Friday Talking Points -- Deal, Or No Deal?
Welcome back, to this weeklong edition of "Deal, Or No Deal?" We're all anxiously awaiting word whether a short-term deal will be agreed to by both Donald Trump and the leaders of Iran, while the world's economy hangs in the balance. Will Trump agree? Will his own hawkish Republicans go ballistic when they find out what's in it? What is in it? Are any of the leaked clues as to what it contains accurate? Or will there be some doozies in there that nobody is expecting?
That's what this whole week has been like, since Trump has been promising an imminent deal the entire time. Of course, Trump has been playing various versions of this game all along, ever since the ceasefire was agreed to. He's not exactly the "boy who cried 'Wolf'," since we're talking about peace here -- he'd have to maybe be "the boy who cried 'Sheep'," although that doesn't have the same ring to it, does it?
The oil markets are betting that a deal will be reached, which has eased the price of gasoline in America somewhat -- after it hit a new high under Trump last weekend. If a deal is agreed to, prices will likely continue to fall, although it will be a very long time before they get back to what they were before Trump started his war of choice (the national average price of gas in the U.S. was down to $2.75 per gallon in January, just to remind everyone).
Gas prices coming down again is welcome news for everybody, but what remains to be seen is whether it will be enough to lift the sour mood about the economy which has gripped the country. The University of Michigan has been surveying consumer sentiment since 1952, and it was stunning to hear from them this week that consumer sentiment now stands at an all-time low. That's astonishing when you think about it. Americans' consumer outlook is now worse than it was during the oil shortages and crises of the 1970s, it is now worse than during the double-digit inflation and double-digit interest rates of the 1980s, worse than during the dot-com bust, worse than during the "Great Recession" under Obama, and (perhaps the biggest shock of them all) worse than during the COVID-19 pandemic, which absolutely shut down a huge chunk of the country's economy. People's economic outlook is now worse than all of them. And it dropped by ten percent just last month alone. Meanwhile in official governmental figures, the "personal consumer expenditures" measure of inflation (which is the preferred measure of inflation for the Federal Reserve) rose to 3.8 percent.
Trump is disappointing many of his fellow Republicans because his messaging on the economy has not exactly been comforting to them. Trump himself won't be on the ballot this November, but GOP members of Congress will be, and they are getting more and more worried each time one of these dismal economic indicators is released. Trump's go-to guy to spin anything with a smirking grin on his face tried to brush all this off this week with the astonishing fantasy that all the people who responded to the University of Michigan survey were Democrats, and therefore the number could be completely ignored. Because, um... Republicans aren't consumers and spend no money ever? This obviously makes no sense, but that's never stopped any Trump apologist before.
Trump's polling on the economy and inflation is in free-fall now, and those numbers don't seem likely to magically bounce back even if an Iran deal is announced any time soon. Even just looking at poll numbers from Republicans shows how grim things have gotten for Trump. On inflation, Republican voters approved of Trump during his 2024 campaign by an impressive 68-point margin. Now, that margin is five points below water. That's a 73-point swing. And that's just among Republicans. His numbers are far worse when you add everybody else in.
Trump has suffered a complete collapse among individual demographics as well. Among young men, Trump beat Kamala Harris by one point in the 2024 election. Now, however, young men disapprove of the job Trump's doing by a 55-point margin. Just among this one group of voters, Trump has fallen by 56 points. There are indications he's also losing support among White working-class voters as well.
Attitudes about the economy tend to sink in and solidify with voters long before elections actually take place. Trump still may have a very short window in which to show some improvement, but if gasoline is still a lot higher by the end of the summer than where it was before Trump's Iran misadventure -- say, above $3.50 a gallon -- then people are still going to have a pretty grim outlook on the economy. Trump has been using Joe Biden's playbook on inflation and high prices -- insisting that what people are feeling is only temporary and that good times are just around the corner, folks! -- but we all know how badly this worked out in the end for Biden.
The biggest thing Trump could do right now to improve things would be to agree to whatever deal the Iranians have come up with. But that's problematic as well, since once he does agree to some deal, the details of that deal are going to be made public. And those details could be deemed absolutely unacceptable by hawkish Republicans.
So far, from the rumors in the media, the deal will basically contain two things: the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, and the end to the U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports. All the truly contentious issues will be pushed off to be discussed later, during a 60-day period to follow, with no guarantee that any final peace deal will ever actually be achieved. Trump has a habit of wanting to come to some ad hoc ceasefire deal, but then losing all interest in negotiating all the really hard stuff -- just ask the people in Gaza, who are still waiting for "Phase 2" of their own ceasefire with Israel to appear.
Trump wants to chalk up a win, and then he will almost certainly lose interest in a final deal, because the final deal will be very complicated and probably take a long time to hammer out (if one is even reached while Trump is still in office). To put a good face on the initial deal, Trump will want to have something he can point to and say (inaccurately, most likely): "Look -- the Iranians agreed to never have a nuclear weapon ever!" Then he can declare his whole misbegotten war a stunning victory and move on. The Iranians, however, might agree to have some sort of vague, aspirational statement in the initial deal, but they are not going to agree to handing over their highly-enriched uranium or give up their right to enrich uranium in the future until a final deal is reached.
There's a good overview of how pointless this war has all been in the New York Times, which includes a deep dive into why things went sideways so fast, but here are the basics of where we stand right now:
. . .
The Trump administration hasn't accomplished any of its war aims. The Iranian regime is intact, perhaps even more hard-line than before the war now that the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps appears to exert greater control. There has been no unconditional surrender; Iran still possesses substantial stocks of highly enriched uranium; it still possesses a formidable missile arsenal; and it still supports terrorist proxies that wage war against Israel.
We have weakened the Iranian military, but the regime is unbeaten and unbowed. If anything, its regional and global position may even be stronger than it was before the war. Before the war, Iran's control over the Strait of Hormuz was theoretical. Now it's actual. And we don't seem to possess a plan -- or the will -- to open it once again.
Whenever Trump does release the details of the deal he's reportedly considering, he's going to start taking political flak from both sides. Because, at heart, the deal will only bring us all back to basically where we were before the war started. The Strait of Hormuz being open and the Iran blockade being lifted were both part of the status quo antebellum. Ending these two things is not progress, in any way. Republican hawks will almost certainly be loudly complaining about this -- there already was some pushback over the scope of the deal earlier (Trump's been promising an imminent deal will soon be announced for over a week now). And Democrats will doubtlessly point out that -- even if a final deal that adequately addresses Iran's nuclear program develops -- it will likely be very similar to the deal that Barack Obama cut with Iran. That's the same deal that Trump ripped up, in his first term.
Trump insisted, this week, that he isn't worried at all about the political damage this war has done to him (and his fellow Republicans), saying during one of those fawning tongue-baths that passes for a cabinet meeting these days:
A chill went down the spines of every GOP officeholder who is up for re-election, when they heard this.
All Trump seems to care about is using the resources of the federal government to have fun, splash his name and face everywhere he can, and transform the quiet dignity of Washington into the tackiest three-ring circus that he can. He spends an inordinate amount of time pushing how wonderful his new (and incredibly tacky) ballroom is going to be. His sycophants are now planning on creating a new $250 bill (for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence) with Trump's face on it -- even though it is supposed to be illegal for any living person to appear on American currency. He's currently putting up a wildly tacky "octagon cage" on the White House grounds, so he can have a big fight for his birthday next month. And he's planning a concert series to begin at the end of June on the National Mall -- although now over half of the performers have cancelled (once they realized it was a purely political event designed to praise the Dear Leader, instead of a nonpartisan celebration, as it was supposed to be). Thankfully, this week a judge blocked Trump from closing and gutting the Kennedy Center, and also ordered that Trump's name be taken down from it, so at least he's been stymied on one of the most offensive of his egotistical moves (for now).
The other big political story of the week was the results from the Texas primary runoff election. For the second time this primary election cycle, a sitting Republican senator was defeated for the sole reason that Trump didn't like him. This probably won't matter in Louisiana, where Bill Cassidy was defenestrated, but it might in Texas. Sitting Senator John Cornyn was seen by many -- both within the Republican Party and without -- as having a much better chance of holding onto his seat in November than the candidate who won on Tuesday night, Ken Paxton. The Democrats have a candidate with a real shot of winning (James Talarico), and Paxton is about as flawed a candidate as can be imagined, who is carting around a Conestoga wagon's worth of baggage. This will wind up being both one of the most expensive races this fall as well as one of the most closely-watched. Will Democrats manage to finally "turn Texas blue"? Stay tuned....
The question many have now is whether Cornyn will now join what is being called the "YOLO caucus" of Senate Republicans who now have absolutely nothing left to lose by opposing Donald Trump. We wrote about this earlier in the week, pointing out there are now six Republicans who might be considered members of this (non-existent in reality) caucus: Cornyn, Cassidy, Thom Tillis, and Mitch McConnell -- all of whom will not be in the Senate come next January -- as well as Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins, who both have a record of occasionally voting against Trump. Hopefully, this will bring the Senate to gridlock on all of Trump's agenda and block his worst impulses from ever happening (like that $1.8 billion slush fund to make all the January 6th insurrectionists millionaires, by using our tax dollars). It remains to be seen how effective this YOLO caucus will be, but it is an optimistic note to end on this week nonetheless.
James Talarico certainly had the spotlight on him this week, after the Republican primary runoff that ousted a sitting U.S. senator (John Cornyn) and nominated a seriously-flawed and baggage-laden candidate instead (Ken Paxton).
But Talarico didn't really do anything impressive himself this week, since he had already won the Democratic primary outright, weeks before.
So instead, we're going to hand the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award to the winner of a Texas primary runoff for a House seat.
Here's the basic story, for those who haven't heard of this race:
Johnny Garcia defeated Maureen Galindo, a sex therapist with little political experience. Garcia led Galindo by about 20 percentage points when the race was called by the Associated Press.
Democratic leaders had denounced Galindo, saying she would have embarrassed the party nationally and probably would have had a tougher time winning in a general election in a district drawn to give Republicans an edge.
Well-meaning people can argue about what exactly crosses the line from merely opposing the Israeli government into outright antisemitism, but calling for "Zionists" to be rounded up and castrated certainly seems to be well over that line. Here, decide for yourself:
The next day, Galindo told a local radio station that Garcia and others supported by pro-Israel groups should be "tried for treason."
Galindo actually got the most votes in the Democratic primary, which led to some awfully shady campaign spending, as a "mysterious super PAC with links to Republicans spent nearly $900,000" on her behalf during the runoff election campaign. Republicans would have much rather run against her than against Garcia, for obvious reasons.
But Garcia defeated Galindo, so that won't be happening. When Garcia learned he had won on Tuesday night, he posted to social media: "No te metas con Tejas" ("Don't mess with Texas" ).
This is one of the Texas districts that was redrawn to favor Republicans, but Democrats think Garcia has a chance in November. We have no idea what chances Garcia has of actually winning his race, but for beating a Democratic candidate who was absolutely unacceptable, Garcia is our Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week this week.
[We could only find contact information for Johnny Garcia's campaign, and it is our standing rule never to link to campaign websites, so you'll have to search his contact information yourself if you'd like to let him know you appreciate his efforts.]
Look, we do realize that Democrats have moved on from the soaring idealism of Michelle Obama's "When they go low, we go high." But even so, there should be some sort of limits to how low Democrats go. And to us, that line was crossed this week.
Right off the bat, Republicans are starting up their smear machine and directing it at James Talarico, because they are terrified that he actually has a chance of winning a now-open Senate seat in Texas -- especially since Ken Paxton will be the Republican running against him. They're already claiming Talarico's a vegan (because that's about the worst thing you can call someone in beef-loving Texas), which is simply not true (Talarico responded by saying: "I've been eating barbecue since before Ken Paxton's first indictment" ).
Leave it to Stephen Miller to take things even further in the "coming up with outrageous lies" department. Miller posted on social media: "The Democrats made history in Texas by nominating their first transgender senate candidate," which isn't just a lie, it has no basis in reality whatsoever.
The Democratic National Committee -- the people who are actually in charge of the Democratic Party nationally -- fired back with what they thought was an amusing comeback. They posted their own "mean tweet," which said in its entirety: "shut up you ugly fuck."
Now, we're not prudish by any means. The general taboo against cursing in politics completely disintegrated in the Trumpian era, we do realize that. Even "dropping F-bombs" doesn't raise eyebrows the way it used to. We get all of that.
But seriously? "Shut up you ugly fuck"? That's the best you can do?
It sounds more like what a kid would say in a schoolyard insult-fest with a bully, when he or she can't come up with anything better. It's like responding, "Your mother!" to someone. Sure, it feels good, but it is semantically meaningless. No points have been scored by hurling such generic insults.
It's hard to even call Stephen Miller "ugly," when you get right down to it. He looks more... is "vampiric" a word?... let's say "frightening." Small children scream when they see his face -- that sort of thing.
Also, setting aside the relative quality of the insult, this crosses more than one line. Because it is not just the profanity, it crosses a line in politics that Democrats really should respect: never criticize the physical appearance of your opponents.
For that reason, and for the weakness of this juvenile response in the first place, we have to award the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week to whomever it was on the D.N.C.'s communication team who thought it would be a brilliant idea to post this mean tweet. Let's go back to the drawing board and try to come up with something a little better next time, shall we?
[Contact the Democratic National Committee via their official contact page, to let them know what you think of their actions.]
Volume 843 (5/29/26)
OK, most of these talking points deal with the war and any possible deals to end it, for obvious reasons (it was the biggest story of the week, really). Then there are a few odds and ends, with one at the end from a Republican just for the fun of it.
Sadly, however, we didn't have room to fit in a pithy comment on the fact that R.F.K. Jr. is now apparently a snake-handler in his spare time, so you'll have to create your own talking point for that one (we would try to work in the lyrics to Hot Tuna's "Praise The Lord And Pass The Snakes," personally).
What, exactly, have we gained?
This is the key question to ask, about Trumps war of choice with Iran.
"Can anyone tell me what, exactly, America has gained by this war? When it began, Donald Trump couldn't even answer when people asked him what his goals were for starting it. He started off hoping that the Iranian people would rise up and overthrow the regime, but of course that didn't happen. Then he came up with a list of goals, none of which have been met as of now. So what, exactly, did we fight this war for? So Pete Hegseth could strut around and pretend to be macho? I mean, that's about the only thing that seems to have been successfully achieved, from where I sit."
That was true before the war
After asking that first question, Republicans will doubtlessly have some sort of answers. These will fall into two categories, so we've got two talking points in response. The first one can be used if Republicans start (for instance) talking about the Strait of Hormuz being reopened:
"Yeah, but that was true before the war was started. Nothing will have changed."
That was true when Trump first took office
And the second one will be more useful, because it will almost certainly apply not only to any short-term deal but also to whatever gets worked out (on Iran's nuclear program, for instance) in any long-term deal as well:
"Yeah, but that was true before Trump even began his first term in office. The deal Trump struck is pretty much exactly the same as the deal Obama handed over to Trump -- which he then ripped up. Iran wouldn't have any highly-enriched uranium right now, if Trump had just done nothing and left Obama's deal in place. This whole war was completely pointless."
It did help some folks...
Rub this one in, because prices aren't going to get back to where they were before the war started any time soon.
"The only thing I can see that this pointless war achieved was to create record profits for oil companies. Every time you go to the pump and fill up your tank and the price is more than it was in January, you can thank Donald Trump for making his oil buddies even richer, as you cut back your spending to afford that gasoline."
How many billions will Iran get?
This one Trump truly deserves.
"Donald Trump has made a very big deal for a very long time over the fact that as part of the deal he struck, Barack Obama had to unfreeze $1.7 billion in Iranian funds. Trump disdainfully calls this the "pallets full of cash" that Obama sent to Iran, as if it was somehow America just giving this money to Iran -- which wasn't true. By his own standard then, how many billions of dollars is Trump going to give Iran as part of his peace deal? The Iranians want anywhere from $12 billion to $24 billion in assets unfrozen and turned over to them. To put this another way, that is seven to fourteen times what Obama did. And Iran also wants war reparations to the tune of $300 billion. Boy, that $1.7 billion isn't looking like such a big deal anymore, is it?"
Worst economy since Truman
Hit this one hard, too.
"The verdict is in, and the American consumer now considers the country's economy right now to be the worst ever, since polling began on the issue. That reaches back to when Harry S. Truman was in office, folks. Consumers are less confident in the American economy right now than they were during: the 1970s oil crises, the 1980s when inflation and interest rates were in the double-digits, the Great Recession, and even the COVID-19 pandemic. That's pretty astonishing, when you think about it! But that's how bleak the picture looks right now for the American consumer, and it's pretty easy to understand why...."
Tell us what you really think, Thom
Senator Thom Tillis, who might be called "the founding member of the YOLO caucus," didn't hold back when talking about the new Republican nominee to hold onto Senator John Cornyn's Senate seat, Ken Paxton. In doing so, he provided his own talking point for Democrats -- all you have to do is preface this with: "Well, as Thom Tillis said of him...."
Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
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