Donald Trump has lost all control

May 13

This afternoon, just as President Trump was getting ready to leave the White House to begin his journey to China, he stopped on the South Lawn to talk to the press and gave some of the most honest answers of his entire presidency. Standing in front of the cameras, visibly irritated and increasingly combative as reporters continued pressing him with basic questions, his words came out angry and belligerent, telling us exactly what he thinks, not just of the press, but of every American he was elected to serve. He called reporters asking the questions their jobs demand of them “dumb” and “not smart people.” And then, when asked if he cares about Americans’ financial suffering, he replied, without a single pause to consider what he was admitting, saying, “not even a little bit.” That is who Donald Trump is, and what he thinks about his fellow Americans.

And Trump didn’t stop there. When a reporter asked, “Mr. President, to what extent are Americans’ financial situations motivating you to make a deal?”

Trump answered: “Not even a little bit. The only thing that matters when I’m talking about Iran, they can’t have a nuclear weapon. I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing. We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That’s all.”

He said he doesn’t think about Americans’ financial situation. That he doesn’t think about anybody. He didn’t sound like he was caught off guard. He wasn’t tricked into saying something he didn’t mean. He was asked a straightforward question, the kind of question that any competent leader answers without even thinking, because it should be second nature. You talk about how much you care, because you should care. You talk about how you’re fighting for the working families. You say something, anything, that shows you understand what people are going through. But Trump actually told the truth. He does not care. And he also knows that his own devout followers won’t care that he doesn’t care.

When a reporter followed up, asking him to clarify whether he really was not considering the financial impact of the war on Americans, he doubled down. He said the stock market going “up or down a little bit” and what Americans are paying for food all come second to the nuclear question. And then he snapped at the reporter with, “Are you listening to me?” Furious that she would dare push back.

This is a man who ran on the promise that he would fight for forgotten Americans. That he would bring prices down. That he would end wars, not start them. And today he told the country that none of that was ever real.

And it’s not just what he said. It’s how he treated everyone who tried to hold him accountable for saying it. In the same press gaggle, a reporter asked him about inflation. She pointed out that he promised to bring it down and that it is now at its highest level in three years. Before she could even finish her question, he attacked.

“My policies are working incredibly,” he said. “If you go back to just before the war, for the last three months, inflation was at 1.7%.” Then he turned directly to the reporter. “Now, we had a choice. Let these lunatics have a nuclear weapon. If you want to do that, then you’re a stupid person, and you happen to be.”

That is the President of the United States calling a woman a stupid person on live television for doing her job. For asking the most basic question a reporter can ask: are your policies working? She wasn’t rude or hostile. She stated a fact and asked him to respond to it. And his response was to insult her intelligence.

He did it again just minutes later when a reporter asked about the ballroom. The question was perfectly reasonable: Trump had demanded the firing of a government official over cost overruns, so a reporter asked how that squared with his own White House ballroom project, which started at $200 million and keeps growing. His response was to ramble about how he “doubled the size” and it’s “a little bit under budget depending on the finishes,” and then he turned on the reporter. “You dumb person,” he said. “You are not a smart person.”

That’s three separate attacks on reporters in a single press conference. Three people doing their jobs, protected by the First Amendment, asking questions the American public deserves to have answered. And each time, instead of really answering, he went after them personally. This is not a leader in control. This is a man impulsively reacting, cornered, and lashing out at anyone who makes him feel the walls closing in.

And I want to take a moment to acknowledge the journalists on the ground today who kept asking questions even after watching their colleagues get called dumb and stupid right in front of them. That takes courage and a commitment to something bigger than their own comfort.

And they did not stop asking the questions that matter most. Because a reporter asked Trump whether he would send the National Guard or ICE to voting locations during the midterm elections in November. His answer: “Well, you know what? I’d do anything necessary to make sure we have honest elections. We have to have honest elections.”

The reporter followed up: “So, you’re not ruling that out?” Trump quickly gave an awkward smile.

He just told us, clearly, what he is willing to do. He did not say no. He smiled. We have less than six months until the midterms. We cannot afford to treat this as just another moment of Trump being Trump. We need to start building the legal, organizational, and community infrastructure right now to make sure that every American who wants to vote can vote without fear, intimidation, or armed federal agents standing between them and the ballot box.

And what he said next made this even more chilling. Because minutes later, when a reporter asked about the redistricting battle and the concerns of African-American voters that Black members of Congress are being drawn off the map, Trump didn’t hesitate.

“Well, I think it’s been a wonderful process,” he said. “The Democrats, or as I call them, the Dumocrats, because they are dumb in so many ways, they’ve redistricted for years, and now we took our shot, and it looks like we’re going to pick up a lot of seats. And that’s a good thing.”

A wonderful process. That’s what he calls the systematic dismantling of Black and Latino political representation in America. That is not a political statement. It is a confession. He is telling us that he sees the suppression of Black and Latino voters as a victory. That he views the gutting of the Voting Rights Act’s legacy not as a moral crisis but as a strategic win. And he is doing it while simultaneously threatening to send armed agents to polling places and refusing to rule out using the military in elections. He continues to follow the blueprint of a stolen democracy.

But none of this changes how so many of us see what Trump is doing to our country. We all know how this goes. The chaos, the cruelty, and the con. But many of Trump’s most devoted followers have just started to see who he really is. Nearly 600,000 of them are learning a hard lesson about the man they put their faith in. Last June, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump announced the Trump Mobile T1 phone, a gold-plated device they called a patriotic alternative to Apple and Samsung. The price was $499, and they took $100 deposits. Nearly 600,000 people paid, pouring roughly $59 million into the Trump Organization. The phone was supposed to ship last August. Then November. Then December. Then January. Then “Q1 2026.” It is now May, and not a single phone has shipped. Not one. On April 6, Trump Mobile quietly updated its terms and conditions to include language saying that a deposit “does not guarantee that a device will be produced or made available for purchase” and “does not create a contract for sale.” Customers who have tried to get refunds are being denied. The “Made in USA” claim was quietly dropped after executives confirmed the bulk of production would happen overseas. And across TikTok and MAGA forums, the people who believed in this product are starting to turn. Demanding to know where their phones are, sharing that many bought 4.

This is what Trump has always done. He takes money from people who trust him, promises them something incredible, and then rewrites the fine print when it’s time to deliver. He did it with Trump University. He did it with his casinos. He did it with his charities. And now he’s doing it from inside the White House, while his own family’s company profits off the loyalty of the very people he told us today he doesn’t think about. Not even a little bit.

Every single time he does this, people peel away. They may not admit it publicly. They may not switch parties. But they stop showing up, donating and voting. And in an election that could come down to margins in a handful of districts, that silence is everything.

We must continue to take him at his word. When he says he doesn’t think about Americans’ financial situation, we believe him, and we make sure every voter in every swing district hears that clip between now and November. When he threatens to send the National Guard to polling places, we don’t wait to find out if he’s serious. We organize now. We work with voting rights organizations, with state attorneys general, with local election boards, to build the protections that ensure armed intimidation does not decide our elections. When he celebrates the gutting of Black and Latino representation, we support the legal fights that are still alive. The Brennan Center is still in the courts. Democracy Docket is tracking every challenge. The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law called this what it is and is not backing down. Those organizations need support, and they need it now.

We spend with intention. The Trump Organization is not a business; it is a grift machine that operates from inside the presidency. The gold phones, the gold card visas, the ballroom funded by taxpayer money after he promised it wouldn’t be. Every dollar that flows into his family’s ventures funds the apparatus that is dismantling our democracy. We can choose not to participate.

And we keep pushing. The pushback is working. We can see it in the way he’s unraveling on camera. We can see it in the way his allies in the Senate are squirming over the ballroom vote. We can see it in the way his own supporters are posting videos online demanding to know where their money went. The pressure is creating cracks. Our job is to widen them.

[Salon] Donald Trump has lost all control

Donald Trump has lost all control