Trump biographer Michale Wolff says President Donald Trump tends to attack his friends and loyalists hardest when things don’t go his way — primarily because they make easy targets. This, he said, will be no different after the punishing midterms when the newly infuriated president will be hunting targets to take the blame for his mistakes.

“He would literally dissolve,” Wolff said of Trump. “It would be the existential event of his life. He cannot be a loser.”

“President Donald Trump’s post-midterm temper tantrum will hit loyalists in his inner circle hardest, his longtime biographer predicts,” Daily Beast reports of Wolff’s Inside Trump’s Head Podcast. “The president will not react kindly to the widely expected blue wave that polling shows will hit on Election Day.”

Trump tends to see allies — including U.S. allies — as weak, merely because they are comparatively kind to him. But, as U.S. allies have already learned, Trump likes to target the weak for abuse.

After the midterms, Wolff said that “puppeteer” Trump will surely look for someone to blame. He said the president will hand some Republicans a “moment in the sun,” before eventually “pulling the rug out from under them” as well.

“Blame is elemental to Trump,” said Wolff. “He is going to throw dirt on virtually anybody who is a Republican. And what he’s going to say about all of these people who might want to replace him is that you’re nothing without me.”

Wolff predicted Trump and his Republican Party are likely headed for a trouncing, and that this makes a new Trump meltdown imminent.

“They will certainly lose the House. They may lose the Senate,” Wolff said. “Whatever happens there, it’s not going to be pretty, and there’s not going to be a real way to spin anything else, but we’ve done terribly in this election.”

Wolff, who has been entertaining readers with his particular brand of insight into Trump’s mentality, said Trump is not the kind of man to acknowledges losses and changes tactics after a midterm beatdown. While others, like President Barack Obama, Clinton and others have taken bad midterms as a signal to change course, Wolff said Trump does not have that kind of introspection.

“They say, OK, yeah ... that went badly for us ... and we ... hear you. And then they … modify positions,” said Wolff. Only Trump is incapable of admitting defeat.

“And that’s actually one of the reasons he won’t be able to say, ‘OK, I hear you, and we’re going to adjust.’ Why? Because that would be an acknowledgment of losing. I mean, that would be actually listening to someone else,” Wolff concluded.

No matter how much conservative Nick Catoggio dislikes President Donald Trump, he is always quick to admit Trump’s Teflon superpower is impressive. But on Tuesday, Catoggio said he was surprised to have to confess that Trump’s Teflon armor regarding Jeffrey Epstein appears to be cracking.

Trump’s name appears generously throughout the investigative files on convicted sex trafficker Epstein, but Catoggio predicted back in 2025 that Trump’s voters would obediently back off when Trump ordered them to. This, he now says, does not appear to be the case.

After damning news of Trump allegedly sending Epstein a lewd birthday message in 2003 alluding to ‘certain things in common’ that the two men shared, Trump warned in a post on Truth Social that no true fan of his would be suckered by the Jeffrey Epstein “hoax” perpetrated by Democrats and the liberal press. He even blasted right-wingers who remained suspicious of him.

“Surely his followers would obey his commands. Don’t they always?” demanded Catoggio at the time. “The Journal’s bombshell is effectively, and ironically, the end of the scandal as a political threat to Trump rather than the start. MAGA simply lacks the civic integrity to keep pursuing the truth about Epstein now that it’s been transformed, stupidly and cynically, into a referendum on the media.”

“[But] was I wrong?” Catoggio now asks, pointing to a poll finding public credulity about an Epstein cover-up to be widespread and bipartisan. Among Republicans, 57 percent said they suspect the government is keeping information about the sex trafficker secret, and 17 percent said they believe the cover-up is aimed at concealing “significant” material in the files about Trump.

“Forget Republicans, though,” said Catoggio. “Among independents, a group whom Trump came within 3 points of winning in 2024, opinion on Epstein is radioactive. Fully 81 percent think the government is hiding things about him, and 66 percent(!) suspect that ‘significant’ information about the president has something to do with the reason why.”

In an America with no war in the Middle East and inflation at 2 percent, none of that would matter in November, said Catoggio, adding that only “the most committed cranks” would vote against the ruling party at a moment when things are going well economically and overseas because they’re mad that Trump didn’t open the Epstein files. But in an nation trapped in a “forever war” with diesel at $6.50 per gallon, the Epstein issue may be “just the trick" granting "disaffected Trumpy populists psychological ‘permission’ to break with him without feeling like traitors by doing so,” said Catoggio.

Perhaps his supporters would have stuck with Trump on Iran and refused to betray him to the hated left. But the fact that he “crossed them on Epstein last year” may have “given them a face-saving way to express their broader disenchantment with his presidency,” said Catoggio. "It was he who betrayed them by not eagerly exposing America’s pedophile class, a supreme populist priority, and so now they’re free to oppose him on anything they like. Including the war.”

Additionally, Catoggio said a record-high share of the public now believes that the government is corrupt. And this same opinion among Republicans has barely budged.

“Trump’s supporters know he’s corrupt, in other words, and they know it well enough that they can’t be bothered to pretend otherwise even when talking to pollsters,” Catoggio said. “… The swamp won because Trump wanted it to win, those supporters might conclude — on war, on influence peddling, and on Jeffrey Epstein. If any meaningful part of the right ends up entertaining that possibility in November, the president and his party are cooked.”

Bloomberg reports analysts and investors alike are finally wising up to President Donald Trump’s up-and-down roller coaster of oil prices, and they’re finally settling in for a long-term slog with Trump in the White House.

“The conflict in the Middle East and the implications for forward inflation remain the primary macro narrative and are likely to dictate price action in US rates for the foreseeable future,” BMO Capital Markets’ Ian Lyngen told Bloomberg as a Tuesday drop in oil prices failed to keep stocks and bonds from sliding into an ugly drop.

Previously, Wall Street investors had rallied whenever Trump announced progress in ending his unilateral war on Iran — which has bottlenecked global oil supplies and driven up prices on the international market. But Tuesday drop in oil prices “did little to allay Wall Street’s concerns that still-elevated energy costs could fuel inflation and spur Federal Reserve rate hikes,” according to Bloomberg.

This means Trump’s magic button for temporarily manipulating stock markets with unreliable claims of peace now appears to be failing. Bloomberg reports the dollar rose and Brent crude dropped below $103 a barrel as the Trump administration ordered another release of oil from emergency reserves amid a stalemate in US-Iran talks — but to no avail with investors.

“In economic news, US job openings fell to a five-month low, suggesting employers grew more cautious about expanding their workforces toward the end of the summer, while layoffs remained subdued,” reported Bloomberg. “Consumer confidence dropped to the lowest level since 2014,”

eToro’s Bret Kenwell told Bloomberg that the latest labor-market data reinforces the “low-hire, low-fire” backdrop that has taken hold of the nation, and he added that lagging consumer-confidence “should not come as a surprise.”

“Sentiment now sits at multi-year lows as persistent inflation and higher costs weigh on households,” Kenwell said. “The question becomes whether we’ll see this materialize into weaker consumer spending — a question that earnings season will help answer.”

But in the meantime, Bloomberg reports market worries sent Treasury 30-year yields to the highest level since 2002. Most companies in the S&P 500 fell, with the gauge posting back-to-back losses.

The year 2002, notably, was marked as a terrible time for the U.S. economy with former President George W. Bush’s onerous tax cuts raiding federal coffers and Bush’s disastrous war in Iraq devastating budgets and consumer confidence.

A former special prosecutor’s epic takedown of a fumbled MAGA conspiracy theory before viewers on Tuesday had CNN anchor Kasie Hunt wondering if the GOP was finally done with pursuing half-baked attacks on Jack Smith.

“Could that be it? Could that be it?” Hunt later asked her panel on CNN’s “The Arena with Kasie Hunt.”

“I think this is what political scientists often refer to as a face plant,” CNN analyst and Axios political reporter Alex Thompson responded, referring to Sen. Eric Schmitt’s (R-MO) failed attack on Smith before Smith decimated Schmitt on live television.

Schmitt claimed he had text messages from Smith's own team that Smith was in Atlanta Feb. 2024, one day after DA Fani Willis admitted a relationship with co-worker Nathan Wade, in addition to various name-calling and verbal attacks. But Smith deftly destroyed Schmitt by explaining that he had attended an entirely different game.

“It was a rough moment, and I say that as someone who likes Eric Schmidt very much,” admitted GOP pundit and possible White House media candidate Scott Jennings. “Uh, and I think he's been a really good politician and senator in Missouri. So obviously this was a mistake.”

But Jennings rallied as best he could, pointing out that what Republicans are really worried about with Smith is that he obtained communications from members of Congress regarding local Republican donors who had written checks for five and $10.

“Apparently, he got records of at least one journalist, Mollie Hemingway, from the Federalist. And so, the Republican argument here has been that this was partisan, uh, that this was dramatic amount of overstepping, uh, and that it really did encroach upon the job duties of a lot of these senators and members of congress that he was digging into, in their view, for no good reason and without disclosing it to them at the time,” said Jennings. “So, I think legitimate concerns were aired, even if there was a rough moment on the committee today.”

But panelist and former prosecutor Ellie Honig told Jennings that Republican lawmakers flubbed their whole argument.

“The way that Republicans have chosen to attack Smith is just not the most effective way to criticize him. If you want to criticize the guy, you can point out that his entire career leading up to the Trump prosecution was marked by overcharging and over aggression. He had high profile cases rejected by judges, by juries, unanimously in one case by the Supreme Court. You can

point out the fact that he asked for a gag order that violated Donald Trump's First Amendment right, to the point where a judge and a court of appeals judge overturned Smith's gag order. You can point to the fact that he insisted on trying Trump for months after an indictment with 13 million pages of discovery. There's no way Trump could have engaged his due process to prepare for trial. You can point to the fact that he dumped a whole bunch of information into the public sector in October of 2024 by reversing the rules of criminal procedure. There are very effective and fair criticisms of smith, but these Republican senators are not on them at all,” said Honig.

Jennings quickly glommed onto Honig’s hurled life-saver, saying “listen to Elie. This guy made mistake after mistake, and it all leads back to the central Republican argument that this was overly partisan, overly prosecuted. And that was the point of the hearing today.”

Hunt agreed that “Elie ... did a better job than the senators that we saw.”

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Politico reports a federal appeals court appears likely to allow a contempt investigation to go forward, which could include criminal charges, to proceed against Trump administration officials.

“All but one of the 11 active judges on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals were on hand Tuesday for a nearly three-hour argument over the Justice Department’s bid to shut down contempt proceedings initiated last year by U.S. District Judge James Boasberg,” reports Politico’s Josh Gerstein, adding that Boasberg “launched the probe after the administration deported hundreds of Venezuelans to El Salvador despite an order from Boasberg that appeared to require that many of the men be kept in U.S. custody.”

Most of the judges on the appeals court appeared to favor giving Boasberg more leeway to continue his inquiry. On that court, Democrat appointees outnumber Republican ones 7-to-4.

“Last year, the Justice Department identified then Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem as the official responsible for ordering that the deportations go forward despite Boasberg’s order. But several judges on the court announced Tuesday that they were concerned that the administration was making Noem a scapegoat while seeking to cut off inquiry into others who might have been equally or more responsible.

“Do we have to just accept what you say?” demanded Judge Michelle Childs of Justice Department attorney Brett Shumate. Noem, Childs suggested, “might be a sacrificial lamb.”

“The district court doesn’t have to accept that as the only relevant decisionmaker,” opined Obama appointee Judge Patricia Millett. And Judge Cornelia Pillard said the government’s approach, if pursued, could even lead to a criminal referral for someone “who was kept in the dark.”

“The judges’ questioning was often intense,” said Gerstein. “At least two judges paraphrased fired DOJ lawyer Erez Reuveni’s claim that then-Principal Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove told Reuveni and other government lawyers in advance of the showdown with Boasberg that they might need to say “(CENSORED) you” to any judge who moved to stop the deportations.

Gerstein said Bove, who is now a 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals Judge, has denied the account. But a lawyer for the deported Venezuelans, Lee Gelernt of the American Civil Liberties Union, told the judges that Boasberg’s order was not unclear. He added that the government’s conduct at the time belied any ambiguity.

“Any prior administration … or any DOJ, I think, prior to this one would have sought clarification,” Gelernt said, according to Gerstein.

Additionally, Gelernt also hinted that the Trump administration was angling to make Noem the fall guy, saying it was “highly unlikely that former Secretary Noem made all of the decisions here.”

The Justice Department is urging the appeals judges to shut down Boasberg’s inquiry and end the contempt proceedings.

The MAGA-sphere was struggling to recollect itself after one of its latest conspiracy theories went down in flames on Tuesday.

MAGA maven Sean Hannity deleted a post on Tuesday accusing former special prosecutor Jack Smith of having contact with a prosecutor investigating President Donald Trump for attempted election subversion while attending an NBA game in Atlanta.

Earlier Tuesday, the MAGA social media machine was already up and churning with the accusation as Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) leveled the question at Smith before live cameras on, telling Schmitt he had text messages from Smith's team that Jack Smith was in Atlanta Feb. 2024, one day after DA Fani Willis admitted a relationship with co-worker Nathan Wade.

"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 the day after Willis and Wade announced their affair," said Schmitt, adding: "I don't think you know that we have this stuff, I'll give you a second to process it."

But there was no processing required, as Smith quickly dismembered the accusation by explaining that he had attended an entirely different game.

News media pounced elements of the MAGA echo chamber that had fired prematurely before understanding their target.

“Are you going to update this tweet now that it is clear the senator mixed up the Atlanta Hawks with the Iowa Hawkeyes? I mean, this is absurd stuff,” wrote Tangle News founder Isaac Saul of former Fox News reporter Catherine Herridge, who had claimed Smith “seemed off balance” and “taken aback when Schmitt said he was bringing receipts” of memos, transcripts and texts.

MAGA leader and Fox News entertainer Hannity had already quietly deleted his own similar accusations hours later on Tuesday, without apology or explanation.

“Clearly the talking points and marching orders were sent out to push this story before it was revealed that Schmitt either lied or was embarrassingly wrong and confused the Atlanta Hawks with the University of Iowa Hawkeyes,” one heckler said on X.

But other media, including New Republica writer Brian Beutler, had screenshot Hannity’s claim, and reposted it after its sudden absence.

“Here’s a deleted tweet from Hannity, who won’t admit error, won’t chastise Schmitt, and won’t lose stature with anyone on the right, including the most of the blue-check community on this website,” Beutler said. “This is what you all like about him!”

Other members of the online MAGA community were slower to action, with Alt-right entertainer Benn Johnson failing to delete his own Schmidt-related post later that Tuesday.

“Are you really this ignorant or just pretending to be,” said one commenter beneath Johnson’s lingering post.

Conservative Dispatch writer Nick Catoggio says there is little reason to expect President Donald Trump to take a lesson from the smackdown that’s likely coming for him in the November midterms.

“Trump isn’t going to ‘change course’ if Republicans are drubbed at the polls,” Catoggio told the Dispatch. “Almost certainly, he’ll double down on everything Americans hate about him.”

The polls are looking horrible for Trump and his subservient Republican Party, Catoggio said. Democrats may have led by 6.5 points on the generic congressional ballot, but on Friday Catoggio said that margin had risen to 8.6 points. That’s “head for the fallout shelter” stuff, he said — and that’s new.

“Since the day in 2015 that a certain witless ape rode a certain escalator, in other words, the Republican Party has never lost ground in both houses of Congress in the same election. Which makes the surging optimism in every corner of news media right now about an unfolding Republican calamity in November unnerving,” Catoggio said.

Typically, when the president takes a beating at the polls, he’s chastened by the vote of no confidence, Catoggio said — but that would require a certain something that Trump doesn’t have.

“Do I really need to explain why the current president is unlikely to be so conciliatory? We’ve all lived through the last 10 years. We all grasp, surely, that a man who’s incapable of humility will not — because he cannot — be humbled.”

As the Times wrote, Catoggio expects Trump “will return to war after the midterms anyway,” feeling either “vindicated by an unexpected electoral victory” or that he “has nothing more to lose by pursuing his own strategy.” His tariff abuses will also get worse thanks to Congress, which recently passed a bill authorizing new sanctions on Russia — but also granted trade authority to “allow Trump to drop 100 percent tariffs on virtually any country he likes, for as long as he likes, and with pretty much bulletproof legal authority to do so,” according to the Bulwark.

And “postliberals,” said Catoggio, will spend the last two years of Trump’s presidency egging him on with pleas that “now is the time for maximum viciousness.”

“‘We’ve lost Congress, they’ll say, and we’ll probably lose the White House in 2028. This could be the last chance we have for years to accomplish our goals and ‘save America,’” according to Catoggio. “Fascists view every emergency as an invitation to behave more ruthlessly, and they’ll surely treat the great midterm drubbing of 2026 as an emergency.”

And since a new Democratic Congress will be scrutinizing the Trump family’s “sleazy financial conduct,” Trump will likely go all out and choose escalation over conciliation in pursuing his agenda: War, tariffs, mass deportations, wrecking the occasional public monument.

“The voters who put Democrats in charge of the House and Senate hate all of it, so why shouldn’t he seek revenge on them by giving them even more of it?” asked Catoggio. “Why should he care more about public opinion than about his own legacy when the public behaved so ‘disloyally’ at the polls? … This is what happens when you place America’s welfare in the hands of someone who literally can’t fathom putting someone else’s interests above his own,” Catoggio concluded.

“‘Repudiation’ in a political context is really just a fancy word for ‘shame,’: Catoggio concludes. “… Trump neither feels shame nor believes he should answer to anyone. There will be no lesson learned from this [midterm] comet strike.”

Presidential historian Tim Naftali delivered terrifying news about President Donald Trump in the wake of his unconstitutional ban on certain news media organizations that he branded “fake news.”

Speaking to CNN anchor Kasie Hunt Saturday morning, Naftali was at a loss after watching a 2020 exchange between Trump and CBS ’60 Minutes’ anchor Leslie Stahl, wherein Trump did not deny labeling news as “fake” to undermine their brutally honest coverage of him.

“The media is fake, and frankly, if I didn't have social media, I'd have no way of getting out my voice,” Trump told Stahl.

“Do you know what you told me a long time ago? When I asked why you keep saying ‘fake media?’ Yeah, you said to me, ‘I say that because I need to discredit you so that when you say negative things about me, no one will believe you,’” Stahl recounted to his face.

Again, Trump did not deny what he’d told Stahl. “I don't have to discredit you,” he said instead.

“But that's what you told me,” Stahl insisted.

“You discredited yourself,” Trump said.

Tim, that speaks volumes about the president's thinking,” said Hunt, after the video.

“Listen to the president,” urged Naftali, “because the president reveals almost everything about how he understands the freedom of speech. He has revealed a lot in his comments recently. He's made it clear that he believes that he alone, not the Republican Party, not the executive branch writ large, but he alone can determine what's truthful and that the American people shouldn't hear.”

“That is beyond narcissistic,” said Naftali, blasting the president for daring to try to break First Amendment guardrails for the press. Even Richard Nixon — who despised the press — did not go so far, he said.

“Richard Nixon is his own tragic and troubled story. But one thing about Richard Nixon was that Nixon believed in the constitutional institutions of this country,” said Naftali. “… When push came to shove in the summer of 1974, and the supreme court said, Mr. President, you're going to have to reveal turn over the tapes as part of our legal system, the president thought about it. He wasn't happy at all, and he knew this meant the end of his presidency. But in the end, what did he do? He gave the tapes, as demanded by the Supreme Court.”

“So Nixon understood there were actual red lines. One of the reasons why he was so secretive was that he knew he was acting wrong. He had a sense of shame. He knew his enemies list was wrong. He knew you shouldn't use the IRS against journalists or anyone else. He knew that was wrong. He tried to do it secretly. He tried to go around,” Naftali argued. “We have a president now who doesn't seem to know right from wrong when it comes to our Constitution. He speaks as if he doesn't believe in the basic concepts that Richard Nixon understood were the American constitutional way.”

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The New York Times reports all that gold leaf and marble that President Donald Trump is laying down in Washington, D.C., has to be paid for with something, and apparently that money is coming from the rest of the nation’s parks and public spaces.

“President Trump’s administration has thrown the 433 sites managed by the National Park Service into turmoil, shifting funding and workers to pet projects in Washington, slashing staff across the country and scrubbing exhibits that it says “inappropriately disparage Americans,” reports the Times.

Early last year, the Trump administration began gouging out the Park Service work force, leaving at least 20 percent of parks significantly understaffed, according to the Times. And earlier this year, the administration funneled at least $67 million generated by entrance fees from parks to help fund projects in Washington favored by Trump, like his botched Reflecting Pool repairs.

“As a result, hundreds of repairs and upgrades around the country may go unfunded this year, according to government documents,” said The New York Times. “Then there is the contentious proposal to trade away a small parcel of land in Yosemite National Park, a crown jewel of the park system, to a private developer. A bipartisan group of 153 lawmakers pledged this week to block the land exchange, declaring that ‘public lands belong in public hands.’”

“Any one of these changes could be catastrophic in its own right, especially as it relates to staffing and funding,” said Dan Wenk, a retired as superintendent of Yellowstone National Park after. “When the next administration comes, Republican or Democrat, funding may be restored, but it’s going to be incredibly difficult to rebuild.”

The Times also spoke to Republican Fran P. Mainella, who led the Park Service under President George W. Bush. Mainella said Trump may not understand the value of parks to the public and the economy.

“We have to find a better way to tell that story to him, so he understands that these parks are here for current and future generations, and part of his responsibility is to make sure they stay that way,” said Mainella.

The Times reports that “it is unclear if Mr. Trump has ever visited a national park, either while in office or as a private citizen; his forays outdoors typically involve a golf course.”

And White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers refused to say if Trump had been to a park, saying only that Trump “loves our national parks and is personally invested in making them great.”

Meanwhile, the administration awarded a no-bid contract to cover four statues near the National Mall in 23.75-karat gold leaf before the country’s 250th birthday, according to the Times. It also repaired nine ornamental fountains in Washington that had been dry for years. But these cosmetic fixes “siphoned money from urgent upgrades elsewhere.”

“While the administration added Washington sites to a list of White House priorities, it relegated about 1,500 other projects at more than 200 sites nationwide to a separate list labeled ‘low priority,’ according to government documents,” said The Times.

New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg says she gets emails all the time from frustrated readers asking why the Times does not fully cover the extent of President Donald Trump’s advanced age and mental ‘decline’ “like they did Biden’s.”

One of those answers, she said, involve the problem of covering the sheer quantity of it all.

“I mean, one is just that there’s only so much room, and scandal expands to fit the space available,” Goldberg wrote.

Trump’s erratic behavior appears to be mounting as he and his party face a possible drubbing in the midterms, with Trump posting images declaring the Strait of Hormuz “new U.S. territory.” Stanford political science professor and former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul called this and other presidential posts “just crazy.”

“We are no longer a serious country, let alone a respected great power. Hoping the damage [done] right now can be reversed, but it’s going to take a lot of work and a lot of humility,” McFaul wrote.

Trump also likes to attack women in public, and he gets dragged for claiming he was America's greatest president — a post that neglected to mention 11 of America's former chief executives, including the most influential recent Republican president, Ronald Reagan.

At the same time, Goldberg says she’s not sure if she even sees “a marked untethering” — just more of it. Significantly more.

“The A.I. memes are not new. There was the one in which he kind of compared himself to Jesus, or a doctor. And so part of the difficulty, I think, and this has been the difficulty writing about Trump all along, is that it is very difficult to maintain the appropriate level of shock, because you just cannot help but get inured to this over the last 10 years,” Goldberg wrote. “And it’s a kind of constant struggle to try and maintain some connection to the frame of reference we had for what was considered acceptable or decent a decade ago.”

But also, Goldberg said newspaper reporters are mindful that American voters know exactly what kind of person they voted for, because they voted for him twice.

“[T]his is the man who was re-elected,” said Goldberg. “It’s not like a situation like John Fetterman, where there was almost a bait-and-switch [where] … people thought that they were electing one man, and then he became someone totally different. This is Trump. It’s always been Trump.”

Goldberg said his erratic behavior may be more visible to more people now, at least for Republicans.

“There was this kind of scrim of great-man inevitability, as if he might have been some kind of mad genius instead of just mad. So as his poll numbers go down, and as his catastrophes metastasize, that mythos that once surrounded him becomes more and more threadbare. But this is the same person who bankrupted casinos. This is the same person that caused me to cry my eyes out in terror when he was elected in 2016,” said Goldberg.

Mediaite reports Fox News has uttered no opinions and made no statement on President Donald Trump’s Friday decision to ban CNN, MS NOW and other news organizations that publish stories he does not like.

“President Donald Trump banned three news organizations from the White House on Friday, but one would never know that by only watching Fox News’s primetime lineup that night,” reports Mediaite.

In a Truth Social screed, the president claimed: “Media Outlets shouldn’t be able to constantly write or report FICTION and LIES when they’re covering the President of the United States, the Trump Administration, or the United States of America,” Trump said, adding that, “Other Fake News Media Outlets to follow.”

“The blacklisting of three major news organizations was itself the big news of the day, especially on the airwaves of affected parties CNN and MS NOW, as to be expected. But on Fox News, the ban was virtually ignored,” reports Mediaite. “Trump first made his announcement on Truth Social just after 3 p.m. ET. Later that hour, Fox began carrying Trump’s press gaggle from the Oval Office, where several reporters asked about the ban. When the gaggle ended during the 4 p.m. hour, Fox News host Will Cain did not acknowledge the ban on The Will Cain Show, and neither did the following program, The Five. It was only at the end of Special Report – Fox’s flagship evening news program – that the ban was discussed, albeit quite briefly.”

Additionally, Mediaite reports from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m., there was no mention of Trump’s media ban to be found.

“There was no mention of the ban from Laura Ingraham on The Ingraham Angle, guest host Charlie Hurt on Jesse Watters Primetime, Sean Hannity on Hannity, or guest host Kennedy on Gutfeld!” Mediaite reports. “The ban received a brief mention on Fox during the late-night hour on Fox News at Night, where Trace Gallagher spent 25 seconds reporting on it.”

On Friday, CNN anchor Jake Tapper reminded a guest how the Obama White House had determined Fox News to not be a legitimate news organization, and they tried to get them excluded from a pool interview.

“I remember when I was a White House correspondent back in the Stone Age, during the first Obama Term, and … they didn’t ban them but they tried to get them excluded from a pool interview with a newsmaker who was part of the administration. The White House Correspondents Association and all the networks said, ‘no you can’t do that. It doesn’t matter if you don’t like what they report — we might not like what they report, or say or whatever,’” said Tapper. “It’ll be interesting to see if Fox repeats that same kind of affirmation.”

“One hopes that there will be solidarity within the new corps pushing back on these unconstitutional infringements on the freedom of the press,” said Tapper’s guest, Conor Fitzpatrick, chief supervising attorney of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE).

One night and one day later, Mediaite reports both Tapper and Fitzpatrick appear to have their answer.

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Blustery President Donald Trump puts on a good face of optimism leading into the midterms, but the Washington Post reports the president is secretly all too aware of the hammer coming down for him.

“Trump in recent weeks has become sober about the gravity of the political situation, listening intently as he is presented with often discouraging polling, according to four people with knowledge of his recent comments,” reports the Times. “… That shift has prompted him to take more action on the midterms — pledging to stump for candidates and opening his war chest in competitive races, for example — although it remains to be seen how effectively Republicans can gain ground over the next six weeks.”

“He definitely feels like some of his decisions have led to the dynamics where he’s unpopular and things aren’t looking great for the midterms,” said one person in Trump’s circle, speaking anonymously to the Times.

Trump outwardly dismisses unfavorable polls, reports the Times, instead “fastening his attention on surveys that present him in an artificially positive light. He often says that negative surveys are fake and not to be believed.”

For months, the Times reports Trump publicly “expressed a lack of concern about political conditions,” commenting about how the party in power typically loses the midterms regardless of other factors, and insisting that voters’ economic frustration wouldn’t affect his decision-making on the war.

“I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing,” Trump said in May, when asked whether voters’ concerns would push him to accede to a deal to end the war he started with Iran. “We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon, that’s all. That’s the only thing that motivates me.”

“Publicly, Trump continues to insist that there’s no reason for voters to be disillusioned with him,” said the Times. He admitted at a recent rally that Americans are paying higher gas prices because of his unilateral war in Iran, but he also said the hit on voters’ bank accounts are justified.

Increasingly, however, Trump has come to terms with his team’s polling, which reflects the poor standing with voters facing him and Republicans in November, according to his advisers. They tell the Times they are “increasingly blunt” with him. And in recent weeks they claim he actually appears to be listening to them about the GOP’s harsh electoral reality.

And it didn’t always translate to a good mood for Trump, adds the Times, especially considering the president faces his lowest approval rating of his second term with his hugely unpopular war with Iran and the rising oil prices that come if it. Voters similarly have no patience for his various construction projects in Washington, “to cement his legacy,” according to the Times. And voter discontent is going nowhere as Trump fails to “meaningfully lower prices, which he pledged to do while he campaigned in 2024.”

“The blunt talk from his team coincided with Trump’s approval of spending plans from his aligned super PACs, disbursements that now total roughly $140 million. Republican candidates and operatives had grown concerned in recent months that Trump was sitting on his large reserve of campaign cash,” reports the Times.

The New York Times reports Trump is nailing the 2024 coalition that elected him to the wall.

“Many voters say they are upset about the trade war, including some who cast ballots for Mr. Trump in 2024 with hopes that he would bring them relief from rising prices, according to more than four dozen interviews across six states at the center of the battle for control of the Senate,” reports the Times.

The paper said Trump’s intensifying trade conflict involving steel, dairy, appliances, automotive parts and agricultural equipment is infuriating voters and putting embattled Republicans on defense as they try to walk the delicate line between capitulating to concerned Republican voters and appeasing the Republican president. Meanwhile, the Times reports Trump is giving Democrats very good arguments for removing Republicans in the midterms, thanks to his unilateral war in Iran, which “has spooked financial markets and threatened to accelerate inflation.”

“In Maine, Senator Susan Collins, a vulnerable Republican, has pushed Mr. Trump to de-escalate the trade war. In Michigan, the Republican nominee for Senate, Mike Rogers, has appeared to stand uneasily with Mr. Trump’s trade policy,” said the Times. It added that while 19 percent of likely voters oppose his trade policies, according to the latest poll from The New York Times and Siena University, that poll “did not ask voters specifically about the trade war with Canada,” which is targeting hard vulnerable Republican candidates and incumbents in pivotal swing states.

Many Trump voters, according to interviews, are incensed.

“I voted for him, and I wish I had not,” said Candace Oxley, a retiree in Kettering, Ohio. Oxley said Trump’s trade conflict and his preoccupation with vanity projects are angering her as Americans find it harder to afford groceries or gas. This, she said, is complicating how she votes in Ohio’s competitive Senate race between Republican incumbent Jon Husted and former Senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat whose platform includes restraining the runaway president.

“It’s not the presidency I voted for,” said Ben Rackliff, a contractor in Jefferson, Maine, adding that Trump has taken his tariffs “to an extreme.”

Meanwhile, over in New Hampshire, carpenter Jonathon Stevens said he’d bought into Trump’s “blue-collar” approach and professed tax policies, but he is now “dismayed” by the consequences. After two years of Trump’s haphazard policies and emotional chaos, he now says he misses former President Barack Obama’s “professionalism,” and he is leaning toward supporting Representative Chris Pappas, a Democrat, in the Senate race in New Hampshire.

Stephanie Grisham is a former communications person for President Donald Trump in his first term, and she says she recognizes what drove Trump to try to illegally ban certain news outlets from the White House.

As Trump’s press secretary Grisham told CNN anchor Brianna Marie Keilar that Trump tasked her with the impossible job of getting the press corps off the White House grounds, even if that means searching for stragglers off the grounds.

“And I would just say, ‘I'm still working on it. There's a lot to go through with legal.’ And I would just kind of push it off and push it off and stall him. And then obviously I never completed that task, but that's something that I knew was going to happen one day,” she told Keilar.

Having announced a ban of so-called “fake news,” which will likely die in court under a First Amendment argument, Grisham said that it appeared Trump was on a tear and feeling “very, very empowered right now,” based upon his past behavior. But unlike his last term, there appears to be “no guardrails” to keep him acting sane.

“I was hopeful that somebody like [White House staff] Susie Wiles or Dan Scavino would be there doing it … but it seems like he has really surrounded himself with sycophants and … everybody's laughing and thinking it's a great idea. But you know, as always, he's missed the point,” said Grisham. “The economy is terrible. I live in the Midwest, and I can't tell you how many farmers and people who drive water trucks and big equipment are suffering, and people can't afford groceries. They’re suffering and he's not doing anything but these silly projects and these silly little vanity things that he's doing. It doesn't look good. He's so out of touch and he's melting down.”

Panelist and former federal prosecutor Shan Wu told Keiler that the Constitution makes no exception for “fake news,” which makes Trump’s ban look more like a futile outburst or temper tantrum than an actual actionable policy with follow through.

Keiler then asked Grisham what could drive Trump to coddle such an unconstitutional and futile effort, if she thought it was one particular story that got out this week that drove Trump so over the edge.

“I think he has had an epically bad couple of weeks when you consider the Iran war SCOTUS pushing back on voting, on [failing to put his name on] the Kennedy center and the courts pushing back on that, with interest rates went up. I mean, I could go on and on,” said Grisham. “You all know what's going on. So, I think he just saw the last — whatever the last story he saw was the last straw. And he decided to, you know, post something on social media. It's how he is. He doesn't really think before he does. He just does these things and he just expects everybody around him to just make it work.”

“I imagine he’s going to double down … it’s going to go into litigation,” she concluded.

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Lobbyist and Republican strategist David Urban hit a wall on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 after trying to pivot away from President Donald Trump’s abrupt call to ban certain media companies from the White House on Friday.

News was circulating most of the evening after Trump vowed to ban CNN, MS NOW and other organizations for reporting stories he does not like. Urban attempted to pivot from Trump’s announcement, which critics called a First Amendment violation.

“I come on here, you know, every night and say we should be talking about a lot of different things today. For example, instead of talking about banning the media, the president does have good news. There's a report out—the U.S. Census Bureau put a report out that said poverty rates in America are at historic low. As a matter of fact, real wages, real median household income jumped 2.6 percent. … And instead of talking about that, like all day and crowing about that great news, we're talking about this. And nobody in America cares about this.”

But Senior political commentator Ana Navarro blasted Urban for not taking the issue seriously.

“There is something wrong with a country that does not allow for critical things to be written. And I know this because I fled one of those countries,” said Navarro. “I fled communism in Nicaragua, … and let me tell you, I don't make these similarities and comparisons lightly. One of the first things that dictators of any ilk do when they get to power is attack the free press, censor the free press, and try to silence the free press. And what Trump did today, what he's threatening to do today is not coming in a vacuum.”

Navarro then cited Trump’s attempt to ban the Association Press after it refused to rename the Gulf of Mexico, as well as the banning of reporters from the Pentagon, and Trump’s “constant berating of female reporters.”

“You know, that that line he uses where the press is the enemy of the people. I have heard that line before from [dictator Daniel] Ortega,” said Navarro. “… So people have to be very careful and we have to condemn it. And I would ask Republicans and Trump supporters to think to themselves, ‘how would they feel if Barack Obama had suddenly and capriciously banned Fox News, how would what would they be reacting? We can't make this partisan.”

Urban retorted that “simply banning people from showing up does not mean that the coverage stops.”

“The coverage will continue,” Urban insisted. “The coverage of the Pentagon continued. People are not allowed in the building. And yet the coverage continues.”

“But he wants to he wants to influence that coverage,” Navarro reminded him, “by weaponizing the FCC, by filing frivolous lawsuits, by extorting money out of networks, by threatening them verbally, by berating and attacking journalists.”

To this, Urban conceded that “you don't get that coverage unless you engage with the media ... and tell your story.”

“Oh, he's certainly engaging with the media,” Cooper quipped. “He's calling them piggy and insulting women primarily.”

“You get good stories by being a good president,” Navarro said. “If you are throwing a temper tantrum and wanting to demolish the Kennedy Center because your name is not on it, you're not going to get a good story. If you are calling regular Americans into court and accusing them of vandalism because your pool guy screwed up the repair work of the [Lincoln] Reflecting Pool, you're not going to get a good story. You get good stories by doing good things, behaving like a decent human being, and being a good president.”

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While speaking with a panel about President Donald Trump’s recent ban of CNN, MS NOW and other possible media outlets, CNN anchor Erin Burnett played a withering supercut of Trump’s adolescent-grade abuse and name-calling of women around him at press gaggles.

This, Burnett insisted, was “only a small sample.”

“What a stupid question for you to ask,” Trump barked to an unknown woman on July 27.

“You’re the most obnoxious reporter in the whole room,” he told another woman on December 8, 2025.

“You are the worst reporter,” Trump told CNN’s Kaitlan Collions on February 3.

“Quiet! Quiet, piggy,” he ordered another woman on Nov. 14, 2025.

“I’m tired of it, you dumb person,” Trump told a woman on May 12.

“She’s a horror show,” he blasted another female reporter on May 8, while talking to aids.

And finally: “You have a lot of hate in your heart,” Trump accused a woman Sept. 16, 2025.

“As I said, that’s a small sampling,” Burnett told her panel, adding “he thrives on those exchanges.”

“You know, what’s missing from this conversation is a psychiatrist,” said Former White House Press Secretary Joe Lockhart, after some thought. “Because it really is about his state of mind. I don't know that people fully understand, uh, and, you know, just when you look at the interactions with the reporters, it's just no one has ever talked, as a president, like that. And I think it's interesting that in every clip that you showed, it was a woman that he was talking to. So, there there's a lot going on in his, um, you know, pathology. And that has as much to do with any one of these acts, I think.”

CNN Media Analyst Brian Stelter suggested Trump is caving under the weight of an incoming “blue wave at a time when his base might need something to get excited about.”

“He's trying to give the MAGA media audience something to be excited about, because nothing else seems to be working for the party,” said Stelter, citing plummeting polls for the president and his party and a popularity slump.

In any case, Ryan Goodman Professor of NYU School of Law, said Trump reporter ban of CNN and other media sources won’t stand under court scrutiny anyhow.

“They try to restrict law firms on the basis of the president not liking what the law firms had done, and therefore restricting their contracts and their security clearances, which is equivalent to, in some sense, media coverage and media having clearances and accreditation. He's lost five times. There have been five cases, and he's lost all of them on the First Amendment,” Goodman said.

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Kerry Kennedy, a daughter of JFK’s younger brother, former attorney general and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, held nothing back after hearing of President Donald Trump’s justification for insisting his name should be on the memorial of an entirely different president.

“It's heartbreaking to me,” Kennedy told CNN anchor Jake Tapper on Friday night, while describing a recent photograph of Trump seated on Air Force One, holding what looks like a presentation poster entitled “Kennedy Center DEMOLISHED. “It's heartbreaking because this is the monument to our slain president. And this is also the monument to the arts. The most important monument to the arts in our entire country. And these are the actions of a petty little tyrant who can't get his way. And because he can't add his name to it, he's going to blow it up.”

“[If he had his way] It would be like the Trump Eiffel Tower or the trump Buckingham Palace or the Trump Tomb of the Unknown Soldier,” said Kennedy, without mentioning that Trump received several military draft deferments as a young man to avoid the Vietnam War.

“Keep your name off our buildings, Mr. Trump. Do your job. Lower our prices, stop the war in Iran and get to work on what's important,” Kennedy barked.

Tapper then played a clip of a White House recording on Friday depicting Trump rationalizing his continued crusade to put his name on the Kennedy Center, despite a judge forcing it’s removal earlier this year.

“I can save it easily, but why should we be doing that and then raise money for the rest of our lives to keep it afloat, because that's what you have to do,” Trump told reporters. “If we get no recognition, I think the Trump administration should be recognized as having saved the Kennedy center, because nobody else can do it.”

Kennedy called this a temper tantrum from a child who does not “get his way.” Plus, his argument is faulty.

“It's not that he has to raise the money. The money has already been allocated by Congress in the Big Beautiful Bill, $256 million, more than enough to completely remake the Kennedy Center. So, this is just a false narrative,” said Kennedy.

She added that there are actually three separate sources of funding for repairs: government, charity, and ticket sales — two of which Trump busted by imposing himself over the building and its board of directors.

“Well, charity and ticket sales plummeted as soon as Trump put his name on the building. So, all he has to do is step away and people will come flooding back,” Kennedy insisted.

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CNN anchor Jake Tapper took no kindess on Friday to President Donald Trump’s announcement that he was “banning” CNN, MS NOW and Politico “from the White House, … effective immediately.”

There was no indication the Trump administration had taken steps to follow through on the ban. CNN reporters were not escorted from their White House workspace near the briefing room later on Friday, nor was the CNN team traveling Friday with Vice President JD Vance removed from the reporters’ pool.

But Tapper had no mercy for what he called Trump’s “unconstitutional” ban.

“He wants the news to bend,” said Tapper. “… Let's remember that earlier he defined ‘fake news’ as purposely negative stories. That's ‘fake news’ to him. He wasn't talking about stories that are inaccurate. He started talking about stories that are not positive.”

Tapper made note to report Trump said “more [was] to come,” and he talked about the Washington Post and the New York times, both of which he repeatedly called “fake news.” Tapper did not hesitate to bring up examples of certain newspaper owners kowtowing to Trump through settlement payments or some other means yet still suffering the president’s enmity.

“I think it's interesting, just as an object lesson,” said Tapper. “Jeff Bezos took over the Washington Post. Jeff Bezos made changes to the Washington Post, we believe — although it's never been established as clear fact — to curry more favor with the president. It doesn't matter how much you kowtow to the president, whether you're ABC writing the check for $16 million or CBS (Paramount) writing the check for $16 million or Jeff Bezos doing it. Unless you are 100 percent positive (about Trump) you know the bill is going to come due.”

Tapper made no mention, however, of Trump’s media manipulation plan for MAGA elements to purchase CNN’s parent company and twist it into a MAGA-styled version similar to the recent conversion of Paramount. Trump, himself, made clear his plan while speaking to Tapper in an earlier interview while discussing the death of Sen. Lindsey Graham.

“Sure,” responded Trump in answer to Tapper’s invite for additional call-in interviews. “We're trying to have CNN go on a normal path.”

“I’m on the normal path right here, sir,” Tapper replied.

“Good,” said Trump. “You are.”

Political analyst Dan Pfeiffer commented on the exchange, saying “Trump says ‘WE are trying to get CNN to go down a normal path.’ He is admitting on live television that the FCC’s approval of Paramount Skydance’s acquisition was part of a corrupt plan to make CNN more MAGA-friendly.”

As Pfeiffer explained: “David Ellison, the pro-Trump billionaire who owns Paramount, reportedly made promises to Trump to change CNN’s news coverage and on-air lineup. And this is exactly what Ellison did when he acquired CBS News.”

On Friday, Tapper cited the Obama White House saying Fox News was not a legitimate news organization, and they tried to get them excluded from a pool interview, but “all the networks said, ‘no, you can't do that. It doesn't matter if you don't like what they report.’”

“It'll be interesting to see if Fox repeats that same kind of affirmation,” Tapper said.

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Two DOJ sources are are sounding the alarm, saying a top Justice Department official threatened managers in a recent conference call that federal prosecutors could be fired if they “decline to investigate and pursue cases of reported election fraud,” according to MS NOW.

“Aakash Singh, the top lieutenant to the deputy attorney general, warned that Department of Justice lawyers must pursue election fraud cases that FBI or Department of Homeland Security agents present to them, or risk termination, according to the people, who sought anonymity to avoid reprisals for sharing internal discussion,” reported MS NOW on Friday

The sources say Singh also told supervisors that the FBI and DHS “may overrule a prosecutor who declines to pursue one of their investigations, and that the office of the deputy attorney general would make the final decision on whether a case goes forward.”

The Guardian reported last year that Singh “pleaded guilty to driving under the influence four years ago, and that his subsequent elevation to a high-ranking post “is unusual in light of that arrest,” according to experts.

Aakash Singh became an associate deputy attorney general last year and immediately began instructing attorneys to “prioritize charges against protesters and people committing misdemeanors, even allegedly advising them to call new grand juries if they fail to get felony indictments,” said the Guardian.

Trump’s DOJ has aggressively pursued the president’s perceived enemies with investigations that often evaporate under jury or judicial scrutiny.

MS NOW reports Singh’s most recent threats reverberated through the DOJ, sending officials into a panic. Department leaders already regularly lose their jobs after failing to nab convictions against Trump’s targets.

“The news shocked many, because the instructions appeared to override and reject long-standing Justice Department rules that require prosecutors to independently assess whether the evidence presented to them justifies further investigation or possibly bringing a prosecution,” report MS NOW.

Justice Department spokesperson Emily Covington denied to MS NOW that Singh threatened firings.

“He never said anyone would be fired,” Covington said in an emailed statement. “The Department has been very clear that election integrity is a priority. This is not a partisan issue. Only those who are allowed to vote should be voting in our elections. If you break the law, you will be charged accordingly.”

MS NOW interviewed former Justice Department prosecutors and election security experts, who said that pressuring prosecutors to pursue election fraud cases is “dangerous for the public and ignores decades of department policy designed to avoid unfounded investigations.”

“If true, this is outrageous,” said Public Integrity Section former Justice Department prosecutor Ryan Crosswell. “It is the prosecutor — the expert on the criminal law and the expert on whether the facts satisfy the elements of the crime — that has to make this decision.”

Crosswell’s office oversaw election crime prosecutions before the Trump administration dismantled the office. Crosswell resigned his position in 2025 when Trump political appointee Emil Bove ordered his section to shut down a corruption investigation into Trump ally and then-New York Mayor Eric Adams.

Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., introduced a resolution Tuesday to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, accusing him of defying Congress and illegally continuing the U.S. war in Iran, among other crimes. However, one target of Hegseth’s alleged abuses unleashed a devastating “I told you so” on the defense secretary.

In addition to the defying Congress over the Iran War, Massie’s eight-article resolution also targets Hegseth over U.S. military operations in Venezuela and Yemen, and accuses him of illegally directing the operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro without congressional authorization. It also accuses him of carrying out extrajudicial killings.

“Secretary Hegseth abused the powers entrusted to him as secretary of defense by subordinating the constitutional limits on the use of military force and the laws governing the conduct of hostilities to his own policy objectives,” said Massie, adding that Hegseth has shown “profound disregard” for the impact of U.S. military operations on civilians.

In his resolution, Massie also pointed out that Hegseth “weaponized the Department of Defense to retaliate against and intimidate Senator Mark Kelly” after Kelly appeared in a video addressed to members of the military reminding them that “our laws are clear. You can refuse illegal orders.”

At the time, the video pertained to an “unlawful strike campaign against vessels suspected of narcotics trafficking in international waters,” said Massie, but Kelly said Hegseth would have done well to heed the video warning himself.

“I think the real ironic thing about Pete Hegseth’s potential impeachment from being secretary of defense is six of those eight articles are about Pete following illegal orders from the president,” said Kelly, speaking with an Atlantic host at the September Atlantic Festival” in New York. “If he’d just listened to us, he would not have found himself as now … [as] the first cabinet member where a member of his own party has tried to impeach him and throw him out of office.”

“So, [Hegseth] goes down in history as that guy,” chided Kelly. “But if he had listened to the six of us he would not have found himself in this situation.”

Kelly said he had “never met Tom Massie” prior to his resolution this week.

“We’ve never spoken before until a couple of days ago after this happened. I thought it was appropriate to give him call because of his … resolution of impeachment, but it’s eight articles in there. One of them is about what Pete Hegseth is trying to do to me, my name, and he goes through my case and why he believes this is an impeachable offense.”

President Donald Trump argues that his name should be on the Kennedy Center because it is his administration that is trying to renovate it — despite the fact that the building itself is a memorial to an entirely different president.

But Zeteo reports recent tax records reveal the non-profit’s revenue took a steep nosedive precisely when Trump entered the White House roughly two years ago.

Trump likes to claim the center is “a mess,” and that “for many years [it] has lost tens of millions of dollars, even hundreds of millions of dollars. It’s a loser financially.” He further argues that “for me to go and fix it, I’m the one capable of fixing it and then have to subsidize it for years to come, because you will lose with the Kennedy Center, they were losing hundreds of millions of dollars and sometimes hundreds of billions, this is before I got involved.”

So Zeteo said it asked the Kennedy Center for its 2025 tax return, which was filed just last month. And what the numbers show, according to Zeteo, is that Trump “is both lying about previous losses and hiding his own deliberate financial assault.”

“The tax return does not show the Kennedy Center perpetually losing ‘hundreds of millions’ or ‘sometimes hundreds of billions.’ But it confirms issues, particularly around Trump’s takeover,” said Zeteo reporters Martin Pengelly and Andrew Perez. “… As of Sept. 30, 2025, the Kennedy Center had record net assets of $778 million. The center reported $517 million in revenue last year, and $210 million in revenue less expenses.”

However, the facility listed $48 million in “bad debt expense” in its return.

“Program revenue declined by $16 million and pledges and grants declined by $30 million in the seven or so months after Trump began his Kennedy Center takeover,” reports Zeteo. “That was before he added his name to the building, a move that reportedly caused ticket sales and donations to plunge much further.”

"The Kennedy Center made a $40 million profit in 2024. Then he demanded his name on the building, replaced the board and management with his lackeys and it's bankrupt," posted former Fox sports host Robert Lusetich on X. "The same things happen to everything he touches."

After Trump’s unhelpful intervention, the facility’s budget would have been in the red without untapped Congressional appropriations of $257 million as part of Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill.

“Interestingly, the tax return says that as of Sept. 30, 2025, roughly $330 million in federal appropriations – $310 million allotted for capital repair and restoration, and $20 million for operations and management – were being ‘held by [the] U.S. Treasury,’” Zeteo added.

But unquestionably, Zeteo reports the numbers prove Trump’s claims that the center’s finances being in a perilous state may now be accurate – but only because Trump reentered the White House for a second time.

Zeteo said it reached out to the White House and Treasury Department for financial details about the Center’s tax return, “oddly enough, the administration didn’t answer,.”

In the meantime, Trump has repeated his threat that if he can’t put his name on Kennedy’s memorial, it might have to be “ripped down,” in his own words.

“Then, that night, in a moment so Trumpian as to be almost perfectly absurd, the president was photographed on Air Force One, looking at a poster board headlined ‘Kennedy Center DEMOLISHED,’” Zeteo reported. “Next to Trump was Bill Pulte, the loyal attack dog Trump temporarily installed as director of national intelligence.”

Semafor reports Republicans are considering whether to surrender the states of North Carolina and Georgia to Democrats in the November Senate race. Party insiders say the problem is a money issue versus GOP toxicity under President Donald Trump.

“Just 10 years ago, those two southern states formed the bedrock of Republicans’ Senate majorities. But as … Trump’s collapsing approval hampers the party’s candidates nationwide and widen the battleground map, some in the GOP want to adjust tactics and consider moving money away from races where its candidates are struggling to gain traction.

“These are always tough decisions, but it’s a zero-sum game. It’s important that resources are directed where there’s a high probability of a winning outcome,” one Republican senator told Semafor. “North Carolina and Georgia have consistently shown us behind. It’s not an easy environment.”

According to the GOP member speaking anonymously with Semafor, the party appears to be investing resources on Senate races with slightly more hope in Michigan and New Hampshire while they fight to hang onto Senate seats in Iowa, Ohio, and Alaska.

“When it all settles, we’re going to win those seats, objectively. But I think we’re going to have a hard time in North Carolina and Georgia,” the senator said.

“Republicans don’t yet agree on their battleground blueprint,” reports Semafor. “Some would prefer to keep hammering away at former North Carolina Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper and Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff. But less than two months out from Election Day, the party’s internal divide reflects the urgency with which they’re working to hang onto at least one chamber of Congress next year — as the House looks increasingly likely to flip to Democrats.”

Semafor reports Cooper and Ossoff have maintained steady leads over their GOP opponents and that neither North Carolina nominee Michael Whatley or Collins have the advantage of incumbency. Meanwhile, red-state incumbents Sens. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) and Jon Husted (R-Ohio) are facing abnormally robust challengers.

Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) told Semafor that Republicans must “take a hard look at North Carolina and Georgia” when assessing their chances: “Move on? Maybe. Obviously we have limited resources, and we want to put them where we’re likely to win. And it would really suck if we lose in Alaska, for example, where we aren’t spending the resources.”

But Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) told Semafor that North Carolina and Georgia just are “not looking good.”

“Georgia looks like it’s pretty close to done. And North Carolina seems to be close to that. I’m still hopeful that something will change. But you know, at some point things get baked in,” said Cornyn.

Data analyst G. Elliot Morris fears the GOP may be a dead-party-walking as they head into the mid-terms — and polling analytics are setting the GOP up for terrible disappointment.

“The polls are [possibly] understating support For Democrats, not Republicans, as you might have heard,” said Morris, speaking on the data generating process with The Downballot Podcast host David Nir.

“If you pay any attention to politics and the polls over the past couple of cycles, then you will probably be triggered by large apparent misfires in public opinion surveys in the direction of the Democrats over the last four election cycles, basically every cycle since 2016, except for the midterms,” said Morris, referencing President Donald Trump’s unexpected wins in 2024 and 2016.

However, “once you look under the hood,” said Morris, it appears pollsters are accidentally creating the potential for bias in the other direction and setting Republicans up for even more disappointment than they’re already expecting. “Pollsters now are increasingly weighting or adjusting their samples by political variables, in particular, the results of the last election.”

The problem with that, said Morris, is that survey respondents don’t always admit they voted for Trump when they did.

“Maybe you don’t want to say you voted for that guy. Maybe you were like a soft Trump voter in 2024 and a pollster is going to ask you, ‘hey, who did you vote for last time? And you were under no obligation to the pollster's statistical methodology to tell them the truth. Maybe you say, ‘oh, I didn't vote.’”

And according to follow-up surveys, respondents appeared to be changing their claims of earlier support, not wanting to admit they went Trump the last time around for whatever reason.

“Those sort of soft members of the Trump coalition now won't admit that they voted for him. So that's not necessarily a problem unless you are equalizing your sample by past vote,” said Morris. “… [T]his level of recalled vote error could be increasing support for Republicans in the generic ballot by a little less than one percentage point in terms of vote margin. So, in other words, if there wasn't this level of hypothetical bias we're exploring, maybe Democrats are winning the generic ballot by like eight points instead of seven, which is what our average shows today.”

This, said Morris, is going to be a problem for Republicans in very close state and district races, especially if they were expecting that single digit to get them over the finish line.

Former Kansas governor Bill Graves is a Republican with a growing hostile attitude toward President Donald Trump and the Republicans who unfailingly enable him.

“The Republican Party to me today feels like sort of a bad frat party,” said Graves on the Thursday night edition of Erin Burnett Out Front. “Everybody sort of just full of this joy and enthusiasm about how great things are going. And they're not really grasping the struggles that are going on every day for everyday Americans.”

“I don't recognize this Republican Party,” Graves insisted. “I'm still a Republican, and I intend to stay one. But I'm hoping the Republican Party trends back more towards me than further away from me.”

Graves said he lamented the “corruption and ineptitude” coming from the White House, and he said the party was failing the balance of power system that made the U.S. a functional democracy for so long.

“I've got a tremendous respect for the balance of powers in our in our nation. And right now, the Republicans in Congress have simply given away, have walked away from their responsibility to be the check and balance against this executive branch. And that is wrong. And it needs to be rectified.”

Graves, who served two terms as Republican secretary of state in Kansas, as well as governor, also worked as a poll worker during the 2020 presidential election, which Trump claims he won despite proof that Biden was the victor. Now Graves says he is alarmed by Trump’s persistent claim that the 2020 election was “rigged,” and he is furious that Trump is talking about installing federal agents at polling sites, and claiming voter data.

Burnett pointed out that “no one even knows whether Trump believes his own lies about the election, but she noted that Trump has called mail-in voting "cheating," even though Trump himself votes by mail.

Graves said he served with 49 other state election officials, both Republican and Democrat, every one of them with “hundreds, if not thousands of county clerks.”

“Do you know who were administering elections at the local level? The volunteers. And what the president says in all those instances is such a disservice to all the people who work so hard to make sure we have free and fair elections in this country. And I wanted to see for myself, so I did volunteer and work for two and a half weeks in advance voting, and it is a remarkable system. I'm proud of the people that I worked with,” said Graves, his voice growing stern.

“The president, every time he talks, does a great disservice to all those people and to our process. And the fact is, he lost fair and square, and the fact that he can't man up and accept it is just beyond hard to imagine — that a president of the United States could be in that frame of mind.”

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Rep. Chip Roy of Texas unleashed a masterclass of denial while speaking with CNN anchor Jake Tapper on Thursday night.

The act kicked off after Tapper confronted Roy with footage of First Lady Melania Trump hosting an ‘opulent’ White House dinner scene complete with expensive dinnerware as Americans struggle under an affordability crisis created by Trump’s own policies.

“Can you explain the worldview of the president and first lady when they — when she puts up that state dinner video?” asked Tapper. “It’s very fancy. But it's giving kind of like Nancy Reagan, White House china vibes, and then President [Donald] Trump talking about how there is no affordability crisis.”

“I'm never going to try to explain what someone else is thinking about on any particular issue,” said Roy, immediately surrendering the argument.

“But what I can tell you is what the people of Texas are telling me and people across the country. … [P]eople are concerned, of course, about affordability, and the president's right to raise it,” Roy added, without mentioning the voter outrage and a polling slump that followed Trump after he denied the existence of an affordability crisis a few months ago. “It takes a while [to fix]. We've been in this term for 18 months. It takes a while to reverse the mistakes, by the way, of both parties. Both parties have been failing on the spending front that's driven inflation.”

Roy then pleaded for voters to give Republicans a chance to “finish the job” that Trump has peppered with spiking inflation and gas prices amid his unilateral war with Iran and tariff policies with U.S. trading partners.

Tapper then pointed out that voters appear to be turning on Trump’s immigration policies to the point where even once loyal GOP candidates are attacking Trump to side with constituents.

“[Trump] was elected the second time, but I think the issue was a lot of people expected they were going to go after the worst of the worst, the bad, the so-called bad hombres,” said Tapper. And yet we've seen people who are not the worst of the worst, not bad hombres being taken,” said Tapper, then citing the death of two Minneapolis residents at the hands of federal officers and a Florida GOP congresswoman demanding “dignity.”

“And now we have an issue that Republicans used to have the advantage on immigration. And voters are saying they prefer Democrats over Republicans on the issue,” said Tapper. “Do you understand why the pendulum swung that much?”

“Well, first of all, I'm not sure I accept that the pendulum has swung that much,” said Roy, in opposition to countless polls saying otherwise. “I think most of the people that I talked to, again, not just Republicans … and people are very happy that our streets are safer, that we're not having as much fentanyl, that we don't have as many, uh, cartel problems and gang problems in South Texas.”

Despite Roy’s claim, polls are stacking up against Trump and his party on almost all issues, including immigration—polls where Trump and the GOP once dominated.

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The New York Times reports that China is playing chess while President Trump appears to be throwing rocks.

“One of the most important lessons from the war with Iran is one that few saw coming,” reports NY Times writers Rebecca Elliot and Keith Bradsher. “The conflict has made clear that China, which has long been highly vulnerable to oil supply shocks, has managed to transform that weakness into a surprising source of geopolitical power.”

According to the Times Chinese leaders saw the problem far in advance and began stockpiling huge amounts of oil, building extra oil refining capacity and investing heavily in fossil fuel alternatives. Then, in the early months of Trump’s entirely voluntary war on Iran, it cut off supplies of jet fuel, gasoline and diesel to neighboring countries to preserve supplies for itself.

This, reports the Times, has “big implications for the global energy industry, where oil producers like Saudi Arabia and the United States — not importers like China — have traditionally held most of the cards.”

But former U.S. officials tell the Times that it also means Chinese target and U.S. ally Taiwan is now in incredible danger due to Trump’s unilateral war.

Already dominant in solar panels, batteries and electric vehicles, China now appears to have an unparalleled position across the energy landscape. As a result, officials say U.S. threats to restrict Chinese access to oil “may no longer deter leaders in Beijing from taking aggressive steps like invading or blockading Taiwan.”

“If they come to feel that in this domain, they are less vulnerable than they and many others may have assessed previously, that is a profound and important shift in one of the key inputs to how China makes decisions about its global strategy,” said Julian Gewirtz, a former White House and State Department official who worked on China issues in the Biden administration.

While Trump was cracking down on renewable energy alternatives to fossil fuel in the U.S., China was pairing up its massive oil reserves and refining capacity with its ability to pound resources into new fuel alternatives, allowing the country to “slash oil purchases by 23 percent in the first six months of the war with Iran” compared with the same period the year before, according to customs data. Meanwhile, other countries — many of them U.S. allies — still heavily rely on Middle East crude oil. This leaves them either with less access to oil or tottering on bankruptcy to buy it at higher global prices.

China was not even internationally recognized as a major global player in oil exports — so sudden ability to throttle oil imports “caught nearly everyone in the oil industry by surprise,” reports the Times.

“This is a power that nobody thought China had,” said Erica Downs, a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy. “Going forward, it’s going to be really interesting to see: What does China do with this newfound power?”

And China is already using its upper hand to deftly maneuver exports away from U.S. allies like Australia and the Philippines this spring, reports the Times.

Time is counting down to the November midterms and some Republicans are choosing self-preservation over loyalty, reports NBC News.

President Donald Trump has urged Republican voters to pretend he’s on the midterm ballot. But a handful of GOP candidates in tough races are keeping their distance,” writes NBC News reporter Alexandra Marquez. “This week, House candidates running in districts that Trump carried in the 2024 election have broken with him on key issues including immigration and the Iran war, underscoring the increasingly difficult political environment Republicans face less than seven weeks out from Election Day.”

The latest example happened Thursday in Florida, where GOP Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar —a staunch Trump ally — began airing a direct-to-camera TV ad criticizing Trump’s aggressive deportation agenda.

“Mr. President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far,” Salazar declared. “In July, 50 percent of the 50,000 people that were detained had no criminal record. Be careful what your advisers are telling you about immigration policy. The same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today.”

The commercial comes as a surprise because Trump actually won Salazar’s district in 2024 by 15 points, and Cook Political Report has rated her race as “likely Republican.” However, A New York Times/Siena poll released this week revealed that 55 percent of registered voters disapproved of Trump’s aggressive immigration policies — but also that voters trusted Democrats more than Republicans on the issue by a 51 percent-to-45 percent margin.

Earlier this week, NBC News reports GOP Reps. Zach Nunn and Mariannette Miller-Meeks of Iowa voted “for the first time in favor of a resolution directing the president to halt military action in Iran without congressional approval.” Nunn argued on X that two Iowa service members died as a result of Trump’s unprompted war with Iran.

Miller-Meeks, who served in the Army for 24 years, echoed Nunn’s sentiment in her own post on X, saying “I will not vote to keep our soldiers in an open-ended war, with Iowans paying too much at the pump. … The President needs to present a plan to Congress and the American people for how this ends so we can focus on bringing our soldiers home and lowering prices.”

But both Miller-Meeks and Nunn know that The Cook Political Report now rates both their races as “toss ups” due to Trump extreme unpopularity across the nation. Trump won Miller-Meeks’ district by 8 points and Nunn’s district by 4 points in 2024.

Meanwhile, Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-Iowa) is running for Senate this year in a competitive race against Democratic state Rep. Josh Turek in a state that Trump won by 13 points only two years ago, reports NBC News.

That may explain why Hinson doesn’t plan to attend a campaign rally in Iowa that Vice President JD Vance will headline Friday — citing schedule conflicts. She has also broken with the president on his tariff policies on ground beef imports.

“I want to lower prices but this is a bad idea,” Hinson recently wrote in a post on X. “… We should be focused on cutting red tape for cattle producers, lowering the cost of production, and supporting market-based solutions to support Iowa producers and lower costs for consumers.”