Trump faces polling crash amid war, bad economy, midterms

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It's not just a few Trump voters, though. Trump is also dealing with a new revolt from exiled MAGA members, led by Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and others. They seem to be considering the launch of a MAGA alternative, arguing Trump has, quote, betrayed America. Tucker Carlson, also releasing a 10-point manifesto for how to rebuild the country after the president is done wrecking it, as The Daily Beast puts it. Tucker Carlson, then blasting Trump on camera. Do you have the President of the United States, whatever they tell you, openly threatening the use of nuclear weapons in a conflict that has no immediate or obvious resolution? You've already proven yourself incapable of leadership because that's crazy. That's beyond reckless. That's, well, it's literally suicidal and homicidal. Now, Trump is also reportedly taking his anger directly to members of his own cabinet. The Washington Post reporting on a clash in which Trump pressed his Pentagon Chief Pete Hegseth over America's dwindling munitions. Trump reportedly demanding answers on the, quote, extreme munitions shortages that now threatened to limit military options with Iran. The White House denies the exchange occurred, but it's all context for the GOP's growing midterm fears. Political reporting on a closed-door Senate GOP meeting, where the big question was, when is Trump going to focus on the midterms and take the advice of his own team? One Republican senator asking, quote, when Trump would start attacking Democrats instead of attacking Republicans? Things are not much better over in the House. Axios reporting on Democrats improving map, quote, for scandal-plagued House Republicans, whose seats should be gimmies for the GOP. have instead turned their races into unexpected battlegrounds. And that's where we start tonight, trouble surrounding Trump and the GOP just three months from the midterms. Joining me now is Molly Jong-Fast, contributor writer for The New York Times, host of Fast Politics podcast, and MS Now political analyst, Rick Wilson, co-founder of the Lincoln Project, and political strategist who has worked on multiple Republican presidential campaigns. Molly, Rick, thank you both for joining here this evening. Molly, let's start with you here. Taking all of this together, the numbers don't look good for Republicans, Donald Trump, the head of their party, is in denial over his polling. What would you tell Democrats, though, who may be getting ahead of themselves about what they should be cautious for at this point? Yeah, I mean, look, I think right now what Democrats need to focus on is getting sort of solidarity after some bruising primaries. What needs to happen now is that the loser in the primary needs to endorse the winner. That needs to happen in Michigan. That happened in Texas. Those kind of things. The Democrats need to get together and sort of even though there's a lot, there's, look, there's a lot happening in the Democratic Party right now. But right before the midterms, and we're like a little bit less than 90 days from the midterms, Democrats really need to be focused on unity, on turning out their voters, on exciting their base, which is excited, and about, you know, getting voter turnout and making sure that the midterms are safe. Because remember, there's a lot of voter intimidation coming from the Republican side and a lot of, you know, sort of...

stuff coming from Trump world that, you know, is problematic for any stretch of reasons. So, Rick, on the other side of this, we reported MS Now that associates of Trump's own political operation understand he's not going to perfectly echo the GOP's strategic messaging campaign. He's going to say whatever he feels like saying on any given day. But what would you tell the Senate GOP over their meeting in which they were expressing concerns about Trump and the lack of seriousness in which he has taken the midterms here? I mean, have they not met him? This is a man who does not think about the Republican Party as a party he has to help. It's all a one-way street for him. It's like, do they obey me? Do they like me? Do they come and kiss the ring? And really, their electoral prospects this year have been damaged because of Donald Trump's actions on tariffs, on the war, on a host of other areas. The one thing they should do, which is to get some daylight on him and talk about affordability, is the one thing they can't do. So instead they're stuck with his messaging of screaming about imaginary communists everywhere. I think that it is a very tough spot for the Republicans. And, you know, the House is looking very, very problematic. And the Senate should have been a lot easier for them. And it's getting worse by the day. Meanwhile, a moderate Democratic group, known as Third Way, is planning a $15 million spend to oppose progressive Dems and try to convince the country that progressive democratic policies are not the way forward. Can the progressive movement, though, at this point, be stalled by Dems who, or moderate Dems who are concerned that they can't win in battleground races? Or does this only hurt the wider Democratic Party as a whole at this point? I think it's hard to know what this money will do. Look, the thing we've seen from the Michigan Democratic primary results is that candidate quality matters. And even if a spend will help, it doesn't necessarily get a candidate over the line. And I think, like, with the progressives who won, they have been actually very strong candidates. Like, when you hear Abdul El-Sayed speak, he's a very good speaker, and he has the same thing that Zohran Mamdani has, where he's very... good at staying on message. I mean, he has this call in response, money in your pocket, Medicare for all. Like these are things that voters have said they wanted. And remember, Democrats, the Democratic base is very angry. And they want to see. their people fighting for them. And this may not be so simple. This may not just be progressives versus moderates. This may be an angry base that feels the party has not delivered for them, and them wanting candidates who are offering something that feels like it's going to happen imminently. And so I don't know that the framing is as simple as that. Also, there are some real problems with the Democratic establishment right now, like the DNC.

And I just don't understand why they're focusing on a part of the party or even, you know, when they could be focusing on the sort of larger infrastructure problems, you know, that money could go to candidates and not against Democratic candidates. Rick, well, we're talking about the factions that exist within the Democratic Party. I believe you and I was going back. We first sat down and met up for coffee in Tallahassee literally a decade ago here this summer. And we were talking about the future of the GOP at that point. But when you're talking about the future of the Democratic Party, this time, 10 years later, I'm going to ask you, because you're looking at progressive Abdul El-Sayed running in Michigan. But also you have your fellow Republican, David Jolly, running as a Democrat now for governor of Florida. What does the Democratic Party's future look like? And if you were advising a Republican at this point, they're running against a Democratic Party that has a lot of elements to it at this point. Look, the Republicans would like to categorize all Democrats as wild-haired flaming communists, ignoring candidate quality, as mentioned just a moment ago. Look, they've got candidates across the political spectrum running in the country in states where they fit. And Syed, he fits, he works for that state. He works for Michigan. Maybe that wouldn't work in North Carolina. But in North Carolina, we've got a great candidate who's more in the center left. In Florida, Jolly is in the center left. And all these Democratic candidates, it's actually inverted what the Republican Party used to be. He used to have liberal Republicans, moderate Republicans, conservative Republicans. Now you only have Trump Republicans. And the Democrats have got candidates running. who are in all different wings of the party. So it is a little bit more of a slippery target for the GOP to say, absolutely all of them are the same as Zohran Mamdani or the same as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or the same as the squad. It's a really tough assignment because you see these people who have also this year come out, the Democrats have also come out with a slate of much more talented candidates than they have in a long time. So I think that they're in a better position to resist some of that attack vector from the GOP. I'd just like to add one thing. There's also a group of independence in states where the Democratic Party brand is bad. And they are running not as left versus right, but as up versus down. And so you have people like Dan Osborne in Nebraska and Rob Sand in Iowa and Josh Turrick in Iowa, who are candidates that are actually trying to get... this movement, this progressive, it's not progressive, it's more just like a worker movement, a union movement. And I don't think, I think it defies naming in a way. It's really its own thing. And I think that the fact that they're not running as Democrats, that they're running as independent, independence in states where democratic brand is bad is meaningful.

Rick, we've got one last quick one for you here. I'll push back a little bit on the idea that the GOP is now wholly in lockstep with Donald Trump in uniform, because if I may, it seems like there's almost factions of MAGA now. Tucker Carlson, Thomas Massie, Marjorie Taylor Greene. What is the future of this sort of alternative MAGA and does it have an impact in the Republican Party beyond 2026? The real question is, does Tucker Carlson take this in-house? into the Republican process and become a lightning rod for a lot of that populist anger that is very anti-war, etc. Or does he do it on the outside and try to form a new party or a new movement that I think that would be very dangerous for the Republicans? Because even if it only pulls two or three percent, it's going to cause a very large upset in the electoral chemistry for the GOP at the presidential level. Rick Wilson, appreciate it much, my friend. I'll come back for a coffee down in Tallahassee with you. Molly, stick with us here. You'll be joining us here later this hour. I end later in the show. Did Trump just get busted? Cheating at golf again. How is the most absurd story of the week reveals something serious? Famed sports writer Rick Riley will be here. Also ahead, why Todd Blanche's bid to get confirmed as Attorney General is still not a slam dunk. Plus, I fact-check a new GOP smear campaign that is a long, ugly history. But first, new corruption fears amid revelations about Trump's plans for his luxury jet from Qatar. We're back in just 90 seconds. There are moments that define who you are and who you're becoming, and when those moments arrive, what you drive should rise to meet them. The Rangerover Sport commands attention from the very first glance. Every line, every detail, engineered for impact. Inside, refinement takes over with sculpted 22-way heated seating with available massage and a 13.1-inch touchscreen that puts everything within easy reach. But the Range Rover Sport isn't just about luxury. It's about uncompromised performance, too. Delivering a powerful, agile drive that feels as confident as it looks. And with nearly endless ways to personalize, from interior finishes to wheels to unique colors and accessories, your Range Rover Sport becomes unmistakably yours. For those who expect more from every moment, there's a vehicle designed to meet it. The Range Rover Sport. Exclusive offers available now. Explore further atrangeover.com. You might not think about oil and natural gas, but it's a big part of your daily routine. From the soap you used, your toothpaste, even your bed sheets. More than 6,000 everyday products are made using oil and natural gas. Companies like energy transfer work behind the scenes, safely transporting these resources across the country through a network of underground pipelines. Learn more at it takesenergy.com. Normally in these ads, you'd expect someone like me to ask you to buy something. But I want to ask you to do something different.

I'm Dave Ferenthal, and I'm a reporter for the New York Times. I'm an investigative reporter, which means that I follow the money, inside of government and outside of government. The point of my job is to find things people are trying to hide. It involves talking to lots of people. It involves looking through lots and lots of documents. And if there weren't folks like me to go beyond the surface, to understand who is really shaping what the government does, the public will be left in the dark about what the government's doing with your tax money, what the government's doing to you through regulations and spending. If you're like me and you think this kind of journalism is important, seek out a news source that does firsthand fact-based reporting. If that's the New York Times, thank you. If that's your local paper, that's great too, because where you get your information matters. It's about the controversial gift, if not the most questionable one ever, that we've seen given to a president and that president accept. The Qatari donated Air Force won, a $400 million luxury jet that the Trump administration insisted would go to Trump's presidential library after his term. But now, the New York Times reports that could all be changing. An anonymous White House official telling the Times, quote, no final decision has been made about which plane will go to the library. Now, Eric Trump is saying an old Air Force One will be put on display at the Trump library and that it is, quote, not the plan at the moment to bring the Katari jet to the library. That leaves its fate unclear, as NBC News reports. No decision. Well, that is a stark contrast to this claim Trump made in May of last year. Do you plan to use the plane after you leave office? No, I don't, no. It would go directly to the library after I leave office. I wouldn't be using it. Things look very different now. Remember, Trump flew on this plane despite the fact that it lacks crucial air defense systems. Trump himself admitting that. And the Trump-D-OJ took the extraordinary step of issuing subpoenas for New York Times journalists over their reporting about the security concerns, eventually withdrawing those subpoenas amid a court fight. All of this, not only raising major security, but also ethical concerns. As Newark Magazine reports, quote, ethics experts have suggested that the Trump administration's acceptance of the plane likely runs afoul of federal law, which bars the acceptance of gifts from foreign governments without prior congressional approval, a situation that would likely grow even more complex if Trump tried to retain the use of the plane once out of office. This is just the tip of the iceberg of corruption allegations plaguing Trump, though. Trump was also gifted a diamond-encrusted ring from a Belgian trade group after he exempted diamonds from his tariffs. Truth Social is now selling early access to Trump's posts, and he's made more than a billion dollars in crypto alone. We should note that the White House insists Trump and his family don't have conflicts of interest. There's a lot to get into. Tim O'Brien and Molly John Fester here to break it all down after a short break.

I can't hear. Tim, why wouldn't the Trump donate the jet to the library? And what is the biggest conflict of interest problem in your mind for the public? A lot of money. And the Trump's, when they see anything in front of them, that's worth a lot of money, they take it. Whether it's crypto or resort deals in the Middle East. or giant jets that they're getting from a foreign government that presents possible national security concerns for the American voters and for the national security apparatus in Washington. You know, Lauren, Liz Smith, the late, great New York Daily News, gossip columnist, once said to me in her Texas drawl, you know, honey, the only thing you need to know about Donald Trump is that he's a seven-year-old grown old. And like a seven-year-old, Donald Trump loves his toys, and he loves to surround himself with bling. He lives in a triplex in Trump Tower that looks like the high rollers suite at Caesar's Palace. Obviously, he loves gold. The Oval Office has been festooned with it in radically tasteless ways. And now he has his jet at his disposal, the inside of which looks like a jet you'd ferry high rollers to casinos in. There was never a chance that he was going to let go of this. And I think the idea that he would have given it to the library after he left office and could not use it. I think Donald Trump wants to use this until he's no longer alive. He loves what it demonstrates. He loves that he got it for free. The other thing to understand about him is, I think, at his core, he is so greedy and it's a bottomless greed that he just doesn't restrain himself, even though he is vastly wealthy already. And he's willing to sacrifice the prestige of his office. He's willing to put American interests at risk so he can have a big plane to fly around him. Molly, why should the public care about what happens to this jet and where it goes? I think that the problem with Donald Trump is that a lot of the rules that presidents followed before this were norms. They weren't necessarily illegal because there was never a feeling that they would do it. I mean, remember, the last president who polled as poorly as Donald Trump did was Nixon right before he resigned. So, like, there was a... The office was a place where people would behave a little bit better than they might otherwise. And so there were these things that were called norms. And what Donald Trump has done is if it's not illegal or sometimes, certainly the allegations make it seem as if it is illegal, he will continue doing it. But Donald Trump does, in fact, we see him just run through these norms. And the plane is a great example. You know, there are ethics. There are ethics norms that the president is supposed to follow. And this administration just runs right through them. And so that's why you have to care about the plane because you have to care about everything. Because what you see when one norm is broken, you see what happens here, which is a cascade of breaking of norms and a president who does not follow the rules the rest of us do. And then you get into a situation like we're in right now.

Tim, we so often hear this idea of what are Democrats doing to stop the breaking of these norms, to stop the conflict of interest. And we should be clear that Senate Democrats have very introduced a bill to block Trump from keeping the plane after he leaves office. Senator Chris Murphy and nine other senators co-sponsoring a bill. If this legislation... let's say it's somehow a word to even pass. The president, of course, would veto it. But where do you see the ability to try to rein in some of these conflicts of interest? Is it Democrats potentially seeking the super majority to overcome his veto with Republicans in 2027? Or is this even a move as late as 2029, actions taken now that could have impact almost two and a half years from now? Well, you know, I don't think... there's anything that can really be done right now unless the Republicans develop a spine. Because the Democrats can invade against this. But as Molly pointed out, It's really guided by norms. It's not guided by hardcore regulation and hardcore laws. The presidency has always been immune to the ethics guidelines that govern most of the federal government. The framers of the Constitution believed if you prescribe too many restraints around a president, it would constrain their ability to actually hold the office and run it properly. But they, of course, never envisioned. that they would wind up with baby Huey in the Oval Office and someone who didn't care about observing norms, about having an ethical core. And so what Trump has done is, and he's done it in so many other ways around institutions in the U.S., is he's exploited these gaps that exist around an office as powerful as the presidency. And so I think, I do think, when you noted, Will this have to wait till 2027 or beyond? I do think it's going to have to wait. until the Democrats have enough of a majority on the Hill that new legislation can get passed and it's legislation that's veto-proof. And that might mean that it also has to await, you know, a trifecta where the Democrats control the White House and both branches of Congress. And I don't know that we'll see that anytime soon. So it's a real conundrum. And I don't know that he can be restrained right now. Molly, I think it's worth noting that it's not just Democrats talking about public corruption, but there's new comments from JD Vance talking about fighting corruption. Take a listen. I don't care where you came from. I don't care what your name is. If you are committing fraud against the American people, all of us, all of us in public leadership should be trying to stop it and try to throw you in prison for enriching yourself off the American taxpayer.

There's a level of cognitive dissonance here that we hear from the vice president there, Molly. And you saw there on screen, Secretary Clinton saying, quote, local man suggests jailing own boss. How galvanizing of an issue is this year? And is this the GOP acknowledging that they have to also act like they're addressing the idea that there's corruption that exists in our government? Yeah. And look, stock trading, these kind of things are 80, 20 issues. People don't want their government. cheating, right? They don't want their government taking from them. So I do think there is a cognitive dissidence here. And we have seen historically Trump will just sort of say things and run on them. Like in 2024, he said, I'm going to make things cheaper. It's very hard for presidents to make things cheaper. Once inflation gets going, it's very hard to reverse it. So what did Donald Trump do? He did things that made things more expensive. He has had success with claiming things that were not necessarily tethered to reality. And I think that's what this is. But clearly, when Democrats win back the House, which hopefully they will, and perhaps the Senate, they will be able to have greater accountability. So they'll be able to have hearings about some of this. They'll be able to at least get some sunlight into what's happening here. And though some of this stuff isn't illegal and it's against norms, being able to see what's happening, we still have elections in this country. These people are going to have to run for re-election, these members of Congress, and they will have to answer for this corruption. And we hear Democrats increasingly taking on the idea of corruption and using it as a cudgel on the campaign trail increasingly. So my friend, Molly Jong-Fest, Tim O'Brien, appreciate you both here this evening. And later, famed sports writer Rick Riley on Trump apparently cheating at golf and why it's so revealing. But first, my fact check of a new GOP campaign in these midterms, you could say it's partly a red scare.

Look, debates over America's capitalistic traditions are absolutely at the heart of our political discourse, and always have been. It should be. Throughout our history, it's drawn out debates over taxation, anti-trust laws, the extent to which the government should be able to regulate commerce, the rights to organize labor, the role of the federal government in supporting our education system, or helping provide health care, clean water, and save streets to its people. But today, the president is not engaged in that conversation or debate. Instead, he's using the threat of communist takeover in America as a means of trying to bludgeon his opposition and elicit fear among the electorate. Just three months from the midterms now. Take a look at Fox News just last night. It's big government socialism. It's this Medicare for all, which is really a euphemism, not simply for government control of health care, but frankly, for government control of the entire economy. Hence the flirtation, not just with socialism, but really with communism. Indirectly from the president himself just last night at a rally in Las Vegas. The communists want to take their ruinous and deadly ideology of misery and squalor to every state in America, but we're not going to let them. That rhetoric coming just after progressive Dems won big in Michigan this week. The current left are not communists, to be clear, but the red scare for the GOP, it's not new. In 1950, then Congressman Richard Nixon deployed a red smear campaign to win his first election in California to the U.S. Senate. As the L.A. Times would go on to Chronicle, Nixon's campaign strategist, Murray Chotner, explained his campaign philosophy this way. The purpose of an election is not to defeat your opponent, but to destroy him. In those frigid days of the Cold War, Nixon not only impugned his then opponent Helen Douglas' loyalty, but called her the pink lady, quote, pink right down to her underwear. That same year, this is the audio of Republican Senator Joe McCarthy on the campaign trail. They shouldn't be called Democrats. They should be referred to properly as the comie crap party. By 1961, Ronald Reagan was beginning to make his push to thrust the conservative movement to the forefront of the Republican Party, opposing the creation of Medicare at the time, but also federal funding of schools, which he asserted was, quote, the foot in the door to federal control. He delivered a speech in which he said, American apathy is due at least in part to our belief that the small number of American communists is evidence of weakness and a lack of threat. But history makes no secret of the fact that Lenin became the leader of the world conspiracy on just that issue, that the Communist Party would remain a small, dedicated, highly trained cadre which would use and manipulate the masses when necessary. In the year since, prominent Democrats have so often been depicted as anti-capitalist. In 2010, the RNC planned to fundraise off, quote, fear of President Obama and socialism. You can see, here a slide is obtained by political at the time under the label Evil Empire, and a depiction of Obama as Joker as the Joker from Batman. By 2015, Ted Cruz was mocking Obama as the world's most powerful communist. In 2018, these protesters in Miami shouted Nancy Pelosi out of an event. Look at Nancy Pelosi right here. Look at this piece of

You don't belong here, you fucking, communists. Get the f*** out of here. In 2024, then candidate Trump attacked Kamala Harris' as Comrade Kamala Harris. The rhetoric continues today, coming from the very top, Trump himself. What's me? Be very careful with the whole socialist thing. I think in many cases it's much more than socialist. They skipped socialism. They went directly to communism. But it's not just the president, Speaker Mike Johnson, just yesterday, posting this online. Quote, it's no longer Republican versus Democrat. It's not even common sense versus crazy. It's America-loving versus America-hating communists. And today's Democrat Party has shown us who they really are. Democrats want to destroy America. Let's take a look at some of these programs. Democrats support that Johnson says make them, quote, America-hating communists, Medicare for All, giving those in need access to health care, SNAP, helping low-income families get access to food, and other social safety net programs aimed to provide basic resources to those facing economic hardship. Americans can debate all these specifics, but this, a communist takeover? America's last century has proven otherwise. Joining me now is Will Summer, senior reporter with the bulwark and author of the False Flag newsletter. Will, how effective is the Red Scare in 2026? I have to say, it strikes me as kind of outdated, more than a little outdated. I mean, I think Donald Trump gets a lot of his ideas, his policies from decades ago, from the 80s, this trade protectionism, all this stuff. And I think in the same way... he doesn't have a lot to run on, and so he's drawing these old ideas about, you know, let's freak people out about communists. It's striking to me that they aren't saying socialism quite as much. That I feel like, you know, with Zohran Mamdani, we heard about socialism, but now maybe they're saying that that's not hitting as hard. We have to go to communism. Does it have the same impact today? Or is Donald Trump, at 80 years old, living in a bygone Cold War era where he thinks it may have the same impact? Because now we're hearing from people like even Speaker Mike Johnson that are using some of this rhetoric, or they just simply following his lead on this. Yeah, I mean, I don't know if there was a messaging memo that went out, or as you said, maybe they're just seeing what Trump's saying in his speeches, what's happening on Fox News. But I think the reality is among, like, the MAGA base in right-wing media in the grassroots, I just don't see this resonating a lot. There was not like a huge buildup of, you know, panicking over communism. But, you know, we can see the administration. They put out this whole report on Cuba saying they were kind of behind all these, the hidden hand of communism across America. A lot of strange stuff, but even among Republicans, I don't see it resonating. Part of the rise of Democratic Socialists in the political movement that we're watching is... frankly, some confusion over exactly what the positions of democratic socialists are. And sometimes lost in it are the nuance that every person candidate to candidate can be different. But most family members, most people have family members or friends that are hearing these fears of

Okay, what is Democratic Socialism versus Socialism versus Communism? What are you hearing is the conversation within the Democratic Party right now about the need to be outward and forefront and pushing back against the ideas that they're pushing socialism or communism? Yeah, I mean, I think it's a challenge for Democrats right now. I mean, obviously, as we saw in the Michigan primary, this is a very live issue. And a lot of these Democratic Socialists are out to knockout incumbents or candidates that were really chosen by the party establishment. So I think it's challenging for someone. like Chuck Schumer, he doesn't really want to be out there saying, well, here's the difference between socialism and communism and kind of hashing it out. So in one way, I think that message may be effective for Republicans. But on the other, a lot of voters weren't alive for the Cold War. They haven't seen Red Dawn. I just think a lot of this isn't resonating. When you look back at Joseph McCarthy and Nixon, the 1950s was obviously a different political climate. But are you seeing any particular echoes of what transpired then and what is coming into our politics now? You know, I do think there is a real effort from this administration to criminalize being a socialist. maybe a few people who actually are communists. I mean, there are efforts that we know that Neville Sigmund, who's a wealthy lefty guy, he's under investigation. We've seen a lot of wealthy donors investigated by the government who have given money to leftist causes. There's an investigation of liberal activists who went to Cuba. I think there's this sense of, even if they can't really ultimately bring these cases, an attempt to sort of have a chilling effect and scare people from being politically active from the left. For Democrats, they're looking at for the first time, the progressive movement, facing the battleground states, battleground house races in a way that they have not had the opportunity to compete with before. If you look at Abdul al-Siyadh, for instance, he's going up against Republican Mike Rogers in Michigan. How much of an issue do you think this is going to be? And to what extent could it be effective for Mike Rogers? To what extent does Abdul El-Sayed need to play defense in getting at the forefront to push back on these ideas? Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of this will come down to how viewers see or voters see socialism. Do they see it as sort of just like a change, a fair economic system, shaking things up, or do they see it as the Republicans would like to paint it as almost like Stalinism, a sort of collectivization, all this negative stuff? So I think ultimately, I think the socialism, communism line is probably going to be like the main attack coming from the Republican Party in the midterms. Will Summer of the Bullwark. We appreciate you much here. And up next, famed sports writer Rick Riley is going to be joining us on the new heat that Trump is facing, this time involving his always-so-excellent golf game.

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Questions of talent aside, Trump actually practices his golf game a great deal. According to public accounts, he's spent more than 26% of days of his second term of his presidency on the golf course, 26%. Contradicting promises he made before ever becoming president. I love golf, but if I were in the White House, I don't think I'd ever see Turnberry again. I don't think I'd ever see Dural again. I owned Dural in Miami. I don't think I'd ever see many of the places that I have. I don't ever think I'd see anything. I just want to stay in the White House and work my ass off, make great deals, right? Who's going to leave? There won't be time to go on vacations. There won't be time to go golfing all the time. I'm not going to play much golf because there's a lot of work to be done. As for Trump's alleged reason, win, many experts are skeptical. Pointing out the score would be impressive even for someone much more spry. Famed sports journalist, Rick Riley, described it like this. Quote, no 80-year-old on earth with a pancake swing in the chips. Chip Yips has ever shot 10 shots under his age. Club members let him win because nobody wants to get audited the rest of their lives. Some who have hit the links with Trump over the years have come forward to accuse him of being less than honest when it comes to golf, particularly when he's playing on one of his own golf courses. He cheated when I played with him. We clearly saw him hit a ball, hook a ball into a lake at Trump National in Jersey. And his caddy told him he found it. Now was the caddy soaking wet when he said this? No, he wasn't. He just took off running and next thing he was. I got to Mr. Trump! Did you see a splash? We saw a splash. I'm not going to say Donald Trump cheats at golf. But if your caddy cheats for you, does that... Mean is you're a cheat or two? Has anyone called them out? Did you see him get called out? Well, listen, we're calling them out for bigger things that cheated on golf. Rick Riley joins me now. You literally wrote the book on this topic, Commander and Cheat, How Golf Explains Trump. Rick appreciated it this evening. Why is this latest championship this weekend? Allegedly his 43rd victory. The number seems to change quite often, though. Why is it so hard to take at face value? You have no idea how it got to 43. When he was, when he has 18, he told me, I said, there's no way you've won 18 championships. He says, yeah, I play the first when I buy a new course. I played the first round by myself. I call that the club championship. So then it just keep building. And in one year, he went from 26 to 36, but there was no sign of him playing anywhere. Now then he suddenly added that one day to 38. Then he's won two since then, which 38 plus two suddenly equals 43. I really think, you know, he could beat 100 by the time he gets out of office.

You've known the president for a while. In 2006, there's actual results of a celebrity golf tournament that he played in Lake Tahoe. And of 80 celebrities, Rick, he came in 62nd, beaten by Ray Romano, Dan Quail, Moripovich. He did for what it's worth. He beat Charles Barkley. But is this why he mostly sticks to unverified competitions? We never get to have actual cameras on him. Yeah, Fawn, I played in that. I mean, he's got a pancake swing. He's got the yips. The yips is where you just can't putt. You suddenly go like this. He chips like Edward's scissor hands. He's just awful, especially around the green. He hits it pretty good off the tee. But he's got, when he plays in his own courses. He's got caddies that throw it out of the rough, out of the bunker. One time I saw him hit it in a lake splash. Suddenly he's on the fairway. I'm like, what the hell, Donald? And he goes, it must have been the tide. So there's no beating him when he's at his own course because nobody wants to get thrown out of the club. It's kind of like when you race your three-year-old in a foot race and you go, you won! Because nobody wants to get sent to the cornfield. You know, it's a weird system. I want you to listen to Peyton Manning, because a lot of celebrities, they don't outright call Trump a cheater, but they provide some insight. Take a listen. Did he cheat? Did he cheat on your flight? No. Because Sam Jackson was here. He said he cheats. I counted his strokes. You did. You did them all. Would you have called him out if you determined that he was indeed cheating? I think I would have. You would have. Yeah. Okay, good. He played it honest. And he gives a lot of puts now. He will give you a lot of puts when he expects those to be reciprocated. Okay, he gives puds, but he expects to be reciprocated. Can you explain it to folks? Well, in golf, if you hit one up really close, called Within the Leather, then the opponent's supposed to say, that's good. I'm not going to make you putt it because you're going to make it. Well, Trump just takes them before you can give him to him, and they can be the size of a Winnebago. He doesn't care. He's on to the next, and he's got these. golf carts that go 40 miles an hour, yours goes about 10. So he's always way ahead of you, him and his catty are cheating, and then you lose 20 bucks to him, and then he buys the hamburgers. But all he wants is the trophy. Every day he wants the trophy, the win, whatever it is. But it used to be he used to make up. better excuses for how he suddenly won five more tournaments. He'd be like, well, like one day he won a two-tournament, a two-day tournament, but we know he was at a funeral in North Carolina. And he said, well, I played good earlier in the week, so I put that score in. But now he just makes them up out of blue air. OK, Rick, I want to get, I want last quick question here for you, because we've got like video from last year purportedly showing a caddy dropping a ball close to the green here. But the bigger part of the bigger part of the bigger part of the camera.

The bigger part of why this matters is what did you assess years ago that it said about the man that would go on to become the president of the United States? Look, I don't know about politics, but I do know golf. And golf is like bicycle shorts. It reveals a lot about a man. And if he's going to cheat you in golf, he's going to cheat his friends and family, he's going to cheat the country. He's going to cheat in elections. He's going to cheat on his wife's in taxes. And in fact, we've asked him, Donald, you can't cheat me like this. He goes, oh, I cheat on my wife's, I cheat on my taxes. Why wouldn't I cheat on my own golf course? And that's how it works. Rick Riley. I feel like we'll be able to talk after some more golf matches ahead. There'll be a few along the way. I appreciate the time tonight, my friend. Thanks so much. And right back after this break, more about the clash over Todd Blanche's confirmation.

Now to the fight over Trump's attorney general pick. A full Senate vote to confirm Todd Blanche could come as early as this week. Todd Blanche can only afford to lose one more GOP vote in the scenario that Mitch McConnell has still not returned to the Capitol. Republican Senator Susan Collins has already said she'll oppose his confirmation. And two others, Lisa Murkowski and Bill Cassidy, are still noting their hesitation to support him. If they both vote no on Todd Blanche, he will not be confirmed. That does it for me tonight. Join me, Cindy Lauper, with Chef Michelle Bernstein and Dr. Panico to talk about psoriasis and psoriotic arthritis, the potential connection and risk of developing permanent joint damage. Cosentic secukinumab is prescribed for adults with moderate to severe plaque psoriasis 300 milligram dose and adults with active psoriotic arthritis 150 milligram dose. Don't use if you're allergic to Cosentics. Before starting, get checked for tuberculosis. An increased risk of infections and lowered ability to fight them may occur, like tuberculosis or other serious bacterial, fungal, or viral infections. Some are fatal. Tell your doctor if you have an infection or symptoms like fevers, sweats, chills, muscle eggs or cough, had a vaccine or planned to, or if inflammatory bowel disease symptoms develop or worsen. Serious allergic reactions and severe eczema-like skin reactions may occur. Learn more at 1844 Kocentics.com slash Cindy.