Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Trump Strikes his Own Party with Fatal Blow

Episode Date: May 9, 2026

Based on Election Night in America results from this week in Indiana, and new polling numbers, no one has destroyed MAGA and the Republican Party’s chances at the Midterms more than Trump himself. Popok explains that Trump alone is to blame for Hispanic and Hispanic Catholic Voters abandoning him and rejecting his attacks on the Pope, as he sheds more than 15 points from his favorability rating because of his un-American policies, and he improves the Democrats' chances to take key state senate seats in Indiana by having hard-right Trumpers replace more moderate Republicans just in time for the midterms! Veracity: For up to 65% off your order, head to https://VeracityHealth.co and use code LEGALAF. Subscribe:  @LegalAFMTN  Visit https://meidasplus.com for more! Support the MeidasTouch Network: https://patreon.com/meidastouch Add the MeidasTouch Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-meidastouch-podcast/id1510240831 Buy MeidasTouch Merch: https://store.meidastouch.com Follow MeidasTouch on Twitter: https://twitter.com/meidastouch Follow MeidasTouch on Facebook: https://facebook.com/meidastouch Follow MeidasTouch on Instagram: https://instagram.com/meidastouch Follow MeidasTouch on TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@meidastouch Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Behind every F-35 jet is a Canadian company, horizontal tails built in Winnipeg, engine sensors from Ottawa, and stealth composite panels crafted in Loonenberg to name just a few. Thanks to thousands of skilled Canadian workers, the F-35 aircraft is delivering unmatched capabilities for 20 allied nations around the world, and will generate more than $15.5 billion in industrial value for Canada. This ad is sponsored by the F-35 partner team, Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems, Northrop Grumman, and RTX. Learn more at www.f35.com slash Canada. There's no single person other than Donald Trump who's more responsible for the cratering of support for the Republican Party and MAGA as we head into the midterms than Donald Trump. Every poll that's come out in the last 24 to 48 hours demonstrates that.

The election results last night in Indiana, particularly a canary and a coal mine moment where Donald Trump is celebrating him cannibalizing his own party weakening it for the general election and for Democrats to take those seats in the general election, in the state senate, in Indiana. And now new polling has come out that said exactly what we've been covering here on legal AF and might as touch all this time. A major swing vote of Donald Trump's MAGA coalition is the Hispanic vote. And the Hispanic vote is firmly against Donald Trump and his continued attacks, even in the last 24 hours, against the Pope, is not helping him with Hispanic Catholics. I'm Michael Popak. We'll talk about election night in America and the results, and what it really shows about Donald Trump's suicide mission to kill off MAGA before his term is over.

That's the only way to explain it. I'm Michael Popock. Let's get down to the last few hours and polling. and election nights as Americans tried to signal to their elected officials where the political mood and wind is. And it's completely against Donald Trump. Let's focus for a moment on his failing poll numbers. Okay. February of last year, before he announced his tariff scheme against 200 countries that backfired so spectacularly in his face. He, he, was at a relative high in terms of polling, right? He was somewhere around 45 to 47% approval rating. Okay? Where is he now? He's now in the low 30s, having dropped about 15 points, about a point every month since that high point in February. He's now down in, and I'm doing this to troll Donald Trump.

He's now down around the Jimmy Carter numbers. And Trump has made no bones about saying that Jimmy Carter was a failed president. Well, your numbers are at that failed presidency level, even lower than after Jan 6th, heading equally to George Bush numbers. How did it happen? Well, if you look at the charts, and CNN did a good chart graph on this recently. You start with about five major events, each shaving off about three points of favorability from Donald Trump over the last 15 months. April of last year, tariffs get announced, and they fail. Shave off a couple of points.

Then you have his rollout of the National Guard and Armed Forces against the American people in major blue cities. Shave off three points. Then you've got the killing. the assassinations on the streets of Minneapolis by ICE of Renee Good and Alex Prady. Shave off a couple of points. You've got his handling or mishandling and cover-up of the Epstein child sex trafficking scandal and the cover-up of the cover-up. Shave off a couple of points. Then you have at the end of February almost a year to bookend my discussion from the high point of his favorability.

A year later, he announces the war in Iran at the end of February. And we see how that has, again, backfired on him as he can't figure out a way to get out of the war he started on a folly with half-baked ideas. And it all results, all that Iran war stuff, results in higher gas prices. When you go from tariffs down to gas prices, you now understand how he dropped 15,

points in recent polling on favorability. On the economy, it's worse. Twenty-three, 24, 25 percent favorability rating, 70 percent or more of America, including a healthy number of Republicans and almost all the independents have rejected Donald Trump on his key signature feature of his administration, the economy. I thought that's why we elected a criminal business in businessman-in-chief, forget it. And then if you thought Trump was done decimating his own political alliances and coalition that he needs at the midterms

and got him elected, you'd be wrong. Let's look at the Hispanic and Hispanic Catholic vote. In a poll that just came out in the last day or so, in Ipsopold, 50% of Hispanics, 50% of Hispanics polled know someone who's been caught up in Trump's immigration and migration policies of removal or deportation. In fact, I'm sorry, 60% of them know somebody. 50% of them either carry citizenship documents on them or passports or their immigration papers

because they're afraid of being picked up and deported accidentally. A fascinating number. six out of ten Americans believe that America is no longer welcoming to immigrants, and that's a bad thing. Tourist visas are way down, including from Canada, what had been, our number one tourist partner. But also, business visas are down. So travel visas are down, the tourist visa, business visas are way down. People don't want to come to America. I have friends that are retiring overseas that would never would have thought of doing that in any era other than the Trump era.

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hybiscous extract, green coffee, bean extract, and magnesium. Clinical trials showed no negative side effects from the ingredients. I like that it's a simple doctor-formulated option to support your metabolism. So learn from Allie and make the switch to Veracity. Head to VeracityHealth.co and use code legal AF for up to 65% off your order. Once again, that's V-E-R-A-C-I-T-Y Health.co for 65% off your next order. and make sure you use my promo code, Legal A-E-F, so they know I sent you. Then you've got, with the Hispanic vote, which is now 73 to 74% abandoning Donald Trump,

you've got the attacks on Pope Leo. That continue, you would think after J.D. Vance tried a test run as a newly minted Catholic, who's out with a book called Communion about his conversion to Catholicism, you'd think they would do a cleanup and stop attacking the Pope, one of the world spiritual leaders, a leader of a nation, you know, a leader of a country, if you will, the Holy See, and somebody to which not only Catholics look up to as a moral compass and a voice of reason in a topsy-turvy world,

but non-Catholics as well. I'm Jewish. I've had my favorite popes, right? I love Francis. for many reasons. I mean, my daughter's not named after him, but, you know, I do appreciate the Franciscan ideals that he embraced. And going after the first American pope is not manufacturing new voters for Donald Trump. In fact, Marco Rubio now, the Secretary of State who's also a Catholic, Cuban-American, he's now got to go meet with the Pope on bended knee literally to clean up the mess. I mean, they're talking up a big game.

Oh, Marco Rubio's going to go over. They're going to have a heart-to-heart conversation about foreign policy. Yeah, I don't think that's what's going to happen at the Vatican. I just don't see it that way after Marco Rubio's done kissing his ring as his own spiritual leader of the Pope. You know, and here's Donald Trump again attacking Pope Leo in the last 24 hours, killing any chance he has of reviving the Hispanic vote. the clip. You've had this back and forth with Pope Leo. I wish Pope Leo would talk about Jimmy Lai. You'd talk about Jimmy Lai with the chairman. Will you be bringing him up again?

I will. I brought him up and there's a lot of, there's a little bitterness, I would say, with him and Jimmy Lai. You know, he was, Hong Kong was not as easy. But I will be, I will be bringing up. I wish the Pope would. I want the Pope to talk about Jimmy Lye and I want you to bring him home. That would be a good deal. Well, the Pope would rather talk about the fact that it's okay for Iran to have a nuclear weapon. And I don't think that's very good. I think he's endangering a lot of Catholics and a lot of people. But I guess if it's up to the Pope, he thinks it's just fine for Iran to have a nuclear weapon. He's from Chicago. You've got to learn a few things. He's from Chicago. There is a lot of confusion. I live in a highly Hispanic Catholic

community in Miami. And Catholic, in Hispanic radio doesn't know what to do with Trump. They want to like Trump because there's this nostalgia for dictatorship. But yet, but they love the Pope. I mean, you know, when I was a kid, you go into somebody's home and you'd see, you know, two eight by ten photos up on a wall, Ronald Reagan and the Pope. That was like facing each other. So he's created this schism between his, his. Hispanics having down to choose between their spiritual leader and their president and they're abandoning Trump in droves.

Now I want to talk about what just went down in Indiana and bring this all home. Because it is a level of insanity of which I am not familiar. Trump decided as a last flex to take on seven conservative Republican legislators in Indiana who refused his debate. man to remap Indiana. And so when he couldn't get them to remap the congressional districts and they opposed him, he primaried them, bringing forward a trumper to take down the conservative Republican. And he was successful. I mean, five out of the seven, it looks like he's going to have taken out. Hooray! Except that weakens the Republican Party's chances in the midterms.

That was only a primary. That just made the seven seats go hard all right to Maga Land. That necessarily doesn't work at the midterms in the general election when there's a Democrat on the other side. So I'm actually, I don't know what the mainstream media is reporting, but I'm actually thrilled. that Trump got all those MAGA to be in those, to win the primary, now they're going to be up against moderate, progressive, liberal, even conservative Democrats who now, I think, strengthen their chances. They just have to run to the left and to the center of these MAGA MAGA.

But Trump doesn't care. All he wanted to do was flex and show he could take out people that opposed him. regardless of what happens at the midterms. It's this kind of lack of strategic thinking that will inure to the benefit of the Democrats at the midterms as we mobilize votes. So there you have it. Election night in America did not go well for Donald Trump.

I just explained why. The Hispanic vote running parallel with the general population vote and the abandonment of Donald Trump by independence, by women, by voters under 30, by the Hispanic vote, by even the black vote, where Donald Trump didn't do too poorly in 2024. You put all that together. You plug in all of the data feeds into the model,

the computer model, about what's going to happen at the midterms. And you put in all the economic feeds and gas prices and inflation and jobless recovery and the polling numbers about right direction, wrong direction. And this is going to be a bloodbath for the Republicans of their own making. of Donald Trump's own making. And that's why it's so important to focus on, yes, the House races. Could be a plus 30 seat advantage for the Democrats

when the night is over on election night in November. The Senate, though, Sherrod Brown back in the game for a political comeback at Ohio who won the Democratic primary to get back a Senate seat and return to the Senate. And the road to the Democrats getting the majority in the Senate, which is oh so important, not just for impeachment and conviction, but also for confirmation of judges and Supreme Court judges

and people in Donald Trump's cabinet to finish up his term. We got to win Ohio. Democrats got to win Ohio. So I'm glad you're here. If you like this kind of reporting, Midas touch, hit the free subscribe button, and I do a lot of my work on the channel that I found it and curate called Legal A-F,

become a YouTube subscriber there as well. Until my next report, I'm Michael Popock. Can't get your fill of legal A.F. Me neither. That's why we form the legal A.F. Substack. Every time we mention something in a hot take, whether it's a court filing or an oral argument, come over to the substack. You'll find the court filing and the oral argument there, including a daily roundup that I do call, wait for it, morning A.F. What else? All the other contributors from Legal A.F are there as well. We got some new reporting. We got interviews. We got

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