The Public Is Resisting Trump. The Elites Aren’t.
The president is encountering little resistance as he remakes our society. And yet polling is clear that voters aren’t with him.
Back in April, the White House took a sledgehammer to America’s trading relationships with the rest of the world, pledging that a shiny new trade regime would be in place within three months: “90 deals in 90 days.” Seventy-five days and two deals later, they’re tweaking the calendar a bit.
“Secretary Lutnick said yesterday that he expects 10 more deals,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Fox Business this morning. “So, if we can ink 10 or 12 of the important 18, there are another important 20 relationships, then I think we could have trade wrapped up by Labor Day.” Happy Friday.
The Public’s Not With Trump
by William Kristol
In case you hadn’t noticed, everything’s not great as we approach the celebration of our nation’s 249th birthday.
Donald Trump’s abuses get more brazen and his usurpations get more dramatic by the day. He is tightening his control of the executive branch and using its powers ever more aggressively to execute his authoritarian agenda. The other two branches of government don’t seem able or willing to do much to check or balance him, or even slow him down. And much of the private sector is too timid to embrace the cause of defending liberty and a free society.
Things could be worse. They’d be worse if the American people were enthusiastically supporting Trump’s actions. But they’re not. That might make the inability or unwillingness of their “leaders” to resist Trump more forcefully seem inexplicable. But there is also hope that with the public resisting, these leaders might eventually stiffen their spines a bit.
There’s some fresh evidence of public resistance in a new poll from Quinnipiac University. It shows 41 percent of voters approving of the way Trump is handling his job as president, while 54 percent disapprove.
More striking is this: On Trump’s signature issue of immigration and deportation—central in so many ways to his authoritarian project—64 percent of voters say they would prefer giving most undocumented immigrants a pathway to legal status, while only 31 percent say they prefer deporting most of them. In December 2024, those numbers were 55 percent versus 36 percent. So Trump has lost ground on his most high-profile initiative.
What’s more, 56 percent of respondents in the Quinnipiac poll disapprove of the way ICE is doing its job, 55 percent disapprove of sending National Guard troops to Los Angeles, and 60 percent disapprove of sending in the Marines. Again, cause for optimism but also befuddlement, too. After all: Couldn’t Democrats in Congress do more to point out that the “One Big Beautiful Bill” now before the Senate massively increases spending for the unpopular masked men of ICE and their deportation efforts?
Then again, maybe making this point is unnecessary. The Quinnipiac poll shows that the Big Beautiful Bill is already extraordinarily unpopular. An unusually high 71 percent of respondents say they have heard or read a lot (36 percent) or some (35 percent) about that legislation. And they don't like it. Fifty-five percent of voters oppose the bill while only 29 percent support it, and 16 percent are unsure or have no opinion.
I can recall no similar case when the signature legislation of a new president and his party in Congress had the support of only 29 percent of the public. Even Democrats in Disarray should be able to run successfully in 2026 against Republican members of Congress who’ve voted for this bill—and more broadly, against the Republican leadership in D.C. that insisted on it.
It’s true that there are limits to how effective mere public disapproval can be in stopping an authoritarian push by a powerful executive. Presidents have a lot of power even if much of the public isn’t supportive. Still, if the public were on board, things would be worse.
But you know what would help a lot? Some elite disapproval—publicly and boldly expressed. While a successful democracy depends on some degree of reasonableness from voters, a successful liberal democracy also depends on some degree of responsibility and even courage from elites.
Next week will provide a case study of elite responsibility and courage. As Jefferson put it in his famous letter to Roger Weightman expressing regret that he wouldn’t be able to attend a celebration of the Declaration’s fiftieth anniversary:
I should indeed, with peculiar delight, have met and exchanged there, congratulations personally, with the small band, the remnant of that host of worthies, who joined with us, on that day, in the bold and doubtful election we were to make, for our country, between submission, or the sword; and to have enjoyed with them the consolatory fact that our fellow citizens, after half a century of experience and prosperity, continue to approve the choice we made.
Jefferson took pride in being one of the “small band,” the “host of worthies” who made their momentous choice and chose to approve the Declaration on July 4, 1776. They did so, of course, as representatives of their fellow citizens, who (mostly) approved of their choice then and later. But Jefferson’s letter is a reminder that the Declaration was a choice not at first of the people but of the signers. They were elites who individually pledged not to the people but “to each other” their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor.
Is it too much to hope that we might find similar worthies willing to make such a choice today?
Mission Re-Accomplished
by Andrew Egger
On May 1, 2003, President George W. Bush stood on the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln to proclaim the success of the weeks-old invasion of Iraq, which had already resulted in the toppling of Saddam Hussein. A massive, star-spangled banner behind him was emblazoned with the words “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.” The visual has since become a cautionary tale against spiking the football too soon.
Now, as the entire Trump administration declares a fatwa on anyone saying its strikes on Iran were anything other than an overwhelming and permanent geopolitical triumph, it’s fair to wonder whether they’re falling into the same trap.
Trump, of course, always takes the path of maximum bombast, so it wasn’t exactly a surprise that he would spend the week crowing about the “TOTAL OBLITERATION” of Iran’s nuclear program. If some of his pronouncements verged into sheer wishcasting—“You know, they have guys that go in there after the hit, and they said it was total obliteration,” he told reporters in the Hague this week, referring to a supposed Israeli operation that appears not to have existed—well, just take a gander at the other shit the guy says.1
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Dan Caine took a more measured approach, advising that the full damage assessment would “take some time,” because he apparently lives in a world based on past experience and sanity. If the rest of the administration were sane and sober, they would acknowledge that a great deal of fog of war remains around the operation and that, while the strikes were an undeniable success, more work might have to be done to constrain and frustrate Iran’s nuclear-armed ambitions.
Instead, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has appointed himself Trump’s top enforcer against the dangerous, seditious, and unpatriotic notion that the U.S. strikes might have been anything less than a fatal blow to Iran’s nuclear program.
“What’s really happening is you’re undermining the success of the incredible B-2 pilots and incredible F-35 pilots and incredible refuelers and incredible air defenders who accomplished their mission, set back a nuclear program in ways that other presidents would have dreamed,” Hegseth scolded reporters at a press conference. “It’s like it’s in your DNA and in your blood to cheer against Trump because you want him not to be successful.”
When Fox News reporter Jennifer Griffin asked a straightforward, factual question—whether Hegseth could say for certain whether Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium had been destroyed in the strikes—Hegseth went nuclear. “Jennifer, you’ve been about the worst. The one who misrepresents the most intentionally,” he replied, visibly emotional.
It almost goes without saying that this is deeply stupid. Reporters trying to figure out what can be known about the aftermath of the strikes is no more unpatriotic than America’s intelligence agencies trying to answer the same questions. But it’s more than just stupid—it could prove dangerous.
With every passing day, the entire White House is committing itself to the argument that it is unthinkable Iran could bounce back from these strikes. In doing so, it is putting itself in a policy straitjacket. Months from now, if troubling intelligence reports start to bubble up that Iran did indeed manage to get its uranium to safety and intends to get back to further enrichment as quickly as possible, how will Trump and Hegseth respond? Will they allow this information to shape their thinking on the matter? Or will they thrust their heads back into the sand, waving it off as more treasonous nonsense from Deep Staters trying to make our great warfighters look bad?
AROUND THE BULWARK
The Criminals Are Running DOJ… GEORGE CONWAY and JVL break down a stunning whistleblower complaint accusing former acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove of telling colleagues the DOJ should ignore court orders and deport migrants anyway.
NATO’s New Northern Leaders… The Nordic-Baltic Eight are stepping up, GEN. MARK HERTLING observes.
‘F1: The Movie’ Review… See the cars. The cars go fast! SONNY BUNCH reviews Joseph Kosinski’s F1: The Movie.
Republicans Want to Deport Zohran? On Bulwark+ Takes, SAM STEIN and TIM MILLER break down the grotesque and dangerous rhetoric from GOP Reps. Andy Ogles and Nancy Mace, who are calling for or suggesting the deportation of New York mayoral candidate and naturalized U.S. citizen Zohran Mamdani.
Quick Hits
ANOTHER WIN FOR THE ANTI-VAXXERS: Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s new handpicked vaccine advisory committee wrapped its first meeting yesterday with a vote to stop recommending flu shots containing the preservative thimerosal. The change, while directly affecting only a small portion of the flu vaccine supply, represents an explicit and alarming sop to the aims of the anti-vax movement. Here’s Politico:
Kennedy, in 2014, wrote a book about thimerosal, arguing that it likely causes autism and should be banned. But many public health agencies have long considered it to be safe—including the CDC, according to its website. “Scientists have been studying the use of thimerosal in vaccines for many years. They haven’t found any evidence that thimerosal causes harm,” the website reads. . . .
“Even though this move only affects a small portion of the flu vaccine supply and likely won’t impact access in the US this season, the symbolism is powerful. It signals that falsehoods may have a place in shaping vaccine policy in America,” Katelyn Jetelina, an epidemiologist who has consulted for the CDC, told POLITICO. “The ripple effects could undermine trust in vaccines, vaccine access globally and weaken pandemic preparedness.”
CBS News reports that the thimerosal vote “was based mainly on a presentation by Lyn Redwood, the former head of a group founded by Kennedy that has lobbied against vaccine authorizations and requirements. Redwood has been hired to work in the agency’s vaccine safety office, though she said Thursday she was speaking only as a private citizen.”
Redwood is a militant champion of the debunked belief that vaccines give children autism—something she has long claimed happened to her own son. Ahead of her presentation to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, her presentation was posted online—which allowed ABC News to notice it cited at least one source that does not exist. (After they published that fact, the presentation was edited to remove the citation. That’s service journalism for ya, improving the science presented to our top vaccine-policy bodies!)
Redwood may be an anti-vax loon, but new ACIP Chair Dr. Marin Kulldorff thinks that’s no reason not to take her policy recommendations. “I think it’s inappropriate to dismiss a presentation, just because the person does not have a PhD or an MD,” he told CBS News.
GIVE IT UP, ANDREW: After his shock loss to Zohran Mamdani in Tuesday’s New York City Democratic mayoral primary, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo conceded quickly and congratulated Mamdani. “Tonight is his night,” Cuomo said. He deserved it. He won.” Apparently, Cuomo meant that literally. Now that Mamdani’s night is over, Cuomo’s not dropping out of the race. Here’s CNN:
The former New York governor, who quickly conceded the Democratic primary race on Tuesday night to Mamdani, has not fully committed to running an active campaign through the summer and fall. But Cuomo will keep the place he already secured on the “Fight & Deliver” ballot line for the November election, three sources say.
Cuomo is calculating that the full city’s electorate would be significantly different from Democratic primary voters who were energized by Mamdani’s focus on affordability and his campaign’s online videos. His camp also believes Mamdani and his policy ideas, from a rent freeze to city-operated grocery stores, will receive increased scrutiny now that Mamdani is positioned to secure a Democratic primary win once ranked-choice votes are allocated next week.
It’s remarkable to see the former governor—the definition of a party politician—apparently convincing himself he’ll actually be stronger with the broader electorate than with his own party’s primary voters. Guess we’ll find out! Either way, whatever Cuomo’s huffing, we want some of that.
Cheap Shots
Ever hear of the late, great Hannibal Lecter?
ICE has become the maga gestapo. And what is happening in these "detention centers" is unfathomably cruel. A pregnant woman was denied care, despite begging for it or for her deportation to finish because she could get care in her home country, and her child, an American citizen, was stillborn, while she labored in shackles. Horrific. And that's just ONE horror story. If we get out of this mess, everyone involved in this barbary needs to be held to account.
With respect to the elites failing to speak up against the brutal excesses being foisted on society by the regime of the orange narcissist-felon, why would they? They have everything to gain from the moves being made by the regime, mostly in the lower taxes they hope to enjoy.
These men and women, for whom too much is never enough, live in a separate world from >95% of average citizens. They enjoy salaries and perks labelled obscene and outrageous, immense multiples of the average worker. They live charmed lives, in mansions, on executive jets.
They don't want this to end, so they stay quiet and hope their gravy train is . . . forever.