Subscribers can listen to an ad-free version right here… or you can watch on YouTube / Listen (and subscribe) on Apple/ Spotify / iHeart / RSS Feed

**

NOTE: If you enjoy conversations like this one, or just want to hang around with smart, sane people, please consider joining us. As you know, we depend on the kindness of strangers to keep doing this work. And the dogs and I are immensely grateful for your generous support.

But, first let’s catch-up:

• Worser and worser for the GOP: The new Pew Poll finds Trump’s approval down to 30 percent; Democratic voters far more engaged.

  

• The performative brutality is the point: “Pentagon plans public livestream of its first firing squad execution in decades.” In other words, a taxpayer-funded snuff stream.

• Another ICE shooting. This time in NYC: “Man shot and wounded by ICE agents during operation in New York City while in car with 5-year-old.”

• Sadly, Donald Trump once again failed to win a Nobel Prize, despite years of whinging for it.

• This is the kind of sh*t Thom Tillis signed up for when he voted to confirm Todd Blanche: “Justice Department seeks criminal charge for former Trump aide Cassidy Hutchinson”

• Meanwhile, the president tried to stoke a race war against Somalians: “Trump says Minnesotans should fight back against Somali immigrants.”

• And declares a new class of ENEMIES: “Trump: Anyone saying "AI" is "the enemy!"

• Finally, JD offers a revisionist definition of socialism. “I don’t know what the term means anymore,” he went on. “I think in reality what it actually means in the American context is you want to replace American workers with foreigners workers, and you want boys to play in girls’ sports.” WTAF?

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Some highlights of my conversation with David Frum

The US playing Russian Roulette with its debt. And the world knows it.

A new kind of presidential corruption.

When corruption starts at the top.

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Friday

I’m on the road again today (visiting the grandkids). Auggie takes up his position waiting for me to come home.

**

Who, you may have often asked, are these people? How did Donald Trump gather such a wretched hive of scum and villainy around him? The question is only partly rhetorical, but it seems timely, as we read the latest chapter in the saga of Don Jr.’s former girlfriend, who was bundled off as ambassador to Greece after he dumped her.

For Kimberly Guilfoyle, we now learn, the best was definitely yet to come — at least in terms of her spectacular contributions to our Age of Grift. Wrote Dispatch editor Stephen Hayes, “I'm not sure I've read a story over the past decade that better captures the grifter culture of TrumpWorld better than this one. Detail after amazing detail. Jaw-dropping, and yet none of it is really surprising.”

Guilfoyle’s grossness defies quick summary, so I urge you to read the whole Wall Street Journal piece: “‘Honey Please’: Kimberly Guilfoyle Pushed Donor to Wire $100,000 to Her Amex Account” - WSJ

The paper brings the receipts in the form of Kimberly’s text messages in which she cajoled and begged her buddy, MAGA donor Eric Deters, to send her some cash without leaving a paper trail. (Unlike her ex, Kimberly apparently did not have access to generous Putin-linked Russian oligarchs, but shared his ethos.)

Kimberly Guilfoyle was preparing for her congressional hearing to become U.S. ambassador to Greece when she reached out to a Trump donor with an urgent request: She needed $100,000 that she said she owed American Express—in a way that wouldn’t leave a paper trail.

“It won’t show up anywhere if you wire money to American Express,” she wrote on Signal, according to messages reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. “Please.”

The tale becomes sleazier with every paragraph:

For months, Guilfoyle had been chatting with Eric Deters, a former congressional candidate in Kentucky who was seeking her help in getting the attention of the new Trump administration on some personal tax and legal issues—and had promised payments of as much as $1 million if she was successful. As Donald Trump Jr.’s former fiancée, Guilfoyle offered to use her sway, according to Deters and messages reviewed by the Journal. She forwarded Deters the messages she’d sent to the new Internal Revenue Service chief and updated him on her efforts to lobby the Justice Department on his behalf.

But her confirmation was coming up, and she needed her card balance paid down before then, she said.

“Honey please I need you to get this done for me today,” she texted Deters, adding a prayer hands emoji and a PDF with bill payment instructions from American Express. “You could just send it here,” she wrote on July 3, 2025, just days before her July 9 confirmation hearing.

Deters didn’t ultimately make the payment, telling Guilfoyle it would cost him his marriage.

The story details not merely the shakedown, but the (attempted) coverup as well.

Guilfoyle also expressed concern about her dealings with Deters becoming public—and the effect that could have on her ambassador post. She warned Deters repeatedly not to commit talk of money or payments to text. “Eric, I really wish you would stop papering all these things,” she wrote in one exchange.

Happy Thursday.

A note to readers: A quick reminder, you are not the crazy ones. But this is the fight of our lifetimes, and the challenge of our generation.

Right now, fewer than 10 percent of our readers are paid subscribers. That’s okay, because this newsletter — and the podcasts — are free. But if you find what I do is worth something to you, I hope you will consider a subscription.

That comes to about 27 cents a day, less if you subscribe annually, for a daily dose of sanity. And both the dogs and I are immensely grateful for your generous support.

Wagging the dog, again?

“Trump Is Considering a Plan to Strike Iran Before the Midterms” - The Atlantic

If buying votes doesn’t do the trick, how about renewing a war? And pretending that we won?

The White House has asked the Pentagon to develop strike options against Iranian targets that could be exercised ahead of the midterms, according to two administration officials. The planning underscores just how much the president wants to reduce gas prices and demonstrate progress in the conflict before the vote, administration officials told us.

If you are wondering how on earth this would work, you are not alone.

Any strike campaign would put the roughly 50,000 U.S. troops in the region, as well as Gulf allies, at risk of Iranian retaliation, and further deplete America’s munitions stockpiles. Even some of the president’s most ardent supporters want the U.S. to exit the war in order to halt the rise in inflation. An inconclusive limited strike is likely to have the opposite effect. Crude-oil prices have typically risen when the U.S. has resumed strikes after a pause, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

“Military action has done nothing to drive down oil prices; in fact, it has done the opposite,” Will Walldorf, an international-affairs professor at Wake Forest University and a senior fellow at the think tank Defense Priorities, told us. “And if this is an attempt to rally the Republican vote, how does that make any sense given how unpopular this war is?”

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Today’s Podcast

We’re less than a month until the midterms, so this seems like a good day to fly solo, because I have some opinions: About the Madness of King Donald; Trump’s taxpayer funded self-fluffing; his endless gaslighting; the danger of hopium bubbles; Nazis; Natalie Harp; the impact of double-haters on the midterms; the use of the word “bullshit; and the incredible lightness of Thom Tillis.

Plus: the three most important questions we should be asking about a Lame Duck Donald Trump:

• What is he capable of doing?

• What can he get away with?

• Who will stop him?

Subscribers can listen to an ad-free version right here… or you can watch on YouTube / Listen (and subscribe) on Apple/ Spotify / iHeart / RSS Feed

**

NOTE: If you enjoy conversations like this one, or just want to hang around with smart, sane people, please consider joining us. As you know, we depend on the kindness of strangers to keep doing this work. And the dogs and I are immensely grateful for your generous support.

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Nota Bene

Mamdani’s time in the barrel… as the left eats its own. “For Mamdani, Oct. 7 Anniversary Sets Off Anger and Bitterness” - The New York Times

It took a turn roughly 12 hours later at a vigil organized by Israeli peace activists in Union Square in Manhattan, where pro-Palestinian demonstrators disrupted the event to jeer the mayor. He appeared ashen and upset as he left, without addressing the crowd, flanked by his security detail as he walked to a waiting S.U.V. at 8:50 p.m….

The mayor, who is known for his broad, effervescent smile, seemed especially stung by the opposition to him expressed by the pro-Palestinian crowd in Union Square, given his consistent support of their cause.

During the vigil, he stared stone-faced, and at times looked crestfallen, as the activists chanted in support of Hamas, called for the deaths of Israeli soldiers and denounced him as a “traitor,” many citing his meetings with President Trump or his efforts to build ties with Jewish leaders.

“Zohran, you coward!” someone yelled from the crowd, which numbered in the hundreds. Others yelled, “Zohran is a sellout!”

And, of course: “Hasan Piker Defends Protesters Slamming Zohran Mamdani.”

**

The Great Trump Escape (Comes a bit late) “Most Republicans in tight midterm races distance themselves from Trump, Reuters review finds” | Reuters

Two-thirds of Republican candidates in competitive US House and Senate races have broken with President Donald Trump on policy or played down ties to him, a Reuters review found, revealing a widespread effort to distance themselves from the president as his unpopularity threatens the party's hold on Congress.

**

Via Michael Anderson: “Vladimir, Donald, Anna Politkovskaya. And war.”

It is amazing to think that we live in a world where the US president has no idea of who Anna Politkovskaya was, does not find it worth acknowledging a Russian attack that killed 32 Ukrainians, and probably still doesn’t grasp why Russia has set Ukraine on fire - but does know the Russian dictator’s birthday. As he was keen to show the US media yesterday…

Yesterday was Putin’s birthday (74). He celebrated by killing Ukrainians across the country. At least 32 civilians were killed, including five children; more than 100 were injured.

The Russians hit a residential area - blocks of flats - in the small town of Pryluky, in the Chernihiv region. At least 22 people were killed, including five children (three of them just one year old).

The US president did not mention this massacre with one word while smiling about his birthday call to the man responsible for the killings. One wonders whether ‘the leader of the free world’ had the guts to mention it to the birthday boy in their call….

Yesterday was also the anniversary of the murder of Anna Politkovskaya. She was gunned down in 2006.

‘Why I dislike Putin?’, Politkovskaya was once asked.

‘His cynicism, racism, endless wars, lies, lines of corpses...’

Politkovskaya was murdered on Putin’s birthday, and amongst Russian journalists the killing has always been interpreted as a macabre ‘birthday present’ to the dictator. And a warning to the rest.

ICYMI: I talked with David Corn about the Trump-Putin bromance, which he documents in his new book: ‘How Russia Won.”

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Friday dogs

Seasons change. But not Auggie’s game.

Plus: the three most important questions we should be asking about a Lame Duck Donald Trump:

• What is he capable of doing?

• What can he get away with?

• Who will stop him?

Subscribers can listen to an ad-free version right here… or you can watch on YouTube / Listen (and subscribe) on Apple/ Spotify / iHeart / RSS Feed

**

NOTE: If you enjoy conversations like this one, or just want to hang around with smart, sane people, please consider joining us. As you know, we depend on the kindness of strangers to keep doing this work. And the dogs and I are immensely grateful for your generous support.

Some excerpts from today’s pod

Taxpayers won’t be getting a refund for Trump’s self=pleasuring PSAs.

**

The other day I wrote about Tucker Carlson’s defenses of Adolph Hitler.

Afterward, I got an email from a reader suggesting that we should simply ignore Tucker Carlson’s new fetish for Nazism. “He wants attention, so let’s not give it to him.” Here’s my response.

Thom Tillis says that the problem with Trump is not the “What” — it’s the “How.” He’s wrong. The brutality is “what” Trump is doing. Mt response:

The three questions we should be asking:

October 7, 2016: “The turning point was that wasn’t.

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Today is the 10th anniversary of the October 7, 2016 release of the Access Hollywood tapes (about which more below). So, this is also a good day to talk about Senator Thom Tillis and his own bizarre form of Trump Derangement Syndrome.

But let’s catch up first:

• No refund for Trump’s self-fluffing: “Trump Does Not Plan to Reimburse Taxpayers for Promotional Ads” - The New York Times.

• It’s Scott Bessent’s turn in the barrel: The WSJ is out with a bombshell report on the dysfunction in his Treasury Dept.: “Inside Bessent’s Treasury: Tension, Turnover and Unmet Economic Goals” - WSJ

• A bad debate night for a doddering Susan Collins. Via Adam Jentleson: “Based on tonight’s debate, Collins seems entombed in the category of senators who are past their sell-by dates but remain certain they have a formula—and then find themselves doddering on a debate stage and then, after election day, wondering why that formula didn’t work anymore.”

• The gaslighting continues. Via Adam Kinzinger: MAGA wants you to think that Trump was “just joking” about nuking Los Angeles and San Diego. “But no American president should ever say what he said, not as a joke and not as a clumsy way of making some other point. And I think everybody knows that in their gut, including a lot of the people who rushed to defend him.”

**

NOTE: Why are we doing this? Because the moment demands it. And the writers on Substack simply can’t stay silent. But only you can decide whether you think it is worth supporting them.

I’m frequently asked: What can we do? How can we fight back? How can we get through this? How can we stay sane?

One answer: Support the voices that are supporting democracy, the rule of law, free speech, and fundamental decency. For most of us there are no salaries. No writer fees. No benefits. For many of these writers, there is no safety net. Just reader support. If a writer spends days crafting an important post that exposes the outrages of the current regime, they may actually make nothing. Zero. Zip. Bupkus. Unless readers step up and subscribe. And if you choose to subscribe to this newsletter, the dogs and I will be very grateful.

Thom Tillis Still Doesn’t Get It

I mentioned yesterday that I was in New York for Stephanie Ruhle’s show, and found myself in the green room with Senator Thom Tillis, who has a new book with the promising title: “How to Lose Friends and Antagonize Presidents.”

We had a cordial conversation, and then I watched his interview with Ruhle. It was, I am sorry to say, cringeworthy, and highly revealing: Because what we saw was a man who — even after all these years — lacks the courage of his remarkably weak convictions.

To his credit, Tillis called out Trump’s festering corruption. Tillis noted that Trump is raking in billions at the same time that ‘people are growing up in a trailer park’.” “Appearances are not good,” he offered.

But it’s not just “appearances,” is it? And there was the rub. But it was only the tip of Tillis’ iceberg of rationalizations, trimmings, and unwillingness to see what is right in front of his eyes.

**

Ruhle was precisely the wrong interlocutor for Tillis to try to bullshit. She opened the conversation by quoting one of the text messages Tillis says he sent to Trump: “I want to help,” Tillis wrote, “but I don’t take this BS from anyone, including you, Mr. President. I care if you fail.”

Ruhle asked him to explain this, “because these are tough words, but at the same time, you voted with him 95 percent of the time.”

Tillis trotted out his canned answer.

With Trump, he said, “the ‘what’ is very seldom the issue. It’s the ‘how’.”

As an example, he cited Trump’s brutal immigration enforcement. “I'm OK with deporting in an orderly fashion, anyone who's here that's illegally present, that's not trying to go through a process to be here legally. But to do it the way [Kristi] Noem did it made us lose an issue that we were winning on.”

But Ruhle interrupted him, “But sir,” she said, “that is the what, not the how.”

“The what is what they’re doing.”

Which is exactly the point: The brutality of Trump’s ICE thuggery is the what. Shooting people in the streets is the what. Separating families; arresting moms at school; detaining US citizens; renditioning migrants to Third World gulags are the what of Trumpism.

Tillis stuck to his spin. Trump’s policy on the border was a “big win,” he said, but it was Kristi Noem who screwed everything up. Time and again, he blamed the staff, not the boss.

Ruhle called him out on it.

“But,” Ruhle interjected, “why are we blaming Kristi Noem? Why are we blaming Pete Hegseth, all whom you voted to confirm? All of this is happening at the President’s direction.”

Ruhle’s question exposed the soft underbelly of Tillis’ critique of Trump. In the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Tillis insisted: “The president has great political instincts.”

But on issues like immigration and affordability, he claimed, it was his advisors who were giving him bad advice, “and making it difficult for the Republican brand.” (He talked a great deal about that “brand,” but we’ll come back to that.)

Inevitably, Ruhle also asked about Tillis’ vote to confirm the nomination of Todd Blanche as Attorney General. Tillis briefly opposed Blanche, only to cave in and vote to confirm. Tillis (who now says he has regrets about voting for Hegseth) doubled down on his support for Blanche, calling him “a solid AG.”

“He’s proven to me to be a professional that I think is right for the role.…”

Back in the green room, I asked one of Tillis’ staffers, WTF was he thinking voting for someone like Blanche? The aide said that Blanche was helpful in quashing the criminal probe into Fed Chair Jerome Powell (which seems de minimus, since there was no there there at all). The aide also argued that if Blanche had not been confirmed, Trump would have appointed someone even worse, like the thoroughly deplorable MAGA enforcer, Ed Martin.

But this was weak sauce, because Tillis could then have voted against Martin as well. That’s his job.

Ruhle also challenged Tillis on his vote for Blanche, noting that Tillis “held up his confirmation because you were worried about this anti-weaponization fund and you secured some sort of agreement that it wasn’t going to move forward with it. It kind of feels like they’re looking —.”

“Nah, that’s just a liberal narrative — it is dead,” Tillis interrupted.

“You know what? You’re not going to say that here: ‘That’s a liberal narrative,’” Ruhle repeated.

“No, I’m not talking about you,” the GOP lawmaker backpedaled. “I’ve heard it back home. I heard it from my colleagues on Judiciary.”

**

Perhaps you are detecting a pattern here. Even when Tillis was outspoken about Trump’s ethical swamp, he cast it not in terms of the damage to the rule of law, but rather how it was hurting the Republican brand.

He was also unwilling to say flatly that Trump’s self-dealing was illegal, saying that “remains to be seen.” Instead, he called it “a bad look.”

“And I think that’s one of the reasons why we have political headwinds. The big issue I have is with Don Jr. Look, I realize even people worth $300 or $400 million can have liquidity problems, but you’d have thought he’d have figured out another way other than letting a Russian oligarch, who has literally been on a mission with Vladimir Putin to Beijing, fund a wedding. Doesn’t make sense,

Again, is it illegal? I don’t know, but appearances, it’s the last thing we need. This is about the Republican brand.

Ruhle followed up, asking Tillis whether the White House was for sale. “Why would a Russian oligarch want to pay for Don Jr.’s wedding unless he was getting serious political favors?”

Tillis agreed that those are “legitimate questions.”

“They should be answered. My point in writing the book, and my point in talking on these shows, is that I care about the Republican brand.”

So, it is not the dishonesty that bothers Tillis, but rather the branding problem. It’s not the thuggery of ICE or the attacks on the rule of law — it’s the damage to the GOP brand. (FFS.) Tillis explains he is speaking out and writing the book to help Republicans win next month and keep control of the Senate. (In the green room, he told me that he thinks the House GOP majority is toast but put GOP chances of holding the Senate at 60%.)

**

Later in the day, he went around and around with MS NOW’s Luke Russert about his vote to confirm RFK, Jr. despite Kennedy’s position on vaccines. It did not go well.

Russert grew so frustrated he decided to try to abandon the topic altogether.

“Okay, I’m done. I’m sorry. You’re talking in circles and it makes absolutely no sense. So I’m good,” he said.

Exit take: In the end, Tillis gives naivete a bad name. But he also provides a window into what has happened to the GOP, which has surrendered their morals, rationalized Trump’s increasingly erratic and bizarre behavior, and abandoned the rule of law. Even at this late date, Tillis — whose political career is thoroughly and comprehensively trashed — is unable to see either who Trump is, or what his party has become.

Sad.

**

You can watch Ruhle’s whole interview with Tillis here:

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Ten Years Ago Today: The Access Hollywood Tape

From the introduction to the paperback edition of “How the Right Lost Its Mind”:

Late on the afternoon of October 7, 2016, I texted an old friend, fellow Wisconsinite Reince Priebus. The Access Hollywood videotape had just been released, showing the GOP presidential nominee describing his approach to seducing and perhaps assaulting women. “You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful—I just start kissing them,” Donald Trump said on the tape. “It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”

In the course of his campaign, Trump had insulted POWs, women, disabled reporters, members of minority groups, and his opponents without derailing his candidacy. But this felt like it might be different, and events were moving quickly.

Trump was due to visit Wisconsin the next day for a rally with Speaker Paul Ryan, their first joint appearance of the campaign. Relations between Trump and Ryan had been fraught, with the speaker accusing his party’s nominee of “textbook racism” while Trump derided the speaker as “our very weak and ineffective leader.” The Wisconsin event was the culmination of Priebus’s peacemaking efforts. Like other members of the GOP mainstream, Priebus had been a Trump skeptic, but as chairman of the Republican National Committee he had embraced Trump’s candidacy with apparent enthusiasm. He was also one of Ryan’s best friends, so the joint event would be a symbol of his efforts to normalize Trump’s candidacy and rally the disparate wings of the GOP behind the erratic billionaire.

But now all of Priebus’s friends and colleagues from Wisconsin would have to stand on stage with their pussy-grabbing nominee. It would be the photo-op from hell, a month before the general election.

Despite our deepening political differences, Reince and I had kept in touch throughout the campaign. At lunch in Milwaukee in September, we had talked about our lives after the election. He wanted to stay on as RNC chair to pick up the pieces before returning to law or perhaps a cable television deal. I told him that I was writing a book; he said we should stay in touch because, unlike Trump’s campaign staffers, he had never signed a nondisclosure agreement.

So that afternoon when the tape was released, I texted Priebus. He wasn’t going to allow Trump to drop a bomb on Wisconsin Republicans, was he?

Priebus responded quickly: “I am the guy trying to fix this!” he texted. “I am in tears over this.”

Within a few hours, Ryan withdrew the invitation to Trump. For a moment, it seemed like a turning point. But it wasn’t, or at least not in the way that I thought it would be. As we later learned, Priebus told Trump he should drop out of the race (for which Trump never forgave him). Across the country Republicans rescinded their endorsements. Ryan announced he would no longer defend Trump.

But one by one, they drifted back. After Trump’s improbable win, Priebus became White House chief of staff. Ryan, who had so often expressed his disgust with Trump’s comments, became his most important ally in Congress. A year after Trump’s election, Ryan declared: “We’re with Trump. That’s a choice we made at the beginning of the year. That’s a choice we made during the campaign; . . . we merged our agendas.”

In retrospect, the Access Hollywood video foreshadowed the degree to which the right was willing to surrender its remaining principles and enable many of Trump’s worst impulses. So it should not have come as a surprise when the GOP stuck with Trump as he became embroiled in a growing series of scandals, fired the FBI director, and tried to obstruct the special counsel’s investigation into his conduct. Nor should it have come as a surprise when evangelical Christian leaders gave the president a pass on reports he had an affair with a porn star and paid her hush money. They were merely reprising the moral compromises they had made during the campaign.

The right’s rolling acquiescence to Trump’s hostile takeover also foreshadowed the metamorphosis of the conservative movement on issues ranging from personal character and public ethics to fiscal conservatism, crony capitalism, free trade, immigration, global leadership, and human rights.

You can read the rest here.

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Wednesday dogs

And now a PSA from the boys.

“I'm actually not a secret Nazi… I'm someone who tries to think clearly about cause and effect.” —Tucker Carlson, moments after he suggested that Britain would have been better off if Hitler had won WWII.

**

Before we wade into the fetid swamp of Tucker Carlson’s mind, let’s catch up for a moment:

• Tom Cotton finds out. “Trump apparently shares Tom Cotton’s phone number in push to make Daylight Saving Time permanent” - POLITICO

• Fraud, waste and abuse. Update: “Kristi Noem’s Agency Gave Her Donor a Lucrative Contract Just Before She Left” - The New York Times

• More Fraud, waste, abuse. “Trump says his super PAC will pay for pro-Trump ads instead of taxpayers.” Yeah, but where’s the refund?

• Trump approval at record low; “Hispanic voters sour on Republicans, Reuters/Ipsos poll finds.”

NOTE: I’m in New York this morning for Stephanie Ruhle’s “Money, Power, Politics” Show, and just spent some time chatting with Senator Thom Tillis in the green room. I was tempted to ask him “WTF were you thinking voting for Todd Blanche, etc.” But I was on my more-or-less-best behavior, and he was quite charming and chatty. Then I watched his on-air interview. I’ll have more thoughts about Tillis tomorrow.

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Tucker Does Hitler

Tucker, of course, is simply asking questions, even as he toys with Holocaust Denial, and defends Adolph Hitler’s invasion of Poland in 1939. But inevitably, this raises the awkward question: Is the former Fox News host going to places where even neo-Nazis have feared to tread? Apparently, he is.

The latest kerfuffle centers on his interview with former Tory minister Jacob Rees-Mogg, in which Tucker suggests that Britain would have been better off losing WWII

Via The Daily Mail:

The former Fox News presenter – who once described Darryl Cooper, a Holocaust denier, as ‘the best and most popular historian in the United States’ – asked Mr Rees-Mogg if the UK had benefited from fighting the Second World War.

He then asked if Britain was ‘a better country than it was’ after winning the war.

Mr Rees-Mogg replied that the Second World War represented ‘the classic good versus evil’ war and said that ‘we did the right thing’.

He said Britain was a better country ‘to have defeated Hitler’ and that ‘otherwise we’d be speaking German’.

Mr Carlson then said that there are a ‘lot of people’ who are unable to speak English in Britain, arguing it would ‘at least be nice’ to have a ‘European language’ spoken in the UK if Germany had won the war.

Mr Rees-Mogg, who served as a Conservative MP from 2010 to 2024, replied: ‘I see no advantage of speaking German over any other language. We want to speak English. [Winning the war] benefited us... because eventually Germany would have invaded us.’…

Responding to the commentator’s remarks on social media, Republican senator Ted Cruz said: ‘Yes, Tucker, the UK is better off for winning WWII.

This, I would suggest, is a widely held opinion. But Tucker is anxious to explain his defense of Hitler’s actions, including his invasion of Poland in 1939.

“Well, Hitler said that 15% was once Germany and it was given to Poland at the Treaty of Versailles. That was German territory with Germans in it. That was his case. And by the way, that was true.”

Carlson insisted that he was not defending Hitler, but said the Nazi invasion should not be portrayed as an inexplicable act of aggression divorced from Germany’s territorial grievances after World War I…

“I’m just saying the idea that Hitler just randomly rolled into Poland is a lie and everyone believes it because they know nothing about the actual facts. But the truth is, Germany had big pieces of it carved off, including part of Prussia and it was given to this other country. It infuriated the Germans. Maybe it shouldn’t have, but it did. And that was the justification for it.”

He then argued that none of those disputes justified Britain entering the war.

“The U.K. had nothing to do with it at all,” Carlson said.

Rees-Mogg countered that Britain had commitments to its allies, but Carlson maintained that entering the war had ultimately devastated Britain.

“They destroyed their empire and their country fighting this war that they still pretend was a good idea, but it wasn’t,” Carlson said.

Rees-Mogg strongly rejected that assessment.

“It was fundamental. It was the classic good-versus-evil,” he said.

This, I believe, is also a widely held opinion, even on the Right. At least for the moment. But Tucker is clearly interested in (1) revisionist history, (2) the rehabilitation of Hitler’s reputation, and (3) building his own edgy right-wing brand. That third agenda item is not new, and Tucker has been pushing the limits of conspiracism, racism, and antisemitism for some time, delighting in the attention it continues to bring him.

Even so, the Hitler stuff seems a newish frontier, but one that Tucker clearly relishes.

The debate later became even sharper when Carlson argued that Hitler had repeatedly indicated that he did not want a war with Britain. Rees-Mogg cautioned Carlson against taking Hitler’s declarations at face value, noting the Nazi dictator’s record of making assurances and then violating them.

“You seem to be putting more trust in Hitler than I would,” Rees-Mogg told him. “He said all sorts of things.”

Rees-Mogg then directly confronted Carlson over the direction of his argument.

“I’m very surprised you’re verging on defending Hitler. I think this is not really what you want to be doing,” he said.

Carlson answered sarcastically before explicitly rejecting the accusation.

“Yeah, I guess I’m just a secret Nazi,” he said. “I’m actually not a secret Nazi. And hardly a public Nazi. I’m just someone who tries to think clearly about cause and effect.”

“I’m reassured,” Rees-Mogg replied.

I, however, am not reassured. Several questions come to mind: Why here? Why now? Why Hitler? Several answers also come to the mind:

• (1) Historical revisionism is very much a thing on the Right these days (See Richard Nixon), so Tucker figures, “Why not Adolph” too?

• (2) Tucker calculates that there is a market out there among antisemitic/Nazi-curious youth for Hitler-stanning, and thinks this might grow his numbers and boost his chances in the 2028 GOP primaries.

• (3) He is having a breakdown of sorts up there in the woods, or…

• (4) He is actually becoming a not-so-secret Nazi.

Note: We’ve been calling out folks like Tucker Carlson for years — even as his friends have made excuses for him. But none of this is normal and we can’t be numb to it. Please consider joining us.

A New GOP Trump Critic?

We will, as usual, restrain our irrational exuberance for the time being. But this definitely bears watching: Via Punchbowl News: “John Curtis steps into Trump critic void.”

[A] new conservative voice is stepping into that void, believing he can deliver hard truths in his own way.

Sen. John Curtis, the freshman Republican from Utah, made his first big public move by calling out the president’s son over a ProPublica report that a Russian oligarch paid for some of his wedding-related expenses. Curtis asked the Senate Judiciary Committee to subpoena Donald Trump Jr. as part of a broad investigation into the business dealings of presidential family members, aimed at determining whether new rules are necessary. Curtis suggested subpoenaing Hunter Biden, as well.

“Watching what was happening in the Trump administration, it’s really hard to draw a line and say, ‘Okay, you’ve crossed it,’” Curtis told us during an interview in his Capitol hideaway. Curtis believes a number of Republican senators found situations involving Trump “uncomfortable” or “unclear.”

Trump Jr.’s wedding was the “alarm bell” for Curtis that a line had been crossed.

Curtis said he’s mostly received thanks, both from his Senate colleagues and people back home. Notably, he hasn’t heard from Trump.

“It is interesting the White House has not responded,” Curtis said. “I don’t assume for a minute that means they won’t… If I have angered [Trump], it’s actually better to me if he speaks out because it gets it out in the open instead of having it fester there.”

Trump’s backlash has helped end multiple Senate careers, so it remains to be seen whether Curtis emerges unscathed. His confidence comes partly from how he got here: in 2024, Curtis won a four-way primary to succeed former Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) without a runoff, handily defeating the candidate Trump endorsed.

That win “gives me a lot of freedom,” Curtis said.

Curtis x Trump. The 66-year-old Curtis said his goal is to tell Trump what he sees in the hopes it helps him succeed. The former Provo, Utah, mayor compared the type of role he wants to play to a board of directors: not anti-Trump, but not a guaranteed yes vote either.

“I do think we have worked very hard to have a relationship where President Trump doesn’t feel like it’s my job to wake up and just be obnoxious — but rather to be supportive, but also not just an automatic rubber stamp,” Curtis said.

One area where Curtis wishes he’d spoken up sooner is Trump’s early nominees. Curtis said he saw warning signs with some Cabinet officials who have since been ousted, which includes former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and former Attorney General Pam Bondi. Tulsi Gabbard has also left her post as DNI.

Well, yes, but…

Despite intense deliberations over some votes, Curtis has backed every Trump nominee for a Cabinet-level job this term. He did single-handedly block a controversial State Department pick over antisemitism allegations, but it would be a significant escalation if Curtis became a true swing vote on nominations.

Exit take: We’ll see. But, as with folks like Thom Tillis, Bill Cassidy, and John Cornyn, it is the votes — not the furrowed brows or sharply worded interviews — that count.

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Nota Bene

I’m quoted (accurately) near the end of this piece by Peter Savodnik : “The Democratic Party’s Crooked Kingmakers: The hosts of ‘Pod Save America’ have built a media juggernaut—and are using it to channel a new progressive rage.”

None of this comes as a surprise to a subset of Never Trump Republicans who watched their own party jettison its values a decade ago.

The fragmentation of any coherent Democratic discourse, the swirling furies, the antisemitism—“it reminds me of MAGA back in 2016,” Charlie Sykes, the former talk-show radio host in Milwaukee, told me. “The center of gravity in the Republican Party moved to the entertainment wing, just as the center of gravity in the Democratic Party has moved to the podcaster-influencer wing.”

In 2018, Sykes, with Sarah Longwell and former Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol, co-founded the news site The Bulwark. They wanted a place for principled conservatives, and the hope was to counter the new populism and restore some guardrails around right-wing discourse. As Sykes noted in a December 2016 New York Times op-ed, “For years, we ignored the birthers, the racists, the truthers, and other conspiracy theorists.” That had left his party vulnerable. “We destroyed our own immunity to fake news, while empowering the worst and most reckless voices on the right.”

Now, he sounded haunted by the what-ifs.

When I asked him whether the Pod Bros had a responsibility to curb the more extreme elements in their party, Sykes paused, and then he said: “What would have happened, in September of 2015, if Rush Limbaugh had come on the air and said, ‘Look guys, I know a lot of you love Trump, but Trump is not a conservative.’ Would history have been any different? We, of course, can’t possibly know what would have happened.”

He added: “What’s happening now is people who know better are afraid to be exiled from their party. What we need is people who have an internal moral gyroscope.” He was talking about the Democrats, but really, he was talking about both parties.

Then, he said: “It’s really difficult to stand against the winds of whatever direction the winds are taking you.”

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Today’s Podcast

On today’s podcast, I chat with David Corn, whose new book — “How Russia Won” — which chronicles the long-standing and bizarre influence bromance between Donalkd Trump and his BFF, Vladimir Putin.

Subscribers can listen to an ad-free version right here… or you can watch on YouTube / Listen (and subscribe) on Apple/ Spotify / iHeart / RSS Feed

**

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Tuesday dogs

The boys are waiting for me to come home.

Subscribers can listen to an ad-free version right here… or you can watch on YouTube / Listen (and subscribe) on Apple/ Spotify / iHeart / RSS Feed

**

NOTE: If you enjoy conversations like this one, or just want to hang around with smart, sane people, please consider joining us. As you know, we depend on the kindness of strangers to keep doing this work. And the dogs and I are immensely grateful for your generous support.

Some highlights of my conversation with David Corn

The most successful covert operation in modern history.

Why Trump wants Putin’s friendship.

How Trump shut down warnings about Putin.

Trump’s Red Carpet welcome for Putin.

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"We’re gonna’ win big and we’re gonna shove it up their ass….They are a bunch of dumb son of a bitches.” — Donald J. Trump, October 3, 2026

Abraham Lincoln, he is not. But this is known.

At his weekend speech at a high school gym in Ohio — a state he won by 11 points two years ago — Trump continued to pimp for massive new data centers despite the fact that Ohio residents overwhelmingly oppose them; and dropped a threat to ignore the state if it elected a Democratic governor.1 Not exactly a winning message, but what do I know?

There was more, because there always is. Trump also shared his insights into vegans — which he pronounced as “vay -gans.”

“When I see that Talafreako in Texas. So he's been a vaygan all his life. He's a vaygan vaygan, I didn't even know what the hell a veygan was. A veygan is vegetables. A vaygan is eating a piece of lettuce all day long."

Are you not entertained?

James Talarico is, of course, neither a vegan, nor a vay-gan. But Ken Paxton is a cretin, liar, and — whatever his diet — a comprehensively corrupt slimeball. And thus, very much Trump’s Man. (See: For Trump, Ken Paxton Is the Whole Package.”)

But I digress.

Because the point is that this is evidently the president’s closing argument in the homestretch of the midterm campaign. Ballrooms, arches, bribes, bizarrely blasphemous ads, and crude bullshit. Republicans who have clasped him to their bosoms lo, these many years, are undoubtedly reassured that they are, indeed, led by a Real Man of Political Genius.

Meanwhile, things are really going well in This Best of All Trump Golden Age Wars: “Hormuz Gridlock Risks Global Food Crisis, International Chamber of Commerce Chief Says” - WSJ

Happy Monday.

NOTE: There’s less than a month to go before the midterms, but it’s going to take more than one election to dig out the rot. We don’t deal in hopium here, but we can offer straight, sober, doses of sanity. And we hope to be in this for the long haul. So, please consider joining us.

The White Nationalists Come for “The Asians”

It’s easy to say, “of course,” but it’s also important to note that this is a new front in the culture war — and that itis coming from “respected” voices in the MAGA movement.

My fellow cheesehead, James Wigderson first called my attention to the phenomenon, when he wrote: “Homogeneous Is the New Long Word for White, whe he quoted white nationalist Jonathan Keeperman explaining “The Indian Question” to MAGA race-warrior Christopher Rufo on his podcast.

“There are a lot of people for whom, and I think, it is like historically the case, the preference, to live in a homogeneous society. And they just, look, they couldn’t tell you why. There’s not like some rational reason necessarily for it. They just like it better, in the way that certain people like certain kinds of foods better. And they don’t owe a reasoned explanation for why they prefer a slice of pizza to a burrito or something.”

“And there you have it,” noted Wigderson. “Some people just want to keep America white, and it’s like choosing a pizza over a burrito. We should just accept it and give in to that desire. Let America be as racist as it wants to be. They’ll just call it choosing a “homogeneous society.”

The context of their conversation was this baldly racist post by Texas GOP candidate, Bo French, who was upset that so many Asian students were Texas Longhorn fans, or something. (French is the GOP nominee for state Railroad Commissioner, which is actually pretty important job.)

French’s post was so vile that it was quickly denounced by Senator John Cornyn and Karl Rove, who announced that he would be voting for the Democrat in the race for railroad Commissioner. Rove, indeed, is shocked to find that his party is being over-run by bigots. “My party is being infiltrated by people like Bo French,” Rove said. “Nick Fuentes goes to Dallas and meets with a bunch of Republican leaders. This guy is a Nazi. We’ve got all these people getting on their little podcasts and so forth, saying: ‘We’re just asking questions about the Jews.’”

But Keeperman and Rufo had a very different take. Via TPM: “Chris Rufo — Known For ‘DEI’ and ‘CRT’ Panics — Tries to Make ‘the Indian Question’ a Thing.”

Keeperman and Rufo’s “Indian Question” episode amounts to an hour-long defense of French’s post. Keeperman offered a tortured tautology about why the south Asian college kids cheering a comeback victory for the Longhorns — some of whom were wearing cowboy hats and throwing up the “Hook ‘em Horns” hand sign — were not properly “assimilated” into American culture: because he said so.

“Successful assimilation is precisely that you wouldn’t notice it, we wouldn’t have anything to talk about,” he said. “The mere fact of us being able to notice that, no, this is not an assimilated group, this is just a bunch of Indians at the game, is itself sort of definitionally the case that they’re not yet assimilated.”

Keeperman then explained that many white Americans, like French, simply have “this fundamental intuition” and a “preference” for “homogeneity” and “they wanna fight to preserve that” as the U.S. inches towards becoming a “majority-minority country.”

“And Indians are like this conspicuous case,” he said, “where they see a difference and they go, ‘I just don’t like that.’ And it’s not because they don’t like Indians or anything like that. Now it may be expressed in, like, vulgar, lurid bigotry of whatever kind, but it also is just a case that they prefer homogeneity.”

Keeperman said French’s tweet might have been crude, but expressed something he and other white Americans have long been too scared to express: that they want to live around other white people….

Rufo nods along with all of Keeperman’s arguments. When Keeperman expresses disgust for the phrase “diversity is our strength,” often used by liberals, Rufo excitedly agrees, saying it “sounds like a slogan from [George Orwell’s novel] ‘1984.’”

It is notable that Rufo has decided to partner so closely with Keeperman, who the Guardian’s Jason Wilson has described as a “key player and influential tastemaker in a burgeoning proto-fascist movement.” He is indeed an extreme figure, heading up Passage Press, a publisher that Wilson noted reprints “out-of-print or public-domain books by historical fascist and reactionary writers,” including works “by radical German nationalist and militarist Ernst Jünger” and “Peter Kemp, who fought as a volunteer in Francisco Franco’s army during the Spanish civil war.”

Exit take: Same old song. New packaging. New target.

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MAGA Comes for Canada

This is a huge story north of the border. “How some Alberta separatists are courting U.S. support for independence”– Global News Canada

A Globe and Mail investigation has found that Republican political operatives were on the ground in Alberta this year to assist the separatist campaign in its bid to leave Canada, while harbouring their own aspirations for the province to secede.

The Globe also found that when Alberta separatist leaders went to Washington to meet with the U.S. State Department, they offered up key assets from the province’s resource portfolio, including access to fresh water and royalties on crude oil, in exchange for help transitioning to independence.

Through interviews with The Globe on both sides of the border, people involved in politics, the corporate sector and Alberta’s pursuit of separatism have described persistent efforts by figures in the U.S. administration and conservative political establishment to support groups seeking American expansionism and independence for Alberta.

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Trump Invites Putin to the G20

Make sure you read Jay Nordlinger:

What manner of man, what manner of leader, are we inviting to Florida? Here is a news report from a couple of days ago: “Russian missile and drone strikes killed at least four people, including a child, in Kyiv and the surrounding region overnight …”

Another report says, “A Russian drone strike on the National Academy of Sciences in Kyiv killed at least two people on Monday.”

There is footage, if you can bear it, of Russian forces dropping bombs on a man walking his dogs.

It’s important to know some names and faces, lest the dead, the murdered, be mere abstractions. A Ukrainian soldier, Danylo Ivzhenko, posted a tribute to his wife, Maria: “Today, a Russian attack on a business center killed the most important person in my life. … Last year, we took out a mortgage and planned to have a baby this winter.”

In another attack, a 2-year-old boy named Kyrylo was killed. So were his grandmother, both grandfathers, and other relatives. His mother survived, severely wounded.

Russian forces have kidnapped thousands of Ukrainian children, and now these children, older, are being forced to fight in the Russian army against Ukraine.

Then there is starvation—the deliberate starvation of Ukrainians. One headline reads, “ ‘Hell on earth’: last residents eat weeds to survive in Russian-occupied Oleshky.” Anne Applebaum commented, “Another mass famine, carried out by another cruel regime.”

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Meanwhile, in Wisconsin

Craig Gilbert in The Milwaukee Journa-Sentinel: “Anti-Trump voters may hold the key to Wisconsin's governor race”

When you’re in the president’s party, winning the support of voters who disapprove of the president is a challenge. In eight of the last nine races for governor in Wisconsin, the candidate from the president’s party could not overcome that hurdle and went on to lose the election.

There is one more challenge for Tiffany: not only is Trump’s disapproval higher than previous presidents, but it is more intensely felt.

In the latest Marquette poll, 53% of likely voters not only disapprove of Trump but “strongly” disapprove. That is 9 points higher than Biden’s “strong” disapproval in 2022 and Trump’s “strong” disapproval in 2018, according to exit polls, and 6 points higher if you compare it to Marquette’s pre-election surveys.

These “strong“ disapprovers are much harder for the president’s party to win for governor or Senate than “somewhat” disapprovers, polling shows.

If they make up a majority of Wisconsin voters in November, then Tiffany will need the votes of at least a small slice of people who are not just anti-Trump but very anti-Trump.

Exit take: Good luck with that.

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Monday dogs

Our friend Leo is pretty jazzed about the Brewers’ electrifying post-season run.

The most shocking thing about this shocking story is that no one is especially shocked: “U.S.-Russia Talks on Ukraine Now Involve an Oil Deal Tied to Trump Allies” - The New York Times

The Trump administration’s talks with Russia about ending the war in Ukraine have expanded to include a multibillion-dollar oil deal that would benefit Middle Eastern business executives with ties to the two main U.S. negotiators, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.

As Anne Applebaum observes, the story has a “a kind of ‘greatest hits’ feel to it: All the old names are back in the news.” Not just Kushner and Witkoff, but also a rogue’s gallery of grifters, oligarchs, and global miscreants.1

There are, she notes, two major scandals here. The first is that the Trump-Kushner-Witkoff Gang has designed the deal to favor Trump’s friends in the Middle East over other American business groups.”

The second scandal “helps explain a bigger mystery.”

Five years into their failed invasion, the Russians, unable to move forward on the front line, are stepping up their aggressive bombing campaign, hitting schools, hospitals and bridges in Kyiv and other cities, along with power plants and factories. Why? Because Putin believes he can.

The Russian president has reason to believe that he has bought off Trump and his envoys with flattery, fake talk of “peace” and business deals. He repeatedly stops Americans from helping Ukraine.

Even if no money ever changes hands and no deal is completed, the fact that Kushner, Witkoff and others around Trump discuss them gives Putin the conviction that he can continue to commit war crimes, kill civilians and never pay a price.

America and America’s allies are all badly damaged by this policy, which is a disaster for Ukraine, for European security, for America’s reputation, for the rule of law around the world and ultimately for American security and prosperity too. The only beneficiaries are Kushner and Witkoff’s Middle Eastern partners and some businessmen close to the president.

**

Fraud waste and abuse update: “Kristi Noem’s Agency Gave Her Donor a Lucrative Contract Just Before She Left.”

In the last hours of Kristi Noem’s tenure as the homeland security secretary, her agency delivered a windfall to one of her political donors by buying five airplanes from the man’s firm at a substantial markup, documents show.

The Department of Homeland Security agreed to pay the donor’s firm $108 million for a Boeing 737 airliner that had been converted into a massive private jet, complete with a stand-up bar, two bedrooms, marble showers and a table covered in manta ray skin.

And, right on cue, MAGA has decided this is a good moment to Make Corruption Great Again by rewriting the history of Watergate and exonerating Richard Nixon: “Rehabilitating the Reputation of Evil” - by James Wigderson

We probably should have seen the Nixon rehabilitation tour coming. The answer to the question, can you make a Wisconsin senator worse than Joe McCarthy, Senator Ron Johnson said in 2024, “The first coup is you take out Kennedy. The second coup, you take out Nixon. Then you take out Trump. You know, to what extent is the federal government involved in these things?”

Perhaps you can connect the dots. Because that’s what we try to do every day here. No billionaires. No oligarchs. No corporate media. No Dark Money PACS. No t-shirts. Just straight, sober, sane, occasionally snarky commentary. And dogs.

A week of commentary

Sunday

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Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Saturday

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Sunday dogs

Eli and Auggie enjoying a beautiful October morning.

• Turning Texas blue? Really? New Times/Siena poll:

  According to the latest New York Times/Siena University poll of the race for U.S. Senate, James Talarico, a 37-year-old state legislator seen by national Democrats as one of the breakout stars of this cycle, is ahead of his Republican rival, Ken Paxton, the state’s scandal-plagued attorney general, by six points. The poll was conducted from Sept. 21 to Sept. 30. A survey from mid-September, the ReconMR/Siena Research Institute poll, also showed the Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Gina Hinojosa, four points ahead of the three-term G.O.P. incumbent, Greg Abbott, the most dominant political figure in Texas.

  Cue the fluttering heartbeats. Cue, as well, the eye-rolls.

• But, wait, there’s more: Check out Alaska, Ohio, Iowa, Kansas too:

  

• Republicans in retreat. “Top GOP groups retreat from North Carolina Senate race as hopes fade” - POLITICO

• Meanwhile: “A gut punch in Ohio: Nearly 1,400 laid off at truck factory just days before Trump rally.”

• Tax dollars for Nork-style propaganda. “Trump Directed Use of Taxpayer Money for Ads Praising His Presidency” - The New York Times

• BONUS: Bucks for Blasphemy. “‘God made Trump’ ad and at least 12 others are part of controversial taxpayer-funded ad campaign.”

  One of the spots, a three-minute-long ad titled “God Made Trump,” was broadcast during Republicans’ midterm convention in Dallas. In it, Trump is presented as a messianic figure with a riff on Paul Harvey’s “God Made a Farmer.” It was created by Dilley Meme Team, according to NPR, and began going viral earlier this year.

  “I need somebody with arms strong enough to rustle the deep state, and yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild. Somebody to ruffle the feathers,” the voiceover says, “So God made Trump.”

In the latest episode of To the Contrary, Jonathan Rauch and I start by diving into the bizarre antics of SecDef Pete Hegseth, who is transforming the Pentagon into a stage for his peculiar brand of Christian nationalism.

I describe his recent speech as “Music man meets Mussolini,” while Rauch cautions against dismissing Hegseth too easily.

We also discuss the Pro-Death Pro-Lifers of MAGA; and the debate over AI — and whether our new Superintelligent Overlords can be taught to be moral. I argue that we are philosophically ill-equipped to handle the challenges of AI. Is AI conscious? Does it have a soul? Can it become human? What does it mean to be human?

And, of course, we talk about the epic GOP faceplant on Jack Smith.

Subscribers can listen to an ad-free version right here… or you can watch on YouTube / Listen (and subscribe) on Apple/ Spotify / iHeart / RSS Feed

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NOTE: If you enjoy conversations like this one, or just want to hang around with smart, sane people, please consider joining us. As you know, we depend on the kindness of strangers to keep doing this work. And the dogs and I are immensely grateful for your generous support.

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ICYMI

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Some highlights of my conversation with Jonathan Rauch

Pete Hegseth: The Music Man Meets Mussolini

Me: Hegseth is deeply unserious. Rauch: Don’t be so hasty: he’s actually quite serious.

The GOP attack on jack Smith was a Masterclass in political malpractice.

The cognitive dissonance of the Pro-Death Pro-Lifers of MAGA.

We aren’t prepared to handle the Big Questions about AI.

Donald Trump is talking to chatbots.

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Saturday morning dogs

Flashback to a Saturday buried in dogs.

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ICYMI: Pete Hegseth had some Deep Thoughts this week about wimps, radicals, media traitors, and woke generals. As the uniformed brass sat mutely (wondering silently WTAF?), Hegseth declared:

"It's worth saying again, so that the fake news understands it. We are no longer the 'woke' department, or the 'weak' department. Simple translation of that? No fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdos.

No wimps, no radicals. Just warriors. Just tough, ready, committed troops….

Following his master’s lead, Hegseth also lashed out at the media, which he compared unfavorably to the Iranians who have been beating his ass. The American press, Hegseth said, “intentionally smears the troops and the historic mission that they are undertaking,” which he declared was “fundamentally anti-American. It’s sick. It’s a national betrayal. It’s treason.”

In a moment of radical self-parody, he proclaimed: “The ideological clowns are out. The patriotic cowboys are in—with testosterone testing on top.”

And then — having announced that he was firing 20 percent of the nation’s generals and admirals — he introduced something called Project Meridian, a project to study the "future of warfare" headed by Elon Musk, Newt Gingrich, and a guy named Palmer Luckey. I mean, what could possibly go wrong handing the keys to the future of our national security to a ketamine-soaked billionaire, an ideological clown from the 1990s, and a third guy who will shortly be questioning his life choices.

Happy Friday.

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Manifestly Unfit

As Tom Nichols writes in The Atlantic, “Hegseth’s speech proved, yet again, that he is manifestly unfit for his job.”

America can endure a bloated Pentagon with some generals in make-work jobs. It can stand to trim the waste in expensive programs and root out incompetent bureaucrats. What a democracy cannot—and should not—tolerate is a secretary of defense who trucks in propaganda and wants the people who serve in America’s military to be the armed instrument of his own resentments and biases.

So, this is a good moment to remind you that the potted plants of the lame duck Congresss will have an opportunity to do something about that — if only in a symbolic way.

You may recall that as the Mike Johnson-led House staggered toward oblivion last month, GOP Rep. Thomas Massie introduced eight articles of impeachment against Hegseth.1

"By engaging in hostilities in Iran for more than 90 days without congressional authorization, Secretary Hegseth is breaking the law and must be held accountable.”

"Secretary Hegseth's constitutional violations extend beyond the illegal war in Iran. He is abusing the power of his office to ignore congressional war powers resolutions, to kidnap foreign leaders, and to intimidate critics of the Trump administration by retaliating against them for exercising free speech. If we are to remain true to our oath to 'support and defend the Constitution of the United States,' Congress must not turn a blind eye to Secretary Hegseth's unconstitutional and illegal actions."

Because Massie’s impeachment resolution is “privileged,” his motion forces the House to vote on it. Speaker Johnson was so fearful of the outcome that he shut down the House and left town. Johnson can run, but he cannot hide. After the election Congress will return, and critics will not have to wait until January to impeach Hegseth.

FLASHBACK: A clown with a flamethrower: “Hegseth wrote of US military taking sides in ‘civil war” — the Guardian

In one of his five published books he wrote that in the event of a Democratic election victory in the US there would be a “national divorce” in which “The military and police … will be forced to make a choice” and “Yes, there will be some form of civil war.”

Hegseth’s 2020 book exhorts conservatives to undertake “an AMERICAN CRUSADE”, to “mock, humiliate, intimidate, and crush our leftist opponents”, to “attack first” in response to a left he identifies with “sedition”, and he writes that the book “lays out the strategy we must employ in order to defeat America’s internal enemies”.

Exit take: We’ve been warned.

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The Most Corrupt Dinner in the World…

…with a surprisingly svelte Donald J. Trump. Via the Washington Sun:

In a new page on its website, GetTrumpMemes.com, the crypto firm promises invitations to “an evening with 3 Legends and President Donald J. Trump” for the 185 largest holders of the “Trump Coin.” (The number of “legends” promised dropped from four to three on Wednesday.) The top 29 purchasers will be invited to an additional “VIP Reception with YOUR FAVORITE PRESIDENT,” while the four biggest will also receive an 18-karat Trump-branded gold watch.

The winners will be chosen based on a formula that seems designed in part to increase sales of $TRUMP in the next two months.

The competition, which began Wednesday, represents a new opportunity to personally enrich the president in what good-government experts have deemed an unprecedented conflict of interest.

As the Sun’s Jeff Stein notes:

“Buying $1M (or less!) worth of $TRUMP coin should get you in Nov 22.
Trump has pocketed $635 million.
Investors down +$4 billion on Trump crypto.

BONUS: Speaking of corruption: “Trump ads use money for border security and slain officers' memorials” - The Washington Post

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Trump and the Chatbots

Because I am not a sadist, I won’t urge you to read the transcript of Trump’s Interview with TIME magazine. And, in any case, Matt Labash has done it, so the rest of us do not have to slog through it.

I just forced myself through all 40 pages (or maybe it just felt like it) of the dadaist wordloaf that was the TIME magazine interview with Trump. In which he exhibited all his usual tics: bitching, complaining, whining of unfair coverage, lying, bragging about things he hasn’t done, etc, ad nauseam. There’s no point in recapping. You’ve heard it all before. A thousand times, if not ten thousand.

But it strikes me that there’s one thing I’ve never heard in the eleven years that Trump’s been inflicting himself on us each and every day. And that is: I’ve never once heard him say, “How can I be of service to you, the American people?” Because he doesn’t think he was elected to serve us. He thinks we should count ourselves lucky to serve him.

But there is one rather revealing (and deeply disturbing) tidbit buried in the offal: Trump is talking to Chatbots about matters of war and peace.

Since returning to office, Trump has marveled at AI’s capabilities. He is increasingly in thrall to the tech executives courting him.

In December 2025, Elon Musk returned to the Oval Office for a clandestine meeting. Trump spent hours asking Grok, Musk’s AI chatbot, questions about his presidency and legacy, according to an official present.

At the time, Trump was ordering missile strikes against Venezuelan boats he alleged were smuggling drugs into the U.S. He asked Grok how Venezuelans would react if the U.S. captured Maduro.

According to the official present, the chatbot responded that Maduro was a repressive and deeply unpopular dictator and that many Venezuelans would likely celebrate his downfall. After Trump ordered the mission to seize Maduro, the following month, celebrations broke out in the streets. Trump, according to officials, came away thinking Grok was ingenious.

**

It’s not hard to connect the dots here. Via Puck:

An empty A.I. accord: No wonder Dario Amodei looked so uncomfortable at Trump’s A.I. summit this week. The one-page White House Accord on Super Intelligence, which the president hailed as “morally binding,” opens with a clear statement of what it hopes to accomplish: nothing.

“We believe every company is responsible for developing its own technology safely and in a way that builds trust with customers and the public,” the document reads. Attached is a page with just six signatures: Amodei, Greg Brockman, Elon Musk, Jensen Huang, Sundar Pichai, and Mark Zuckerberg, who reportedly came up with the idea for the document during a conversation with Speaker Mike Johnson last week.

Not surprisingly, the entirely toothless, voluntary declaration of principles neatly aligns with the policy framework that Johnson has been pushing: self-regulation.

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Meanwhile, in Wisconsin

The state’s sleaziest politician gets a “cease and desist” order for his sleazy ad.

Republican Rep. Derrick Van Orden received a cease-and-desist letter Wednesday from attorneys representing Rebecca Cooke, his Democratic challenger for Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District, over the use of AI deepfake videos against his opponent.

The letter references a deepfake video Van Orden posted to X on Aug. 4 purporting to show Cooke on the campaign trail with former President Joe Biden stating that she intends “to take advantage of as much corruption as possible and give every illegal alien free health care.”

“You are airing this false content to attempt to fool the voters of Wisconsin into believing she said something she did not to harm her reputation for your own political gain,” Ben Stafford of Elias Law Group wrote in the letter on behalf of Cooke’s campaign.

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Friday dogs

Zok enjoying an early Fall morning in Angouleme.

As you know, I worry about irrational exuberance, but I may have picked a bad year to quit chuffing hopium. Because damn. (BTW: Scroll down for a special midterm election offer.)

Let’s catch-up a bit:

• Trump economy approval hits new low, AP-NORC poll finds | AP News

  A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that only 17% of U.S. adults approve of the Republican president’s handling of the cost of living. Just 26% approve of his handling of the economy overall, marking a new low.

• How bad is it? This bad:

  

• GOP Panic Update: “Democratic wave is hitting Republican states hardest, scrambling Senate strategy.” / “Mississippi Democrats dare to wonder whether Senate seat is in reach” - The Washington Post/ “Trump’s red-state tour raises eyebrows and anxiety among Republicans ahead of midterms.”

• GOP Panic Update II: The president is flailing. Jonathan Lemire in The Atlantic — “What Is Trump Doing?”

  • The numbers are bad: Trump’s approval rating dropped to 37 percent in a new Wall Street Journal poll this week, marking the lowest rating in that poll since 1990 for an incumbent president heading into a midterm election. He’s even lower in other polls.

  • The president, the most dominant figure in the GOP in generations, will soon hit the campaign trail for his party—but he is beginning in deep-red states, an eyebrow-raising bit of scheduling that suggests acknowledgment of his weak political standing.

  • More and more Republicans are starting to worry about a blue wave, one that seems certain to secure the House for Democrats but could very well, in an outcome unthinkable even a few months ago, yield a Democratic Senate as well.

  • With barely a month until Election Day, and with early voting already under way in a number of states, Trump and his party are flailing.

• Our above-the-law presidency. “Trump says he would consider pardoning administration members “- ABC News

  “Yeah, sure, I’d do that,” the president answered when asked by TIME magazine if he was “considering pardoning members of your administration prior to the end of your term?”

• And then they came for the judges. “Justice Dept. Tries to Rebuke Federal Judges for Speaking to The Times” - The New York Times

• Finally, in the latest edition of “Beyond Parody”: 'White House Accord on Super Intelligence' misspells United States.”

  The "morally binding" accord on developing the technology safely, signed by the president and leading tech executives at the White House on Sept. 29, includes a misspelling under the president's signature with “United States” written as "Unites States."

  Happy Thursday.

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Today’s Podcast

When “On Tyranny.” was first published in 2017, it was a huge best-seller. But some of the smart kids were skeptical of Timothy Snyder’s warnings. This was America, they assured us, and it could never happen here.

But, nine years later, the book seems more prophetic than ever. Institutions we thought would be firewalls cracked; universities, media companies, law firms, and billionaires “obeyed in advance.” The Supreme Court effectively placed the presidency above the law…

So, this seems like a good time to catch up with the historian who tried to warn us. I asked Snyder: How are we doing? And what happens next?

Subscribers can listen to an ad-free version right here… or you can watch on YouTube / Listen (and subscribe) on Apple/ Spotify / iHeart / RSS Feed

**

NOTE: If you enjoy conversations like this one, or just want to hang around with smart, sane people, please consider joining us. As you know, we depend on the kindness of strangers to keep doing this work. And the dogs and I are immensely grateful for your generous support.

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Nota Bene

Garry Kasparov targeted for assassination by Vladimir Putin? “New Details: Assassins Were Indicted. Very Likely, I Was Their Target.”

The Kremlin’s fondness for international assassinations of its critics and enemies has a long history. This year, Moscow has ramped up its covert actions and sabotage campaign across Europe. So today’s news naming me and my long-time associate and Free Russia Forum co-founder Ivan Tyutrin as assassination targets cannot be called a surprise—but it’s still a shock.

Neither I nor Ivan have been told explicitly that we were the targets whose names are redacted in the indictment of the assassins. We were, however, warned by security services in Lithuania and the US that our lives were in danger and that we should take precautions, which I did and will continue to do.

But I will not stop and I will not hide, even if I thought it was possible to do so. I believe that the best defense is a good offense. My family and I will not truly be safe as long as Putin is in power in Russia—a circumstance shared by millions. And so I will continue to do everything I can to rally the free world against Putin’s murderous dictatorship, especially by supporting Ukraine militarily and economically—and punishing Russia in similar fashion.

Meanwhile in Wisconsin. A close race. And a tsunami of GOP money. James Wigderson: “Race for Wisconsin Governor Is Close - Again.”

“New Marquette Law School Poll of Wisconsin finds that in the race for governor, Democrat David Crowley is supported by 49% of likely voters and Republican Tom Tiffany is supported by 46%, with 5% undecided.”

Given a choice between being Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley and Republican Congressman Tom Tiffany, you would definitely want to be Crowley right now.

But..

The negative advertising by Tiffany and his billionaire backers has taken a toll on Crowley. Where Crowley had a net positive approval rating in the previous Marquette University Law School Poll, he is now at 31% favorable and 44% unfavorable, a net favorability of -13 points. That’s down from a net favorability of +4 points in August. Most of the growth of the negative opinion of Crowley has occurred among Republican voters (50% to 75% unfavorable) but it has also grown among independent voters (25% to 39% unfavorable) while his favorability has dropped among independents from 26% to 18%.

While 42% of independents still claim they don’t know enough about Crowley to have an opinion, that opinion is being formed in the air war that is being fought right now on televisions and streaming services across Wisconsin.

And… “Tiffany raised $26 million in two months thanks to transfers from state party fueled by its billionaire backers.”

Tom Tiffany raised $26.3 million over the past two months for his gubernatorial campaign, thanks largely to transfers from the state GOP after the party received $27.6 million from billionaires Diane Hendricks, Dick Uihlein and Liz Uihlein.

The $24.2 million the state GOP transferred to Tiffany’s campaign helped him outraise Dem rival David Crowley more than 2-to-1 during the reporting period.

The Uihleins, Illinois business owners and GOP mega donors, each gave the state GOP $11 million during the period, which covered July 28-Sept. 23. Meanwhile, Hendricks, the owner of ABC Supply in Beloit, gave the party $5.6 million.

Hendricks and the Uihleins have collectively given the state GOP $39.2 million since Jan. 1, and the party has turned around to transfer nearly $34.4 million to Tiffany while doing another $206,862 worth of in-kind contributions for his campaign.

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Thursday dogs

Flashback: Grandson Elliot bonds with Auggie.

But, nine years later, the book seems more prophetic than ever. Institutions we thought would be firewalls cracked; universities, media companies, law firms, and billionaires “obeyed in advance.” The Supreme Court effectively placed the presidency above the law…

So, this seems like a good time to catch up with the historian who tried to warn us. I asked Snyder: How are we doing? And what happens next?

Snyder reminds us that Democracy is not our birthright; it’s a fragile aspiration: We don’t possess democracy because of any inherent greatness; rather, it’s a system designed to manage our weaknesses. As he puts it, “We have democracy because wise people understand that we’re not so great.”

Snyder urges that our understanding of democracy must evolve. “You have to aspire to it because it doesn’t come on its own. There aren’t institutions that protect you. You have to do the work on your own.”

Looking back to 2017, he reflects on the alarming rise of authoritarianism and the complacency that has seeped into American institutions. “So much bad stuff has happened in the last decade that you can’t really think about toggling back,” he says. Instead, he advocates for a politics of aspiration and creation. We must ask ourselves, “What do we build now?”

“You can’t just go back because where we started was flawed.”

Subscribers can listen to an ad-free version right here… or you can watch on YouTube / Listen (and subscribe) on Apple/ Spotify / iHeart / RSS Feed

**

NOTE: If you enjoy conversations like this one, or just want to hang around with smart, sane people, please consider joining us. As you know, we depend on the kindness of strangers to keep doing this work. And the dogs and I are immensely grateful for your generous support.

Some highlights of my conversation with Timothy Snyder

A little courage could have changed everything. Imagine if we had had 25 Liz Cheneys.

A reminder: Democracy is for fallible people.

How oligarchs turn concessions into power.

Trump’s strongman image is cracking.

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“Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness….Let us not assassinate this lad further, senator. You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency? —Attorney Joseph Welch to Senator Joseph McCarthy June 9, 1954

On Tuesday, we were reminded that history sometimes rhymes. Except that this time the indecency came wrapped in an epic political faceplant.

During yesterday’s Senate hearing, Republican Senator Eric Schmitt — with a bizarre admixture of malice and incompetence — called former Special Counsel Jack Smith a “dirtbag” and accused him of perjury.

Only to have the whole thing spectacularly fall apart on live television.

How awful was it? Even the most cynical longtime observers of performative senatorial idiocy were gobsmacked. And the remarkable thing is that it was even viler and dumber than it looked. So let’s break it down…

Happy Wednesday.

No, none of this is normal. Which is why I do this every day. If this work matters to you — and if you think it has some value — please consider joining us.

Here’s the NYT headline: “Jack Smith Defends Trump Charges as Senator’s Perjury Claim Falters” - The New York Times

“Falters?”

The word hardly seems adequate to the occasion, but I suppose it’s more journalistically acceptable than saying that Schmitt’s charge “turned into a festering puddle of bubbling sh*t,” which is how I would prefer to describe it.

For Schmitt, who is evidently thirsty to be JD Vance’s running mate — this was supposed to be his spectacular MAGA moment. But the NYT described Schmitt’s nesting doll of wrongness:

It was meant to be a dramatic confrontation, a public accusation of perjury against Jack Smith, the special counsel who investigated Donald J. Trump. Instead, Senator Eric Schmitt’s amateur sleuthing into basketball led him to the wrong game, league and state.

The coverage was brutal, but history is likely to be even harsher, as Schmitt cemented his position alongside Joe McCarthy in the Pantheon of Wretched Assholery.

**

Schmitt’s glorious pratfall came amidst the GOP’s full-frontal defense of Donald Trump’s various crimes — from inciting an insurrection on January 6 to his violations of the Espionage Act. Via CNN:

The scene epitomized how speculative and thinly constructed the GOP’s allegations about Smith, Trump’s foes and about the justice system being weaponized against Trump have been. Likewise, the GOP’s other major perjury allegation against Smith rests on a complete misreading of the evidence.

But rarely has this apparent fishing expedition been laid so bare. Schmitt seemed to firmly believe he had nailed Smith on something. But just minutes later, it seemed to fall apart – and rather spectacularly so.

Here is how Schmitt’s brutal gaffe played out in real time:

Strutting and smug, Schmitt tried to make the case that Smith perjured himself when he said he had not gone to an Atlanta Hawks basketball game to meet with Fani Willis – the Fulton County DA who also prosecuted President Donald Trump.

“Did you go to an NBA game between the Golden State Warriors and the Atlanta Hawks on February 3rd, 2024?” Schmitt asked Smith.

“What city would that be?” Smith asked.

“Atlanta,” Schmitt replied.

“No,” Smith said.

“Let me just give you a little context. The day before Fani Willis came clean with her affair with the prosecutor — you know, the Atlanta prosecutor that was also trying to get Trump — the next day, were you in Atlanta?” Schmitt insisted.

“I do not believe so,” Smith repeated.

Then Schmitt unveiled what he thought was his smoking gun.

“What would you say if I had a series of text messages from your team that said you were in Atlanta at a Warriors-Hawks game on February 3rd, 2024 — the day after [Fulton County prosecutor Fani] Willis and [Nathan] Wade announced their affair?”

To emphasize that this was a VERY BIG DEAL, Schmitt then had a Senate staffer (and Senator John Kennedy) hold up a poster board that purported to show text messages from Smith alongside huge images of Willis and Wade. (As if this proved some sort of conspiracy on Smith’s part.)

“I’ll give you a second to process it so you don’t, you know, perjure yourself,” a smirking Schmitt said. But he was already confident that he had nailed Smith. “I think you’ve already perjured yourself,” Schmitt declared, before working himself into a furious rhetorical fustian:

“I just want to say — in the famous words of the chief of the secret police under Stalin — show me the man, I’ll show you the crime,” he said.

“You may think you’re a hero in this story. But let me tell you something: You’re the villain. You’ve done so much damage as a former prosecutor; I can say there’s so much damage to the trust and faith people have in our system — you have weaponized the Department of Justice against political enemies to an extent that has never happened in the history of this country. You will go down as a total dirtbag.”

Within moments, with stunned fellow senators looking on, it became clear that it was Schmitt himself who was the “total dirtbag.”

Because, as it turned out, Schmitt had gotten the entire story wrong. He had confused the Atlanta Hawks with the University of Iowa Hawkeyes, a collegiate women’s team whose star player was Caitlin Clark.

Smith explained:

“If this is the correct basketball game, I recall going to a University of Maryland basketball game where Caitlin Clark was playing right around that time. And the Marshal Service was there with me. You could check if that was the exact date. It was Maryland playing Iowa, I think, February of 2024.”

Schmitt’s entire gotcha crumbled.

“Perhaps you should have looked at it more carefully,” Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar said to Schmitt. “I’m going to begin my questions now,” Klobuchar said. “But I think that people should have their facts straight before they accuse someone of being a dirtbag and not get the teams wrong.”

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How bad was the GOP’s Schmitt Show? Let us count the ways.

For the moment, let’s set aside Schmitt’s humiliation, because what we saw yesterday was a cascade of botches.

(1) By holding this hearing, the GOP dramatically reminded voters that their party leader had engaged in “serious crimes against our nation.” Jack Smith was give a national platform to declare: “If asked whether to prosecute a former president today, based on the same facts, I would do so regardless of whether that president was a Republican or a Democrat,” he said. “I will not be silenced by the continued threats of prosecution from the president or others.”

(2) The hearing also reminded people about the GOP’s priorities and its slavish devotion to defending their convicted-felon master.

(3) With Trump’s approval rating sinking toward the Nixon Line, Republicans formed a phalanx of rationalizations, conspiracy theories, and smears to justify Trump’s campaign of retribution.

(4) Schmitt solidified his “dirtbag” status by refusing to apologize to Smith, definitively answering the question: “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”

(5) The hearing was also a reminder — weeks before midterms — that every vote for a Republican is vote to put the gavel in the hands of these guys.

(6) The term “political malpractice,” hardly covers it.

But wait, there’s more….

(7) What was Schmitt actually trying to prove with his gotcha moment? Even if the texts showed Smith was in Atlanta to watch a basketball game, WTF? As Don Moynihan notes this morning, none of this made any sense.

But even if they did place Smith at the Hawks game, they had zero evidence that Smith met with Willis. The theory was that the day after Willis admitted to the affair, becoming the focus of withering national attention, she decided that was the perfect time to hang out with another incredibly visible Trump enemy. At an NBA game. It was necessary to coordinate their secret conspiracy, in person, at a public event.

Eric Schmitt was the Attorney General, the chief law officer, for the state of Missouri. And this was his big gotcha, the takedown that generate him this level of smugness? Look at him. He really thought he had something.

Schmitt proclaimed that Smith had lied under oath, even though it was Schmitt who made false claims before the Senate.

What in the world was he thinking? The short answer is that he wasn’t. The reality is that Schmitt and company operate in a world where facts and logic are frequently inconvenient.

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What Jack Smith said

From his opening statement:

As I appear before you today, it is my belief that the rule of law faces challenges unlike any we have experienced in our lifetime. Individuals are threatened with criminal investigation because they are perceived to have opposed the President. Predetermined outcomes increasingly seem to take precedence over the Justice Department’s long-standing core values, traditions, and norms.

History teaches that the rule of law is rarely destroyed all at once. It is often weakened by attacks on the institutions and public servants sworn to uphold it. Since January 2025, we have witnessed precisely such an effort, including the vilification of the career prosecutors, FBI agents, and support staff who served on my team, simply because of their unwavering commitment to the fair and impartial administration of justice without regard for any personal costs.

I myself have been threatened with jail by the President of the United States.

I remain confident, however, that the rule of law will endure because so many continue to uphold it faithfully each day. Throughout our legal system, public servants have remained faithful to their oaths despite extraordinary pressure to do otherwise. Their example demonstrates that while fear may be contagious, courage is as well.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify today. I look forward to your questions.

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Nota Bene

Speaking of botched conspiracy theories —→ David Graham: DOJ’s Collapsing Probe Into a Supposed Anti-Trump Conspiracy - The Atlantic (Gift link)

The grand-conspiracy probe, which attempts to tie together the documents case, investigation of the 2016 Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, and other investigations into Trump allies, has been a mess. In April, a career prosecutor leading the team was removed, reportedly after she concluded that there was not enough evidence to charge John Brennan, the CIA director under President Obama who has repeatedly tangled with Trump, with any crimes….

She was replaced by Joseph diGenova, who was a federal prosecutor in the 1980s but has more recently been known for propagating conspiracy theories…. DiGenova abruptly resigned earlier this month and implied that he had been under pressure to bring unjustified charges. “If you want indictments where there’s no evidence, you have an ethical problem,” he told the New York Post.

Yesterday, another member of the team, Kurt Olsen, departed.

Exit take: Perhaps you are detecting a pattern.

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Wednesday dogs

Eli, who is way smarter than your average GOP Senate staffer.

• Jack Smith testifies before Congress, and Charlie contrasts Smith’s courage with author Jacob Weisberg’s list of cowards (Bezos, Bush, Roberts, McConnell, Megyn Kelly, and more)

• Why tribal loyalty beats reason — and why George W. Bush fundraising for Senate Republicans — and Karl Rove’s “Nazi problem” discovery — still fall short

• Peter Thiel and the tech oligarchs got Trump wrong; now they want trust on AI?

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• Trump doubles down on AI, Iran, and China, while voters feel gas and grocery pains

• Are the polls real? Why Republican behavior (Trump is campaigning in Alabama and Oklahoma!) says “yes”

• Why hundreds of millions in ads and Elon’s money may matter less than you think in the midterms

• Affordability + “they’re for them, we’re for you” is the potent message that Democrats still aren’t fully exploiting

• And MUCH more!

BONUS: The Trump Report

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Authoritarianism, he reminds us, takes roots not by destroying institutions, but by bending and bullying them into submission.

In his new book, “Profiles in Cowardice,” he focuses on eight key figures —driven by fear, ambition, or self-preservation— who are emblematic of what he the “Great Capitulation” to Trump 2.0. It’s a familiar list, with a couple of twists:

• Jeff Bezos – Amazon CEO, penis-rocket guy.

• Stephen Schwarzman – Blackstone CEO.

• Brad Karp – The former Paul, Weiss partner, who symbolized Big Law’s capitulation.

• Mitch McConnell - who had a chance to end Trump but choked.

• George W. Bush - who can’t bring himself say Trump’s name.

• Sian Beilock – President of Dartmouth, who represents elite academia’s appeasement.

• Megyn Kelly – Former Fox News host, who transformed herself under Trump’s influence.

• Chief Justice John Roberts – Who effectively put Trump above the law.

Here’s how the NYT review of Weisberg’s book begins:

Say what you like about President Trump, he has ushered in a golden age of cravenness.

A nation long perceived, not least by its own nationals, as resilient and courageous — a people of gallant pioneers, fearless entrepreneurs, irresistible war heroes, nerveless astronauts, brave civil rights activists — is now forced to contemplate an entirely new set of data. It seems that, when placed under mild authoritarian pressure, an extraordinary number of powerful Americans, ostensibly honorable and right-thinking, quickly revealed themselves to be cowardly and unprincipled and made of the wrong stuff.

The journalist Jacob Weisberg is one of the first to attempt to chronicle this new landscape.

And Weisberg joins me on today’s podcast…

Subscribers can listen to an ad-free version right here… or you can watch on YouTube / Listen (and subscribe) on Apple/ Spotify / iHeart / RSS Feed

**

NOTE: If you enjoy conversations like this one, or just want to hang around with smart, sane people, please consider joining us. As you know, we depend on the kindness of strangers to keep doing this work. And the dogs and I are immensely grateful for your generous support.

Nota Bene

A profile in courage: “I will not be silenced by the continued threats of prosecution from the president or others.” — Former Special Counsel Jack Smith to the Senate Judiciary Committee, this morning.

**

“Trump is more unpopular now than he was right after January 6. Let that sink in.”

**

Karl Rove is shocked, shocked. “Karl Rove says Republican Party is being taken over by 'Nazis' - San Antonio Current

“My party is being infiltrated by people like Bo French,” Rove said. “Nick Fuentes goes to Dallas and meets with a bunch of Republican leaders. This guy is a Nazi. We’ve got all these people getting on their little podcasts and so forth, saying: ‘We’re just asking questions about the Jews.’”

**

“Pope Leo says artificial intelligence safety concerns should be taken seriously” | AP News

Pope Leo XIV said Monday that concerns about artificial intelligence going rogue are not “fake news” and should be taken seriously, insisting that safety issues raised by AI experts should be discussed and acted on.

Leo, who dedicated his first encyclical to AI and protecting humanity in its wake, was asked during a press conference about what the United States and China especially should be doing to prevent AI from posing catastrophic risks to humanity. U.S. President Donald Trump has called concerns about AI going rogue a “hoax.”

“This is a problem that, I think, we need to sit down and talk about,” the American pope told reporters returning home from France. “We can’t just sit back and pretend nothing is going to happen.”

**

Ed Luce in the FT: “A Republican midterm defeat will not be an earthquake.”

It is only a slight exaggeration to say that since Republican lawmakers do not have control of Congress, they cannot really lose it. Though Trump treats Congress like a Duma, sufficient handfuls of Republicans have joined Democrats to block some of his wishes. Foremost of these is a bill to impose draconian ID requirements on voters. For the most part, however, Congress has been irrelevant in the last 20 months. King Charles III’s address to it earlier this year was a reflection in mutual augustness — the dignified bit of Britain’s constitution talking to the dignified bit of America’s.

Even if one accepts the extreme hypothesis that Democrats can speak with one voice, it is unclear what they can do to stop Trump from carrying on, still less make his wheels fly off. But that is what many are vowing. Democrats will be stymied by the fact that Trump’s most dramatic actions — his economic and military wars of choice — tend to bypass Capitol Hill. Any law that tries to block him can also be vetoed by him. Imagining that two-thirds of the Senate would convict Trump following impeachment would be as quixotic as the last two times.

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Some highlights of my conversation with Jacob Weisberg

Why the powerful fall in line.

George W. Bush won’t even say Trump’s name.

What’s the point of having FU money, if you won’t say FU to the president?

What’s Justice John Roberts afraid of?

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Tuesday dogs

Eli has plans for me.

[Dan] Scavino, 50, posted what appears to be an AI-generated video showing him popping champagne with what seems to be his second wife, Erin Elmore, and the president’s son Eric Trump and his wife Lara Trump. The video is set to the tune of Pitbull’s hit song “Don’t Stop the Party.

Marie Antoinete, who lost her head over this sort of thing, would have blushed.

Even right-wing influencers were gobsmacked by the crassness of the thing. ““You really have no shame, do you?,” Conservative activist Carrie Prejean Boller wrote. “Many Americans can’t afford groceries, gas or their mortgage payment, and you post a tone-deaf AI video of you and your buddies partying at the People’s House,”

Oh, and we learned yesterday that Trump is offering to sell weapons to China, because everything is for sale, including our national security and the lives of our soldiers, amirite?

“President Trump continues to say, ‘Hey, we sell arms to other people around the world,’” [David Perdue, the American ambassador to China] said on “Fox News Sunday” while discussing the state visit by Mr. Xi to Washington last week. “He actually asked President Xi would he like to buy some at one point.”

So, perhaps this is a bad day to talk about civic virtue.

Happy Monday.

A recent Substack post by Princeton’s estimable Robert George reminds us that we once took it for granted that we could only keep our “constitution of liberty.” if we kept our “virtue.”

The term may seem quaint today, but it had a real meaning for the Founders, who had a keen grasp of the fragility of democracy and the long history of their failures. John Adams famously insisted that our Constitution was made “only for a moral and religious people and is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

Professor George quotes Adams at some length, and it is worth stepping back from our daily firehose of outrages to consider his warning:

But should the people of America once become capable of that deep simulation towards one another, and towards foreign nations, which assumes the language of justice and moderation, while it is practicing iniquity and extravagance, and displays in the most captivating manner the charming pictures of candor, frankness, and sincerity, while it is rioting in the rapine and insolence, this country will be the most miserable habitation in the world.

Because we have no government armed with the power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, and gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution, as a whale goes through a net.

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

George Washington agreed. In his Farewell Address, Washington said:

Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.

In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens.

The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity.

**

I don’t want to debate the question of whether one needs religion to be moral; that’s for another day. But it seems worthwhile to note that the emphasis Adams and Washington put on morality and virtue was once an integral part of our American civic religion. Until recently, it wasn’t a matter of partisan dispute that character mattered —and that it mattered a great deal.

This is not to say that we were always a “Republic of Virtue,” because our polity has been filled with knaves, fools, and crooks. But, at least until recently, we embraced the pretense that things like honesty and decency mattered. There were guardrails that held the grifters accountable; there were consequences for corruption — legal, moral, and political.

Many of the scandals of the past now seem quaint, but at one time we took them very seriously. They were followed by disgrace, indictment, defeat, ostracism, shame, and sometimes impeachment.

But then the folks who thought that “Character Mattered” changed their minds and their stripes. Cynicism is the handmaiden of corruption, because it insists that everyone and everything is corrupt; and therefore, appeals to character are hypocritical eyewash and mere pious posturing. Demands to support the “Lesser Evil” and “Whataboutism,” crowded out arguments about character and virtue.

Now, as the chodes riot and exult in their grift, the Age of Shame feels like ancient history.

The devolution culminated with Trump, but if we’re honest, it began long before he came down the escalator. “The safest road to hell is the gradual one,” C.S. Lewis once wrote, “the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”

But we had lots of milestones; lots of signposts. And here we are.

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“Paid for by the U.S. Government” Actually, paid for by the taxpayers.

Trump’s 2024 ‘Final Battle’ Ad Returns, Funded by Public Money - The New York Times

As President Trump ran to return to the White House in 2024, his campaign released a somber, black-and-white ad in which he railed against the “deep state” and vowed to expel “warmongers” from government.

“This is the final battle,” Mr. Trump is heard saying in the online ad, which shows him walking silently down a hallway.

That ad has returned this weekend, airing on television stations across the country, with one notable difference: As it ends, the words “Paid for by the U.S. Government” appear on the screen.

The spot is the latest in a series of pro-Trump ads funded by public money. Some ethics experts have argued that the Trump administration is violating federal laws banning the use of taxpayer dollars for propaganda, and the ads have drawn criticism from both parties. The most recent ad, one expert argued, is a more flagrant violation given its prior use in the political arena.

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Not a Parody

“Tommy Tuberville claims 'many' airline pilots, air traffic controllers are 'part of the furry community'“

The furry subculture has even permeated the US airline industry, Tuberville claimed, noting there is “significant overlap” between people who are transgender and the furry community.

“What’s more concerning is that this [mentally unwell] furry community touts the fact that many — listen to this — that many airline pilots, flight attendants and air traffic controllers are part of the furry community. Lord help us,” he said.

“It’s terrifying when you think about this. When you walk on to a commercial flight, it’s possible that the pilot flying your plane could have a deranged fetish of dressing up like an animal. You can’t make this up.”

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Nota Bene

Maud Maron: Nikole Hannah-Jones and the Price of ‘Equality’ - WSJ (Gift link)

Ms. Hannah-Jones and I both have children who are juniors in the New York City public schools. I also have two older children who graduated in 2024 and 2026, as well as a fifth-grader, so I have some comparison points Ms. Hannah-Jones lacks. My two eldest graduated from a school system that required Regents exams—subject-matter competency tests that measure students’ baseline proficiency and stress-test whether the system itself is serving students. My youngest two, like Najya, won’t have to take those exams because the “equity” movement Ms. Hannah-Jones champions won the day: The state Education Department has decided that the class of 2027 is the last that will have to pass the Regents to graduate.

I have also seen the effect of replacing state test scores, grades and attendance as admission rubrics for middle school and high school with lottery numbers. It did lessen the number of white and Asian kids in “good” schools and increase black and Hispanic enrollment. It also fueled the exodus of families of all colors from the school system. Ms. Hannah-Jones calls that racism in action. But city data don’t support her claim. The school system asked families why they left. Forty-one percent wanted a more rigorous education than the city’s public schools could provide. Of families who switched to charters, which overwhelmingly serve minority students, 46% cited the need for greater academic rigor. For families moving to private schools, 42% did.

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Monday dogs

Auggie explains that he wants me to throw him the ball.

• TIME: Republican Panic Sets In Over Prospects of a Massive Blue Wave

  With less than six weeks to go until Election Day, the sentiment among Republicans is shifting from nervous to fatalistic, as a pileup of bad news has many convinced they are heading toward an electoral disaster.

• Axios: GOP election outlook goes from bad to "craptastic"

  It’s looked bad for Republicans all year, but this week felt different — like the political environment was disintegrating in real time, one ominous data point after another.

  Most worrisome for the GOP, there’s virtually no chance the war ends, inflation cools, interest rates fall, consumer confidence rises, and economic optimism surges before the Nov. 3 election.

  That’s why Republicans fear the undertow imperils so many candidates once deemed safe.

• The Guardian: “Republican jitters grow as unpopular Trump fuels midterm ‘bloodbath’ fears.”

• Slate: “The Great Republican Panic Is Upon Us”

• Punchbowl News: “Republicans hit the panic button before Election Day”

• NYT: “A ‘Big Problem’: Trump’s War With Iran Drags Down Republicans in Midterms.”

• Mark Halperin: “My Trump sources say the president's worst nightmare imaginable has arrived... panicked texts and emails from GOP insiders are blowing up my phone. They're all saying the same thing.”

• Nate Silver: “Donald Trump has yet again hit an all-time approval rating low. As of today, his net approval is sitting at -22.4. This far into his first term, Trump was all the way up at -11.6, while Joe Biden was at net -9.6 at the same point in his presidency.“

  

• Republicans pour money into dozens of US House races previously considered safe.”

• “GOP Poll Shocker: Darline Graham Nordone in Serious Trouble”

• “High Gas and Rising Mortgage Rates Trouble Trump as Midterms Near” - The New York Times

• Wall Street Journal: “Trump Is Predicting Midterms Success but Republicans Are Starting to Panic.”

  Five weeks before the midterm elections, Republicans are panicking—and Trump is doing little to ease their minds.

  Over a whirlwind seven days, the president has made a series of moves that have confounded Republican candidates, strategists and lawmakers.

  He abruptly banned three media outlets from the White House, triggering a dayslong standoff that led major TV networks to limit their video coverage of his events. He praised New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic socialist who has long been a boogeyman for the right. At the United Nations, the president threatened to annihilate Iran and escalate the war.

  Back in Washington, he threw an extravagant state dinner for China’s Xi Jinping, an authoritarian who has been the subject of fierce Republican criticism for years. The same week he welcomed the Communist leader to the White House, Trump appeared in government-funded anti-communism ads that show clips of the president as a choir sings “Love Me.”

Exit take: If only they had been warned.

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ICYMI: A week of commentary and snark

Sunday

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

MSNOW: Charlie Sykes: MAGA podcasters are losing interest in Trump

Friday

Saturday

The Guardian: ‘The weaker he gets, the more dangerous he gets’

Charlie Sykes, a conservative author and broadcaster, said: “Donald Trump fears irrelevance more than anything and he’ll rage against it as long as he can. The notion that he will go quietly would be incredibly naive.

“We’re headed for a collision between a lame duck who has no respect for the constitutional norms and an opposition that may have some power to hold him accountable. The paradox is the weaker he gets, the more dangerous he gets.”

**

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Sunday dogs

Captured on the trail cam: Auggie and Eli checking to see if coyotes had visited the night before.

On today’s “To the Contrary” podcast, I sit down with Susan Glasser, author of "Letter from Trump's Washington" in The New Yorker to talk about Trump’s damp squib of a summit, the GOP's midterm panic, and the latest bizarre incident of presidential lawlessness.

Glasser’s latest piece: “The Week Republicans Finally Panicked About Trump.”

The surprise of the election is not that Republicans, faced with terrible polling numbers and a historically unpopular war, would break with a President from their party. Ask George W. Bush how that political dynamic works. Panic is infectious in politicians. The problem is that it’s much, much harder for today’s G.O.P. candidates to flee from Trump after a decade of turning their party into a virtual cult of personality. Until now, Trump managed to keep his hold over politicians who might otherwise have broken with him on an important issue because of his fervent MAGA base, which would loudly punish even the most minor deviations from the President’s positions, no matter how eccentric or at odds with core conservative ideology those positions may have been.

But now Trump is losing a crucial part of that base—a rapid and unexpected decline best tracked in the portion of the electorate that expresses strong support for the President, which has dropped sharply to just thirteen per cent in recent surveys. “I feel like I was sold a bill of goods,” one formerly solid Trump voter told the Times’ Sabrina Tavernise. In another recent survey, sixty per cent of white likely voters without a college degree— a critical part of Trump’s base—said that they disapproved of how he is handling the cost of living. MAGA isn’t punishing the panicking politicians; it’s joining the panic.

And this, to me, is the real surprise of 2026: the President may be brought low this fall not by the Democrats who would crawl over broken glass to defeat him but by the very voters who sent him back to the White House in the first place. Iran, it seems, may finally have done what January 6th and all the rest of Trump’s countless misdeeds could not. Has Donald Trump’s lame-duck era already begun?

Subscribers can listen to an ad-free version right here… or you can watch on YouTube / Listen (and subscribe) on Apple/ Spotify / iHeart / RSS Feed

**

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Some highlights of my conversation with Susan Glasser

Trump didn’t understand he was being insulted.

Trump’s fawning and fluffing of dictators.

Donald Trump is not an ala carte menu…

Trump’s core support has been cut in half. How does Trump get that back in the next 39 days?

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Saturday morning dogs

Auggie on watch.

Where should we begin?

• The supplicant president waiting deferentially at the bottom of the stairs for The Chinese dictator? (Presidents haven’t made the pilgrimage to meet visiting heads of state at the air base for more than 60 years. Usually, they meet them at the White House.)

• The surreal split screen? “At the White House gate, a throng of Chinese journalists was being admitted onto the grounds of the Executive Mansion to cover the visit of President Xi Jinping. Out on the street, several American journalists were blocked from entering the White House on the orders of President Trump.”

• Trump’s praise of Communist China’s “friendliest press corps,” even as he imposed a ban on members of the American press? (China, of course, has no free press, and has imprisoned at least 111 journalists, according to Reporters Without Borders, which makes Xi’s China, “the world’s largest prison for journalists.”)

• The former leader of the free world once again fawning and flattering a communist autocrat?1 “This would be the same president.” writes Peter Baker, “who is running government-paid television advertising vowing to stop the United States from becoming socialist or communist in the same week that he held a friendly meeting with the democratic socialist mayor of New York and rolled out a literal red carpet for the communist president of China.”

  

• Trump’s disgusting mockery of his predecessor? So tasteless that even conservative media types were appalled.

  

• The stark contrast between the fluffing of Xi (and Putin) vs. the economic war Trump is waging with…. Canada? Peter Baker, again:

  In the epic contest between democracy and autocracy, Mr. Trump has long given the impression that he may be on the other side. But rarely has that been brought home as starkly as this week, as he punishes news outlets for being too “negative” about him while embracing Mr. Xi and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, two of the world’s leading authoritarians whose governments brutally suppress free speech.

• Trump’s cringey covetousness of Xi’s power and ruthlessness? On X, Senator Chris Coons posted:

  ❌ Trying to shut down the free press
  ❌ Hijacking major companies by demanding government equity stakes
  ❌ Silencing dissent through a politicized justice system
  ❌ Purging the qualified civil servants for yes-men
  
  Trump doesn’t just want to meet with Xi – he wants to copy him.

• The fact that - as Phillips O’Brien notes — “the Chinese are actively destroying the US global position while the US president bows and scrapes”?

• Or how about his glittering state dinner last night where oligarchs shared pâté with apparatchiks and Trump’s favorite billionaires partied with his favorite communists?2 (David Ellison Dines With Trump & Xi With WBD-Owned CNN Banned.)

• And then, there is Trump’s newfound fetish for seizing the means of production by demanding fealty from private companies and strongarming government equity in key industries. In July, LA Times columnist Jackie Calmes wrote: “In just over a year, Trump has used billions of taxpayers’ dollars to buy shares for the government in a growing list of private companies — U.S. Steel, Intel, Westinghouse and more — citing national security. The companies don’t always welcome their new stakeholder; at a minimum, they rightly fear it for the demands the government could make about prices and production.”

Exit take: On the stump and social media, Trump rails against Communism. On the tarmac, he is America’s biggest fan boy for the world’s most brutal Marxists. And far from denouncing the new Axis of Evil, he wants very much to be a member.

The rotten apple doesn’t fall far from the rotten tree

Tom Tiffany, Wisconsin’s GOP candidate for governor watched Trump’s media ban and said, “Me Too!” Via my fellow cheesehead, James Wigdderson: “Tiffany Goon Prevents Reporters from Covering Campaign Event.”

Congressman Tom Tiffany will follow President Donald Trump in anything, including his treatment of the press. On Thursday, Trump lost in federal court a bid to bar journalists he doesn’t like from the White House. Meanwhile in Wisconsin, Tiffany had a goon block the door to prevent two Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporters, Mary Spicuzza and David Clarey, from attending a campaign event.

Other reporters were allowed to attend the event, as well as a photographer for the newspaper, but the reporters from the Journal Sentinel, the state’s largest newspaper, were intentionally blocked from entering.

Tiffany’s goon that blocked the door is a notorious online Republican troll named Eric Brooks. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that he is a staff member for the Tiffany campaign. Brooks is also a member of the Waukesha School Board.

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Nota Bene

PROGRAMMING NOTE: The New Yorker’s Susan Glasser will join me on tomorrow’s “To the Contrary” Podcast… stay tuned. Here is her latest:

The Week Republicans Finally Panicked About Trump | The New Yorker

Forty days before the midterm elections, Washington is increasingly consumed not by Trump’s endless antics so much as by the rapidly clarifying political reality of the predicament in which the President, deeply unpopular and trapped in an unwon war of his own choosing in the Middle East, has got himself and his party. A reckoning—one far harsher than was expected, even a few months ago—now seems imminent.

**

Inside NBC News’ polling averages: Democrats enjoy biggest lead yet in the race for Congress

Democrats are heading into the final stretch of the 2026 midterms with their largest lead yet in the race for Congress and President Donald Trump’s approval rating at a significant low, according to NBC News’ newly released polling averages.

A 9-percentage-point advantage for Democrats when it comes to control of Congress is part of a steady deterioration of the political environment for Republicans. The parties started the road to this November effectively tied in the weeks after President Donald Trump returned to office last year, but independents have gradually begun to prefer a Democratic-controlled Congress. And those voters have soured on Trump and his economic policies in particular.

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Friday dogs

The boys are still shocked that this is real life.

As of midmorning, it was not clear if were in some sort of a constitutional crisis, in which Donald “I am the code” Trump defied a federal court order to let reporters back into the White House.

It now appears that he has TACO’d on the issue. As of 9:55 a.m., the credentials of CNN, MSNOW, and Politico were all restored.

But if we had faced a “crisis,” it would merely have been a subset of the larger constitutional crisis that is Trump’s whole presidency. But I digress.

Happy Thursday.

A note to readers:

A quick reminder, you are not the crazy ones. But this is the fight of our lifetimes, and the challenge of our generation.

Right now, fewer than 10 percent of our readers are paid subscribers. That’s okay, because this newsletter — and the podcasts — are free. But if you find what I do is worth something to you, I hope you will consider a subscription.

That comes to about 27 cents a day, less if you subscribe annually, for a daily dose of sanity. And both the dogs and I are immensely grateful for your generous support.

Even as the president was flaunting his fetish for fawning on autocrats, Federal Judge Timothy Kelly was reminding Trump that we are not yet a full banana republic.1

Kelly, a Trump-appointee, granted a 14-day restraining order on Trump’s latest press ban and told the White House to “immediately return, reinstate, and restore” the press credentials held by CNN, MSNOW, and Politico. His opinion (which you can read here) is a root-and-branch evisceration of each and every pretext Trump’s lawyers cited to justify his attack on the First Amendment.

In his opinion Wednesday, Judge Kelly called bullsh*t on Trump’s “national security” claims.

“….the Court is skeptical— at least on this record-that Defendants’ interest in safeguarding national security is the actual motivation for, or is even advanced by, the revocation of Plaintiffs’ hard passes.”

“Still, on this record, Defendants offer little to back up their asserted national security interest to justify revocation of Plaintiffs’ hard passes. So this interest does not tilt these factors in their favor, especially given that Plaintiffs have shown a likelihood of success on the merits.”

And the judge cited Trump’s own words (because there is a always a bleat. Always.)

“…nothing in the record that predates this suit suggests that the revocation of Plaintiffs’ hard passes was motivated by national security concerns.

Certainly, that is not what President Trump said when he announced that he was “banning” Plaintiffs from the White House-instead, he focused on the alleged lack of truthfulness and negativity of Plaintiffs’ reporting. And even the justifications provided to Plaintiffs after this case was filed are ambiguous about the true purpose of the revocations: while Defendants’ letters to Plaintiffs mention national security concerns, they purport to identify reporting that “threatened national security and/or spread falsehoods,” leaving open the possibility that all the stories fall into the later bucket, rather than the former.”

The judge said that Trump provided no evidence — bupkus, nada — to back up his claim. In effect, he laughed the president out of court.

“Defendants offer no declarations or other support— classified or unclassified- explaining how any of the reporting they identified in their letters to Plaintiffs damaged the national security. The declarations they do provide include general background about classified information, but the declarants are senior officials in the Department of Defense who have no direct knowledge of how reporters operate in the White House, or about any of the facts at issue here.”

“And supplemental declarations filed by Plaintiffs show that, in most cases, the reporters who authored the stories Defendants identify in their letters did not even hold hard passes.”

**

But, wait, it gets better. Indeed, the story is a nesting doll of deliciousness.

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It was JD

Oliver Darcy reports that the anonymous source behind one of the stories the White House cited to justify banning reporters from the White House was, in fact, Vice President JD Vance.

In its letter justifying the ban, Trump’s White House cited a half-dozen stories published by Politico that "have threatened national security and/or spread falsehoods.” One of them was this story: “A deal with Iran is near but not final, senior US official says.” The article quotes a “senior administration official" who said that the odds of the U.S. striking a deal with Iran to end the war were between 80 and 85 percent.

That senior administration official, Status has learned, was none other than Vice President JD Vance speaking on a background call with reporters authorized by the White House.

Indeed, Vance not only briefed POLITICO on the state of the Iran deal talks, but spoke to a group of reporters from several news organizations. In exchange for the information, those outlets agreed to grant Vance anonymity. Status, which did not participate in the briefing, is not bound by those rules.

So, to be clear here. The story that Trump claimed endangered national security came straight from his own White House and the key source was his own VP.

Awkward. But delicious.

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The Pathetic GOP Scramble for an Off-Ramp

Yesterday, Punchbowl News reported on the GOP Freakout: “Republicans hit the panic button before Election Day.” Today, the NYT reports: “Survival Mode Time’: Republicans Accelerate Their Break With Trump.”

Forty days before the midterm elections, a growing number of Republican candidates across the country are openly seeking to distance themselves from President Trump, breaking with a leader who has long held an iron grip on his party.

On Monday, the Republicans running for Senate in both Michigan and Iowa called on the president to end the war in Iran as a way to reverse the escalating price of gas. On Tuesday, G.O.P. candidates for governor in Wisconsin and Michigan, along with an embattled Republican senator in Ohio, followed.

A bit late don’t you think? Especially for the Republicans who have been tongue-bathing Trump for the last decade.2 On today’s podcast, I have some thoughts on that:

**

We have a special two-part pod today: I dive into the latest developments in the Trump meltdown – from his UN speech to his attacks on CNN’s Katlin Collins – and all the Republicans facing electoral extinction, who are now desperately seeking an off-ramp from Trumpism.

But first, I sit down with one of the prophets of our tech doom — an author who chronicled the strange, sociopathic, deeply ignorant, and arrogant narcissists of Silicon Valley 26 years ago.

Paulina Borsook published her book, “Cyberselfish” in the 1990s. In his introduction to a new paperback edition of the book, Gil Duran writes:

“You hold in your hands a work of prophecy. Like most products of that cursed genre it contains a warning that was largely ignored at the time of its publication. The disastrous results of this oversight fill today’s headlines and an existential threat to freedom and democracy.”

After our conversation, I break down Trump’s rant at the United Nations, his attack on the First Amendment, and the GOP’s pathetic — and belated — scramble to distance themselves from Donald Trump before the midterm election.

Subscribers can listen to an ad-free version right here… or you can watch on YouTube / Listen (and subscribe) on Apple/ Spotify / iHeart / RSS Feed

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Nota Bene

Phillips O’Brien on Substack:

When historians look back on Trump’s foreign policy in a century, I bet these are their verdict on his most famous policies:

The support of Russia--the most evil.

The pillaging of Venezuela--the most corrupt.

The decision to go to war with Iran--the most incompetent.

The abandonment of Taiwan--the most geopolitically catastrophic.

The China policy--the most craven.

The destruction of US relations with its allies--the most stupid.

**

The year’s worst political take isn’t getting any better. Hassan Piker approval ratings: Maine 7%; Michigan 6%; New Hampshire 4% (!)

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Thursday dogs

Mellow boys today.

2

How bad is it? ICE is so toxic that Kansas Senator Roger Marshall posted this: