GEOFF BENNETT: A new poll puts President Trump's approval rating at a record low.

Meantime, the president is escalating his feud with Ukraine's president.

Our Politics Monday team is here to discuss that and more.

We have got Tamara Keith of NPR and Carrie Dann of The Cook Political Report With Amy Walter.

Amy Walter is away this evening.

It's great to see you both.

TAMARA KEITH, National Public Radio: Good to be here.

GEOFF BENNETT: So let's start with this latest new national poll.

You have got The Wall -- excuse me -- The Washington Post/ABC News/Ipsos poll.

It's putting President Trump's approval rating at just 33 percent, the lowest of either term.

And Democrats have an eight-point advantage heading into November.

So, Tam, how much of a liability is that for Republicans on the ballot?

I know you have some new reporting.

TAMARA KEITH: Yes, so back in September, President Trump held a dinner in the Rose Garden with about 30 Republicans in competitive races.

And, at that dinner, he promised he was going to go to all of their districts.

He was going to go to 35 competitive districts and help those members by just showing up.

Well, my analysis of his travel since that time is that he's gone to a fewer than a third of those districts, and instead he's gone to a lot of very red states and very red districts.

Part of that is because he's a liability in swing races, and part of that is that he loves the warm embrace of a rally in a place where they actually love him.

He claims he's going to say thank you.

But part of it is just that the map has shifted so that areas that we weren't even really talking about a few months ago are now considered competitive races.

GEOFF BENNETT: And, Carrie, where do you watching most closely to gauge where this election is headed and if all of this polling is actually true or accurate?

CARRIE DANN, Managing Editor, The Cook Political Report With Amy Walter: One of the numbers I found the most fascinating in that Washington Post poll was among Republicans.

And the way The Post broke it down was MAGA-affiliated Republicans and then Republicans who say, I affiliate as a Republican, but I'm not really into the MAGA movement.

Among MAGA Republicans, Donald Trump's approval rating is 94 percent.

Like, basically, all of those people are huge fans of the president.

But among that other group of Republicans who are not into the MAGA movement, he's barely breaking even.

Almost half of those voters disapprove of him.

And, to your point, I think one of the trickiest things that Republicans are trying to do is to tell those people, disaffected Republicans, hey, you got to hold your nose and show up in November and vote for a candidate, even if you're not crazy about the president, without deactivating that 94 percent approval rating among MAGA people, which is I think why he's going to these very red areas to juice every single one of those voters that he possibly can, while also quietly singling to other Republicans in the state, hey, you might not love the president right now, but you need to show up for your team.

GEOFF BENNETT: And, Tam, Democrats appear to have momentum, even in states -- as Liz just reported, states like Ohio, that have shifted toward Republicans in recent elections.

How do you interpret that?

TAMARA KEITH: Yes, Ohio is a fascinating state.

It is, according to AdImpact data, the most expensive state in that Senate race among all of the Senate races starting September 1 through Election Day.

Just truckloads of money are being dumped on that state.

What is fascinating about it is you really have, in some ways, two incumbents and then also two non-incumbents at the same time, because Jon Husted didn't win the seat.

He was appointed.

And a lot of people still think Sherrod Brown is a senator from Ohio.

GEOFF BENNETT: Well, let's shift our focus in the time that remains to Ukraine, because President Trump is escalating his confrontation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

There's this dispute over access to important satellite communications that are used for the military there.

The president has blamed Ukraine for rising gas prices in this country.

What's driving the president's increasingly hostile posture toward Ukraine and its leader?

CARRIE DANN: Well, I think you justified that he's trying to draw a line between Ukraine and high gas prices.

I think it may be a little bit late to do that credibly with voters.

I think voters have drawn a very bright line between the Iran conflict and the high gas prices.

He may be trying to deflect that by talking about this other conflict.

But I looked back.

You mentioned AdImpact.

I looked at the ad spending around the issue of Ukraine and Russia this cycle, $2 million.

For Iran and gas prices, we're at like $80 million.

So, clearly, the politics of this are not that voters really care about this issue.

I think what he is trying to do is tie it to gas prices and tie the high gas prices to Joe Biden, instead of the decisions that his administration has made.

GEOFF BENNETT: How do you see it, based on your reporting?

TAMARA KEITH: Well, voters very clearly tie it to the Iran war.

Like, they draw that direct line.

The president certainly -- I have covered him for years.

He has often been looking for reasons to escalate or to fight with Zelenskyy.

This isn't really new.

This is certainly a new front in this, but he's often been feuding with Zelenskyy.

And so this is a moment where he is just throwing a lot of spaghetti against a lot of walls.

In this case, doing a deal or announcing that Russia will sell diesel to the United States, no one is expecting this to actually bring down diesel prices, but it speaks to the fact that the president is trying to show that he's working on this thing that is actually a very big problem for a lot of people.

GEOFF BENNETT: We have got one more topic, and we have got a minute left.

I'm going to see if I can fit this in, but here we go.

So President Trump, he is turning his attention to this public golf course in our own backyard here in Washington, D.C.

His administration wants to overhaul this historic East Potomac course.

It sparked a legal fight, as we reported earlier in the program.

Is the real story here less about a golf course and more about who gets to decide what happens to a public land?

CARRIE DANN: I think it's cumulatively.

I don't -- I'm not sure voters outside of D.C.

necessarily know very much about this issue, but I do think it speaks to the idea that he, in many of these cases, whether it's the Kennedy Center ballroom or the East Wing of the White House or this golf course, has blazed through benchmarks or guardrails against the things that he's trying to do.

That's, I think, a metaphor for a lot of things people feel about the president.

I don't know if it's a huge issue that resonates, but cumulatively he's also choosing to spend his time on this.

TAMARA KEITH: Yes, I mean, I think that we have seen in polls for months, and literally a text from one of the swing voters I check in with all the time earlier today, saying, why is the president focused on a golf course?

Why is he focused on beautification projects, when people are literally choosing between paying their heating bill and their grocery bill?

GEOFF BENNETT: Two terrific journalists and broadcast professionals.

We did it.

GEOFF BENNETT: Tamara Keith, Carrie Dann, thanks again.

TAMARA KEITH: You're welcome.

CARRIE DANN: Thanks.