Trump Wants to Exhaust Us. He’s Failing.
The Bulwark · C · trust 22/100
William Kristol , Andrew Egger , and Jim Swift September 8 Upgrade to listen 10 minutes 593 244 47 Labor Day is in the rearview mirror, and the midterms are suddenly only fifty-six days away. Keep your head on a swivel. Happy Tuesday .
Join Bill and Andrew for Morning Shots Live at 10:00 a.m. EDT today on Substack and YouTube .
President Donald Trump speaks to reporters before boarding Air Force One on August 14, 2026 at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland. ( Photo by Samuel Corum/Getty Images) The People vs. Mad King Donald by William Kristol
I trust you all had a better Labor Day weekend than Donald Trump.
On Sunday the president of the United States fired off more than sixty social media posts, each more bizarre than the last. They included frenzied rants, manic boasts, personal attacks, crazy links, lunatic messages, and surreal AI-generated memes and images. They were often weirdly dystopian—Trump nuking the Earth from orbit from a space station, Trump with giant robot bodyguards as fires burned.
His niece, Mary Trump, a psychologist, remarked Sunday evening that “Donald is decompensating in real time.” The post that particularly caught Mary’s attention was an AI-produced upside-down map of Iran molded into Donald Trump’s profile.
Things didn’t get better on Monday. Trump continued to decompensate. A spate of fifteen posts within five minutes Monday morning ended with the president offering holiday good wishes :
Happy Labor Day to all, including the Radical Left Lunatics, Communists, and Dumocrats who will do anything possible to destroy our Country. These Deranged People, after fighting for 10 years, should finally acknowledge that your Favorite President (ME!), knows how to WIN! They should be exhausted by now but, sadly, they’re not. They’re going to give it one last shot at ruining America, but we’re not going to let that happen. We’re going to win the Midterms, BIG, and SAVE AMERICA! President DONALD J. TRUMP
This post was revelatory. Trump seems to admit what it was that had gotten under his skin. His critics “should be exhausted by now.” But, “sadly, they’re not.”
But not too much. It’s not a good thing that we have an unhinged president with more than two years left in his term, and with loyalists manning the top tiers of our government determined to carry out his authoritarian wishes, including to subvert free and fair elections.
On the other hand, it is good that even Trump has to admit that his critics aren’t exhausted. And it is good, as Trump doesn’t admit but as he surely knows, that their ranks are growing. That our ranks are growing.
If you haven’t joined our ranks yet, now’s the time.
On Saturday, the New York Times reported Gallup’s finding that “The share of Americans who associate themselves with the Democratic Party has grown significantly over the past year.” Indeed, “the latest data shows Democrats with a 10-percentage-point advantage over Republicans when voters are asked which party they identify with and when independent voters are asked which party they lean toward.”
In 2024, Republicans and Republican-leaning independents held a small edge over Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents. Now Democrats’ advantage is approaching their margins during their victorious waves of 2006 and 2008.
Then on Sunday, the Financial Times reported that their latest survey showed Trump’s approval rating, which in their polls had oscillated between 34 and 37 percent approval all year, had now dipped to 32 percent.
The public is moving in the right direction. They’re doing so despite the continued complicity at worst, and silence at best, of so many of the elites who continue to suck up to Trump.
To their credit, the organizers of the successful and important No Kings protests are stepping up again to help. This morning they announced plans for “No Kings: Vote Early” events on October 17. As one of the No Kings organizers, Ezra Levin, explained,
We are headed into an important point in a democracy, which is whether the people stand up and refuse to allow an authoritarian to consolidate power. And the way to do that in a democracy is by exercising your right to vote and by exercising your right to organize to prevent any sabotage in that election. . . .
The goal before was to send a message and recruit volunteers to do more civic engagement work. The goal this time is to not just send a message. [It is] to take back power for the people through the biggest early vote that we’ve ever seen in this country, and to prepare a nationwide force to push back against the sabotage that comes our way.
The goal is no longer to send a message. It’s to take back power.
So mark October 17 on your calendars. And then double circle November 3 with a dark Sharpie. Because the key No Kings event will be Election Day.
Powerful people want to move on from Epstein, his crimes, and his long friendship with Trump.
So we printed all 3.5 million files and built The Donald J. Trump & Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Reading Room. Now we’re taking it across the US with Epstein survivors all fall to educate the American public.
Trump Is Turning a Bad Midterm Into a Republican Catastrophe… BILL KRISTOL joins TIM MILLER on The Bulwark Daily to revisit the run-up to the midterms in 2006 and 1994 , two major wave election cycles where the bottom just fell out from under the party in power.
It’s here… A thank you from SARAH LONGWELL for those who pre-ordered How to Eat an Elephant . For those of you who haven’t: Get your copy today!
Labor Day… We have some worthwhile works from CARL SANDBURG , MOTHER JONES , and FDR that are worth your time and reflection.
ENERGY CRUNCH: Donald Trump wants to declare victory in Iran, declare the Strait of Hormuz open for business, and go home. But events continue to intrude on this plan.
Crude oil prices are pushing toward $100 a barrel again amid renewed fears about regional instability, after Iran’s Houthi proxies launched a drones-and-missiles attack…
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