Adam Lynch

Republican commenter S.E. Cupp warns the U.S. economy is likely going to drag down President Donald Trump and his Republican Party leading into the midterms.

“Looking back, if we're going to assess the health of this administration next year, come midterms, we'll be looking back at Liberation Day,” Cupp told the panel of CNN’s “Table for Five.” “I think the economy is going to be the main story as we head toward midterms and the economy is not great. … Now we have polling that shows voters — including Trump's own — blame him for the economy.”

Cupp said Trump’s next big project is to manage the messaging and policy of his economic failures before it sinks the party....

When holiday celebrations are done President Donald Trump will be facing “daunting challenges in 2026,” said USA Today writer Bart Jansen.

The lingering impasse over government spending is brewing in the House and Senate and Jansen said Americans will be facing a health care cost spike in 2026 now that Republicans and Trump have let Obamacare subsidies expire.

“The political disputes about spending − and the possibility of another federal government shutdown − will play out while waiting for a Supreme Court decision that could overturn tariffs central to the president's economic agenda that are projected to generate more than $3.3 trillion over the next decade,” said Jansen....

Former GOP Communications Director Tara Setmayer whacked President Donald Trump’s 2025 attack on comedians and entertainment as a sign of a weak man on MS NOW’s “The Weekend.”

“He's done [this] from day one,” said Setmayer. “He went after the media, calling them the ‘enemy of the people.’ which was straight out of the dictator playbook that we've seen from the 1930s and 40s with Mussolini and Hitler. This is exactly what strongmen do. And Donald Trump is the most thin-skinned, boring whiner. He is a whiner in chief. He whines constantly about anyone who dares to say anything negative about him, yet he tries to portray that he's this big, tough guy. Really? Because that doesn't sound like someone who is a well-adjusted adult who can handle criticism.”

Setmayer spoke directly to Trump’s Christmas Eve threat to terminate the broadcast licenses of networks featuring comedians who are “negative to President Donald J. Trump.”...

Republican pundit S.E. Cupp ragged President Donald Trump’s constant need for adulation and compliments.

“There were some big tests [in Washington — one of them, loyalty,” reported “Table for Five” host Abby Phillip, before playing a montage of toe-kissing from President Donald Trump’s administrators at cabinet meetings.

The cut-scene contained a flood of “thank yous” and “greatest president evers,” as well as a “Thank you for letting us get up every day and have a purpose,”—all of which caused a raft of cringing amid the “Tabel for Five” panel....

The Guardian reports President Donald Trump is struggling to remain conscious at public events while opinion polls suggest Americans are turning against their president and Republicans make for the exits ahead of bleak congressional mid-terms next November.

“… [T]his is a guy whose legacy may well be the political collapse of Republicans in this era,” said Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota. “Put another way, rather than asking who is going to be the inheritor of the Trump mantle and the so-called MAGA movement, we may be talking in a year or so about which candidates can escape the odious distinction of having been connected with Trump.”

Trump “hit the ground running” after his 2024 win, said the Guardian. “On his first day in office he pardoned nearly everyone involved in the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol and launched a radical expansion of executive power, a systematic retribution campaign against perceived adversaries, and a sweeping overhaul of domestic and foreign policy.”...