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Just dropped · Trial Balloon · Ep. 189

Navigating the Nonsense

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Trial Balloon · Ep. 189: Navigating the Nonsense

Byron Donalds Walks a Tightrope of Trump Loyalty

October 3, 2026 · 8:39 pm ET · Leave a Comment

“Rep. Byron Donalds had a problem,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“President Trump had learned that the campaign of the man he’d endorsed to become Florida’s next governor had scrubbed prominent mentions of him from Donalds’s website. To calm Trump down, aides showed him a tweet where Donalds minimized the change and appeared beaming alongside the president inside the Oval Office, according to people familiar with the events. That satisfied Trump, who went on to warn that Donalds risked losing if he dropped him.”

“The incident last month shows the conundrum facing Republicans who owe their political careers to Trump. A worsening environment for the GOP is tightening midterm races across the country and prompting a number of Republicans to distance themselves from the president.”

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Taegan Goddard

Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire -- which for more than two decades has been one of the nation's most influential political news sites.

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