YOU CAN'T BEAT ABSOLUTIST ZEALOTS WITH CRINGING APPEASERS

This New York Times poll isn't good for Donald Trump.

Less than a third of voters think the country is better off than it was when President Trump returned to the White House a year ago, with a wide majority saying he has focused on the wrong issues, according to a new poll from The New York Times and Siena University.

A majority of voters disapprove of how Mr. Trump has handled top issues including the economy, immigration, the war between Russia and Ukraine and his actions in Venezuela. And significantly, a majority of Americans, 51 percent, said that Mr. Trump’s policies had made life less affordable for them.

All told, 49 percent of voters said the country was worse off than a year ago, compared with 32 percent who said it was better....

Mr. Trump’s own job approval rating stands at 40 percent, down three points since September. His disapproval rating has crept up to 56 percent.

But the cult still loves the man. One poll participant is shockingly frank about his mancrush on Trump.

“I think he must be doing something right when there are so many people opposed to him,” said Paul Minihane, 77, a real estate broker who lives in Dedham, Mass. “I mean, Donald Trump could look at me in the face and tell me to go screw myself. And I’d say, ‘Thank you.’ I think that’s good. I don’t think he’s looking to kiss everybody’s ass. I think he’s going to do what he thinks is the right thing. And I think that’s a positive thing.”

I'm reminded of Dennis Hopper as a drugged-out photojournalist talking about Marlon Brando as Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now:



This is a personality cult interwoven with a cult of Fox News-style zealotry, a belief system according to which everything Democrats and liberals do or believe is evil, and every aspect of human life can be summed up in right-wing catchphrases. Consider this woman:

A New Hampshire state representative is in hot water after messages from an encrypted GOP group chat were leaked and show her advocating for “segregated schools.”

Granite Post was the first to report about a group chat in the encrypted messaging app Signal that includes Rep. Kristin Noble, the chair of the House Education Policy and Administration committee in the New Hampshire House of Representatives....

In one message, Noble states, “When we have segregated schools we can add all the fun stuff lol.”

She follows that message up with another, saying, “Imagine the scores if we had schools for them and some for us.”

When the story leaked, Noble responded with a catchphrase I'm sure she believed trumped all objections:

Only hours after news of the messages was made public, Noble released a statement on social media with a donation link asking people to help her “stop the spread of the woke mind virus.”

She want on to insist that she was talking about political segregation, not racial segregation:

“It’s funny to watch the Democrats feign outrage when I thought they’d be supportive of managing their own schools, with libraries full of porn, biological males in girls sports and bathrooms, and as much DEI curriculum as their hearts desire. Schools like that will have terrible test scores because they focus on social justice rather than academics.”

“Republicans have been self-segregating out of the leftist indoctrination centers for decades. If democrats had their own schools, and we had our own, families wouldn’t need to avail themselves of the wildly successful education freedom account program. It’s a win / win proposition.”

These people are only 40% of the country at most. We're the majority. But these catchphrase-spewing automatons punch above their weight because the party in opposition to them is led by this pathetic nebbish:

How closely, if at all, should Dems collaborate with this administration, especially in an election year? That question is always pertinent to a minority party, but especially now. The latest edition of The Opposition from @lauren-egan.bsky.social plus @samsteindc.bsky.social:

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— The Bulwark (@thebulwark.com) January 22, 2026 at 9:08 AM

A HOST OF PROMINENT POLITICAL LEADERS descended on Onondaga County, New York, last week to mark the official groundbreaking of a $100 billion semiconductor manufacturing facility by Micron Technology.

Among those in attendance were Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (New York’s senior senator) and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.

... Micron’s expansion was initially made possible by the CHIPS Act, which President Joe Biden signed into law, and which Donald Trump opposed. And so, as the gathered politicians and Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra took questions from the press, Luke Radel, a college reporter from nearby Syracuse, posed a question to Lutnick: Why should Trump get credit for these jobs?

Lutnick geared up to answer. But before a word left his lips, Schumer—a Buffalo Bills beanie tented over his head—jumped in: “We’re not looking for one side or the other,” he said. “We’re working together to make this thing happen in the right way.”

If Schumer were in attendance just to ensure that anyone watching the ceremony understood the Democratic contribution to this project, fine. He could invoke Biden and the CHIPS Act, and could let Lutnick take the heat from (unsurprisingly) a student journalist.

But no. He ran interference for Lutnick.

And what thanks did he get?

Later that day, the Commerce Department posted a glossed-up promotional video about the Micron groundbreaking. Schumer was not even in it. Instead, it featured Lutnick mugging triumphantly in a variety of settings: shoveling dirt, striding alongside Mehrotra, photographed with his arms crossed and a vainglorious grin, boasting from a lectern that Biden had secured a measly $75 billion investment from Micron while Trump had negotiated one for $200 billion.

I'm pounding my head on the desk as we speak.

We talk about Donald Trump's mental state, but maybe it's Chuck Schumer who should be taking a cognitive test. I question Schumer's grasp on reality, specifically the reality of politics in the 21st century.

I don't really believe that Chuck Schumer has dementia, but he's a stubborn old man. He's as committed to his belief that appeasement is the only way Democrats can win as Trump is to the belief that tariffs are a miracle economic elixir. Like Trump, Schumer refuses to process any information, any facts from the real world, that suggest he should reconsider his idée fixe. Chuck Schumer will not utter a negative word about the Republican Party. He will sing the praises of bipartisanship every chance he gets. He's dug in. He will die on this hill.

And America may die with him.