Donald Trump is melting down, and this morning he did it in Time magazine.
October opened with a president who can’t stop lashing out. Asked a simple question about banning news outlets from the White House, Trump turned it into a rant about Kaitlan Collins, calling her “crazy” and “the most unhappy young person I’ve ever seen,” then insisted, unprompted, that he “didn’t get booed out of the place.” His White House pulled CNN from the press pool again, less than a week after a judge he appointed blocked his ban. A new AP-NORC poll shows why he’s this rattled: only 17 percent of Americans approve of how he’s handling the cost of living, and 65 percent blame his policies for high prices. And the senator who blew up his own career attacking Jack Smith turns out to have been warned his evidence was never checked. There are 33 days until the midterms.
TRUMP MELTS DOWN OVER KAITLAN COLLINS IN BIZARRE INTERVIEW
Trump was asked why he banned three news outlets from the White House. He answered by going after a CNN anchor who wasn’t even part of the question.
Time published the interview Thursday. Trump started with his usual complaint. “I don’t think anybody should be forced to bear fake news, constantly bad stories, because I’ve done great things,” he said. “I mean, I’ve done Venezuela. I’ve done, I can name, I can name 100 great things I’ve done. I never get good press. I never get fair press.”
Then he zeroed in on one reporter. “So at a certain point, you say, ‘What’s the purpose of like this crazy Kaitlan Collins?’” Trump said. “She’s a very average person. She’s the most unhappy young person I’ve ever seen.”
Next, with nobody asking, he brought up getting booed. “Yesterday I got tremendous applause from massive crowds that came to Duncan,” he said. “And I said to the people, ‘Don’t feel bad tomorrow when you read that I got booed out of the place.’ I didn’t get booed out of the place.” He’s now been booed in Tennessee, heckled outside Chicago and protested at a golf tournament in the past week.
Asked whether a free press has a role holding power to account, Trump said, “It is, but they got to treat you fairly.” Then he went after more networks. “NBC’s bad too, but CNN is terrible. MS NOW changed their name because they have no friends.”
This isn’t the first time he’s gone after Collins personally. In February, from the Resolute Desk, he told her, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you smile. I’ve known you for 10 years. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a smile on your face.” She’d asked about Jeffrey Epstein. At the UN last month, he told her, “You should not be here covering me.”
The ban Trump was defending has already been blocked by Judge Timothy Kelly, whom Trump appointed. With no answer for that, Trump, 80, used his interview time to tell Time that a 34-year-old reporter doesn’t look happy enough.
TRUMP’S WHITE HOUSE PULLS CNN FROM THE PRESS POOL AGAIN
Less than a week after a federal judge blocked Trump’s press ban, his White House kicked CNN off the press pool for his trip today.
The White House’s own schedule, released Sunday, had CNN traveling with Trump on Thursday to a truck plant in Denton, Texas, and then to remarks in Durant, Oklahoma. When the daily guidance came out, CNN was gone. The network confirmed it. The White House didn’t answer questions about why.
It’s the second time in a week. The White House also barred CNN from Air Force One for Trump’s trip to Tennessee last weekend, when the network was scheduled to provide pool coverage. The judge’s order only covers access on White House grounds, and Trump’s team is working around it.
“The White House is persisting in unpredictably and inconsistently implementing the President’s unconstitutional ‘ban on the free press’ by barring CNN from fulfilling its role as a designated television network pooler, to the detriment of CNN, its fellow pool members and, ultimately, the American public,” said Theodore Boutrous, the lawyer for all three outlets. On Monday, the outlets asked the judge to extend his order.
The pool is a small group of outlets that share video, reporting and costs so the whole press corps, and the whole country, sees what the president does. Pulling a network out of it shrinks the record for everybody.
The rest of the press corps has picked a side. The White House Correspondents’ Association, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and 49 news organizations filed a legal brief backing the three outlets. Fox News, ABC, CBS and NBC briefly refused pool duty last week in solidarity with CNN. Even Fox walked out on him.
Trump tried this before. In 2025, he banned the Associated Press from the Oval Office and Air Force One for refusing to call the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.” The AP sued, and that case is still going.
He lost in court last week. This week, he found a way around the ruling.
JUST 17 PERCENT APPROVE OF TRUMP ON THE COST OF LIVING
The new AP-NORC poll explains the meltdown. On the issue voters care about most, Trump is at 17 percent.
Only 17 percent of Americans approve of how Trump is handling the cost of living. Just 26 percent approve of how he’s handling the economy. And 65 percent say his policies are mainly to blame for high prices, not things outside his control.
That’s a lot worse than Joe Biden’s numbers during pandemic inflation. Biden’s economic approval was 28 percent in June 2022, and only 44 percent of Americans blamed his policies for prices that October. Trump’s economic approval is lower, and the share blaming him is 21 points higher.
The worry keeps rising. About half of Americans are extremely or very concerned about affording gas, up from 39 percent in July, and about the same share say it about food. Trump’s economic approval has dropped 14 points since March 2025. About 7 in 10 say his handling of living costs has been worse than they expected, including roughly half of Republicans. About 6 in 10 Republicans now disapprove of how he’s handling living costs, up from about half in April.
His own voters are saying it. “I was hoping it would be better or different, but it’s not really good,” said Robert Gault, 66, a retired factory worker and Republican from Bradford, Pennsylvania. “He said, ‘Make America Great Again.’ And I have not seen him do that.” Pedro Sanchez, 52, a California law enforcement worker who voted for Trump, said, “I used to have a lot more disposable income. I don’t have that any more.” He put it on Trump. “I think he has a lot to do with it,” Sanchez said. “I think with Biden, a lot of the stuff was outside of his control.”
The war and tariffs are dragging him down too. Sixty-nine percent say the Iran war hasn’t been worth it, and only 28 percent approve of his handling of Iran. Sixty-four percent say he’s gone too far on tariffs. Overall, about 3 in 10 approve of the job he’s doing, and about 6 in 10 say the country is worse off than when his second term started.
Trump told Time he’s done “100 great things” and never gets fair press. Americans aren’t getting their opinion from CNN. They’re getting it at the gas pump.
SCHMITT WAS WARNED HIS EVIDENCE WAS NOT VETTED
The senator who accused Jack Smith of perjury on live TV was warned beforehand that his evidence hadn’t been checked.
The texts Eric Schmitt waved around came from Trump’s Justice Department, which shared them with Republican staff on the Judiciary Committee. Chairman Chuck Grassley’s staff left them out of the memo on what would be used at the hearing and didn’t share them with Democrats. When Schmitt’s staff went looking for anything linking Smith to Fani Willis in Georgia, they got the texts along with a warning, a source told MS NOW. The texts hadn’t been vetted, and Schmitt’s office would have to do that itself.
They didn’t. A basic check would have killed the whole thing: the seat number in the texts doesn’t exist in the Atlanta arena. And Smith shows up in crowd footage of the Iowa Hawkeyes game in Maryland that day, about 550 miles from Atlanta.
Schmitt went ahead anyway. He accused Smith of perjury, called him a dirtbag, and told him, “You may think you’re a hero in this story, but let me tell you something. You’re the villain.”
That same morning, Axios had floated him as a possible JD Vance running mate in 2028, calling him “trustworthy, intelligent, articulate and a deft political operator.” By the afternoon, he’d confused the Atlanta Hawks with the Iowa Hawkeyes in front of the whole country.
His staff may pay for it too. Ethan Harper, the general counsel who held up the poster, was set to move to the White House Staff Secretary’s office. Politico reports the episode has put that in doubt.
Trump’s Justice Department passed unvetted material about the prosecutor who charged Trump to Republican staff. The chairman kept it off the official memo and away from Democrats. A Republican senator was warned it hadn’t been checked and used it to accuse that prosecutor of a federal crime on live TV.
Nobody in that chain stopped to check whether it was true.
