Just dropped · Trial Balloon · Ep. 189
Navigating the Nonsense
G. Elliot Morris: “Voters aren’t confused about the motive, either. 62% say Trump made the promise mainly to win votes in November, and only 13% think he genuinely intends to send the money.”
“Moreover, 71% of adults say it is inappropriate for a president to promise government payments that depend on his party winning an election, including 53% of Republicans.”
“If you bring a problem up to the president, and it’s not exactly in your lane, and it’s really not in anybody else’s lane, but there’s a problem, you will inherit that problem. Because the president will listen to you, get your opinion, and he’ll say, ‘Well, go fix it.'”
— Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, quoted by Politico.
“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,” Time reports.
“The warning signs are coming in quickly from across the map—much on it from red states where President Trump won comfortably just two years ago.”
NewsNation: Trump’s polls sink further in warning sign for GOP.
“Donald Trump on Saturday condemned reports that Florida’s Republican gubernatorial candidate Byron Donalds distanced himself from the president by pulling prominent reference to his endorsement from the campaign’s website — and touted upcoming rallies in Florida to boost Donalds,” Miami Herald reports.
Said Trump: “Two Rallies are already scheduled in Florida for Byron and, will be, as always, ‘SOLD OUT!.'”
Mediaite: Fox News presses Florida Gov frontrunner Byron Donalds on voter fears of data centers.
Politico: “As the Kennedy Center drama prepared to shift into a new phase, Trump realized he lacked someone there who could do his bidding. Loyalist Ric Grenell had left the post of executive director two months earlier, replaced by a longtime District of Columbia official who had been the Kennedy’s Center’s vice president of facilities. Trump barely paused to consider his options.”
“The president looked around the room, and zeroed in on the man who was 10th in the line of presidential succession, whose department had been founded in 1903 with a mandate to ‘foster, promote, and develop the foreign and domestic commerce, the mining, manufacturing, shipping, and fishery industries.’ It now had nearly 50,000 employees working toward those aims. Not a single one of them had been hired for his or her expertise in performing arts administration. It would now be Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s job, Trump declared, to ‘fix’ the Kennedy Center. One of the country’s oldest government posts had been redefined in an instant.”
“The White House has launched another taxpayer-funded television ad before the midterms, this time featuring imagery of President Donald Trump walking down a hall as audio plays of him saying ‘this is the final battle,'” CNN reports.
Said Trump: “We will cast out the communist, Marxists, and fascists. We will throw off the sick political class that hates our country. We will rout the fake news media, and we will liberate America from these villains once and for all.”
“The State Department is ‘assessing’ how to share passport information with state and local governments, as well as some nonprofit groups, ahead of the midterm elections,” NewsNation reports.
“According to a department spokesperson, the goal is to share the information in a way that ‘protects Americans’ data, deters fraud and supports the integrity of U.S. citizenship.'”
“President Trump plans to host Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei at a private White House dinner on Sunday evening, sources familiar told Axios,” Axios reports.
“The dinner —the first one-on-one meeting between the two— is an indication of thawing relations between Anthropic and the administration, whose officials and allies have had longstanding tensions.”
One day after he rejected an Iranian proposal to end the war, President Trump told Axios in a phone interview that he expects U.S. negotiators to engage in more talks with the country this week.
“Iran said it’s awaiting a definitive U.S. response to a seven-day proposal for reopening the crucial Strait of Hormuz but won’t soften its conditions, after President Donald Trump voiced his rejection,” Bloomberg reports.
“The Islamic Republic is aware of Trump’s remarks though has yet to receive anything from mediators Qatar and Pakistan, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi was cited as saying by state-run broadcaster IRIB late Saturday.”
Said Araghchi: “The U.S. president has made some good remarks as well as many contradictory ones, which unfortunately we hear from him frequently.”
“Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) said Saturday that it’s ‘entirely possible’ his party could win control of the Senate in the midterm elections, but he also left the door open on his own political future,” CBS News reports.
As for his own political future, Fetterman added: “Let’s see what happens if I happen to be 51 — I don’t know.”
“Two years ago, President Donald Trump’s campaign buried then-Vice President Kamala Harris with ads on transgender issues as he stormed back into the White House,” CNN reports.
“Now, Democrats are confronting a fresh wave of attacks that sound like Trump’s – and this time, after a party reckoning about how to address the topic with voters, they are responding more forcefully.”
“Some Democrats in competitive races are stating their clear opposition to trans athletes playing in girls’ sports teams or even saying they oppose trans ‘ideology.’ Candidates like James Talarico in the Texas Senate race are trying to reconcile past positions receiving new scrutiny. And others, like former Sen. Sherrod Brown in Ohio, are downplaying certain issues altogether, noting their states already have laws addressing them.”
“Diesel prices soaring to record highs this past week have caused Republican candidates in solid-red parts of the country to call for an end to President Donald Trump’s war with Iran and for a ban on diesel exports, as the issue rattles the party’s MAGA base in a way that few have in this midterm election year,” the Washington Post reports.
“Election experts have warned Donald Trump’s administration could use the crucial hours and days after November’s midterm elections to disrupt the results after struggling to enforce a crackdown on voting,” The Guardian reports.
“With less than six weeks remaining until polls close, and control of U.S. Congress in the balance, the post-election ‘counting window’ is seen as as a particularly vulnerable moment by former U.S. federal government officials.”
Ron Brownstein: “The outcome of the 2026 election will be determined primarily by how well Republicans play defense across the growing list of GOP-held House and Senate seats Democrats are targeting. But the GOP is also hoping to play offense by flipping some House and Senate seats Democrats now control.”
“Because of their redistricting maneuvers, Republicans have more opportunities to flip House seats held by the other side than is typical for the president’s party in midterm elections. In the Senate, Republicans are seriously targeting four Democratic-held seats. But in both chambers, the same collapse in President Donald Trump’s approval rating that is threatening so many GOP incumbents is dimming the party’s prospects of unseating many Democrats.”
Daniel Dale: “His relentless dishonesty has become a central feature of U.S. and world politics. Voters and members of Congress, allies and adversaries, CEOs and investors alike have had to try to figure out how to read a man whose words are so frequently not true.”
Axios: “Cost of living and health care costs top the list of issues rural voters want 2026 midterm candidates to address, according to a new AP/KFF poll.”
“Ahead of the midterms, rural voters rank pocketbook concerns above immigration, the conflict with Iran and several major domestic policy debates.”
“Trump officials say Iran is miscalculating if it believes rising prices and the midterm elections will weaken President Donald Trump’s hand in negotiations to end the nearly seven-month conflict,” Fox News reports.
“The administration is projecting confidence that mounting economic pressure will push Tehran toward a deal, even after three hours of talks this week ended without an announced breakthrough.”
Said State Department principal deputy spokesperson Tommy Pigott: “The president holds all of the cards here.”
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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