Donald Trump’s deranged threat to obliterate Iranian civilization entirely has prompted powerful pushback from some former MAGA allies. Some are suggesting it’s time to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove him, including Alex Jones , Anthony Scaramucci , and Marjorie Taylor Greene , who tweeted that “he has gone insane.” Tucker Carlson called on military officials not to follow illegal orders to attack civilian infrastructure. After we recorded, Trump temporarily postponed the assault. But the co...
Apr 08, 2026•22 min
Donald Trump is now facing tough questions about his threats to bomb Iranian power plants and bridges, which are growing more and more unhinged . On Monday he seethed at a reporter who asked pointed questions about this, attacking his news outlet and ranting that his colleagues seem to want Iran to have a nuclear weapon. Meanwhile, Punchbowl News reports that Republicans may be at a “breaking point” with Trump over the war. All of which raises a question: If Trump seems ready to go through with ...
Apr 07, 2026•19 min
A frustrated Donald Trump is mulling more personnel changes, Politico reports , potentially targeting his Commerce and Labor secretaries. As one official confides: “He’s very angry and he’s going to be moving people.” The Politico piece depicts unnerved aides parsing his fury like tea leaves and disconcertedly leaking to reporters about who’s on “thin ice.” Crucially, Trump is mulling changes that would make him look better on the economy — where a new poll is absolutely brutal — and in hopes of...
Apr 06, 2026•20 min
During Donald Trump’s speech on Iran this week, he revealed too much. In a line that sounded partly ad-libbed, he declared that the Strait of Hormuz “will open up naturally. It will just open up naturally.” This should be read as a straight-up admission that Trump has no idea how to fix the colossal mess he’s made, and that he’s just washing his hands of it entirely. That’s utterly damning. Meanwhile, Politico reports that Republicans privately fear the speech did nothing to help them politicall...
Apr 03, 2026•27 min
Donald Trump seems really mad. He exploded over birthright citizenship after his arguments on it fell flat in the Supreme Court . That came despite his decision to show up at the proceedings, another display of anger designed to bully the justices. He also raged at them over this earlier in the week. Meanwhile, Trump is angrily threatening our NATO allies for failing to bail him out by helping reopen the Strait of Hormuz. On top of all that, Trump just suffered a string of losses in the lower co...
Apr 02, 2026•26 min
The other day your faithful podcast host argued that Donald Trump’s presidency is in free fall in terms of public opinion. Now the signs are even clearer: His approval ratings have dropped below 40 percent in The New York Times ’s polling averages and in two other sets of averages as well. That’s a critical milestone. Meanwhile, CNN’s Harry Enten powerfully points out that Trump has been on a steady, inexorable decline for months, and is now a net 45 points under water with independents . That’s...
Apr 01, 2026•25 min
Donald Trump erupted in angry threats against Iran over the still-closed Strait of Hormuz, vowing to potentially bomb electric and desalination plants. In effect, Trump is threatening war crimes due to his own failure to anticipate closure of the strait. This comes after Pete Hegseth issued a widely-criticized prayer seeking God’s assistance in “overwhelming” violence against Iran, which Pope Leo has now sharply rebuked . That's telling: As scholar-of-religion Sarah Posner explains in today’s ep...
Mar 31, 2026•21 min
A recent Wall Street Journal report reveals that Donald Trump now sees his mass deportations as a big political problem for him. He’s siding internally with advisers who worry that they’ve become a liability in the midterms. In this, Trump is clearly rebuking Miller and his agenda. New reporting from Politico further illuminates this dynamic, revealing fresh levels of infighting prompted largely by Miller’s unhinged demands. As Politico notes, this turmoil has already gotten Kristi Noem fired fr...
Mar 30, 2026•21 min
Donald Trump is panicking about the midterm elections, leading him to unleash a series of rants on Truth Social. He raged at Republicans for failing to pass voter suppression legislation, urging them to “TERMINATE THE FILIBUSTER” to do so. He followed with a second all-caps tweet reiterating the demand. And he seethed a third time over the GOP failure. Remarkably, Trump doesn’t hide the fact that he sees this as the only way to save the midterms. You can see why: A Fox News poll finds Trump’s di...
Mar 27, 2026•20 min
Officials are leaking to NBC News that Donald Trump gets updates on the Iran war in video compilations of successful strikes. One official describes these sanitized montages as “stuff blowing up,” and Trump allies fear he’s being misled. That’s humiliating. By contrast, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt is portraying him as a world-historical statesman: She just laughably claimed that he’s brilliant at uniting our allies behind him (the opposite of reality in this war). She asserted t...
Mar 26, 2026•23 min
Donald Trump’s tirades about Iran are getting uglier. He let out one rant that positively relished U.S. military domination of Iran and seethed about the media’s refusal to acknowledge his greatness. He unleashed a second tirade that dripped with bizarre triumphalism , angrily declaring the war “won,” which raises questions about why it’s continuing. And Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth delivered a rant that was drenched in bloodlust. This comes as a new Strength in Numbers/Verasight poll finds Tr...
Mar 25, 2026•20 min
Donald Trump’s war on Iran appears to be a fiasco, and speaking to reporters, he made a surprising claim : He insisted no one anticipated that Iran would attack other countries in an effort to widen the war. But this was widely expected, and amusingly, in saying that, Trump revealed that he didn’t anticipate it. That’s a striking admission about his own lack of foresight. Which captures something broader: On many fronts, Trump didn’t prepare for eventualities that most experts fully did anticipa...
Mar 24, 2026•21 min
Donald Trump is furious over coverage of his Iran war. During a speech, he let out a rambling tirade at the media , and in a revealing turn, he talked about Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr’s latest threats to revoke network licenses. Trump went off script, spewing unhinged falsehoods about the press’s 2024 coverage and strangely declaring Carr’s campaign a great success while urging him to keep it up. This essentially confirmed that Trump does expect Carr to ramp up the use ...
Mar 23, 2026•28 min
Everything we’re learning now strongly suggests that Donald Trump’s war is about to get worse. First, officials leaked word to The Washington Post that the Pentagon and the White House are likely to demand $200 billion more from Congress. Trump sort of confirmed this in remarks to reporters while adding some unsettling additional threats of unspecified military action. Second, sources told Reuters that Trump is considering the deployment of thousands of troops on the ground. All this means that ...
Mar 20, 2026•27 min
Donald Trump’s case for invading Iran took a big blow Tuesday when top counterterrorism official Joe Kent resigned . Though Kent is a crazed extremist with vile views , his letter directly undermined the core rationale Trump has offered for his war and made big news in doing so. This comes as MAGA figures are splitting badly over the conflict . Some (Megyn Kelly, Tucker Carlson) are raging that the United States is doing Israel’s bidding, and others (Ben Shapiro) are denouncing them for blaming ...
Mar 18, 2026•22 min
Over the weekend, Donald Trump unleashed two crazed tirades at the media over Iran. In one, he angrily accused news organizations of rooting for the United States to “lose the war.” In another, he openly urged his Federal Communications Commission chair to employ state power against media outlets that displease him. And in a weird rant to reporters, he angrily rebuked other countries for refusing to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz. All this comes as a New York Times expose reveals shocking deta...
Mar 17, 2026•23 min
Republicans are reportedly “ incensed ” at Donald Trump for pushing them to pass voter suppression measures when they don’t have the votes for it. Yet he’s raging at them over this almost daily, openly declaring that making voting harder is the only way to salvage the midterms. Republicans want to focus on the economy, but Trump won’t let them, and Politico now reports that worsening GOP losses in state-level races has them very worried about the elections. One operatives says: “I’m ringing the ...
Mar 16, 2026•21 min
Donald Trump has been all over the place on the global oil shock created by his war amid Iran’s closing of the Strait of Hormuz. Earlier this week he angrily claimed that the price hikes are a small price to pay for world peace, adding: “ONLY FOOLS WOULD DISAGREE!” But on Thursday he offered some bizarre new spin , claiming that the U.S. “is the largest Oil Producer in the World, by far, so when oil prices go up, we make a lot of money.” The idea that “we” all benefit prompted intense criticism ...
Mar 13, 2026•23 min
For Donald Trump, the news is getting worse on his war against Iran. The New York Times reports that the Trump team badly miscalculated Iran’s response to the American invasion, leading to a developing energy fiasco. The Times also reports that some officials are pessimistic about the lack of any real strategy to end the war, adding this: “They have been careful not to express that directly to the president, who has repeatedly declared that the military operation is a complete success.” Their fe...
Mar 12, 2026•23 min
Donald Trump claims Iran is responsible for the bombing of an elementary school that killed scores of children, even though the evidence continues to mount that the United States is responsible. In a striking exchange with a reporter , Trump was asked point blank why no other government official will confirm what he’s saying. He said straight out: “Because I don’t know enough about it.” But in saying this, Trump admitted that he'd made an incendiary factual claim about an extraordinarily serious...
Mar 11, 2026•24 min
In recent days, President Trump has angrily demanded that Republicans pass the SAVE Act, a massive voter suppression measure that already passed the House but almost certainly can’t pass the Senate. In one tirade on Truth Social , he threatened not to sign anything else until Senate Republicans get it done. That echoed a second rant demanding the same. After we recorded this episode, Trump gave a speech doubling down on this demand . But a funny thing is happening: This is trampling all over the...
Mar 10, 2026•22 min
We’ve noticed that whenever the news is bad for Donald Trump, Karoline Leavitt dials up the cultlike obsequiousness to 11. She just let out a strange rant basically declaring that Iran will have entered into “unconditional surrender,” as Trump wants, whenever he says it has. In another odd moment , she dismissed widespread MAGA criticism of Trump’s war by essentially declaring that MAGA is whatever Trump says it is. The two displays really went full North Korea in other ways, too. And that’s no ...
Mar 09, 2026•29 min
This week, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt lashed out at a reporter and accused the media of trying to make Donald Trump “look bad.” The occasion was a question about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who had previously accused the media of the same. What’s truly strange is how Leavitt flatly denied Hegseth had said what everyone heard him say, followed by an unhinged, extended tirade at reporters. Why the rage? Well, Republicans are growing anxious: Punchbowl News reports that they e...
Mar 06, 2026•23 min
In this week’s Texas Senate primaries , Democrat James Talarico triumphed, while GOP Senator John Cornyn and MAGA extremist Ken Paxton are headed for a runoff. Talarico, who speaks openly about his religious commitments and about the need to win over MAGA voters, might have a shot, especially against Paxton. That caused Donald Trump to explode in an agitated, panicky tirade on Truth Social , where he warned that the GOP primary could cost Republicans the seat and “MUST STOP NOW!” He vowed to end...
Mar 05, 2026•22 min
Speaking Tuesday about his war on Iran, Donald Trump got too candid. He declared that the worst-case scenario could involve people running Iran who are just as bad as those he’s deposing. He also admitted that most of the people the United States hoped will take over are now “dead,” and visibly had no idea what will happen next. All this accidentally reveals just how little thought he’s given to what will happen as this continues to unfold. It comes as MAGA is turning against Trump over the war:...
Mar 04, 2026•24 min
With Donald Trump’s war on Iran getting worse, a new report in The New York Times reveals damning details about the runup to the decision. We learn that Trump’s case rests on lies about the “imminent threat” Iran poses, and that he publicly misrepresented his own top general’s misgivings about the invasion. Secretary of State Marco Rubio arguably misled congressional leaders, and JD Vance privately called for going big, undercutting his “noninterventionist” cred. This comes as a new CNN poll fin...
Mar 03, 2026•23 min
Donald Trump’s state of the union speech was the culmination of many months of lies about his economy and his tariffs. Yet in recent days, even Fox News has been admitting to how bad the news is getting. Fox figures have gently tried to tell Trump the truth about tariffs: One hinted Trump should use the Supreme Court ruling against them as an offramp. Another said Republicans are privately celebrating the decision. A third warned the tariffs badly threaten the GOP’s midterm hopes. On Fox Busines...
Mar 02, 2026•23 min
This week, The New York Times confirmed the latest revelations in the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, reporting on the missing files that appear to involve charges against Donald Trump himself. The Times is treating this as a blockbuster story, digging in hard on the details in a way that will surely cause media scrutiny to intensify further. MAGA is all over the place on this. Fox News has mostly ignored the revelations, as Media Matters shows. One big MAGA influencer is hyping Hillary Clinton’s suppo...
Feb 27, 2026•27 min
On Wednesday, Donald Trump exploded wildly on Truth Social, ripping into Democrats Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, who attacked him during his speech. He called them “Low IQ,” “mentally deranged,” and “LUNATICS,” and even savaged Robert De Niro, who also criticized the speech, as “sick and demented.” Trump hoped appeal to the middle, but he couldn’t help sliding back into full racism at his first opportunity. Meanwhile, even some Republicans found the speech wanting: One strategist said it wouldn’...
Feb 26, 2026•24 min
The Jeffrey Epstein scandal has just taken another bad turn for Donald Trump. NPR reports that the Justice Department has withheld key documents from the publicly-released Epstein files. Guess what: They apparently relate to charges that Trump potentially abused a minor. And Congressman Robert Garcia, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, also dropped a bombshell, claiming he’s reviewed DOJ materials personally and confirmed that DOJ does appear to have withheld critical FBI int...
Feb 25, 2026•24 min
