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This is an adapted excerpt from the May 8 episode of “The Briefing with Jen Psaki.”
At this point, we are all familiar with Donald Trump’s “flood the zone” strategy: Move fast, try to upend as many things as possible, and throw so much at us that it’s hard to keep up. The president wants to make it harder for us to figure out what’s real and what’s bluster. One way to cut through some of that is to figure out what he really cares about.
Trump was forced to pull Martin’s nomination, acknowledging that his nominee didn’t have the support.
Consider one of the first actions Trump took after being sworn in for a second term, which was to install Ed Martin as the top federal prosecutor for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, D.C., one most powerful prosecutor’s offices in the country.
For the last few years, that office has been in charge of the largest criminal probe in American history, the investigation into the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Along with having zero experience as a prosecutor, Martin also served as a defense lawyer for several Trump supporters who were charged with attacking police officers during the insurrection.
As interim U.S. attorney, Martin dismissed any ongoing cases against Capitol rioters, including at least one whom Martin represented as a defense lawyer. Then he set about demoting federal prosecutors who had worked on those Jan. 6 cases. He also sent out sloppy, poorly-worded, vaguely threatening letters aimed at members of Congress and even medical journals.
With Martin’s interim appointment ending his month, all Trump had to do to keep him there permanently was to get the Republican-controlled Senate to confirm him. But on Thursday, Trump was forced to pull Martin’s nomination, acknowledging that his nominee didn’t have the support. Shortly after Martin’s nomination was withdrawn, Trump announced a new interim U.S. attorney for D.C., former Fox News host Jeanine Pirro.
When it comes to Martin’s demise, here’s something worth paying attention to: The man who appears to have sealed his fate is none other than Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina.
Now, it’s not like Tillis hasn’t voted for Trump nominees before, even when he found them objectionable. In fact, he’s voted for all of them. You may recall that it was his vote that saved the nomination of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Tillis was reportedly so disgusted with Hegseth’s alleged behavior that, according to The New York Times, he was working feverishly behind the scenes to kill his nomination. But then Trump threatened to back a primary challenger in Tillis’ election next year, and at the last minute, the senator caved.
That was January. So what’s different now? Why couldn’t Trump get Tillis to vote for his Day One, hand-picked D.C. prosecutor? Well, maybe it’s that less than four months into his second term, Trump doesn’t have the juice he had even just a few weeks ago.
It’s not only the nominations — it’s been a parade of failures. Since retaking the White House, the president has passed almost no legislation, though he did get Republicans in the House to pass a bill renaming the Gulf of Mexico to “the Gulf of America.” The one Republican who voted against it called the bill “juvenile.”
Trump isn’t faring any better in the courts. A new analysis from Bloomberg found that Trump is losing in court far more than he’s winning, with his policies having been stopped by courts more than 200 times.
The polls continue to be brutal for a president barely 100 days into his term. The latest Economist/YouGov poll finds Trump’s approval underwater by 10 points, with 52% of Americans disapproving of the job he’s doing. A full 75% of Americans think Trump’s tariffs will increase the prices they pay.
On Thursday in the Oval Office, a reporter asked the president his thoughts on his tariffs causing a slowdown in traffic into U.S. ports, and on the thousands of dock workers and truck drivers who are now worried about their jobs as a result. The president appeared to think the slowdown is great, responding, “That means we lose less money.”
At this point, we all know Trump. We know what he does when things are going badly, when the polls aren’t good, when nominations are blowing up, when he wants to try to change the narrative: He puts on a big show. And for Trump, the reality rarely lives up to the hype of the show.
We got used to this during the first term. Back in 2018, Trump held a flashy photo-op outside Racine, Wisconsin, to announce a $10 billion investment in a new manufacturing plant. But the golden shovel he used in that groundbreaking ceremony proved to be literally just another shiny object, because the plan to actually build that large-scale plant was quickly abandoned and the 13,000 jobs Trump promised never materialized.
For Trump, the reality rarely lives up to the hype of the show.
There was also Trump’s “Phase One” trade agreement with China, which was signed at the White House amid a lot of fanfare in January 2020. Trump claimed that China would spend an extra $200 billion buying American goods. When the data eventually came out, it turned out that China had effectively bought zero additional goods.
He has been back at it this term, too. Remember when he threatened Mexico and Canada with 25% tariffs and then backed off those tariffs, claiming he had struck amazing deals with our neighbors and gotten them to agree to major concessions? Well, it turned out that Canada and Mexico were actually just doing stuff they already planned to do.
So it should come as no surprise that the big “breakthrough” trade deal Trump announced with the U.K. on Thursday isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. In fact, it’s not really a trade deal at all.
But that's not the point. For Trump, the point is the show.