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The Trump White House keeps losing

Is Trump entering his flop era?

President Donald Trump’s second term began at a breakneck pace, with a wave of executive orders and other actions imposing tariffs; targeting law firms, universities, and individuals he believed had wronged him while he was out of office; and reshaping the US immigration system.

Nearly a year and a half into his second term, the White House appears to be losing momentum. Much of Trump’s legislative agenda has stalled in Congress, the war with Iran has dragged on longer than the administration seems to have expected, and Trump’s proposed “anti-weaponization” fund” went down in flames after some unusual pushback from Republican lawmakers.

Is Trump giving up on his slush fund?

Here’s why Republicans just stood up to Trump

To understand the current state of the Trump White House, Today, Explained co-host Sean Rameswaram spoke with Megan Messerly, a White House reporter at Politico, who recently wrote about the “funk” Trump and his staff are in.

Below is an excerpt of the conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.

You recently wrote for Politico about how the president and his administration are kind of in a funk — and not just over the slush fund fiasco. Remind us how else we’re seeing this funk, for those who have disassociated.

We are now more than three months into the Iran war, and this is just not going anywhere anytime soon. We have seen the president over the last week and a half now say that he’s close on a deal to extend this ceasefire with Iran that still has not come through. There was this two-hour Situation Room meeting on Friday. Nothing came out of that after two hours.

Talking to folks in and around the White House, they just want to find a face-saving way out of this war, but........

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