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‘Will Be Big’: Trump Faces Dangerous Warning Signs Ahead of Address to Congress

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As President Donald Trump prepares to deliver his second Address to a Joint Session of Congress on Tuesday night, he faces a barrage of warning signs from all sides. Public polls show declining approval, congressional town halls are boiling over with frustration, nationwide protests continue to mount, and economic reports paint a troubling picture. Internationally, his Oval Office attack on President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has sparked a global wave of support for Ukraine. At home, federal judges have repeatedly struck down his executive orders as unlawful, unconstitutional, and overreaching. Meanwhile, Elon Musk and his widely unpopular “Department of Government Efficiency” are adding to the administration’s troubles, and deepening fractures within Trump’s own party threaten to undermine his agenda.

Trump is also facing a high bar — one he himself set: nearly 48 million people watched his first Address to a Joint Session of Congress eight years ago.

Apparently aware of the stakes, Trump on Monday, in an all-caps post declared, “Tomorrow night will be big. I will tell it like it is!” And appearing to want to tamp down the viral videos of town halls across the nation being inundated with — often Republican — voters blasting their Republican members of Congress, Trump wrote: “Paid ‘troublemakers’ are attending Republican Town Hall Meetings. It is all part of the game for the Democrats, but just like our big LANDSLIDE ELECTION, it’s not going to work for them!”

(There was no “landslide election” — Trump won by a mere 1.5 percentage points, in one of the smallest popular vote margins in modern history. According to numbers from The American Presidency Project, Trump’s “mandate” ranks 32nd out of 51 elections.)

ECONOMY

Signs are pointing to an imminent recession — something President Joe Biden never had.

“The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s running forecast for first-quarter gross domestic product slid again on Monday,” Barron’s reported. “The Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow estimate now calls for a first-quarter GDP decline of 2.8%, down from a decline of 1.5% on Friday. As recently as Feb. 19, GDPNow predicted growth of 2.3%.”

That means that there economy under President Trump is expected to contract. Earlier Monday, citing a contraction, Barron’s also reported that “it boils down to expectations that President Donald Trump’s plans to introduce tariffs will push imports way down, and the difference between exports and imports is a key part of the GDP calculator.”

President Trump campaigned on lowering the cost of “groceries” — a word he very proudly used repeatedly — on his first day. That has not come to pass, and Americans are angry about it.

Reporting that Trump’s approval rating is already falling and could “collapse” over inflation, New York magazine’s “Intelligencer” notes that “by far Trump’s greatest vulnerability is over his management of an economy where renewed signs of inflation are evident, and where his policies, once implemented, could make conditions worse.”

The Intelligencer’s Ed Kilgore writes that a Reuters-Ipsos poll “found that only 32 percent of respondents gave Trump a positive assessment on his handling of inflation. A mid-February Gallup survey found 54 percent of Americans disapproving Trump’s handling of the economy and 53 percent disapproving his handling of foreign trade. A February 24 American Research Group poll found 38 percent of registered voters approved of Trump’s handling of the economy and 57 percent disapprove, with this more specific data point: ‘Unprompted, voters disapproving of Trump’s handling of the economy complain that Trump has not reduced grocery, gasoline, and/or energy prices as he promised during the campaign.'”

On Monday, the financial markets reacted to Trump’s affirmation that his announced tariffs on Canada and Mexico will go into effect at midnight, tariffs that are being described as “one of the most self destructive economic policy steps in recent history.” The DOW plummeted nearly 700 points (1.58%), after dropping over 800 points in the hours before trading ended. The tech-heavy NASDAQ did even worse, dropping almost 500 points, or, 2.61%. CNBC reported the S&P posted its “biggest loss since December,” after Trump’s tariffs message.

APPROVAL RATING

A CBS News/YouGov poll that dropped on Sunday was also damning.

56% said things are going “badly” under Trump.

The issues that voters think Trump is focusing on the most (the border, tariffs, and the federal workforce/DOGE) are dramatically different from those they want him to focus on (the economy, inflation, government spending.)

Worse, the majority of respondents believe Trump’s policies are “making the price you pay for food go up.”

They are likely correct.

Trump’s tariffs are widely expected to dramatically increase to price of food. But instead of acknowledging that fact, Trump Monday afternoon gleefully declared, “To the Great Farmers of the United States: Get ready to start making a lot of agricultural product to be sold INSIDE of the United States. Tariffs will go on external product on April 2nd. Have fun!”

According to the USDA in January, “Imports play an increasingly important role in ensuring that fresh fruit and vegetables are available year-round in the United States.” Through 2023, “the percent of U.S. fresh fruit and vegetable availability supplied by imports grew from 50 percent to 59 percent for fresh fruit and from 20 percent to 35 percent for fresh vegetables.”

On another topic, the CBS/YouGov poll found that the vast majority of Americans (78%) want the U.S. to stay in NATO — something Trump has suggested he opposes. Elon Musk has stated outright he thinks the U.S. should pull out of NATO, and the United Nations.

“Senior White House adviser Elon Musk said on Saturday that he believes the United States should leave the United Nations and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization—two of the world’s most important intergovernmental bodies,” The Daily Beast reported.

DEMOCRATS

One other warning sign: President Trump may face is a decidedly less-packed house.

Some, including The Nation‘s Elie Mystal, are calling for Democrats to boycott Trump’s address.

Several Democrats have already announced they are. U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) says he will host a town hall instead of attending.

So has U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT), who told CNN Trump’s address will be a “farce” during which he will “spew a series of lies.”

“We have to fight every single day. Every single day,” Murphy declared. Republicans flood the zone, Democrats have to flood the zone. They flood the zone with lies, we flood the zone with truth.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

Image: Trump 2020 State of the Union address/via Wikimedia Commons

 

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Why Trump’s Blockade Is ‘Unlikely to Work’: Military Expert

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April 22, 2026

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A New York Times op-ed by a military expert argues that blockades don’t work the way President Trump thinks — and that his blockade of Iran is “unlikely” to succeed.

Jennifer Kavanagh, director of military analysis at Defense Priorities, a foreign policy think tank, explains that Trump’s blockade should not have come as a surprise — he’s used them already against Venezuela and Cuba.

While the Strait of Hormuz was open before Trump started his war against Iran, Iran chose to close it. Trump’s response was to launch a blockade of Iranian ports, to force a deal.

“But Tehran’s effective closure of the strait since the United States and Israel attacked two months ago has emerged as the war’s most bedeviling problem and one Mr. Trump is desperate to fix,” Kavanagh writes. Trump’s goal is to “choke Iran’s economy and force the country’s leaders to reopen the strait and accept Washington’s terms of surrender.”

READ MORE: Trump: ‘Extraordinarily Brilliant’ — Yet Stumped by Virginia’s ‘Rigged’ Referendum

That tactic is “unlikely to work for the same reasons the United States finds itself facing strategic defeat by a weaker adversary: a mismatch of stakes and time horizons.”

Kavanagh explains that the way blockades work is an equation of time and will. And Iran has both. Trump, she suggests, does not.

“While Iran has gained the upper hand in this conflict by extending and surviving what it considers an existential war,” Kavanagh writes, “Mr. Trump wants a fast and decisive victory, something a blockade cannot deliver.”

She points to President Abraham Lincoln’s blockade against the Confederacy during the Civil War. The war lasted four more years. And she points to the British naval blockade of Germany in World War I. That war also lasted another four years. Today, “Iran can likely endure the U.S. blockade for months without facing economic collapse.”

For Trump, “this timeline is likely to be unacceptable. His impatience with the war is evident in his increasingly erratic Truth Social posts and near-constant assertions that the war is already over,” Kavanagh says. “In a test of wills, Tehran has the advantage and a higher pain tolerance. With their survival on the line, Iran’s leaders can afford to be patient.”

READ MORE: ‘Weak, Stupid, and Bad’: Trump Slams Conservative Supreme Court Justices in Wild Rant

 

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Trump: ‘Extraordinarily Brilliant’ — Yet Stumped by Virginia’s ‘Rigged’ Referendum

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6 hours ago

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April 22, 2026

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President Donald Trump is being criticized for his latest Truth Social post in which he describes himself as an “extraordinarily brilliant person” yet admits he cannot understand the language in Virginia’s redistricting referendum — which more than 1.5 million voters passed Tuesday night.

The president also claimed the election was “rigged,” while offering no evidence, and was frustrated because ballot counting went more heavily in Democrats’ favor (the “Yes” vote) as results were counted.

“A RIGGED ELECTION TOOK PLACE LAST NIGHT IN THE GREAT COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA!” Trump declared.

“All day long Republicans were winning, the Spirit was unbelievable, until the very end when, of course, there was a massive ‘Mail In Ballot Drop!’ Where have I heard that before — And the Democrats eked out another Crooked Victory!”

READ MORE: ‘Weak, Stupid, and Bad’: Trump Slams Conservative Supreme Court Justices in Wild Rant

“In addition to everything else,” he continued, “the language on the Referendum was purposefully unintelligible and deceptive.”

“As everyone knows, I am an extraordinarily brilliant person, and even I had no idea what the hell they were talking about in the Referendum, and neither do they! Let’s see if the Courts will fix this travesty of ‘Justice.'”

Critics blasted Trump’s remarks.

“I am begging for someone to explain to the President how election returns work,” wrote Sarah Longwell, the founder and editor of The Bulwark.

“You weren’t ‘winning all day,’ you were ahead before counting finished,” wrote progressive commentator Alex Cole. “Those are not the same thing. The real conspiracy is how MAGA convinces itself losing = cheating instead of… losing.”

READ MORE: Republicans Have to Make a Choice Between ‘Reality-Based Data’ and Trump: Benen

 

Image via Reuters

 

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Republicans Have to Make a Choice Between ‘Reality-Based Data’ and Trump: Benen

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7 hours ago

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April 22, 2026

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President Donald Trump’s job approval stands at its lowest point of his second term, and since he won’t be on the ballot in November or in 2028, Republicans will have to ask themselves at what point do they accept “reality-based data” and distance themselves from him?

So asks Steve Benen at MS NOW, where he notes that the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll “found Trump’s approval rating at just 36%, which was roughly in line with the latest NBC News survey. For the White House, the Associated Press’ latest national poll was even worse” — coming in at 33%.

The AP reported that even Republicans are showing less faith in his leadership, and added their findings “show a president who is struggling with unfulfilled promises to tame inflation and testing Americans’ patience with a conflict in the Middle East that has dragged on longer than expected.”

Benen notes that it’s been widely assumed that there is a floor below which Trump cannot sink — his base will never leave him. But, he posits, “the AP poll suggests it’s time to reassess earlier assumptions about just how low his support can go.”

READ MORE: ‘Weak, Stupid, and Bad’: Trump Slams Conservative Supreme Court Justices in Wild Rant

Some believe that focusing on Trump’s approval rating is “misplaced,” since he is constitutionally prohibited from running again.

But the trouble with that argument is that congressional Republicans are indeed preparing for midterm elections “as the American electorate turns sharply against a GOP president — whom those same congressional Republicans have championed since his return to power.”

The lower Trump’s approval rating drops, the lower his support gets, “the more the party confronts a question about what to do with reality-based data,” says Benen. “Do they take new, sizable steps to distance themselves from a failing and woefully unpopular president, or do they continue to carry Trump’s water and take their chances with a dissatisfied electorate?”

READ MORE: How Trump’s Corruption Is Like a Thermonuclear Bomb: NYT Columnist

 

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