Donald Trump is polling at 33% approval, a number that, among second-term presidents in the modern era, only beats Richard Nixon — a man who resigned in disgrace before his own party could remove him. That is where we are. And somehow, that wasn't even the worst thing that happened to Trump this week.
The Week Trump's Own People Started Folding On Him
The thing about Trump's first term was that his enemies were always somewhere inside the tent. Dissenters, leakers, the occasional general with a spine. He could blame them for everything and his base bought it. This term, as the BBC's Anthony Zurcher reports, the people folding on him are the ones who love him most.
In the span of a few days, Trump watched his hand-picked US Attorney Jeanine Pirro drop a high-profile vandalism case he personally championed, and saw his former criminal defense lawyer Todd Blanche blink in the face of a Senate standoff over a slush fund that critics were calling, charitably, a payoff scheme. Two of his most loyal lieutenants. Both bent under pressure. Both left him holding the bag.
Trump's response was exactly what you'd expect. He attacked Pirro publicly, praised Blanche by pretending not to know what Blanche had agreed to, and retreated to Truth Social to insist reality was wrong. Again.
The Reflecting Pool Fiasco, Starring a Former Fox Host Who Blinked
Here is the actual sequence of events in the Reflecting Pool case, which sounds like a bit from a political satire show that got cancelled for being too on the nose. The National Park Service blamed former Olympian David Hearn for intentionally damaging the Reflecting Pool near the Washington Monument. Trump loved this. Vandalism! A villain! A prosecution!
Then Jeanine Pirro, Fox News veteran and one of Trump's most reliable cheerleaders, actually looked at the evidence she'd have to present to a judge and jury. According to BBC News, she filed a 20-page brief on Friday concluding that the damage was the result of a, quote, "botched installation," not vandalism, and that her own department had been given misleading information by the Interior Department. Case dropped.
Trump, who had enthusiastically endorsed the vandalism story, did not take this well. He went to Truth Social. He went to the Oval Office on Monday. "She folded like an umbrella," he said of Pirro, apparently unaware that the correct analogy for someone who abandons a losing case after reading the evidence is not "folding" but "lawyering." The irony of a man famous for alternative facts attacking someone for surrendering to actual facts is either lost on him or completely intentional. Neither option is reassuring.
The 'Payout Pot for Punks' That Almost Tanked His AG Pick
Meanwhile, up on Capitol Hill, Trump's preferred attorney general nominee Todd Blanche was running into a wall made of two Republican senators and basic math. John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina joined with Democrats to block Blanche's confirmation, demanding he formally disavow any plan to revive a proposed $1.8 billion fund that would compensate people who claim they were targeted by politicized prosecutions. Tillis called it a "payout pot for punks," which, credit where it's due, is a genuinely good line from a man who doesn't usually produce them.
The concern, per BBC News, was that the fund could end up compensating people prosecuted for the January 6th Capitol riot. You know, the one Trump spent years calling a tourist visit before calling the participants hostages and then pardoning them wholesale. The senators wanted it in writing that Blanche would kill the fund. Blanche obliged, releasing two letters on Sunday that Cornyn and Tillis said satisfied their concerns.
Trump, asked about the letters on Monday, said he "didn't look at" them and didn't know what had been agreed. Which is either a stunning admission of management incompetence from the guy who keeps telling us he alone can fix things, or a deliberate attempt to maintain plausible deniability on a deal he privately hated. He also posted on Truth Social that he'd "push hard" to get Congress to pass the fund anyway, so either way, this story isn't over.
The Iran War: Still Going, Still a Mess, Still Somehow Getting Worse
Behind all the domestic theater, there is a war. An actual war, with Iran, that the United States is fighting right now, and which an increasing number of Americans think is not going well. According to BBC News, Trump claimed over the weekend that he had called off "an attack that would have been the biggest attack since World War II" after Iran reached out through Arab intermediaries. Then Iran denied any new direct negotiations were happening. Then Trump went back to Truth Social to accuse Iran of "duplicity."
This has become the rhythm of the conflict: Trump announces a breakthrough, the other side disputes it, Trump calls them liars, repeat. BBC News notes this is not the first time Trump has taken Iranian assurances at face value and declared a diplomatic victory that did not materialize. The gap between the announcements and the reality keeps widening.
Polls show Americans are increasingly unhappy with the war and skeptical that Trump is achieving his stated goals. That unhappiness is a major factor in a 33% overall approval rating that, per the BBC, aligns with findings from AP, CNN, Quinnipiac, and YouGov, and matches or undercuts Trump's numbers even after January 6th. Trump's response to these polls has been to dismiss them as fabricated. Which is a strategy that works great right up until it doesn't.
What 33% Actually Means Historically
Let's just sit with the number for a second. Thirty-three percent. Among second-term presidents in modern American history, per the BBC's reporting on recent polling, only Richard Nixon scored lower, and Nixon left before he could find out how much lower he'd go. Every other second-term president, including ones who presided over wars, recessions, and spectacular personal scandals, managed to hold more public support than Donald Trump is holding right now.
Trump has waved this off as fake numbers. He posted on Truth Social about his "REAL Polling Numbers," which he did not specify or source. Multiple independent pollsters from across the ideological spectrum are producing the same result, which is either a massive coordinated conspiracy involving organizations with nothing in common or a data point the president would prefer didn't exist.
Two years left in the term. A war with unclear objectives and declining public support. An attorney general nominee who just had to buy his confirmation with a written promise. A US Attorney who abandoned the president's pet prosecution after reading the evidence. This is the second term Trump promised would be different from the first.
The Dingo Take
You are supposed to believe that a president polling at 33% is the victim of a media conspiracy so vast and coordinated it somehow includes outlets across the political spectrum, independent universities, and international polling firms. You are supposed to believe the Reflecting Pool got vandalized, not botched by federal contractors, even though the administration's own hand-picked prosecutor read the evidence and refused to argue otherwise in court. You are supposed to believe the Iran diplomacy is on track, even though the other party in that diplomacy keeps publicly denying the breakthroughs Trump is announcing.
At some point the alternative facts stop being a political strategy and start being a flashing warning light. When a president's most loyal allies are quietly cutting deals he publicly claims not to know about, when his chosen prosecutors are dropping his chosen prosecutions, when his approval is in territory last seen by a president who had to resign, something structural has broken down. This isn't spin anymore. This is a feedback loop with no off switch.
The funniest and most terrifying part of this particular week is that Trump isn't uniquely failing at any one thing. He's failing at all of them simultaneously, in public, while insisting it's going great. The Reflecting Pool, the attorney general fight, the Iran war, the polls: every single one of these stories ends in the same place, with Trump asserting a version of events that the evidence does not support, and the world moving on without him. There are two years left. Start counting.
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