THE DAILY BLAST with Greg Sargent

Donald Trump raged at a reporter who asked about his “midterm convention” offer to send $5,000 to voters if the GOP holds Congress. He snapped at her repeatedly, called her “the worst,” and even leaned in and glowered menacingly in her face. What makes this significant is her question: Why, she asked, do you need to pay voters to turn out if your economic policies are the smashing success you claim? This captures the core absurdity of the moment, and Trump has absolutely no answer for it. It’s no accident that this comes as the preliminary ratings for his first-night speech viewership on Fox News were a scant 2.5 million, even less than a Sean Hannity episode. The Times opined: “No Trump bump.” Mediaite called it a “dud.” We talked to New Republic senior editor Alex Shephard, author of a good piece on Trump’s political weakness. We discuss new data that shows the enthusiasm gap favoring Democrats, why those bad convention ratings are so humiliating for Trump in a deeper sense, how Trump-MAGA’s hold on the culture is vanishing, and the profound contradictions at the heart of MAGA’s Trump-worship.

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Donald Trump just tailspinned again in the polls. In a new Quinnipiac survey, his overall approval is at 33 percent and he plummeted to a record low on the economy. Meanwhile, a CNN analysis finds that on the same issue, Trump is an astounding 52 points underwater with independents. That’s the context for Trump’s fake-promise to send $5,000 to every American if the GOP keeps Congress. Many critics dismantled the idea. But even Fox News is gently mocking it: One anchor pointed out that he’s made empty promises of cash before. Bret Baier noted that it would cost $1.3 trillion. And Laura Ingraham pressed Trump: Why not send people the money now? That gets to the heart of this idiotic effort to use federal money to rig the elections. We talked to political scientist Tom Schaller, author of a good piece for the Public Notice Substack on Trump’s inflation disaster. We discuss why the polls look much worse than in 2018, how Trump’s policies created this disaster for the GOP, and why Trump’s magical reality-bending powers might be finally running out.

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After Canada’s reciprocal tariffs kicked in this week, Donald Trump spiraled on social media. He posted a deranged map suggesting he wants to annex all of Canada. He posted a demented visual of himself domineering over Canada’s prime minister. And he posted an unhinged rant attacking Canada with convoluted threats. Now, Republican strategists tell The Hill in a baffled tone that they’re worried the trade war has become a big liability in the midterms. That comes as Republicans like Susan Collins and Kansas’s two GOP Senators have appeared at a loss to explain Trump’s approach. In short, even Republicans are flummoxed by Trump’s motives here. We talked to Vox’s Zack Beauchamp, who has reported deeply on the roots of Trump’s trade-warring. We discuss how unmoored Trump is from basic trade realities, how Canadians see the situation, what it means that even working people oppose his tariffs, and why it all gives Democrats an opening to restate the case against MAGA nationalism.

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Donald Trump unleashed a barrage of angry, unhinged threats over the last few days. He posted a map of all of North America—including Canada and Mexico—under conquest by the United States. He angrily threatened to cut off all U.S. sales of Canadian aerospace company Bombardier, even though it employs many U.S. workers and its supply chains are deeply entangled in U.S. communities. He crossed out the “Mexico” in New Mexico and replaced it with “America.” And he snarled that gas prices will drop below $2 after we “WIN” against Iran, even though he simply cannot get it to do his bidding right now. In all these cases, Trump is threatening things that are never, ever going to happen. The calculation that his voters will be satisfied by this—even as he’s failing them so badly across the board—reveals his seething contempt for them with great clarity. We talked to Salon’s Amanda Marcotte, who writes well about MAGA psychology. We discuss why Trump genuinely thinks this stuff will sate MAGA, how this reveals his profoundly dim view of his supporters, why it was a catastrophe that the media overinterpreted 2024, and what it means that the culture has moved well beyond Trump and MAGA.

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Donald Trump’s tailspinning continues. A CNN analysis finds that Trump has a lower approval rating than any of his predecessors going into midterms in this millennium. That’s worse than Joe Biden in 2022, Barack Obama in 2014 and 2010, and even George W. Bush in 2006. Meanwhile, Trump says he’ll campaign heavily this fall, but humiliatingly, Republicans are leaking to Politico that they don’t want him anywhere near them on the trail. And The Washington Post reports that amid GOP fears of his toxicity, he’s running ads about himself and his super PAC may hoard its funds. Why? Because his team fears its fundraising ability may dry up after the midterms—meaning they anticipate a big loss. We talked to veteran political handicapper Charlie Cook about his new piece digging into the GOP “nightmare,” why Trump’s unpopularity may be historically unique, and why that’s making conventional midterm patterns unusually bad for the GOP.

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