Trump approval rating takes another hit in latest poll

Lauren Sforza
Sun, August 17, 2025 


Donald Trump's poll numbers have taken another hit.

President Donald Trump’s approval rating slipped again in the latest Pew Research Center poll released Thursday.

The Pew Research Center poll found that Trump’s approval rating has dropped three percentage points over the past two months and is down nine points since shortly after he took office. The poll ultimately found that Trump had a 38% approval rating among all Americans, which is down from the 47% approval rating in January.

The poll found Trump’s approval rating also dropped among those who voted for him since taking office earlier this year. Trump’s approval rating among his own supporters fell from 95% recorded earlier this year to 85% in the latest poll.


The Pew Research Center found that an overwhelming majority of those who identify as strong Republicans still approve of how he is handling his job as president. About 93% approve of his job performance, slightly down from the 96% who said the same shortly after he took office.

The research center highlighted a significant change in approval among certain Republican-leaning groups.

The research center noted that there has been “substantial erosion in his approval over this period among those who identify as Republicans but not strongly, as well as among independents who lean toward the GOP.”

“About six-in-ten of those in these groups approve of Trump’s performance today, down from roughly three-quarters at the start of his second term,” the research center wrote in its press release.

The Pew Research Center also found that public assessments of Trump’s personality traits have also fallen off since 2024.

More from the research center:

Fewer now say he cares about the needs of ordinary people (37% today, 42% last summer), is a good role model (29% now, 34% then) or is mentally sharp (48% now, 53% then).

Trump is widely described as standing up for what he believes in: 68% say this today, identical to the share who said this last summer.

The poll was conducted among 3,554 adults from Aug. 4 to 10, 2025. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 1.8 percentage points.

NJ.com.

What is President Donald Trump's current approval rating? See the most recent polls

Laura Daniella Sepulveda, Kinsey Crowley and Samantha Neely, 

Arizona Republic
Sat, August 16, 2025 a




President Donald Trump’s approval ratings continue to sink near record lows as he faces a week marked by tense diplomacy, legal battles and partisan fights over political maps.

On Friday, Trump met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska, hoping to reach a deal to end the three-year war in Ukraine.

While Trump called the talks “extremely productive,” the summit ended without a resolution on the most important issue. “We had an extremely productive meeting and many points were agreed to,” Trump said in a short statement to the media without taking questions. “One is probably the most significant. … We didn’t get there, but we have a very good chance of getting there.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had urged President Trump to take a strong stance. Trump said before the meeting he might consider U.S. security guarantees for Ukraine and has in the past threatened economic penalties on Russia. He was yet to speak with Zelenskyy after the summit.

Also on Friday, the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit against Trump over his federal takeover of the city’s police force, calling the move “brazen” and saying it has caused "operational havoc" within the department.

Meanwhile, Trump’s political operatives continue to pressure Republicans in Texas, Florida and Ohio to redraw congressional maps in ways that could favor Republicans ahead of the 2026 elections. The strategy has drawn pushback from California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who announced Thursday a special election to advance his own redistricting plan and renewed calls for a national ban on partisan gerrymandering.

Here's what to know about Trump's approval rating, including how they are decided and how Trump's ratings compare with his first term and past presidents.
What is Donald Trump's approval rating?

Here are the latest approval ratings released about Trump's administration:


A state-by-state survey released on Aug. 12 by the Morning Consult showed that while Trump's approval rating nationally remains historically low, he still holds a positive approval rating in 27 states.


According to the New York Times' daily average of polls, last updated on Aug. 15, Trump held a 44% approval and 53% disapproval ratings.


A Reuters/Ipsos poll reported that, as of July 20, 40% of those surveyed gave him a favorable approval rating of his performance in office.


The Economist shows that 42% of people are favorable of Trump and 54% are unfavorable of him, according to the latest update from Aug. 15.


A Rasmussen Reports poll from Aug. 15 showed 49% approval and 49% disapproval of Trump.


A Morning Consult poll updated Aug. 11 showed 45% approve and 51% disapprove.


The American Research Group poll from July 17-20 showed 38% approve and 59% disapprove.

Trump has a positive approval rating in 27 states

Trump's approval rating is above water in 27 states, according to an Aug. 12 update from Morning Consult, which gathers polls over the course of three months to get a look at state-level data among registered voters. The number of states who approve of Trump is unchanged from July's update.

Trump is most popular by Morning Consult in Wyoming, where 66% of voters approve of his job performance, and least popular in Vermont, where 64% disapprove of his job performance.

In the political sphere: Mayor Gallego, Sen. Kelly paint bleak future for uninsured Arizonans
What is Trump's approval rating in Arizona?

Arizona was the only state in the Morning Consult's survey with a neutral net approval rating, meaning exactly half of the voters who were surveyed approve of his job performance, and the other half don't.
How does Trump's approval rating compare with his 1st term?

Trump had a final approval rating of 34% when he left office in 2021. His approval average during his first term was 41%.
How does Trump's approval rating compare with past presidents?

Joe Biden - 40%


Donald Trump (first term) - 34%


Barack Obama - 59%


George W. Bush - 34%


Bill Clinton - 66%


George H.W. Bush - 56%


Ronald Reagan - 63%


Jimmy Carter - 34%


Gerald Ford - 53%


Richard Nixon - 24%
Are presidential approval ratings accurate?

Data agency Gallup notes that these approval ratings are a "simple measure, yet a very powerful one that has played a key role in politics for over 70 years."

A president’s approval rating reflects the percentage of Americans polled who approve of the president’s performance. Anything can impact a president's rating, such as legislation passed, actions and elections.

According to ABC News, an approval rating doesn't just represent how well the administration is doing for the general public, but could determine the outcome of an upcoming election for a politician or how much they get done during their time in office.

While these ratings are easy to understand, Quorum says some analysts believe they are not as useful as they once were due to extreme partisanship and the polarized political climate.

“Presidential approval ratings have always been partisan, with members of the president’s party offering more positive assessments than those in the opposing party,” according to the Pew Research Center. “But the differences between Republicans and Democrats on views of the president have grown substantially in recent decades.”

USA TODAY Network reporter Maria Francis contributed to this article.

Judge denies Trump administration request to end a policy protecting immigrant children in custody

Associated Press
Sat, August 16, 2025 


Children play soccer at a US government holding center for migrant children in Carrizo Springs, Texas on July 9, 2019. - Eric Gay/AP/File


A federal judge ruled Friday to deny the Trump administration’s request to end a policy in place for nearly three decades that is meant to protect immigrant children in federal custody.

US District Judge Dolly Gee in Los Angeles issued her ruling a week after holding a hearing with the federal government and legal advocates representing immigrant children in custody.

Gee called last week’s hearing “déjà vu” after reminding the court of the federal government’s attempt to terminate the Flores Settlement Agreement in 2019 under the first Trump administration. She repeated the sentiment in Friday’s order.

“There is nothing new under the sun regarding the facts or the law. The Court therefore could deny Defendants’ motion on that basis alone,” Gee wrote, referring to the government’s appeal to a law they believed kept the court from enforcing the agreement.

In the most recent attempt, the government argued they made substantial changes since the agreement was formalized in 1997, creating standards and policies governing the custody of immigrant children that conform to legislation and the agreement.

Gee acknowledged that the government made some improved conditions of confinement, but wrote, “These improvements are direct evidence that the FSA is serving its intended purpose, but to suggest that the agreement should be abandoned because some progress has been made is nonsensical.”

Attorneys representing the federal government told the court the agreement gets in the way of their efforts to expand detention space for families, even though Trump’s tax and spending bill provided billions to build new immigration facilities.

Tiberius Davis, one of the government attorneys, said the bill gives the government authority to hold families in detention indefinitely. “But currently under the Flores Settlement Agreement, that’s essentially void,” he said last week.

The Flores agreement, named for a teenage plaintiff, was the result of over a decade of litigation between attorneys representing the rights of migrant children and the US government over widespread allegations of mistreatment in the 1980s.

The agreement set standards for how licensed shelters must provide food, water, adult supervision, emergency medical services, toilets, sinks, temperature control and ventilation. It also limited how long US Customs and Border Protection could detain child immigrants to 72 hours. The Department of Health and Human Services then takes custody of the children.

The Biden administration successfully pushed to partially end the agreement last year. Gee ruled that special court supervision may end when HHS takes custody, but she carved out exceptions for certain types of facilities for children with more acute needs.

In arguing against the Trump administration’s effort to completely end the agreement, advocates said the government was holding children beyond the time limits. In May, CBP held 46 children for over a week, including six children held for over two weeks and four children held 19 days, according to data revealed in a court filing. In March and April, CPB reported that it had 213 children in custody for more than 72 hours. That included 14 children, including toddlers, who were held for over 20 days in April.

The federal government is looking to expand its immigration detention space, including by building more centers like one in Florida dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz,” where a lawsuit alleges detainees’ constitutional rights are being violated.

Gee still has not ruled on the request by legal advocates for the immigrant children to expand independent monitoring of the treatment of children held in Customs and Border Protection facilities. Currently, the agreement allows for third-party inspections at facilities in the El Paso and Rio Grande Valley regions, but plaintiffs submitted evidence showing long detention times at border facilities that violate the agreement’s terms.

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'THE WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING'

Despite Trump’s tough tone now, things were much worse in Washington when the National Guard was rolled out in 1968

Andy Rose, CNN
Sun, August 17, 2025 


National Guard troops stand on 9th Street between L and M Streets in the northwest section of Washington, DC, on April 6, 1968. - Bob Schutz/AP

Fear in the streets. Buildings burning. Law enforcement struggling to tamp down violence and control chaos.

It’s the kind of scene that has brought a federal military response to US cities in the past. And it’s a vision of Washington, DC, that President Donald Trump is invoking to bring the military to the city’s streets today.

“It’s becoming a situation of complete and total lawlessness,” Trump said in a news conference last week, announcing his plans to federalize law enforcement in the capital – including the deployment of 800 National Guard troops.

While the government has announced some arrests this week – many of them immigration offenses – the scene in Washington has been a far cry from the description Trump gave when announcing the federal law enforcement takeover, saying the District “has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals.”

Since their arrival this week, members of the guard have spent much of their time posted near landmarks and standing next to armored vehicles, amiably obliging tourists who request selfies.

It’s a noticeably different situation than the chaotic one that prompted the biggest military callup in Washington since the Civil War – the 1968 riots following the assassination of civil rights leader the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., in Tennessee.

“You saw smoke, and you saw flames. And you see cars speeding by. ‘There’s a riot! The city’s burning!’” said Brig Owens in a 2014 interview for an oral history project. Owens, who died in 2022, was a player for Washington’s NFL team who was called up for active duty with the guard during the riots.

A burned-out building, which was destroyed by arsonists during a night of burning and looting triggered by the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., is seen on April 6, 1968. - Bettmann Archive/Getty ImagesMore

“It was as if war had come to the city. At least for a small kid, that’s the way it felt,” Washington, DC, historian John DeFerrari, who was 10 years old at the time, told CNN.

“I remember being out and playing in the front yard of our house and seeing a military Jeep come by on patrol. Two soldiers there. A machine gun mounted.”
Locals dispute dire descriptions

To hear the president tell it, the situation in Washington is just as dire today.

“People are so happy to see our military going into DC and getting these thugs out,” Trump said.

But many local elected officials are expressing less enthusiasm for the federal action and the impression the president is giving of the District.

“One thing that has everybody pretty mad, especially me, is the characterization of our city and our residents,” responded Mayor Muriel Bowser. “We don’t live in a dirty city. We don’t have neighborhoods that should be bulldozed.”

After spiking in 2023, violent crime in Washington has been on the decline, according to Metropolitan Police Department records.

“He’s painted this dystopian vision, and it just doesn’t track with the facts on the ground,” DC Councilmember Charles Allen told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Thursday.

The National Guard was last mobilized in DC in 2020 during Black Lives Matter protests. Guard mmembers famously helped to clear out demonstrators as President Trump made his way across Lafayette Square to hold a Bible in front of a vandalized church. There has been a dispute over whether the guard was already planning to move protesters away from the White House or was specifically clearing a path for the president’s photo opportunity.

Before 2020, the guard and its predecessor – the DC Militia – were placed on federal active duty only 10 times in the District, according to the Congressional Research Service, including a multiyear deployment during the Civil War.

National Guard members take a break from the heat at the Lincoln Memorial while protesters demonstrate against police brutality and racism in Washington, DC, on June 6, 2020. - Win McNamee/Getty Images

MLK’s death brings anger to the streets

King’s assassination in Memphis on April 4, 1968, was a shock to the world. But it was felt as a shattering blow in Washington, which had the highest percentage of Black residents of any major US city at the time, according to The Washington Post.

Paul Delaney, cofounder of the National Association of Black Journalists, was a reporter for The Washington Star newspaper at the time and knew the bottled-up rage of the community – already dealing with “white flight” and underinvestment – could explode at the news.

“I drove up and sure enough, groups of protestors had formed on 14th Street near Pitts Motel,” Delaney, who is now 92 years old, told CNN. “They began marching to U Street and began breaking windows, looting, etc. I marched with them, hiding my notebook so they wouldn’t think I was a cop or some kind of spy. This went on through the night.”

Within hours, businesses were in flames. Hundreds would ultimately be looted or torched, The New York Times reported, as fury over King’s death expressed itself in the devastation of the several neighborhoods, including the historically Black community of Shaw.

By the weekend, the DC National Guard was part of a deployment of more than 13,000 soldiers – most of them full-time Army and Marines – trying to bring the emotionally exhausted city under control.

“You had little mobs throughout the city, and you have to be aware of what those consequences could be if you get caught up in that mob,” Owens said.

In contrast to the current administration, President Lyndon B. Johnson was reluctant to immediately bring the federal military onto the streets of the nation’s capital, waiting a full day before invoking the Insurrection Act to mobilize troops.

A National Guard soldier stands at the corner of 4th and H Streets in northeast Washington, DC, on April 6, 1968. - AP

“But then you had lots of destruction, lots of fires going on. Firemen were being harassed to some degree by the rioters,” said DeFerrari. “So, the local police chief and the mayor said listen, we need federal help to control this situation.”

Before calm was restored to the community after four days, more than 6,000 people were arrested, according to the National Archives, and 13 were dead. Most of the victims died in burned or collapsed buildings, The Washington Post reported.

“You had to be very careful walking through the various neighborhoods, and you didn’t know if someone was going to throw something at you or if someone was going to take a shot at you,” Owens said. “Very intense time.”

After the violence was brought under control, President Johnson toured the damage from the air, Secret Service agent Clint Hill, then head of the president’s protective detail, told The Washington Post in 2018.

“It was quite a sight to behold. It was unbelievable. A major portion of the city had actually burned, and it’s something I’ll never forget,” said Hill, who was was tragically familiar with witnessing tragic events. Only five years earlier, Hill had rescued Jacqueline Kennedy in a moving limousine after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in a Dallas motorcade.

“(The riots) left this pall over the community,” said DeFerrari. “Devastation and a sense of the old community being lost, and what is the replacement of that?”

Troops patrol a downtown street in Washington, DC, after President Johnson ordered them in to help police on April 5, 1968. - Bettmann Archive/Getty Images
Trump tests limits of his authority

It is the second time this year President Trump has posted guard members on the streets of a city whose leaders didn’t ask for it. The president federalized 4,000 California National Guard troops in June in response to immigration protests in downtown Los Angeles that had turned confrontational with federal agents.

Gov. Gavin Newsom sued the Trump administration, contesting Trump’s legal ability to take over the state guard without an open “rebellion” against the government. A judge is considering whether to declare that the president’s action illegal following a three-day bench trial.

But circumstances are much different in Washington, a federally controlled district that does not have the same constitutional protections as states.

“Yes, the president can deploy the National Guard in DC, and they are allowed to perform law enforcement functions,” said CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig.

Still, even the president does not have unilateral control over the city. By law, Trump cannot extend his 30-day takeover of DC law enforcement without the approval of Congress, which is on its summer recess, unless he declares a national emergency.

The District’s attorney general, Brian Schwalb, filed suit against the Trump administration Friday, arguing the president has already exceeded his authority by trying to force the Metropolitan Police Department to accept a new “emergency commissioner,” something Schwalb called a “hostile takeover” of the department.

It took decades of redevelopment and gentrification, but the communities left in ruins after the 1968 uprising now show no visible signs of the violence that upended the city.

DC’s Shaw neighborhood is now billed by the city’s marketing organization as filled with “cool local shops, foodie restaurants, concert halls and African American history.” Row houses in what were once considered dangerous streets now sell for more than a million dollars.

For those who have seen the devastation and rebuilding of the city up close, the decision to call in the military now is especially troubling.

“I think there very clearly is not an emergency in many Washingtonians’ minds,” said DeFerrari. “I think many Washingtonians think that this is quite unnecessary.”

A member of the US National Guard walks past military vehicles on the National Mall in Washington, DC, on August 14, 2025. - Alex Wroblewski/AFP/Getty Images

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Republicans look to make a U-turn on federal commitment to electric vehicles for the Postal Service

SUSAN HAIGH
Sun, August 17, 2025


One of the U.S. Postal Service's new zero-emission electric Next Generation Delivery Vehicles (NGDV) is displayed in front of the organization's headquarters in Washington, on Aug. 7, 2025. (AP Photo/Susan Haigh)ASSOCIATED PRESS

One of the U.S. Postal Service's new zero-emission electric Next Generation Delivery Vehicles (NGDV) is displayed in front of the organization's headquarters in Washington, on Aug. 7, 2025. (AP Photo/Susan Haigh)ASSOCIATED PRESS

FILE - American Postal Workers Union President Mark Dimondstein speaks at a rally, Oct. 8, 2018, in Washington. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)ASSOCIATED PRESS

FILE - Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, speak to reporters after a closed-door meeting with fellow Republicans, at the Capitol in Washington, Sept. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)ASSOCIATED PRESS

FILE - Mail delivery vehicles are charged at a post office in Athens, Ga., Thursday, Sept. 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Ron Harris, File)ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) — A year after being lauded for its plan to replace thousands of aging, gas-powered mail trucks with a mostly electric fleet, the U.S. Postal Service is facing congressional attempts to strip billions in federal EV funding.

In June, the Senate parliamentarian blocked a Republican proposal in a major tax-and-spending bill to sell off the agency's new electric vehicles and infrastructure and revoke remaining federal money. But efforts to halt the fleet’s shift to clean energy continue in the name of cost savings.

Donald Maston, president of the National Rural Letter Carriers’ Association, said canceling the program now would have the opposite effect, squandering millions of dollars.

“I think it would be shortsighted for Congress to now suddenly decide they’re going to try to go backwards and take the money away for the EVs or stop that process because that’s just going to be a bunch of money on infrastructure that’s been wasted," he said.

Beyond that, many in the scientific community fear the government could pass on an opportunity to reduce carbon emissions that contribute to global warming when urgent action is needed.

Electrified vehicles reduce emissions

A 2022 University of Michigan study found the new electric postal vehicles could cut total greenhouse gas emissions by up to 20 million tons over the predicted, cumulative 20-year lifetime of the trucks. That's a fraction of the more than 6,000 million metric tons emitted annually in the United States, said professor Gregory A. Keoleian, co-director of the university's Center for Sustainable Systems. But he said the push toward electric vehicles is critical and needs to accelerate, given the intensifying impacts of climate change.

“We’re already falling short of goals for reducing emissions,” Keoleian said. “We’ve been making progress, but the actions being taken or proposed will really reverse decarbonization progress that has been made to date.”

Many GOP lawmakers share President Donald Trump's criticism of the Biden-era green energy push and say the Postal Service should stick to delivering mail.

Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, said “it didn't make sense for the Postal Service to invest so heavily in an all-electric force." She said she will pursue legislation to rescind what is left of the $3 billion from the Inflation Reduction Act allocated to help cover the $10 billion cost of new postal vehicles.

Ernst has called the EV initiative a “boondoggle” and "a textbook example of waste,” citing delays, high costs and concerns over cold-weather performance.

“You always evaluate the programs, see if they are working. But the rate at which the company that’s providing those vehicles is able to produce them, they are so far behind schedule, they will never be able to fulfill that contract," Ernst said during a recent appearance at the Iowa State Fair, referring to Wisconsin-based Oshkosh Defense.

“For now,” she added, "gas-powered vehicles — use some ethanol in them — I think is wonderful.”

Corn-based ethanol is a boon to Iowa's farmers, but the effort to reverse course has other Republican support.

Rep. Michael Cloud, R-Texas, a co-sponsor of the rollback effort, has said the EV order should be canceled because the project "has delivered nothing but delays, defective trucks, and skyrocketing costs.”

The Postal Service maintains that the production delay of the Next Generation Delivery Vehicles, or NGDVs, was “very modest" and not unexpected.

“The production quantity ramp-up was planned for and intended to be very gradual in the early months to allow time for potential modest production or supplier issues to be successfully resolved,” spokesperson Kim Frum said.

EVs help in modernization effort

The independent, self-funded federal agency, which is paid for mostly by postage and product sales, is in the middle of a $40 billion, 10-year modernization and financial stabilization plan. The EV effort had the full backing of Democratic President Joe Biden, who pledged to move toward an all-electric federal fleet of car and trucks.

The “Deliver for America” plan calls for modernizing the ground fleet, notably the Grumman Long Life Vehicle, which dates back to 1987 and is fuel-inefficient at 9 mpg. The vehicles are well past their projected 24-year lifespan and are prone to breakdowns and even fires.

“Our mechanics are miracle workers,” said Mark Dimondstein, president of the American Postal Workers Union. “The parts are not available. They fabricate them. They do the best they can.”

The Postal Service announced in 2022 it would deploy at least 66,000 electric vehicles by 2028, including commercial off-the-shelf models, after years of deliberation and criticism it was moving too slowly to reduce emissions. By 2024, the agency was awarded a Presidential Sustainability Award for its efforts to electrify the largest fleet in the federal government.

Building new postal trucks

In 2021, Oshkosh Defense was awarded a contract for up to 165,000 battery electric and internal combustion engine Next Generation vehicles over 10 years.

The first of the odd-looking trucks, with hoods resembling a duck’s bill, began service in Georgia last year. Designed for greater package capacity, the trucks are equipped with airbags, blind-spot monitoring, collision sensors, 360-degree cameras and antilock brakes.

There's also a new creature comfort: air conditioning.

Douglas Lape, special assistant to the president of the National Association of Letter Carriers and a former carrier, is among numerous postal employees who have had a say in the new design. He marvels at how Oshkosh designed and built a new vehicle, transforming an old North Carolina warehouse into a factory along the way.

“I was in that building when it was nothing but shelving,” he said. “And now, being a completely functioning plant where everything is built in-house — they press the bodies in there, they do all of the assembly — it’s really amazing in my opinion.”

Where things stand now

The agency has so far ordered 51,500 NGDVs, including 35,000 battery-powered vehicles. To date, it has received 300 battery vehicles and 1,000 gas-powered ones.

Former Postmaster General Louis DeJoy said in 2022 the agency expected to purchase chiefly zero-emissions delivery vehicles by 2026. It still needs some internal combustion engine vehicles that travel longer distances.

Frum, the Postal Service spokesperson, said the planned NGDV purchases were "carefully considered from a business perspective” and are being deployed to routes and facilities where they will save money.

The agency has also received more than 8,200 of 9,250 Ford E-Transit electric vehicles it has ordered, she said.

Ernst said it's fine for the Postal Service to use EVs already purchased.

“But you know what? We need to be smart about the way we are providing services through the federal government,” she said. “And that was not a smart move.”

Maxwell Woody, lead author of the University of Michigan study, made the opposite case.

Postal vehicles, he said, have low average speeds and a high number of stops and starts that enable regenerative braking. Routes average under 30 miles and are known in advance, making planning easier.

“It’s the perfect application for an electric vehicle," he said, “and it’s a particularly inefficient application for an internal combustion engine vehicle.”

____

Associated Press writer Hannah Fingerhut in Des Moines, Iowa, contributed to this report.

Trump says tariffs are going to be enough to pay down national debt. It likely won’t even touch the sides

Eleanor Pringle
Sun, August 17, 2025 

FORTUNE


President Trump says his tariff revenues will both pay down America’s $37 trillion debt and possibly fund a public “dividend,” but Treasury data shows they fall short of even covering monthly interest costs. In exclusive interviews with Fortune, Wharton’s Professor Joao Gomes and AEI’s Desmond Lachman warned that while tariffs may slow debt growth, they won’t meaningfully reduce it. Markets are largely skeptical of Trump’s math despite some unconventional revenue wins.

President Trump has a two-pronged plan for the proceeds of his tariff regime. Firstly, he says, it’s going to pay down America’s $37 trillion national debt. Secondly, he’s considering sharing the spoils with the public.

“The purpose of what I’m doing is primarily to pay down debt, which will happen in very large quantity,” Trump told media earlier this month. “But I think there’s also a possibility that we’re taking in so much money that we may very well make a dividend to the people of America.”

The plan sounds welcome, in theory. But there’s just one problem. At present, tariff revenues don’t even cover the interest on the debt—let alone reduce its overall size.

According to Treasury data seen by Fortune, the accrued interest expense on Treasury notes in July alone was $38.1 billion. Add to that $13.9 billion in interest on Treasury bonds, $2.85 billion on Treasury Floating Rate Notes (FRN) and a total of $6.1 billion across Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS) assets. The bill is eye-watering: The total comes to $60.95 billion for the month.

By contrast, Treasury statements show that tariffs only brought in $29.6 billion to offset it. An impressive figure, but still not enough to rival interest payments.

Of course, the White House could pay off some of its debt and reduce interest payments by deploying the tariff revenues directly to the bottom line. Governments have a number of ways to pay off debt, either by paying off bonds at maturity instead of rolling them over, or launching a buyback scheme in order to retire the bonds and reduce total outstanding debt.

It seems that the White House is not yet enacting a plan for the latter option. A tentative schedule of buyback operations for August 2025 shows the Treasury intends to spend nearly $40 billion buying back various security types and maturity ranges. However, compared to a similar schedule from August last year, this is $10 billion less than the Biden administration had accounted for.

Looking forward, if the Trump team does intend to pass through circa $30 billion a month toward offsetting the national debt, it would have accrued a gargantuan $360 billion payment over a year. This figure is less than 1% of America’s national debt, at the time of writing.

Of course, those on the bullish end of the economic scale are unconcerned by the notion of paying off national debt because a) the bond market forms a core part of the economy, b) the U.S. could grow its way out of any default or debt crisis, and c) the nation is in control of its own fate because its central bank has the ability to ease the cost of borrowing.

Nonetheless, warnings are coming from some of the most significant corners of the economy. In the private sector, JPMorgan Chase’s CEO Jamie Dimon believes America is barreling towards a predictable crisis; in the public sector, Fed chairman Jerome Powell believes it’s time to have an “adult conversation” about debt.

And the president himself is clearly aware of the issue, pushing efficiency and cost-cutting to bring down deficits. The only problem is, economists can’t quite figure out his maths.

The White House told Fortune: “America’s debt-to-GDP ratio has actually declined since President Trump took office – and as the administration’s pro-growth policies of tax cuts, rapid deregulation, more efficient government spending, and historic trade deals continue taking effect and America’s economic resurgence accelerates, that ratio will continue trending in the right direction.


“That’s on top of the record revenue that President Trump’s tariff policies are bringing in for the federal government, and cooled inflation paving the way for interest rate cuts.”
Offsetting, not repaying

By Professor Joao Gomes’s calculations, President Trump’s tariff regime is netting his expenditure at zero as opposed to improving the balance sheet.

The Wharton professor of finance and economics (at President Trump’s alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania) believes the tariff income will offset the costs of the Oval Office’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill Act”—estimated by the Congressional Budget Office to add $3 trillion to the debt by 2030—and not go much further.

“They leave the national debt picture similar,” Professor Gomes tells Fortune in an exclusive interview. “The idea that [tariffs are] going to pay down the national debt is of course greatly overstating it.”

That being said, Professor Gomes said tariffs are likely to have some useful dragging effects on the speed at which America’s national debt is accumulating. The White House said it expects its bill to reduce the much-watched debt-to-GDP ratio to 94% from its current standing of 121% by increasing economic growth.

“There’s no question of us paying down the debt,” Professor Gomes added. “Every year the government needs $1.8 trillion of net new borrowing, so that number could go down, but before we have any questions about repaying we first need to close that gap—and 1.8 trillion is impossible to close … the best we could hope for is if the tariffs turn out to generate enormous amounts of revenue [and] reduce that annual budget gap, which would make the debt grow less quickly.”

“The idea that somehow in the debt is gonna go down, we’re gonna start buying things back and so on and reduce the debt in dollar terms is just unimaginable. We’ll never get that much revenue.”

Professor Gomes was echoed by Dr Desmond Lachman, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He told Fortune in an exclusive interview: “[For Trump] to say that he’s going to raise maybe $300 billion is a drop in the ocean in relation to the amount of red ink they’ve got. The country’s on a really dangerous debt trajectory.”
Signals to markets

How much of a problem national debt proves to be ultimately comes down to foreign investors, and their confidence in the U.S. government’s ability to pay its bills. Approximately 26% of America’s debt is held by foreign countries according to The Conference Board, presenting significant issues if those investors decide to take flight.


Dr Lachman believes that while President Trump may be framing tariffs as bringing back jobs or paying off debt to be more politically palatable, investors will see through the rhetoric. “Markets aren’t dumb. They can do the arithmetic and figure out that this is nonsense,” he said.

The former deputy director for the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) Policy Development and Review Department added that the continued flight to gold (prices are up 27% over the past year) is indicative that markets no longer view U.S. Treasuries as the ultimate safe haven.

“People are worried that this government’s not serious about economic policy,” Dr Lachman said. “Trump can say what he likes. A comment I think is great is: One thing about the bond markets is that they can’t be primaried. In bond market, the money’s gonna move. People just want to protect their cash, they’re not afraid of being bullied by Trump if the numbers don’t add up.”


Counter to Dr Lachman’s point is the fact Treasury yields have stayed relatively flat over the past couple of years. 10-year is at around 4.3%, and was the same in late-October 2022, while 30-year has hung around the 4.8% mark since 2023.

Due to this, Professor Gomes believes the market isn’t alarmed by the Trump team’s unorthodox methods of balancing the debt. He said: “There’s interesting and peculiar things about this that we’ve all noticed. For example, the news earlier this week that Nvidia is gonna give effectively a 15% tax to the federal government for any exports to China certainly brings an extra source of revenue to the government that is not going to be small.”

“The ability of this president and this administration to find strange ways” to generate revenue may convince markets of Trump 2.0’s sincerity when it comes to the debt, Professor Gomes added, “I’m not sure I would discount that ability to continue to do things that I would not support, and I don’t think [are] great ideas, but at the end of the day, you cannot deny that they bring strange forms of revenue that do change the debt picture.”


And while there are two ends of the spectrum on who will end up paying for the tariffs (at one end Trump, saying it will be foreign nations, at the other end the likes of Goldman Sachs says the majority of the prices will be paid by U.S. consumers), the administration is proving it can “extract revenues.”

“Whatever you think of the methods,” Professor Gomes added, “If it’s an issue they can find ways to do this.”
A turning point?

National debt is often described as a game of chicken played by one administration then the next, adding to the debt and risking crisis instead of introducing potentially unpopular policy to address it (austerity).

Trump’s unusual approach to revenue generation shouldn’t be viewed as an end to that game, said Professor Gomes, but merely a delay of any reckoning. “It seems clear that suspicious as [markets] are of the policies they feel confident that that’s not going to happen at the moment,” the economist said. “We would need something, some other event of some type—a serious war or conflict—the things that really change paradigms” to prompt such a crisis, he added.

The Conference Board is not so convinced. “The debt crisis is here” it said in a note shared with Fortune, outlining a six-step program to reduce the debt-to-GDP ratio to 70% within 20 years. This includes, among a range of ideas, establishing a bipartisan committee for fiscal responsibility, enacting tax reform to increase revenues in a fair way, and develop a package of reform for social security.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Trump’s reciprocal tariffs could be struck down as soon as this month — and the administration is warning of economic apocalypse

Jason Ma
Sat, August 16, 2025

FORTUNE

President Donald Trump and his Justice Department have issued doomsday warnings recently on what would happen if a federal appeals court rules against the administration in a legal challenge to his so-called reciprocal tariffs. James Lucier at Alpha Capital Partners said the court could issue a ruling later this month or next month.


The Trump administration sees complete disaster for the U.S. economy if its reciprocal tariffs are struck down, revealing its level of concern as a court is expected to issue a critical decision soon.

On July 31, a federal appeals court heard arguments in a case challenging the tariffs’ legal basis under the International Economic Emergency Powers Act (IEEPA), and the judges expressed deep skepticism about the administration’s side.

In a note this past week, James Lucier at Capital Alpha Partners said a decision is expected by the end of September, but could come as soon as late August. A unanimous or near-unanimous ruling could give the Supreme Court cover to avoid taking the case immediately and reject the administration’s request to issue a stay that would keep the tariffs in place in the meantime.


The dire warnings also represent “a remarkable change in tune by the administration, which until now has always insisted that it had legal authority to get the deals done one way or another even if the IEEPA tariffs were struck down,” he added.

Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs helped leverage a series of trade deals, including an agreement with the European Union, which pledged to invest $600 billion in the U.S. and buy $750 billion worth of U.S. energy products, with “vast amounts” of American weapons in the mix. Similarly, the U.S.-Japan trade deal entails $550 billion of investments from Tokyo.
‘Financial ruin’

The U.S. hasn’t received immediate cash transfers in those amounts. Still, in a letter to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Monday, Justice Department officials suggested the government would suddenly owe everyone money—leading to catastrophe.

“The President believes that our country would not be able to pay back the trillions of dollars that other countries have already committed to pay, which could lead to financial ruin,” wrote Solicitor General D. John Sauer and Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate.

They also warned that unwinding the trade deals would lead to a “1929-style result.” That echoed a post from Trump on Truth Social days earlier, when he predicted another Great Depression would hit America if the court rules against his tariffs.


Sauer and Shumate turned up the volume even higher in their subsequent letter, elaborating further on the depression warning.

“In such a scenario, people would be forced from their homes, millions of jobs would be eliminated, hard-working Americans would lose their savings, and even Social Security and Medicare could be threatened,” they wrote. “In short, the economic consequences would be ruinous, instead of unprecedented success.”

‘The president is in a jam’

To be sure, the government has generated significant tariff revenue since April, and importers who paid the reciprocal duties could seek reimbursement if they are struck down.

But that’s only about $100 billion and also includes revenue from sectoral tariffs that were imposed under a separate legal basis that’s not at risk.

“The real problem, the letter implies, is that Trump does not have legal authority to replicate the IEEPA tariffs under other tariff statutes if the court strikes the IEEPA tariffs down,” Lucier explained. “In other words, the president is in a jam because if the court strikes down the IEEPA tariffs, his trade deals have no legal basis.”

A note from Yardeni Research on Wednesday also pointed out that the administration is becoming increasingly concerned about losing the court case.

The letter from the Justice Department officials appears to anticipate that they will lose the case as they are asking for a stay if the court goes against them.

There will be “messy” consequences if reciprocal tariffs are struck down, according to Yardeni, as Trump needs the revenue from tariffs to reduce the budget deficit and help to lower bond yields.

“If he loses in court, these yields might move higher. Stock prices might decline on this news initially due to a new round of policy uncertainty,” the note said. “So the dire tone in the letter is understandable, even though it is a wee bit over the top.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

A PIECE OF THE ACTION

Trump’s unprecedented, potentially unconstitutional deal with Nvidia and AMD, explained: Alexander Hamilton would approve

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and President Donald Trump. 

 Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Nick Lichtenberg
Sat, August 16, 2025

· Fortune ·

“We negotiated a little deal,” President Donald Trump told reporters on August 11, about the developing situation with leading chip makers Nvidia and AMD continuing to do business in China. He explained that he originally wanted a 20% cut of Nvidia’s sales in exchange for the company obtaining export licenses to sell H20 chip to China, but he was persuaded to settle at 15%. The H20 chip is “obsolete,” Trump added … “he’s selling a essentially old chip.”

The chips do appear to be quite significant to China, considering that the Cyberspace Administration of China held discussions with Nvidia over security concerns that the H20 chips may be tracked and turned off remotely, according to a disclosure on its website. The deal, which lifted an export ban on Nvidia’s H20 AI chips and AMD’s MI308, and followed heated negotiations, was widely described as unusual and also still theoretical at this point, with the legal details still being ironed out by the Department of Commerce. Legal experts have questioned whether the eventual deal would constitute an unconstitutional export tax, as the U.S. Constitution prohibits duties on exports. This has come to be known as the “export clause” of the constitution.

Indeed, it’s hard to find much precedent for it anywhere in the history of the U.S. government’s dealings with the corporate sector. Erik Jensen, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University who has studied the history of the export clause, told Fortune he was not aware of anything like this in history. In the 1990s, he added, the Supreme Court struck down two attempted taxes on export clause grounds (cases known as IBM and U.S. Shoe). Jensen said tax practitioners were surprised that the court took up the cases: “if only because most pay no attention to constitutional limitations, and the Court hadn’t heard any export clause cases in about 70 years.” The takeaway was clear, Jensen said: “The export clause matters.”

Columbia Law School professor Eric Talley agreed with Jensen, telling Fortune that while the federal government has previously applied subsidies to exports, he’s not aware of other historical cases imposing taxes on selected exporters. Talley also cited the export clause as the usual grounds for finding such arrangements unconstitutional.

Rather than downplaying the uniqueness of the arrangement, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has been leaning into it. In a Bloomberg television interview, he said: “I think you know, right now, this is unique. But now that we have the model and the beta test, why not expand it? I think we could see it in other industries over time.”

Bessent and the White House insist there are “no national security concerns,” since only less-advanced chips are being sold to China. Instead, officials have touted the deal as a creative solution to balance trade, technology, and national policy.
How rare is this?

The arrangement has drawn sharp reaction from business leaders, legal experts, and trade analysts. Julia Powles, director of UCLA’s Institute for Technology, Law & Policy, told the Los Angeles Times: “It ties the fate of this chip manufacturer in a very particular way to this administration, which is quite rare.” Experts warned that if replicated, this template could pressure other firms—not just tech giants—into similar arrangements with the government. Already, several unprecedented arrangements have been struck between the Trump administration and the corporate sector, ranging from the “golden share” in U.S. Steel negotiated as part of its takeover by Japan’s Nippon Steel to the federal government reportedly discussing buying a stake in chipmaker Intel.

Nvidia and AMD have declined to comment on specifics. When contacted by Fortune for comment, Nvidia reiterated its statement that it follows rules the U.S. government sets for its participation in worldwide markets. “While we haven’t shipped H20 to China for months, we hope export control rules will let America compete in China and worldwide. America cannot repeat 5G and lose telecommunication leadership. America’s AI tech stack can be the world’s standard if we race.”

The White House declined to comment about the potential deal. AMD did not respond to a request for comment.

While Washington has often intervened in business—especially in times of crisis—the mechanism and magnitude of the Nvidia/AMD deal are virtually unprecedented in recent history. The federal government appears to have never previously claimed a percentage of corporate revenue from export sales as a precondition for market access. Instead, previous actions took the form of temporary nationalization, regulatory control, subsidies, or bailouts—often during war or economic emergency. Examples of this include the seizure of coal mines (1946) and steel mills (1952) during labor strikes, as well as the 2008 financial crisis bailouts, where the government took equity stakes in large corporations including two of Detroit’s Big three and most of Wall Street’s key banks. During World War I, the War Industries Board regulated prices, production, and business conduct for the war effort.

Congress has previously created export incentives and tax-deferral strategies (such as the Domestic International Sales Corporation and Foreign Sales Corporation Acts), but these measures incentivized sales rather than directly diverting a fixed share of export revenue to the government. Legal scholars stress that such arrangements were subjected to global trade rules and later modified after international complaints.
Global lack of precedent

The U.S. prohibition on export taxes dates back to the birth of the nation. Case Western’s Jensen has written that some delegates of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, such as New York’s Alexander Hamilton, were in favor of the government being able to tax revenue sources such as imports and exports, but the “staple states” in the southern U.S. were fiercely opposed, given their agricultural bent, especially the importance of cotton at that point.

Still, many other countries currently have export taxes on the books, though they are generally imposed across all exporters, rather than as one-off arrangements that remove barriers to a specific market. And many of the nations with export taxes are developing countries who tax agricultural or resource commodities. In several cases (Uganda, Malaya, Sudan, Nigeria, Haiti, Thailand), export taxes made up 10% to 40% of total government tax revenue in the 1960s and 1970s, according to an IMF staff paper.

Globally, most countries tax profits generated within their borders (“source-based corporate taxes”), but rarely as a direct percentage of export sales as a market access precondition. The standard model is taxation of locally earned profits, regardless of export destination; licensing fees and tariffs may be applied, but not usually as a fixed percent of export revenue as a pre-negotiated entry fee.

Although the Nvidia/AMD deal doesn’t take the usual form of a tax, Case Western’s Jensen added. “I don’t see what else it could be characterized as.” It’s clearly not a “user fee,” which he said is the usual triable issue of law in export clause cases. For instance, if goods or services are being provided by the government in exchange for the charge, such as docking fees at a governmentally operated port, then that charge isn’t a tax or duty and the Export Clause is irrelevant. “I just don’t see how the charges that will be levied in the chip cases could possibly be characterized in that way.”

Players have been known to “game” the different legal treatments of subsidies and taxes, Columbia’s Talley added. He cited the example of a government imposing a uniform, across-the-board tax on all producers, but then providing a subsidy to sellers who sell to domestic markets. “The net effect would be the same as a tax on exports, but indirectly.” He was unaware of this happening in the U.S. but cited several international examples including Argentina, India, and even the EU.

One famous example of a canny international tax strategy was Apple’s domicile in Ireland, along with so many other multinationals keeping their international profits offshore in affiliates in order to avoid paying U.S. tax, which at the time applied to all worldwide income upon repatriation. Talley said much of this went away after the 2018 tax reforms, which moved the U.S. away from a worldwide corporate tax, with some exceptions.

The protection racket comparison

If Trump’s chip export tax is an anomaly in the annals of U.S. international trade, the deal structure has some parallels in another corner of the business world: organized crime, where “protection rackets” have a long history. Businesses bound by such deals must pay a cut of their revenues to a criminal organization (or parallel government), effectively as the cost for being allowed to operate or to avoid harm.

The China chip export tax and the protection rackets extract revenue as a condition for market access, use the threat of exclusion or punishment for non-payment, and both may be justified as “protection” or “guaranteed access,” but are not freely negotiated by the business.

“It certainly has the smell of a governmental shakedown in certain respects,” Columbia’s Talley told Fortune, considering that the “underlying threat was an outright export ban, which makes a 15% surcharge seem palatable by comparison.”

Talley noted some nuances, such as the generally established broad statutory and constitutional support for national-security-based export bans on various goods and services sold to enumerated countries, which have been imposed with legal authority on China, North Korea, Iraq, Russia, Cuba, and others. “From an economic perspective, a ban on an exported good is tantamount to a tax of ‘infinity percent’ on the good,” Talley said, meaning it effectively shuts down the export market for that good. “Viewed in that light, a 15% levy is less (and not more) extreme than a ban.”

Still, there’s the matter, similar to Trump’s tariff regime, of making a legal challenge to an ostensibly blatantly illegal policy actually hold up in court. “A serious question with the chips tax,” Case Western’s Jensen told Fortune, “is who, if anyone, would have standing to challenge the tax?” In other words, it may be unconstitutional, but who’s actually going to compel the federal government to obey the constitution?

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Opinion

Trump has humiliated America

Robert Service
Sat, August 16, 2025 

THE TELEGRAPH, UK

Putin

The Alaska summit has finished. Donald Trump afterwards described it as a “ten out of ten” experience, declaring that “great progress” was made towards peace in Ukraine. Vladimir Putin appreciated the camaraderie and Trump responded with hand pats and tender glances.

The American allowed the Russian to dominate a press conference, which prevented the press from asking any questions. Putin, holding his sheaf of prepared notes, expertly performed a political somersault. During the current war he and his administration have scoffed at any idea that Russia is fighting Ukraine.

For Putin, Ukrainian president Zelensky is merely an American puppet and America alone bears the responsibility for prolonging the current war.

In Anchorage, though, Putin instead highlighted the military aid that the US transferred to Russia in the Second World War across the Bering Strait.

It was a ploy to deflect attention from the Ukrainian question. In the week before the summit, president Trump had huffed and puffed like a strongman.

He growled that if Putin rejected steps to a ceasefire, he would introduce ‘severe’ secondary economic sanctions that would punish any country that bought Russian oil and gas.

If Trump had stuck to this standpoint in Alaska, Russia’s economy would now be succumbing to crippling pressure of sanctions against countries which buy their oil and gas from Moscow. Russian finance minister Anton Siluanov would have to tell Putin that the “special military operation” was no longer affordable.

Currently the Russian cost of living index is high, but Russians have found it bearable. Any further heightening would spell danger for the Kremlin. But Donald suddenly lost his militancy when he met Vladimir at the airport and invited him to join him on the backseat of “The Beast” – the armoured Cadillac that usually carries only the US president.

In Anchorage, Trump appeared to fall, not for the first time, for Putin’s charm. Putin learned his skills at a KGB training school where one of the textbooks – believe it or not – was Dale Carnegie’s “How to Make Friends and Influence People”.

At the press conference, as his heralded super-deal to end the Ukraine war tumbled to the floor, Trump’s morale appeared punctured. This is no surprise after weeks when he insisted that a speedy agreement on land swaps was available for a permanent peace.

In a Fox TV interview immediately after the summit, however, he suggested that it is no longer his but rather Zelensky’s task to negotiate such a deal.

He did not say how Zelensky might do this without capitulating to Russian terms and ending his own presidency because Ukraine, for all its defects, is a democracy, and Ukrainians agree that national surrender should not be an option for their rulers. Putin’s invasion has reinforced, not undermined, this resolve.

More in Politics

Trump Circles Drop F-Bomb After ‘Failure’ Putin Summit: Wolff

As Zelensky has pointed out, Ukraine’s sovereignty and its protection are a vital interest for all of Europe. Some commentators in the West still blame the United States for over-expanding Nato membership. They fail to understand that the ex-communist countries of Eastern Europe banged on Washington’s door throughout the 1990s to allow them to join the alliance.

They rightly assumed, from their experience at the USSR’s hands, that Russia had not necessarily lost its imperial instincts. They needed to secure their defences in case there was a resurgence of Russian power. When the price of oil rose on world markets in the early 2000s, Russia’s ambitions grew with its financial revenues.

Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are thankful that they made it into Nato before Putin could do to them what he has done to Ukraine. But as was shown in 2007 by the cyber-attack on Estonia’s entire IT network, Russia continues to regard Baltic states as potential prey.

Were Ukraine to drown in the current wave of Russian offensives it would not be long before moves were made against other countries along the Baltic littoral.

Donald Trump has handed over to Zelensky the responsibility for dealing with Moscow. Earlier this year he and vice-president JD Vance were personally offensive to Zelensky at a live TV session in the White House when war leader Zelensky was even criticised for wearing military fatigues rather than a suit and tie. American supplies of war-fighting equipment have always been crucial in enabling the Ukrainians to defend themselves.

But Trump has sometimes turned off the tap, and it now has to be kept open by the European powers which buy arms from the United States for transfer to Ukraine. The concern must be that the White House might decide to suspend even this arrangement.

What, though, does Trump now expect of Zelensky? Will he demand agreement to so-called land swaps as the price for any kind of support from America? And will the American president continue circling in orbit around Planet Putin?

The answer will not depend solely on Trump’s preferences. As the first editions of Russian press told the summit story on Saturday morning, the Alaska talks were a victory for Putin.

Without promising a ceasefire, Russia was beckoned back into the comity of the world’s great powers. Until now Trump has received an easy ride from the conservative end of the American media spectrum. But Americans are patriots first and foremost – how long will they put up with the master of the deal, who has the pack of cards in his grasp, dealing with them so ineptly?

Public opinion in the United States does not favour presidential losers – one of Trump’s favourite words of abuse – when they permit the public humiliation of American power and prestige

Opinion

Trump baked in Alaska: He grovels — worse yet, it’s bad TV

Andrew O'Hehir
Sun, August 17, 2025



President Donald Trump greets Russian President Vladimir Putin as he arrives at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska, Aug. 15, 2025. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images


Donald Trump’s supposed strength lies in showmanship and stagecraft, or at least in shamelessly whoring for attention, which is not exactly the same thing. The fact that “we” — meaning the entire ecosystem of media and public opinion, including you and me — keep giving him attention, like a bunch of aging addicts chasing an unachievable high, says more about us than about him.

But while Trump’s second administration is undeniably nastier and more destructive than his first, it’s not entirely clear who’s driving the bus to dystopia. Because it ain’t him. Trump has always seemed more like a sump pump of received wisdom and reprocessed opinions than an actual human adult, but even by those standards he now appears enormously diminished. His so-called summit meeting with Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday was an abject failure (for everyone but Putin), making clear that the president’s performance skills have degraded nearly as much as his already-damaged cognitive abilities.

It seems almost beside the point to report that Trump and Putin failed to achieve a breakthrough in resolving the Ukraine conflict, and that Trump appears to have pivoted back to Putin’s view of the war, at least for the moment, after a brief personal flirtation with the orthodox pro-Ukraine position of other Western leaders. Did anyone genuinely expect a different outcome? It’s not entirely a rhetorical question; a lot of people at least pretended to.

The endlessly disproven notion that Trump is a master negotiator, uniquely skilled at making “deals” (whatever that even means), is like a fading folk belief or sectarian doctrine. For MAGA believers, it’s a received truth that requires no evidence and can never be contradicted by facts. For mainstream journalists, it’s an aspect of the Trump legend that must be treated with reverence, and demands the perpetual suspension of disbelief. Even after all these years, they remain mystified and mesmerized by the Trump phenomenon, and follow him around like a flock of children hoping to learn Harry Houdini’s secrets: Maybe this time, the magic will be real!

It wasn’t real this time either, and the consensus view that Trump was thoroughly pantsed by the Russian leader is correct, or close enough. Putin was welcomed back to the Western world with a literal red carpet, while giving nothing away and making no concessions. Amid the baffled and disgruntled commentary coming in from all directions, I was especially struck by New York Times fashion reporter Vanessa Friedman, who goes straight to the heart of the matter in far more economical fashion than most of her peers. The point of the whole show, she writes, was the photo op depicting Putin and Trump

in complementary dark suits — single-breasted, two-button — matching white shirts and coordinating ties … giving the impression of kindred spirits: just two statesmen meeting on the semi-neutral ground of an airport tarmac to go talk cease-fire, their respective planes looming in the background.

Both men, Friedman continues, understand “the power of the image” and “have made themselves into caricatures through costume and scenography, the better to capture the popular imagination.” What she does not say, perhaps to avoid throwing shade on her colleagues from the supposed grown-up desks, is that Trump’s image-making fell flat during this particular spectacle, and the whole world was watching.

That helps explain the scathing reviews from the Trump-orbiting press corps: Not only was there no peace deal in Ukraine — which, not to be tiresome, was something Trump promised he would accomplish in one day — but, worse yet, our guy put on a bad show. Armies of commentators, reporters and photographers were hauled off to the 49th state expecting a vintage Trump performance, of the sort that has lubricated their industry for an entire decade.

What they got instead was inconclusive meeting that produced no agreement of any sort, followed by “an awkward press appearance” captured by the Washington Post with a textbook people-are-saying deflection:

Reporters also noted that Trump spoke for just a few minutes before stepping off stage and described him as appearing unhappy, tired or bored during the joint appearance.

I’m sorry, what? Which reporters said such disgraceful things about our president, and why aren’t you naming them or quoting them? Was it by any chance the reporters who wrote this article? Was it someone else? Did they swear you to secrecy?

I’ll tell you who was unhappy, tired and bored: All the mainstream journalists who felt personally insulted after traveling all that way for a depressing pseudo-event with crap ratings. This was a new experience in their long-running relationship with Donald J. Trump; the media transition to covering a lame-duck presidency has begun. (Sure, I know: He might try to run again or stay in office or whatever, but it sure doesn’t feel that way right now.)

By Saturday afternoon, we witnessed the arrival of sober and long-winded policy analysis in numerous forums, most of it making painfully obvious points: Trump had reversed himself shamefully, apparently in exchange for empty flattery from the Russian leader — full points for whoever told Putin to bring up the 2020 election! — and had done less than nothing to advance the prospects of peace in Ukraine.

But the tone of disappointment and personal insult had already been established, and if nothing else it fueled a lot of enjoyably outraged prose. For Peter Baker of the Times, normally something of a Trump neutral, “the Anchorage meeting with Mr. Putin now stands out as a reversal of historic proportions,” even by the standards of Trump’s “erratic presidency.”

For Anne Applebaum of the Atlantic, “It was humiliating to watch an American president act like a happy puppy upon encountering the dictator of a much poorer, much less important state, treating him as a superior.” Much of what is admirable in Applebaum’s work, and also what is dubious, is captured in that one sentence: She is a fine writer, a clear thinker, a forceful exponent of old-school internationalism and something of a neo-Cold Warrior.

Speaking of Cold War throwbacks, Max Boot’s column in the Washington Post was uncharacteristically listless, as if he not only wished that the summit hadn’t happened but also that he didn’t have to write about it. (All these years of fruitless warmongering have worn Boot out, I fear.) Putin was the “clear winner,” he writes, and Trump “looked positively giddy” as he escorted Putin into the presidential limo known as “The Beast.”

Want more sharp takes on politics? Sign up for our free newsletter, Standing Room Only by Amanda Marcotte, also a weekly show on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

Beneath this outpouring of anti-Trump snark lies a veiled suggestion calculated to inflame the MAGA faithful: Trump wasn’t just outmaneuvered by Putin but literally unmanned, and there’s something feminine or masochistic or sexually submissive in the “happy puppy” relationship between the wannabe dictator and the genuine article. Whether that’s a sophomoric insult or acute psychological insight is, I suppose, a matter of interpretation, but it’s been an element of liberal Trump-Putin discourse since the 2016 campaign.

David Smith of the Guardian frames his otherwise conventional analysis by taking that premise to a hyperbolic and faintly homophobic extreme: “That was the moment he knew it was true love,” he writes, awkwardly framing Trump’s reaction to Putin’s endorsement of his alternate-history claim that the Ukraine invasion would never have happened with Trump in the White House. Smith then contends that the Alaska summit was actually worse than “Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Adolf Hitler in Munich 1938,” or the Churchill/FDR/Stalin Yalta Conference that carved up Europe in 1945, without even trying to explain or defend that outlandish proposition. Because these guys seem so gay? (I imagine that’s not it.)

What actually happened, and didn’t happen, between these so-called world leaders on Friday in Alaska wasn’t especially surprising, or all that difficult to understand. Donald Trump ran headlong into reality, in the form of an uncharismatic but implacable opponent who holds most of the cards, to use Trump’s favorite metaphor, and is in position to grind out a slow and painful endgame to this war, largely on his own terms. But he also ran into something else, which could be the outer limits of his diminishing ability to shape the narrative so it’s always about him.

No one expected Trump to grow a spine or display moral principles or “become presidential.” His low-key quisling turn was entirely in character, and not nearly enough to explain the media’s collective sense of betrayal. What the fading infotainment priesthood wanted, or rather needed, was vintage Trump theater: outrageous bluster, false claims, fatuous rhetoric, unfulfillable or alarming promises (with something or other about the future of Ukraine thrown in). Instead, they watched their main character deflate before their eyes, like a sad-clown balloon at the end of a long day at the theme park. Trump committed the only unforgivable sin of this era: He was small and boring.

The post Trump baked in Alaska: He grovels — worse yet, it’s bad TV appeared first on Salon.com.

Trump Melts Down Over Negative Coverage of Putin Summit Flop

Emell Derra Adolphus
Sun, August 17, 2025 

Photo Illustration by Victoria Sunday/The Daily Beast/Getty Images

President Donald Trump launched into a Sunday morning rage on the heels of negative media coverage around his flop summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Media outlets reported that Trump largely came away empty-handed from his historic Putin meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, save for a puzzling Putin lecture about eliminating “all the primary root causes” of his full-scale assault on Ukraine.

President Donald Trump walked away from his historic summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin with no deal in place for peace in Ukraine. / SERGEY BOBYLEV / POOL/AFP via Getty Images

In a post-meeting debrief, Trump said “there’s no deal until there’s a deal.” He added, “I will call up NATO in a little while. I will call up the various people that I think are appropriate, and I’ll, of course, call up President Zelensky and tell them about today’s meeting. It’s ultimately up to them.”

Yet judging from the Truth Social posts he fired off first thing on Sunday, Trump appears to be feeling the pressure of having made no deal with Putin after previously positioning himself as America’s dealmaker-in-chief.

“It’s incredible how the Fake News violently distorts the TRUTH when it comes to me,” Trump posted. “There is NOTHING I can say or do that would lead them to write or report honestly about me. I had a great meeting in Alaska on Biden’s stupid War, a war that should have never happened!!!”

Doubling down on rage for breakfast, Trump added, “If I got Russia to give up Moscow as part of the Deal, the Fake News, and their PARTNER, the Radical Left Democrats, would say I made a terrible mistake and a very bad deal. That’s why they are the FAKE NEWS!”

Ahead of his Monday meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and a gaggle of European reinforcements, Trump also made sure to add a plug for his long-suffering bid to be an awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He wrote, “Also, they should talk about the 6 WARS, etc., I JUST STOPPED!!! MAGA”

Politico reported that Trump has stooped to cold-calling Norwegian diplomats to pester them about the prize, with the summit reportedly playing a large part in his campaign to put himself up for the award.

Yet even before it flopped, MAGA pundits came out and said that Trump deserves the prize regardless.