BREAKING: Republicans Privately Admit Trump Has Lost It

REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein

Good evening, this is Really American. It is Tuesday, July 14, 2026. Trump is having a very bad night.

Trump announced a 20 percent toll on the Strait of Hormuz and killed it 24 hours later after his own administration spent months calling the idea illegal. His deportation force ordered a nationwide halt to vehicle stops because ICE agents shot and killed two immigrants in a single week. In Georgia, Jon Ossoff told reporters that most elected Republicans privately think Trump has lost it as he prepares a primetime speech full of debunked election lies. And the GOP spent the day manufacturing outrage at Jack Smith, because the revenge tour needed a fresh target. All of it below.

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TRUMP’S HORMUZ TOLL: DEAD IN 24 HOURS

Trump killed his own Strait of Hormuz toll on Tuesday, one day after announcing it.

On Monday, Trump declared the United States would charge fees worth 20 percent of a ship’s cargo to pass through the strait. Experts said the toll could more than double the cost of shipping oil through the world’s most important energy chokepoint. By Tuesday he scrapped it on Truth Social and replaced it with vague “Trade and Investment Deals” with Gulf states that nobody in his administration can describe.

Trump’s own Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, spent months insisting that charging tolls on an international waterway violates international law. Trump announced one anyway. Then he told reporters he does not think anybody should be able to charge a fee for the strait, per the New York Times.

The real crisis is getting worse. Trump says a full blockade of Iranian ports is restarting, the month-old ceasefire is shattered, and shipping through the strait has nearly stopped.

Every blocked tanker shows up at your gas pump. Trump is running a war by all-caps social media post, and you are paying for it.

ICE HALTS TRAFFIC STOPS AFTER KILLING TWO MEN

ICE ordered officers nationwide to stop making traffic-stop arrests in most cases after agents killed two immigrants in one week.

Officers fired into vehicles and killed a Mexican immigrant in Houston last week and a Colombian immigrant in Biddeford, Maine, on Monday. Per the Washington Post, guidance from ICE headquarters said no vehicle interactions whatsoever.

ICE officers have committed five fatal shootings while firing on vehicles since Trump took office last year. Firing into a moving car violates basic law enforcement standards. Chicago and Los Angeles police both prohibit it.

The agent who killed a man in Biddeford wore no body camera. Even Susan Collins asked DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin to stop all non-urgent vehicle stops. Chuck Schumer said a pause is nowhere near enough and demanded real consequences.

People are dying at traffic stops because Trump demanded arrest quotas his agents were never trained to hit. The pause is an admission. The accountability has not started.

OSSOFF: REPUBLICANS PRIVATELY SAY TRUMP HAS LOST IT

Jon Ossoff said Tuesday that Republicans privately believe Trump has lost it.

Trump plans a primetime address Thursday claiming his government found evidence the 2020 election was rigged in Georgia. GOP-led audits and Georgia’s own Republican governor debunked those claims years ago.

Ossoff did not blink when reporters asked about it. “Privately, most elected Republicans in this building think the president has lost it and is dooming them to dismal losses this fall,” he said, according to Mediaite.

Then he turned to his opponent. Mike Collins launched his Senate campaign doubling down on 2020 election denialism. Now Collins has to defend Trump’s conspiracy theories and doubled health insurance premiums for more than a million Georgians at the same time.

Trump’s Georgia lies cost Republicans both Senate seats in 2021. Ossoff is making him run on them again. This is what fighting back looks like.

THE GOP’S JACK SMITH MELTDOWN

Republicans spent Tuesday raging at Jack Smith, the man who investigated January 6.

Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson released Justice Department documents showing Smith’s team accessed texts from 44 members of Congress and Trump officials during the January 6 investigation. Rand Paul accused Smith of spying and lying under oath. Johnson called it weaponization.

Here is what they left out. Smith’s office ran a dedicated filter team to protect privileged material and constitutional rights, according to Mediaite. The list included Democrats like Cory Booker alongside the Trump insiders at the center of the probe: Mark Meadows, Rudy Giuliani, Stephen Miller, and Mike Pence.

The timing is not an accident. Republicans needed America talking about anything other than ICE standing down and Trump’s election-lie speech.

This is the groundwork for prosecuting the prosecutors. Watch what Todd Blanche’s Justice Department does with it next.

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Tonight you read about a president reversing his own war policy in 24 hours, a deportation force that killed so many people it had to stand down, and a party working overtime to change the subject. Really American covered all of it without a billionaire calling the shots. If you have been enjoying Really American on a free subscription, today is the day to upgrade to a paying membership. Every subscription funds the independent journalism you just read. Subscribe or upgrade right now.

— The Really American Team