The Daily Blast: Trump Spirals into Fury at Bad War News as Polls Hit Shocking New Low

That's the music for your oron. The video is also released in Venice with Shopify. It's a real help to be released. Start your test today for just one of your promotions. This is the Daily Blast from the New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I'm your host Greg Sargent. [Music] Donald Trump is raging in all directions. After exploding at Pope Leo over his criticism of the war,

“he's now lashing out at an ally, Italian Prime Minister George Amalone. Why?”

Because she sided with the Pope on the war, and because she won't help him reopen the straight of our moods. This comes as a new polling analysis shows him cratering with non-college white voters who are of course a critical voting block. The conventional wisdom is that Trump has a high floor of support due to his base, but what if he hasn't bottomed out yet? We're talking about all this with new Republic senior editor, Alex Shepherd, who's been writing well about the catastrophic politics of Iran for Trump world.

Alex, always good to have you on, man. It's great to be back. Let's start with some polling because it's amazing.

CNN's Harry Inton looked at an average of polls to calculate Trump's approval with white voters who didn't go to college. Listen, we are talking about non-college white voters, and he is sliding right into the water. This is a Ruttro moment to quote the great Scooby-Doo, Trump's net approval rating with non-college. Look at this. In February of 2025, it was plus 32 points. And now it is minus 2 points. That is a 34-point shift. And I will note this is an average of both.

So that was overall approval. Now listen to what these voters are thinking on the Iran war. What about the war while the war ain't helping him? Because just take a look here. Non-college whites, net approval rating of U.S. military action against Iran minus 5 points. You think that's low come over to this side of the screen. How about Trump on Iran minus 13 points. A very unlucky 13 indeed for the president of the United States with a key core group of heads. Just to recap, Trump's general approval with non-college whites has slid by 34 points.

And he's now underwater with them. On the war, support for it is 5 points underwater with those voters.

“And support for his handling of Iran is 13 points underwater with them. Alex, that is something hear thoughts?”

It's just terrible. I mean, I think there's always been this misguided idea that Trump's support among the white non-college is quite working-class vote is iron-clad no matter what.

And that's just not true. We saw this during a pandemic as well. But even during the pandemic, which basically did create a global recession, we did not see the president do this sort of this level of economic self-sabotage. And I think that the extent to which many people myself, I think included here, overstated some of the causes of Trump's victory back in 2024. It's really coming into the foreground right here. The big thing that wrote him to victory was inflation, right? And Trump is taking a number of actions right now to cause prices to rise.

And if you look back, this sort of cratering support started at the beginning of this year, so all the way back in January, it predates Iran and it's post-terrorif inflation. That was the sort of start of the erosion of white-working class or white non-college support. And now Trump has basically quadrupled down on that by starting a stupid war for no reason that he's now stuck in.

“And you're seeing things that it like, for instance, you know, a gas going up by 30, 40% in some cases that is forcing people to, I think, racking with what the president is actually doing here.”

And, understandably, they are recoiling. Well, Alex, I followed up and asked Harriet and if Trump has ever fair this badly with non-college whites and polling and intent told me that this rivals where he was with that demographic just after January 6th,

that suggests he's at a low point with them, as you also said, what's critical to me here, though, is it isn't just the economy. His base is cracking over the war too.

And as you say, maybe the perceptions of the war are colored very strongly by the impact that's having on prices, but I also think the war is just filling the headlines with awful news and stuff that makes him just look like a preposterously ridiculous moron.

And even there were relatively low stakes. They were people that Trump personally cared about. And in general, he was doing things that didn't tend to affect people's dated existence. And I think for voter for some voters that erratic behavior only communicated the back of the Trump was a different sort of politician. And again, the stakes were relatively low at the first term. If he looked back then as bad as things were for them, most part, it largely amounted to a big tax cut pre-fandemic, a big tax cut bill that any Republican president would have passed anyway.

“And I think now what you're seeing are those voters have to reckon with what those policies look like in the real world, right, in a way that they haven't had to before.”

And they are having to actually see that like, oh, this guy Donald Trump who claims to be breaking the system on our behalf is actually engaging in just another stupid Middle East war.

He's not explaining why he's doing it. And every action that he's taking since that war has begun has only made it worse. It's only made costs go up. And I think in general, people are looking at this with understandable awareness, right, where you look at a situation like the straight-of-war moves. And it's impossible, I think, regardless of your political, political beliefs or sort of like, it not be incredibly cynical about it. And say, you know, this is a situation which the U.S. has managed to lose a Middle Eastern more faster than at any time in our history, you know, maybe even going back to when we were fighting the barbaric pirates or whatever.

And I think that that, you know, also matters here. And again, I think for all of the talk about the president's ability to communicate with these kind of low-prepensity voters, there has not been any of that about this war.

You look back, you know, the things that have cut through to the mainstream are Trump tweeting that he's Jesus or whatever. It's not, you know, a rationale for going to do regime change in Iran.

And that's because there's no one in this administration that can actually tell you what they're doing here, but if you are a voter, what you will see is for instance, you know, I won on vacation two weeks ago when I came back gas was a dollar of 40 cents more expensive than when I left. You know, I think you got to the critical point there, Alex, which is that the straightforward move situation is just really legible to a lot of voters. It's choke point, a lot of important stuff passes through it.

Trump has said that he will obliterate Iranian civilization to compel Iran to open the straight and they didn't open the straight. And so people are kind of wondering like, what is this half cocked lunatic doing?

He's threatening to incinerate tens and tens of millions of people and it's not actually forcing Iran to do this bidding.

“And I really think the entire mystique is just cracking up over that. What do you think?”

Yeah, I mean, I think that they're totally high on their own supply and they have been for a really long time and that, you know, if you look back for instance at the Iraq war to which this, you know, that is a much more significant. It's a much more significant use of American manpower, but that war at least one had a sort of fake rationale providing democracy to them at least, but it existed as a kind of cathars post 9/11 catharsis for people that was both of those things were legible. And this war is just not legible, right? It is legible when you explain to people that, you know, this is a longstanding, you know, Israeli preoccupation and that the Gulf States had their own reasons for one of the US to do it, but they, you know, none of these.

These parties could, you know, understandably take out the Iran regime themselves because they don't have the military power to do it, so they convinced Trump to do it.

“And I think what you, and which is what happens, and I think when, when you look at it more broadly, I think people understand that that's what happened here.”

But I think inside the administration, my general sense is that Trump believed that he had kind of gotten in and out of Venezuela in this way that he could just keep kind of doing this. And that he, he is this sort of soul master of reality and he can declare a victory whenever he wants. And we're in a situation now where, you know, Iran are stated adversaries in a much stronger negotiating position than they were before, right? Because they can hold the United States economy hostage and they know that Trump is terrified of doing that as well.

But he also can't get out of a situation which he's not the soul winner, which is already impossible here. And that's the bind that you and I and, you know, the millions of non-cudge regulators that we were talking about earlier find ourselves in right now. To stay up to date on all the news that you need to know, there's no better place than right here on the DSR network.

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Use code DSR 26 for 25% off discount on sign up at the DSR network and dot com. That's code DSR 26 at the DSR network and dot com slash buy. Thank you and enjoy the show. Trump's frustration over Iran right now is just white hot. After the Pope criticized the war and Trump unloaded on the Pope.

The Prime Minister of Italy, George of Maloney called Trump's attack on the Pope unacceptable. This really angered Trump. He said this to an Italian newspaper quote, "It's her who's unacceptable because she doesn't care if Iran has a nuclear weapon and would blow up Italy in two minutes. If it had the chance." Most quote.

Alex, this isn't just any point you had in European leader. Maloney is a member of the MAGA International.

“What's funny about this though, I think, is that Maloney didn't understand that she's not even allowed to defend the Pope.”

If it makes the alien American dust pot look bad in the least, Trump has to be above the Pope even for the Prime Minister of Italy. Well, yeah, of course, we all know about the Iranian nuclear threat threat to Italy right now too.

I do think that this tells us something that is really interesting to me, though, which is that basically from the moment that Trump really emerged,

especially since him and Steve Bannon linked up, there was this idea that they were the kind of spearhead at this global far right movement. And this was like back in June of 2016 after the Brexit boat happened, Trump was going around calling himself Mr. Brexit. And there was this larger sense, this is like where a lot of the Victor Warbon links. The Hungarian president who went down after 16 years, basically a hour over the weekend. There was this idea that they were sort of this part of this groundswell of the global far right that populists were fed up with open borders,

that they were fed up with bureaucrats, that they were fed up with, you know, people in far away places like Brussels, which is ridiculous to me, you know, dictating how they live, and that they were going to rise up. And I think what we're seeing is the crack up of that everywhere, right? You look at Canada, for instance, Canada was probably on the verge of electing a kind of Trump-esque figure last year, right? Trump comes into power puts in these tariffs. Now you have a technocrat, right? Mark Carney, the former head of the Bank of England,

“is running there, and I think Maloney is fascinating because she was, I mean, she is the furthest right Italian Prime Minister since Mussolini, right?”

That's not debatable, that's crazy in its own way, but she has really had to dial back on her populism and conservatism, because of the association with Trump and how toxic that is. And I think that what you're seeing is that even among far right figures that tying yourself too close to him is a problem. Of course, I mean, again, if the President attacks the Pope and you're the Prime Minister of Italy, you do sort of have to step in, but that again is the absurdity of this moment.

And again, once you speak out against Trump, right, you know, you have this ridiculous situation where Trump is watching television on Sunday, and sees these three American cardinals speak out against the war, and then literally,

basically, literally, big kind of literally starts a holy war right after that.

“And the reverberations, I think, from that are huge, but I think that the Orban defeat there is not,”

is not immaterial to this, that global far right leaders are looking around and saying, this is a pretty bad moment for us, right? People are turning against this kind of far right populism that has been ascended since Trump essentially walked down the escalator in 2015. In fact, I want to underscore what you're saying by pointing out that when Maloney ascended, that was seen as a real sign that this global far right, this mega international was really on the march. And so, for her to have to really start distancing herself from the, you know, unquestioned Supreme Leader of the mega international is a real sign that it's just starting to crack that plus Orban going down to defeat,

really suggests that the global right is on, on much shaky or ground, looked as if they would be, and boy, it happened fast. This was already baked in before or wrong, right? And Iran is the most catastrophic thing in American president has done since Iraq. I mean, it's maybe worse in some ways, which is crazy to say. But, you know, I think what we're seeing here is is a huge global trend that is manifesting itself everywhere,

Trump's anger at Maloney is also over the fact that she's apparently not willing to send military help to reopen the straight-up or moves.

“Trump said this to the paper, speaking about Italians, quote, "Do they like the fact that your prime minister isn't giving us any help to get oil?”

I'm shocked at her. I thought she had courage, but I was wrong." Close quote, "Alex, I don't know if Trump understands the situation at a basic level. The problem doesn't appear to be that we don't have enough military firepower. It's that military firepower can't force Iran to open the straight. Isn't that the essence of this?" Yeah, and I think the other thing too is what Trump is doing is psychological more than it's strategic, right? That he wants other people to take the blame here. That he is trying to bring in NATO and the European Union, which have wisely kept their distance from this entire farce.

“The United States does not need help militarily to bomb Iran, but it does need the help of other nations to end this conflict, right?”

It needs to help of countries specifically that are not Israel to end this conflict. And it needs those countries, I think, to help find an offer. I hope you build one that is acceptable to the United States, Iran, the Gulf States, and the Iranian regime, to the extent that such a thing exists right now. And instead of trying to bring those sort of partners in to find a way out of this, Trump is alienating them and demanding that they share in the blame for something that is just colossally stupid. Well, to return to some stuff you said earlier on this discussion, I think there's an interesting through line to all this.

Trump's MAGA allies in Europe are turning against them over the war. That means MAGA and internationalist splitting over it. Meanwhile, Trump's base is splitting over the war at home. That means MAGA in America is fracturing over it. The scale of betrayal in a way of what Trump is ostensibly supposed to represent and what MAGA is ostensibly supposed to represent.

Never mind that it was always bullshit that they were anti war, but they're supposed to be that.

The scale of this betrayal is actually at the point where it's really seriously endangering a massive movement. And I find that really striking and I got to say, man, if this is what brings MAGA crashing down, then boy is that a certain kind of satisfying part of just the society from the fact that thousands and thousands of innocent people are getting killed. Yeah, and you've been seeing this sort of crack up that I've been writing about it for the last couple months, especially since Iran started, which is, you know, this is started.

“I think with people that are all opportunists, they are almost all, or maybe all anti semites, but they are people like Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones, Megan Kelly.”

But these are also people that I think were genuinely trying to back intellectually backfill the notion of Trumpism, right, that with something, right, and that's not just the president.

And what you've seen, I think, is a real, the first schism was between people that were trying to kind of come up with a meaning outside of Trump for the stuff.

They left. And I think that you now have this sort of true believers that just say, well, MAGA is Trump, it's whatever Trump says, it's just a straight up culture personality, but one of the things that you saw this week was after the Jesus fixture, like, people like Riley games or these kind of, you know, Catholic influencers. They were out to you, and I think that was notable to me, not because I think it will necessarily last, but you see how quickly these people will be now, right, that anyone is basically, if there's a sort of exit door that cracks open.

They will speak out about it, and that's, that's a notable difference from the first term where, for the most part, the kind of Trump opposition on the right was from a sort of more establishment or moderate wing. And what we're seeing now are that, in some ways, it resembles the aftermath of January six that there's a sense that he's done, right, he's a loser, he's cooked. And so the people that understand that they are going to have to be fighting over what power and the Republican party looks like post Trump are starting to position themselves and sharpen the knives.

And I think that is something that I assumed who's going to happen closer to the end of this term, but it's, it's happening right now and it's, it's, I think, causing this sort of accelerated breakdown of this coalition. Well, just to wrap this up, here's the best part of all, JD Vance can't do that. He can't distance himself from Trump. He's tied to Trump very, very tightly. All he can do is get, you know, beautiful reporters to write things in newspapers saying that really, really, he totally opposed the war and, and at the same time he, of course, is really loyal to Trump.

And it's cracking up under him, yet he can't distance himself from the dark force, the kind of vortex that's causing the cracks to really radiate out in all directions.

“I mean, it couldn't be happening to a nicer guy. You, you wrote about this. Can you sort of take us through how JD Vance kind of manages this at this point?”

Yeah, I mean, I've been fascinated with Vance more or less inside first came into contact with him via Hillbillionity.

I think that's one of our great opportunists and cynics and you know, as a shape-shifter par excellence. And I think what he's been doing this term has been really interesting to me because he's trying to sort of build connections with these various sort of independent movements within magic, right, whether they're kind of this sort of podcast crowd or the sort of more intellectual wing. But he has his Catholic conversion story and his upcoming memoir about that. So he has a kind of religious conversion, take us well, but one thing that Vance does not have, which Trump has isn't independent basis support within the party.

“And I think where Vance is fascinating is that you're seeing somebody who's trying to figure out what a Vance coalition post Trump could look like.”

And the lead up to Iran basically said, okay, well, if I can keep my hands clean here, right, well, Marka Rubio is made rival probably for the nomination is, you know, his fingerprints are all over that. Then, you know, he can go out and say, look, you know, Trump is him, you know, it still works, right, we move too far away with it. This is a wrong thing. It was a mistake, but you can follow me and I will take care of all of that. And that's just not going to work at all. You know, as we've been discussing, he is tied to all of this. So I think what we're seeing is that, you know, there isn't like a successor who can come in and just say, I am magic now, right, and, you know, we're going to do, you know,

magic without Trump and it's going to be even better because Trump has never allowed somebody like this to flourish or prosper in any way. And so I think that that also, I think points to a kind of failed state situation, right, that Trump will be term limited. You know, he's not going to hold on to power. I don't think, but he's not going to. And you're going to have these people that are fighting over the sort of scorched earth that were left in, which is six dollar gas, a strength in the Ryan regime, no, no, like strong ties to Europe or even to the Gulf States, maybe in the Middle East.

“And a country that is more isolated, weaker and poorer than it was 10 years ago, solely because we elected this moron twice.”

Well, there is one thing, one other thing that Trump has, that JDVans definitely lacks, and that's charisma. Which is also a problem because he's going to need that to try to hold together all these different competing factions who, as you say, will have their knives out for each other.

Alex Shepherd, always great to talk to you. Thanks so much for coming on.

Thanks, Brad.