Trump Already Uniting America (Against Him)

From town halls to polls and even on Fox, Trump is failing

Feb. 21: GOP hearing from actual people who are pissed … Trump’s poll plummet spreads … Republicans privately plead with Trump to be less Trump … Trump targets IRS, post office …

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Current-for-now Rep. Rich McCormick (R-GA) at a town hall attempted to deflect criticism of DOGE with his face and left hand. (Screengrab / 11Alive video.)

A single congressional town hall is the kind of thing TFN strives to ignore. One data point does not a pattern make, no matter how much bias it confirms. But give me multiple town halls, and now we’re talkin’.

You may have seen the viral video yesterday of Rep. Rich McCormick (R-GA) at a packed-capacity town hall getting ripped by Georgia residents over the wanton federal layoffs by Pres. Donald Trump and his surrogate, Elon Musk. Or the other viral video.

Well, it wasn’t just McCormick. The House isn’t in session this week, so House Republicans are back home, meeting with their constituents and hating it.

On Monday, Rep. Nick Begich (R-AK) helpfully explained during an open house that there’s nothing he can do about Trump’s cuts, because what’s he gonna do, vote against Trump? Pshaw!

As Judd Leggum points out, Begich is a member of the Congressional DOGE Caucus and still said that he (a) “had no idea these things were going on,” (b) learned about them “on Twitter” (deadnaming Musk’s antisocial-media platform), and (c) is “not in a position to approve or deny the cuts." (It’s not clear what Begich thinks Congress does aside from its primary role approving and denying cuts.)

Two days later, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) held her own virtual town hall, during which she reportedly implied that Begich, her fellow Alaskan, had squelched tougher questions.

Murkowski, who has voted to oppose some Trump nominees, took a much less equivocal stance than Begich did on Trump’s illegal firings and also illegal cuts. Withholding congressionally allocated funding, she said, “violates the Budget Act … It violates the Impoundment Act, and it cannot be allowed to stand."

Also Wednesday, the town hall of Rep. Cliff Bentz (R-OR) had far more people than similar events, despite being held in the morning, when people who don’t work in the federal government still have to go to work. One big topic? The >50 federal workers laid off in northeastern Oregon, including at the U.S. Forest Service.

Here’s how the Baker City Herald put it:

"My heart goes out to those people," Bentz said, a statement that provoked derisive laughter from some in the audience.

Trump won the county by 73%. But as the Herald reported, “Several audience members made it clear … that they don't support the administration.”

Want more?

Rep. Scott Fitzgerald (R-WI) held a town hall yesterday, and the large crowd apparently loves American literature because a recurring motif at the event was F Scott Fitzgerald.

Here’s TMJ4’s report: “If there were Trump voters in the room, none spoke up in support of Trump's first month efforts.”

And Fitzgerald publicly fact-checked Trump lies about Ukraine: “No, Ukraine did not start the war.”

And if those rare cynical Newsfuckers among you suspect that congressional Republicans don’t mind getting smacked around by voters every six months or so if it keeps the oil-money checks coming, there’s new evidence that’s not the case.

Politico reports that GOP members are flooding the White House with calls about DOGE and the firings and the budget cuts, a procedure known in parliamentary terms as a fucking freak-out.

“Republicans [are] particularly worried about cuts affecting public safety and health roles,” Politico demurely put it. And here’s Politico demurely calling House Republicans flagrant liars:

…Republican members are publicly cheering the administration’s push to slash the federal government, which is being led by billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk with Trump’s blessing. But privately, many are feeling helpless to counter the meat-ax approach that has been embraced so far, with lawmakers especially concerned about the dismissal of military veterans working in federal agencies as well as USDA employees handling the growing bird flu outbreak affecting poultry and dairy farms.

At this rate, Republicans are going to save even more money by canceling every future town hall. And all of this was before the latest 24-hour cycle of Trump/Musk news. That includes — but is in no way limited to:

• Wait times doubling to get into popular national parks like Arizona’s Grand Canyon National Park, home to America’s second-largest gaping crack. (h/t)

• Canceled reservations at Gettysburg National Military Park, site of America’s second-stupidest civil war.

• DOGE firing 20% of the World Trade Center Health Program staff, picking up the battle against 9/11 first responders where Osama bin Laden left off. (House Republicans didn’t do shit when word first got out, but are now speaking up as they realize that people can actually see them.)

• DOGE canceling a $257,000 contract to analyze and compare data about the illnesses experienced by 9/11 firefighters exposed to toxins while responding to 9 fucking 11. The cancelation was included in DOGE’s bullshit list of “savings” that it achieved to “maximize governmental efficiency and productivity” and/or fuck over the closest thing a still-secular society can have to saints.

• Airlines seeking to roll back a 2024 rule Pres. Joe Biden implemented to reduce mishandling and damage of wheelchairs and scooters used by disabled people.

• The Trump administration planning to cut all but 16% of the Housing and Urban Development office that oversees home rebuilding and new residential construction after oil companies destroy communities with the wildfires and floods and hurricanes their emissions caused.

• And the Washington Post blew the whistle on Trump’s plans to transition from mail. Trump reportedly plans to take over the Postal Service, illegally firing the independent board that runs it and ruining its status as the second-most popular federal agency. The board reportedly is planning a special delivery of a lawsuit against Trump as soon as he tries it.

Of course, no matter how much of this stuff motivates people to turn out to GOP town halls, it’s still anecdotal. However…

…Remember those two new polls yesterday’s usually-poll-eschewing TFN told you about? Well, now there are two more polls. The results are similar, but I won’t bore you with the specifics…

I’ll Thrill You With the Specifics!

CNN’s Harry Enten yesterday broke down the net results of all four of this week’s new polls. TFN can’t in good conscience endorse Enten’s presentation style, but in the clip, he rattles through the numbers for what he called “the worst polling day” Trump has had so far, including yesterday’s from CNN and Quinnipiac and two new ones:

Trump net approval ratings:

• Ipsos: ↓ 7%

• Gallup: ↓ 6%

• CNN: ↓ 5%

• Quinnipiac: ↓ 4%

Trump’s approval numbers are also down on what used to be his greatest strength — along with fueling rampant xenophobia — the economy (because people still believe that he was a good business leader and that we should let business leaders anywhere near the levers of popular power). Trump’s now underwater on that signature issue, the economy.

Trump’s net approval ratings on the economy:

• Ipsos: ↓ 8%

• Quinnipiac: ↓ 4%

There is, however, one new poll where Trump/Musk/DOGE/MAGA come out on top. The Economist and YouGov polled Americans about which government agencies they believe should be eliminated. One agency garnered more votes than any other: DOGE. (h/t)

And I’m gonna gift-link you Newsfuckers a lengthy Washington Post writeup of that Ipsos poll because it’s just rife with one specific after another about clear majorities or at least pluralities of Americans opposing the stupid range of stupid things the Trump administration has said and done and stupided.

And here’s yet another indicator of just how bad it’s already getting for Trump. There are now multiple reports of creeping empiricism…at Fox.

Fox Recognizing Trump’s Damage…One…Specific…at…a…Time

No one has ever been hired at Fox for their ability to extrapolate, let alone to empathize, so this will take some time. But … the process seems to have begun.

On very, very specific matters, a growing number of Fox stalwarts appear to be less stalwarty today.

The technical term for a group of foxes is a “skulk,” and skulking seems to be the word for how these Fox people are going about this.

Let’s start with the Foxest of Fox hosts, Jesse Watters, who has an extra ‘t’ in his name because no one gets to have clean waters.

So, right-wing cruelty is typically premised on the misanthropic assumption that other people are bad. Immigrants crime bad. LGBTQ+ grooming bad. Women autonomy bad. Atheists Satan bad.

In a phenomenon that I call proximity empathy, however, even the wrongest of right-wingers sometimes do display empathy and care for people in the groups they’ve targeted … when their direct personal experience refutes the group-slander to which the right otherwise subscribes.

So, all those not-working, shifty federal workers suckling at the national teat? It turns out Watters knows one (1) of them personally and holy shit the one fed worker Watters knows turns out to be the one (1) fed worker who’s good!

Watters, of course, typically revels in callousness and cruelty. It’s not the reluctant pain administered by a loving parent. From him it’s delight in the right-wing justice being visited upon the bad of the Earth.

Well, now Watters knows a fed worker who just got DOGEd. And voila Watters has discovered empathy and rejected callousness. Not for everyone, of course, but people like his buddy.

“…he just found out he’s probably going to get laid off. He’s going to get DOGE’d…

“This guy is not a DEI consultant. He is not a climate consultant. This guy is a veteran. So when you’re talking about DOGE-ing people, veterans should get priority. Because if you’re going to go out there and kill enemies, put your life on the line, you should not be in the same category as people that are doing DEI.”

So, Watters wants DOGE to start sheltering people not who are trying to rectify institutional and endemic racism, or trying to save Planet Earth, but who went out there and killed enemies. It’s a start?

Hilariously, of course, Watters remained oblivious to the fact he was still being callous to DEI and climate workers:

“…we just need to be a little bit less callous with the way … we talk about DOGE-ing people. I want that to sink in…

“I am not guilty of that. I finally found one person I knew who got DOGE’d, and it hit me in the heart.”

And at least Watters did it on TV, where Trump might see it. His other Fox colleagues only defied Trump via another method: Skulking.

Fox’s Mark Levin skulked so hard he trashed the Ukraine positions of Pres. Donald Trump without actually takething His name in vain.

Levin instead addressed the arguments Trump has put forward, such as that Ukraine, not Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin, started the war and that Pres. Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a dictator for not holding an election, during an invasion.

Which is weird because I was told no one who saves their country violates the law. Anyhoo!

Here’s Levin, with italics added for implied Trump:

…this is almost comical in a sick way that Putin is demanding an election…

So, I don’t know why there are people that not only oppose Zelenskyy, but seem to support Putin… if they had espoused these policies not that long ago, people would have wondered if they were on the take, or who they’re working for, something like that. Not that they are…

Trump also said lied that Zelenskyy was at four percent in Ukrainian polls. Here’s Levin, apropos of Trumpthing:

So, Zelensky’s latest poll, he’s at 57%.

Levin also implied that Trump is part of the 19% of Americans, by Levin’s calculations, who are not smart and do not have the very best brains, with italics added to emphasize not Trump.

Eighty-one percent of the American people do not trust Putin because 81% of the American people are smart…

Because the men and women in this country who’ve been in the military, who’ve fought wars, they understand…

That’s why Zelenskyy [is] at 57%, higher than most politicians in our own country.

Of course, Levin didn’t say this on Fox, where someone might see it. He skulked it on his radio show, where no one would see it.

Fox’s Brian Kilmeade pulled the same schtick, schticking it to Trump from safe territory: The airwaves. Here’s Kilmeade to Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), with italics again added to scream “Truuuuuump!” into the darkness of the moral abyss:

I believe that the, Ukraine are the good guys in this. …It’s Russia that is the problem. But what do you do with people in your own party that said, “I’m done with this [and I am Donald Trump]”?

And as Thune points out, much of the U.S. funding for Ukraine never left the U.S. It went to U.S. weapons-makers. And that money will continue to return to the U.S. government in the form of taxes paid by the arms dealers, income taxes and sales taxes paid by their employees, and on and on, as long as Trump doesn’t do something stupid like fire thousands of IRS agents…

Trump Fires Thousands of IRS Agents

Obviously, whichever remaining Internal Revenue Service patriot audits Elon Musk will receive the Nobel Peace Prize and evolve instantly into a being of pure energy and light, but since that hasn’t happened yet, here we are.

The New-at-Governing Boys Club is gutting the IRS less than two months till April 15.

Reportedly, the IRS yesterday began laying off 6,000 7,000 employees. That’s almost eight percent of the entire agency. Don’t make me tap the “less than two months till April 15” clause.

According to the Guardian, non-white people make up 56% of IRS personnel. Sixty-five percent are women. And 100% of them directly or indirectly work to retrieve at least some of the money illegally hoarded by our oligarchic Saurons.

In addition, some of the remaining IRS personnel will be tasked to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), assisting with deportations. In other words, removing people who, um, pay taxes.

It’s not just that this will make filing season more fuckified for everyone. It’s not just that this means more illionaires will hide more illions behind their ramparts of lawyers.

It’s also flagrantly, instantly, intrinsically, automatically, diametrically opposed to the alleged mission of saving taxpayers money.

Every time the IRS hires someone, the U.S. government saves money. I hope the math is clear on this one!

Two Quickies

• A new (old) kind of car battery is coming… if it can get past Pres. Donald Trump’s roadblocks and backward-facing toll booths. U.S. companies are ramping up to make lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) batteries, which may sound like they’ll make you overdose before they explode and set you on fire, but are actually safer than our nickel-manganese-cobalt batteries. LFPs are also cheaper and we could’ve been at parity with China on this tech, but noooo, the communists caught LFP batteries after they slipped through the Invisible Hand’s intangible fingers in 1997. The Washington Post reports we could be getting them now, but one wall Trump did build (with Democratic help, to be fair) was tariffs and tax policy standing in the way. U.S. companies see rapid growth here…starting in five years. under Pres. Barron.

• Trump is still making government re-big again! Remember their whole retire-now/get-a-payout offer? It was upheld (for now?) in court and some people took it. And some people who took that offer…were then laid off. No payout. No lifetime supply of chocolate. No Fizzy Lifting Drinks™. Then the Washington Post asked DOGE, hey, DOGE, what the fuck? So now DOGE is scrambling to re-offer their offer to the people whose email addresses they no longer have because they fired them just like the world’s smartest people would do.

Recommended Reading

• I’m thinking and not-frequently-enough writing about Trump’s second presidency in terms of a civics education. Government under Democrats is seldom visible. If someone called Pres. Joe Biden stupid for not putting his name on Covid relief checks, it wasn’t me, it was him. Then I spotted a nifty, viral-friendly post on Reddit, connecting everyday activities with the eroding government. I thought it was pretty effective and worth including in the syllabus for Civics 101, Prof. Trump.

• More for the syllabus: This weekend’s list of recommended reading is recommending another list of recommended reading, which I’m recommending not at all because they recommended reading me. (Truly, it’s a good list of writers on specific topics.)

• Katherine Stewart is a leading writer and researcher on the perils of America’s theocratic movement(s). (And, full disclosure, has boosted my work on the National Prayer Breakfast.) She just did an interview with Salon’s smart Senior Writer Amanda Marcotte about her new book, "Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy.” Marcotte is always recommended reading, but this discussion hits on essential themes that will dominate the rest of our lives, and not just Mitch McConnell’s. Namely, the movement to change the basic understanding of who this Jesus guy was and how dire the consequences could be for America, the land of His birth.

• Substacker D.L. Mayfield posted a really uplifting, empowering primer on how to defy authoritarianism. The key is the easiest/hardest thing in the world: If we decide not to accept it, it can’t last. As Pete Seeger sang:

If you don't let red-baiting break you up,
And if you don't let stool pigeons break you up,
And if you don't let vigilantes break you up,
And if you don't let race hatred break you up,
You'll win.

Taking Action

Dates/details unconfirmed! For pencil-planning purposes only…

Upcoming Actions

• Feb. 28: “Hit Them In their Profits” — a day not to buy things.

• March 7-14: Amazon — A week of buying nothing from Amazon. We can do this!

• March 14: National Strike — If you can, and if you need an excuse to skip work, this is the day.

Resources

• Chop Wood, Carry Water

• Sister District Project (h/t)

• Postcards to Voters (h/t)

• How to pursue change at home with your local officials (h/t)

TCB

NEWSFUCKER DU JOUR Asking you Newsfuckers to support TFN with a paid subscription is an emotionally fraught exercise for me, not least because of the voice in my head shrieking, “Why should anyone support you, you fraud?!?” So, instead, every once in a while, I’m gonna share the words fellow Newsfuckers have shared with me when they upgraded to paid:

Aw, thanks, Doug! (Goddamit, shutup, voice in my head!)

Thank you. More power to us!

CONNECTING Come say hi on Bluesky, Mastodon or Spoutible!

Go get ‘em, kids! And it’s the weekend, so give yourself some mental space along the way…

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TFN creator and writer Jonathan Larsen co-created Up w/ Chris Hayes and wrote for Countdown with Keith Olbermann at MSNBC, helped launch CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° and Air America Radio, and has also worked at The Daily Show with John Stewart and The Young Turks.