Welcome to the final Washington Secrets of the week. That means our rival strategists rank how Donald Trump has fared during the past seven days. Secrets will be taking a break over Memorial Day and will return at the end of next week.
It was a week that passed for business as usual for Donald Trump. Iran brinkmanship — or an ex post facto unfollowed-through threat, depending on how you look at it — a trip to the roof, big wins in the ongoing campaign against his own party, followed by awkward reversals.
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On Monday, the president announced he was calling off plans for a strike on Iran. The previously unannounced threat had been abandoned, he said, at the request of Gulf leaders who wanted more time for talks. It was a head-scratcher even by the odd standards of this presidency, publicly calling off something that hadn’t yet been announced.
A day later, he surprised members of the White House press corps by inviting them up onto the roof to survey the latest work on his new ballroom. After taking questions on everything from Cuba and Iran to domestic prices, he laid out breakfast sandwiches for the reporters.
The evening brought a reckoning for Republican congressmen who had crossed Trump for one reason or another. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), who led the fight to release the Epstein files and has long been a libertarian thorn in the president’s side, lost his primary. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), who voted to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial, went down as well.
It marked an extraordinary display of power. Yet, the president also displayed uncertainty at times. On Thursday, he admitted he was pausing plans to sign an executive order that would have added an extra layer of regulation to the introduction of powerful artificial intelligence models. He said he did not want to do anything that could undermine the U.S. lead over China in the field.
And by the end of the day, Trump must have realized that his attacks on his own senators meant his slim Senate majority was no longer a given.
The week ends with a change of season. Trump flies to his New Jersey golf club for the first time this year on Friday, marking the end of Mar-a-Lago season and the start of Bedminster weekends.
So what do our two strategists make of it?
Jed Babbin: Grade C Plus
It’s easy to tell how anxious Iran is for a peace deal: they put a $50 million bounty on Trump’s life this week.
It wasn’t a bad week for Trump and Co., but it wasn’t very good either. The price of gasoline is still going up, about $4.50 where I live, and the increases aren’t going to stop any time soon. The Iranians don’t seem to want a peace deal, and the indictment of Raul Castro, at age 94, seems an opportunity missed.
Castro, at a fragile age, isn’t likely to survive a snatching operation such as we conducted against Nicolas Maduro, one of Castro’s favorites in Venezuela, and his death in U.S. captivity wouldn’t be a great accomplishment. But the indictment is solid, charging Castro with causing the deaths of Americans in two separate shoot-downs in 1996. Castro is believed to have confessed to his guilt in audio recordings.
The Iran war stalemate continues as Trump once again delays further attacks on Iran. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu isn’t happy. Trump continues to threaten Iran into making a deal, but no deal is forthcoming. He just doesn’t get it. The ayatollahs won’t make any deal that surrenders their nuclear program.
Iran’s “supreme leader,” Mojtaba Khamenei, who may or may not be alive, is casting the conflict as “jihad”, a religious war on which there can be no compromise. Meanwhile, Trump is facing increasing problems with the Senate and the War Powers Resolution, which prohibits the president from conducting wars in excess of 60 days without congressional authorization. Which isn’t forthcoming.
Meanwhile, Minnesota seems to be the fraud capital these days. The Justice Department just announced its findings that 15 people have been charged in a new scam that took more than $90 million from state programs and forced the closure of at least one. The DOJ describes Minnesota as a “culture of fraud.” Which the Democrats continue to defend.
Jed Babbin is a Washington Examiner contributor and former deputy undersecretary of defense in the administration of President George H.W. Bush. Follow him on X @jedbabbin.
John Zogby: Grade C
This has been an eventful week for the president. On the plus side, his impressive GOP primary victories in Louisiana, Kentucky, and Georgia mean that Trump is clearly in charge of the Republican Party. Any party member who seeks to defy his wishes risks losing a seat, being unmercifully gaslit, or trashed on Truth Social.
Yet, before the week was even finished, several GOP members of Congress did, in fact, stick a needle in the eye of the president. He settled with his own Justice Department for almost $2 billion to create a fund to compensate those people who claim to have been victimized by the Biden administration, but the money wasn’t in any budget, and enough Republicans have said they will not add it to any appropriations bill.
The money wasn’t there. It is not going to be there.
But let’s give the president some credit for being fully transparent about the process and purpose.
His approval average is down to 39%, with 58% disapproving. Nearly 3 in 4 voters rate the economy as poor.
The U.S. debt hit $39 trillion this week. Congress, including enough GOP presidential defiers, will not appropriate funds for his grand ballroom or additional security. And the leadership in Iran says enriched uranium must stay in Iran and the toll for commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz.
John Zogby is the founder of the Zogby Survey and senior partner at John Zogby Strategies. His latest book is Beyond the Horse Race: How to Read Polls and Why We Should. His podcast with son, managing partner, and pollster Jeremy Zogby, can be heard here. Follow him on X @ZogbyStrategies.
Who’s up and who’s down?
It is only the White House under the microscope here at Secrets. Today, we look at the other winners and losers from the week that just went by.
Good week
Villains
Fraudster George Santos, former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (convicted for trying to sell President Barack Obama’s vacant Senate seat in 2011), and Jan. 6 rioters eyeing the “anti-weaponization” slush fund for a big payday. Pleading guilty is apparently not a problem. And even Hunter Biden is entitled to apply, according to Vice President JD Vance.
Bill Cassidy’s spine
The senator located his spine this week, voting in favor of a war powers resolution after voting no seven times previously. It seems as if he has finally found his spine. But given that he basically lost his job this week, it’s less an act of bravery than an admission that he has nothing left to lose.
Bad week
The Democratic National Committee
Its autopsy of the 2024 election defeat was released on Thursday, quickly becoming a punchline. It was vague, riddled with typos, and unfinished. It appears to be the first autopsy in history to constitute a self-inflicted wound, as one Democratic operative told Politico.
Lions
The Commission of Fine Arts stripped four golden lions from plans for Trump’s triumphal arch on the grounds that they were “non-native.” That is bad news for lion statues at the Art Institute of Chicago, the New York Public Library, and so on.
Lunchtime reading
Inside the making of the Congressional Record: How history gets recorded as D.C. sleeps: “When a lawmaker speaks, a rotating team of floor reporters takes down every word in shorthand. On the Senate floor, they can be seen skillfully maneuvering around lawmakers, stenotype machines hanging from their necks. Working in 15-minute shifts, they can tap 225 words per minute.”
Party crasher: Nigel Farage’s lesson for US conservatives: Differences in scale mean the Reform UK playbook probably won’t transfer to the U.S. But its clear identity, recognizable grievances, and improving political operation should offer inspiration to American conservatives, Ron MacCammon writes.
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