One of the most frustrating things about the capitulation of elite institutions to Donald Trump—from law firms to universities to media companies—has been that the logic of the situation so clearly counseled the opposite. As many have noted throughout Trump’s second term, if institutions facing Trumpian persecution had shelved short-term self-interest and banded together in resistance instead, it would have hobbled his authoritarian tactics at the outset.
Helpfully, this has now been confirmed—belated but significantly—by none other than Donald Trump himself. Late Thursday, while erupting in a wild fury over media companies that have joined forces against his effort to ban select ones from the White House grounds, he accidentally revealed an Achilles’ heel of sorts.
Trump raged as follows:
They only write badly about a man who won the Election IN A GIANT LANDSLIDE, winning all 7 Swing States, the Popular Vote, and 86% of the Counties, etc., and whose Popularity has grown because of the unprecedented SUCCESS our Country is having on both the World Stage, and at home. CNN and MSDNC, to show you how fake they are, today refused to cover one of the Biggest and Most Beautiful Events to take place in many years, the arrival at the White House of the Highly Respected President of China, Xi Jinping, and his beautiful wife, Madam Peng. The event was magnificent — Actually made for Television but, because they’re Fake News, and because they knew how good it would be, they didn’t want credit to be given to “TRUMP,” they refused to be there.
Buried in all that derangement is an important revelation. After Trump banned CNN, Politico, and MS NOW—ostensibly on national security grounds, but in reality out of pique—the networks that run the press pool joined them in solidarity, which suspended the pool’s rolling coverage of the president.
As my colleague Tim Noah observed, this has only worked to Trump’s detriment. Though a judge has now temporarily blocked Trump’s ban, the immediate result of the pool suspension was that the participating networks didn’t film Xi’s arrival. So there was no widely aired coverage of Trump’s grand ceremonial reception of him—hence his fury.
In angrily pretending the news organizations boycotted the event to deny him attention during a successful moment, all Trump really demonstrated is that he badly needs their attention. Thus, their decision to join together in defense of excluded colleagues has located a real weak spot—and nailed it with a direct hit. That’s the true source of his furious outburst.
Relatedly, the part of Trump’s tirade in which he claims his “Popularity has grown” comes at a funny moment. The Cook Political Report just shifted its ratings of 15 House races in Democrats’ favor, and two really jump out: North Carolina’s 11th district and Texas’s 15th district, which have both moved from Lean Republican to Toss Up.
Trump carried North Carolina’s 11th by nearly 10 points, and he carried Texas’s 15th by nearly 18 points. The North Carolina district is in the western part of the state, deep in Appalachian Trump country. The Texas district is in one of the border areas that Trump dominated, prompting talk of a major realignment among Latino voters.
He’s now deeply underwater in places just like these. Indeed, in a statement, the Democratic-aligned House Majority PAC says its polling is showing Trump’s approval sinking “especially in districts Trump won by over 10 percent.” But you don’t have to take Democrats’ word for it: Note that Trump’s own Super PAC and its affiliates are sinking money into shoring up both the North Carolina and Texas districts.
For these to be serious toss-ups suggests extraordinary deterioration in Trump’s standing among many different demographics, from noncollege and rural whites to the Hispanic voters that defected to Trump in 2024. And there’s other evidence that Trump’s collapse is a big factor in these districts, too.
The Cook Political Report, for instance, also shifted Florida’s 27th district from Likely Republican to Lean Republican—hard for Democrats to win, but not impossible. Recall that the GOP congresswoman who represents it, Maria Elvira Salazar, just ran a direct-to-camera ad denouncing Trump for his “betrayal” of Latinos who supported him. This wouldn’t be happening unless he’s cratering in this district as well—after Trump carried it by nearly 15 points. It’s now at least within reach for Democrats on a very, very good election night.
Which leads us back to Trump’s eruption at the media. It’s hard to know whether the press would have banded together to confront him in quite this way if his approval rating were what it was, say, throughout 2025 and even into early 2026. Certainly other institutions were not doing so. In one way or another, law firms, universities, and media companies all surrendered.
As Michelle Goldberg writes in The New York Times, a big factor driving all that early capitulation was serious elite miscalculation: Figures at these institutions got spooked into overestimating the price of getting on Trump’s bad side. Indeed, if the last two years have confirmed anything, it’s that the logic of collective resistance is sound. Not only is the immediate price for bucking Trump small; it actually works. It’s one of the only things that can really disarm him.
Trump’s own furious reaction to the media’s stand against him neatly underscores the point. And it’s useful to have it confirmed, even if it came awfully late, at a moment when his tailspinning public standing made it a whole lot easier.