Kathleen Culliton

President Donald Trump suffered a public meltdown Sunday morning over his plummeting poll numbers and the people who report them.

Trump took to Truth Social about 8:45 a.m. to threaten political journalists who report to their readers the president's popularity ratings have stagnated at roughly negative-20 points since late May.

THE FAKE POLLS USED BY OUR CROOKED MEDIA ARE OUT OF CONTROL, AND SOMETHING MUST BE DONE ABOUT IT," Trump wrote. "FCC TO THE RESCUE!"

It remains unclear what Trump expects the Federal Communications Commission to do, but the agency has been accused by ABC News of intimidating the network into making programming changes.

Earlier this month, ABC sued the FCC on First Amendment grounds, arguing its demand for early review of broadcast licenses posed an "existential threat."

The demand arrived after late-night host Jimmy Kimmel infuriated the president with his joke about First Lady Melania Trump, according to PBS and the Guardian.

Kimmel said Melania Trump glowed "like an expectant widow" — two days before a failed attack at the White House Correspondents' Dinner.

The Brookings Institute reports this was not the first time the FCC leveraged its power at Trump's behest.

"It is a bad business deal and an even worse deal for democracy," their report states. "We saw it with Jimmy Kimmel, “The View,” and now the Iran war: When Trump doesn’t like broadcast coverage of his administration, he often threatens their existence, and the chairman of the FCC joins in."

A political "prairie fire" has erupted in the midwest for Republican Senators who fear President Donald Trump is only fueling the flames, Politico reported Sunday.

Republicans told Politico they're deeply concerned Democrats will regain control of the Senate in November as Trump policy wallops farmers and promotes his personal brand.

“He’s in serious trouble in farm country,” Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) told Politico. “He being Trump — and Trump is us. I’m not very optimistic.”

The midwest is crucial territory for Democrats seeking to flip Republican, Politico noted. If they hold Michigan and claim Ohio and Iowa, Democrats will almost certainly reign in the Senate for Trump's last two years in office.

And Trump has become a tough sell in those states as tariffs mount, gas prices spike and the president allows for imported beef.

Adam Hamilton, a pastor-turned-Democratic nominee running against Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS), told Politico that people in Kansas are feeling desperate.

“What I’m hearing when I go across the state is people saying — and these are Republicans, not Democrats — we can’t have six more years of this, or even two more years of this," Hamilton said.

Josh Turek, the Democratic state lawmaker running against Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-IA) reported a similar state of affairs in Iowa.,

“We’re going through a second farm crisis right now, Farmageddon," said Turek.

Even as these Democrats capitalize on Trump's cratering popularity among struggling Americans, Trump hoards campaign cash and uses his position of power to enjoy himself, Politico reported.

"When Trump is not living the life of a 12-year-old boy — hosting UFC fights on the White House lawn and watching Indy cars go vroom through downtown D.C. — he’s fixated on naming things after himself," the report states.

"It’s all so small. Yet it’s no laughing matter when the American voter is paying $4 for a gallon of regular."

As his reputation circles the bowl, one particular of President Donald Trump's legacy remains: toilet paper.

That's the analysis from MS NOW Sunday morning on how Trump's trade war with Canada has Americans worrying once again about toilet paper — and raging at the president.

"Call it another stain on Trump’s handling of the economy," wrote analyst Anna Kim.

This isn't the first time Trump's administration has caused Americans to panic over toilet paper.

There was the "Great Toilet Paper Panic of 2020" at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic when supply chain disruptions had people bartering faces masks for rolls, toilet paper heists and a surge in the popularity of bidets, Kim reported.

Toilet paper has often haunted Trump, who made headlines in 2018 boarding Air Force One with what appeared to be toilet paper stuck to his shoe and is plagued by rumors he wears adult diapers.

Trump's also been mocked by a piece of artwork called "America" — which is indeed a golden toilet — and Trump-themed toilet paper.

Now, Trump's toilet paper troubles have returned.

Canada, Kim explained, is the nation's largest supplier of toilet paper imports which means they'll be subject to a 50% tariff.

While Kim predicted toilet paper prices are unlikely to skyrocket, due to the large amount the U.S. produces and the small percentage (5) of Canadian tee-pee the U.S. consumes — she argued it was still a newsworthy concern.

"Access to affordable TP might have even more resonance than prices at the pump," she wrote. "Not everyone has a car, but everyone uses the bathroom."

As Trump's poll ratings plummet, Kim concluded the Republican party should share Americans' concerns about toilet paper.

"It’s a bad sign for the GOP that consumers feel squeezed by their Charmin — instead of vice versa," she wrote.

"By rekindling his trade war with Canada, Trump hasn’t just flushed away the last vestiges of goodwill with our closest ally. He’s wiped away any pretense of concern about Americans’ daily struggles with affordability."

The president's longtime biographer Michael Wolff struck a nerve on Saturday with his commentary about the "buffoons" Donald Trump has endorsed.

The Daily Beast's report on Wolff's reasoning included a raging-mad remark from the White House after the outlet reached out for comment.

“Michael Wolff is a professional scumbag and serial liar whose brain has been completely warped by his severe and incurable disease known as Trump Derangement Syndrome," a White House spokesperson said.

Wolff has made multiple headlines of late as a go-to expert on all things Trump.

He is known to comment on the president's "struggling" marriage, Trump's eye-bulging rages, adult-diaper rumors and his relationship with the notorious Jeffrey Epstein.

On Saturday, Wolff added Trump's questionable endorsements to that list.

“There’s an interesting pattern of men who won’t admit to their wives that they are voting for Donald Trump, and then they vote for Donald Trump,” Wolff said.

“The dynamic is different in this midterm election because he’s not on the ballot. So, you know, the buffoons who are running in his name don’t have the luxury of being the ultimate buffoon, as it were.”

This is why Wolff believes Trump's ballot "buffoons" won't fare well come election day.

“You might like to vote for the greatest buffoon of all time, but the many buffoons, you don’t really want," Wolff said. "Do you really want to vote for Ken Paxton?”

House Speaker Mike Johnson unwittingly skewered President Donald Trump on live television Saturday when two off-the-cuff comments bounced badly off B-roll.

The leading House Republican mistakenly lobbed insults at the leader of his own political party when Newsmax aired images of Trump in the Oval Office and Johnson said this:

"It's not unlawful for crazy people to run for office," Johnson said. "Never at this level."

While it appears Johnson did not mean to imply Trump was crazy, many of the president's critics have said so outright.

George Conway, for example, appeared on MS NOW hours earlier in the day to argue Trump was a malignant narcissist and a sociopath losing his grip on reality.

"He is the malignant narcissist, the sociopath," Conway said. "These people become more and more delusional over time because they create their own little world."

Meanwhile, Johnson doubled down on his b-roll botches as Newsmax aired footage of a voter submitting a mail-in ballot.

"A number of people are so determined to rip the Constitution in half," Johnson said over the footage.

That was exactly the point New York Times analyst Jamelle Bouie made Saturday in his column warning Trump's efforts to limit mail-in voting had ripped a "Trump-size hole in the constitutional order."

"The president of the United States is engaged in a conspiracy against the voting rights of the American people," wrote Bouie, "which is to say that the president is engaged in a conspiracy against the Constitution itself."

Call it socialism, imperialism, corruption or theft — senators, conservatives, journalists, former ambassadors and economists all agree President Donald Trump's "deal" to control 65 billion barrels of Venezuelan oil is a very bad move.

Trump's Truth Social announcement on Friday of a deal with Delcy Rodríguez — who became Venezuela's acting president in January after the U.S. military captured former President Nicolás Maduro — spurred an uproar over cries of corruption.

"Using our troops for a private oil grab is corruption at epic scale," said Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA). "Here’s a guarantee—this will pad the pockets of Trump family and Big Oil companies and delay transition to cleaner energy."

Kaine was not the only U.S. senator to condemn Trump's deal with Venezuela — or to claim corruption was the cause.

"This isn't a win," said Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD). "This is proof Trump put our service members at risk to get Venezuelan oil for his billionaire buddies. Putting our soldiers’ lives on the line for private profit is a gross dereliction of his constitutional duty."

Independent journalist Juliet Jeske of Decoding Fox News also looked at the deal from a humanitarian perspective.

"Trump is stealing oil from country that just had a catastrophic earthquake and where most of the populace lives in extreme poverty," Jeske wrote on X. "I don’t think he ever really cared about Maduro. He just wanted their oil."

This perspective was shared by Michael McFaul, a Stanford University professor of political science who served as U.S. Ambassador to Russia from 2012 to 2014.

"Delcy Rodriguez is a dictator," McFaul wrote. "Cutting a deal with her to steal Venezuelan oil to benefit Americans is both immoral and impractical. The Venezuelan people will never go along with this deal."

McFaul fumed that Trump had yanked the U.S. back to the 19th century and the age of imperialism.

"We are now acting like a typical imperialist empire," McFaul said. "His Venezuelan oil deal is just that- straight-up imperialism, using military force to seize the assets of a country in the south. Deeply regrettable."

CNN's Jim Acosta echoed this concern — arguing the president had taken the U.S. back to the 1700s — but added a jab at Trump's rising gas-price problems.

"Trump is desperate," Acosta wrote. "Trump is choosing oil over freedom for the Venezuelan people. Experts say this won’t lower gas prices right away."

Even some conservatives fumed at Trump's fuel fix, among them conservative think tank Cato Institute economics expert Scott Lincicome.

"So, after taking 31 US government equity stakes in private companies over the last year, Trump just announced a MAJORITY-STATE-OWNED oil company?" wrote Lincicome. "This isn't even 'creeping' socialism anymore."

Independent journalist Aaron Rupar likened the "deal" to a form of socialism as well — National Socialism.

"Nazi Germany also pillaged the natural resources of countries it conquered," Rupar wrote.

President Donald Trump has failed to transform the U.S. from a republic to a regime — but the nation could still crumble unless Democrats make one decisive move to prevent it, a columnist argued Saturday.

New York Times political analyst Jamelle Bouie outlined a bleak state of conditions in Trump's America in which the president has already begun making moves to subvert the upcoming midterm elections.

"The president of the United States is engaged in a conspiracy against the voting rights of the American people, which is to say that the president is engaged in a conspiracy against the Constitution itself," wrote Bouie.

"This is part of a larger effort, spearheaded by the most fanatical of his allies, like Stephen Miller, to end the American republic and supplant it with an authoritarian regime in which President Trump holds sovereign authority over the whole nation."

Bouie based his claim on Trump's efforts to seize state's power to run their own elections, his waging war abroad without permission from congress, and the deployment of violent Immigration agents into American cities to "terrorize" communities.

"Thousands of people have been kidnapped in the street and whisked away to squalid detention centers, where dozens have died," wrote Bouie. "Many thousands more, including some American citizens, have been deported, sometimes to countries they’ve never seen or visited in their lives."

The columnist drew a direct comparison to the genocidal Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler when he described the Trump administration's interpretation of their mandate.

"The attitude of the president and his advisers is that the 2024 election was an enabling act for a constitutional revolution, in which rule by the people was replaced by the Führerprinzip," wrote Bouie.

But that mandate has failed, Bouie argued.

"I believe Trump has failed to accomplish authoritarian consolidation," wrote Bouie. "But he has ripped an enormously damaging Trump-size hole in the constitutional order."

That's why, according to Bouie, Democrats must prioritize a single action.

"Should Democrats capture a majority, they must make the reconstruction of the American political order their first priority," Bouie wrote. "That includes an impeachment trial against President Trump."

Canadian geese with orange hair, muscular hands and machine guns patrol Lake Ontario in President Donald Trump's latest AI -slop fever dream.

The leader of the free world dubbed these terrifying birds "Donald Ducks."

Trump, 80, shared this bizarre video as criticism and ridicule mount over his trade war with Canada and executive order renaming Lake Ontario "Lake America."

It also appeared soon after The Bulwark revealed a Trump loyalist was caught in an audio bemoaning "Trump fatigue" she worried would drive Republican voters away from the polls.

“We’re not helping ourselves today when we decide to rename Lake Ontario ‘Lake America,'" said Rep. Stephanie Bice (R-OK). "I mean, yeah, these are not—this does not help the case, right?”

Trump apparently disagreed.

After a morning spent insulting CNN and praising Henry Enten, Trump shared a 34-second video of a phalanx of armed geese marching to the "Hawaii Five-O" theme song.

They can be seen quacking, running, staring menacingly into the camera and shooting their machine guns into the sky.

Trump's followers on X were charmed and enchanted.

"President Trump just posted this gem," wrote political commentator Eric Daugherty. "Lake America, protected by Donald Ducks Pure gold."

Ducks and geese are different, science shows.

One MAGA lawmaker has a new message for voters "exhausted" by President Donald Trump: Move over.

That's according to a new audio recording, unearthed by The Bulwark, in which Rep. Stephanie Bice (R-OK) can be heard bemoaning Trump's impact on voters.

"I was at a board meeting yesterday with a group, and one of the execs said to me, ‘I’m a Republican, I’ve been a Republican for a long time, but I have Trump fatigue,'" Bice said. "It’s a fair statement, you know?”

Bice was speaking to Republican students at Oklahoma State University Thursday evening when she shared her concerns about what "Trump fatigue" will mean in the upcoming midterm elections.

The Republican told students she worried voters would either vote Democrat or not vote at all — and all because of Trump.

"The challenge that we have is that we have to get over the narrative that ‘I don’t like this guy so I’m going to vote for the Democrat,’” said Bice. “Because I’m telling you right now, I’m hearing it already.”

Bice then made two predictions should Republicans fail to overcome the fatigue.

“They’re going to vote for the Democrat and they may split [the] ticket and vote for me and a few others, or—this is my bigger fear right now—people don’t go vote,” she said.

Publicly, Bice is what The Bulwark dubbed as an "unabashed Trump ally" — and it was this persona a spokesperson tried to protect in a statement to the news outlet.

“She was relaying a comment made by someone else and discussing the importance of Republicans turning out and voting for the entire ticket,” said Wesley Harkins. “Congresswoman Bice strongly supports President Trump... Any suggestion otherwise takes her comments out of context.”

But according to The Bulwark, Bice spoke in depth about the problems hypothetical voters have with the low-polling president she "strongly supports."

"While many of Trump’s problems stem from discontent with the economy and the ongoing war against Iran, Bice added that his focus on personal feuds with the Canadian prime minister and others weren’t making things better and were likely making the situation much worse," The Bulwark reported.

Bice was recorded as saying, “We’re not helping ourselves today when we decide to rename Lake Ontario ‘Lake America.’ I mean, yeah, these are not—this does not help the case, right?”

New York Times journalist Maggie Haberman refused to apologize Saturday after her reporting spurred President Donald Trump to make what one MS NOW anchor dubbed as "horrible attacks."

Haberman appeared on MS NOW to address Trump's critical response to her reporting on a New York City-born president's decision to skip the upcoming 9/11 memorial at Ground Zero.

"That's objectively news," said Haberman. "It wasn't going to stay secret."

This measured response stood in stark contrast to Trump's, who erupted with rage on Truth Social Friday night.

“Maggot Hagerman, the Fake Reporter from The Failing New York Times, an unattractive person both inside and out,” Trump wrote. "She’s a stalker, and should be forced to turn over any and all money that she’s made through her fake reporting on me.”

Trump accused Haberman of falsely reporting that he would attend a Pentagon ceremony rather than the World Trade Center site because he would not be permitted to speak at Ground Zero.

“It will all be revealed in the lawsuit against them," Trump wrote. “If she were ever forced to reveal her ‘sources,’ you will find out they either don’t exist, or didn’t say what she reported."

A senior White House official later claimed to MS NOW that Trump would attend the Pentagon ceremony because Vice President J.D. Vance would be attending the 9/11 ceremony and security measures mandate the two men not appear in public together.

Asked to respond, Haberman noted the New York Times stood by her report, which had relied on multiple sources.

"We were quite transparent with them about what we were reporting, including the part about that part of the reason why he was not going to New York," Haberman said. "Then 24 hours later, the president started attacking the piece."

George Conway hurled expletives and quoted Janis Joplin Saturday as he tried to explain why President Donald Trump won't spend money on his fellow Republicans ahead of the midterms — a decision host Eugene Daniels dubbed "strange."

Conway, a vocal Trump critic and founder of the Lincoln Project, appeared on MS NOW to share his theory as to why Republicans continue to beg the president to spend some of his $400 million super PAC funds on their cash-starved political campaigns.

"The problem is he does not give a s--- about anyone other than himself," Conway said. "Trump is the most narcissistic human being we have ever seen in American politics. Full stop."

Conway grounded his case for Trump's "malignant narcissism" in the roots of the president's political life, arguing the personality trait explained his rise and his pending fall.

He asked viewers to recall the nation before Trump came into office when, he argued, Americans were tired of being told they had to help the poor and needy. Then Conway quoted Joplin.

"It was kind of like the Janis Joplin song, 'Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz,'" said Conway. "It's about the gospel of getting rich — and so that was the appeal of Trump... He gave a permission structure for everyone to be their worst selves."

While Americans envisioned a world of people who only cared about themselves together, Conway argued, Trump had other ideas.

Those ideas are now on full display as Trump hoards his campaign coffers and dodges assassination threats in the company of his human "binkie," Conway claimed.

"He is the malignant narcissist, the sociopath," Conway said. "These people become more and more delusional over time because they create their own little world. That's what Natalie Harp is about. She protects him."

Harp's constant praise explains why Trump has failed to understand that his actions could result in a "midterm reckoning" in the upcoming elections, Conway concluded.

"His aides won't tell him...negative things," he said. "They'll just say, 'Boss, your message hasn't really gotten out — it's our fault."

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's desperate efforts to control the narrative on the Iran war have succeeded only in revealing how little control over the situation he has, a columnist argued Saturday.

This withering rebuke of Hegseth's actions against military journalists and service members who have reported untenable conditions, as the war drags into its seventh month, came courtesy of Salon analyst Sophia Tesfaye.

"Rather than addressing any systemic failures on the part of the department, Hegseth’s command structure has resorted to authoritarian retaliation," wrote Tesfaye.

"The silencing of the press and scapegoating of desperate sailors does not hide Hegseth’s mess."

Tesfaye detailed several ongoing scandals that Hegseth has proved unable to control, from the Pentagon's firing three journalists at its military newspaper Stars and Stripes to the suicide attempts reported aboard the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln.

Rather than curb criticism, Hegseth has made the military newspaper a household name as the fired publisher, editor-in-chief and a reporter pursue legal action against the federal government — and revealed something significant about the Trump administration, Tesfaye argued.

"Hegseth’s purging of the publication’s editorial leadership, under the fraudulent guise of insubordination, for making troubling information public is a signal that the administration’s public relations take precedence over the lives and wellbeing of American service members," she wrote.

"This is how an insecure political operation behaves when the facts catch up with its propaganda."

Hegseth has also failed to convince the public as that a sailor who attempted suicide by jumping overboard the Lincoln was guilty of "malingering" — the disciplinary charge that sailor now faces, argued Tesfaye.

Outrage has only mounted as military families report their loved ones suffer food shortages and terrifying exhaustion aboard the Lincoln, slated soon to return to the U.S, she concluded:

"The war’s abysmal poll numbers show the American people see through the fog of Hegseth’s propaganda."

President Donald Trump admitted to befuddlement late Friday night when he took to Truth Social to rage at a political foe.

Trump lashed out at New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) after she refused to start calling Lake Ontario "Lake America" and cast blame on the president for prioritizing semantics over serious issues such as inflation.

"Governor Kathy Hochul is for Canada, a Country that has been ripping off New York State for years, especially under her Administration, instead of the good ‘ol U.S.A," Trump raged. "Can you imagine her saying that she won’t respect or acknowledge LAKE AMERICA."

While Trump argued "Dumocrats" such as Hochul were "bad for our country," Hochul argued his mounting war with Iran and trade war with Canada were worse.

"New York families are being hit with higher costs for energy, groceries, and prescription drugs because of Trump's actions," Hochul wrote on X. "Instead of fixing these issues, the president is trying to rename Lake Ontario. Shame on him for deflecting from the real needs of Americans.

Hochul also argued Trump's rename was telling, as it changed the acronym students use to remember the great lakes (Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie and Superior) from HOMES to SHAME.

Trump's Thursday order to rename Lake Ontario has drawn much criticism from analysts who say it's risky to antagonize one of the nation's top trading partners with a rehash of a past move that was deeply unpopular ahead of the midterm elections.

President Donald Trump's desperate attempt to engage his MAGA base with a terrible rehash of a previously unpopular move provoked a strange theory from a prominent political analyst Friday morning.

Trump's executive order renaming Lake Ontario as Lake America will underline to conservative voters his obsession with trivialities and remind them of one the most unpopular moves he made at the beginning of his second term, CNN's Aaron Blake argued.

"The move recalls one of Trump’s splashiest (so to speak) moves on his first day back in office last year, when he signed an order renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the 'Gulf of America,'" wrote Blake. "That went over like a lead balloon."

Polls show Trump's decision to rename the Gulf was more unpopular than his pardons of Jan. 6 defendants with 70 percent of Americans opposing it in multiple polls.

Blake noted those polls were taken before Trump's renaming spree.

"Americans have taken a pretty dim view of Trump’s penchant for renaming things — including after himself," he wrote. After his handpicked board of loyalists tried to rename the Kennedy Center after Trump, Americans said by a 2-to-1 margin that he had 'gone too far.'"

Trump faces shorter odds of winning approval for "Lake America" considering the current political context — prices are rising as his war with Iran wages on, Blake argued.

Also — Americans like Canada, he wrote.

"These kinds of stunts might have felt a little cuter when Trump was riding higher early in his term, they now risk reinforcing how preoccupied he is with not just trifles, but things that Americans decidedly do not want," he wrote.

"Even some Republicans are balking, with the GOP nominee for Wisconsin governor, Rep. Tom Tiffany, saying Thursday that the name should stay the same."

So why did Trump decide to escalate hostilities with Canada? Blake has a surprising theory.

"You could say he’s playing the hits. But it’s really playing the flops," wrote Blake. "It increasingly feels as though President Donald Trump is trying to do unpopular things."