{"id":830131,"date":"2026-08-29T20:42:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-29T20:42:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/830131\/"},"modified":"2026-08-29T20:42:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-29T20:42:11","slug":"trump-steps-up-stunts-as-us-midterms-loom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/830131\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump steps up stunts as US midterms loom"},"content":{"rendered":"<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">From trolling Canada about a lake to suddenly talking about Kim Jong-un, US President Donald Trump\u2019s recent distractions speak louder than words.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">The former reality television star has long been known for his reliance upon a simple tactic: when you don\u2019t like what\u2019s being said, change the conversation.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">But the 80-year-old\u2019s recent stunts appear to be even more targeted than usual at wrestling the news away from the Iran war and the economy as difficult midterm elections loom in November.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">\u201cThis president specialises in diversions,\u201d said William Galston of the Brookings Institution.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">The war on Iran is proving a major drag on Trump\u2019s approval ratings, which polls show are consistently in the low 30s, but there is no end in sight to the conflict as it hits the six-month mark.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"A poster shows the name change from Lake Ontario to \u201cLake America\u201d, as US President Donald Trump signs an executive order in the Oval Office on Thursday. Photo: EPA\" data-qa=\"BaseImage-handleRenderImage-StyledImage\" class=\"e1gf69pb2 css-6ikqhs e445x7d0\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/3912fdf4-6c22-4bb2-b89f-adfc4ce83e05_64f10534.jpg\" title=\"A poster shows the name change from Lake Ontario to \u201cLake America\u201d, as US President Donald Trump signs an executive order in the Oval Office on Thursday. Photo: EPA\"\/>A poster shows the name change from Lake Ontario to \u201cLake America\u201d, as US President Donald Trump signs an executive order in the Oval Office on Thursday. Photo: EPA<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">The Atlantic reported that the White House\u2019s strategy was to try to push the conflict into the background, avoiding more military action and focusing on less newsy economic measures against Tehran.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From trolling Canada about a lake to suddenly talking about Kim Jong-un, US President Donald Trump\u2019s recent distractions&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":830132,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,93032,95168,103,46961,4515,12,11320,228242,6507,22586,3,73455,2186,1866,153670,21,19,22,20,25,24,3123],"class_list":["post-830131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-america-first","tag-brookings-institution","tag-canada","tag-chuck-schumer","tag-democrats","tag-donald-trump","tag-fox-news","tag-iran-war","tag-kim-jong-un","tag-lake-ontario","tag-news","tag-north-korean","tag-republicans","tag-south-korea","tag-tehran","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-white-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/830131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=830131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/830131\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/830132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=830131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=830131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=830131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}