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President Donald Trump lashed out at oil companies and his own US attorney in the gilded Oval Office on Monday as his spin ran into the real world.
It was more evidence that Trump 2.0 is losing some of its juice.
Oil executives are capitalizing on Trump’s war against Iran and “making too much money,” the president said. He singled out Chevron and warned it to make gasoline cheaper even though, he said, he’s a “big free enterprise guy — nobody bigger.”
Jeanine Pirro, his handpicked US attorney for Washington, DC, “choked,” Trump said, when she about-faced in court papers and admitted it was a botched rehab by the Interior Department and not vandalism that caused setbacks in the renovation of the Reflecting Pool, which Trump has taken on as a pet project. It was he, he said Monday, who had the idea of applying material meant for swimming pools to the 100-plus-year-old landmark.
“She folded like an umbrella,” Trump added of his longtime ally.
CNN reported Monday that he is now considering removing the former Fox News personality from her position.
Pirro’s transgression, in Trump’s eyes, is that she was forced to admit that the narrative he’s pushed in public is not one that can be prosecuted in court.
Trump’s victory to open the week is winning enough support for Todd Blanche, his former personal attorney, to be confirmed as attorney general.
But there’s a loss in the fine print of that deal. Blanche, currently acting attorney general, had to officially and permanently squelch the $1.8 billion fund widely seen as a way to pay Trump’s political supporters.
Blanche admits defeat. Will Trump sign on?
In Trump’s world, the fund — part of a settlement between him and his own Department of Justice — was a way to right wrongs against his allies. Other people saw it as an ethical minefield that would put taxpayer money in the pockets of people Trump previously pardoned.
Blanche’s promise not to pursue the fund wasn’t enough for Sens. John Cornyn and Thom Thillis, who wanted it rescinded in writing.
While CNN reported Monday that the White House was deeply involved in the decision to rescind the settlement, CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig noted that Trump and his lawyers have not signed the document clawing back the agreement. That means Trump or his attorneys could, in theory, sue to have it reinstated.
“For all the drama around this written document from Todd Blanche, it really accomplishes essentially nothing as a legal matter,” he said Monday on CNN’s “The Situation Room.”
The ‘SAVE America Act’ still doesn’t have the votes
Those same two Republicans who insisted on having Blanche kill the settlement in writing have also been vocal in arguing the GOP should move on, for now, from Trump’s voting restrictions bill, which would impose new proof-of-citizenship requirements in addition to voter ID conducted in the states.
For months, Trump has argued the bill is required to address the threat of mass voter fraud. There’s no evidence for that kind of fraud in the real world, as CNN’s Daniel Dale has repeatedly documented, but it remains an animating principle of Trump’s presidency. None of the political pressure from Trump or from the MAGA side of the GOP has created momentum to get enough votes for the legislation. And there wouldn’t be enough time to implement it before the midterm elections.
Neither Tillis nor Cornyn will be on the ballot in November. Tillis, a longtime but selective Trump critic, is not running for reelection. His North Carolina seat is considered a strong pickup opportunity for Democrats by political handicappers.
Cornyn lost a primary election runoff against a more MAGA opponent who won Trump’s late endorsement. Democrats are salivating over the prospect of making Texas competitive this year.
A pause on handing more power to Trump’s political appointees
Another Republican, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, slipped language into a spending bill unveiled by Republican leaders to block, for now, a rule proposed by Trump’s Office of Management and Budget that would give political appointees, rather than subject experts, more power over federal grants. Collins, the only Republican running for reelection in a state Trump won in 2024, is locked in a tight reelection battle.
Meanwhile, Trump’s approval rating is dipping to record lows — about one-third of Americans approved of his job as president in a CNN Poll conducted by SSRS and released last week. The last time a US president drew approval that low was at the tail end of Trump’s first term, after the storming of the Capitol by his supporters in January 2021.
Two major drags on his popularity have been his handling of the economy and the war he launched on Iran. In Trump’s telling, the war would last at most a couple of months and the US would have more control over worldwide oil markets as a result.
Things have not worked out that way. Instead, despite Trump’s repeated claims that Iran wants badly to negotiate an end to the war, the Strait of Hormuz is effectively closed, and the status of talks is unclear.
Disruptions to oil from the Middle East, paired with the opening of markets in Venezuela thanks to Trump’s order to snatch then-President Nicolás Maduro from his bed, have created a situation where US oil companies are benefiting more than they have since the 2022 inflation crisis.
For those who need their memories jogged, the Biden administration’s refusal or inability to acknowledge the economic pain Americans were feeling then sapped much of the juice from Joe Biden’s presidency.
The-CNN-Wire
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