Senator Gillibrand on Trump's Midterm Challenges

“Battleships, ballrooms, and bombs. That is what Trump is fixated on, not the cost of groceries or housing or our health care.”

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand’s cross-examination of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth three weeks earlier had already exposed a central contradiction: the administration claimed it had won the war against Iran, yet was asking Congress for $1.5 trillion in new military funding. Now, with new reports showing the U.S. has depleted its interceptor missiles, anti-ballistic munitions, and attackums, and with Iran openly mocking Trump’s “semi-negotiations,” the argument has only sharpened. The MAGA coalition’s core voting bloc—non-college educated white voters—is abandoning the president, and the administration’s priorities have never been clearer.

The Collapse of the MAGA Base

The episode’s central argument rests on a dramatic shift in polling data. In the 2024 election, Donald Trump won non-college voters by 13 points. That group was the engine of the MAGA movement. Now, according to CNN’s Harry Enten, Trump’s net favorability among non-college voters has cratered to negative 19—a 32-point swing. Among non-college white voters specifically, he is net negative 8. The MAGA movement itself, once plus 6 among non-college adults in October 2024, has fallen to minus 22.