On the menu today: If you think President Trump is doing a terrific job and is above criticism, you may want to skip today’s edition. If you think our octogenarian president’s increasing obsession with his Washington, D.C., construction projects is a sign that he’s tuning out of real problems and issues because he’s frustrated and tired, retreating into a happy fantasy world where his job approval ratings have never been higher, inflation is defeated, peace with Iran is imminent, and his frequently touted “Golden Age” is real, read on.
Trump Prefers a Triumphal Arch to Legislative Triumphs
Maggie Haberman of the New York Times, in an interview with her colleague Ezra Klein:
Klein: How much of his time actually goes into the renovation now?
Haberman: A lot. If you looked at, like, a chart of his mind share, . . . like 70 percent of it would be on his renovations.
You don’t have to buy Haberman’s figure, but it’s undeniable that President Trump spends a lot of time thinking and talking about the White House ballroom project, the Reflecting Pool renovation, and his “independence arch.” That possessive word is deliberate; in October, when a reporter asked whom the arch was for, Trump responded, “Me.”
You may have noticed that the Republican-controlled House and Senate are not exactly sending a ton of legislation to the president’s desk: “The 118th Congress [2023–24] enacted just 274 laws, the lowest total in 50 years, and the 119th Congress is currently on pace to fall below that mark with only 103 bills passed so far.” In part, this reflects the fact that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) addressed a variety of issues, but the number of passed bills is still awfully low by historical standards: “The 17 Congresses since the start of George H.W. Bush’s presidency in 1989 have passed an average of more than 380 bills.”
As far as the president is concerned, his work is pretty much done. In October of last year, Trump said he saw no need for a second bill passed through reconciliation, as the OBBBA was. “We don’t need to pass any more bills. We got everything in that bill.” In December, he repeated the assessment. “We don’t need it because we got everything in it.” (In June, Trump signed a second reconciliation bill, an approximately $70 billion budget package to fund the Department of Homeland Security’s immigration enforcement operations through 2029.)
A little of what’s passed in Congress is not getting signed by the president. Trump declined to sign the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act — a bill that was, in terms of policy, a mixed bag at best. But it was a rare bipartisan and popular mixed bag, passing in the House by a vote of 358 to 32 and in the Senate of 85 to 5.
Trump does want Congress to send the SAVE Act to his desk. That will not happen, because Senate Democrats will filibuster it, and there aren’t enough votes to get rid of the filibuster.
Axios wrote on Sunday: “President Trump doesn’t much care if Republicans lose the House and/or the Senate in the midterms this fall. Yes, he’d prefer a big win, but he seems indifferent to the election and the possibility of endless Democratic investigations of his family, wealth and policies, his closest advisers tell us.”
Late last year, our Ramesh Ponnuru observed that a Democratic House is likely to be a minimal impediment to Trump. “Since taking office in January, President Donald Trump has largely governed without even consulting the legislative branch.” So “if Democrats take the House, they can’t really thwart Trump by denying him the legislation he wants — because there’s not much he wants from Congress.”
Trump mostly governs through executive orders and unilateral action. This Congress has never passed legislation to enact tariffs. Nor has this Congress passed an authorization for the use of military force in Venezuela or Iran.
As of July 31, 268 executive branch positions are unfilled. There is no Trump administration appointee to serve as ambassador to Algeria, Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Germany (!), Honduras, Iraq, Kuwait, Nepal, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Qatar, Russia (!), Saudi Arabia (!), Ukraine, the United Arab Emirates, or Venezuela. This is not a matter of the Senate’s not confirming an appointee; this is a matter of the president not naming anyone for that position, nearly two years into his presidency.
Perhaps the lack of ambassadors is moot, because almost all the administration’s highest-stakes foreign negotiations are handled by Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff. Neither of those men was ever confirmed by the U.S. Senate; as special presidential advisers, they are considered internal staff appointments by the White House. Neither man has a traditional security clearance for handling classified information or has passed a traditional background check for a top U.S. government position.
Trump acts as if the primary role of Congress is to applaud during the State of the Union address.
And the president is convinced that the American public thinks he is doing a terrific job. No public poll has Trump’s job approval rating higher than 44 percent (Rasmussen and the Daily Mail) and most have it in the upper 30s. No public survey has Trump’s job disapproval lower than 52 percent, and CNN has it at 65 percent. Yesterday President Trump wrote on Truth Social, “My REAL Polling Numbers, not those made up by the Fake News Media, are the best they have ever been,” and bragged that he has achieved “unparalleled respect and success throughout the World.”
The president might believe that his work is done, but major national problems remain and are worsening.
Trump and his administration have no discernible interest in reducing this year’s deficit, currently at $1.36 trillion, $29 billion higher than at this point last year. The national debt is $39.7 trillion. (It was just under $20 trillion when Trump took office in his first term in 2017.)
Social Security runs out of money in 2032, six years from now. Medicare Part A runs out of money one year later. Nobody’s interested in doing anything about that.
Trump’s policy on Iran continues to bounce between hyperbolic threats and naïve credulity, as he fumes that the “Iranian Leadership is unbelievably duplicitous!” (If only someone had warned him.) U.S. Central Command has sent a message to military analysts “looking for new creative and unconventional ways to pressure and punish Iran.” (Nothing wrong with soliciting new ideas, but it’s a little unnerving to hear that five months into what was supposed to be a five-week war, we’re looking around for other options.) The war begun by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which Trump repeatedly pledged he could resolve in one day, has been raging for all 561 days of Trump’s presidency.
Polling continues to indicate that the economy, the cost of living, and affordability are at the forefront of voters’ minds, with the midterm elections about three months away.
Two weeks ago, at a rally in Marietta, Ga., Trump said, “They used the word, first time I heard it, it was a word, you know, made up by the Democrats, affordability. They said affordability. I said, I’ve been here one day. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it and we’re taking care of it. You know, we’re taking good care of it.”
The U.S. Department of Agriculture calculated that food prices increased by 2.4 percent in 2024 and 2.9 percent in 2025, and projected that in 2026 and 2027, they will increase 3.1 percent.
Republican operative Liz Mair is keeping an eye on the month-to-month grocery prices at Aldi supermarkets in seven counties in seven swing states — North Carolina, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, and Arizona:
Nash County, NC: A few items were unavailable, and required substitution, in this location. But even without substitutions, the price of our weekly shop here increased by $0.60. With substitutions, the price of the weekly shop went up by a full $2.62.
Peach County, GA: Here also, a few items were unavailable, and required substitution. But even without substitutions, the price of our weekly shop here went up by $0.24. With substitutions factored in, the shop got more expensive by $3.09.
Erie County, PA: Better news in Erie than in Nash and Peach counties. . . . Here, the price of our weekly shop went up by only $0.38. This is despite our rotini needing to be substituted at a higher price.
Macomb County, MI: Just as in Nash and Peach counties, here, some items were unavailable, and needed to be substituted. That pushed the price of the basket up by $2.76. But even without those substitutions, the price of our weekly shop went up by $0.74.
Iowa County, WI: Here, as in Erie, generic pasta twists were unavailable and had to be substituted. That bumped the price of our weekly shop up by $2.02. But even if we leave the pasta twists out, the price of the basket went up by $0.60.
Clark County, NV: Clark is the first of our outliers. After seeing a huge bump last month, prices fell back to Earth. . . . That’s not because base prices were down, though (among available items, we still saw a bump of $0.38). Rather, the change is due to generic russet potatoes and white bread becoming available. That knocked $7.42 off the overall price of the shopping basket, saving shoppers a decent chunk.
Maricopa County, AZ: Like Clark, Maricopa also saw the cost of their weekly shop decline. But like Maricopa, that’s not because of the base price of items coming down; rather, it was to do with there being no need this month to substitute unavailable generic items with branded white bread.
Among available items, we still recorded a price increase of $0.16. But the reversion to generic white bread meant a savings as against last month of $2.92.
Noting “big price changes” on some staples, with “gas and groceries hit hardest,” Mair says that “an increase in the price of a shop of a couple of dollars every single month has an outsized effect that I think we’re going to see when [final] results come in.”
Ah yes, gas prices. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, as of July 27, the national average price for a gallon of regular was $4.09; a week earlier, it was $4 even, and the week before that, $3.85. You’ll find similar numbers over at AAA.
No doubt part of the reason our 80-year-old president spends so much time thinking about and talking about the White House ballroom, the Reflecting Pool, and his arch is because he spent his life as a real estate developer. But it’s also because Trump has limited interest in, and little patience for, governing and the actual work of the presidency. He likes the trappings of the presidency — redecorating the White House, putting his face on federal buildings and documents, the fancy new jet from Qatar that isn’t as completely safe as he and his administration insisted. But actual problem-solving almost always turns out to be much more difficult than Trump expected, from the Reflecting Pool to Iran to health care. (Trump famously whined at the start of his first term, “Nobody knew that health care could be so complicated.”)
ADDENDUM: Over in the Washington Post today, a column about how you rarely see the Justice Department throw another federal department under the bus the way U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro did to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum in court last week.
The filing is 20 pages of Pirro and assistant U. S. Attorney Michael Spence telling D.C. Superior Court Judge Todd E. Edelman: Don’t blame us, Interior gave us bad information. It stated, “These documents indicated a rushed and flawed installation process, with repeated failures of the lining during the installation process, and extensive peeling of the lining throughout the Reflecting Pool. . . . DOI provided less than fulsome information at the outset of this case. . . . Had DOI been forthcoming with the information clearly in its possession, the government would not have sought a grand jury indictment.”
Naturally, President Trump is furious with Pirro, raging to reporters that she “choked.”