Trump Press Sec Rages at Media as Putin Mess Sinks Him in Brutal Poll

On Tuesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt seethed at the media for well over a minute for not acknowledging President Trump’s world-historical peacemaking efforts or his smashing successes in the Russia-Ukraine talks, even though there haven’t been any such successes. And she offered a wildly absurd explanation for why European leaders rushed to Washington, D.C. (to prevent the United States from selling out Ukraine to Vladimir Putin). This comes as a new Reuters poll finds Trump’s approval rating down to a new low of 40 percent. That’s fueled partly by Russia-Ukraine: A striking 54 percent of Americans say Trump is too aligned with Putin. We talked to international relations expert Nicholas Grossman. He explains how Leavitt’s spin and European angst show that incredibly high-stakes matters are now being dictated by an unnerving combination of Trumpian megalomania, his genuine desire for a future world marked by a weak Western alliance and strong autocracies, and his utter indifference to the U.S. public’s apparent rejection of that vision. Listen to this episode here. A transcript is here.