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I'm your host, Greg Sargent. A new Gallup poll finds that President Trump's approval rating has dropped to 37%.

But guess what? The White House has figured out just how to get those numbers back up, by picking a huge fight with The View.

This week, Joy Behar unleashed a striking takedown of Trump on the air,

mocking him mercilessly for being jealous of Barack Obama.

This enraged the White House, which responded with a bunch of name-calling, but also with a

veiled threat. This comes as Trump's threats are escalating on many other fronts as well.

We think the logic of this is worrisome.

At some point, won't Trump and the White House have to escalate?

What happens then?

The outright jailing of Democrats and TV critics?

Salon's Amanda Marcotte is one of the best out there at decoding MAGA's various

cultural hatreds, so we're talking to her about all this today.

Good to have you on, as always, Amanda.

Thanks for having me.

So let's start with what Joy Behar said on The View.

This comes as Trump has been inventing fake reasons for threatening prosecution of Barack Obama and so forth. Listen to what Beihar said about that.

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