Latest news with #MAGA-fueled
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump Is Bleeding Hundreds of Millions Thanks to Musk's War
The explosion of Donald Trump's once-cozy friendship with Elon Musk is hitting them hard where it hurts most—in the pocketbook. As reported Thursday, Musk's personal fortune was cut by $26.6 billion after Tesla shares slumped by more than 14 percent, wiping a mind-boggling $150 billion off the EV giant's market value. But Trump isn't escaping unscathed. According to Axios, Trump Media & Technology Group stock declined 8 percent, while his MAGA-fueled $TRUMP cryptocurrency tumbled 12 percent—bleeding him of more than a billion dollars. The website reported that the 8 percent dip in Trump Media & Technology Group cost the president around $202 million. But he may be more concerned by the roughly 10 percent decline in the value of of his Official Trump meme coin, potentially costing him nearly $900 million. As Axios noted: 'Both men got to vent their frustrations publicly, and it only cost them about $21 billion.' The dramatic split was triggered when Musk, having departed his DOGE post on May 30, torched Trump's so-called 'One Big Beautiful Bill'—a sprawling tax-and-spending package—as a 'disgusting abomination.' Musk, who had personally poured nearly $300 million into Republican campaigns in 2024, tweeted: 'Without me, Trump would have lost.' After an uncharacteristic delay, Trump hit back—threatening to strip federal contracts from Musk's companies, which would kill electric vehicle tax credits and cost Tesla $1.2 billion this year, according to JPMorgan analysts. Musk then pressed the nuclear button by alleging Trump's name appears in sealed legal files on the late pedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein. He also called for Trump's impeachment, responding 'yes' to a user on X who wrote: 'Trump should be impeached and JD Vance should replace him.' However, a truce may be on the horizon, as Trump and Musk are expected to speak in person on Friday, according to Politico's White House Bureau Chief Dasha Burns. Perhaps, as the old adage goes, money really does talk.
Yahoo
12-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Ruben Gallego uses the ‘purity' argument to defend his MAGA associations
Depending on whom you ask, Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona is either the future of the Democratic movement or Kyrsten Sinema 2.0, a self-serving climber willing to abandon his party, and his stated principles, for personal gain. The first-term senator has been trying to establish his identity as a straight-talking, MAGA-friendly liberal for several months now. During last year's campaign, he aligned himself with the Phoenix Police Department by supporting its opposition to a federal consent decree after the Justice Department found that the police force had discriminated against racial minorities for years and violated the rights of homeless people. Earlier this year, he co-sponsored the Laken Riley Act, a MAGA-fueled anti-immigration bill that some of his colleagues denounced for its potential civil rights infringements — a seeming about-face for a lawmaker who once vocally opposed racial profiling. And he drew backlash earlier this year when he co-hosted a ritzy fundraiser with Trump-supporting venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, whose technocratic 'manifesto' in 2023 was derided in The New York Times as 'A Tech Overlord's Horrifying, Silly Vision for Who Should Rule the World.' But to hear Gallego tell it, he's giving Democrats a model to follow. At a town hall Saturday in Pennsylvania, he defended his fundraiser with Andreessen, arguing that Democrats have become too 'pure.' As Rolling Stone reported: 'My general view of how to win elections is you have to get a lot of votes, and that means we're going to have to have alliances with people that we may not agree with 100 percent of the time,' said Gallego, stating that 'Marc Andreessen runs the largest venture capital firm in Arizona. We want to bring as many jobs as possible.' Gallego said he doesn't agree with Andreessen on every issue, pointing to the existence of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which the VC exec accused of 'terrorizing financial institutions' after it fined a payday lending company backed by his firm. But Gallego added, 'My perspective [is] what happened last election is that we got so pure and we kept so pure that we started kicking you out of the tent. It ends up there aren't enough people in the tent to win elections.' It's worth noting that, had Gallego and fellow Democrats effectively protected voting rights — which have been under siege in Arizona and around the country — ahead of last year's election, they may have already had enough eligible and mobilized voters in their own tent, rather than feeling compelled to pull voters from the MAGA tent. And Democrats featured several Republicans at last summer's Democratic National Convention, so it's odd to hear Gallego argue that the party hasn't been welcoming enough. Former Democratic pollster Adam Carlson made a valid point about Gallego's remarks, arguing in a post on X that Democrats should be willing to welcome regretful Trump voters, nonvoters and third-party voters, but maybe shouldn't be so willing to placate people like Andreessen, who 'donated millions of dollars to support Trump & actively advise him on policy antithetical to what we stand for.' In other words, there's chemistry at play here, and the question with all impurity is whether it's toxic or not — whether introducing it into your system will cause harm. Indeed, a few specks of dirt in your drinking water won't kill you. But arsenic is a different story. And I think political movements operate similarly. Sure, they can tolerate some opposing viewpoints — as long as those views don't strike at the heart of the very movement you're trying to mobilize. This article was originally published on
Yahoo
20-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Steve Bannon tells me why Elon Musk is 'evil' — and his vision for Trump 2028
Reclining out on his terracotta-tiled terrace, his bare feet propped up on a worn ottoman, Steve Bannon gets a phone call. We're 2,000 miles from the Oval Office, at Bannon's Tuscan villa outside Tucson, an Italianate fountain gurgling away beside him. You might think Donald Trump's former strategist-in-chief is out of the loop these days, relegated to basking in the Arizona sun. But the call is from Alexandra Preate, a Bannon protégé who's now a top advisor to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. The stock market has just gone into a nosedive, spooked by Trump's on-again, off-again tariffs, and Preate wants to consult with Bannon on Bessent's markets-calming remarks to reporters that morning outside the White House. "He was so brilliant," Bannon tells her. "He has got to do that every day." Fresh out of federal prison for his refusal to talk to Congress about his role in the attempt to overturn Joe Biden's election, the man Time magazine once called "The Great Manipulator" remains an influential force in Washington. As I saw during my two days with him, Bannon, at age 71, is still crafting MAGA's message at the highest levels. He says he speaks daily with Trump's top trade advisor, Peter Navarro, who served as Bannon's cohost of "War Room," the rowdy, MAGA-fueled podcast Bannon helms twice a day, six days a week. Bessent, whom Bannon calls "my guy," and FBI Director Kash Patel are friends, and Sen. Josh Hawley, a right-wing populist, is a frequent guest on the show. Just last week, Bannon was summoned back to what he calls the "Imperial Capital" to assist the administration "on messaging for Flood the Zone" — Trump World-speak for overwhelming the president's opponents with fresh MAGA initiatives. Prominent Democrats are also paying heed. Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, who is widely expected to run for president in 2028, featured Bannon as the third guest on his new podcast. "He's a serious thinker," says Rep. Ro Khanna, another California Democrat touted as a 2028 contender. "Bannon got it right on the challenge deindustrialization poses" to the American economy. Khanna tells me he'd be open to appearing on "War Room," which The Wall Street Journal recently called "the hottest stop in DC's media circuit." Despite his continued influence, Bannon doesn't agree with Trump on every issue. And this time around, there's a major new player separating the two: Trump's former right-hand man is at complete odds with his current right-hand man. Elon Musk, Bannon tells me, is basically the devil incarnate. "Elon was always evil," he says. Don't get him wrong: Bannon supports what Musk is doing with DOGE, which he lauds as "a shock troop to deconstruct the administrative state." But he says there is a "very deep chasm" between him and Musk — one based not only in politics, but in spirituality. Musk, as Bannon sees it, is the embodiment of a new form of satanism. By seeking to implant computer chips in people's brains, Musk is attempting to disrupt humanity itself, a grandiose vision that is antithetical to what Bannon, a Catholic, sees as God's will. "He's a techno-feudalist," Bannon tells me with barely concealed venom. "We are on the side of the human being." Musk's dark plot to engineer a race of computer-enhanced superhumans has done nothing to diminish Bannon's enthusiasm for Trump. In fact, Bannon tells me he is undertaking perhaps his most ambitious project yet: ensuring that Trump wins a third term in 2028. Bannon is confident, he tells me, that Trump will carry at least 331 electoral votes next time — a triumph even greater than his victory over Kamala Harris. How, I ask, can that happen within the bounds of the Constitution? He's working on it, Bannon tells me. Bannon's villa is nestled in a quiet neighborhood of ranch houses, saguaros, and mesquite trees overlooking the Santa Catalina mountains. He still spends most of his time in Washington, at a townhouse he owns behind the Supreme Court. But sometimes, he tells me, it's good to escape the unceasing procession of visitors who call on him in the capital. Besides, he can host "War Room" just as easily from here, in a small corner room in the villa. Welcoming me to his retreat, Bannon asks why I became a journalist. I suppose journalism suited my skeptical cast of mind, I say. "You're a dick," he says. I'm momentarily speechless. That's a good thing, he assures me. Real journalists are always dicks. A massive coffee table perched in front of Bannon's armchair supports four stacks of newspapers: not just mainstream periodicals like The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, but outliers like The Epoch Times, a paper founded by Chinese American adversaries of the Chinese Communist Party. Where Trump professes admiration for Xi Jinping as a strong leader, Bannon, who once lived in Shanghai, views China as America's mortal enemy and dreams of a popular rebellion that will overthrow the communist regime. A collection of books and periodicals sprawls from the table to the base of the fireplace to the kitchen counter. I leaf through "The Money and the Power," a book on the making of Las Vegas, and see Bannon's hand-scrawled circles and underlines strewn across the pages. His omnivorous reading, he tells me, is a key advantage in political strategizing, a calling in which few of his rivals are known for being avid readers. The TV on his wall is set not to CNN, which he views as aimless, or Fox News, which he dismisses as weak neoliberal tea, but to MSNBC, which he treasures as a true-blue voice he can push back against in the "War Room." "There's my girl," he says when MSNBC afternoon host Nicolle Wallace appears on the screen. Some in Washington suspect that Bannon may be weighing a presidential run of his own in 2028. A straw poll of attendees at the recent CPAC conference placed him second among possible Republican nominees, albeit a distant second to JD Vance. But Bannon dismisses the speculation. "I'm not running for president," he tells me. He's all in for Trump to serve a third term. He's cagey on how he plans to make that happen, but he says he's working on it with legal experts he declines to name. One possibility, he says, is a so-called Article V convention, in which delegates could propose amendments to the Constitution requiring ratification by at least 38 states. Bannon believes that another run by Trump — his fourth — would be his biggest victory ever. "I think he does better in 2028," Bannon says. The president, he predicts, would take three states he failed to win in 2024: Minnesota, New Hampshire, and New Mexico, the latter delivered by Trump's rising support from Latino voters. If Trump can't or won't run, I ask, will you support Vance? Bannon pointedly refuses to anoint the vice president as Trump's rightful heir. If the president is not the nominee, Bannon says, he will favor an open primary for the Republican nomination. It's time for War Room. Throughout our conversation, Bannon has been relentlessly affable. But now, as showtime approaches, he barks at Will, his 21-year-old production assistant, over some unresolved camera issue. "I don't want bullshit," he tells Will. "I don't want spin." Will is clearly accustomed to such scoldings and takes it in stride. So, he has a temper, I scrawl in my notebook. To look at Bannon and his happy-hour red nose is to think, drinker. And he was, in earlier chapters of his life in finance. But his "boozer" days ended, his younger brother, Chris, tells me, when Steve realized he could be far more productive if he laid off the sauce. Bannon takes his hands off his ample belly and points to his black sneakers. "These are my prison shoes," he tells me. "I wear them every day." Most of today's morning show is wonky and kind of boring: an analysis of whether Democrats will shut down the government, an interview with economics writer Spencer Morrison about his new book, "Reshore: How Tariffs Will Bring our Jobs Home and Revive the American Dream." But Bannon concludes the show with a spectacular detonation: an unscripted, full-throated rant over "the $350 billion of your money" — he repeats the number several times — that the United States has spent to help Ukraine combat Russia's invasion. Bannon shows a MSNBC clip of Washington Post columnist David Ignatius defining America's national interest as keeping Ukraine "European" and out of Putin's clutches. "This is insanity!" Bannon bellows. "We don't give a damn about whether Ukraine is European!" Ignatius, he declares, "is the spokesman for the Central Intelligence Agency." And the liberal media, as always, is the true enemy. "There's blood on the hands of MSNBC!" Bannon thunders. The show over, Bannon immediately becomes subdued again. As we chat on the terrace, I call him out on the $350 billion figure, which Trump also uses. It's a fake number — an exercise in raw demagoguery. On this very day, Trump's own State Department is releasing a statement saying the United States had provided $66.5 billion in military assistance to Ukraine since Russia's 2022 invasion, and about another $20 billion has been disbursed in other aid. Bannon shrugs. Whatever the correct number is, he says, it's a lot. As unprecedented as it is to have someone with a felony conviction serving as president of the United States, it's equally rare to have a leading political strategist who has spent time behind bars on the president's behalf. Bannon was released in October after completing a four-month sentence for contempt of Congress at a low-security prison in Danbury, Connecticut. In February, he pled guilty to defrauding donors who contributed over $20 million to build a border wall, but received no jail time. He's extremely proud to have served time. Sitting in his comfy living room armchair, he takes his hands off his ample belly and points to his black sneakers. "These are my prison shoes," he tells me. "I wear them every day." I ask him what prison was like. "Yeah, I don't want to talk about it too much," he says. "Too personal." Then he proceeds to talk about it. He wasn't sent to a "camp," he stresses, but to a true prison, "massively overcrowded" with hardened drug offenders. Standing in line one day to return to his cellblock, he saw a prisoner shanked in the rib cage, his skin ripped open, "blood everywhere. It turns out he was a rat." Bannon's military training, including his time on a cramped Navy destroyer, helped him get through the confines of prison life. No one threatened him, he tells me. "You've got to be very tough. My attitude was just like my attitude every day. I don't give two fucks. And you're not going to fuck with me. Right?" It wasn't all grim survival mode. Bannon, a graduate of Georgetown's School of Foreign Service and the Harvard Business School, was asked to teach a class. So the man who tried to stage an insurrection offered a course on the rule of law. "We went back to the founding documents of the country," he says. He had his students read Alexander Hamilton's "Report on Manufactures" — dear to Bannon's heart for its appeal to turn the United States into an industrial powerhouse "independent" of foreign nations. "It's interesting," he says of his course. "They had seats for 25. My class always had 50 people in it. It was oversubscribed. These people thirst for this information." In prison, he also tried to convince viewers of the "White TV"— the Black prisoners controlled a second screen, the Hispanics a third — to watch MSNBC. No dice. They insisted on Fox News. He was released a week before Trump's victory. "I came out more empowered than ever," Bannon says. "Tougher, more focused," he stresses. "Your dedication has to be to the mission." Bannon works virtually around the clock. On the second day of our time together, I join him in the War Room for the cold open at 7 a.m. He fell asleep at 9 p.m. after watching MSNBC, he tells me, and has been up since 1 a.m. "War Room," which often cracks the list of top 10 politics podcasts on Apple, is a platform for conspiracy theorists. The flamboyant election denier Mike Lindell advertises his MyPillow products on the show. On this morning's episode, Mary Holland, an ally of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., attacks the measles vaccine as potentially dangerous to children, even as a measles outbreak in Texas has already killed an unvaccinated 6-year-old. "Fuck no, not in a zillion years," Bannon tells me, when I ask whether he took the COVID vaccine. "Poison." I push back, but he dismisses me as a brainwashed tool of Big Pharma. "Bobby is doing a great job," he says. His other guests today include Jack Posobiec, who spread the lie that Democratic bigwigs were operating a pedophilia ring out of a Washington pizza parlor, and Laura Loomer, who shared a video claiming 9/11 was an "inside job." Spotify banned the show in 2020 and YouTube in 2021. Later, after his afternoon show, Bannon repairs to his armchair. He looks fried, and says as much. I tell him I can't tell when he's serious with his routines and when he's just acting up, to troll the libs. He denies he does anything as a troll. Yes, he assures me, he is serious about having the J6 Choir — a music group composed of insurrectionists turned prisoners — perform at the Kennedy Center. He'd like to have all of the J6 families there, seated in the "elite boxes," and he's hopeful Trump would attend. Then we come back to Musk. In February, the Times reported, Trump ordered Bannon to halt the attacks on Musk and said he wanted the two men to meet privately and work out their differences. I ask Bannon whether Trump is trying to referee between him and Elon. No, he says, Trump has more important things to do. Musk, returning fire, has lashed out at Bannon, calling him "a great talker, but not a great doer." I tell Bannon that I get his dispute with Musk over the H-1B visa program, which Bannon sees as a globalist scam that denies rightful jobs to American workers. But what, in his mind, accounts for Musk's evilness? "He's a transhumanist," Bannon says. "Elon's piece is tied with actually taking your phone and putting it inside your brain." Transhumanism is an intellectual movement that advocates enhancing humans through technology, in order to protect them against existential crises ranging from pandemics to artificial intelligence. Musk has said the ultimate aim of his brain chip company Neuralink — which today focuses on helping quadriplegics control computers with their thoughts — is to merge humans with AI so the species doesn't get "left behind." Bannon, like Musk, is a disrupter — but he draws the line, apparently, at disrupting God. Bannon believes we are unprepared for a near future when humanity is divided between those who have a brain-enhancing chip and those who don't. "It is a massive, massive leap for humankind," he tells me, "and we won't be the same people on the other side. We're not ready as a society, we're not ready as a culture." He rises from the chair and hands me a book on the coffee table. "Dark Aeon: Transhumanism and the War Against Humanity." It was published by War Room Books, an imprint of Skyhorse, in 2023. The tome, which features a forward from Bannon, accuses the "cyborg savior Elon Musk" of being the embodiment of "satanism with a brain chip." Bannon, like Musk, is a disrupter — but he draws the line, apparently, at disrupting God. Afew days after I depart Arizona, Bannon texts me. If I want to understand "War Room" and his leadership style, he tells me, I need to watch "Twelve O'Clock High," a 1949 World War II movie starring Gregory Peck as Brig. Gen. Frank Savage. In it, Savage assumes command of a bomber group and whips the demoralized soldiers into men, placing the needs of the mission above the well-being of any individual trooper He goes on hazardous bombing runs himself. But his zeal comes at a cost: By the end of the movie, he suffers a mental breakdown. "Gen. Savage turns out to be human," I say to Bannon. "Frail." "He did exactly what he had demanded from his men," Bannon replies. "No exemption. It broke him — as he knew it would if you commit to 'maximum' effort." I suggest to Bannon that his method is the inverse of Carl von Clausewitz's famous dictum, that war is a continuation of politics by other means. In Bannon's world, politics is the continuation of war by other means. "Nailed it," he responds. And for Bannon, the battles, the shifting alliances, never seem to cease. Where Bessent is "my guy," Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, the former chief of Cantor Fitzgerald, is the "crazy man," he tells me. It seems one is either with Bannon or against him. Bannon derives his power, ultimately, from two sources. The first is the following he commands among his "War Room" posse, as he calls his followers. But it's possible his legions aren't prepared to follow him into every battle. He wants the United States to go to war, if need be, to defend Taiwan from a Chinese invasion — a position directly at odds with his overriding imperative to put an end to America's global empire. Yet a recent poll found that barely a third of Republicans would support sending US troops to Taiwan. Bannon may be ready to lead the charge, but he's likely to find himself with few troops at his disposal. The second source of Bannon's power stems from his ability to influence the man he went to prison to protect. As Bannon sees it, he is winning his war for populism. Tariff walls are going up; federal programs are coming down; America First is the slogan of the hour. But plenty remains to be done, and Trump may prove an obstacle to some of his goals. Bannon doesn't just want to kill the H-1B visa program; he aims to impose a moratorium on all legal immigration, a stance Trump has not embraced. The president also appears poised to deepen America's involvement in Ukraine, through a minerals deal that Bannon opposes and a possible acquisition of its power plants. I mention a news report that the Democratic Republic of Congo offered Trump access to minerals of value to Musk and other high-tech barons, in exchange for US military help to put down an internal rebellion. A good idea, I ask Bannon? "No," he says. Yet Bannon insists that Trump is a truly transformational president, on par with Washington and Lincoln. On our second day, after he finishes the morning podcast, Bannon heads to the kitchen, where he brews big cups of espresso and toasts bagels for the two of us. As we eat standing up, he tells me of his first meeting with Trump, back in 2010. At the time, with Barack Obama still in his first term, Trump was mulling a presidential run. Bannon, eager to advance the cause, walked Trump through the history of American populism — only to have the future president offer a correction. The word is "popularism," Trump said. No, Bannon explained, it's populism. But Trump, who liked his own rendition better, would not be moved. Paul Starobin is the author of "Putin's Exiles: Their Fight for a Better Russia." Read the original article on Business Insider
USA Today
04-03-2025
- Politics
- USA Today
'Trust in Trump': President's supporters dismiss alarm bells from critics
'Trust in Trump': President's supporters dismiss alarm bells from critics Show Caption Hide Caption Could President Trump's agenda lead to a Constitutional crisis? President Donald Trump's pushback against the judiciary could change the how executive power functions. Whatever is said about President Donald Trump by his critics, Cynthia Harrison remains a true believer. "The guy, he has a track record, a four-year track record, so yeah, we trust him," Harrison, a retiree from Stowe, Vermont, told USA TODAY. Trump has "been right on everything," she said. Harrison cites the nearly two-year investigation into Russian election interference stemming from the 2016 campaign as an example. A 2019 special counsel inquiry did not find evidence Trump or members of his campaign conspired with the Russian government to sway the outcome, and another internal investigation released in 2023 concluded that the FBI should never have launched a full investigation. "He said it was a hoax," Harrison said. "He was right about that. " That fealty to the president fuels his administration, as demonstrated at a luncheon in Washington last month, where White House trade adviser Peter Navarro was asked about the U.S.-China tariff war. Navarro suggested it's foolhardy to speculate what Trump might do next, and that's "because by now, it's trust in Trump." Ahead of his address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, the president has dismantled parts of Washington's bureaucracy and warned the judicial branch to butt out. Many of his core supporters who spoke with USA TODAY remain faithful and jubilant about the cascading change despite daily alarm bells rung by legal scholars and historians, including early signs that voters are softening on certain parts of his agenda. They are happy about the emphasis on tightening the U.S.-Mexico border, including televised raids aimed at mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, and they defend firing federal workers to tackle the country's roughly 36.2 trillion debt crisis. "I get excited because (Trump's) a disrupter and Washington needs to be disrupted," Harrison emphasized. "So love him tapping Elon Musk, who's the smartest man in the world, to help out and weed out government corruption." That steely confidence among the MAGA-fueled base has been Trump's strongest armor as he wields his power in sharp ways, from his demands to end birthright citizenship to a directive pausing the distribution of trillions of dollars in federal grants and loans. But a NPR/Marist survey released this week ahead of Trump's joint address to Congress could show the first cracks in the armor. About 45% approve of the job he's doing as president versus 49% who disapprove, according to the poll of 1,700 U.S. adults, which has a roughly 3% margin of error. The same poll found solid majorities unsure about his actions, with 54% saying the country is moving in the wrong direction; 55% believing federal cuts will cause more harm than good; and 56% of adults, including 65% of independent voters, thinking the president has rushed to make changes without considering the full impact. "The president is doing the things he promised his base he would do, but you wonder what happens once all of these changes start to impact them personally," said Patricia Crouse, a political science professor at the University of New Haven. "What will be the consequences and ramifications of what he's doing?" 'We're tired of it': Americans deeply divided on Trump, but job approval steady Those who pulled the lever for Trump last fall overwhelmingly dismiss concerns about executive overreach, however, as being overblown by the press as much as by Democrats. Even those in the president's coalition who have some misgivings about the MAGA movement say they have found things to like. Malcolm Mahoney, a student at Dartmouth College, said he couldn't bring himself to support Trump last fall and instead wrote in former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley's name. "I'm of the philosophy that I don't believe in voting for the lesser of two evils," said the 20-year-old Republican from Springfield, Massachusetts, a self-described social conservative. Yet Mahoney has been pleased with the president's executive orders pardoning 23 anti-abortion activists and barring transgender student-athletes from playing women's sports. Other social conservatives who spoke with USA TODAY also cited Trump's signing of an executive order requiring policy recommendations to protect in-vitro fertilization, or IVF, access and reduce out-of-pocket costs. More: Dismantling agencies and firing workers: How Trump is redefining relations with Congress & courts "I'll make it clear, I am not a 'Trumpy.' I am appreciative of some of his efforts, and I am not appreciative of others," Mahoney said. The country at large remains sharply split on its opinion about Trump as a person. When asked their opinion of the president, political data site FiveThirtyEight on March 3 showed Trump was averaging roughly 48% unfavorable versus 46% favorable across various polls, far better than the public's opinion of him during the campaign. The site's same model had Trump with about a 52% unfavorable versus 43% favorable rating on Election Day last year. Mary Mennona Ventresca, a Republican from Royersford, Pennsylvania, said Democrats and their allies should stop attacking their opponents and accept that Trump's supporters aren't uninformed but rather see the country's problems radically differently from how they do. "His opponents have behaved for generations now like they own this country by divine right. That they alone have a right to free speech but that their opponents really don't," the 64-year-old saleswoman told USA TODAY. "Frankly, we're all tired of it." A Pew Research Center survey released last month demonstrates how much Trump engenders extreme feelings in either direction with most Americans. The poll showed 37% of U.S. adults strongly support his job performance. Conversely, about 40% said they strongly dislike what he's doing as president. That 77% with strong feelings either way is far more than those who hold more lukewarm feelings. The Pew survey shows that of those Americans, 11% identify as "not strongly" disapproving of Trump versus 9% who said they were "not strongly" approving. Jack Reeves, of Wellington, North Carolina, voted for Trump and said he doesn't pay much attention to day-to-day happenings in Washington. He said he trusts the president to handle the economy and believes his actions are in America's best interest. But he's a bit more cautious on some moves, such as new tariffs on imports. "You do need your tariffs, but they don't need to be really outrageous, outlandish where it causes everything to go sky-high where you can't really afford it," said Reeves, an independent. Foes seek to make Musk the administration's face In terms of his policy prescriptions, Pew finds there is slightly more opposition to Trump than full-throated support. About 35% of U.S. adults said they support all or most of Trump's policies and plans, compared with 24% who said they support none of his agenda. But the Pew poll shows that 40% of Americans are somewhere in the middle: 17% say they support some of his agenda, and another 23% assert they back "only a few" of his moves. Reeves, 60, a terminal operator at a shipping yard, believes the federal government is "too big for its britches." He supports Musk coming into the administration to examine and dismantle certain agencies. As far as any trepidation about giving Musk access to "all unclassified agency records, software systems, and IT systems," according to a Trump executive order, Reeves isn't troubled. He said he sees it the same as powerful members of Congress, such as former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, trading stocks. "It ain't no different than all the insider trading that all the Democrats were doing while they were in office," Reeves said. But Republican Candy Meintze, 64, of Stevenson, Michigan, who voted for Trump after being undecided, said she's wary about Musk, an unelected official, having so much government oversight. "The only thing I don't like is he has so much access; that disturbs me," said Meintze, a married grandmother of seven and great-grandmother of three. Democrats have focused their early counteroffensives on Musk, who is viewed more negatively than positively overall, according to the Pew survey. About 54% of Americans express unfavorable views of the billionaire, according to the survey, versus 42% who view the South African-born entrepreneur favorably. Musk's task force announced last month, for example, that it terminated 89 contracts worth $881 million and canceled another 29 "DEI training grants" totaling $101 million within the U.S. Department of Education. Meintze, the Michigan Republican, had been on the fence about last year's election. She said she wants Trump to tread carefully on some actions, including attempts to dismantle the department. "I don't think what he's doing is reckless; I think it's necessary, but he needs to give some of his actions more thought," she said. "I'm like, what's the rush?' Other supporters, such as Jeanne Solnordal, a longtime real estate investor in Oakland, California, said every administration should seek to cut costs and question long-standing spending measures. She supports whatever actions are needed to cut waste. "I'm glad somebody is finally thinking with some common sense, like (Trump) said," Solnordal, who is chair of the Alameda County (Calif.) Republican Party, told USA TODAY. Musk's major moves: Trump, joined by Musk in Oval Office, orders up big cuts in federal workforce "Change is hard, so rapid change is even harder, but those who are against it are going to have to get used to it. I'm going to have trust in President Trump that he knows what he's doing."
Yahoo
04-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
'Trust in Trump': President's supporters dismiss alarm bells from critics
Whatever is said about President Donald Trump by his critics, Cynthia Harrison remains a true believer. "The guy, he has a track record, a four-year track record, so yeah, we trust him," Harrison, a retiree from Stowe, Vermont, told USA TODAY. Trump has "been right on everything," she said. Harrison cites the nearly two-year investigation into Russian election interference stemming from the 2016 campaign as example. A 2019 special counsel probe did not find evidence Trump or members of his campaign conspired with the foreign government to sway the outcome, and another internal investigation released in 2023 concluded that the FBI should never have launched a full investigation. "He said it was a hoax," Harrison said. "He was right about that. " That fealty to the president fuels his administration, as demonstrated at a recent luncheon in Washington last month, where White House trade adviser Peter Navarro was asked about the U.S.-China tariff war. Navarro suggested it's foolhardy to speculate what Trump might do next, and that's "because by now, it's trust in Trump." Ahead of his address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, the president has dismantled parts of Washington's bureaucracy and warned the judicial branch to butt out. Many of his core supporters who spoke with USA TODAY remain faithful and jubilant about the cascading change despite daily alarm bells rung by legal scholars and historians, including early signs that voters are softening on certain parts of his agenda. They are happy about the emphasis on tightening the U.S.-Mexico border, including televised raids aimed at mass deportations of undocumented immigrants and they defend firing federal workers to tackle the country's roughly 36.2 trillion debt crisis, as an example. "I get excited because (Trump's) a disrupter and Washington needs to be disrupted," Harrison emphasized. "So love him tapping Elon Musk, who's the smartest man in the world, to help out and weed out government corruption." That steely confidence among the MAGA-fueled base has been Trump's strongest armor as he wields his power in sharp ways, from his demands to end birthright citizenship to a directive pausing the distribution of trillions of dollars in federal grants and loans. But a new NPR/Marist survey released this week ahead of Trump's joint address to Congress shows the first cracks in the armor. About 45% approve of the job he's doing as president versus 49% who disapprove, according to the poll of 1,700 U.S. adults which has a roughly 3% margin of error. The same poll found solid majorities unsure about his actions with 54% saying the country is moving in the wrong direction; 55% believing federal cuts will cause more harm than good; and 56% of adults, including 65% of independent voters, thinking he has rushed to make changes without considering the full impact. "The president is doing the things he promised his base he would do, but you wonder what happens once all of these changes start to impact them personally," said Patricia Crouse, a political science professor at the University of New Haven. "What will be the consequences and ramifications of what he's doing?" Those who pulled the lever for Trump last fall overwhelmingly dismiss concerns about executive overreach, however, as being overblown by the press as much as Democrats. Even those in the president's coalition with some misgivings about MAGA say they have found things to like. Malcolm Mahoney, a student at Dartmouth College, said he couldn't bring himself to support Trump last fall, and instead wrote in former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley's name. "I'm of the philosophy that I don't believe in voting for the lesser of two evils," said the 20-year-old Republican, who is a Springfield, Massachusetts native and self-described social conservative. Yet, Mahoney has been pleased with the president's executive orders pardoning 23 anti-abortion activists and barring transgender student-athletes from playing women's sports. Other social conservatives who spoke with USA TODAY also cited Trump signing an executive order requiring policy recommendations to protect in-vitro fertilization, or IVF, access and reduce out-of-pocket costs. More: Dismantling agencies and firing workers: How Trump is redefining relations with Congress & courts "I'll make it clear, I am not a 'Trumpy.' I am appreciative of some of his efforts, and I am not appreciative of others," Mahoney said. The country at-large remains severely split on its opinion about Trump as a person. When asked their opinion of the president, political data site FiveThirtyEight on March 3 showed Trump was averaging roughly 48% unfavorable versus 46% favorable across various polls, far better than the public's opinion of him during the campaign. The site's same model had Trump with about a 52% unfavorable versus 43% favorable rating on Election Day last year. Mary Mennona Ventresca, a Republican from Royersford, Pennsylvania, said Democrats and their allies should stop attacking them, and accept that Trump's supporters aren't uninformed but rather see the country's solutions radically different from them. "His opponents have behaved for generations now like they own this country by divine right. That they alone have a right to free speech but that their opponents really don't," the 64-year-old saleswoman told USA TODAY. "Frankly, we're all tired of it," she added. A Pew Research Center survey released last month demonstrates how much Trump engenders extreme feelings in either direction with most Americans. The poll showed 37% of U.S. adults strongly support his job performance. Conversely, about 40% said they strongly dislike what he's doing as president. That 77% with strong feelings either way is far more than those who hold more lukewarm feelings. The Pew survey shows that of those Americans, 11% identify as "not strongly" disapproving of Trump versus 9% who said they were "not strongly" approving. Jack Reeves, of Wellington, North Carolina, voted for Trump and said he doesn't pay much attention to day-to-day happenings in Washington. But, he trusts the president to handle the economy and believes his actions are in America's best interest. However, he's a bit more cautious on some moves, such as slapping 25% tariffs on imports. "You do need your tariffs, but they don't need to be really outrageous, outlandish where it causes everything to go sky high where you can't really afford it," Reeves, an independent, said. In terms of his policy prescriptions, Pew finds there is slightly more opposition to Trump than full-throated support, for example. About 35% of U.S. adults said they support all or most of Trump's policies and plans, compared with 24% who said they support none of his agenda. However, the Pew poll shows that 40% of Americans are somewhere in the middle, with 17% saying they support some and another 23% asserting they back "only a few" of his ideas. Reeves, 60, a terminal operator at a shipping yard, believes the federal government is "too big for its britches." He supports Musk coming into the administration to examine and dismantle certain agencies. As far as any trepidation about giving Musk access to "all unclassified agency records, software systems, and IT systems," according to a Trump executive order, Reeves isn't troubled. He said he sees it the same as powerful members of Congress, such as former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, trading stocks. "It ain't no different than all the insider trading that all the Democrats were doing while they were in office," Reeves said. But Republican Candy Meintze, 64, of Stevenson, Michigan, who voted for Trump after being undecided, said she's wary about Musk, an unelected official, having so much government oversight. "The only thing I don't like is he has so much access; that disturbs me," said Meintze, a married grandmother of seven and great-grandmother of three. Democrats have focused their early counteroffensives on Musk, who is viewed more negatively than positively overall, according to the Pew survey. Approximately 54% of Americans express unfavorable views of the billionaire, according to the survey, versus 42% who view the South African-born entrepreneur favorably. Musk's task force announced last month, for example, that it terminated 89 contracts worth $881 million and canceled another 29 "DEI training grants" totaling $101 million within the U.S. Department of Education. Meintze, the Michigan Republican, had been on the fence about last year's election. She said she wants Trump to tread carefully on some actions, including attempts to dismantle the department. "I don't think what he's doing is reckless; I think it's necessary, but he needs to give some of his actions more thought," she said. "I'm like, what's the rush?' Other supporters, such as Jeanne Solnordal, a longtime real estate investor in Oakland, California, said every administration should seek to cut costs and question previous spending measures. She supports whatever actions are needed to cut wasteful spending. "I'm glad somebody is finally thinking with some common sense, like (Trump) said," Solnordal, also chair of the Alameda County (Calif.) Republican Party, told USA TODAY. Musk's major moves: Trump, joined by Musk in Oval Office, orders up big cuts in federal workforce "Change is hard, so rapid change is even harder, but those who are against it are going to have to get used to it," Solnordal added. "I'm going to have trust in President Trump that he knows what he's doing." This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Trust in Trump': Supporters dismiss alarms about a divisive president
