Hi, this is Josh Marshall, and this is the Josh Marshall podcast featuring Kate Riga.

We're going to talk about a few different topics today.

They all kind of center around a similar central topic.

And before we started recording the episode today, I was looking at an Axios update.

And, you know, Axios has various problems as a source

of political news. But one of the things that's interesting about it is that you can kind of see it

as a sign of when something has broken through into, you know, kind of DC consensus opinion.

It's actually quite valuable for that. And there's a new poll out commissioned by

the economist. And the headline that Axios used is that almost half of Americans would

describe Trump as racist, cruel, or corrupt as the sort of, you know, when they do like a word cloud, what is it

about Trump? And those are not positive evaluations. And as we've seen kind of across the

polling environment, Trump's public approval continues to go down. I was kind of scanning the

different approval averages

today and Nate Silvers, which is tended to be a little higher than others is, I don't know,

like 41% or 40% or something like that. And the one that Eliot Morris does, G. Eliot Morris

is down at like 37% or 38%. So he

continues to get less popular. And one of the interesting things about the present moment is that we're

very much in full steam ahead mode. I mean, you know, Trump is not a course corrector, right? But still, there's his own

kinds of course corrections that Trump does, because if Trump is more than an ideologue, he is

someone who craves affection and is solicitous of his own power. And public support are key to both of those things.

So the things we're going to talk about today, I think circle around that basic dynamic

that Trump is not sure the bottom is quite falling out in his public support, although

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