Deep Dive
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It's Tuesday, April 29th. I'm Erin Ryan, in for Jane Koston, and this is What A Day, the show that will send a photo of Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts the next time we RSVP no to an event because of scheduling difficulties.
On today's show, Spain and Portugal enter a second dark age, albeit one that lasts hours and not decades, and the surprise retirement announcement of another longtime Democratic lawmaker. But first, we made it. 100 days of President Donald Trump's second term down,
Only 1,362 to go. Not that I'm counting. Trump 2.0 is a bit different than Trump 1.0. Trump hasn't gotten any better at governing, but this time he's surrounded himself with people who won't try to stop him, but also cannot govern, so they can't really help him either. But what they can do is blow smoke up his ass all day, every day.
Of all the leaders in the world today, no leader is working harder to prevent wars or end them than President Trump is right now. President Trump has proven no one does it better than President Trump. There is no equal, it's not even close. You know, you are overwhelmingly elected by the biggest majority. He is the greatest negotiator and the greatest person who understands these are his goals and his objectives, and he is executing them.
That was a nightmare mashup of Dyson levels of sucking up from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Border Czar Tom Homan, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, i.e. people with a lot of power and no shame. The joke during President Trump's first term was that every week resembled a new verse of Billy Joel's We Didn't Start the Fire. His leadership this term has been so chaotic that I'm not sure it could even be arranged into a song that makes sense. What
What even rhymes with adult tech billionaire accidentally cancels Ebola research or puppy-merking cabinet secretary travels to El Salvador for xenophobic photo op and poses pointing a machine gun at a law enforcement official's head? Too many syllables. The piano man would never.
I follow the news as part of my job, and even I'm having trouble distinguishing between Trump's bluster without follow-through, the giant avoidable screw-ups that will take years if not lifetimes to repair, and actual plans that were made and came to fruition. It doesn't help that the president could literally throw up all over a world leader and his acolytes would declare a major strategic victory. Here's what we know for sure, though.
Trump has made moves or announced that moves would be forthcoming on the issues that voters said they cared about during the 2024 election. Things like immigration, cutting government spending, and the cost of living. But he just can't stick the landing. And his approach to these things has not gone over particularly well with Americans. In fact, the latest round of polling paints a dismal picture for the president's popularity. The worst in modern history for a president this early into his term.
There's no way even Trump can finesse that, though it's not for lack of trying. Here he is speaking to reporters Sunday next to Air Force One. The good news is costs are way down. Groceries are down. Eggs are down. Gasoline is way down. It's all coming down. It's all looking good. Tariffs are strong. We're taking in a lot of money from tariffs. We're losing a lot.
before I got here. We were losing billions of dollars a day, and now we're doing great, and we haven't even kicked in yet. The program that hasn't kicked in is doing great? Okay, dude.
But also if everyone around him has spent the last 100 days telling him what an exceptional president he is, maybe he does believe it. Here to help make sense of this milestone and where we go from here is Jon Favreau, co-host of Pod Save America and founder of Crooked Media. Jon. Hi. Welcome to What A Day. Good to be here. So it's kind of hard to wrap your head around everything that's happened in the last 100 days. Only... It's like 100 years. 100 days. Yes.
But in what ways do you think Trump has actually changed the country since he took office in January? Changed the country, changed the world. I think that he and Elon Musk have broken much of the government in ways that people are feeling immediately now, but also that I don't think we'll know the full extent of the damage for years and years.
I think that shattering most of our alliances all over the world and launching a global trade war, we're gonna feel the effects of that for the next several years and maybe even beyond. Ideally, if we have a democratic president after this, repairing those relationships is gonna be a lot of work because who's gonna trust us after this, especially after we reelected Trump for a second term. I also think that...
he's instilled fear in a lot of people. I think the idea that they're, you know, scooping people up off the streets and shipping them to a foreign gulag without any due process or trial is, you know, hopefully the courts will continue to step in and stop that. But you do that enough and that changes America too. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Well,
Well, let's get into the polls. There are a ton from the New York Times, NBC, Washington Post, AP, and their various partners, and they all say the same thing. People don't like it. Not big fans. This is the bright spot. If there is a bright spot, is that the
Like, we haven't gone crazy. Most of the country still does not like this. And I actually think that polling's interesting because it's much worse than it was just a few weeks ago. And we haven't really experienced the full extent of the damage from the trade war yet. We're still a couple weeks away from shelves potentially being empty.
and prices really going up, and people losing their jobs. And so this is like just based on the headlines from the trade war for the last several weeks. So I think that the polling could get even worse. - How would a normal administration be reading these numbers?
A normal administration would be reading these numbers worried about their agenda in Congress because you have a bunch of vulnerable Republicans in a very tight margin in Congress and he hasn't passed
any bills yet. So, and he's got a very big one that he's trying to get passed. So they'd be very worried about the vulnerable Republicans peeling away and not supporting them. You'd just be worried that you get into this vicious cycle where the polls show weakness. And so then more people are emboldened to speak out against you and disagree with you. And then your agenda gets stalled and then your polls get even weaker. And so it continues. So, you know,
Look, no other president except for Trump has had polls this bad in the first hundred days. And of course, you know, Trump never really recovered from that approval rating in the first term and did go on to lose that election. So, you know, I think if I was a Republican in Congress, I'd be most worried.
Okay. Well, Trump won the popular vote, something that he cannot shut up about. And he's doing pretty much what he said he would do during the campaign, tariffs and deportation and retribution. Why do you think that people are so soured on the agenda that they voted for? I think the people who put them over the top
particularly with the popular vote, are people who were not that tuned into politics. You know, I always remember some voters in a focus group who said, you know, I don't like Donald Trump. I didn't like him in the first term, but I liked the economy. So I might vote for him and then just not watch TV, close my eyes and just enjoy the Trump economy.
And so I think for those people, they're like, well, we're not really enjoying the Trump economy anymore either. But even in the New York Times poll, you see still a slight majority of people who believe that undocumented immigrants who are here illegally should be deported, but
they're also very against the way he's doing it. So I don't think they believed that people would be sent to a foreign prison without due process, that Trump would defy court orders. So I even think that the things he's doing that are still somewhat popular with people in theory, the way he's doing them is turning a lot of people off. Do you expect the administration to course correct? Or do you think he just, really, you think he just doesn't care about Congress? And do you think that he hasn't played the tape for it and he doesn't understand that
If he... If Republicans lose their majority in the House, then his entire agenda is basically dead in the water. I mean, anything is possible with him. You never know. But I think that now that he has made this comeback and defied political gravity in his mind, and particularly in the minds of the people around him, I think...
he and the people around him are like, we're just going to do what we want. And, you know, we've been called dead before and then come back to life. And so who cares? So given all the polling, where do you see the best opportunity for Democrats to remind voters that they could possibly be the solution to the problems that the Donald Trump administration is causing? What are the political opportunities for Democrats here? I mean, if they can't see the political opportunities in this, then they shouldn't.
Hang it up. Go home. But I do, I mean, you know, in the generic ballot for Congress, I think, I think that the New York Times has the Democrats leading by three. Fox had them leaving by seven, which is a lot more. But it's still not
The margin is not as big as Trump's approval is low. So I do think that that means people are not ready to just support Democrats. And so I think Democrats have work to do, not only speaking out whenever Trump is doing something that they know is unpopular, but to also offer an alternative as they attack him. So if they're going to attack him on the trade war, as they should, they should talk about, you know, what Democrats would do if they get
Congress back. Yeah, it feels like the party is a little bit at sea when it comes to just like breaking through the noise that Trump makes. Trump makes so much more noise than most Democrats on any given day. Like, do these polls show any kind of path forward like for Democrats who want to cut through the noise? What does that look like? I mean,
I, it's interesting in the times poll, it showed all the issues that Trump's underwater on, which is all of them. And the issue that he's the most underwater on is the case of Kilmer or Brego Garcia, even worse than he is on immigration, worse than the economy. That is an issue that I remember when it first happened.
I was like, why aren't any Democrats speaking out about this? And then, you know, Chris Van Hollen, Senator Chris Van Hollen goes down to El Salvador. Some people are like, ooh, I don't know if this is a good issue. Democrats didn't do well on immigration and it's one of the reasons Donald Trump won. And
Sure enough, Donald Trump is very unpopular on this issue now. And I think that should teach Democrats that when you speak up on an issue that even if you don't look at the polls, you just know in your gut is not going to land well with the American people. Like shipping people to a foreign prison without due process. Then it is possible to break through and to, you know, make Donald Trump unpopular on a lot of these issues.
So where do you see risks for Democrats trying to break through the noise? Is there a way for them to get over their skis or to play a hand too hard, I guess? Yeah, I think, look, I think the big risk right now is the Democrats come across as too scripted, too poll tested, inauthentic, too cautious. And look, I don't think
Democrats should like throw public opinion to the wind, right? Like I am a big advocate in it for, like I think polls are very useful. I think knowing where people are is useful, but I do think
to your point about Trump being someone who is able to break through and get people's attention, like Democrats need to figure out how to get people's attention. And the more they came off as sounding like typical politicians who are cautious and poll tested and have these canned lines that we've heard a million times before, they're just not gonna break through, you know, because it just sounds like the same static noise to people that they've heard before. So you just gotta talk like a normal fucking person.
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean, Jasmine Crockett has been saying as much. And I think that she's probably a good example of Democrats being true to themselves and speaking up. And I think it's like, it's non-ideological too, because you got someone like Jasmine Crockett, AOC,
Pete Buttigieg. There are people from across the spectrum in the party who are breaking through. It doesn't necessarily have to do with what their ideology on the spectrum is. It has to do with, are they saying something worth hearing that's different and refreshing than what you usually hear from politicians? So what do you think the next big fights will be in the next hundred days, and how are you going to survive?
Well, we're about to head into the big, beautiful bill to see if they can get this passed. And I think that will be most of the spring and summer. I think we will continue to watch the courts take up a lot of Trump's unconstitutional, unlawful actions and see whether the Trump administration will push back or not. I think that the trade war is going to get worse before it gets better. I think we're going to see what happens with Russia and Ukraine. That's going to come to a head. So I think
And that's probably all in the next 100 days. And I will survive on very little sleep and lots of caffeine. Okay. There you have it. John, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me. That was my conversation with Jon Favreau, co-host of Pod Save America and founder of Crooked Media. We'll get to more of the news in a moment, but if you like the show, make sure to subscribe, leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, watch us on YouTube, and share with your friends. More to come after some ads.
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Here's what else we're following today. Headlines. It's a sad day. We will miss Jerry and his service upon his retirement from the United States Congress.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries speaking there about Virginia Democratic Representative Jerry Connolly's announcement Monday that he will not seek re-election. In an open letter to his constituents announcing his departure, Connolly said his esophageal cancer had returned after undergoing, quote, grueling treatments. The 75-year-old congressman announced his diagnosis late last year, shortly after he won re-election. Jeffries continued with more praise for Connolly. He has been a tremendous supporter
Connolly also said he plans to step down from his position as top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, quote, soon.
This opens the floor for another Democrat to replace him. We could see New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez run for the position. She challenged Connolly for the role last year and lost. Ocasio-Cortez is no longer on the committee, but some House Democrats told Axios Monday that she's weighing a second bid. Representatives Jasmine Crockett of Texas and Ro Khanna of California have also been floated for the role.
Connolly has been in Congress for 16 years. He was elected back in 2008 to represent Virginia's 11th congressional district, which includes Fairfax County. Connolly's district is deeply blue, meaning his seat is likely safe from Republicans who might want to flip it. His replacement will be elected in next year's midterms.
Russia unilaterally declared a temporary three-day ceasefire with Ukraine Monday. According to a statement from the Kremlin, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a stop to quote all military actions from May 8th through midnight May 11th. The statement cites humanitarian reasons for the fighting pause and Russia's upcoming observance of Victory Day on May 9th, the day the Allied forces defeated Nazi Germany in World War II.
This is the second ceasefire that Russia has declared on its own. Putin took world leaders by surprise earlier this month when he announced a one-day ceasefire with Ukraine for Easter. That pause did not hold. Both sides accused each other of violating it. Ukraine expressed skepticism following Monday's announcement. In a video posted to Twitter, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky questioned why the ceasefire wouldn't be immediate.
Here he's saying, quote, "Russia has consistently rejected everything and continues to manipulate the world, trying to deceive the United States. Now yet again, another attempt at manipulation. For some reason, everyone is supposed to wait until May 8th before ceasing fire, just to provide Putin with silence for his parade."
The White House responded to the Kremlin by repeating President Trump's demand that Putin sign on to a deal that brings an end to the war. Here's White House Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt during Monday morning's press briefing. The president has made it clear he wants to see a permanent ceasefire first to stop the killing, stop the bloodshed. And while he remains optimistic he can strike a deal, he's also being realistic as well. And both leaders need to come to the table to negotiate their way out of this.
To quote our solemn leader, Vladimir, stop! A major power outage swept across Spain, Portugal, and for a brief time, part of France on Monday.
Spain's interior ministry declared a state of emergency as the blackout paused trains, planes, and subways. Some hospitals were even left to run on generators. At the time of our recording, the cause of the outage was not clear. Head of operations at Red Electrica, Spain's power company, called the blackout exceptional and extraordinary. Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said Monday evening electricity supplies had been restored to about half of the country and the rest should be restored today.
According to Portugal's electrical and gas supplier, power was also starting to return to parts of the country on Monday night. Last summer, a lot of these folks migrated to this giant chat called Chatham House. It's a signal chat with 300 plus members. I mean, you have a real pain tolerance to exist in that kind of space.
Thank you.
Fascinated by this secret elite group chat, Pod Save America co-host and Crooked Media founder John Lovett spoke with Smith on Monday about why Chatham House was so influential and how the right-wingers in the chat like to pick fights with businessman Mark Cuban. He's like the big lib in there. And like a big part of what happens in that chat is people yell at Mark Cuban and he argues back. And there's some level of like, if you're good enough at arguing with Mark Cuban, maybe you'll get a job in the Trump administration. Like that is a thing people think. Yeah.
It's kind of terrifying that arguing with power libs could get you into the sit room. But then again, so does being a former Fox News morning anchor who, to put it mildly, does not seem like a good hang. To watch Lovett's full conversation with Ben Smith, head to Pod Save America's YouTube channel. And I just want everyone listening to this to know I will respect Chatham House rules. And if you want me in these chats, I won't give Ben Smith a fucking thing.
And if you don't want to add Lovett, absolutely do not add me. And that's the news. Before we go, we're offering a 30-day free trial to Friends of the Pod, but it's ending tomorrow. So now is the time to join. If you're enjoying this podcast, chances are you believe in what we do. And subscribing to Friends of the Pod is the best way to support Crooked Media. It's also the most direct way to help us keep building a progressive media ecosystem.
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That's all for today. If you liked the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, be careful how you steer that aircraft carrier, and tell your friends to listen. And if you're into reading and not just the Pentagon's explanation for why a $60 million fighter jet is now at the bottom of the Red Sea, like me, What A Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at crooked.com slash subscribe. I'm Erin Ryan, and I repeat, do not add me to your insufferable group chat for whiny inside boys.
Waterday is a production of Crooked Media. It's recorded and mixed by Desmond Taylor. Our associate producers are Raven Yamamoto and Emily Fore. Our producer is Michelle Alloy. We had production help today from Johanna Case, Joseph Dutra, Greg Walters, and Julia Clare. Our senior producer is Erica Morrison, and our executive producer is Adrienne Hill. Our theme music is by Colin Gillyard and Kashaka. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.