Thomas Massie

Massie would never get my vote. Other than the Epstein thing, he votes with Trump and the authoritarian right wing something like 95% of the time.

And honestly, that old school hardass Republican thing used to appeal to me a little. But in the last 30 years, they've gone completely fucking crazy. So no - I doubt very seriously I'll ever vote for another Republican. Ever.



‘You’re Going to See More Defections’: Thomas Massie’s Ominous Prediction for the GOP

In a new interview, the Republican congressman opens up about Donald Trump, Mike Johnson and his strategy to dig even deeper into the Epstein files

Rep. Thomas Massie has gone toe-to-toe with the president of the United States, the speaker of the House and the attorney general in just the last few months. And he says there’s more to come.

The libertarian Republican from rural Kentucky has long been a headache for party leaders, but he’s taken it to another level by co-authoring bipartisan legislation that compelled the Justice Department to release vast troves of documents related to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

In an interview with POLITICO Magazine in his Capitol Hill office, Massie boasted that some 3 million files have already been released, even as he said he’d continue to bring pressure on the DOJ to reverse redactions in the documents.

Massie was the sole Republican to spar with Attorney General Pam Bondi at a combative congressional hearing last week, but he said for now, he won’t pursue efforts to hold her in contempt for not fully releasing the files.

“I don’t think it’s necessary to proverbially pull a knife right now in this argument because we’re winning it,” he said. “When the attorney general is reduced to a stack of pre-prepared insults to deliver, and when the DOJ is responding to my every tweet with additional unredactions, I don’t think I’m going to change what I’m doing just yet.”

Massie also joined several other Republicans recently to buck President Donald Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson on legislation that would block some Trump tariffs. And he had an ominous prediction for GOP leadership in the coming months.

“On any given day, I would just need one or two of my own co-conspirators to get something done,” he said. “I think you’re going to see more defections.”

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

I want to start with the recent Bondi hearing. You had some heated interactions with her. What did you come away with from that interaction?

Not necessarily for my own exchange, but just overall I think she looked weak and frustrated when she started talking about the Dow Jones, which has literally nothing to do with her job. I thought that looked bad. [She] kind of had this stack of insults that were pre-prepared — in politics you might call it oppo research — and you could see her shuffling through them to try and find which one matched the person who was trying to ask her a question at the time. She found my card like right at the end, as you can see she was looking for it.

What do you make of the attorney general coming to the Hill to testify in a general oversight hearing and then dishing out these flashcards about members of Congress?

This was her first appearance in front of the House of Representatives, and I think the public consensus is that she didn’t do a great job. Obviously, I prefer her politics to Merrick Garland’s, but he was better as a witness in terms of weathering it and looking credible, even if he didn’t give us the answers he was supposed to.

Did you get any substantive answers you were looking for?

She did admit that they changed the redactions [on Epstein documents] within 40 minutes of me finding the inappropriate redactions. I think that was a win. You can approach these hearings in different ways. If you’re not comfortable mixing it up with the witness, you can just give a five-minute speech. Or, if you’re thinking the witness is probably not going to be cooperative and not answer the questions, then you ask questions that sort of answer themselves when they don’t answer the question.

Although I genuinely wanted to know if they could track the individual redactions and who did them, because there could be somebody at DOJ who kind of reports to Pam Bondi, but is kind of at another level than Pam Bondi. The people who were there for life sort of run the place. They know how to get things done. I did think it was really fishy that there were thousands of instances of Leslie Wexner’s name, but the one instance that would’ve shown that Kash Patel may have committed perjury was redacted. And so my question legitimately was, who made this redaction? Because if I could find out who made that redaction, then I would go over to the DOJ computers and put that name in and see what else that person was in charge of redacting.

And then in the instance of releasing, that’s the grossest incompetence I’ve ever seen in government. An attorney sends you a list of the victims he represents so that you can redact their names, and you release the whole list. It’s like your worst nightmare. And I would guess that the attorney never in his wildest dreams dreamed that the DOJ would be that incompetent.

Do you have any plans to take legal action to fully redact any of these documents? Obviously they’ve been redacted multiple times.

I think six months ago, nobody ever thought we would be where we are now. I mean, we have 3 million files released. We do have some evidence that at least at some point the government thought there were co-conspirators, that Jeffrey Epstein trafficked women to other men. So that’s a victory right now. And things are unfolding. If you look at the overall pace over the last six months, the pace has actually picked up, it hasn’t slowed down.

I don’t think it’s necessary to proverbially pull a knife right now in this argument because we’re winning it. When the attorney general is reduced to a stack of pre-prepared insults to deliver, and then the DOJ is responding to my every tweet with additional unredactions, I don’t think I’m going to change what I’m doing just yet. We’re at a stage right now where we still have steam.

With that strategy, are you still planning on holding Bondi in contempt?

Well, to do that, we need two or three Republicans. I do think within the conference our momentum is gaining some steam as well. When I go over to the DOJ terminals, I see Republicans interested in this who didn’t sign the discharge petition [to bring the Epstein files bill to the floor]. And I think they’re being compelled to do that because they see that there’s some there there. And they’re also being asked by their constituents, well, what are you doing?

Where do you think the disclosures go from here? Is there anything else Congress can do other than contempt to prod the administration along?

The strongest tool we have now and have wielded through all of this is public pressure. And the hearing was useful in that regard. The recent document dump is useful in this regard. I heard the White House press secretary say we’re moving on. And if you look on the internet, people are sharing that clip and saying, no, we’re not.

What do you make of her saying that? And even the president recently has said again, he thinks the country should move on to something else.

Yeah, he’s decided that since these files don’t further implicate him in his opinion and exonerate him, that we should just move on now. Throughout this whole thing, Ro Khanna and I have taken great pains to keep this from becoming a partisan exercise because if it devolves into who shows up in the files more, Bill Clinton or Donald Trump, that’s just the typical food fight that you have in Washington D.C. And then you end up in a stalemate where you can’t get a bipartisan vote.

Trump often wields power on Capitol Hill through intimidation and fear. That obviously has not broken through on the Epstein matter as much. Several of you defied him on tariffs as well. How is that toolkit wearing thin for him, that he’s not able to badger enough Republicans into falling in line?

The margin is razor-thin, so on any given day, I would just need one or two of my own co-conspirators to get something done. And what’s happening is that the retirement caucus is growing and primary days are coming up and passing. Once we get past March, April and May, which contain a large portion of their Republican primaries, I think you’re going to see more defections.

Because quietly and privately, people are telling me they agree with me. And so there are people who plan on running again who will be past their primaries or certainly past the date at which the administration could put another Navy SEAL up to run against somebody. And then there’s the retirement caucus, which includes people who don’t want to retire, but redistricting is going to take them out or pit them against another Republican when they may retire for that reason.

Why has that sentiment changed in this term, and not as much in the first term?

I think there’s some fatigue, I call it rubber stamp fatigue. People who get elected to Congress, almost none of you got here by mistake. Everybody’s got flaws but everybody who gets here is driven and probably could accomplish other things besides Congress with that level of drive. They could be entrepreneurs or make a lot of money as lawyers. Nobody graduates from high school and signs in their yearbook that they want to be the class rubber stamp.

And so you have competent, driven individuals — some of these are military officers — who are being told every week to stand down, bite their tongue, sit on their hands, do what they’re told, be part of the team and put their brain in neutral, and that kind of job will make you tired by noon.

How big do you think is the caucus of people whom the president has no control over anymore? Do you think it is just a handful right now?

It’s really just the retirement caucus. And so they have to weigh the cost of alienating the president of the United States in their future job. Maybe they want to be the head of a trade association where crossing swords with the president would disqualify them later.

When was the last time you heard directly from the president or his team about anything?

Does the prayer breakfast count? I mean, he called me a moron at the prayer breakfast.

Just on the stage, thousands of pastors, including some from my own district, who apologized to me. They were literally here in my office that day and praying with me. And then they go to the prayer breakfast and hear the president say that. They are not impressed and I don’t think anybody was impressed by his performance at the prayer breakfast. It was completely political. But to answer your question, last time I heard from him was at the prayer breakfast and people said well what’s your response to that? And I just said I’m glad to know I’m in his prayers.

Have you talked to him or anyone on his team?

I talked to him when they needed my vote to get the “big, beautiful bill” to the floor, and he told me that he would tell Chris LaCivita to quit running ads against me if I helped him get the bill to the floor. And I said, “I want to be completely clear with you.” And I told him twice. I said, “I’m not voting for the bill when it gets to the floor. I want you to understand that’s not part of this agreement.” And he goes: “I understand. I get it. That’s fine.” Those were his three things he said.

And then they just kept running the ads. And then when the success of the Epstein Files Transparency Act was imminent, I think he just succumbed to Massie derangement syndrome at that point.

And that was when you were on the phone with the president himself during that conversation over the rule for the legislation.

In a room with the speaker of the House. There were two other members of Congress in there who made the same deal. So they got nothing for their vote either.

When was the last time you talked to Speaker Johnson about the Epstein matter at all?

One day they needed my vote and I offered to give them my vote if he would issue a press release thanking me for my good work on the Epstein Files Transparency Act. That’s all I required to get my vote. And I think he probably went and gave somebody else a bill to pass instead of doing the public statement.

That’s the last time I talked to him about that. And we had a serious discussion. He was like, you know, I can’t do that. He said the bill was flawed and worked against it. Well, obviously it wasn’t flawed. It’s working right now. And so anyways, I haven’t talked to him since then about that.

With the exception of when they put [“crazy stuff”] in the rule, I’ve been pretty reasonable on these votes. And I’ve asked Mike Johnson, tell me why I should keep being reasonable?

Do you think you could go further than what you are doing right now?

Oh yeah. Yeah. I’ve voted for a lot of rules when they’ve needed me.

In Europe, we’re seeing lots of consequences and resignations from the Epstein disclosures. The UK government is in tumult over it. We’re not seeing that same reaction in the United States at least yet.

Why do you think it’s different here?

I think the way that politics is structured in Europe is more ephemeral and reputational. They can recall a prime minister. They can have a vote of confidence. I think their head’s always on the chopping block. And so if reputationally somebody becomes a burden to the party, they might be quicker to jettison that person. And with the case of Prince Andrew, it’s all about reputation with royalty, right? They’re supposed to be better than everybody else, and when they aren’t, they can’t be in the club.

Here in the United States, once you become the ruling party in the White House, you’re there for four years. It’s almost unheard of that you would switch horses in the middle of the stream in the United States like they do in Europe. And also because we don’t have a coalition in our version of parliament. The president right now uses Congress as a rubber stamp, and he doesn’t have to really worry about the coalition falling apart in parliament. He doesn’t have to worry about members of his own party defecting. So I think they’re going to just keep taking on water here. If reputations mattered more in the United States, Howard Lutnick would already have resigned.

How do you feel the Epstein matter is playing in your primary? The president is pushing in on the primary challenge against you. How do you feel like this is shaping your race at this point?

Well, there are a lot of factors that play back home. You’ve got to understand, you can’t pretend that things in D.C. are the same as they are in Kentucky’s fourth district. When I undertook this cause to get this bill passed, I didn’t think it would hurt me back home, and I didn’t think it would help me back home. You know, I’ve taken up for raw milk, ending the Federal Reserve. Those are causes that maybe they’re nationally popular, but back home, maybe they only motivate a low single-digit percent of my voters, right?

And I thought the Epstein case might be similar to that — a national concern that doesn’t have a lot of effect or a disproportionate amount of influence in my district. But I was surprised to find out that it does. This isn’t a boutique or niche issue back home. This is a big deal back home, and it’s also shaped the demographics of my support back home. The people who were upset that my entire family posed with machine guns are now voting for me. And the president has control over the people who get 100 percent of their news from FOX.

So I’ve lost support there, but I’ve gained support from Republican soccer moms.

Here’s where I have to laugh every time somebody says “Oh, you just did this because it’s politically expedient.” There’s nothing politically expedient about pissing off the president and drawing 10 or 20 million dollars into your primary and causing them to double down. He was already a little bit annoyed at me for the votes on the “big, beautiful bill,” the [continuing resolution to fund the government], and even [the speaker’s race for] Mike Johnson. But once I did the Epstein thing, I crossed the rubicon. There was no, “I’m sorry, we misunderstood each other. We can be friends now.” So, it’s drawn a lot of fire from outside of my district and from the White House into my district, but in the district among my people it’s popular.

And it’s done one other thing: It has disarmed completely the argument that I never get anything done. When you go to your social media and half your feed is about something that I’ve done — if my opponent tries to say on his social media, “Massie is a gadfly and he never gets anything done,” they’ll just dogpile him with all the things that are happening because of me.

So it helps back home.

Ex-MAGA

My default position hasn't changed. In fact, it may have hardened a bit now that the Epstein thing is really beginning to blow up.

If you can't get your head around the fact that Kid Fucking is quite a bit worse than being in the US without the government's permission, then you're a diseased yak at your favorite daughter's church wedding.

Knowing you voted for Trump

is like knowing you fucked my dog.

You can say you're sorry because now

you realize it was a bad thing to do,

and you'll never go near another dog,

and we can talk it out,

and I might be able to forgive you

so we can move on.

But here's the thing:

YOU'RE A GUY WHO WAS

FUCKING PEOPLE'S DOGS.

So go ahead and prove that you've changed

by working your ass off

to repair the damage you've done.

But stay the fuck away from me.

Today's Cult College

Straw Please

Maybe It's Not Them

Maybe it's you.

Failing Maga

Two things we should never accept being in the same sentence:

1. Trump
2. Course correct

That doesn't mean he won't bluster about it. He's very good at pretending.

"I've decided to talk about affordability again because you idiots are finally ready to start maybe understanding the sheer brilliance of my very smart ability to do the weave in real time, and to do it with actual real world things like prices and shit. So there ya go ... just by talking about it for a few days, I've solved the problem, which wasn't really a problem - you're just too stupid to see it properly - the way I do ......... "

I think the guy is not long for the world. They've got him tinkering with his ballroom plans, dressing up the golf courses around DC, fartin' around at the Kennedy Center, and touring with his "rallies".

IMO, he's not running the show. My guess is that Susie Wiles is in charge, and that she and Russ Vought are the actual power. Everything else is false fronts and window dressing.

MAGA leaders warn Trump the base is checking out. Will he listen?

Trump’s advisers say he is preparing to hold near-weekly rallies to spend more time with the base, but has faced criticism from within MAGA in the meantime.

As Donald Trump ate his crab cake lunch inside the White House last month, conservative pollster Mark Mitchell tried to explain that there was a disconnect between what the administration seemed to be focused on, and what Trump’s passionate base of supporters want to see.

“Sir, you got shot at the Butler rally,” Mitchell said, invoking the “really strong optics” of Trump raising his fist in defiance after the attempted assassination in July 2024.

“You said, ‘Fight, fight, fight.’ But nobody ever clarified what that means,” Mitchell continued. “And right now, you’re fight-fight-fighting Marjorie Taylor Greene, and not actually fight-fight-fighting for Americans.”

The head pollster at Rasmussen Reports warned Trump that many of his supporters believe he hasn’t “drained the swamp” in Washington, and suggested the president refocus with a plan to embrace “pragmatic economic populism.”

“To the extent to which we were talking about the economic populism message, he wasn’t as interested as I would have hoped,” Mitchell said, adding that it was a “long-ranging conversation.”

Mitchell’s critique echoes a growing chorus of faithful MAGA supporters who have begun raising concerns over what they see as Trump’s second-term shortcomings. In recent weeks, pockets of the president’s base — well-known for its unwavering dedication to Trump and his MAGA agenda — have accused the president of focusing too much on foreign affairs, failing to address the cost of living issues he pledged to fix, aligning himself too closely with billionaires and tech moguls, and resisting the release of more investigative files on the deceased sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein.

Across the conservative spectrum, a steady drumbeat of commentators have warned that Trump’s coalition is weakened, and the party is headed for defeat in November’s midterms elections. There are concerns that the base won’t show up over frustrations that Trump hasn’t pursued the MAGA agenda aggressively enough. And others worry economic concerns could threaten his standing with the independent voters key in next year’s midterms.

Trump’s top advisers have taken note of the criticism from within MAGA, and see it as part of the “cyclical” feedback the administration will receive throughout his term, as one senior White House official put it. Trump’s staff have planned for him to begin holding near-weekly rallies to tout his accomplishments after spending little time on the stump this year, two officials told The Washington Post, speaking on the condition of anonymity to detail internal conversations. But on his first stop of that effort, at a casino in Pennsylvania last week, Trump again mocked the word “affordability” and downplayed concerns about rising costs and inflation before acknowledging, “I can’t say affordability is a hoax because I agree the prices were too high.”

His advisers anticipate complaints from Trump’s base could even become “louder” as the midterms approach, but will subside as more of his policies take effect. Eventually, an adviser quipped, the cycle will restart with a new set of criticisms.

Chief among the recent critics has been Greene (R-Georgia), whose complaints led to Trump disavowing her last month and her subsequent decision to resign from Congress.

“I’m an early indicator — I’m like a bellwether,” said Greene, who stood by Trump during his political exile after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, and has prided herself on being closely attuned to Trump’s base. “I say it, and then within four to six months, everybody’s saying the same thing.”

In an interview with The Washington Post, Greene said most of Trump’s longtime supporters still want to see him succeed, but “the base is jaded.” They know what they elected him to do, Greene said, and “they’re aware he’s not doing it.”

‘Driving 80 miles an hour at a brick wall’

Public polling has shown mixed signals about how much Trump’s support has slipped among Republicans. He maintains support from the vast majority of the party, though recent polling shows he has dipped below the GOP’s usual 90-percent approval mark. But Trump’s approval overall has lagged in recent weeks. It reached its worst with voters in late November and has ticked up slightly since, though it remains lower than at this point in his first term. An Economist/YouGov poll conducted this month found that 41 percent of Americans approve of the job Trump is doing, and 55 percent disapprove, a net improvement of five percentage points from the same poll a week earlier.

That apparent softness has coincided with some Republicans emboldened to push back against aspects of the Trump agenda, including last week, when GOP state senators in Indiana blocked a White House-led effort to redraw the state’s congressional maps. And on Thursday, 20 Republicans in Congress joined Democrats in another rebuke, supporting a bill that would overturn Trump’s executive order that limited union rights for federal workers.

What remains to be seen is whether that brewing dissatisfaction will grow, or if Trump can more aggressively focus on issues that quiet the discontent. Trump said Tuesday that his remaining three years in office amount to an “eternity” in “Trump time” to carry out his agenda.

Still, the chorus of supporters willing to speak out has become louder.

Mitchell was invited to the White House by Vice President JD Vance, who follows him on X and has communicated with Mitchell about polling in recent months. Before lunch with Trump, Mitchell met with Vance, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Mitchell is not part of the president’s political operation, but Trump’s advisers were interested in hearing his outside perspective, a White House official told The Post.

Mitchell said Trump listened to his concerns and asked questions, but eventually pivoted to one of his favorite conversation topics: golf. He gushed about two of his golf partners, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) and Fox News host Bret Baier, both of whom are the subject of MAGA-faction ire. Trump also bragged about how much money he had raised during a golf fundraiser for Graham the weekend before, a day after he declared he was rescinding his support for Greene.

Conservative pollster Mark Mitchell says President Trump was more focused on golf than on policy at a White House meeting. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)
In an interview, Mitchell suggested that it would have been better for the administration to acknowledge early on that repairing the economy would take significant changes and would not occur overnight.

“The very first thing they shouldn’t have done is lower gas prices one dollar and then say, ‘The Golden Age is here,’ ” he said.

Greene also believes Trump is missing an opportunity to connect with his base on affordability. People “understand that it takes time to stabilize the economy,” Greene said, but they take issue with Trump’s claims that concerns about affordability are part of a “Democrat hoax.”

“No, it’s not, and the health care situation is serious. It’s dire, and Republicans are only just now taking it serious,” Greene said, referring to expiring health care subsidies that will cause insurance prices to surge for Americans enrolled in Affordable Care Act plans. “This is a country driving 80 miles an hour at a brick wall on Jan. 1,” when they expire, Greene said.

‘Punchy tweets, cool video edits … no follow through’

Savanah Hernandez, a conservative commentator who serves as a Turning Point USA contributor, described the second Trump term so far as “underwhelming,” while crediting Trump with making positive, lasting changes to the conservative movement.

She was among the influencers the White House assembled for an “Antifa Roundtable” with Trump in October to discuss how to stop a movement of far-left activists who have at times incited violence during protests. But on that and a host of other issues Trump’s base cares about — including the administration’s goal to deport more than 1 million illegal immigrants this year, which it is not expected to reach; accountability for what they believe were government agencies being “weaponized against” conservatives; and vows to make life more affordable — Hernandez said he has fallen short.

“All we’ve really seen is punchy tweets, cool video edits, but really no follow through on any of the promises,” she said of the messaging coming from the White House.

“And if he listened to his base and he was connected to us, even just through social media, you would see that the average person is still struggling to buy groceries, that the housing crisis is still on the mind of everybody, that inflation is still a really big issue, and when Americans see billions of dollars going overseas to any country, it really feels like a betrayal when we’re struggling here at home,” Hernandez said.

Two senior White House officials said Trump on nearly a daily basis is shown a range of feedback from MAGA commentators, including criticism about his performance. In a statement, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called Trump the “proud founder and undisputed leader” of MAGA, “the greatest political movement in American history.”

“President Trump is delivering on his core campaign promises across the board, keeping his word to the nearly 80 million patriots who elected him in a landslide, and fighting every day to make America greater than ever before,” she said.

Other MAGA-aligned voices downplayed the extent that critical voices within the movement are a warning sign. Jack Posobiec, a longtime activist and conservative media figure, described Trump’s performance as “light-years beyond” his first term.

“You will always have this sliver of people — it’s a very online group of people, a very active group of people, who would say they want more, they want more, they want more,” Posobiec said in an interview. “And I get that.”

Isabel Brown, another conservative podcaster, said the complaints from within MAGA are “a signal of a healthy conservative debate.”

Populist voices urge Trump to course correct

In Georgia, 36-year-old Jessie Meadows, a Trump voter who describes herself as “MAGA,” grew frustrated this year as prices remained high and the president responded dismissively to the push to release more files on Epstein. Her disappointment hardened as Trump attacked Greene and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky), who also pushed for the files’ release. Trump’s online posts touting favorable polls and success bringing down inflation seemed like his own version of “fake news,” Meadows said.

She voted for Democratic candidates in November’s Public Service Commission elections in Georgia that flipped the seats from the GOP, and said that going forward, she will back candidates she considers “America First,” regardless of party.

“If I had known what Trump was going to turn into now, I would have stayed home,” Meadows said.

Many supporters like her have been turned off seeing what was once a full calendar of rallies in Middle America replaced with opulent events with business leaders, deal-signings with billionaires and travel to other continents. While meeting with Trump, Mitchell told the president his base of supporters wanted to see him “smash the oligarchy, not be the oligarchy.”

“Building billionaire-funded ballrooms and jet-setting around the world and trillion-dollar investment deals looks a lot like oligarchy stuff,” Mitchell told The Post.

Despite acknowledging Trump’s departures from his base on issues like foreign and tech policy, some top populist voices in his movement insist the president is course-correcting to win back support ahead of the midterms.

Trump “is pivoting into a much harder populist nationalist stance — on deportations, drug cartels, Third World fraud, tariffs,” said Stephen K. Bannon, his former adviser turned influential talk show host and operative.

“It’s only harder from here to November 2026,” Bannon, who has been outspoken against efforts by wealthy tech executives to influence Trump’s policies, told The Post. “Broligarchs didn’t sign up for the ‘wetwork’ of modern politics. They will be the first off the bus.”

MAGA influencers have cringed at some of Trump’s comments they view as out of touch with his base, especially his assertion on Fox News that the U.S. needs foreign workers because it does not have enough “talented people.” Not long after, Trump acknowledged that his base wasn’t happy with his decision to welcome foreign tech workers to the country, but said his poll numbers would instead go up with “smart people.”

Raheem Kassam, a British right-wing influencer living in Washington, who is editor of the conservative National Pulse, said his phone lit up with complaints when Trump made the poll comment.

“I’m just saying, listen to the people that elected you, because right now, apart from the deportation stuff, you’re not really connecting with them,” Kassam said.

In response to a request for comment from the White House, in addition to Leavitt, Vance provided The Post with a statement touting a reduction in the number of illegal immigrants in the country, Trump’s work with pharmaceutical companies to lower drug prices for some Americans, among other accomplishments.

“Is there more work to do? Of course there is,” Vance said. “And no one is more committed to doing it than the President of the United States and his team.”

Other Trump supporters said that while not everything has panned out as they hoped, they remained confident in the president.

“He is not a king,” said Jerry Ramsey, 81, from Marietta, Georgia. He can’t just say, ‘You gotta cut the price of a hamburger.’ Within another year, I think things will be rocking on pretty good.”

Think Outloud

Operative Concept:

MAGA voters are willing to go down with the ship as long as they're convinced someone they don't like is going to drown faster and harder.

People keep telling me not to take it out on the MAGA voters, but I'm not hearing a good explanation for how these people continue to buy into the bullshit when better information and - you know, factual reality - are both in their faces every fucking day.

Year-To-Date, AI accounts for 40% of GDP growth, and 80% of the stock market rise.

Expertise is not Elitism

Education is not Brainwashing

Warnings are not Fear Tactics

Professor Pagel's Rundown

Instead of getting your Underoos all knotted up, maybe you could just tell us you don't issue illegal orders.

This looks a lot like more evidence that these jerks are spoilin' for a fight, and they intend to do everything they can think of to provoke a violent reaction.

History Explains

Holy fuck - it's been right there in plain sight the whole time. These "Alpha MAGA" boys are closeted submissives!?

No wonder they've been totally absorbed into Daddy Trump's cult.

A huge Thank You to this darling girl - she's made another piece of the puzzle fall into place for me.

K.I.S.S.

Slight variation - Keep It Stoopidly Simplistic

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Overheard

MAGA Bros are the guys

who're convinced

that the waitress

is totally into them

That Weird Video

Trump is telling you what he's doing to you, MAGA - you stupid fucks.

It's a fairly simple extension of LBJ's  "If you can convince the worst white man that he's better than the best black man, he'll empty his pockets for you."

The worst of the MAGA deplorables believe Trump is fucking over the liberals more than he's fucking them over, so they're good with it.

Today's Agent Provocateur

They get more and more desperate for that Reichstag Fire thingie.

They Don't Know

... because they don't want to know.

So along the same lines, it's not likely they'll make any real change in the way they think because they don't really think they were wrong about their core prejudices. They'll just wait for the next guy who makes them feel comfortable about their racism, misogyny, and xenophobia.

The good news is that a lot of them will probably spend a few cycles staying home.

Let 'Em Do What They Do

A New One

Hey, MAGA

... when do you think you might start getting tired of being played for suckers all the fuckin' time?

U.S. employers added 911,000 fewer jobs than first reported, new BLS data shows

The change from April 2024 to March 2025 was the biggest revision on record. President Donald Trump fired the BLS commissioner last month over an earlier updated report.

The U.S. labor market was far weaker during much of 2024 and early 2025 than data initially showed, a new government report indicated Tuesday — injecting more uncertainty into the economy and fueling a raging debate over the figures that analysts use to understand it.

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In the largest preliminary revision to jobs data on record, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said employers had created 911,000 fewer positions from April 2024 to March 2025 than previously reported. That’s less than half as many as the agency had initially indicated. The data will be revised again and finalized early next year. Economists say that report could be less negative.

But the revision adds more evidence that the economy was already slowing even before President Donald Trump’s sweeping new tariffs and immigration policies squeezed costs for many businesses.

And it landed just a month after Trump fired the BLS commissioner, Erika McEntarfer, over weak jobs data, accusing her without evidence of overseeing government figures that were “rigged” for political purposes, including to help Democrats in the presidential election that Trump won.

The White House said the new report showed that the BLS is “broken” and that the economy was suffering under President Joe Biden.

“This makes it very clear that President Trump inherited a much worse economy by the Biden administration than ever reported,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Tuesday. “And it also proves that the Federal Reserve is holding our monetary policy far too restrictive. Interest rates are too high. The Fed needs to cut the rates because of the mess that we inherited from the Biden administration.”

Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer said in a separate statement that the American people had “even more reason to doubt the integrity of [BLS] data” and condemned the agency’s leaders, who she said had “failed to improve their practices during the Biden administration.”

Many economists and policymakers across the political spectrum stress that there is no reason to question the quality of the data.

Forecasters said they had expected a large revision this year due in part to slowing business growth, shifting immigration levels, declining response rates to government surveys and an apparent downward shift in the broader economy.

“These revisions don’t really change my perspective about the labor market, which was already reasonably pessimistic,” said Guy Berger, director of economic research at the Burning Glass Institute. “We knew the labor market was cooling over this period. A lot of other indicators came down. And in the process of that happening, we added less jobs.”

The three major stock indexes sank Tuesday morning on news of the massive downward revisions. But they rallied by midday, and all closed up slightly, as investors look ahead to rate cuts widely expected at next week’s Federal Reserve meeting.

The new annual revisions provide a more accurate snapshot of the labor market before new economic forces began to take hold — including higher tariffs and stronger immigration enforcement from the Trump administration.

Those forces have lately weighed on the labor market, which could be heading for a downturn. Monthly jobs data published last week revealed a rising unemployment rate and weaker-than-expected job creation of just 22,000 new positions in August. Even more concerning: The data showed the labor market shed jobs in June, the first such losses since the coronavirus pandemic.

The Trump administration shrugged off last week’s report as temporary, saying it expects a resurgence of new jobs and advanced manufacturing as a result of the president’s trade and immigration policies.

Most of the revisions announced Tuesday reflect the labor market under Biden. The report does not change estimates of job gains since March.

The closely watched monthly jobs reports are based on surveys of about 121,000 businesses and government agencies — a small share of the millions of U.S. employers. So the figures become more accurate when they are later calibrated with data from state unemployment offices. When the economy is rapidly growing or shrinking — as it did during the pandemic, or as it can at the start of a recession — large changes can result, because it is harder for surveys to capture how many businesses are opening or shutting down.

The preliminary revisions announced this week bring the average monthly pace of job gains during the year ending in March to just over 70,000, down from 147,000. Tuesday’s report does not indicate when the revisions took place over the 12-month period; that information will be released when the data is finalized early next year.

The annual revisions removed about 0.6 percent of all U.S. employment, the largest percentage fix since 2009.

The changes affected many sectors but especially leisure and hospitality. The report downgraded job gains in that industry, which includes hotels and restaurants, by 176,000 positions. Retail and wholesale trade also took a hit. And the information sector, which includes media, tech and telecoms, lost the largest share of jobs, about 67,000 positions, or 2.3 percent of its total employment.

Some economists argue that the labor market is still solid. The unemployment rate remains relatively low, at 4.3 percent, as do layoffs. Lower levels of immigration could mean that fewer new jobs are needed to support the population, compared with recent years, to keep the unemployment rate stable.

Last year, the preliminary revisions to jobs data drew an uproar. BLS reported that the economy created 818,000 fewer jobs in the year ending in March 2024, which at the time was the biggest fix to federal jobs data in 15 years. Trump jumped on the revisions to accuse Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and Biden of “fraudulently manipulating job statistics” for political purposes. The final revisions published early this year ended up showing a smaller change, a downgrade of roughly 598,000 fewer jobs.

Economist Michael Strain of the right-of-center American Enterprise Institute said that he believes this week’s news will “unfortunately contribute to the narrative that there’s something fishy going on at BLS. It’s possible that we’ll see an even more aggressive response from the president.”

He added: “I think there is not a shred of evidence to believe that there’s any political bias in the data and there’s not a shred of evidence to believe the data are being manipulated in any way for any reason. In addition, I think there’s lots of scope to improve the data, and that’s something that I think would require money.”

Since firing McEntarfer in early August, Trump has nominated BLS critic and Heritage Foundation chief economist E.J. Antoni to lead the agency. Antoni is facing scrutiny from policymakers and economists for his pro-MAGA partisanship, relative lack of experience and what critics have called a misunderstanding of economic data, which could threaten his confirmation hearing in the coming weeks. Antoni has said he is interested in improving the accuracy of BLS data, and the White House has said that Trump tapped Antoni to solve those problems.

Erica Groshen, who led the BLS under President Barack Obama, said the large revisions announced this week also reflected lower participation in government surveys. Only about 35 percent of employers agreed to participate in voluntary jobs surveys, according to data from April, down from 74 percent a decade ago.

Berger, of the Burning Glass Institute, said he has been giving less credence to monthly job creation data in recent years, which has been highly distorted by recent shifts in labor supply, including the surge and subsequent crackdown in immigration.

Instead, Berger and many analysts and policymakers have been paying closer attention to the unemployment rate, hiring and layoff levels, and employment ratios, which have revealed periods of weakness over the past year. For example, the unemployment rate climbed last summer, contributing to the Federal Reserve’s decision to lower interest rates in September 2024.

“If your perspective has been ‘Wow, these job numbers are good, so the labor market is strong,’ you probably should have changed your mind on that a long time ago,” Berger said.

A Random Selection

Off_JaWaggon

Because Of Course

To answer Tom's question:

If Republicans even acknowledge anything like this, it gets "the wrong people" to the voting booth.

Reported as MAGA Republican, but unconfirmed:

Major Richard Ojeda