On today’s BradCast: For a guy who believes he’s a strongman, or wants to be one — in a nation where too many have fallen for that idea as well — the President, with each passing day, is revealing himself to be incredibly weak. Even his own supporters have noticed, and are finally beginning to turn away from him in all of the swing states and even in some of the so-called “reddest” states! [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Yes, he’s still causing a lot of pain for a lot of people. He’ll continue to cruelly do so as long as he can. But don’t fall for his tough guy act. He continues to be a wannabe strongman, even while he’s failing on virtually every front. We make the case on today’s program, along with the latest news and coverage of several under-the-radar issues and contests on next Tuesday’s off-year election ballot.

Among the evidence from which we draw today…

• Tough guy Donald Trump calls for the U.S. “Department of War” to resume testing nuclear weapons just minutes before meeting with China’s actual strongman President Xi Jinping last night. Just about every point Trump made in his social media announcement on nuclear weapons was false, leaving actual expert in this field completely confused. (And then Xi, like so many other world leaders who have figured out how easy it is to play Trump, went on to eat his lunch. Trump didn’t even notice.)

• “What If Trump Is Weaker Than We Think—and America’s Finally Figuring It Out?”, muses our friend Thom Hartmann, as Trump’s previously ironclad grip on Republicans in Congress begins to reveal numerous cracks in both chambers. “It’s just a matter of time,” Thom correctly concludes.

• Michigan‘s Democratic state Senate Majority Whip and 2026 U.S. Senate Candidate, Mallory McMorrow, calls out the Administration for choosing to violate the law by “using food as a political weapon” in cutting off money allocated by Congress to fund payments to some 42 million Americans on SNAP. The threat to starve Americans, beginning on November 1, is supposedly due to the federal government shutdown that our very weak President appears both uninterested and unable to do anything about. Late today, a federal judge suggested she was likely to order the Administration to follow the law by using emergency contingency funds to keep SNAP going as November begins.

• Trump’s national approval numbers are beginning to fall again, to all time lows, following a brief and tiny uptick on the heels of the faltering Israel/Hamas agreement. He continues to have the lowest approval numbers for any President in modern history at this point in his term. So, naturally, he is lying about that to media in hopes they will dutifully report his fake news. For example, on Air Force One this week, he lied to the press gaggle: “I have the best numbers for any President in many years, any President!” Nice try, weakman.

• But where his plunging approval ratings are really beginning to leave a mark are in 12 states that voted in his favor last year, where new polling now shows him underwater in all of them! The states where he enjoys negative ratings after winning them last year include every single battleground state (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) as well as five states where he easily won less than one year ago. His approval ratings are now underwater in Alaska, Florida, Iowa, Ohio and Texas! In all of those states he’s plunged in approval by an average of about 15 percentage points since last November. Does that sound like a strongman to you?

• We’ll see if voters agree with the argument in next week’s off-year elections, as important contests and ballot issues loom in New York City, New Jersey, Virginia and California. But there are also some under-the-radar races elsewhere, several of which we detail today in advance of Tuesday’s Election Day, including Republican efforts to make voting more difficult (for certain people) in both Texas and Maine, and a Hail Mary effort by Republicans to try and somehow win a majority on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in time for the 2028 Presidential election.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as the deadly, record-breaking, climate change-fueled Hurricane Melissa continues to wreak havoc in the Caribbean as it begins to peter out in strength during its move into the colder North Atlantic. Oh, and bad news for Iceland, just to add a bite to the end of today’s program…

The BradCast with Brad Friedman 10/30/2025

A Pretty Weak ‘Strongman’: ‘BradCast’ 10/30/2025  |  Trump now underwater in 12 states he won just last year; Also: A few under-the-radar issues and contests in Tuesday's off-year elections...    · · · · ·   A Pretty Weak ‘Strongman’: ‘BradCast’ 10/30/2025  |  Trump now underwater in 12 states he won just last year; Also: A few under-the-radar issues and contests in Tuesday's off-year elections...

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