Another day, another absolutely brutal poll for President Donald Trump. The latest WaPo-ABC News-Ipsos survey finds Trump’s approval rating at 37 percent, with catastrophically low approval across a host of issues: 23 percent approval on cost of living, 27 percent on inflation, 33 percent on the conflict in Iran, 34 percent on the economy, and 40 percent on immigration. Crazy how many are so ungrateful to be living in the HOTTEST COUNTRY ON EARTH right in the middle of its GOLDEN AGE.
Sam and Will Sommer will be going live this morning at 10 a.m. EDT for MAGA Monday—tune in on Substack or YouTube. Happy Monday.
Volodymyr, Péter, and Leo
by William Kristol
On June 4, 1940, in the wake of the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk, Prime Minister Winston Churchill spoke in the House of Commons. The conclusion of the speech is justly famous:
We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.
In fact, eighteen long months later—“in God’s good time”—the New World did step forth to the rescue and liberation of the old. And for eight decades after that, the United States took on the responsibility of leading the Free World.
No longer. The current American president doesn’t care much about the world. His administration’s slogan is “America First.” And his administration doesn’t care much about freedom. As White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller explained, “we live in a world, in the real world . . . that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world.” And if we simply live in a world governed by iron laws of force and power, all this talk of freedom and the Free World is bunk.
So under the Trump administration, we’re no longer the leader of the Free World. Indeed we’re barely on the side of the Free World.
And yet, despite Miller’s fatalism and determinism, history is full of surprises. Trump’s success here in the United States surely counts as an unfortunate surprise. But in this past decade, the Old World has also generated surprises—hopeful surprises. The Old World has produced leaders who have stepped forth to defend freedom, and who may, in God’s good time, inspire us once again to do the same.
Seven years ago, in April 2019, an entertainer who’d never held elective office, Volodymyr Zelensky, was elected president of Ukraine. What his nation has done in defending its national freedom against the brutal assault of a much larger and dictatorial neighbor has surely been the twenty-first century’s finest hour.
And so, as David French recently put it, “for the first time in my adult life, the moral and strategic heart of the defense of liberal democracy doesn’t beat in Washington. . . . It’s in Kyiv, where a courageous leader and a courageous people have picked up the torch America has dropped.”
A year ago, on May 8, 2025, Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost was elected pope. Pope Leo XIV, the first American pope, is of course not from the Old World. But the institution he heads is certainly an Old World one. And so we have the paradox that it has fallen to the head of an ancient, pre-liberal institution to remind the president of the United States of the dignity and responsibilities of human freedom. And for all President Trump’s belittling of him, People Leo XIV has turned out to be a formidable enough figure that Trump is sending his secretary of state to Rome this week to pay his respects. This is not quite Henry IV journeying to Canossa—but it’s not nothing.
Then last month, Péter Magyar trounced Viktor Orbán in the illiberals’ favorite haunt, Hungary. As David Baer observed last week in The Bulwark, Magyar
did this by invoking the spirit of Hungary’s 1848 liberal revolution. Highlighting the contrast between the ideals of 1848 and the reality of Orbán’s Hungary, Magyar turned the election into a referendum on illiberalism. . . . Presented with a clear, stark choice between reactionary conservatism and national liberalism, Hungarians chose liberalism.
As David and I discussed yesterday, Magyar has a formidable task ahead. But he seems to understand the challenge of re-creating liberal institutions and a free society, and is moving aggressively to meet it.
So: Three surprising and impressive leaders in the fight for freedom. Can they succeed on their own turf? Could they also inspire a resurgence of the cause of liberty here in the United States? Could the Old World come to the rescue of the New?
Why not? If the principles of the Declaration of Independence are universal, why shouldn’t the impetus for their renewal come from outside our borders, from Kyiv and Rome and Budapest? In the twentieth century, we helped liberate them. In the twenty-first century, couldn’t they help liberate us?
AROUND THE BULWARK
Pentagon Firings Have Nothing to Do With ‘Culture’… The U.S. military’s culture doesn’t need radical change—and if it did, this wouldn’t be the way to go about it, argues MARK HERTLING.
Trump’s War on the Enlightenment… STEPHEN PINKER joins MONA CHAREN on The Mona Charen Show to discuss why the world is improving in ways most people don’t recognize—and why so many still believe everything is falling apart.
Tech Broke Democracy With Social Media. AI Is Next…. On How to Fix It, JOHN AVLON talks with JOSH TYRANGIEL about what AI actually looks like outside Silicon Valley hype.
Pete Hegseth’s Long War Disaster… On the latest Shield of the Republic, ERIC EDELMAN and ELIOT COHEN discuss Pete Hegseth’s job security amidst the ongoing war with Iran.
Quick Hits
STRAITJACKETED, CHAPTER ONE MILLION: Donald Trump has tried a lot of things in his fruitless quest to get Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz—he’s tried bombing them, he’s tried stopping bombing them, he’s tried threatening to genocide them, he’s tried taking sanctions off their ships, he’s tried putting sanctions back on their ships, he’s tried blockading the strait himself. Over the weekend, another thought seemed to occur to him: What if I just tried asking really nicely?
In a Saturday Truth Social post, Trump lamented that “Countries from all over the World,” whose ships are “merely neutral and innocent bystanders,” remain bottled up in the strait, and announced that “we have told these Countries that we will guide their Ships safely out of these restricted Waterways”—beginning, he said, this morning. Iran, he pleaded, should not interfere: “The Ship movement is merely meant to free up people, companies, and Countries that have done absolutely nothing wrong.” He added that Iran should consider it a “humanitarian gesture” and added that Iran’s acquiescence “would go a long way in showing Goodwill on behalf of all of those who have been fighting so strenuously over the last number of months.”
Iran was unconvinced. Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps spokesman Hossein Mohebbi warned Sunday that “any foreign armed force, especially the aggressive military of America,” would be attacked if it attempted to enter the strait, and that “violating” shipping vessels would also “be stopped with full force.”
Whether Trump will risk trying to call that bluff remains to be seen. One incident seems already to occurred early this morning, although the details are disputed: Iran claimed to have fired on and struck an American destroyer, preventing it from entering the strait, while U.S. Central Command said this was fabricated, adding that U.S. forces had begun the operation to free some of the ships stranded behind the strait.
BEHIND CLOSED DOORS: Much of the controversy over Donald Trump’s mass-deportation agenda has involved the actions that take place out in public, which bystanders can capture via phone video: the masked plainclothes officers, the violent arrests, the brutality toward protesters. What’s happening out of sight is even worse. A new Washington Post investigation of hundreds of internal ICE records finds record amounts of guard violence taking place inside overcrowded detention centers:
As ICE’s crackdown on illegal immigration has flooded detention centers with record numbers of detainees, guards inside those facilities have increasingly resorted to acts of physical force, The Post’s analysis of the reports found. Detention guards have used punches, kicks, takedown maneuvers, restraint holds and restraint chairs, as well as less-lethal weapons such as Tasers and pepper spray, according to the reports.
During the first year of Trump’s second term, detention staff used force 37 percent more times than the previous year, the reports show. The number of people subjected to force rose even more sharply, to 1,330 individuals—a 54 percent increase from the previous year, under President Joe Biden—as officers increasingly used these tactics with groups of detainees, the reports show.
Read the whole thing. As a reminder, the vast majority of these detainees have never been accused of any crimes.
BLOOD IN THE WATER: Why redistrict tomorrow when you could redistrict today? In the wake of the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Louisiana v. Callais, some Southern states are moving at breakneck speed to try to get new, redder maps in place ahead of the November midterms. Here’s CBS News:
Depending on how state officials proceed and whether courts intervene, legislators may try to split up Tennessee’s sole Democratic district and eliminate one of Alabama’s two blue seats.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee convened a special session that will start Tuesday, writing in a statement Friday that lawmakers “owe it to Tennesseans to ensure our congressional districts accurately reflect the will of Tennessee voters.” . . .
GOP Sen. Marsha Blackburn, who is running for governor of Tennessee, has called on state lawmakers to draw a map that gives Republicans an edge in all nine of the state’s congressional districts, splitting up the Memphis-area district held by Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen. President Trump has strongly urged Lee to redraw the state’s map to give Republicans “one extra seat.”
Both Alabama and Louisiana will have to reschedule their primaries, which were set to take place this month, in order to ram new maps through. They’ll also have to contend with the fact that filing deadlines have already passed for congressional candidates, all of whom were running in districts drawn by preexisting maps. They may also run into trouble if courts decide it’s too late to make major election changes for this cycle without compromising the integrity of the elections in question.
President Trump is urging red-state legislatures to push forward. “We cannot allow there to be an Election that is conducted unconstitutionally simply for the ‘convenience’ of State Legislatures,” Trump wrote last night. “If they have to vote twice, so be it.”
Cheap Shots
Yes, indeed. But it's much worse.
The deadly legacy of the orange narcissist-felon lives on, a virulent cancer in the human heart.
He has 'normalized' lying, cheating, stealing, deception, distrust. He has nourished crude epithets, personal attacks, rage, revenge, the sowing of hatred, divisiveness, distrust, cruelty to others. He has perverted every person and organization he touches, as he glories in pride, greed, lust, anger, gluttony, envy, sloth.
He has brought down a great nation, and a sometimes hopeful world. That hopeful world has abandoned him, justifiably.
He is the living horror that destroys all our better instincts, and attacks our souls.
"Crazy how many are so ungrateful to be living in the HOTTEST COUNTRY ON EARTH right in the middle of its GOLDEN AGE."
More than a little bizarre that the lower Trump's approval numbers go, the more he seems to think that monuments should be erected in his honor.