Jadin

Republicans got wiped out yesterday, and the main reason is Donald Trump. He put up arguably the worst presidential performance in a century, and voters answered with a blue tsunami he fully earned. Mandate. Remember where he started. He had a real mandate: the House, the Senate, the popular vote, a sweep of the swing states and a 6-3 Supreme Court. Democrats were spooked enough to sign on to the Laken Riley Act, and the only question was how far the rightward swing would carry him. Gridlock. Trump turned all of it into almost nothing that lasts. He hates legislating: the back-and-forth with Congress, the details, the compromises. So he skipped it. He never made a case for killing the filibuster, and he never rallied the public behind popular bills that could reach 60 votes. He just didn't bother. The result was an unpopular tax cut, money for ICE and a favor to the crypto industry. That was the least productive Congress in decades, all because of one man's preferences. Economy. His economic policy was among the worst we've ever had: big deficits, high tariffs and attacks on the Fed's independence. We ended up with higher interest rates, persistent trade deficits and a weaker dollar all at once. Immigration. Immigration was supposed to be his signature issue, and he got the least out of it for the most backlash. He could have used the moment to pass new laws and push self-deportation by cutting off the economic payoff of being here illegally. Instead he chose spectacle. The administration poured attention, money and lawyers into stunts like shipping random people to Salvadoran prisons with almost no due process. ICE and Border Patrol were encouraged to be aggressive and confrontational, which helped lead to American protesters being shot and killed. Voters hated it. Big Business Over Americans. The obvious move was going after employers, and Trump refused. He said again and again that he didn't want to touch businesses that he knew use illegal labor. Charging a few dozen executives could have removed the reason millions of people come here to work. Instead, agents arrested people off the street one at a time, at thousands of dollars each, while their crying families posted it on TikTok. He turned his biggest political strength into a crippling weakness and deported maybe 6% of the people here illegally. Tariffs. The tariff rollout was embarrassing, with no strategy behind it and no focus on key industries. We taxed coffee and bananas, which we can't grow here, so people just paid more. We taxed the steel and parts our own factories need, which hurt the American companies we were supposed to be protecting. The rates and rules kept changing, the stock market kept tanking and the whole world watched the chaos. Then the Supreme Court struck the tariffs down, and it turned out someone close to the president had seen that coming. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick was the loudest salesman for the tariffs. Meanwhile, Cantor Fitzgerald, the Wall Street firm he ran for decades and handed to his sons, was reportedly offering to buy companies' tariff refund rights for 20 to 30 cents on the dollar. That's a bet against Trump's own policy, and if it was made, it would pay out at full value. Then came the refunds, more than $120 billion of them. Americans paid for the tariffs through higher prices on almost everything. Did they get that money back? Nope. It went to the companies, and the companies are keeping it. Walmart got $2.9 billion, Apple about $2.2 billion and Target nearly $1 billion. Americans paid the tariffs, and corporations and Wall Street cashed the refunds. Insane. Slop. His messaging was the worst in a generation. With nearly 2-to-1 disapproval, he spent his time renaming things. The Gulf of Mexico became the Gulf of America, and Lake Ontario became Lake America. Then he told New Mexico to rename itself "New America," which he has no power to make happen. It's insane, and none of it lowered a grocery bill or helped a single American family. On top of that came the AI slop, the threats to invade allies, and bragging about a ballroom and a repainted pool while gas prices hit records. Grift. While Americans got poorer, the Trumps got very rich. Trump launched the $TRUMP meme coin days before taking office, and Melania followed with $MELANIA. Then there's World Liberty Financial, the crypto company Trump started with his sons, which handed Barron a crypto title of his own. $TRUMP has made the family about $616 million, while its buyers lost more than $700 million. Across their crypto ventures, the family has added at least $2.3 billion to its fortune. Meanwhile, gas went from under $3 a gallon to a record $4.15 on Election Day. He got rich while Americans paid more at the pump. Epstein. For many voters, especially those who voted for him for the first time in 2024, Epstein was the real turning point. When a reporter asked Pam Bondi about the files, Trump cut in: "Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy's been talked about for years." Those voters had been promised the truth. What they got was a president annoyed that they still wanted it. By refusing for months to release the Epstein files, he may have become the first president to take the 1% side of a 99-1 issue. Charlie Kirk. For me, this one is personal. Charlie Kirk did as much as anyone to put Trump back in the White House, and he was murdered in front of thousands of people at Utah Valley University. Two days later, a reporter offered Trump condolences and asked how he was holding up. "I think very good," Trump said, then pointed out the trucks starting construction on his new ballroom. Hours after the shooting, before a suspect had even been identified, he was already blaming the "radical left" and promising to go after left-wing groups. Many people, me included, still have serious questions about this case, and Trump doesn't seem to have any. Last month he attacked the judge and said the trial should happen within a month and "be over with." A man who lost a friend would want the whole truth. Trump just seems to want the story closed. Wars. Trump promised to end Russia's war on Ukraine in 24 hours. Nobody took that literally, but almost two years later it's still going. And instead of ending one war, he started another. On February 28, the U.S. and Israel launched a war on Iran that almost nobody here wanted except Israel. At least 23 American service members are dead and more than 800 have been wounded. Iran attacked shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, oil shot past $100 a barrel, and that's a big reason Americans are paying over $4 a gallon. Yesterday, six in ten voters said the war was the wrong decision. Trump promised peace and gave Americans a war they never asked for, higher energy bills and more death and destruction. Wipeout. And that's ALL before we even get to the DOGE disaster, the broken MAHA promises and so many other failures. Trump botched almost every part of his presidency, and voters noticed. According to NBC News exit polling, 43% of voters said they cast their ballot to oppose Trump. That's the highest protest vote against a sitting president in modern midterm history. Republicans tied their fate to one man and blamed the podcasters who stopped buying the propaganda and lies. Yesterday, they found out what that costs. Trump didn't just cost his party the midterms. He lost the very voters who put him back in the White House.