President Donald Trump and his administration are sinking deeper into "desperation" with their latest moves, according to reporter Sarah Ewall-Wice — and it signals what could be a "monumental shift" in power heading toward Washington.

Ewall-Wice, a political reporter for The Daily Beast, appeared as a guest on the latest edition of the outlet's flagship podcast, where she told host Joanna Coles that, based on what she has heard, there is "a growing sense of desperation ... coming out of this White House." That desperation, she argued, is reflected in the questionable priorities the president has chosen to focus on.

"I talked about Republicans and the swagger they had coming into Trump's White House in early 2025. There is no swagger right now," Ewall-Wice told Coles. "There's an active attempt to try and promote ideas that are not sticking. And so it feels like there's about to be a monumental shift in Washington... Making over Washington, D.C., renaming lakes, and just a plethora of other things that smell of desperation [are] coming out of this White House as a distraction."

She added: "The president puts the focus on these useless things that he's focused on and promoting, and the White House pushes out this kind of bizarre social media campaign to tout him renaming the lake."

Ewall-Wice noted that considerable discrepancies have emerged between Trump and his administration on one hand, and the Republicans actually on the ground running midterm campaigns on the other. Those candidates, she explained, are emphasizing "how they've helped or how they can help the voters who need to go to the ballot box to vote for them" — a message Trump is "not focused on... in the same way whatsoever." Instead, she said, he is spending his time on "random spiels about changing names of lakes or redecorating the White House or building a ballroom." All of this, she observed, can be seen coming to a head in recent polls showing Trump's grip on his past supporters slipping away. The stakes are high for both parties heading into the 2026 midterms, when control of the House and Senate will be decided — contests in which independent and swing voters often prove decisive in closely divided districts.

She also drew a comparison between Republican lawmakers' earlier reaction to Trump's order seeking to rename the Gulf of Mexico the "Gulf of America" — which many publicly touted as a "great thing" — and their current near-silence over his attempt to rename Lake Ontario as "Lake America," an effort seen as aimed at spiting Canada amid trade talks. The order, she pointed out, carries about as much weight with actual voters as the "Gulf of America" order did. Notably, executive renaming efforts apply within federal usage but do not by themselves compel states, other countries, or international bodies to adopt the new names, a limitation that became apparent when several outlets and map providers varied in how they handled the "Gulf of America" designation.

"So he's been using a lot of these distractions that are completely pointless, useless, and a complete waste of the office of the president of the United States," Ewall-Wice said. "And that's what I hear from people out across the country who are just trying to get by, where they hear so much about some of the nonsense that's coming from Donald Trump."

She went on: "And they're like, well, that's not helping me, and that's frustrating. And it just goes to show that the president is focused on how he appears and what he's looking at. It's not about making things better for us. And I get that sense from Democrats... but independents, who are not really aligned with Republicans or Democrats, have been making the same case. And some Republicans also are like, 'We are frustrated by this. This is not working for us.'"