Robert Davis

Political analysts and observers brutally mocked President Donald Trump after he wrote a post on Truth Social where he seemed to admit that he is at fault for the partial shutdown at the Department of Homeland Security.

Part of DHS has been shut down for more than a month as Republicans and Democrats negotiate over a bill to cut more than $5 billion in funding from the agency and institute a series of reforms to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Democrats have been pushing for the changes since ICE agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The partial shutdown has impacted parts of DHS like the Transportation Security Administration, which has caused security lines to grow at airports nationwide.

"I don’t think we should make any deal with the Crazy, Country Destroying, Radical Left Democrats unless, and until, they Vote with Republicans to pass 'THE SAVE AMERICA ACT," Trump wrote on Truth Social. "It is far more important than anything else we are doing in the Senate, and that includes giving these same terrible people, the Dems (who are to blame for this mess!), a Five Billion Dollar cut in ICE funding, a deal which, even when disguised as something else, is unacceptable to me and the American people - UNLESS it includes their approval of Voter I.D., (with picture!), Citizenship to Vote, No Mail-In Voting (with exceptions), All Paper Ballots, No Men In Women’s Sports, and No Transgender MUTILIZATION of our precious children."

Trump also called on Republicans to package his legislation into one bill, and stay in Washington, D.C. through Easter to pass it, if necessary.

Analysts and observers reacted to the post on social media.

"Trump proves that he is the one responsible for the DHS shutdown," Ron Filipkowski, editor-in-chief at MeidasTouch.com, posted on X.

"Apart from the obvious that he’s a raving lunatic, it’s worth emphasizing that the SAVE America Act is even more restrictive than the SAVE Act (which is dangerous enough), causing even worse administrative burden and inequity," political scientist Miranda Yaver posted on Bluesky.

"Republicans aren't going to stay in D.C. for Easter. They have photo ops of going to Easter church services and Easter Egg Hunts to attend," writer Brian Hall posted on Bluesky.

MAGA Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) faced a bipartisan firestorm on Sunday after he gave a "psychotic" interview on Fox News.

Graham went on "Fox News Sunday" with host Shannon Bream, where he was asked about President Donald Trump's recent threat to take over Kharg Island in the Persian Gulf, a major export hub for the Iranian regime. Graham told Bream that he would advise Trump to take the island and "let the [Iranian] regime die." When Bream pressed Graham about whether the operation would involve American troops on the ground, his response enraged some political analysts and observers.

"We took Iwo Jima. We can take Kharg Island," Graham said.

Graham's comments come at a time when the war in Iran is facing significant scrutiny. Energy prices have soared since the conflict began in late February, adding to the anxieties many voters in the U.S. are feeling about the cost of living.

Analysts and observers reacted to the interview on social media.

"Lindsey didn’t take Iwo Jima. He’s sending our kids to die for oil. Period. This man is a monster," political candidate Fred Wellman posted on X.

"We lost thousands of men in Iwo Jima. Nearly 20,000 wounded. F--- this psychotic a------," political commentator Joanne Carducci posted on X.

"No, Lindsey, 'we' didn’t do Iwo Jima," Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO) posted on X. "Almost 7,000 Americans who died and 19,000 who were wounded did Iwo Jima. And they did it to fight for our freedom—with the support of Congress and the American people."

"We lost 7,000 Marines and 20,000 were wounded," Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) posted on X.

A political analyst was taken aback on Sunday by a report that uncovered new details about the death of disgraced financier and convicted sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein.

On Friday, the Miami Herald reported that several bags of shredded documents were found outside of the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan, where Epstein was being kept. Investigatory documents obtained by the outlet revealed that at least one inmate was involved in disposing of the documents and raised questions about the extent of the prison guards' involvement in the ordeal.

Podcaster and owner of MSW Media, Allison Gill, was taken aback by the report as she discussed it on a new episode of her podcast, "The Breakdown," on Sunday. She called the report a "massive revelation."

"If there weren't already a million really weird coincidences surrounding the death of Jeffrey Epstein, if there weren't a mountain of odd coincidences, this story ... would still raise glaring alarm bells just on its own," Gill said.

Gill noted several facts presented in the report that seemed "pretty convenient." For instance, an inmate named Steven Lopez was interviewed by FBI agents about the document shredding, but was only asked yes-or-no questions. A prison lieutenant was also present during the interview.

"That's pretty intimidating," Gill said.

Gill also pointed to a part of the FBI's report on the interview that said Lopez is "just trying to keep his head down" and "doesn't want to screw up" the new job he's been given in prison.

CNN data guru Harry Enten was astonished on Sunday as President Donald Trump's poll numbers continued to sink.

Enten reported on results from a new CBS News/YouGov poll, which found that 58% of Americans believe they are worse off financially during the Trump administration, compared with 38% in October 2024. Only 18% of Americans said they were better off today, according to the poll.

Enten added that the polls showed a 40-point swing away from Trump by independent voters, whom he said, "usually decide the elections here in the United States." Six in ten independent voters said Trump made them worse off financially, compared to just 13% who said they are better off.

"If I were in the White House, only one word to describe them: Yikes!" Enten said.

Trump's approval rating has been in a historic downturn. According to polls analyzed by The Economist, Trump's approval rating has sunk 18 points during his second term, and he is currently polling about six points worse than he was at this point in the first administration.

Enten said Trump's sinking poll numbers are largely due to the economy, and the war in Iran could soon exacerbate those problems.

He added that Trump's approval numbers are also twice as bad as former President Barack Obama's were at this point in his presidency.

"If I were a Republican running for Congress, I would be shaking in place because there's really nowhere to hide," Enten said.

A political analyst warned on Sunday that President Donald Trump appears to be "sleepwalking toward a real catastrophe" in Iran after his latest threat.

On Saturday, Trump posted on Truth Social that Iran has 48 hours to reopen the Strait of Hormuz "without threat," or else the U.S. would strike Iran's largest energy facilities. The threat came about a month after the war in Iran began, which has caused energy prices to spike globally. Iran has also effectively shut down the Strait of Hormuz, which accounts for 20% of global energy trade, to U.S. trade ships since the war began.

Andrew Egger, White House correspondent for The Bulwark, discussed Trump's new threat in a new episode of "Bulwark Takes" with Sam Stein, the publication's managing editor.

"Maybe he's bluffing. Maybe he's just sort of putting a brave face on it and behind the scenes he's shaking [Defense Secretary] Pete Hegseth by the lapels and saying, 'Find us a way out of this thing immediately,'" Egger said. "I kind of hope he is, but it's possible too that he is actually just sort of sleepwalking us toward a real catastrophe."

Stein noted that Trump's threat to obliterate Iran's energy facilities would come with a significant human toll.

"This is really all kinds of messed up," Stein said.

Political analysts were floored on Sunday after Vice President JD Vance seemed to struggle selling President Donald Trump's war in Iran during a recent public appearance.

Tommy Vietor and Ben Rhodes, co-hosts of "Pod Save the World," said during a new episode that Vance's recent appearance showed he is trying to "distance himself" from Trump's war, but not enough to anger the president. This stance seems to comport with Vance's rhetoric on the campaign trail, where he made it clear that he would rather take a restrained approach to foreign policy, including backing away from supporting Ukraine in its fight against Russian aggression.

But Vance's hesitancy to criticize Trump publicly suggests that the war in Iran has put the Vice President in a bit of a pinch.

"He's trying so hard to signal that he wasn't all in on this war. But also, as people have briefed, he told Trump to go big, and he owns everything they're doing," Vietor said. "It's not working, buddy."

Rhodes, a former national security advisor in the Obama White House, added that Vance's shifting stance on the war in Iran shows he's "full of s---."

"He owns this, and he's never going to be able to come out and fully-throated say he was wrong because he depends on Donald Trump for his political survival," Rhodes said. "So, you're watching JD Vance's diminution as a political figure in real time because his identity doesn't work without opposition to forever wars. It's central to him in a way ... And so, the air of the JD Vance balloon is rapidly running out."

A Nobel-winning economist shared a sobering warning on Sunday after President Donald Trump demonstrated an "incredible weakness" in the war in Iran.

On Saturday, it was reported that the Trump administration had already relaxed sanctions on Iranian oil at sea. The deal accounts for roughly 140,000,000 barrels of oil and was announced at a time when the Trump administration is attempting to address the sharp rise in energy prices since the war in Iran began in late February.

Similarly, Trump threatened to attack Iran's power plants if the country did not allow U.S. ships to begin passing through the Strait of Hormuz again. Iran has effectively blockaded the passageway, which accounts for 20% of global energy trade, since the U.S. and Israel began bombing the country.

Paul Krugman, who won the Nobel Prize in 2008 for his work on trade theory, said in a new video on his Substack on Sunday that Trump's moves make it look increasingly likely that the U.S. will lose the war in Iran. He argued that the U.S. is giving Iran significant leverage by allowing it to dictate trade through the Strait of Hormuz.

"That’s an admission, implicitly, of enormous weakness," Krugman said. "It’s an admission that the Trump administration is not willing to accept sustained pain as part of this war. They’re willing to drop bombs and all of that, but they’re not willing to accept economic pain in the United States, even enough to shut off the revenue flow to the Iranian government."

"And this war is fundamentally about who can stand the pain," he added. "It’s the United States doing lots of damage to Iran, but the Iranian government seems to think it can handle that. And the Iranians trying to inflict enough pain through hurting the world’s supply of oil that the United States ceases and desists."

A controversial MAGA Senator cleared his first hurdle toward becoming the next Department of Homeland Security Secretary on Sunday, according to a new report.

Bloomberg reported that Senators voted 54-37 to advance Sen. Markwayne Mullin's (R-OK) nomination in a procedural vote, which the outlet noted appears to signal that the former MMA fighter has enough support to be confirmed as the next DHS Secretary. The vote happened just a few days after the contentious hearing that Mullin had in the Senate Homeland Security Committee, where he was confronted by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) about his previous comments supporting an attacker who injured Paul.

The vote also happened at a time when Democrats are refusing to support a bill to reopen part of DHS that has been shut down for more than a month. The shutdown has disrupted operations at the Transportation Security Administration, causing security lines to grow at airports across the country.

President Donald Trump has threatened to deploy ICE agents to airports to address the growing security lines. He wrote on Truth Social that he is prepared to deploy the agents as soon as Monday.

Democrats have said they want to secure reforms to Immigration and Customs Enforcement after agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens during a recent surge in Minneapolis, Minnesota. However, the Trump administration has been hesitant, at best, to reform the agency.

President Donald Trump and his MAGA allies seem to be realizing that there is no "formula" to save Trump from the disastrous fallout of the war in Iran, according to one of Trump's biographers.

Since Trump decided to bomb Iran in late February, global energy markets have been in upheaval. The average cost of a gallon of gas in the U.S. has risen by more than $1 per gallon over the last month, at a time when public polls show voters are most concerned about the rising cost of living.

Journalist Michael Wolff, who has written four books about Trump, argued on a recent episode of "Inside Trump's Head," a podcast he co-hosts with Joanna Coles of The Daily Beast, that Trump and his MAGA faithful are starting to realize that the war in Iran is an issue that could bleed over into the midterms, and that could be disastrous for the president.

"Everybody is beginning to try to find the political formula in which Donald Trump and MAGA and this whole enterprise can be saved, and [they are] beginning to worry that there is no such formula," Wolff said.

He argued that the pushback Trump has received from within his own base could spell doom for him during the midterms as well. That could compound if Trump decides to abruptly pull out of Iran and declare victory with Iran maintaining control over its uranium supply and being led by an unpredictable regime, Wolff added.

"Beyond that, that sense that he has betrayed his movement is, I think, real and going to bite him in the a--," Wolff said.

A federal judge slammed President Donald Trump's Department of Justice during a recent court order after the agency admitted to making a rookie mistake in the probe of protesters who attended a church service in St. Paul, Minnesota, according to a new report.

In January, protesters attended a service at City Church in St. Paul, where the pastor, Dave Easterwood, also serves as a top Immigration and Customs Enforcement official in the state. Following the protest, the Department of Justice charged 39 people, including former CNN anchor Don Lemon, with conspiring to violate religious freedoms and interfering with the exercise of religious freedoms.

On Saturday, the New York Times reported that Trump's DOJ dropped charges against one of the protesters "in an apparent case of mistaken identity," a move that Judge Douglas L. Micko in the District of Minnesota argued could have been avoided if the DOJ adhered to some rudimentary steps.

“Here we are, months into a case that the government had an intense appetite to initiate, but cannot seem to keep up the pace when it comes to discovery obligations,” Micko wrote. “This is unacceptable.”

The defendant's lawyer, Brock Hunter, told the NYT that the government believed his client was one of the protesters because they cross-referenced her cell phone location data with video footage and his client's driver's license.

"Mr. Hunter said the government could have avoided the blunder if it had sent Ms. Lewis a letter informing her that she was under criminal investigation," the report reads. "That routine step in federal cases can clear up misconceptions before charges are filed or pave the way for plea deals early on."

President Donald Trump issued a blistering ultimatum to the Iranian regime on Saturday night, one that raised the eyebrows of multiple political analysts and observers.

Trump posted on Truth Social that Iran has 48 hours to reopen the Strait of Hormuz or else the U.S. will strike multiple energy plants in the country. He made the threat as global energy prices continue to climb from the regime's effective blockade of the Strait of Hormuz to U.S. ships.

"If Iran doesn’t FULLY OPEN, WITHOUT THREAT, the Strait of Hormuz, within 48 HOURS from this exact point in time, the United States of America will hit and obliterate their various POWER PLANTS, STARTING WITH THE BIGGEST ONE FIRST!" Trump wrote.

Over the last week, multiple power plants and energy fields in Iran have been struck by Israeli forces. The strikes became such a problem for the Trump administration that Trump demanded Israel stop striking Iran without telling the U.S. first. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has suggested that the Trump administration has been made aware of Israeli operations.

"I'm old enough to remember when he said the U.S. doesn't care because we don't even use the Strait of Hormuz. It was, like, yesterday," space archaeologist Justin Walsh posted on Bluesky.

"We’re not even a month into this war yet, and he’s already threatening to do war crimes on main," journalist Matt Novak posted on Bluesky.

"Such a move would disproportionately harm civilians, something the regime has made clear it cares little about," journalist Yashar Ali posted on X.

"From claiming the war is 'winding down' to threatening a new act of terror against a country of 90 million people," journalist Aaron Maté posted on X.

President Donald Trump appears to have given Iran a way to inflict economic pain across the globe for years to come, according to one expert.

Josh Lipsky, senior director of The Atlantic Council's GeoEconomics Center, argued during a new CNN interview on Saturday that Iran has learned it can cause significant economic damage by controlling the Strait of Hormuz, and that the regime could leverage that for the foreseeable future. Lipsky noted that Iran learned this lesson after Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu started bombing Iran in late February.

The Trump administration's recent decision to relax sanctions on roughly 140,000,000 barrels of Iranian oil at sea only reinforces that point, Lipsky noted.

"The message Iran has received over the past three weeks and has shown through their actions, is that they realize they have what I would call asymmetric economic leverage over the rest of the world, and that's through the Strait of Hormuz chokepoint," Lipsky said. "They know that people, not just in the U.S., but around the world, do not want higher gas prices. They don't want higher airline prices. And we're already seeing that trickle in."

"This one choke point has ripple effects all over the world," he continued. "So Iran is leveraging everything they can because they can't fight back militarily in a significant way, despite what we just saw in Israel. They can't really compete with the U.S. and Israel, but economically, they can cause pain. And their gamble is that they can cause enough pain to get the U.S., Israel, and others to relent. And so the administration is trying to find ways to ease that economic pain."

Energy prices have soared since the war in Iran began. As of Friday, a barrel of crude oil cost more than $98, which represents a 48% increase from the previous month. In turn, the average cost of a gallon of gas in the U.S. has increased by almost $1 a gallon up to $3.92, according to AAA.

Lipsky noted that prices are unlikely to come down anytime soon because the Strait of Hormuz, which accounts for 20% of global energy trade, has become a high-risk passage.

"That's not something companies and people were predicting even a month ago," he said.

A House Democrat smacked down President Donald Trump's rambling threat to deploy Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to airports nationwide.

Trump wrote on Truth Social on Saturday that he is considering sending ICE officers to conduct security screenings at airports as negotiations to reopen part of the Department of Homeland Security seem to have stalled.

"If the Radical Left Democrats don’t immediately sign an agreement to let our Country, in particular, our Airports, be FREE and SAFE again, I will move our brilliant and patriotic ICE Agents to the Airports where they will do Security like no one has ever seen before, including the immediate arrest of all Illegal Immigrants who have come into our Country, with heavy emphasis on those from Somalia, who have totally destroyed, with the approval of a corrupt Governor, Attorney General, and Congresswoman, Ilhan Omar, the once Great State of Minnesota," Trump wrote.

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) clapped back at Trump, reminding him that she holds only one office, whereas his Truth Social post suggests she holds three.

"This man can’t win one election in Minnesota, but apparently I won three offices simultaneously," Omar posted on X.

Trump's threat came as the Senate debated legislation to reopen parts of DHS that had been shut down for more than a month. Democrats have demanded reforms to ICE in exchange for supporting legislation to reopen the agency.

President Donald Trump threw a tantrum on Truth Social on Saturday about a New York Times column that was critical of his strategy in the war in Iran.

The New York Times's White House and National Security Correspondent, David Sanger, reported that Trump is "eyeing an exit" from the war in Iran, but added that the president appears not to have "decided whether to take it." Sanger's report apparently didn't sit well with Trump, who raged at Sanger personally in a new Truth Social post.

"The United States has blown Iran off of the map, and yet their lightweight analyst, David Sanger, says that I haven’t met my own goals," Trump wrote. "Yes I have, and weeks ahead of schedule!"

"Their leadership is gone, their navy and air force are dead, they have absolutely no defense, and they want to make a deal," he added. "I don’t! We are weeks ahead of schedule. Just like their incompetent Election coverage of me, The Failing New York Times always gets it wrong!"

Trump's post was made at a time when his administration is facing considerable backlash for coordinating bombing strikes in Iran with Israel. The war appears to have sundered Trump's MAGA coalition, and public polling suggests the war is deeply unpopular with voters.

President Donald Trump threatened "grossly incompetent" Democrats in Congress on Saturday that he is ready to deploy Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to airports across the country after talks to reopen the Department of Homeland Security fell through.

DHS has been partially shut down for more than a month, meaning some employees, including those in the Transportation Security Administration, haven't been paid. In turn, security lines at airports have become a matter of public concern. Trump wrote on Truth Social earlier on Saturday that he would send ICE agents to conduct security checks while negotiations continued.

Trump upped the ante on Saturday evening in another post on Truth Social.

"The Democrats want to give our Country away to the illegals who they allowed to pour through our now very strong Border. I won’t allow that to happen. The Democrats are grossly incompetent! ICE is ready to go on Monday. President DONALD J. TRUMP," he wrote.

The post was made at a time when negotiations to reopen part of DHS seemed to have stalled out. The Hill reported that Trump's border czar, Tom Homan, was scheduled to meet with some lawmakers on Saturday night, but the meeting was cancelled.