Trump silenced himself – and you know he already really hates it

What’s the story?

Silence. Minute after minute of stone-cold silence.

That's all that was broadcast from Donald Trump's White House ribbon-cutting event to open a new helipad on Monday, following press solidarity with the three major US news outlets banned from the White House by the president.

Without the microphones of the US press to catch his words, Trump was left rambling into the ether, surrounded by construction workers.

Trump claimed CNN, Politico and MS Now were reporting 'fake news'. The News Agents say his actions are those of a man losing his grip on power and lashing out with what little he has left.

He faced the consequences of his own actions less than 24 hours later.

“Donald Trump was off to New York to see Zohran Mamdani, ahead of the UN General Assembly, but there weren't cameras there to film him departing or arriving,” Jon Sopel says.

“Suddenly Trump, who loves nothing more in the whole wide world than a camera, didn't have one in front of him.”

He found a camera, of course, inviting himself onto a platform with Mamdani and addressing the press the New York mayor had invited, saying "they said they were going to boycott me, but they never boycott me, so I wasn't very worried about that."

Trump TV: Russian-style propaganda, or just old speeches on a loop?

Of course, Trump wasn’t going to take unexpected press solidarity lying down.

His response? The launch of ‘Trump TV’, promising the “top past moments, announcements, and the latest and greatest from the administration all in one place.”

It flopped.

The reality was a 24-hour stream of old speeches on YouTube, and viewers turned off in their droves. A reported 8,000 people tuned in for the launch of Trump TV, dropping to just over 1,000 a few hours later.

“Trump's implicit critique of the media is that he can go around the media,” says Lewis Goodall.

“In many ways that is true. He and the MAGA movement have been very successful in creating and incubating a whole ecosystem of alternative outlets.

“But it is interesting that they can't quite go that one step further, which is to create the media themselves, as Trump TV shows.”

It’s not only the Trump TV ratings that are low. The president’s approval rating is at just 32%, the worst since his presidency began, and below Joe Biden’s lowest polling.

“This is probably the thing that will hurt him most,” Lewis adds.

“I think we're getting to the point now where so many people – whether it's the media, Americans, even possibly some who previously identified with him – who have just stopped listening.”

The beginning of the end, or just another day in Trump’s America?

Record low approval, a fraction of his MAGA devotees tuning into Trump TV. Things aren’t looking good for Trump right now, which might explain why he’s spending so much time trying to get his name on historic buildings in the US capitol.

“Compare this to where Trump was this time last year – he seemed unstoppable,” Lewis says.

“He, and those around him, seemed genuinely intent on reordering and remaking American society.

“But pretty much from the ICE protests onwards, he has been on a slow, but recently increasingly rapid decline.”

US journalists have claimed that with projects such as the White House ballroom and renaming demands for Washington's Kennedy Centre, he has gone back to where he started – being a property developer, building "gaudy monuments to his own triumphs."

“He has stopped making almost any political argument to the average American voter about anything other than to say he's brilliant,” adds Lewis.

“He has nothing to say to them about the cost of living. He has nothing to say to them about inflation.

“The only people he's now interested in speaking to are his closest acolytes – the 7,000 saddos who, for at least a brief period, tuned into Trump TV.”

Listen to the latest episode of The News Agents.