Hey everybody. Happy Monday. Thanks for being here.
Our top story today. The people who built the MAGA movement are starting to walk away from it. Farmers who have voted Republican their whole lives are watching soybean prices crater while diesel hits a record. Truckers are getting crushed at the pump. And the superfans who followed Trump from rally to rally for years are now calling him a fraud. These are the people who put him there.
We’ll also get into another taxpayer-funded Trump ad, new reporting that Trump offered to sell weapons to China, Trump rejecting a deal with Iran, and the White House getting caught faking numbers once again.
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Let’s get to it.
1. MAGA Voters Turn on Trump
For years, more than half the soybeans American farmers shipped overseas went to China. When Trump picked his trade fight, China stopped buying, prices fell, and farmers ate billions of dollars in losses on last year’s crop. Then tariffs pushed up the cost of the equipment they need to plant, repair, and harvest.
Then came the war. Diesel was under four dollars a gallon in February. It’s now around six and a half, a record. Right in the middle of harvest. One Missouri farmer who voted for Trump told Fortune his combine burns 200 gallons a day, and he’s paying twice what he paid last year.
For a farmer, this stuff snowballs fast. You lose money on this year’s crop, you borrow more to plant next year’s, and now you’re paying that back at a lower price too. It doesn’t take long before the whole operation is underwater. Farm bankruptcies were up 46 percent last year. In Iowa, they tripled. Since then, basically every decision Trump made has made things harder for farmers, not easier. And they are sick of it.
But it’s not just the farmers. Some of Trump’s most loyal superfans are turning too. These are people who sleep in line to get the front row at his rallies. One of them bought an RV in 2018 just to follow him around. She told Politico the moment it broke for her was that cabinet meeting last summer, when Trump brushed off questions about the Epstein files. She said it was like a dagger in her heart, and that a veil lifted. She now calls him a fraud and a liar. Another, who has been to more than a hundred rallies, said Trump can’t be trusted on the war and he might not vote at all in November.
Just five weeks before the midterms, the farmers who have stood by Trump and the superfans who camp out for his rallies are both walking away. These are the people who gave Trump another term. They believed his promises, but since the day he got back in the White House he hasn’t done anything but let them down.
2. White House Recycles Trump Ad With Public Money
On Friday we reported on the “Love Me” ad, a 30 second ode to Trump paid for by the federal government. In case you thought that was a one-off, the administration released another gem over the weekend. It ran during Fox News Sunday, Saturday Night Live, and two football games, costing the taxpayer north of a million dollars. So what was the message they needed your money to broadcast? Have a listen.
First of all, “expel the warmongers?” Pretty ironic, Donald.
Anyway, if that seemed like a Trump campaign ad, it’s because it was. The White House literally took a campaign ad Trump ran in 2024, took out the logo, and ran it with public money. This, by the way, from the administration that’s “laser focused” on fraud and waste.
The ad is bad enough, but the defense is just an insult to our intelligence. The White House put out a statement that referred to these ads as “public service announcements” intended to promote patriotism. They even compare the ads to efforts by FDR to rally the country during WWII.
They also cite past administrations’ use of TV ads to explain policy changes. For example, Obama running ads showing Americans how to sign up for Obamacare, or Bush explaining Medicare Part D.
Those ads helped Americans understand new government benefits and how they could access them. But this ad doesn’t offer anything new. It couldn’t possibly be promoting or explaining a new Trump policy, because it was made before he even took office.
Don’t take it from me. Here’s John Kennedy, the Republican Senator from Louisiana.
“The administration sees it differently.” Kennedy is hedging his bets here, but he obviously knows this is wrong. Other Republicans were right there with him. Thom Tillis called the ads inappropriate and compared them to Viktor Orbán’s Hungary. Thomas Massie said the ads would be normal in a banana republic. Watchdog groups are already filing their complaints with the GAO.
The blatant corruption is nothing new. But next time this administration tries to tell you about waste and weaponization, just remember who’s talking.
3. Trump's Illegal Arms Pitch to China
David Perdue is Trump’s ambassador to China. He went on Fox News Sunday to talk about Xi’s Washington trip, and he made a pretty startling admission: Trump offered to sell Xi American arms.
First of all, that would be blatantly illegal. The US banned arms sales to China in 1989, after Tiananmen Square. That’s federal law. But this president flouting the law is nothing new.
The contrast is far more revealing. This is the same president that held back a 14 billion dollar arms package to Taiwan so he could use it as a bargaining chip. A democracy facing invasion gets stonewalled. The communist dictatorship trying to crush them gets the sales pitch.
It’s just one way this summit has highlighted Trump’s hypocrisy. We already talked about the pageantry: the flyovers, the gifts, the personal touches. But if you weren’t convinced the first time around, here’s Trump himself in 2015 on Obama’s reception for Xi.
So that was the plan: a Big Mac and then straight to business. It just goes to show you how much Trump has changed. Back in the day, he was the one sounding the alarm on the PRC. Since then, he’s been choosing his friends and enemies based on the leaders he respected and related to, even if they were tyrants.
His administration is no more serious. Over the weekend, the White House deputy chief of staff posted an AI generated video of him and the Trump family riding a golden luggage cart through the White House and spraying champagne, presumably dressed for the state dinner.
When it wants your vote, this administration will project patriotism. It will slam communism and celebrate American identity. But they gave up on the principles behind that identity long ago. They stopped caring about the difference between democracies and dictatorships. Countries like Taiwan and Ukraine have paid the price.
Luckily, inconvenient as it is for this administration, we still live in a democracy where your vote matters.
4. Trump Turns Down a Way Out of Iran
The New York Times reports that, on Friday, Iran put an offer on the table: reopen the Strait of Hormuz within seven days and restart nuclear talks. In exchange, they want the naval blockade lifted, sanctions eased on their oil, and a ceasefire that includes Lebanon. Trump rejected the offer.
Iran only wants to reopen the strait, he claimed, because “they’re losing so badly,” and “we’re winning tremendously.” But after so many declarations of victory, voters aren’t buying it. A CNN poll found 64 percent of Americans don’t think Trump is winning this war. 75 percent don’t think he even has a plan.
And when Republicans like Congressman Tom Kean Jr. try to spin his lies, they hear voters’ frustrations first-hand. Have a listen:
That’s a live audience laughing at the mere suggestion that Trump is winning.
But nobody is more frustrated by the war’s losses than our veterans. Just this past week, the Washington Post reported that the Pentagon added 37 more troops to the wounded list, without even a press release. The Post only found out by combing through the Defense Department’s casualty database. That total now stands at 861 wounded and 19 dead since February.
And veterans are hitting back. Founded by Iraq veterans, VoteVets wants to sink the Republicans who have supported the Iran War. According to The New York Times, the group spent over four million against Republican Ashley Hinson in Iowa, who voted for the war six times. And it plans to spend 60 million dollars backing 331 Democratic candidates across the country. That makes it one of the biggest single-issue advocacy groups in the midterms.
Listen, we are now seven months into this war. And the costs keep mounting for both the American public and our military. Voters are fed up. Veterans are fed up. And Hegseth knows that it’s so bad, he’s trying to cover up the evidence.
But Trump doesn’t care. The president conveniently promised voters that the war would end after November’s elections. But he’s reportedly telling his aides something different: that he will start bombing Iran again once the votes are counted.
5. White House Fakes Fraud Numbers Again
During a speech at the Republican midterm convention, JD Vance claimed to have found 250 billion in fraud since the president appointed him czar of the administration’s fraud task force. But The New York Times went through the task force’s own ledger and the numbers don’t add up.
Let’s start with the Justice Department. In its first week, the new fraud division claimed 340 million dollars in enforcement. But about 280 million came from cases investigated months or even years ago, including one from Minnesota in 2022. That work happened under the Biden administration. Vance couldn’t help but count his rival’s success as his own.
The task force also counted Medicaid funding pauses to California and Minnesota as two and a half billion in fraud prevented. But punishing blue states by pausing support for health care doesn’t count as saved money. And it certainly doesn’t prove fraud.
Which brings us to the largest chunk. The task force counted 122 billion dollars of pandemic loans, given out by the Small Business Administration, as fraud. But those loans were flagged as potentially fraudulent. Not recovered. Not even proven.
And look, fraud is undoubtedly a massive problem. According to estimates by the Government Accountability Office, the federal government loses anywhere between 233 to 521 billion dollars annually. But the GAO’s former head said the figures that Vance and his task force have cited lack transparency. And they haven’t been independently checked the way they normally would be.
But let me be clear. JD Vance doesn’t have to pad his numbers. Think about that Trump ad, plastered across your TV screens, paid for by your taxes. If his task force wants real fraud, it should investigate its own administration, starting at the top.
Some other stories that caught my eye:
U.S. intelligence agencies assess that Saudi Arabia has not ruled out building a nuclear weapon, according to classified documents sent to Congress. That finding lands in the middle of a 90-day congressional review of President Trump’s deal to help the kingdom build a civilian nuclear program. While the deal initially caps Saudi uranium enrichment below 5 percent, a further study and a written agreement reveals that the cap can rise to 20 percent. That level of enrichment can be fairly quickly pushed to weapons grade material. For context, Obama’s 2015 Iran deal, which Trump harshly criticized, capped enrichment at 3.67 percent. Members of the deal have dismissed concerns. The State Department says the U.S. “does not and will not support a Saudi nuclear weapon program.” The Saudi Energy Minister has said the program will be “peaceful.” But the deal does not require the IAEA’s Additional Protocol, which gives inspectors access to every stage of a country’s fuel cycle. And geopolitical tensions incentivize noncompliance. In 2018, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said he would build a bomb if Iran completed the development of its own.
Senate Republicans are spending their last scheduled week in session before the midterms trying to pass bills they can campaign on, as their candidates slip further behind Democrats. The centerpiece is a vote expected this week on Sen. Jon Husted’s bill to protect consumers from electricity costs driven by the data center boom. Husted is one of the most vulnerable Republicans on the ballot. And he’s running against an opponent, former Sen. Sherrod Brown, who has spent millions on ads tying him to rising power bills. A recent poll revealed that 69 percent of likely Ohio voters said data centers are mostly bad for home energy costs. Husted says his bill will show voters that he and other Republicans are “serious about driving down electric prices.” But Democrats aren’t convinced. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called it “a fraud,” pointing out that compliance is voluntary. The bill also wouldn’t take full effect for another two years.
