Michael Smerconish in a political commentator who hosts a radio show on Siriux XM and a weekly show on CNN. Today, Smerconish delivered a segment on this CNN show with the chyron "Trump on a Roll." He's basically making the case that Trump seems to gaining steam, not losing it as his 2nd term goes on. In fact, this may be one of his best weeks as president.
TRUMP ON A ROLL@smerconish lays out why this has been the best week of President Trump's second term. pic.twitter.com/JwSNJIH1BZ
— Steven Cheung (@StevenCheung47) June 28, 2025
It's a clip about one week for Trump and it goes on for six minutes listing successes and accomplishments. Just to summarize, here are the bullet points along with a few links backing up what Smerconish is saying:
- A stealthy mission to strike Iran's nuclear facilities in which there were no American casualties.
- Estimations of the success of the mission range from modestly successful to extremely successful.
- Trump announced a ceasefire and put Israel and Iran on blast in front of the cameras when they initially violated it.
- At a meeting with NATO allies, Europe agreed to up its contribution to the alliance.
"Before this week’s annual NATO summit had even begun, allies reportedly agreed on Sunday to hike their defense spending to 5% of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2035." - Trump showed some empathy for Ukraine and a Ukrainian journalist.
- He announced a trade deal with China.
- The stock market is up despite predictions Trump's tariffs would kill it.
CNN headline: "America’s incredible stock market rebound is complete as S&P 500, Nasdaq hit record highs" - Border crossings are down more than 90%. From Fox News:
"Between June 1 and June 22, there have been 5,414 apprehensions at the border, with the busiest sector being El Paso. During that same timeframe, there have been 986 known 'gotaways.' Both numbers are the lowest ever recorded." - New analysis by Pew shows there was no circumstance in which Kamala Harris could have won the 2024 election.
- Trump's win among Hispanic voters was even greater than believed. From Axios:
"Pew's analysis of election data shows that Trump won 48% of Latino voters — a group that had soundly rejected him in 2020 and 2016 — and that it was a crucial factor in his victory." - The Supreme Court put an end to nationwide injunctions which have been used against Trump more than any other president. In fact, they have been used against trump almost as many times this year as they were against Biden in his entire term in office.
As you can see from the links above, all of this is being reported by the major media. The NATO news, the Pew news, the Supreme Court news and the stock market news are all getting out there. But it really is striking that this segment by Smerconish is the only one of its kind I've seen this week. The dots are all there but no one (other than Smerconish) thought they were worth collecting.
I wonder why?
Since the "No Kings" protests demonstrated that the resistance is back in fashion, we seem to moving back to the media's resistance journalism as well. Again, it's not that they aren't reporting the good news it's just that there's no real desire to give Trump any recognition or to further boost his political momentum.
Go take a look at the front page of the NY Times or the Washington Post or NBC News and you'll see some cheerleading for what a great week Zohran Mamdani had but nothing about what a great week Trump had. What you will see are a bunch of opinion pieces and editorials arguing that the Iran strike wasn't as successful as claimed or that the Supreme Court decision is a disaster for democracy. In short, the usual whining of liberal partisans.
But kudos to Smerconish and even to CNN for having him on once a week to provide a tiny bit of balance to the coverage.