TrumpWatch 2026: Democrats Have a Rich Bounty from Which to Choose

Another day, another pollster announcing that Donald Trump has hit a record low for their poll. The latest is Fox, where the President is at 36% approval against 64% disapproval, putting him 28 points underwater.

What is remarkable about this election—and we struggle to think of another example across American political history—is the extent to which the damage is self-inflicted. Certainly there are presidents who went down one particular, unpopular, rabbit hole and had it take a sledgehammer to their support. The obvious example here is Lyndon B. Johnson and the Vietnam War. But with Trump, it is many and varied rabbit holes, and pretty much all of them were obviously unwise from the moment he started going down them.

Indeed, as bad as his approval rating is, the more remarkable number—and we are not the only ones to notice this—is 80%. Trump has somehow managed to end up on the wrong side of many issues where 80% of voters (or more) are against him, and 20% of voters (or fewer) are with him. Things rarely get this lopsided in American politics, and yet he's managed to pull it off, time and again, and just weeks before an election. Let's run down half a dozen examples:

Corruption: We'll start here, because our numbers are from the aforementioned Fox poll. As bad as Trump's approval rating is in that poll, the real eye-opening number is this: 88% of respondents were extremely/very concerned about corruption in government. That made corruption the top issue on the list of concerns, ahead of inflation (85%), gas prices (83%), health care (80%), the Iran War (75%) or crime (73%). Do you know how corrupt you have to be to make voters worry more about that than how they're going to afford to feed their family tonight?

As if on cue, shortly after the Fox poll dropped, The Washington Post revealed that it had laid hands on the (previously secret) list of people and entities that donated money for the Trump ballroom. Leading the way are the Adelson family ($25 million), Apple Computer ($25 million), Charlie Ergen/Dish Network ($25 million), Nvidia ($25 million), Laura and Isaac Perlmutter ($20.2 million), Lockheed Martin ($10 million), Microsoft ($10 million), Rocket Lending ($10 million) and Palantir (AI) Technologies ($10 million). None of these people/entities care one bit about Trump's balls. They are all very obviously buying and paying for something, whether it's aid to Israel (Adelson family), tariff exceptions (Apple), government contracts (Lockheed Martin), reduced oversight (Rocket Lending) or something else. Missing from the list is one Donald John Trump, who promised that he would be paying for most of the ballroom out of his own pocket.

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Inflation: Obviously, Trump did not choose inflation directly. But he did choose to impose arbitrary and protectionist tariffs, and he did choose to attack Iran. Both of those things were 100% guaranteed to trigger inflation, and they have. The September numbers were reported this week, and inflation rose to 3.7%. That's bad on two levels for Trump; first because it's a pretty high number, second because voters tend to be particularly unhappy if they think things are headed in the wrong direction.

Trump may have figured out, at this point, that he can't tame the economy through force of will. Certainly not in the less than 3 weeks before Election Day. And so, he's chosen the only option he thinks he has left: baldfaced lies. At his rallies, he is claiming there is barely any inflation at all right now, just 1.7%. He also says that is much better than the 19% inflation of the Biden years. It is true that 1.7% inflation is better than 19% inflation (unless you are in debt), but all the rest of that is a fantasy. And when reporters ask the White House questions about where these numbers are coming from, the administration refuses to answer.

In the end, people know how much they are paying for groceries or for gas. And despite Trump's gas-inspired gaslighting, he is taking a beating on this issue. According to the latest from AP/NORC, voters disapprove of Trump's handling of cost of living, 82% to 17%. Other polls have similar results; we're just trying to work as many different pollsters into this item as we can, to make clear it's not just one house that has bad news for Trump.

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Livestreamed Execution: We are still stunned that the administration thought that Pete Hegseth's snuff film would meet the approval of the American public. And we were right to feel that way, as the newest Washington Post/Ipsos poll indicates. Exactly 80% of respondents opposed the livestream of Nidal Hasan's execution, as opposed to 18% who like the idea.

We don't know if Trump pays attention to (or even hears about) adverse polls these days. He may only be advised of whatever positive polls that Natalie Harp can find and print out on her mobile printer. But we suspect he got more than an earful from Republicans in Congress, who surely told him that such a display would be a gift to radical Islamist groups and their recruiting efforts. And so, Trump has now called off the livestream. That will reduce the damage done by this decision, which was both foolhardy and sadistic, but it won't erase it entirely.

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The Ads: We have written several times, at this point, about the government-funded ads that are being framed as public service announcements, but are really just Republican campaign ads. Following a backlash, Trump said he would pay for the ads himself, and then he changed his mind. Then, a judge ordered the administration to stop airing the ads until all legal challenges can be resolved, and the administration "accidentally" kept airing them, due to a "miscommunication."

They are finally off the air, and will presumably remain so beyond November 3, unless there's another "accident." In any event, Trump certainly seems to have done himself and the Republicans more harm than good here. A Reuters/Ipsos poll reported that voters found them inappropriate by a margin of 89%-9%.

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Trump Ocean: This is a stupid one, but still instructive. Speaking at a rally this week, Trump suggested that now that he's renamed a gulf and a lake (the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Ontario, respectively), the time has come to rename an ocean. And while he likes the idea of renaming either the Pacific or the Atlantic as the American Ocean, he might like the idea of renaming them as the Trump Ocean even better.

We recognize that Trump might have been making a joke here. Might. But we are also 100% certain that, whether he is serious or not, he has absolutely thought about this possibility. More importantly, humor is in the eye of the beholder, and what really matters is if the voting public takes it as a joke. Given the previous adventures in renaming, we think they will not. And while nobody has polled the American Ocean/Trump Ocean yet, around 80% of the people who have an opinion oppose the recent renaming of Lake Ontario. Hard to imagine that renaming an entire ocean, particularly if Trump tries to rename it after himself, would be more popular.

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Siegfried, Roy and Trump: We can't find any polls on this one, because it's pretty recent. And, truth be told, we don't know if there will be any. However, it's another stupid, unforced error, so we're including it here. A young man named William Chapman suffered from mental illness. Somehow he ended up in the tiger enclosure at a wildlife park in the U.K. and was mauled to death. Exactly how and why this happened remains unclear, but some footage of Chapman and the tiger (taken before the fatal damage was done, but while the tiger was on the attack) has been posted online.

Donald Trump, in one of his late-night posting sprees, re-posted the footage to his social media platform for sadists, accompanied by the comment "Don't ever mess with nature!" And the reason that Trump did that was so people would get the reference when the President posted a second video, made by AI, in which he takes Chapman's place. In the second video, Trump wrestles with the tiger a bit, then effectively tames it, then he and the tiger share a hug. And in case you think it couldn't get tackier, the song "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" plays in the background. We're not going to embed the video, because ick, but if you want to see the original post to confirm we're not making it up, it's here. And if you want to see the later, AI-generated video, it's here.

To us, at least, this brings to mind the occasion when Trump mocked a disabled reporter. That was ugly enough that people still remember it, even when hundreds of other vulgar acts have faded from memory. And that reporter did not die, whereas the tiger-attack victim did.

Given how regularly Trump keeps shooting himself in the foot, well, it's no wonder it's given rise to conspiracy theories that he's actively trying to lose the election. We don't know about that, but we do know that he's giving the Democrats all kinds of ammunition to work with, enough that each candidate running for office can tailor things to suit the needs of their constituency.

We will add one other thing. Politico had a piece yesterday headlined "The GOP's midterm lifeline: Maybe the polls are wrong." The subhead was: "Part of the challenge is no one knows what the midterm electorate will look like, making it hard to know if the polling is accurate."

This is true, as far as it goes. And you're probably going to see more than a few pieces like this in the next couple of weeks, because it's one of the only angles left. That said, we want to point out that the polling misses of the last decade or so have come when Trump was on the ballot, and not in midterms. So, the missteps of 2016, in particular, should not be given undue weight. And the missteps of 2020 and 2024 were actually nowhere near as bad (with a few exceptions), because pollsters had already begun to adjust for the "Trump Effect."

More importantly, guessing how an election will turn out is tough, because there are a lot of moving pieces. A pollster has to guess what the electorate will look like, has to figure out how a respondent plans to vote, has to judge how serious they are about that choice, has to assess how serious they are about making sure to actually vote, etc. There are a lot of things that could go wrong there.

By contrast, polling questions like "How do you feel about inflation?" and "Do you approve of killing someone live on the Internet?" are actually easier, because there are fewer variables in play. And, as you can see, these simpler questions paint a grim picture for Trump (and, by extension, his political party). At the moment, 4-in-5 voters are against him on a LOT of stuff. Not all of those 4-in-5 will vote Democratic, as some will decide the Democrats are even worse, while others will decide that they should not blame [non-Trump Republican X] for the sins of the president. But a lot of them will. And the real point here is that the "Do you approve?" polls are saying the same thing as the "Who will win the election?" polls. That is strong evidence that the "Who will win the election?" polls are on the right track. (Z)

All Politics Is Local, Part I: Fourth and Final Maine Senate Debate Is in the Books

We really don't know if the voters of Maine were served well by scheduling four U.S. Senate debates in the span of just 2 weeks. How much is the race going to evolve in such a short timeframe? It might have been useful if each of the four debates had a distinct focus, like "foreign policy," "Donald Trump," "cost of living" and "social issues." But, as far as we can tell, they did not.

Consequently, each of the debates has tended to hit the same basic beats. That was especially true in the final matchup (which can be viewed here), as each of the candidates seems to have perfected what we might call their "stump debate." Sen. Susan Collins' (R-ME) basic pitch is that if she wins, she'll pork everyone in Maine, thanks to her seniority and her leadership of the Senate Appropriations Committee. Meanwhile, people shouldn't worry about her voting with Donald Trump, since she's a maverick who rebels against her party more than any other senator.

Troy Jackson's basic pitch is that he is a fifth-generation logger, who has logged in Maine just like four generations of his family did before him, because that is what it means to be a fifth-generation logger like he, fifth-generation logger Troy Jackson, is. This, in theory, puts him more in touch with the needs and concerns of regular Mainers, as compared to the out-of-touch, billionaire-serving Collins. Also, he consistently reiterates that Collins has cast key votes in favor of Trump's position, particularly passage of the big, beautiful bill and confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh. Jackson takes the position that it does not matter much if you rebel against your party when your vote is not decisive.

And that actually leads us right into what was surely the worst moment of the night for Collins. Early on, one of the moderators asked Collins to name a notable occasion during which her vote against Donald Trump was decisive. And her answer was... the confirmation of Pete Hegseth. She told a somewhat vague story of how she organized a consortium of Republican members to defeat the nomination, but that one member's change of heart derailed the effort. The moderator followed this with the obvious observation: "And... so that didn't actually change the outcome." Collins had to concede that was true, but insisted it almost did. It's hard to imagine how anyone could have done a better job than Collins did of emphasizing that her acts of rebellion rarely actually matter.

Also rough for Collins was when the debate turned to the Iran War. In the previous debates, she was already hit on her general support for Trump, Trump's budgets, and thus Trump's war. This time around, however, it occurred to Jackson to point out that if Collins has so much power over the federal purse strings, the way she keeps bragging she does, she could be working to cut off funding for the Iran War, and she's not doing so. Collins had no real response to this, other than to say that Trump should have had a better plan for the war. She also thinks the long-term solution to the Middle East is for the U.S. to produce more of its own oil, so it doesn't need Middle Eastern oil. This is not only a pretty silly answer (the U.S. doesn't actually get much oil from the Middle East), it's also a variant of "drill, baby, drill," which is a signature Trump policy. Not the best way for Collins to put distance between herself and the President.

The worst moment of the night for Jackson, meanwhile, came when Collins ambushed him with the observation that he says he doesn't take money from billionaires, but that he's gotten some donations from billionaires. The Democrat tends to look like a deer in the headlights most of the time, and it gets even worse when he is caught by surprise. He hemmed and hawed a bit, admitted that the claim was true, and said that he has donated some of the money to charity. As to the rest, Jackson insisted that he will not be the tool of billionaires, and that they should know that, and that "[I]f they want to give me money during this campaign, I guess that's up to them."

The last question of the night was an interesting one; the candidates were asked who they would put on a "Mount Rushmore of Maine." Both answers were certainly on-brand; Collins went with Civil War hero and politician Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain (though she struggled to remember exactly what he did to become a war hero) while Jackson went with firebrand Frances Perkins, who served as Franklin D. Roosevelt's Secretary of Labor, and who was the first woman Cabinet member. Neither named any other names, which is for the best, because people tend to misunderstand the concept of Mount Rushmore anyhow. It's not really supposed to be a "top four," it's supposed to be four prominent people who represent different facets of American culture and history. Chamberlain and Perkins are both very appropriate choices; keeping in mind the need for breadth, the other two should be Edmund Muskie and maybe... Stephen King? Though you could also make a strong argument for Dorothea Dix, George Mitchell, Margaret Chase Smith, L.L. Bean or Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

As with the other debates (particularly the third one), this debate was also quite testy. The snottiest moment came when a protester stood up and shouted "A.I. data centers are destroying our climate! They're poisoning our water!" Collins decreed that the person was clearly a Jackson supporter, Jackson replied "Oh, shut up. I don't even know that kid," and Collins rolled her eyes. By Maine standards, that's a major throwdown.

When we wrote up the first of these debates, all the way back on October 7, we observed that "Barring a major screw-up by one candidate or the other, the effect of these tilts is only going to be felt around the margins." The polling would seem to support that conclusion. Since the debates began, there have been three polls of the race, two from Republican houses, one from a nonpartisan house. All three had Jackson up by an identical margin, 49% to 47%. This is entirely in line with the polls taken before the debates, such that Jackson's aggregate average went from leading 49.2%-47.1% (+2.1%) to... leading 49.2%-47.1% (+2.1%). Of course, the last debate or two don't show up in the polls yet, but it's hard to see how they might move the needle much. (Z)

All Politics Is Local, Part II: Another Legal Victory for California Will Soon Be upon Us

Yesterday, Donald Trump's personal attorney AG Todd Blanche once again escalated his attacks on states' administration of elections. With less than three weeks before voting ends in the midterm elections, the Department of Justice sued the state of California, California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, and Los Angeles County Registrar Dean Logan to block the counting of votes of 20,000 people it claims are "likely noncitizens." Just 2 days before, the DoJ sent Weber and Logan warning letters telling them to use enclosed thumb drives to verify the eligibility of the people listed. The thumb drives apparently had a sticky note attached to them with a handwritten password. Yeah, nothing strange or suspicious about that at all.

Not surprisingly, neither Logan nor Weber used the thumb drive. They did wonder how the federal government would have any information about voters' eligibility when the state has not shared any voter data with the feds. Logan said he "did not consider the thumb drive a secure device and has not accessed any files." Over the summer, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin sent a similar letter and claimed that California had over 190,000 noncitizens on its voter rolls but refused to provide any information on how it arrived at that figure.

This most recent letter doesn't identify the number claimed to be noncitizens. The lawsuit, however, claims that the number is 20,000. Apparently, the number changes as frequently as the number of windows in a Trump skyscraper. In any event, similar claims have been made in other states and they've all been unfounded. In Nevada, the feds claimed that 1,500 noncitizens were registered to vote. But when those individuals were identified, they were all found to be citizens and properly registered. The lawsuit seeks a preliminary injunction to prevent the state from counting the votes of those the government says are "likely noncitizens" until their citizenship status can be verified.

For months, the DoJ and DHS have tried variations of these shenanigans in federal courts across the country and have lost in virtually all of them. It's unclear why they think this particular trick would work for them on the eve of the election. A federal court is not going to grant them the relief they seek because: (1) their data is faulty and unreliable; (2) states run elections and determine voter eligibility and (3) there is no basis to disenfranchise 20,000 voters this close to the election. Blanche must know this, as does the guy unlawfully serving as the U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, Bill Essayli.

So, what is really going on here? And why target Los Angeles, which is a reliably blue county in a blue state? We can think of a couple of reasons. First, it's all about the announcement. If they can start to sow doubt about the reliability and integrity of elections here, they can bootstrap that to challenges to the vote count after the election. Second, Prop 50 redrew California's Congressional map and could net Democrats as many as five seats. And if Texas' new map turns out to be a dummymander, then Democrats will come up way ahead in the redistricting wars. So, it is useful to cast doubt on any and all results out of California. Undoubtedly, these unfounded claims will be repeated again when it takes the Golden State extra time (as per usual) to get the ballots counted.

But still, this just reeks of desperation. And by now, this song and dance is so old—is anyone really going to buy it (beyond the folks who bought it long ago, without need for evidence)? The administration just keeps replaying the same tired false accusations. Maybe at the end of the day this is all still just another attempt to appease Trump as he feels the midterms slipping away. If it weren't so corrupt and dangerous, it would be just sad. Meanwhile, the limited resources of the DoJ and our taxpayer dollars are being wasted yet again on a fool's errand. What was that about government efficiency again? (L)

All Politics Is Local, Part III: We Continue to Monitor the Texas Senate Race

The U.S. Senate race in Texas is, of course, of enormous interest to us and to any outlet around the country that covers politics. It could very well determine control of the upper chamber. And, perhaps more importantly, it could be a sea-change election for Texas politics. So, every day, there are two or three pretty big stories out of that race.

Yesterday, the biggest story was probably "money." Q3 totals are due for campaigns and PACs, and this will be the last deadline before the election. Democrat James Talarico, for his part, took in $64 million, which is a Q3 record for any Senate race. Clearly, as we noted earlier this week, that campaign is not hurting for money, despite its pretensions to the contrary. Also, Talarico is spending a LOT of money on "Give me money!" ads on YouTube and social media. If he spent $10 million on those ads, then the $64 million is much more impressive than if he spent $50 million. But it's hard to know.

Meanwhile, it was already known that Republican Ken Paxton raised $18 million in Q3. He got that out there as quickly as he could, in order to send a message along the lines of "I'm not dead yet." The news yesterday was that, by and large, Paxton has one donor, namely Elon Musk. Of the slightly more than $200 million that has been poured into Paxton's campaign since the primary, the evidence suggests that about $190 million of it came from Musk. Since Musk is very toxic, it's not great for Paxton that the cat is out of the bag. Also, it could not be clearer that there is a real lack of enthusiasm for the candidate, both among grassroots donors and among the leaders of the various PACs that exist to help Republican candidates win elections (e.g., Tim Scott and the NRSC).

Also lacking enthusiasm for Paxton, as we noted in the earlier piece, is Donald Trump. In theory, Trump should be helping Paxton a lot, because Paxton is Trump's handpicked candidate. In reality, Trump has largely kept his PAC's wallet closed. And yesterday, the President gave a clear indication that he believes his chosen one is in deep trouble, posting a long and rambling screed to his social media platform in which he pre-blamed Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Karl Rove if Paxton does lose. Trump described that pair as "WEAK and INEFFECTIVE Political Hacks." Guess he doesn't care about having Cornyn's vote for the final 24 days of the 119th Congress.

And finally, dessert. This isn't particularly important, but it is amusing. Paxton has decided he will close his campaign with a bus tour, which will be called the "Come and Take It" bus tour. That is a reference to the notion that Paxton is tough, and that Texans are tough, and yada, yada, yada. The delicious part is that the final destination on the tour will be The Alamo. Obviously, that is an iconic Texas location. However, it is also a place where a bunch of doomed Texans were done in, with Mexicans doing the job of finishing them off. We will remind readers that if Paxton loses (alongside a bunch of Texas House members), it will be substantially because Latino voters turned against the Republicans this cycle.

The polls are close enough, and there's enough noise, that it's hard to generalize. That said, it certainly looks like the race is tightening up a little. The obvious explanation is that Talarico was off the campaign trail for nearly 2 weeks while trying to recover from the flu. And Paxton did have a poll from a nonpartisan house this week that shows him tied with Talarico. That said, Paxton gets about one of those a month. He's had an actual lead in just two nonpartisan polls since the primary, one in early August and one in mid-June, and in both cases he was up by just 1%. In roughly 90% of polls, Talarico leads, and that includes 9 of the last 10 nonpartisan polls that have been published. So, the Democrat still maintains an average lead of about 3 points, 48.5% to 45.5%. (Z)

I Read the News Today, Oh Boy: The Utah Jazz

There are a lot of pro sports teams where, due to relocation, the team name makes no sense. There are no grizzlies in Memphis, except maybe at the Memphis Zoo. There are no trolleys to dodge in Los Angeles (and the Dodgers also failed to dodge a sweep at the hands of the Milwaukee Brewers last night). There is no particular reason to associate wizards with Washington, DC (even if there is one current resident who has quite a bit in common with Lord Voldemort). But the worst has to be the Utah Jazz. The team's original home city of New Orleans made that a great fit, but now? Salt Lake City has no jazz and, by the standards of NBA cities, an unusually small population of the demographic group responsible for creating the majority of jazz music.

We had two clues for last week's theme: (1) "the theme should strike a chord with readers" and (2) "[W]e had to hold an item headlined 'The Senate, Part II: Texas Race Has Turned into a Real Soap Opera.'"

Here is the solution, courtesy of reader M.H. in Ottawa, ON, Canada:

The theme this week: genres of music!

• TrumpWatch 2026: This Is What Happens When a Country Has a Corrupt Leader
• The Senate: Candidates Try to Pop Each Other's Bubbles
• Legal Bytes: Hearn Beats the Rap
• I Read the News Today, Oh Boy: Happy Birthday, John Rock
• This Week in Schadenfreude: Artist Captures the Soul of Donald Trump
• This Week in Freudenfreude: Some Folk in Canada Aren't Taking This Lying Down

And as for the hint, the chord struck would of course be a musical one.

Yes! If we had not held the Texas item, "Opera" would have been on the list, too. And this item's headline adds "Jazz," of course.

Here are the first 60 readers to get it right:

N.H. in London, England, UK H.M. in Paris, France B.D. in Portland, OR T.K. in Half Moon Bay, St. Kitts W.A. in Red Lion, PA B.R. in Arlington, MA D.V. in Plymouth, MA M.W. in Frederick, MD J.S. in Chevy Chase, MD P.L. in Skövde, Sweden M.T. in Wheat Ridge, CO M.W. in Altea, Spain R.B. in Richmond, VA R.H.O. in Portland, ME D.W. in Gurnee, IL M.B. in San Antonio, TX M.M. in Dunellen, NJ N.S. in Los Angeles, CA S.K. in Ardmore, PA M.W. in Chicago, IL M.K. in Long Branch, NJ J.M. in Eagle Mills, NY P.A. in Redwood City, CA D.K. in Chicago, IL B.A. in Sioux Falls, SD G.W. in Avon, CT C.B. in Lakeville, MN K.S. in Harrisburg, PA R.S. in Landing, NJ J.T. in Philadelphia, PA

A.F. in Minneapolis, MN C.L. in Boulder, CO A.D. in Gaithersburg, MD P.H. in Bozeman, MT B.C. in Manhattan Beach, CA K.H. in New Haven, CT M.T. in Simpsonville, SC M.B. in Menlo Park, CA G.S. in Basingstoke, England, UK J.W. in Ellicott City, MD T.A. in Apex, NC L.B. in Bozeman, MT J.M. in Arvada, CO T.J.M. in New York City, NY J.N. in Zionsville, IN D.E. in High Springs, FL P.R. in Havertown, PA E.E.M. in Richmond, VT M.K. in Bothell, WA S.J.V. in New York City, NY S.K. in Greensboro, NC E.S. in Providence, RI C.W. in Cologne, Germany R.F.W. in Atlanta, GA K.F. in Berea, KY R.P.E.H. in London, England, UK T.V. in Dinwiddie, VA A.H. in Espoo, Finland D.M.F. in Standish, ME D.S. in Fort Collins, CO

The 60th correct response was received at 7:19 a.m. PT on Friday.

For this week's theme, it relies on one word per headline, and it's in the category History. For a hint, we'll tell you that anyone who solves it should take a bow. Although perhaps a stern one.

If you have a guess, send it to comments@electoral-vote.com with subject line October 16 Headlines. (Z)

This Week in Schadenfreude: Trump Administration Rocked by Battles of Titanic Proportions

It's popcorn time, at least for anyone who dislikes Donald Trump and his team, as not one, not two, not three, but four different ugly squabbles spilled into public view this week.

We'll begin with the story we've already written about a lot, namely the decline and fall of Kimberly Guilfoyle. The fellow who spilled the dirt on Guilfoyle is Republican donor and former Congressional candidate Eric Deters. Early on, as the administration was circling the wagons around Guilfoyle, she (and others) attacked Deters as a scammer and known blackmailer, and insisted the incriminating text messages were fake.

Deters has now filed a defamation suit. And, in addition to that, he claimed yesterday that he has a 16-minute voicemail on his phone that "might bring down the entire Trump administration" and "end the J.D. Vance/Marco Rubio ticket." That's a pretty big claim, especially since no smoking gun seems to last for long when it comes to Teflon Don. But we won't have to wait long to find out, because Deters says he's going to release the message sometime today.

Moving along, there is apparently no honor among grifters. Former Trump attorney Alina Habba has recently married Turhan Mildon, a wealthy businessman who has extensive interests in Venezuela. Trump acolyte Ric Grenell, who was then leading the Kennedy Center, suggested that Mildon donate roughly $6 million to the Kennedy Center, and that the "gift" would certainly help out when it comes to figuring out who does, and does not, get access to Venezuela. The check was cut and then, according to Habba, disappeared. She and her husband claim that Grenell pocketed or redirected the money, he says that's not true. The feud is young enough that it's hard to discern what the truth is. What we do know is that there will be a clear answer eventually, because checks like that leave a big paper trail. At the moment, though, insiders are describing it as a "blood feud" between former friends Habba and Grenell.

Third up, Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau and special envoy at the State Department Paolo Zampolli, a personal friend of Trump's, have been conducting their own blood feud for the last few months, over e-mail, with a dozen-plus State Department staffers looped in via the cc: field. It's pretty soap opera-y, but the executive summary is that Landau accused Zampolli of going well beyond his mandate and engaging in negotiations he was not legally allowed to undertake, while Zampolli accused Landau of betraying Trump. Each threatened to sue the other for defamation, and each threatened to tattle to Trump (though it's not clear either actually did). Anyhow, Politico laid hands on the e-mails and, hours after the outlet made them public, Zampolli was fired.

And finally, it would appear you don't serve as Donald Trump's chief of staff without breaking a few eggs. According to Politico, some Republican insiders are angry with Susie Wiles because of her daughter's shady-looking dealings with Republika Srpska. Others blame Wiles for Trump's poor polling numbers. And still others simply see her as a rival for Trump's attention and affections. Reportedly, Natalie Harp in particular has a habit of printing out negative stories about Wiles to share with the President. And in response to all of this, Trump has been asking people if they think he should fire Wiles.

It may just be a coincidence that all these stories broke within 48 hours of each other. But maybe not. When things are bad, tensions and stress levels rise. And when tensions and stress levels rise, arguments and fights break out. And if people are so upset as to be careless, then they might not keep those arguments and fights on the down-low. So, we could very well be seeing the effects of an expected shellacking at the polls in a couple of weeks. And one can only imagine how ugly it might get if the Democrats gain control of at least one chamber of Congress, and begin frustrating the administration's ambitions, while at the same time launching a gaggle of investigations. (Z)

This Week in Freudenfreude: The Constitution Is the Book That We Look to First

One of the great moments of the 2008 presidential campaign came when some random woman at a John McCain town hall slurred Barack Obama for being an Arab, a terrorist and/or a Muslim. McCain took the microphone and told her, in no uncertain terms, that while he and Obama did not see eye-to-eye on the issues, the Democrat was a good family man and was no terrorist.

This week witnessed two different incidents that brought that moment to mind, in different ways. The first came at one of Donald Trump's rallies, this one in Youngstown, OH. Partway through, while the President was speaking, a woman unbuttoned her jacket to reveal that she was wearing a shirt that calls for the release of the Epstein files.

Needless to say, if you go into the lion's den like that, and you display a shirt like that, you know you're not going to be allowed to remain. Undoubtedly, the protester knew that. However, she also got more than she bargained for, as two men in the crowd assaulted her, punching her in the face several times. Had that been a McCain rally, he surely would have had the two men tossed out (and maybe arrested), would have told the crowd that violence against people we disagree with is not OK, and presumably would have taken steps to make sure the woman was OK. Trump, of course, is not McCain. So, he congratulated the two men and made fun of the woman.

It is the second incident, however, that allows us to make this a freudenfreude item. This week, Michigan U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed (D) held a town hall in Detroit. At one point, a white fellow in a white t-shirt with a red crusader-style cross stood up and began shouting a question. Security moved to remove the man, but the candidate said "let him speak." Here is the video:

What the man said, in short, was that he is a registered Democrat, he voted for Joe Biden, and that El-Sayed seems like a good guy. However, he continued, he cannot abide by the fact that he (the questioner) follows a different "book" than El-Sayed does. The book(s) in question, if it is not clear, are the Bible and the Quran, and the implication of the remarks is that El-Sayed wants to impose Sharia law. El-Sayed is actually used to this kind of thing at this point, and so he listened patiently to the man, and then said, "The Constitution is the book that we look to first." The crowd liked that, and even the questioner seemed somewhat mollified.

There is some scuttlebutt that the man was a plant working for El-Sayed's Republican opponent, Mike Rogers. We also allow for the (slight) possibility he was a plant working for El-Sayed, to allow him to create an "I'm reasonable, unlike Trump" meme. However, our gut feel is that the interaction was genuine. And we hope that, just maybe, this is a reminder that once Trump exits the political stage, American politics will go back to being a lot more civil, and that the spirit represented by John McCain (and by numerous other very decent politicians, Republican and Democrat) will show itself once again.

Have a good weekend, all! (Z)

Today's Senate Polls

Elon Musk has pumped $190 million into Texas supporting Paxton but it is not helping when there is a huge "candidate quality" problem. There are things money cannot overcome.

State	Democrat	D %	Republican	R %	Start	End	Pollster
Texas	James Talarico	52%	Ken Paxton	48%	Sep 30	Oct 14	Activote

* Denotes incumbent

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