You might want to see this, #4

Pollster meanies, stained ties, a weak link in the GOP chain (maybe) and cold-calling the president

Compiled by Sam Bellamy

APB, be on the lookout for ‘negative criminals’

Our stable genius, whose skin is about as thick as a wet Kleenex, wants a criminal investigation of the numerous polls in recent days showing his approval ratings are the lowest of any president in at least the past 80 years.

On Monday morning, America’s chief crank awoke early to post a long rant about news organizations and the pollsters they hire. It was an especially messy meltdown, even by Trump standards:

“They are Negative Criminals who apologize to their subscribers and readers after I WIN ELECTIONS BIG, much bigger than their polls showed I would win, loose [sic] a lot of credibility, and then go on cheating and lying for the next cycle, only worse. They suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome, and there is nothing that anyone, or anything, can do about it. THEY ARE SICK, almost only write negative stories about me no matter how well I am doing (99.9% at the Border, BEST NUMBER EVER!), AND ARE TRULY THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!”

As delightful as it is to see the bully sputtering mad, Media Matters points out that his rants can’t be taken lightly: “… Trump’s talk is cheap until it isn’t — at any time, on a whim, he or the assortment of ideologues and shills he’s appointed can set the gears of government grinding against his foes. And this weekend brought a sharp escalation and worrying signs for the future.”

The linked piece provides disturbing evidence that Trump’s war on the press is heating up.

Trump’s rant Monday also included this: “We don’t have a Free and Fair ‘Press’ in this Country anymore. We have a Press that writes BAD STORIES, and CHEATS, BIG, ON POLLS. IT IS COMPROMISED AND CORRUPT. SAD!”

Could he lose the Majority Leader?

As Trump’s approval ratings plummet so low he has no hope of ever bending over to pick them up, it’s important to watch for Republicans whose support for the buffoon may be wavering. If they sense some strength in numbers or simply feel a need to preserve their political futures, they could turn on him.

One weak link in Trump’s hold on Republicans could be Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a soft-spoken, polite and supposedly unfailingly honest Republican from South Dakota. While he’s no one’s idea of a progressive and has voted wrong on nearly everything, he has shown a clear, if understated, dislike of Trump’s shin-kicking leadership style.

In a recent profile of Thune in The New Yorker, David D. Kirkpatrick notes that the senator overcame considerable opposition from the administration to win the majority leader’s job. He’s not full-throated MAGA, and Trump waterboy Tucker Carlson, among others, thinks that makes Thune an enemy of the cult.

Kirkpatrick reports on how the vote went: “The senators … keep their ballots secret. Without fear of Trump’s retribution, they chose Thune, by a vote of 29-24. Their selection of a non-MAGA Party leader suggested that Senate Republicans may not be as reflexively devoted to Trump as many liberals assume.”

That spillage all over Hegseth’s tie

Veterans and current military personnel appear none too pleased with the recent revelation that Pete Hegseth shared details on a second Signal chat about the U.S. bombing raid on Houthi terrorists in Yemen last month. The chat included Hegseth’s wife and brother.

NPR reports on numerous reactions, including this one: " ‘The last time he was wrongly using an insecure communications device, and he mistakenly thought he was speaking only to security clearance holders,’ said Kevin Carroll, who served 30 years in the Army, then in the CIA and then the Department of Homeland Security in the first Trump administration. Security breaches like what happened in the Signal group chat are called ‘spillage’ by the military, but this is more, says Carroll.

“ ‘Here he's knowingly using an insecure communication device and he's knowingly giving classified information to people who are not security clearance holders, so it's really more than a spill,’ Carroll said. ‘It really gets more to the sort of willfulness that is typically prosecuted by the Department of Justice.’ ”

There will be no prosecution, of course, because the Justice Department is led by Attorney General Pam Bondi, who not only would excuse Trump if he shot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue but would help his wipe his fingerprints off the murder weapon.

Hegseth will return to Fox News and happy hours when Trump finally concludes his secretary of defense is making him look like a loser. Given Trump’s general lack of self-awareness, this could take a while.

New phone, who dis?

What is it about The Atlantic magazine and its ability to leap the Trump administration’s security precautions in a single bound?

First, editor Jeff Goldberg was blessed with an accidental invitation to the now-infamous Signal chat where Hegseth and other high-level officials freely discussed the raid on Yemen and – in the case of JD Vance and Hegseth – how loathsome Europeans are.

Now we learn that, after their request for a sit-down interview with Trump was rejected by White House officials for an interview, Atlantic reporters Ashley Parker and Michael Sherer – both refugees of Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post – decided to cold-call the manboy in chief – and it worked.

Here’s how they tell it: “So at 10:45 on a Saturday morning in late March, we called him on his cellphone. (Don’t ask how we got his number. All we can say is that the White House staff have imperfect control over Trump's personal communication devices.) The president was at the country club he owns in Bedminster, New Jersey. The number that flashed on his screen was an unfamiliar one, but he answered anyway. 'Who's calling?' he asked.”

He then proceeded to prattle on, answering the reporters’ questions and explaining at one point, in no uncertain terms, how things work around here: “I run the country and the world.”

Well, then.

Bravo to Parker and Scherer for their persistence. But, as CNN’s Hadas Gold later noted on X, the circumstances are a bit worrisome: “Ummm should the President be answering phone calls from unfamiliar numbers??? With how easy it is to spoof voices of people he trusts??”

The full story is here. There’s a paywall, but sometimes you can find discounted subscriptions online. The way things are going, we may all need one to keep up.