PBS Poll Has Trump's Job Approval At A Negative 22 Points
The chart above reflects the results of the NPR / PBS News / Marist Poll -- done between April 27th and 30th of a nationwide sample of 1,322 adults, with a 3.1 point margin of error.
Voters Are Unhappy With The Access And Affordability Of Health Care
The charts above are from the recent Navigator Poll -- done between April 23rd and 27th of a nationwide sample of 1,000 registered voters, with a 3.1 point margin of error.
Trump Is Getting The One Thing He Can't Stand - Public Humiliation!
This post is by Robert Reich:
We are witnessing what happens to a person who is consumed with the need to dominate but cannot.
Iran is unlikely to give in. It can withstand the economic pressure of a blockade better than Trump can withstand the political pressure that comes with rising gas prices (now nearly $4.50 a gallon, on average), soon followed by rising food prices.
His looming failure in Iran is not just a serious geopolitical defeat for the United States; it’s a personal crisis for Trump.
Those rising prices coupled with an increasingly unpopular war have increased the likelihood that Democrats will take back control of the House and even possibly the Senate in the upcoming midterms.
Here again, not just a political defeat for the Republican Party but a personal crisis for Trump.
His ego cannot accept a humiliating loss, as we saw after the 2020 election. His need to bully, dominate, and gain submission is so hardwired inside his insecure head that the defeats he’s now facing — to Iran and to Democrats — are already setting off explosions.
He’s posting more wildly than ever — attacking, insulting, ridiculing, threatening.
On Sunday, Trump posted that Democrats had “RIGGED the 2020 Presidential Election. GET TOUGH REPUBLICANS—THEY’RE COMING, AND THEY’RE COMING FAST! They’re no good for our Country, they almost destroyed it, and we don’t want to let that happen again!” He demanded that Republicans “approve all of the necessary Safeguards we need for Elections to protect the American Public during the upcoming Midterms.”
More of his posts are bizarre AI-generated paeans to himself, his godlike powers, his wished-for physique, and his self-image of omnipotence. On Friday night, he posted an AI-image of himself, JD Vance, Marco Rubio, and Doug Burgum, all shirtless and with young physiques, standing in the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial, along with an unidentifiable woman in a bikini. Minutes later he posted an image of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries holding a baseball bat, with a caption calling Jeffries “low IQ,” “a THUG,” and “a danger to our Country.” On Tuesday, he posted AI-images of Joe Biden on one knee with the caption “COWARDS KNEEL,” Barack Obama with the caption “TRAITORS BOW,” and himself with his fist raised and the caption “LEADERS LEAD.”
His mouth — never in control — is now in diarrheic mode. He’s even back to attacking the pope, accusing him of “endangering a lot of Catholics and a lot of people,” adding, “but I guess if it’s up to the pope, he thinks it’s just fine for Iran to have a nuclear weapon.”
His thin-skinned vindictiveness is beyond anything we’ve seen before, which is saying a lot. Last week, after German chancellor Friedrich Merz said the U.S. was “being humiliated by the Iranian leadership,” Trump repeatedly attacked and ridiculed Merz. The Defense Department then said it was pulling 5,000 troops out of Germany, and Trump said he was increasing tariffs on European cars and trucks to 25 percent (from 15 percent).
He’s becoming ever more obsessed with monuments to himself — his ballroom, his arch, his so-called “garden of heroes,” his Trump-embossed passports, his image on 24-karat gold commemorative coins, and his name plastered or etched all over Washington. His plans for self-monuments are becoming larger by the day, more grotesque, more grandiose, and more expensive. Senate Republicans just proposed $1 billion more for Trump’s ballroom, which, recall, was supposed to “cost taxpayers nothing.”
He has even directed the Treasury to announce that his own signature — yes, the same one that appears in a book of birthday greetings for Jeffrey Epstein — will replace the Treasurer’s on all new U.S. paper currency. This will be the first time in American history that a sitting president’s name will appear on circulating cash money.
His thirst for vengeance is exploding, too. Last week the Department of Justice launched another criminal case against former director of the FBI James Comey (whose earlier indictment was quashed by the courts) for posting a picture of seashells spelling out “86 47” on Instagram a year ago. Trump is also insisting that the Justice Department restart its criminal investigation of Jerome Powell and double-down against former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Mark Milley and others he considers “enemies.”
Facing the two monumental failures of Iran and control over Congress, Trump is fanatically seeking other ways to assert dominance. On Tuesday, his Education Department announced a civil rights investigation into Smith College over enrolling transgender students. Expect more of this.
Regardless of what happens in Iran, he’ll claim victory. That will be difficult to do convincingly when gas prices remain over $4 a gallon, but he’ll undoubtedly try.
What if Democrats win control of one or both chambers of Congress in the midterms and he claims they lost or cheated? The nation barely survived the last time Trump’s fragile ego faced a major loss.
We’ll also have to cope with Trump as a lame-duck president who can no longer dominate and gain submission as he did before. Will he try to remain president beyond his second term to avoid this?
The man is unwell. Seriously unwell. Lame-duck presidents fade away, but injured dictators can be dangerous.
Thursday, May 07, 2026
Trump Job Approval Is Negative Among All Groups (Except Republicans)
The chart above reflects the results of the Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between May 1st and 4th of a nationwide sample of 1,573 adults (including 1,409 registered voters). The margin of error is 3.4 points for adults and 3.3 points for registered voters.
Health Care Costs Will Be A Big Issue For Most Voters This Year
The charts above are from the Kaiser Family Foundation Poll -- done between April 14th and 19th of a nationwide sample of 1,343 adults, with a 3 point margin of error.
The 45-Year GOP Scam Has Made The Rich Much Richer And Everyone Else Poorer
The following post is by Thom Hartmann at The Hartmann Report:
Republicans yesterday proposed an appropriations bill that will allocate a billion dollars to pay for Trump’s Golden Epstein Dance Hall (aka “Ballroom”). Every penny of it will be borrowed and we’ll be paying interest on that money for the rest of our lifetimes unless something dramatic changes.
This year, America will spend over a trillion dollars just to pay interest on the current $39 trillion national debt, a debt entirely the result of a 45-year-long GOP scam designed to make the rich richer and elect Republicans, all while simultaneously screwing Democrats and average working class people.
It’s the biggest scandal of the century and is almost never mentioned by the press, even when they noted last week that — for the first time since World War II — our debt is now larger than our entire economy. And by 2030, Fortune magazine reports, we’ll be paying $2 trillion in interest at the current rate of burn, as Republicans add more and more items to the national debt every day.
To put that in context, here’s the “lost opportunity cost” of what that trillion dollars a year we now pay in interest — roughly $3000 every year for every man, woman, and child in the country — on the GOP’s Debt could do for America:
— First, it could guarantee universal childcare and early childhood education nationwide that would free millions of parents to work or start businesses and would pay long-term dividends in better educational outcomes.
— Second, it could make all public colleges, universities, and trade schools tuition-free, while also wiping out existing federal student loan debt over time.
— Third, the U.S. could establish a universal healthcare system or at least a robust public option with zero premiums and minimal out-of-pocket costs, ending medical bankruptcies and improving public health outcomes.
— Fourth, it could fully fund a national infrastructure modernization program,repairing every deficient bridge in the country, rebuild highways, expand mass transit, and replace aging water systems, including lead pipe removal nationwide.
— Fifth, a trillion dollars a year could finance a rapid transition to clean energy: building out solar and wind at scale, modernizing the grid, subsidizing home electrification, and accelerating EV infrastructure to catch up with China.
— Sixth, it could end homelessness in America, with massive savings in healthcare and policing.
— Seventh, we could provide a guaranteed basic income (~$500 to $1,000 a month) to every adult American, or a more targeted version for lower- and middle-income households, dramatically reducing poverty.
— Eighth, it could expand Social Security and Medicare benefits significantly — raising monthly checks, lowering the retirement age, or both — while shoring up the system’s long-term solvency.
— Ninth, the U.S. could also fund universal paid family and medical leave, so no one ever again has to go to work sick or choose between a paycheck and caring for a newborn or a sick relative.
— Tenth, it could dramatically increase teacher pay, reducing class sizes, modernizing school facilities, and providing universal free school meals.
— Eleventh, it could launch a large-scale affordable housing initiative, building millions of units, stabilizing rents, and helping first-time homebuyers with down payments.
— Twelfth, it could rebuild and expand public health infrastructure, including pandemic preparedness, local health departments, research funding, and domestic manufacturing of critical medicines and supplies.
And even after doing several of those at once, there’d still be room for things like universal broadband, modernizing the postal system, expanding national parks and conservation efforts, and funding scientific research at levels that could accelerate breakthroughs in everything from cancer to renewables to clean water.
None of these things are happening, though, because Republicans insist “we can’t afford them because of the national debt” that they, themselves created.
It all started in the 1970s when Republican strategist Jude Wanniski noted that Republicans were viewed as Grinches while Democrats — who’d brought the people the minimum wage, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, free college, and dozens of other popular programs — were viewed as Santas.
His solution was twofold: have Republicans become the “tax-cut Santas” while forcing Democrats to “shoot their own Santa” in the face by cutting back on those gift-like programs.
The strategy was elegantly simple, and was adopted by the GOP in the first year of the Reagan presidency and is still in full operation. (There’s a more complete explanation and timeline here.) It has two parts:
1. When a Republican is in the White House, spend money like a drunken sailor, running up the debt as hard and fast as possible. All this deficit spending on the national credit card also produces “good times” by stimulating the economy like crazy, making Americans think Republicans are good with economics when in fact they’re only good at spending borrowed money.
2. When a Democrat is in the White House, start screaming about the debt and how “our children will have to pay for this!!!” to force that president and the Democrats in Congress to “shoot” their own social programs by cutting them back, producing hard times and reducing the deficits.
To justify all this deficit spending, Wanniski invented a term, “supply-side economics,” arguing that tax cuts for the morbidly rich would pay for themselves as wealth “trickled down” to average working people, and Art Laffer handily supplied a “curve” that seemed technical and scientific. The media lapped it up.
It was all, of course, bullshit, but the American press bought it and no Republican has been seriously challenged on it in 45 years.
The combined Reagan, Bush, and Trump tax cuts along with Bush’s two wars add up to more than our current national debt of ~$39 trillion. And the only way to fix all this without causing horrible pain for the American people is to undo those three presidents’ tax cuts and take America back to the tax system we had in 1980.
When Democrats take over and end the current GOP fascist experiment, they’ll have a huge job to do, unwinding all of this debt. Fully a third of all the debt in American history has come from one president — Trump — who once bragged:
“I’m the king of debt. I’m great with debt. Nobody knows debt better than me.”
Trump’s billion-dollar Golden Epstein Dance Hall is just the latest gilded insult borrowed against our children’s future, while the trillion dollars a year we now pay in interest on the GOP’s 45-year “Two Santas” tax-cut scam could be ending homelessness, guaranteeing healthcare, rebuilding our schools, and lifting millions out of poverty.
It’s beyond time to roll back the Reagan, Bush, and Trump tax cuts for the morbidly rich. As Graham Platner says, “We have to use the tax code to take back the money they’ve stolen from us.”
It’ll be a big job and the billionaires and big business will squeal like stuck pigs, but our debt — and the interest payments on it — have finally reached the point where the GOP’s Two Santas strategy risks crashing the nation’s entire economy.
Democrats need to start talking about this now and point out clearly how we got here with Wanniski‘s Two Santas strategy!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)