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Looking far ahead at how the 2028 presidential nominations will line up, former Republican party campaign consultant Matthew Dowd predicted Donald Trump will, in all likelihood, put his party in an awful bind.

Reacting to accusations that the president is attempting to "freeze" the field as he flirts with running for a third term despite constitutional prohibitions, Dowd suggested Trump would wait to the last minute to pick his successor, thereby leaving the GOP leadership stuck with whomever he anoints.

Speaking with host Alex Witt on MSNBC, Dowd followed up comments that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-NY) couldn't beat Trump but matched up well with Vice President J.D. Vance.

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"It's primarily about the grift," he began. "That's the first point of it. But he is freezing the field, one, by virtue of his enormous personality and sway in getting media attention. But he does make other Republicans sort of stop and not do anything in the course of this."

"And I think that's part of his plan because Donald Trump doesn't want to be viewed as sort of the lame duck," he elaborated. "'We're going to to move on, we're going to have another leader emerge.' And I think he's going to try to push that as long as possible."

"I don't think there's any way in anybody's mind that he can constitutionally run, it's specifically forbidden in the Constitution," he claimed. " I think secretaries of states in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Colorado, any number of states won't allow him on the ballot and will be supported by the courts in that. But i think it does put the Republicans in an awful position because they can't come up with their next leader."

He added. "And I think what allows Donald Trump to do is lay his hands on the last, on the last minute, on somebody, and then it puts them in an awful position of them having to rally around a one person that he lays his hands on in the final minute of this, and that's problematic."

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Newsmax hosts made an hourly plea over the weekend for viewers to "vote" in an unscientific online poll after a Fox News survey showed that President Donald Trump's approval rate was plummeting.

"Well, not sure if you saw the news, but Fox News is claiming President Trump is actually declining in the polls," the announcement from Newsmax anchors said nearly hourly on Sunday. "President Trump responded and said Fox News polls cannot be trusted."

Fox News host Rich Edson warned Oklahoma Superintendent of Schools Ryan Walters that he was "opening the door" for Satanism by pushing for religious-based charter schools.

In a Sunday interview, Walters defended his call for the U.S. Supreme Court to find in favor of taxpayers funding a Catholic charter school.

Rep. James Comer (R-KY), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, accused President Donald Trump's administration of stonewalling his requests for files about accused child trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

During a weekend interview with Sharyl Attkisson, Comer talked about his Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets, which is looking at the Epstein files, President John F. Kennedy's assassination, the Sept. 11 attacks, and other conspiracy theories.

According to CNN data analyst Harry Enten, House Republicans should be exceedingly alarmed at Donald Trump's "terrible" new polling numbers unless they want to be out of a job after the 2026 midterms.

Sitting on the "Inside Politics" panel with host Jessica Dean, Enten insisted an approval number like Trump's current 41 percent will "doom" GOP lawmakers.

Dean prompted her CNN colleague with, "In these midterms, it's going to be these House, all House members that are going to be on the ballot. iI's going to be these congressional members that are going to have to face the consequences and Trump, Harry, he's not going to have to."

ALSO READ:'We’ve made a mistake': Trump’s trade war sends GOP into frenzy

"He's not going to have to," Enten agreed. " But I'll tell you, there is pretty much zero chance, if Donald Trump's approval rating is 41 percent in November of 2026, the Republicans have any shot of holding the House of Representatives."

He emphasized, "There is no, I repeat, there is no precedent for a president's approval rating being as low as Donald Trump's is right now and then his party holding on to the House in the midterm elections."

"We were talking about it yesterday," he recalled. "I mean, when you look at approval ratings this low, this early, you look at where the generic ballot is this low this early, that usually spells doom for the president's party when it comes to midterm elections."

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Kari Lake, a special advisor to the United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM), insisted that she was happy to put herself out of a job if it meant significantly downsizing the Voice of America and other agencies.

During a Sunday interview on Fox News, host Maria Bartiromo asked Lake if the U.S. Supreme Court would hear cases against President Donald Trump's administration.

Donald Trump Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins found herself desperately searching her memory on CNN for one trade deal the president has pulled off when asked about his boast in a Time magazine interview.

Appearing on CNN's "State of the Union," with host Dana Bash, the very talkative Rollins responded to a question about Trump's much derided "200 deals" boast that has since fallen apart by promising something might be coming soon.

"The president told Time magazine, quote, 'I have made 200 deals," Bash pointed out to her guest. "He didn't give us any details about what those could be, what countries he's talking about. Has he actually inked any trade deals and with whom?"

ALSO READ:'We’ve made a mistake': Trump’s trade war sends GOP into frenzy

Rollins first pivoted to an earlier discussion about the price of eggs –– a hot topic in the 2024 election –– which led host Bash to interrupt with, "Let's focus on the trade and on the deals."

"Yes, for sure," Rollins replied. "On the deals, we have 100 countries that are knocking on the door, I believe. I'm not in the room, I'm not negotiating the trade deals, but my understanding is we should have several this week that are coming forward that are very, very close."

" China is a very important one," he quickly added. "Every day we are in conversation with China, along with those other 99 countries that have come to the table. Many countries have already flown to Washington and are meeting with [Commerce] Secretary Lutnick, meeting with [Treasury] Secretary Bessent, meeting with our USTR Jamison Greer. And there is a tremendous amount of progress on all fronts that we'll see again more this week."

ABC News host Martha Raddatz challenged Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent after President Donald Trump claimed that he had made 200 trade deals in his first 100 days in office.

"He said that he has made 200 deals on tariffs. 200 deals?" Raddatz told the secretary on Sunday. "Who has he made deals with? Is there actually any deal at this point?"

Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) suggested former President Joe Biden was to blame for President Donald Trump's poor approval rating on ending the war in Ukraine.

"There are brand new polling numbers that we've got out today that the American people do not think President Trump is handling this well," Fox News host Shannon Bream told Kennedy on Sunday. "His job approval on handling Russia and Ukraine is at 36 and 39 percent, respectively."

Fox News host Rachel Campos-Duffy claimed that President Donald Trump "upstaged" Pope Francis at his funeral over the weekend by meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

"I think this is the takeaway from yesterday's funeral," Campos-Duffy said on Sunday. "Donald Trump upstaged the Pope at the funeral."

Reacting to new polling that shows Donald Trump's approval ratings are cratering, a longtime GOP insider claimed the embattled president's slide with voters will continue unless he makes major changes.

Appearing on MSNBC's "The Weekend," GOP strategist Brendan Buck took issue with co-host Michael Steele who told the panel to slow down their enthusiasm over the president's growing unpopularity.

"Obviously it's just a snapshot, but I certainly don't think it's going to get better for him anytime soon," Buck countered.

ALSO READ:'We’ve made a mistake': Trump’s trade war sends GOP into frenzy

"I mean, this is a president who absolutely believes in what he's doing and they throw around this word mandate a lot; they think they had a mandate to come and I'm, no actually –– I don't know that they actually did have a mandate to do that and every president says that they have a mandate," he added with a grin. "If he had a mandate to do anything, it was to address the cost of living and he's certainly not doing that."

"I think what's amazing in all of this polling is how much he has undermined the advantages he had going in," he elaborated. "He had a real advantage on the issue of immigration–– now he's underwater on immigration. That's remarkable and, of course, on the economy, this economy was ready to get going, it was going to be roaring if he had just gotten out of the way a little bit."

"Just keep things humming, especially in contrast to what we had been through under Joe Biden," he added. "Just stay out of the way, you would have been fine, and he's totally blown it."

'To your point, tariffs are just getting started. this is only going to get worse," he predicted. "You know, if anything is going to sort of check him, the guardrails are public opinion. So maybe he'll see some of this and realize that it shouldn't, he shouldn't go forward. But he's not shown himself to be somebody who, you know, recalibrates."

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Making a rare appearance on Saturday as a guest on MSNBC host Katie Phang's last show, Rachel Maddow graded out Donald Trump's first 100 days and the best she could say about the second-term president that he has "flailed."

Jumping right into it, Maddow, after saying she would miss Phang hosting her own show, began, "Let me just say, the 100 days, there has never been a president who has botched the first 100 days of his presidency more than Donald Trump has. You don't have to take that as a subjective view. It's the view shown in scientific polling of the American public. The public is deeply, deeply, deeply against what Trump is doing. He's -- the YouGov polling that came out this week, I think he is 19 points underwater!"

Pointing out that she believes Trump is "more ambitious" than during his first term before losing to President Joe Biden in 2020, she added, "I do think we're in the middle of an attempted authoritarian overthrow of American democracy. I mean, I think everybody who predicted that was right, but I don't think he's any better at it."

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Maddow also noted expectations for Trump the second go-around were high but that he has stumbled as he's been mired himself in pushing his policies.

"He was going to be better at doing what he wanted to do, and that's what we should brace ourselves for. And I actually don't think that's the way it's worked out," she observed.

'"I think the other thing I was talking about sort of what the pundit class got wrong heading into Trump's second term," she elaborated. "I think what we –– there was, again, a kind of pundit, common wisdom or kind of observer common wisdom that the American people weren't going to resist, you know, weren't going to stand up, that there was there was no sign of the kind of mass resistance to what trump is doing. That's turning out not to be the case at all, it's just different this time."

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On Saturday morning, MSNBC host Katie Phang invited Guardian reporter Hugo Lowell on to discuss his new report on the turmoil at the Pentagon under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and quickly singled out a startling revelation of an accusation of cocaine use.

With Hegseth under the gun for what has been dubbed "Signalgate," new revelations that he included his wife, brother and lawyer in a separate Signal chat where he discussed war plan, and use of an unsecured internet commercial "dirty line" from his Pentagon office, Lowell reported that fighting among dismissed Hegseth aides has also gotten messy.