The Friday Brief, May 1, 2026
Unlicensed Exorcisms and Erika Kirk
Inside
Trump’s Polls Can’t Go Lower…Right?
Erika Kirk’s Grifter Inception
King Charles > King Donald
Iran Might Be Winning
Rhetoric Laundering
A Florida Dummymander
The Dystopia Is Closer Than You Think
Unlicensed Exorcisms? Sign me up!
Smellovision AT LAST.
What I’m Reading
Scenes From The Home Front
Lots of pics this week!
The Big Picture
Trump’s Polls Can’t Go Lower…Right?
There’s a lot of noise this week, with the Hilton incident, the SCOTUS ruling, and MAGA gone wild, but here’s the bottom line: Trump’s numbers are so bad he’s about to nuke his entire party.
Donald Trump is staring at the worst polling environment of either of his presidencies, and this time, the structural rot is visible from orbit. Reuters/Ipsos has him at 34% overall approval and a stomach-turning 22% on cost of living. AP-NORC clocks him at 33% with a 30% economic rating. CNBC’s All-America Survey shows his net approval cratering to historic lows. Silver Bulletin’s average puts him at -18.8 net approval, which, for those keeping score at home, is right where he sat in the smoldering aftermath of January 6th.
The cost-of-living number is the one that should have every Republican strategist day-drinking. Inflation is consistently the issue voters say matters most, and Trump’s net rating on it has collapsed to -40. He owns this. The naval blockade of Iran sent gas to $4.23 a gallon, which, for those of you playing our home game, is the highest in nearly four years…and Brent crude punched through $115 a barrel.
There is no clever messaging fix for $4.23 gas. There is no Truth Social post that makes a Walmart run feel cheaper. Voters experience this every single time they fill up, and they know exactly whom to blame.
The deeper problem for the GOP is the erosion inside the tent. CNN’s polling earlier this month showed strong approval among Republicans dropping from 52% to 43% since January, with a stunning 23-point collapse among Republicans under 45. Nearly three in ten Republicans now say his policies have made the economy worse. The MAGA core on 25% or so is holding, but the soft-Republican coalition that delivered him 2024 is leaking out the bottom of the bucket.
Meanwhile, Democrats are leading on the economy in generic ballot polling for the first time since 2010. Read that sentence again. 2010. The party that lost the 2024 election while screaming about democracy now has voters telling pollsters they trust them more on the issue Trump was supposed to own.
Trump himself seems to grasp the scope of the problem. At a drug-pricing event last week, he conceded, almost mournfully, “By itself, we should win the midterms, but it doesn’t work that way, unfortunately.”
Sad! Weak! Low energy!
Intel and Observations
Erika Kirk’s Grifter Inception
