Shock Poll: Core Part of Trump’s Base is Abandoning Him

Donald Trump, who saw an increase in support from rural voters in the 2024 election, is now seeing huge defections, according to a new PBS/NPR/Marist poll.

The poll taken last week found that only 40 percent of rural voters approve of Trump’s job performance, down from 59 percent in February, according to Newsweek. Forty-five percent of respondents said they disapproved of Trump’s performance in April, which is up from 37 percent who said they disapproved in February.

In the weeks between polls, Trump has unveiled a slate of policy directives that threaten the livelihoods of rural voters, including his sweeping “reciprocal tariff” policy that has undermined essential trade with America’s top trading partners.

Last month, the European Commission agreed to levy tariffs of up to 25 percent on cigarettes from Florida, beef from Kansas and Nebraska, chicken from Louisiana, car parts from Michigan, and most importantly, soybeans—of which the European Union bought $2.43 billion’s worth in 2024. Trump responded with his own insipid optimism, counseling everyone to “BE COOL!”

Farmers were also hurt by Trump’s dismantling of USAID, which lost them $2 billion, and the administration’s upending of programs for farms to provide produce for schools and food banks lost them at least another $1 billion.

Farmers aren’t the only rural residents hurt by Trump—workers and small businesses have also been impacted by shrinking consumer confidence and fears about an impending economic recession caused by roiling markets. Some believe it’s already begun.

But that’s only the tip of the iceberg. The president’s massive cuts to disaster preparedness programs threaten vulnerable rural regions that could be hit by the oncoming hurricane season. After Trump floated eliminating FEMA altogether, the agency stopped paying for temporary housing for more than 1,200 families displaced by Hurricane Helene in North Carolina.

As recently as Friday, Trump’s directive to slash federal funding at NPR and PBS would also disproportionately impact rural areas, which receive the most of the sliver of money granted by the government for educational and cultural programming.

The only group of voters, between those in urban, suburban, and rural areas who reported an increase in support for the president, were small-town voters, with 53 percent approving of his job performance, in an increase from 46 percent in February.

In the 2024 presidential election, a whopping 62 percent of rural voters supported Trump, while only 36 percent backed Kamala Harris, according to AP VoteCast. This demonstrated a 4 percent increase in rural support for Trump compared to 2020.

CBS’s flagship news magazine show 60 Minutes is upping the ante in its fight against Donald Trump. The show’s upcoming Sunday segment will focus on how the Trump administration has targeted law firms in an apparent quest to punish those who dared to challenge him when he was out of office, according to an online listing for the episode.

“On the campaign trail, President Trump vowed to wield the power of the presidency to go after his perceived enemies,” the listing reads. “Now in the White House, Trump is using executive orders to target some of the biggest law firms in the country that he accuses of ‘weaponizing’ the justice system against him.”

The show has had a tumultuous year covering the MAGA leader, who has continued to dedicate significant attention to a sit-down interview that aired on 60 Minutes prior to Election Day with former Vice President Kamala Harris. Trump has repeatedly argued that a version of Harris’s answer regarding Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the broadcast had essentially “defrauded” the American public, since two of the network’s shows—60 Minutes and Face the Nation—cut and aired different portions of her 21-second answer on different days.

Trump sued CBS for $20 billion after the interview, claiming that the different clips amounted to “election interference” and that Harris should drop out of the presidential race over the GOP-baked scandal.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg: Trump and his allies have also insisted that CBS should lose its broadcasting license for what they view as selectively editing Harris’s answer. And on Wednesday, the president attempted to rope The New York Times into the affair, protesting online that the newspaper’s decision to quote individuals who described the case as “baseless” is tantamount to “tortious interference.”

An independent review by the Federal Communications Commission showed that the two answers were in fact cut from the same longer response. Editing answers for time is considered general practice in television news and regularly happens.

The mounting pressure from the lawsuit forced out the show’s chief producer, Bill Owens, last week, shocking employees who described the 24-year show runner’s exit as akin to pulling a “pin from his last grenade.” Owens had refused to apologize or admit wrongdoing in handling Harris’s interview. CBS’s parent company, Paramount, is reportedly moving to settle the lawsuit.

“It’s clear now, in a quest to sell the company, Shari Redstone and others will bow to presidential pressure,” one unidentified 60 Minutes employee told CNN, referring to the non-executive chairwoman of CBS’s parent company, Paramount Global. “60 Minutes is one of the crown jewels of American broadcast journalism, and they have no problem crushing it in their race to make a deal and make themselves richer.”

But regardless of Trump or executive perspectives, the media industry has continued to recognize the value of 60 Minutes’ programming. On Thursday, the show’s controversial Harris segment was nominated for an Emmy.

Senator John Fetterman isn’t in good shape—and could be a danger to himself and those around him.

New York magazine reports that Fetterman, who suffered a stroke in 2022 one month before being elected to the Senate, is unrecognizable to his past and present staff, prone to “conspiratorial thinking” and “megalomania.” His former chief of staff, Adam Jentleson, wrote his concerns in a May 2024 letter to Dr. David Williamson, the neuropsychiatrist who oversaw Fetterman’s treatment at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, D.C.

“We do not know if he is taking his meds and his behavior frequently suggests he is not,” Jentleson wrote, adding that Fetterman was avoiding the recommended regular checkups with his doctors. He also wrote that the senator was driving his car recklessly, often speeding while texting, making FaceTime calls, and reading entire news articles behind the wheel.

One month after the letter, Fetterman got into a car accident, driving home from the airport after an early morning flight well over the 70-mph speed limit on I-70. His wife in the back seat suffered a pulmonary contusion and spinal fractures, and Fetterman told one of his staffers that he had fallen asleep while driving.

In an incident earlier this year, Fetterman was filmed on a flight to Pittsburgh arguing with the pilot about wearing his seat belt correctly.

“If you want to go to Pittsburgh, it’s simple,” the pilot told him. “You’re going to have to follow our instructions or be asked to get off the airplane.”

In another instance in 2023, one of his staffers reported hearing from a journalist that Fetterman had walked into the street and was nearly hit by a car. A short time later, a Senate doctor called Fetterman’s office to report that the senator walked into a group of people and nearly knocked them over near the underground trolleys running between the Capitol and congressional office buildings.

Fetterman insists that he is in good health, despite these reports, and chalks up the disturbing reports to disgruntled staffers. But other accounts show increased black-and-white thinking on issues such Israel’s massacre of Gaza, which has alienated many of his staffers, and an inexplicable show of support for certain Trump administration polices, drawing a backlash from liberal supporters. It seems that Fetterman’s health is raising the question of if he’s fit to continue serving in politics.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has had enough of the Trump administration’s unchecked bullying of the nation’s judicial branch.

The Supreme Court’s most junior justice condemned Donald Trump’s attacks on the country’s judges Thursday night, decrying the hostility from the executive branch as a threat to democracy.

“Across the nation, judges are facing increased threats of not only physical violence, but also professional retaliation just for doing our jobs,” Jackson said at a judge’s conference in Puerto Rico, according to Politico. “And the attacks are not random. They seem designed to intimidate those of us who serve in this critical capacity.”

Jackson, who joined the nation’s highest bench in 2022 after she was appointed by former President Joe Biden, did not mention Trump by name but instead referred to the president as the “elephant in the room.”

Jackson further noted that Trump’s attacks are “not isolated incidents,” arguing that they “impact more than just individual judges who are being targeted.”

“The threats and harassment are attacks on our democracy, on our system of government. And they ultimately risk undermining our Constitution and the rule of law,” Jackson said. “I urge you to keep going, keep doing what is right for our country, and I do believe that history will vindicate your service.”

She added that the judiciary had faced similar challenges during the Civil Rights Movement and the Watergate scandal, when the branch of government was again in the public hot seat.

“Other judges have faced challenges like the ones we face today, and have prevailed,” Jackson said.

The sharp rebuke earned her a standing ovation at the conference, reported The Daily Beast. It’s the second such instance in which a Supreme Court justice has critiqued Trump’s attempts to coerce America’s courtrooms. In March, Chief Justice John Roberts pushed back against the president’s demands to impeach a federal judge who dared to rule against his deportation plans.

“For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision,” Roberts said of Trump’s threats against U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg at the time.

But Baosberg isn’t the only judge Trump has threatened. Dozens of judges have ruled against Trump—and faced the wrath of his allies and his base for doing so.

Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman, a formerly progressive Democrat who has decidedly shifted right in recent years, delivered a hard-line—and honestly bloodthirsty—stance in opposition to a ceasefire in Gaza during a meeting with pro-Israel group J Street’s president Jeremy Ben-Ami in February.

“Let’s get back to killing,” Fetterman said, referring to Israel’s mass slaughter of Palestinians. A person who heard the conversation told New York magazine that Fetterman, a staunch supporter of Israel’s military campaign, advocated to “kill them all.”

Fetterman denied this account and insisted that if he’d advocated for slaughter, he was speaking solely about members of Hamas. “I do support the destruction of that organization, down to its last member,” he said.

These statements and others are part of what current and former staffers believe is a trend of troubling, erratic behavior from Fetterman, detailed in the sweeping report that was published Friday.

The senator’s unsettling behavior and “I’m not progressive” flip has driven out multiple staffers, including three of his top spokespeople and his legislative director. Adam Jentleson, his former chief of staff, was so concerned by Fetterman’s erratic behavior that he stepped down from his position in April 2024.

Shortly afterward, Jentleson wrote a lengthy email to David Williamson, the medical director of the traumatic brain injury and neuropsychiatry unit at Walter Reed Medical Center, detailing the radical changes he’d seen in his boss, believing that he may be severely struggling with his mental health following a stroke in 2022.

Among other serious concerns, like doubts that his boss was taking his medications, obvious lying, and the purchase of a firearm, Jentleson said that Fetterman was demonstrating “conspiratorial thinking” and “megalomania.”

Fetterman “claims to be the most knowledgeable source on Israel and Gaza around but his sources are just what he reads in the news—he declines most briefings and never reads memos,” Jentleson wrote. During his meeting with Ben-Ami, Fetterman had claimed that he had never met an Arab person who would condemn Hamas, but the notes from the meeting stated that only a “single Arab he has met with that staff was present for wouldn’t outright condemn Hamas.”

Speaking about Palestinians, Fetterman said, “You can’t reform a carton of sour milk.”

After Israel set off on its genocidal campaign in Gaza, which has killed at least 52,000 people, following Hamas’s attack on October 7, Fetterman’s controversial social media posts alarmed staff members and constituents alike. Fetterman’s increasingly callous rhetoric about Palestine has manifested a sharp rift between him and the progressive staffers who saw him elected to the Senate in 2022.

Fetterman’s behavior is so concerning, it’s not clear if he’ll be able to continue in the Senate–let alone run for reelection in 2028, when his term ends.

Fetterman was also the first Democratic senator to meet with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in January, earning him praise from the far-right president. “I couldn’t be more impressed,” Trump said at the time.

It’s not clear how much of Fetterman’s turn to the right is related to his health issues, and Jentleson was more concerned for his former boss’s well-being than his political transformation.

“I believed in John’s ability to work through struggles that lots of Americans share,” he said. “He’s not locked into a downward trajectory; he could get back in treatment at any time, and for a long time I held out hope that he would. But it’s just been too long now, and things keep getting worse.

“Part of the tragedy here is that this is a man who could be leading Democrats out of the wilderness,” Jentleson said. “But I also think he’s struggling in a way that shouldn’t be hidden from the public.”