Trump: I'll Be Blamed If We Lose Mid-Terms

 

The corrupt and mentally ill Malignant Fascist told a sparse audience in Clarksville, TN, yesterday that he would get the blame if Republicans lost the mid-terms, after weeks of telling his cult to imagine that he's on the ballot.  From NBC News:

"Even as he makes a case that Republicans should win the midterm congressional elections, President Donald Trump is bracing for the fallout should they lose.

Someone is bound to get blamed, and Trump said at a rally in Tennessee on Saturday that he expects it will be him.

'If we don’t win the midterms, they’re going to blame me,' Trump said. 'You know that. And if we do win them, I will get no credit whatsoever. It’s true. I won’t get any.'

'But I’m working my ass off,' he added. 'You better get out there and vote.' [ed.: working that tonnage off will require more than campaigning]

With some polls showing his approval rating at 30%, and his supporters less motivated to get out and vote than Dems, his narcissistic insistence on campaigning -- even as many candidates decline to appear with him -- should help remind people, especially independent voters and non-MAGA Republicans what they detest about him. 

(photo: Empty seats at Clarksville rally. Fox 17 Nashville)

 

Time To Make Your Donations Count -- Senate

 

As of today, it looks like Sen. Jon Ossoff will win his race in Georgia and former Gov. Roy Cooper will win his race in North Carolina (you need to show up to make that happen!).  Other races are essentially no contests in either blue or red states.  These are the most contested Senate races that would be worthy of a donation:

Mary Peltola (Alaska)

Josh Turek (Iowa)

Adam Hamilton (Kansas)

Troy Jackson (Maine)

Abdul El-Sayed (Michigan)

Peggy Flanagan (Minnesota)

Sherrod Brown (Ohio)

James Talarico (Texas)

A few stretches we need to add:

Jamie Davis (Louisiana) 

Scott Colom (Mississippi)

If you should decide to make a donation, this is the map at Electoral-vote.com, with the polling key, that may help you decide (as much as polls can tell us) where it might be the most strategically helpful (the "barely Dem" and "tied" being the most obvious).  Click to enlarge.

Time, as they say, is of the essence, as the MAGAt party/ cult's Epstein class oligarch donors are kicking in megabucks to try to turn the Democratic tide in the last few weeks of campaigning.  We're next to certain that won't happen, particularly if we make an effort to get the financial playing field a little more level.  Please help if you can.

El-Sayed Dominating Fox "News"

 

When you watch Dem candidate for Senate in Michigan Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, you're blown away by his calm, articulate command of issues, and his zest in undercutting MAGAt talking points. He's more than willing to engage the biased and hypocritical hosts of Rupert Murdoch's propaganda network, and as Sophia Tesfaye notes in Salon.com, he manages to dominate them:

"For years, I believed there was no particularly good reason for a serious progressive to go on Fox News. The network touts its 'fair and balanced' tagline, but it is not a neutral venue and it does not deserve to be treated like one. Its business model is grievance. A Democrat on Fox is a prop. The network invites them into the studio so its audience can watch them lose. Why submit to the bad faith interruptions and the inevitable social media clip engineered to make the left look elitist or insane? 

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed has made me reconsider that.

The Michigan Democratic Senate candidate has emerged as an anomalous fixture on the conservative network, dominating segments with a cool composure that leaves hosts alternating between hostility and reluctant infatuation. El-Sayed is not merely surviving Fox News hits. He is dominating them, and the hosts know it — and Donald Trump definitely knows it." (our emphasis)

Tesfaye's article notes that engaging directly in an informed and confident manner with the Fuxers also worked with Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who didn't back down when confronted by lies and misrepresentations by the hosts. She concludes by saying:

"When a candidate like El-Sayed — just like Sanders and Buttigieg before him — speaks directly to economic class struggles without patronizing rhetoric, a significant percentage of non-ideological working-class viewers listen. And they recognize the fundamental truth in the critique."

Penetrating the right-wing MAGA disinformation bubble with doses of reality needs to be done, and El-Sayed is a master at doing it. Please consider supporting his campaign by going here.

(photo: Andrew Roth/Michigan Advance)

 

Members Of Congress Signing Public Letter Vowing To Honor Election Results

 

It might be coming down to a written "pledge" like this to assure that there will be a transition of power when the Democrats take over at least one house of Congress in January:

A handful of House Republicans are teaming with Democrats to get their colleagues to vow they won't block midterm winners from taking their seats.

Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) and Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) are seeking signatures on a public letter committing House members to honor the results of the November 3 election, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. The push comes as Democrats and Republicans critical of President Donald Trump grow uneasy that the outgoing GOP-led Congress might try to keep Democrats from taking power in January, following months of Trump casting doubt on how some states run their elections.

Signers pledge to oppose "any attempt to refuse or delay the seating of any Member-elect" who arrives with a valid certificate from their state. The pair hope to collect enough names to make the very idea of procedural games by the current House a nonstarter.

Gottheimer pointed to his own experience during the Capitol riot. "I was in the House chamber on January 6, when the doors were barricaded," he told The Journal, adding that recent events made the extra step worthwhile.

Bacon, who is retiring at the end of his term, recalled a near-fight several years ago when some Democrats weighed challenging an Iowa Republican whose race was decided by six votes. "We've seen before how this norm can come under strain," he said.

Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) and Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) have also signed on, their offices told The Journal. Both are fighting tight reelection races, and their support would likely give the effort a majority if every House Democrat joins.

The worry isn't coming out of nowhere. Earlier this year, a Heritage Foundation fellow, Scott Yenor, argued in a commentary that GOP leaders don't have to accept state results right away if they doubt them, leaning on the constitutional clause that lets each chamber judge its own members' elections.

"Congress could deny representation to states without voter identification laws," Yenor wrote. Heritage did not comment to The Journal.

The letter is addressed to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY)...

Whether a letter will preempt the Malignant Fascist and his fascist lickspittles from another coup attempt is open to question.  But an overwhelming, undeniable Democratic wave will go even further in making these fascist plotters think twice about going up against the will of tens of millions of Americans, in red states and blue states alike.

Report: MAGA Money May Not Save Candidates

 

In a combination of bad timing and bad candidates, the groups financing ad campaigns for the Republicans are concerned that all that money is arriving too late and needs to be spread among too many tight races to be effective.  The Associated Press reports:

"Republicans are entering the final month of the midterm campaign increasingly anxious that the $1 billion at their disposal may not be enough to fend off sweeping losses as the party reckons with President Donald Trump’s unpopularity, persistent cost concerns and the fallout from the war in Iran.

The cash advantage, spread out across a half-dozen groups, is driven largely by the Trump-aligned MAGA Inc., which had nearly $416 million in cash on hand at the end of August and began stepping up its spending on critical races in September.

But that money may have come too late, forcing the president’s group to pay much higher rates because of the shrinking availability of air time. Four Republican Senate campaign officials said groups that reserved advertising time last spring paid much lower rates than MAGA Inc. and its affiliated groups. 

Instead, by waiting until September, Trump-connected organizations are sometimes paying more than five times what they would have spent if they acted earlier."  (our emphasis)

Having the corrupt and deranged Malignant Fascist's party squander their considerable resources is satisfying to watch, especially when you consider that the polls in the most-watched races show Dems pulling ahead despite the MAGA ads smearing them.  Early voting -- in person or by mail -- also reduces the impact of late campaign ads.  Perhaps the biggest advantage to Dems is the MF's insistence that voters imagine him on the ballot, as his approval ratings sink with each rise in prices and no end to the war with Iran in sight.

FAFO: Trump Voters In Ohio Flip

 

A teeny tiny sample of what is likely a larger trend in the red state of Ohio:

Sipping tea from beer mugs with his coworkers, Kyle Bos listed the ways his life is changing.

Bos has two daughters, with a third due in January. At the grocery store, five items cost as much as a full cart once did. And on Wednesday, Bos and nearly 1,400 other people were laid off from their jobs at what had been the Navistar truck factory in southwestern Ohio.

The layoffs — occurring just three days before Donald Trump's rally on Saturday at a nearby high school — were large enough to basically erase an entire year of job growth in the greater Dayton, Ohio area. And they are one reason why Bos, 30, plans to spend the final weeks before the November election canvassing votes for Democrats.

Asked how many times he voted for Trump, Bos held up three tattooed fingers. But he said he's done with the president.

"Something has to change politically in this country," said Bos, a member of the United Auto Workers who identifies as a centrist... [Ed.:  if voting for Trump 3 times means you're a "centrist," that word has lost all meaning!  But, hey, welcome to reality.]

More:

Kelly Savage-Radich grew up in a Republican-supporting Ohio family and voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020. But today the mother of three, who lives in a Montgomery county suburb of Dayton, is facing the prospect of having to sell one of her family's vehicles due to the high cost of gas. Her grocery bill has gone up about $100 a week.

She lays the blame squarely at the Trump administration's door.

"He wants his name on everything," she said. "I'm sorry, but I don't give a shit whose name is on the Kennedy Center."

That wasn't the only matter on her list of grievances – Savage-Radich also brought up the killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis earlier this year. She said: "The shooting of an American citizen dead in the street, and no one was held accountable? I have two daughters, and I'm trying to teach them all the freedoms this country has, but it feels like our freedoms are being taken. [snip]

"Trump? I think he's a disaster," said a woman who declined to give her name as she stood outside a tattoo parlor in the Old North district, a working-class area north of downtown Dayton.  [snip]

"To be honest, I think I'm going to vote Democrat all the way down, for everything. Because I want it not to be this way."

We're grateful for every one of these "centrists"/ Republicans who're finally (often once reality hits them personally) coming to the same conclusion the rest of us came to as we watched the Malignant Fascist descend the golden escalator at Trump Tower back in 2015:  He's a disaster.

(Photo:  Don Snoresalot / Reuters)

One Month And Counting

 

We're one month away from the November 3 mid-term elections.  Register to vote if you haven't, vote early if your state allows it, same with mail-in ballots.  Join get out the vote efforts, canvas, and contribute what you can to Dem candidates. If you've never done it before, this is the election to do it.

As we've noted, Dems are picking up momentum as the mentally ill Malignant Fascist's approval numbers drop.  His tariff policies and his war with Iran have caused spikes in what Americans pay for everyday essentials, as his cuts to the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid and other popular programs take effect.  Dems hold a 8.3 point advantage over MAGAts nationally, which would signal a blue wave, if not tsunami, and MAGAts are realizing their dire situation.  If we put forth our maximum effort in the month remaining, we can make the polls a reality on Election Day.

 

QOTD -- Panic

 

"... [Trump] is going to Oklahoma this week, and then Alabama, Alaska, Florida, Iowa, and Texas in October. Campaigning in deep red states like these means that Trump (or more likely, Susie Wiles) understands these states could realistically go blue in the Senate and in some fairly red House districts. Whether his presence there helps or hurts the GOP is another question, however. It could motivate Democrats as much as, or more than, Republicans. When J.D. Vance went to Iowa to campaign for Ashley Hinson, she politely announced that she was busy and couldn't campaign together with him. If Vance is too toxic to be seen with, what does that say about Trump? Also, unlike Vance, who knows how to stay on message and call all the Democrats socialists three or four times a minute, Trump tends to make his speeches about himself, not about the candidate he is trying to help. This could remind Democrats why they hate him so much. It is far from certain that these desperate visits will actually be a net plus to the candidate nominally being supported. 

"What is also happening—albeit quietly—is that Republican candidates are either asking Trump for permission to criticize his administration (but not him personally) or just doing it without asking. Trump is being forced to swallow this, no matter how much it hurts him (although see our posting tomorrow). Topics where candidates are going against Trump include Iran, data centers, ICE and AI. Before this is over, Trump may have to swallow even more stuff he despises." -- Christopher Bates ("V") at Electoral-vote.org, on Republican panic heading into the final month of the mid-term election campaign.  We agree with Bates that the electoral cake has been baked, with public anger at the Malignant Fascist's policies and persona unabated.  We need to make sure that that anger carries through November 3 and into the last 2 years of the MF's reign of error.

Russian Disinformation Campaign Targets Democrats

 

Surprise!  Daddy Putin is working hard again to help his favored American party/ cult, this time in the mid-terms:

A Russian disinformation campaign is targeting the midterms, and specifically Democrats, in what seems to be the first attempt by the Kremlin-backed operation to meddle in this year’s elections.

The campaign is simple, and designed to reach voters on social media. In a series of doctored selfie videos posted to various platforms, Hollywood actors appear to disavow the Democratic Party and urge viewers to vote Republican.

“When I hear about Democrats, I immediately think of corrupt Nazi whores,” a bogus Sarah Jessica Parker says. “If you love America, never vote for Democrats.”

The videos are real — one clip featuring Julia Roberts is lifted from Gucci’s 2023 Chime for Change campaign for gender equality, and others were ripped from personalized videos the actors recorded for fans on Cameo. But the audio is fake, seemingly cloned from the actors’ voices with artificial intelligence and laid over a reel of right-wing bogeymen: Pride parades, Jeffrey Epstein, stock footage of drug deals and homeless encampments.

In one of the manufactured videos posted to X, Bluesky and TikTok, Roberts is made to say that Democrats and Big Pharma are conspiring to push a sinister trans agenda. In another, Emma Caulfield appears to call Democrats vampires who drink the blood of children. A manipulated clip of Christopher Lloyd of “Back to the Future” has him railing against Black Lives Matter, and a voice-cloned Ed Begley Jr. calls Democrats “perverts.”

The videos are all branded with unauthorized CNN logos in the top left corner and push viewers to share the clips and join the #AllDemocratsAreCriminals campaign. The campaign hasn’t gone viral; the most popular posts garner just dozens of interactions and were first flagged by @antibot4navalny, an anonymous group of analysts tracking Russia-related influence operations.

The campaign is familiar to disinformation researchers and bears all the marks of a longtime Kremlin-backed operation. Referred to interchangeably as Matryoshka, Operation Overload and Storm-1679, the campaign is known for seeding social media with manipulated videos that bear the branding of real news outlets and law enforcement agencies to spread false narratives and erode public trust across Europe and the United States. It uses bot networks and has been known to send the clips directly to fact-checkers and newsrooms — a debunking from the media can amplify the messages.

The network seems to be targeting specific candidates in midterm races. On Friday, @antibot4navalny flagged a new batch of falsely CNN-branded videos targeting specific Democrats, including Chris Pappas in New Hampshire, James Talarico in Texas, Jon Ossoff in Georgia, Mary Peltola in Alaska, Roy Cooper in North Carolina and Sherrod Brown in Ohio. The false claims include that Talarico hates Hasidic Jews, that Pappas funded doctors who approved gender transitions for children, and that Brown’s business harmed Ohio’s bee population.

“This is Russia’s opening salvo in their attack on the U.S. midterm elections,” Darren Linvill, a Clemson University professor and the co-director of its Watt Family Innovation Center Media Forensics Hub, told MS NOW. “In the past year they have burned through Moldova, Armenia, Romania, France, Sweden and Germany, as well as others. Now it is our turn.”

It helps immensely that the Russians have a corrupt, compromised Malignant Fascist in the White House, eager to get any help he can.  So, while nothing will be done at the Federal level to counteract the disinformation, maybe we'll get lucky and international members of the cyberalliance that disrupted Russian cybercrime networks in the past can disrupt this political cybercrime as well, in the cause of defending democracy.  It's also been reported that social media platforms have been deleting the Russian disinformation videos.

On the other hand, people who take deepfake misinformation on issues from a celebrity in this existential election wouldn't likely be voting Democratic anyway.  But forewarned is forearmed.

(Image: via Reuters)

Trump Offers Bribe To Vote Republican

Continuing in his efforts to rig the mid-term elections, the corrupt and demented Malignant Fascist promised to give every adult $5,000 if the Republicans keep control of the House and Senate.  He made the bogus bribe offer at his "Trump-a-loser" convention in Dallas last night.  From the Associated Press:

"President Donald Trump pledged Wednesday to send every American adult $5,000 if Republicans retain control of the House and Senate in the midterm elections, an extraordinary gambit to reverse his party’s sagging fortunes in November.

The dubious promise would most likely cost more than $1 trillion and require congressional approval, and would further exacerbate the country’s nearly $1.8 trillion annual budget deficit and concerns about inflation.

“'f the Republicans win, you win with us and you get $5,000,' Trump said during the GOP’s midterm convention in Dallas. 'It will be called the Trump Dividend.'

He likened the payments to a corporation’s distributions to shareholders, citing 'our tremendous strength and success economically.'

Within an hour, Vice President JD Vance appeared to try to walk back Trump’s proposal — at least in part — by suggesting the dividend payments would not go to the wealthy. Vance suggested it could be paid for by U.S. tariff revenues, though the suggested payment dwarfs what the U.S. has taken in through the protectionist measures." (our emphasis)

Some rubes will believe this pathological liar, whose promises are rarely kept, but we expect all but the most deluded will not.  It also appears to violate Federal campaign laws which prohibits the use of bribery to gain votes, but this convicted felon couldn't care less if it means saving his orange hide. 

The "Me" Mid-Terms

The narcissistic and delusional Malignant Fascist sees the problems he's facing as reflecting on his loyal cult in Congress, and not his own destructive decisions from the Iran war to tariffs. He's decided, to the delight of Dems, to make the mid-term elections a referendum on him and his toxic policies.  From Mother Jones:

"....Trump has determined that the midterms must be about him and a referendum on his second presidency—even as GOP lawmakers have made it clear that they desperately do not want that to be the case.

Trump’s poll numbers have sagged as the midterms approach, due in large part to the unpopularity of the war in Iran and the cost of consumer goods; that’s true even among Republican voters. And that’s presumably why many GOP lawmakers and candidates would rather not hold a big party celebrating the success of the administration and tying themselves to it just before voters head to the polls. But, as the New York Times recently noted, they also 'cannot afford to snub' Trump, or, as a person identified as a 'top Republican campaign official' told Axios, 'We have no choice. We’re stuck on the boat with him whether we like it or not.'” (our emphasis)

That boat is leaking at every passing week, with a quagmire in Iran, rising consumer prices, devastating cuts in Government services, blocking release of the Epstein files, and the MF's poll numbers eroding as a result, now in the low 30s.  But, the mentally unstable MF wants to make the mid-term elections about himself and his failed policies, tanking the chances of several toss-up elections for his MAGAt cult.  We say again, "please proceed."

 

Trump Is "Hoover-maxxing" The Mid-Terms

 

The Very Stable Genius Unstable Moron Malignant Fascist must be so confident that his Republican Supreme Court, "his generals," paramilitary thugs, and security forces can keep his fascist regime afloat that he's "Hoover-maxxing" the mid-term elections (referring, of course, to the poster boy for political drubbings, Herbert Hoover).  That involves  maybe giving him a little too much credit for critical thinking.  The other school of thought is, well, he's a sociopathic, narcissistic moron.  

G. Elliott Morris looks at the disconnect between the MF's priorities and what voters want, and concludes the MF's "doing everything you’d expect from someone who wants to lose an election:"

In the past two weeks, several high-profile events have shown voters that President Donald Trump is not focused on their top issues — inflation, jobs, and elections/democracy. On August 31, 2026, Trump won the Supreme Court’s permission (for now) to keep building his 400-600 million-dollar ballroom. In July, he announced new tariffs on Canada, and, on Aug. 27, ordered Lake Ontario be renamed “Lake America.” And this week he told Americans in communities wary of data centers to “Let Data Reign,” while pushing new development of AI data centers and gas power plants onto federal land.

This is not what voters want the president to be focused on. And this mismatch in priorities has been showing up in the polls for months.  [snip]

Where else to begin but by noting the absolutely insane politics of building a giant marble ballroom with money from taxpayers and your billionaire friends while people are struggling to put food on the table. If any other president had tried this — in an election year, no less — he would have been sidelined by his own party’s congressional leaders the next day.

Back in May, our Strength In Numbers/Verasight poll found that 68% of voters opposed spending taxpayer money to build Trump’s ballroom. This included a plurality of Republicans, at 44% opposed to 42% in support of funding construction.

And our August poll shows the cost that focusing on projects like this has had for Americans’ evaluation of the president. Nearly 60% of adults now name prices/inflation as one of their top-three issues facing the country today, 20 points higher than the second issue “jobs and the economy.” And the president’s net approval on prices is at an all-time low, and approaching a net rating of -50.

Generally, the more important voters say an issue is right now, the more voters dislike how the president is handling it. The issues Trump and Republicans are strongest on, border security and crime, are rated as the most important problem by the fewest voters.  [snip]

... [Y]ou do not need a political science research paper to understand that a president spending all his time on things voters don’t care about — indeed, spending a lot of time and energy on policies that exacerbate their top problems — would be bad. If you're hungry, and your parents don’t feed you, you understandably get upset at your parents.

It is thus not surprising (but still worth emphasizing) that Trump has lost support not only with the average American, but also his own voters, because he has been focused on the wrong issues. An August Navigator Research poll found 20% of 2024 Trump voters now regret their vote, with the war with Iran (45%) and prices (43%) at the top of the list of reasons and healthcare cuts close behind (38%). More than a third of Trump vote regretters said they changed their mind on him because the president was “focusing on the wrong priorities like the White House ballroom.”...

The MF has said he wants his voters to "pretend I'm on the ballot."  We only wish he was literally on the ballot, but Democrats should be happy to tie their Republican opponents to the MF as tightly as possible anyway, regardless of how much they try to weasel away from their cult leader.  So, as has been said before, "Please proceed."

Our belief is that the bigger the blue wave this November in every State, the harder it will be for the MF and his rotted out party/ cult to cry "rigged election!", not that they won't anyway.  But, going against the electoral mandate of tens of millions of Americans across blue states, red states, and purple states will trigger an existential crisis that will make January 6 pale in comparison.  Except this time, it won't be MAGAts storming the Capitol.

(Image: Trump and Hoover ("Hmm, that loser looks familiar") / via WSJ)

More Corrupt Behavior From Ken Paxton

 

ProPublica is reporting that corrupt MAGAt Republican candidate for the Senate in Texas Ken Paxton seems to have violated Federal Ethics Law in his financial disclosures:

"Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton appears to have violated federal ethics law in significant ways when filing recent disclosures of his assets and liabilities, creating confusion about his net worth and holdings, a review by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune found.

Among them: Paxton, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, reported owning seven homes but said he earned no income from any. Yet all but one was listed for rent during the reporting periods, and some current residents and neighbors at those addresses confirmed that the properties were rented, the news organizations found. Receiving income and not reporting it is a violation of federal disclosure law, three ethics experts said. 

Additionally, Paxton did not disclose mortgages for three condos at a Utah golf resort that federal law requires him to list as liabilities if they are not personal residences. 

He also valued his stake in a vacant plot of Texas land at up to $50,000 on last year’s filing, but his business partner told the newsrooms Paxton’s share for years has been worth about $1 million. Federal financial disclosure law requires property to be listed at fair market value." (our emphasis)

Add this to the list of illegal and unethical things Paxton has done, for which he was indicted (state securities fraud) and impeached by his fellow Republican state lawmakers.  He even stole a $1,000 pen from a security checkpoint. 

Neo-Nazi loon Elon Musk is pouring money into Paxton's campaign against Dem star James Talarico.  Help level the playing field by supporting the Talarico campaign.

(photo: AP Photo/Nick Wagner)

 

Backfires

 

Backfire #1

Election law attorney Ben Ginsberg said Monday that President Trump’s executive order imposing restrictions on mail-in voting will largely impact Republican voters. 

“One thing is, I think you’re going to see some blowback from Republicans in the coming weeks, because after all, Republicans are the older party and older folks like to vote by mail. They’re the rural party,” Ginsberg said during a Monday appearance on CNN’s “The Source.”

“And certainly vote by mail is important to people in rural areas. And thanks to Donald Trump, there are many more low propensity voters in the Republican Party,” he added. 

Ginsberg has served as counsel to the Republican National Committee, National Republican Senatorial Committee, National Republican Congressional Committee and Republican Governors Association. [snip]

“Republican operatives in the states know that putting up those barriers to that part of the Republican base makes Republican turnout less likely,” Ginsburg said Monday.

“So this is kind of a flawed political strategy wrapped in a rather vocally charged policy from the president,” he added. 

Despite criticism, the Trump administration moved forward with an appeal Tuesday to lift the nationwide block on the executive order restricting mail-in ballots.

Backfire #2

... While every modern American president largely gave up on fundraising after winning a second term, Trump did not. On the contrary, the incumbent has spent much of the past year and a half making a concerted effort to fill the coffers of his aligned super PAC, called MAGA Inc., which is sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars with 10 weeks remaining in the midterm elections.

The good news for Republicans is that Trump is prepared to start spending some of that money. The bad news for Republicans is that the president apparently intends to spend the money on advertising that celebrates him, not them. The Atlantic reported:

President Trump gathered his top political advisers in the Oval Office early this month to solve a problem of riches: how to spend his super PAC’s $400 million political war chest with fewer than 100 days to go before the midterm elections. […]

Some GOP strategists favor focusing entirely on specific races in an effort to convince voters of the merits of individual candidates and local issues. But Trump himself has rejected that approach.

The Atlantic’s report, which has not been independently verified by MS NOW, went on to note that the president “ordered a series of television advertisements about his own record,” adding that Trump “suggested that the ad makers mine his own on-camera statements as building blocks.”

To put it mildly, this is an unconventional approach. Given the circumstances, Democrats want to turn the 2026 elections into a referendum on the unpopular president, his flailing party and the discouraging status quo. Republicans, in contrast, want to make the midterms less of a referendum and more of a choice, with a focus on individual races and candidates.

Dare we say, "please proceed," Very Stable Genius and your cult of incompetent goons!

 

Trump's Mid-Term Message: Save Me From Impeachment!

 

“I’m going to be impeached. They’re going to impeach me. They have no idea why.” -- the narcissistic dolt Malignant Fascist, yesterday in Myrtle Beach, SC, campaigning for Huckleberry Graham's unqualified sister for U.S. Senate, making a desperate argument to keep the House and Senate out of Democrats' hands.  

First of all, stop threatening us with a good time!  But, actually we do know why you could be impeached, Dementia Don. Here's a starter list:

1. Committing illegal war and humanitarian crimes

2. Unconstitutionally usurping Congress’s power to declare war

3. Committing treason by levying war against the United States, individual states, and their people

4. Committing treason and abusing his power by inciting violence, including murder, in Minnesota and covering up the execution of Minnesota civilians by ICE agents

5. Calling for the execution of Members of Congress

6. Abusing the power of his office to unlawfully maintain political power

7. Unconstitutionally operating U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Patrol as unaccountable federal police forces to violate civil liberties in furtherance of Trump’s personal and political goals

8. Illegally kidnapping, detaining, and removing U.S. residents, migrants, and asylum-seekers, including to foreign prisons

9. Unconstitutionally and systemically violating the First Amendment

10. Unconstitutionally usurping Congress’s powers

11. Defying court orders, threatening judges, and unconstitutionally usurping judicial authority

12. Abusing investigatory and prosecutorial powers

13. Abusing his power to remove nonpartisan civil servants, punish perceived adversaries, and reshape federal agencies

14. Engaging in unlawful extortion to co-opt law firms, the media, and private industry

15. Engaging in corruption for his own and his close associates’ personal enrichment

16. Co-opting and dismantling independent government oversight of businesses, government institutions, and law enforcement

17. Imposing unlawful tariffs

18. Receiving foreign and domestic emoluments

19. Unconstitutionally usurping state and local authority

20. Abusing the emergency power

21. Abusing the pardon power

22. Abusing his power to undermine public health and safety

23. Abusing his power in order to deprive the American public of accurate political, historic, scientific, and medical information

24. Unlawfully aggregating and disseminating private data, in violation of individual privacy and liberty rights

25. Depriving citizens of their birthright citizenship

26. Blocking efforts to secure U.S. elections

27. Engaging in unlawful, corrupt practices during the 2024 presidential campaign

Good enough? Though we doubt if Democrats will begin their control of either house with a fruitless effort to get a conviction in a Senate where 67 votes are needed for conviction. Investigations? Yes. Impeachment? Warranted (see above), but not likely. Conviction? Not with this Republican Party/cult!

(Photo: Mandel Ngan, AFP) 

 

Quotes Of The Day -- Trump's Mid-Term Messaging

 

"The economy is doing unbelieveably from the standpoint of Wall Street." --  the Malignant Fascist, August 14, 2026.

"Our energy costs are way down, our groceries are way down, everything is way down, and the press doesn't report it... so I don't want to hear about the affordability..." -- the MF, August 14, 2026.

Said the sub-moron bubble boy, pathological liar, con man, fraudster, business bankrupter, and grifting/grafting billionaire (January 2025- current).

Much more here.  And here.  And still more from another crooked piece of shit.

Time To Make Your Contributions Count

 

Democrats need to flip the Senate in November, and to do it they need your $upport. Here's what the fundraising and the all-important cash on hand numbers looked like a month ago (click to enlarge):

While there have been changes to the numbers since July (primary in Michigan is over and Troy Jackson is the nominee in Maine), this is proportionately where things stand vis a vis the Republican skunks.  If you want to make the most of your contribution to turn the Senate blue, look at the cash on hand numbers.  

For example, adding to the war chests for Troy Jackson in Maine*, Josh Turek in Iowa, Mary Peltola in Alaska, and Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan look to us like the best options since Dem stars Jon Ossoff and James Talarico are doing just fine with their cash on hand.

To target your contribution, you should donate to each candidate's campaign organization.  Here are the  web sites of the candidates noted above:

Troy Jackson

Josh Turek

Mary Peltola

Abdul El-Sayed

If you want to make a more generic contribution, ActBlue is the conduit for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.  However you choose to donate (and we hope you can and will), any amount will be helpful in combating the Republican megadonors' efforts.

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* We don't have Troy Jackson's cash on hand numbers, but we do know South African white nationalist Elon "Leon" Musk said he's donating $40 million to Susan Collins' campaign to keep her in the Senate as a vote for Trump.

Sunday Reflection: The Paywall

 

"The American Dream has become an American Nightmare. It’s too expensive to buy a home. It’s too expensive to get married and have kids. It’s too expensive to retire comfortably.

People are working hard every day, they're playing by the rules of today, but those rules weren't written for us. They were written for billionaires. We can't afford a home, but Jeff Bezos has at least a dozen. We can't afford to fill up our tank, but Mark Zuckerberg is launching helicopters off of his mega yacht. One in five Texas children live in poverty, but one of our own residents became the world's first trillionaire. Those three men now own more wealth than the entire middle class. The top 1% put the American Dream behind a paywall." -- Dem candidate for the Senate in Texas James Talarico, speaking recently in Arlington, TX, where he picked up the endorsement of the city's independent mayor Jim Ross.  While the polls in Texas show a tight race, Talarico has the lead and the momentum, as his felonious and adulterous opponent Ken Paxton can't shake his history. 

Please consider supporting Talarico's campaign by going here.

(photo: Ronaldo Bolaños/The Texas Tribune)

 

Generic Congressional Ballot Poll

 

Less than 90 days to the mid-terms, the generic Congressional ballot continues to look promising for Democrats, who'll need every data point to overcome the Republican gerrymandering ordered by their cult leader, the Malignant Fascist, and a large Epstein-class oligarch-funded campaign war chest:

(click to enlarge)

Clearly, there's some spread among the polls, but we know Democrats have been outperforming their poll numbers in special election after special election since last year.  But it's always good to be reminded that when we show up, we win.

Trump At Post-January 6 Level Approval

 

 

It's going to be hard to pull off a "Coup, Part Two" this November with the would-be king's numbers like this:

A record-high 73% of US adults say that President Donald Trump hasn’t paid enough attention to the country’s most important problems, a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS finds, with just 27% saying he’s had the right priorities.

That comes amid increasingly bleak views of the Iran war, stagnating economic unhappiness, and broad discontent about Trump’s approach to these challenges.

Roughly two-thirds of Americans think that Trump’s policies have worsened economic conditions and that his military decisions in Iran have hurt the US. Around three-quarters say the president is not in touch with the problems ordinary Americans face in their daily lives.

Trump’s overall approval rating, 34%, matches the career low he last saw at the close of his first term, following the January 6, 2021, insurrection. Half of Americans now strongly disapprove of him, a high across his terms, with a record-low 15% strongly approving.

Within his own party, his approval rating has hit a new low at 78% among Republicans, and just 19% of Republicans say they’re enthusiastic about the rest of his second term, down from 38% last spring... (our emphasis)

Those aren't even Viktor Orbán numbers;  they're Nicolae Ceaușescu numbers.  

The poll also shows that the public really doesn't like the Malignant Fascist's monuments to himself, his enriching himself and his crime family while in office with all the graft and conflicts of interest that come along with that, his ICE thugs making communities less safe, and Bobby "Brainworm" Kennedy's mis-handling of various health crises.  The poll doesn't seem to cover what the public thinks about the on-going Epstein-Trump files pedophile coverup.

Come November, we need to have a nationwide blowout throwing Republican MAGAts out of the House and Senate, one that can be denied only at their peril by the desperate MF or his sniveling fascist bootlickers.

(Photo: from a "No Kings" protest last October in Atlanta /Alyssa Pointer, Reuters)