In an interview with CBS News, Trump’s utterly clueless Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick, a billionaire who went to college on a tennis scholarship, said that a recession would be “worth it,” to put forward Trump’s [disjointed, chaotic] economic plans. Lutnick is inadvertently helping to set himself up as the fall guy for the coming collapse.
Lutnick won’t be the only scapegoat. Musk, who has become increasingly unpopular with the American people but who basically bought the regime for $300 million during the campaign, just promised the most transactional president in history another $100 million for his 2026 midterm operation.
Trump’s decision to immerse himself in the politics of the midterms comes just has the general public has turned against his handling of the country’s economy. CNN reported that a new poll shows Trump’s overall job approve/disapproval at 45/54% while just on how he’s handling the economy 44/56%. (He’s also underwater on healthcare, foreign affairs, the budget, management of the government and, most of all, tariffs, where 39% approve and 61% disapprove.) Overall, Trump is 10 points underwater among voters— 42% to 52%.
Districts where Trump is most popular and most likely to turn out MAGA voters, are not districts where Democrats are running serious campaigns— or in almost all cases, any campaigns at all. This dozen districts are solid Trump country. The DCCC isn’t looking at any of them in any way, shape or form:
AL-04 (Robert Aderholt)- Trump 83%
KY-05 (Hal Rogers)- Trump 81%
TN-01 (Diana Harshbarger)- Trump 78.4%
OK-02 (Josh Brecheen)- Trump 77%
AL-01 (Barry Moore)- Trump 77%
MO-08 (Jason Smith)- Trump 76.5%
NE-03 (Adrian Smith)- Trump 76%
LA-04 (MAGA Mike)- Trump 75.6%
TX-01 (Nathaniel Moran)- Trump 75%
TX-19 (Jodey Arrington)- Trump 75%
TX-13 (Ronny Jackson)- Trump 73%
OH-02 (David Taylor)- Trump 73%
Realistically flippable seats are in districts where Trump is a net negative and where Democrats welcome his presence as a means of turning out independent voters and the Democratic base. Some of the districts where Trump is most likely to help defeat Republican incumbents where won by Biden in 2020 and where even last year, Trump underperformed:
NE-02 (Don Bacon)- Trump 46.7%
NY-17 (Mike Lawler)- Trump 49%
PA-01 (Brian Fitzpatrick)- Trump 49%
NJ-07 (Tom Kean)- Trump 49%
CA-40 (Young Kim)- Trump 49%
VA-03 (Jen Kiggans)- Trump 49.3%
CO-08 (Gabe Evans)- Trump 49.6
MI-07 (Tom Barrett)- Trump 49.8%
AZ-06 (Juan Ciscomani)- Trump 49.8%
CA-03 (Kevin Kiley)- Trump 50%
The Democrats would welcome his participation in any of these races and at least 20 others. Yesterday Meryl Kornfield and Patrick Svitek reported how he’s gearing up to give them what they want. They wrote that “his political operation is sending a clear message to GOP lawmakers: Look for him to be highly involved in the midterms. ‘The president is sitting on a huge pile of cash, he really enjoys raising it, and he has told everybody that he plans to use it in races,’ James Blair, the White House deputy chief of staff for legislative, political and public affairs, said yesterday at a Punchbowl event. He added that it’s a ‘very not typical’ posture for a sitting president. Trump was calling for primary challengers to a fellow Republican, Massie, over his lonely opposition to the continuing resolution. But Trump has made clear he also wants to help his party as it gears up for another election in which the House majority is on the line. Blair, who was political director for Trump’s 2024 campaign, acknowledged that history is not on Trump’s side— the party that holds the White House usually loses seats in its first midterms— but he argued that Trump could buck the trend if he delivers on his campaign promises. Blair cited the 1934 election, when Democrats expanded their majorities during Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first term. ‘The model is a little bit 1934 where you’ve got to do some transformative things that can change a political coalition for a generation,’ Blair said. ‘I think we have that opportunity.’”
Blair must have been drunk or high on something. Voters hate the regime's policy profile more and more by the day. And Trump's personnel, not just Musk and Lutnick, but RFK, Jr. and Linda McMahon, currently busy dismantling the Department of Education, something barely a quarter of Americans agree with. Even most Republican voters are uncomfortable with and unsupportive of Trump’s education agenda.
The editors of the Wall Street Journal dealt with Trump’s disastrous tariff agenda yesterday (again), noting that he wanted a trade war and Americans are already paying the price. “Stock prices continued to decline on Tuesday amid the latest Canada-U.S. tariff tit-for-tat. By the end of the day the two sides were talking about a temporary truce, but who knows which side of the tariff bed Trump will wake up on Wednesday?” Tuesday he repeated his absurd demand that Canada become “our cherished 51st state... His exhortation that Canada become a U.S. state is a tacit acknowledgment that the two economies are deeply integrated. His splendid little tariff war will harm businesses and consumers on both sides of the border.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said over the weekend that the President’s tariffs would make some foreign products more expensive but “American products will get cheaper.” Huh? Companies that use foreign components will have to raise prices or swallow narrower profit margins. Does Lutnick understand, well, commerce?
Domestic manufacturers that compete with foreign goods will raise their prices to take advantage of the protectionism to increase their margins. A study in the American Economic Review found that consumers paid $817,000 for each new manufacturing job created by Trump’s washing machine tariffs in his first term.
And Trump is only getting started as he prepares to take his trade war global. He promised Tuesday to “substantially increase” tariffs on cars on April 2, which he said would “essentially, permanently shut down the automobile manufacturing business in Canada.” So first he whacks U.S. auto makers with tariffs that raise their production costs, then he tries to shield them from foreign competition by whacking American consumers.
…The trouble with trade wars is that once they begin they can quickly escalate and get out of control. All the more so when politicians are nearing an election campaign, as Canada now is. Or when Trump behaves as if his manhood is implicated because a foreign nation won’t take his nasty border taxes lying down.
We said from the beginning that this North American trade war is the dumbest in history, and we were being kind.
If Trump goes on the road campaigning for Republicans, nothing would please Democrats more than if he decides to bring a cast of characters like Musk, Lutnick, RFK, Jr. and McMahon with him.