The midterms are eight days from now, and the story of the election is probably going to be about Hispanic voters. They moved toward Donald Trump in record numbers in 2024. They are now swinging back to the Democrats. Gerrymander efforts by the GOP to hold the House could backfire because of Hispanic voters. They could end up deciding control of the Senate.

The conventional wisdom is that they flipped back because of inflation, but it’s clear Trump’s broken promise is about more than that. Many Hispanic voters believed the president would not deport peaceful, law-abiding immigrants. He was lying, but many didn't believe the truth. They believe it now. A new Times poll found that more than a quarter of Hispanic voters personally know someone who has been arrested, detained and deported by ICE.

“The very inhumane way our current administration goes about immigration enforcement is terrible,” a Hispanic voter, a Democrat, told the Times. “People are being treated like hardened criminals, when they hadn’t done anything actually wrong while they’re here.”

This is an important distinction. If the reason for their flipping is inflation, the Republicans can conceivably hope to win them back in time by following through on a future promise of lowering costs. But if the reason is not about anything tangible but instead about trust in the GOP's intentions, Donald Trump may have crossed a line beyond which there is no return.

Time will tell whether I’m right, obviously, but we’ve been here before. In California, prior to 1994, Hispanic voters supported Republican candidates in robust numbers. The party was conservative. It produced Ronald Reagan. It sent Republicans to the Senate. Yet Hispanics found a home there. Many believed it was a means of achieving the American dream.

That changed dramatically after Pete Wilson was elected in 1991. The Republican governor set in motion a series of actions making it clear what his party really thought of the state and the place of Hispanics in it – California was a white man’s republic and they did not belong.

The most notorious of these was Proposition 187. It was a ballot initiative Wilson pushed for while running for reelection. It denied state services to undocumented immigrants, including health care and public education. To their shock, voters approved the measure in 1994.

Beforehand, Hispanics could believe the GOP's party line – if immigrants work hard and play by the rules, the doors of opportunity and freedom would open to them. Afterward, it was no longer possible to believe that. The welcome mat had been pulled. The truth has been revealed. Prop 187 triggered a political backlash that has defined the Golden State since.

California hasn't voted for a Republican presidential nominee since 1988. The last Republican senator, John Seymour, was defeated in 1992. And Pete Wilson was the last Republican governor. (Arnold Schwarzenegger's tenure doesn't really count.) It's widely believed that Wilson permanently enfeebled the state's GOP. He did so with a profound act of betrayal.

Comparing Trump to Wilson is tricky. California isn’t America. But the betrayal is similar, if you’re being charitable, or acutely worse, if you’re just following the facts. Nearly a million immigrants have been deported since Trump returned to power. Most of them are from Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, Colombia and Venezuela. As many as 80 percent of them do not have a criminal record. More than 500 US citizens, most of them Hispanic, have been detained by ICE. Some immigrants have been deported to places they have never known. (Cubans in South Florida, for instance, are being sent to Africa.) Legal immigration has dropped by half, according to Cato. The government is denying virtually all asylum seekers.

That’s not to mention what this president has done to the children of immigrants. Over the summer, The Marshall Project compiled the numbers from January 2025 to August: “8,592 children arrested by ICE; 8,755 children detained by ICE; 562 babies and toddlers detained by ICE; 198 children in ICE custody per day on average; 54 percent of child releases from ICE detention ended with the child being deported; 22,565 deportations of children by the federal government; 1,460 deportations of children taken from the interior of the US.”

It's not that Donald Trump wants to get rid of a few bad apples. It's that he wants to get rid of all apples. The apples have clearly heard the message. And they are now making choices.

Last week, the AP reported that states deciding Senate control are seeing a surge in early voting. “In Texas, early voting is up 74 percent compared with 2022,” the AP said. “In Kansas it’s more than doubled. Maine, North Carolina and Ohio also have seen increases of more than 30 percent in early in-person and mail voting compared with the same point in 2022.”

Pollster Tom Bonier said Saturday early voting in Texas is nearly 3 million. “More Hispanics have voted than did at this point in the 2024 presidential election,” he said. Young voters are driving the surge. “Hispanics under the age of 30 have not only exceeded their total turnout at this point in 2024, they have almost doubled it.” Of the vote totals in Texas so far, Bonier estimated 217,000 were cast by people who did not vote in 2024, half of them being Hispanic.

A common explanation is Hispanic voters are mad about the economy. Prices are too high. Wages are too low. It's harder to get by. But that's almost insulting, as it cheapens the scale of the injustice. Pete Wilson undermined people's material conditions, too, but that's not all he did. He profaned hope. He sabotaged the American dream. His party was punished for it.

To be sure, it's too early to know if Donald Trump's party will face the same or similar fate. However, what we do know is this: no Republican can win the presidency without Texas. If the Republicans are not worried about losing the Hispanic vote there, they should be.

I am very tired of being asked to be stupid. I know that is not the most important thing right now. There are many more serious consequences to electing a criminal president who is burning up the economy. But despite the fact that I do this for a living, and have developed a high tolerance as a result, I am nonetheless exhausted. Endless stupidity wears a man out.

It’s hard to pick just one example. Luckily, the AP sent one. This morning, the White House wants me to believe First Lady Melania Trump “brokered an upcoming ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine in the war-ravaged city of Oleshky.” I am told she “initiated the discussions.” I am told “helping children in conflict [has been] one of her signature issues.”

I am also told that neither Russia nor Ukraine knows what the White House is talking about. The AP: “There was no immediate comment from the Ukrainian or the Russian governments.”

Am I to believe Melania Trump has the capacity to broker a ceasefire when her husband does not? Am I to believe Vladimir Putin cares about what she thinks? (He’s got the president wrapped around his pinky.) Even if true, am I to believe she cares about kids in need? This is the same woman who visited a migrant detention center in 2018, where there were 55 children, wearing a jacket on the back of which was written “I really don’t care. Do U?”

It’s clear what Melania Trump really cares about – her public image. She wants Americans to see her as a woman who cares about children without having to take the responsibility of actually caring for them. She embodies the idea of privatized gain and socialized losses. The truth is transparently obvious, yet the White House keeps asking me to be stupid.

The White House isn’t alone. The Washington press corps is also guilty. We are often treated as if we have no authority to arbitrate reality. If the news media does not tell us something happened, it apparently did not happen.

No one knows exactly what is going on with the president. However, everyone can plainly see that something is definitely going on. No one makes noises like that. No one makes faces like that. No one does either unless there are things we do not know about that are very bad. We deserve to know what they are with sustained coverage in granular detail, but there is nary a peep from the press corps. The AP is willing to repeat word-for-word that Melania Trump negotiated "a localized ceasefire," but not report why Donald Trump is bleating like a sheep.

The stupidity is endless. We are told the president is a patriotic American, then he sucks up to America's enemies. Worse, last week, he switched sides, joining a Russian imperialist who is helping Iran kill Americans. That was after toadying up to a Chinese imperialist who is also helping Iran kill Americans. Last time I checked, "patriotic" did not mean "treasonous."

We are told the president is a Christian man, then he says things that are shockingly blasphemous. This week, he said he will "lead us to a period of Christianity that nobody else can do.” Many of his followers are idolaters. “I want to see two people: Trump and Jesus," one said. Worse is the suggestion that he's the second coming of Christ. At a rally, before Trump's entrance, a soundtrack played: “God gave us Trump … shepherd to all mankind.” If I remember right, the New Testament has a lot to say about something called the Antichrist.

We are told the president has ushered in a new era of manly virtue, despite that he applies spray tanning, dyes his hair, wears heel lifts to make himself look taller, falls asleep during Cabinet meetings, and is perhaps the vainest man who has ever lived. He accuses LaBron James of being “a total disgrace” for warming up during the national anthem but cannot win a war that he has said he won more than 100 times (as of August). He thinks good behavior is weakness, bad behavior is strength. He treats women like real estate. No one has seen more corruption than his. Everyone hates him, especially his kids. But go on. Tell me he’s manly.

Donald Trump is exhausting us with stupidity, but fortunately, there are signs that his moment is exhausting itself. Two years in and no president has been more unpopular than he is. Another two years and it might be virtually taboo to admit voting for him. Jingoism, barbarism, conspiracism, hate – it’s not only that maga-style populism should not be part of the prevailing discourse. It’s that it can’t be for long. As powerful and enduring as it may seem initially, it is more like mushrooms in American history. It springs up all of a sudden and seems to be everywhere at once. Then it dies back, nearly as suddenly. The first Red Scare was like that. So was the second. Americans just got tired of being tired of the stupidity.

It does not go away. Parts of it go underground, back to where it belongs. But some of it takes on new forms. Enterprising Democrats like Jon Ossoff and Abdul El-Sayed are now attempting to shear off the “maga” in maga-style populism. Instead of focusing on bigotry, conspiracy theory and longing for a mythical past, there is focus on egalitarian coalition-building against the real enemy of freedom and democracy: the very obscenely rich.

We may be exhausted but it won't last.

Trump is this close to yelling at clouds

At issue is Trump's defense of an attack ad featuring Amy Acton's estranged mother, Donna Arthur. Acton is the Democratic gubernatorial candidate in Ohio. Her opponent is Republican Vivek Ramaswamy. In the late 1970s, Donna Arthur accused her daughter of lying about the fact that her husband serially raped Acton from age 12. Arthur lost custody of her and her brother. Neither has been in contact since. The stepfather was charged and faced prosecution but fled the state. Donna Arthur went with him, becoming a fugitive. Below, Trump says "this has nothing to do with the stepfather." It has everything to do with him.

Trump: A mother is saying "don’t put my daughter there, because she’s a terrible person and she’s a liar." Why shouldn’t somebody use that?

Reporter: But do the sexual abuse allegations mean nothing, sir?

Trump: Wait, wait. Wait, wait, wait, slow down. Who are you with?

Reporter: I'm with NBC, sir.

Trump: One of the worst networks you have.

Reporter: But there have been very serious sexual abuse allegations, sir.

Trump: Quiet!

Reporter: They make no difference to you?

Trump: Isn't she a fresh person? You’re a horrible little reporter, aren't you? If my mother said bad things about me, you think the Democrats would put it up? I think so. But my mother thought I was wonderful. Thank you, Mom. My mother would never even say, if she thought them. This is a person, a mother, a smart woman, I watched, smart woman. She said her daughter is a disaster. Her daughter is a liar and she felt that she had an obligation and she also said her daughter lied about her opponent, which is Vivek Ramaswamy. If I had that ad, I should be so lucky to have an ad like that. Why wouldn’t you listen to a mother that says that? Why? Why would you, Miss NBC? Why wouldn’t you listen?

Reporter: She stayed with the stepfather after raping his stepdaughter in 1978, sir.

Trump: Wait a minute, quiet! I don’t know anything about a stepfather. You just keep talking.

Reporter: I'm answering you, sir.

Trump: I don’t know about any stepfather. That was many, many years ago. I know that recently a mother got on television and said that her daughter should not be governor of Ohio and she said "I love my daughter, but my daughter lies all the time and lied about her opponent and I can’t watch it." This has nothing to do with the stepfather or anything else. This has to do with the fact that a woman got out, the mother of a person running for governor of one of the greatest states, where I set records, and said that she’s a liar. Her daughter is a liar. She said her daughter lied about the Vivek and the mother couldn’t take it anymore. She basically said her daughter should not – that’s what she said – her daughter should not be the governor of Ohio. To me, that's something that's very much fair game.

The Wall Street Journal and CBS News confirmed that Elon Musk was involved in the decision to stall out Starshield, the military version of Starlink, when Ukraine needed it most. As Russia launched its biggest attack since the invasion, Musk “capped the speeds at which Ukrainian hardware could stay connected to the satellite-based network, the people said, rendering some offensive drones and interceptor drones virtually useless,” the Journal said.

It’s unlikely Musk acted alone. Reuters reported last week the decision to sabotage Ukraine came from the White House, the implication being it was Donald Trump’s. But Musk said publicly that the administration did it. Administration sources said publicly Musk did it. Common sense says both did. The Journal said Musk’s team contacted the White House to “coordinate messaging.” A source told the Telegraph: “The reality is that they were both in it.”

Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, is acting like what’s been done can’t be undone. He has put up with Trump’s humiliation tactics for years to maintain access to weapons and intelligence he needs to liberate his country. But now, he is no longer biting his tongue.

“People have to hear reality,” Zelensky said. Whether it’s lifting old sanctions on Russia, waiving new ones or sandbagging Starshield, it illustrates Trump’s affinity for dictators, he said, and that Trump has taken the wrong side of history in deciding to help Vladimir Putin.

US Senator Chris Murphy, of Connecticut, told Anderson Cooper that Ukraine was winning the war over the course of the last year, despite Trump’s refusal to maintain previous levels of support, until Putin “called in a favor, using whatever lever he has over the president.”

Murphy called recent choices by the White House, including last night’s decision to withhold Patriot missile shipments to Ukraine, “a pattern of behavior” in which the president "has decided he’s gonna put Ukraine in a position where they may be pressured to capitulate … a strategy to put Russia in the most powerful position possible to gain a settlement.”

While Trump deserves to be treated as if he has crossed a line, so does Musk. The fact of his involvement in a conspiracy to destroy Ukraine’s sovereignty should trigger a credibility crisis. Indeed, Heather Cox Richardson compared him to none other than Benedict Arnold.

“Musk’s decision to change the course of a war with ‘a seeming flick of a switch,’ taking it upon himself, with or without the complicity of White House officials, to reverse the foreign policy of the United States of America for the benefit of Russia’s president Vladimir Putin, is a stunning assumption of power reminiscent of Revolutionary War general Benedict Arnold’s weakening of the Americans’ defenses and draining of supplies at the strategic fort at West Point to enable the British to capture it before he was discovered and defected,” she wrote.

Musk seems aware of the possible consequences of showing his whole ass. "After what was described as a ‘night of carnage’ in Kyiv because of the blackout," the Telegraph reported, Musk "had been alarmed about the possibility of adverse consumer reaction in Europe.”

I would guess his fear is rooted in more than concern for his companies, government contracts and profit margins. He has made an enemy out of a sovereign nation whose fate is bound to those of others allied in the most powerful security apparatus on the planet. Governments protect men like Elon Musk. They are how he became an alleged trillionaire. But government protection becomes optional in times of war. Zelensky needs Starshield. He doesn’t need Musk. If I were an oligarch like him, I would be careful around open windows.

In America, among the Democrats, there’s growing apprehension about Musk’s "stunning assumption of power." “If it’s one man, Elon Musk, who is dictating our foreign policy, then he puts the United States at enormous risk,” US Senator Elizabeth Warren, of Massachusetts, said today. “He’s the one who decides whether Ukraine, out there fighting on the frontlines to protect its democracy, lives or dies? No. We should not have one man in that position.”

The Times reported last week that if the Democrats regain control, they might investigate Musk’s AI interests, his foreign entrenchments and what he did as head of the Department of Government Efficiency. His role in a conspiracy against Ukraine adds another item to the list.

Politico reported this week that the House Democrats are already coming up with a game plan for when they have the subpoena power. Texas Congressman Greg Casar said “our committees need to be doing oversight both into the Trump administration, but I think even more importantly or equally importantly, into the corporations and ultrarich people who have tried to corrupt our government. And, of course, Elon Musk is on that list.”

In the spring, the Democrats introduced a bill that would unwind mergers made in the second Trump administration. More generally, the Democrats are focused on anti-monopoly enforcement and price-fixing amid a cost-of-living crisis, as well as political graft. Musk’s former position at DOGE yielded hundreds of billions in contracts. He got out of federal investigations and avoided billions in fines. His companies constitute a virtual trust.

And the Democrats are in the mood for trust-busting.

Filmmaker Alex Gibney made a documentary about Musk that shatters his reputation as a genius inventor. He told Piers Morgan last night that contrary to popular belief, Musk has never invented anything. His real genius is stock pumping, Gibney said. “That is where he really shines. He’s managed to take companies, which have a rather mediocre profit-and-loss record, and make himself through stock pumping the richest man in the world.”

Stock pumping is market manipulation. It’s illegal under federal law and New York state law. I’m reminded of that time when Tucker Carlson asked Musk what would happen to him if Kamala Harris won the 2024 election. “How long will my prison sentence be?” he said.

It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Musk understands the stakes – that he has crossed the line, that there’s no going back, and that all that’s left is to pour hundreds of millions into the midterms in the hopes of staying out of jail. He is the single biggest backer of Ken Paxton, the corrupt and impeached attorney general of Texas. He is literally trying to buy a senator.

No one elected Elon Musk. A majority of the governed did not grant him authority over them. He has no constituency beyond Twitter followers. He has demonstrated unconscionable disloyalty. If he can pull the plug on Ukraine’s defense, he can pull the plug on America’s.

The president is demented. It's why he lashed out at a reporter today in the Oval Office. Donald Trump said: "Quiet. Quiet! What's wrong with you? Are you a sick person?"

It's also why he acts like there is no future.

With the prospect looming over him of a US Congress controlled by the Democrats, Donald Trump is behaving like time is running out. In the last week, he has lifted sanctions on Russian oil, sabotaged Ukraine, and "waived" news laws designed to punish Vladimir Putin.

The devil gets his due.

And the due date has come.That might sound like a good thing, but a demented, futureless president is dangerous. Consider that right now, before the midterms, Trump has the incentive to end the war against Iran. Prices are extortionate. The solution is restoring the flow of oil. But there may be no such incentive after November. As Cole Bucy and Nate Swanson wrote in Foreign Policy last month, Trump "may no longer feel burdened to pretend to be interested."

Once election season is over, odds are Trump will turn his focus entirely inward to avoid accountability or settle scores or strawboss the public's attention to stop it from moving away from him in anticipation of the next election. One result is an Iran that's free to do more of the same burning up of the US economy. Short-term, there is little to be gained with a president who believes if he's going down, he's going to take everyone down with him.

That's why it's important to remind authoritarians that there will be a future, said Zeb Larson, a historian who writes for Dame and Liberal Currents. In the interview below, Zeb told me one of the ways the Democrats can be a truly oppositional party is by constantly reminding the president – but especially his enablers – that "the future awaits them."

They won’t change their behavior on their own, Zeb told me, "because none of them can imagine a post-Trump future. It terrifies them. If they can just not deal with it at all, that leaves them freedom of action. Constant reminders about the fact that the future awaits them will break up his coalition, and also tee the country up for a post-Trump future."

Initially, I got in touch with Zeb, because I wanted to talk about a piece he wrote a year ago, published in Dame, about the president's clear cognitive deterioration, and what happens when authoritarian coalitions like his wait around for their leaders to unravel completely.

But after our conversation, news broke of former and current national security officials advising state elections officials on what to do if Trump uses "federal powers to sway the upcoming vote, covering categories that include legal and illegal activity," according to the Post. "Among their concerns are that the administration could deploy troops or immigration agents to polling stations or seek to nullify results based on claims of voter fraud."

Suddenly, Zeb's point took on bigger significance.

There will be a future. Accountability awaits there.

Trump may be too demented to remember, but others shouldn't.

A year ago, you said Trump's cognitive deterioration is obvious and asked: Who's really running the administration? Your piece in Dame came out before the war. The question is more pressing now. What can history teach us about moments like this?

Yeah, I wrote that before I knew anything about Natalie Harp, but she fits the historical mold perfectly. Her actual position is unclear but she wields access to Trump and his dwindling attention span, so she is now a power broker. And that’s where history is useful, I think, because whatever the normal processes for decision making in government are all gone now.

More philosophically, the opposition (Democrats) need to understand that they have to offer a vision of the future. Trump and those around him won’t do it because none of them can imagine a post-Trump future. It terrifies them. If they can just not deal with it at all, that leaves them freedom of action. Constant reminders about the fact that the future awaits them will break up his coalition, and also tee the country up for a post-Trump future.

In your piece, you describe two roads: one is rigging elections from maga figures who won't give up power. The other is in-fighting between maga factions that plunge us all into chaos. Seems kinda hopeless?

I don’t personally feel hopeless, unless what you’re hoping for is a return to an earlier political status quo. Everybody should now know that Republicans won’t do the right thing on their own. Even the Iran War has just barely dented his control over the party. But he is hugely unpopular, and that seems poised to get worse.

I think what we can’t afford is complacency and the idea that Trump is at the root of all of everything that’s wrong. Democrats should be teeing up every aspect of civil society they can to fight against election tampering — in other words, act like an opposition party. Authoritarians do lose their own rigged elections, but it happens because the vote totals are too hard to ignore and because people are out in the streets. Maga infighting could be an incredible opportunity if and when it comes, as long as Democrats are organized themselves.

A lot has changed since your piece ran. The Dems are now more oppositional than they were, but are they oppositional enough?

Ha, it would take a lot to be enough in my book, but they’re getting there. I still want to see more concrete plans for what they want to do once they regain power. Focusing on economic issues feels safe in a bad way: as Trump has demonstrated, politicians tend to be better at breaking the economy than making it hum.

I want specific, concrete plans for accountability, fixing parts of the government like the Supreme Court, undoing the damage done by DOGE, and so on. My peers at Liberal Currents have done a whole series on this, The Reconstruction Papers. Be ambitious! Try to shape public opinion with demands and stop acting as though they can only ever respond to what they think voters want. This latest attack on Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar is perfect because it shows how dangerous a large immigration police apparatus is: it can become fundamentally undemocratic. We can’t live with this thing going forward, so talk constantly about what comes next.

Trump will be a lame duck soon. The center of gravity is going to move away from him, virtually overnight. Being a sadistic narcissist who is clearly struggling with dementia, he's not going to take kindly to that. Do historians recognize these situations and what can be done?

He will absolutely rage over this and it will be dangerous. He knows at some level that he’s old and dying, and one of the things about dictators is that they rarely talk about lineage or what comes after them. If something can succeed them, it could do so right now, which makes succession a threat. He will be very content to burn everything down.

Luckily for us, it’s terrible for the maga coalition. People hoping to escape accountability, or be Trump’s successor, don’t want to live in the burned down ruins that he’ll leave behind. It will promote infighting, but a savvy opposition can use that to its advantage. The coalition collapsing makes it so much more likely that individual members can’t escape accountability, so it’s better for them to cut deals.

Anthony Scaramucci said months ago that Trump is going to sabotage the GOP. "His personality is 'you guys were nothing before I got on the stage and I’ve carried you for the last 12 years, and the 2020 election was rigged and everyone knows it, and I should’ve won that election, and I’ve returned to the presidency carrying all the Republicans on my back, and when I leave ... you’re going back to nothing' ... that’s Donald Trump's personality." Hopeful? Scary? What should a reasonable person think?

Hopeful in the medium-term, because I don’t really see how the GOP reinvents itself post-Trump. He is a political anomaly and we’ll never be able to separate his appeal from "The Apprentice." What that does is create an opening for the rest of us, because the GOP will come out of this so bruised and without any real core ideologically.

But in the short-term, it is frightening. Whether he’ll embark on another foreign policy disaster, I don’t know; Trump hates being a loser and [the Iran war] has already painted him as one. But at home, he’s going to feel even less inhibited about going after his critics or tanking the economy even further. The best thing for us to do is not to lose heart and just not stop shouting or resisting; reminders of his mortality and that this will end will make it harder for those around him to keep going.

During the president's first term, it was impossible to get his supporters to accept that the Russians really did help him defeat Hillary Clinton in 2016, and that the late Robert Mueller's investigation proved it. As far as they were concerned, the Russia thing was a hoax invented by their enemies, real and imagined. There was no way Donald Trump could be a traitor.

I wonder if that might be changing. Trump has cracked his base of power, first by reneging on his promise to release the complete Epstein files, and bring those involved in the alleged conspiracy to justice. Second, he burned up the economy with a combination of illegal war, illegal taxes and illegal deportations. Then last week, he made a series of decisions so brazen it shocked the cynical opportunists of the Washington press corps. The New Yorker's Susan Glasser said there is an October Surprise this election season. It's Trump's "pivot to Putin."

For reasons no one can explain, beyond that he's the weakest strongman ever, Trump lifted sanctions on Russian diesel. Easing restrictions will not only reverse the punishment for Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine, but boost funding for his continued aggression against it. Last week, Trump (or someone, maybe Elon Musk) pulled the plug on Starshield, the military version of the Starlink satellite system used by Ukraine, just as Russia was pounding it with the biggest ballistic missile attack yet. Then Friday, Trump said he would not enforce new Russian sanctions approved by Congress two days before they were to take effect.

That last decision was the most significant, according to The Atlantic's Tom Nichols. "The American commander in chief has abandoned the Western order, the most successful — and powerful — security arrangement in human history," he wrote Sunday. "Trump’s suspension of the law [sanctions] is a signal to Ukraine, to Russia, to Europe, and to America’s NATO allies that the Trump White House and Putin’s Kremlin are now on the same side."

National Review's Andrew McCarthy, who is not a Democrat or a liberal, took it a step farther. He suggested Trump is acting in accordance with the very definition of treason in the US Constitution. "Putin’s war of aggression and hoped-for conquest against Ukraine … is part of his quest to reconstitute America’s Soviet enemy," he wrote. "And President Donald Trump is giving him aid and comfort.” McCarthy called on the Congress to convene "immediate hearings about this week’s shocking escalation of the Trump-Putin alliance.”

CNN's Jake Tapper did not weigh in on the substance of last week's news, but did remind his Twitter followers today that on this day 10 years ago, at the final debate with Trump, Hillary Clinton said Putin "would rather have a puppet as president." Trump: "You're the puppet."

Hillary Clinton replied: "It's pretty clear you won't admit that the Russians have engaged in cyber-attacks against the United States of America, that you encouraged espionage against our people, that you are willing to spout the Putin line, sign up for his wishlist, break up NATO, do whatever he wants to do, and that you continue to get help from him."

Tapper is perhaps the most cynical of all the cynical opportunists who constitute the press corps. His reputation and reporting were central to the "but her emails" dynamic that dragged Clinton. But with Trump's approval now falling as low as 30 percent, Tapper can see which way the wind is blowing. Reposting Clinton's remarks, in light of the bipartisan reaction to the "pivot to Putin," seems almost conventional. It's a sign that a subject that used to be controversial – Russia! Russia! Russia! – could soon become merely common sense.

A change to elite consensus is one thing. A change to mainstream consensus is another. The cost of living has been magnified by the cost of war such that most Americans are now focused on corruption – not just his, but that of the entire "Epstein class." Corruption is no longer an abstraction that offends the precious sensibilities of liberals. It's real and it hurts.

A new Fox poll showed nine in 10 Americans say corruption is their top worry. Neither affordability nor health care are more important. A new poll by the Post found two in three believe Trump is enriching himself as president. The Post said "most of the increase over the past year has come from people who lean Republican." (An AP poll echoed the same.) CNN reported that Republican operatives conducting focus groups to gauge the opinions of GOP voters in the midwest found that they blame rising gas prices on "corrupt politicians" and "billionaires." That shocked "some longtime strategists who’ve never seen government corruption emerge as a top issue for so many Republican voters in congressional races."

Russia wants peace, Ukraine wants war, Russia is helping us and Ukraine is hurting us by daring to defend itself. Also, we must be nice to Russia or it will help Iran. pic.twitter.com/z1IW0nttVy
— Yaroslav Trofimov (@yarotrof) October 19, 2026

Miles Taylor, who served in the first Trump administration, said a new consensus on corruption is a consequence of the president making it impossible to ignore. "He turned it from a background story that’s always playing out in Washington into basically the lead story of every news cycle for the past 18 month," he said. "The high prices people are experiencing at the grocery and at the pump are in no small part because of Trump’s corruption."

It wasn't supposed to happen, because it has never happened in the history of polling, Taylor later discovered. But if corruption can achieve its current level of visibility, I don't see why the same thing can't happen to Trump's corrupt relationship with Putin. His own people think he's a crook. They are making plans to punish him. They recognize the midterms mark the end of an era. There's no longer a reason to keep denying what's been obvious to others.

Trump is Putin's puppet.

The Wall Street Journal reported this morning that Putin wants a meeting next month between him, Trump and Xi Jinping to negotiate a "Ukraine deal." This evening, the Post reported that Trump is holding up shipments of Patriot missiles to Ukraine. The first reflects hope in divvying up the world, the second an awareness that time is running out. Ukraine's fate is in Europe's hands for now, but the "pivot to Putin" may not be permanent. Disgust with corruption is reaching its zenith, which means Trump's usefulness is reaching its end.

I think the president of the United States really believes "there's never been anybody" who deserves the Nobel Peace Prize more than he does. He really believes he "settled eight wars." He really believes he stopped "the total obliteration of the world" by going to war with Iran.

And I think he will try to punish anyone who does not share his beliefs. As president, Donald Trump has vast powers at his disposal. "I can do whatever I want," he told reporters on Wednesday. Evidently, that includes forcing people to believe his delusions of grandeur.

Yesterday, it was announced that Judge Navi Pillay had been awarded the prestigious award. She's a former jurist for the International Criminal Court in the Hague, the Netherlands. She presided over monumental cases involving genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. When asked for comment, Pillay joked: "I may share this prize with Trump."

Within hours, the administration said it placed economic sanctions on the court, preventing US businesses from providing services. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the ICC was "a rogue court." The sanctions will continue, he said, until "allies, many of whom are part of the ICC and that rely on American service members for their defense, rein in the court."

But after seeing a superpower brought low by Iran, US allies don't rely on "American service members" like they used to. More importantly, Trump's sanctions are an obvious attempt to compel belief in his fantasies. The Washington press corps has "normalized having an insane president," as Aaron Rupar said, but allies must see it clearly. They don't have the luxury.

That said, widespread crisis has a way of changing what's considered normal. Last month, I noted twin patterns. On the one hand, Trump's advisors have been getting "increasingly blunt" with him, according to the Post, about the jeopardy his party is in due to the Iran war. On the other hand, as the economic fallout from the war continues to build up, reporters seem to be getting "increasingly blunt" with voters as well as administration officials.

I didn't mean reporters are becoming adversarial. I meant they are becoming less inclined, as the backlash gains momentum, to play along with the White House line. CNN's Jake Tapper, for instance, has never met an rightwing allegation he was not willing to give credence to. Yet when confronted with wild distortions by Kevin Hassett, head of the Economic Council, Tapper said voter unhappiness is showing up in the data, "just not the data you're looking at."

Worse, for Hassett's credibility, was Tapper's side-eye!

Donald Trump is weakening politically. (A new poll from Pew, the gold standard of polling, showed his approval is 30 percent. Virginia's governor told MeidasTouch last night: "At this point in time in 2022, a little over 200,000 Virginians had voted. At this point in time in 2026, approximately 450,000 Virginians have voted early.) As he does so, there may be more incentive to focus on other weaknesses, including his mental deficits. Up to now, talk of cognitive decline has been on the margins, a subject debated among critics. The furthest forward it has come is in the form of regular rhetoric, as when Mike Barnicle memorably called Trump a "damaged, delusional old man," suggesting dementia without naming it.

But the weaker Trump gets politically, I think the less hesitance there will be in breaking the taboo that's currently preventing people from naming what they see. Last week, for instance, Time released the transcript of a long interview. For some, it revealed a broken brain. It raised the question as to whether Trump can tell the difference between fact and fiction.

"It’s almost unbelievable that this man is the president," Amy McGrath wrote on Twitter. "He rarely finishes a coherent thought. At one point, he actually says that all of his decisions 'are correct ones.' His explanations of the national debt and basic economics are astonishingly muddled. He makes false claim after false claim with absolute confidence. I can't tell if he just doesn't care that he's lying or actually believes the lies himself. Reading the transcript — not watching him, not hearing the delivery, just reading his actual words — is jarring."

I think the strongest evidence to suggest the dementia taboo is fading came from the Times' Katie Rogers. She has covered Trump rallies for a decade. Last week, she said they "feel like the first stops of a farewell tour." There's less attendance, so there's less coverage. "There were swaths of empty seats at the 10,000-capacity athletic center where Mr Trump spoke on Friday," she wrote. "In Ohio a day later, several areas of an upper deck were empty by the time Mr Trump finished speaking at a 4,500-capacity high school student activity center."

But at the top of her report was this: "The events are a ritual. He will attack Democrats. His words will probably stop making actual, logical sense for a moment, or for many moments. (It’s “the weave,” you see.) He will accuse Democrats of rigging the 2020 election (they didn’t). He will attack the news media. Then he will dance to a Village People song" (my italics).

With the dam heaving under pressure, critics are pushing harder. Lawrence O'Donnell might have gone farther than anyone so far. He said Thursday: "If the president of the United States is insane, that is the biggest news of the day or any day. That is what will live in history. That is what historians will devote their attention to if the president of the United States is insane. If the president of the United States’ mind is crumbling before our very eyes, that is the most important story of the day because everything else follows from that, everything!”

In good times, it's tempting to put his derangements in the context of familiar partisanship. A desire to be a dictator on day one of his second term? That's just Trump being Trump!

But bad times make things hit different. This week, he said, "I can do whatever I want," in the same breath as "I stopped the total obliteration of the world," as if he were a superhero. He punished the International Criminal Court for Navi Pillay's decision to poke fun at him. His fantasies hit different when he demands the world validate them or suffer the consequences.

The times, they are a-changing.

Normalized insanity won't last much longer.

The AP ran a headline that said it all. "Can $1 billion buy victory in the midterm elections? Some Republicans fear the answer is no," read the topline item from yesterday's "Morning Wire." However, that was apparently too on the nose for some GOP readers. Later, the AP changed the headline to read: "Can $1 billion power Republicans to victory in the midterms?"

It doesn't matter, though. The fact that Republicans are spending $1 billion on congressional elections is a grotesque revelation. It tells us who the Republicans are, what they value and what they expect from democratic politics. That's more money than you, me and everyone we know will see in our lifetimes. Whether the AP asks if it can "power Republicans to victory" or "buy victory" for the GOP seems like a distinction without a difference.

The Republicans are spending obscene sums for two reasons. One is they took for granted congressional seats in red states and red districts. Some are suddenly in deep trouble. No one foresaw the president campaigning in Nebraska this week, but farmers there have been hit by a costly double-whammy – Donald Trump's tariffs and Donald Trump's war. They're so mad an independent candidate is dead even with incumbent GOP Senator Peter Ricketts.

The second reason is related to the first. Because they took those seats for granted, they got a late start buying media time. They are paying more now to run ads than they would have months ago. The AP said MAGA Inc, the president's PAC, "has been charged roughly $894 per airing, according to AdImpact, while Texas PAC has been charged roughly $809 for a mix of broadcast and streaming." For the same mix, Democrat James Talarico paid about $290.

But there's more here than Republicans making up for lost ground. One billion dollars is a reflection of who they are. They believe authority is their birthright. As a consequence, they believe there's nothing morally wrong with "buying victory." The Republicans are anti-political. They resent competing democratically. They would rather pick their voters, for instance through gerrymandering, than humiliate themselves with the chore of earning votes. As Mark Jacob said, with a precision rare in our discourse: "The clear message of Republicans is that this country is owned by white people and everyone else is renting."

Some white people are renting too. They just don't know it or, if they do, they are choosing to side with the Republicans in the hopes of getting more than people they believe are their inferiors. That cynicism might pay off in good times, with a Democrat overseeing the economy. But with a Republican in charge, it backfires. Nebraska farmers voted Trump, but don't like the consequences. They believe they own America, too. Now their rent is going up.

The pain has been exquisite. Well-meaning advisors tell the Democrats to capitalize on it. The Bulwark's Sarah Longwell said they have "a generational opportunity to reestablish a relationship with rural voters betrayed by Trump." Longwell said the formula is simple.

"Focus on solutions to cost of living issues, including healthcare," she said. "Commit to a secure border without inhumane deportations. Deprioritize divisive social issues. No new wars. A more careful approach on AI policy and data centers. Care about working people."

Other than AI and data centers, these have been part of the Democratic platform since at least the Obama administration. The problem isn't Democrats failing to send the message. It's rural voters failing to hear it. The reality is they want what the Democrats are offering, but not from the Democrats. They want it from the Republicans. They never get it, of course.

That's why they get so mad.

There may be "a generational opportunity," but I don't know if it can be realized through enticements. A better way might be through "tough love." Let GOP voters feel the consequences of empowering men who take them for granted, who try to "buy victory" rather than earn it, and who act like democratic politics is a chore that's beneath them.

Perhaps the best way to help Trump voters is by allowing the painful experience of the GOP brand to play out. Self-interest drove them to Trump. Let it drive them to the Democrats. We're all in this together. United, we stand. Divided, we fall. But values are not enough for some people. They won't choose democracy unless it's a means of survival. Millions of Republicans didn't choose Franklin Roosevelt because he was charming. They chose him, in the depths of the Great Depression, because they understood they were hurting themselves.

Ask Me Anything: October 8, 2026

I asked you to ask me anything. Here are some questions I got. If you want to ask me something for next week's Ask Me Anything, leave a comment below or send a reply.

E Wade asks:

Where are we now on getting the remainder of the Epstein files released?

My answer:

Where we are is paralysis. As long as Donald Trump, or a Republican successor, is in the White House, the entirety of the Epstein files will never be seen. That said, there might not actually be much to them, at least not in ways most seem to believe. Lindsay Beyerstein explained in March the real Epstein story is probably about financial crimes. Epstein probably did the sex crimes, Lindsay reported. Maybe a few others did, too. But, she said, the pedophile ring is almost certainly not as broad and global as alleged. What is probably broad and global, however, is financial crimes, perhaps including espionage. As they say, follow the money. Ron Wyden's office has been. "My investigators have confirmed the Trump administration is hiding interview documents it conducted with some of Epstein’s banks, and there could be more," the Oregon senator told MeidasTouch last week. "There’s no limit to how far Scott Bessent, Kash Patel and Todd Blanche will go to continue this cover up."

Carl Gibson asks:

It almost seems like Trump has been deliberately sabotaging the midterms. If there was a how-to guide for how to screw up your party’s chances of staying in office, he’d be following every step. Do you think he’s deliberately trying to throw the midterms? Kicking 760,000 people off of their health coverage weeks before an election really serves no purpose other than to make life harder for people, including a lot of his own voters.

My answer:

I asked myself the same question in May. Here's what I said: "After all this time, we still interpret the president through a partisan lens that attempts to explain his behavior. Everyone assumes he wants his party to keep the House, at the very least to avoid impeachment. It's because of this assumption that Republicans are growing frustrated. 'The president was elected to juice the economy, to bring down inflation, to stop illegal immigration and to get away from woke culture,' a GOP pollster told the Times. 'If his highest goal were to maintain control of Congress, he would not be doing what he is doing.' We should consider the alternative: that control of Congress is not his highest goal."

What is his highest goal? Donald Trump, obviously.

How that will manifest after the midterms is hard to say. What's certain is he won't accept the outcome, even when he blames the Republicans. He already laid the groundwork for alleging fraud. On Sunday, he wrote on his social media site: “In Detroit, Philadelphia, California, and numerous other US Cities and States, the results, with much smaller numbers, will often take weeks to Rig, I mean, calculate. Voting in America is CORRUPT!!!” For allegations of fraud to work, however, Americans have to trust him. In an interview with the Connecticut Mirror, Jim Himes, ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, said there's the rub. Trump "no longer has any meaningful public sentiment on his side." Himes added: "That was not true on January 6, 2021. A president who is despised by two-thirds of the American population is a much less scary force than one who has the support of 60 percent of the population. So public sentiment really matters, and it is not on his side.”

lindsrn.bsky.social asks:

How do you balance caring for your mental/physical/emotional health while swinging between anger at all the chaos around you and how so many applaude it, feeling sadness over all of the death and destruction, and trying to manufacture some type of genuine hope to keep trying to lead positive change?

My answer:

Hope is found in two things: a) evil people die and b) good people always do good things, leaving their works behind. Progress is usually two steps forward, one step back, but there is no stopping democratic politics. It is the force of change in the world. That said, I stopped believing in the inherent goodness of the American people. Voters will trade democracy for money and status. But there is no good if there is no struggle, and sometimes, the struggle is just to wait. As Charlie Chaplin once said: "So long as men die, liberty will never perish."

I have been thinking about why Donald Trump is so unpopular. The conventional wisdom is that it's because he broke his promises – to bring down costs, to stay out of wars, to release the Epstein files. But I think it's important to focus on what's beneath that and bring it forward, and it's this: Trump lies and those who still believe his lies are increasingly few.

Consider groceries. The president has been concocting a fantasy about the cost of food going down since his return to the White House. "The prices for groceries have come way down from Biden," Trump told reporters last month. "Almost every price has come way down.” He has repeated this lie frequently, but not many seem to believe it. A new CBS News poll found that "70 percent say the president's policies are raising the cost of food and groceries, and 64 percent said the war in Iran is driving oil and gas prices much higher."

Knowing this, he has resorted to bribery. At rallies last night and over the weekend, the president repeated the offer of giving $5,000 to every adult citizen if the Republicans keep the Congress. That kind of cash might be tempting for people struggling to make ends meet, but it also depends on trusting him to follow through, which he has not done with previous offers. In any case, trust isn't showing up in polling. The AP's latest polling shows just "17 percent of US adults approve of the Republican president’s handling of the cost of living."

To be sure, Trump broke his promises, but they were lies, part of a galaxy of lies he's been telling for a decade. They were bound to catch up with him, as more people feel the consequences of believing them. It seems to me there's now a pattern in which the more he lies, the more voters distrust him, and the more voters distrust him, the more he lies. During a rally last night, Trump repeated his bribery offer: "Only I can make this promise to you," he said. "This is a big promise, but I've met so many. I've met all my promises, all my promises."

That majorities are losing faith in Donald Trump is one thing. That they are getting increasingly angry in reaction to his continued lying is another. The rage is building such that the backlash may not be limited to him but also include the political project that brought him. On Monday, CNN's Harry Enten, in noting that Trump's approval in Kansas is down by 20 points compared to the same time during his first term, said: "Donald Trump is probably at this point in his term the least popular Republican president since Herbert Hoover."

Herbert Hoover's defeat in 1932 marked the end of an era and the beginning of a long period of dominance by the Democrats under Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman. Hoover tried to remedy the destruction caused by the Great Depression, but his policies ended up making it worse. Not only did he lose, his party was discredited. Fair or not, his name became a byword for incompetence, greed and corruption. From his time until 1994, the Democrats controlled the House for 66 years, a period broken only by two years of GOP control in the 1950s.

I don't know if history is going to repeat itself, but it's worth noting what Hakeem Jeffries said in February. Polls were showing a swing in approval among independent voters away from Trump by more than 40 points. At the time, the House minority leader compared those numbers to "an extinction-level event." Since then, Trump launched a war against Iran, oil and diesel prices broke records, mortgage rates rose higher and inflation outpaced wages. Trump's approval rating among independent voters reflects that progression. Eight months ago, the indie swing against him was more than 40 points. Now, according to Enten, it's 99.

Roosevelt was mostly responsible for discrediting the Republicans for a generation. Trump, however, is creating potential for that by himself. On Wednesday, he said he was considering a ban on diesel exports. That came as a relief to vulnerable GOP incumbents and candidates, who are facing rage at home. Two days later, however, the president said there would be no ban. Indeed, after G7 countries in Europe said they would release some of their reserves, Reuters asked if he would still consider a ban. "We were never going to do it," he replied.

On Monday, Trump said he would consider an executive order that would suspend federal taxes on diesel. But as GasBuddy's Patrick De Haan said, that wouldn't lower prices in the long term. It could raise them, he said, as it would increase demand without increasing supply. The best solution to the energy crisis is ending the war and reopening the Strait of Hormuz, where Iran's threats have driven shipping costs skyward. According to Bloomberg's Javier Blas, the daily price for hiring a supertanker to move oil through the Gulf has spiked roughly 2,500 percent. It was $50,000 a day before the war, Blas said. Now it's $1.3 million.

The war, of course, is the mother of all lies. Trump has been saying it will end from the day it started. And he keeps repeating the lie despite evidence to the contrary. Last night, in Nebraska, he vowed that the war is "essentially almost over with." Prices will fall after the midterms, he said. "It's going to end very soon, and it's going to end one way or the other."

But few believe it. The war "will carry on as it has," wrote Ali Vaez last week in Foreign Affairs. "There will not be a comprehensive resolution. There will be no lasting peace deal. ... There will be no dramatic escalation, either. Tehran and Washington won’t be defeated. Yet no one will win." Tucker Carlson agrees. Noting that Trump appears to have used AI to decide to go to war, he said "it is hard to imagine clearer proof that the people running our country are nothing close to the geniuses they want you to think they are. They are faking it as they go. There is no master plan; the White House is not playing 4D chess. Or even checkers."

There are two more years to go. No matter what happens in November, Trump will still be in charge of a war no one asked for. He will still burn up the economy. He will still lie about his role. (Oil executives said last week that diesel prices "will not" return to normal for a year.) No one knows how bad it's going to get, but Republicans under Trump could face the same fate that Republicans faced under Herbert Hoover. Majorities already associate Trump's name with incompetence, greed and corruption. By 2028, that opinion could be unanimous.

The Democrats are prepared to hasten that moment. The DNC released a campaign video last week that featured a clip from Don't Look Up, a movie about scientists trying to warn of a meteor hurtling toward Earth – "an extinction-level event," as Hakeem Jeffries might say. In the clip, actor Leonardo DiCaprio screams into the TV camera as if he were giving voice to the mounting rage against Donald Trump and the Republicans: "The president of the United States is ------- lying! This whole administration has completely lost their ------- minds!"

Two more years from now, that may be common knowledge.

The Washington Sun called it "panic week." During the last five days, Republicans across-the-board seemed to wake up to the fact that things are not going to get better from now until the congressional elections. This was the week in which Republicans everywhere realized, all at once, that the light at the end of the tunnel may be from an oncoming train.

“I don’t want to say the bottom is falling out yet, but I feel like we are in this place, and the realization is setting in, that some tough decisions will need to be made,” an unnamed GOP consultant told the Sun. “You can’t get around the fact that Democrats have the advantage on the economy, on gas prices. There’s no choice in this election. It’s a referendum on Trump.”

It's a referendum on the president, to be sure, but more precisely, on his terrible and illegal decision to attack Iran. Republicans hate it for ideological reasons. Trump was supposed to be for America First, after all. But they hate it even more for economic reasons. The cost of the war is burning up the economy, especially the rural economy, which rises and falls on the price of diesel. Diesel has been breaking records every day for the last two weeks.

“The war’s just gone on too long," a source close to Mike Rogers' Senate campaign in Michigan told Politico this week, after he released an ad calling for an end to the war. "Mike still thinks Iran shouldn’t have a nuclear weapon, but we originally thought this would take six weeks. Voters have been paying for it at their kitchen tables for too long.”

How bad is it? Let me bring your attention to Steve Deace. He's a popular rightwing radio host in Iowa. On Thursday afternoon, he reported on a briefing with Iowa House Republicans in which their own pollsters informed them that "if you are in a plus-15 district, [that] you’re within the margin for error, if you’re in a plus-10 district you’re underwater, and that [the midterms] might end up being an even worse midterm environment than 2006."

Translation: Your seat is not safe even if Trump won district by more than 15 points. Your seat is in danger if Trump won your district by more than 10 points. In Iowa, the backlash against the Iran War is so big that 2026 is shaping up to be another 2006, in which the backlash against the Iraq War wiped out three of Iowa's five congressional seats for the GOP.

And as Deace knows, Iowa was a bellwether that year.

"If the environment is this bad in my home state, where Trump has been the most popular political figure over the last decade, I can’t imagine where it is everywhere else," Deace said.

If panic setting in this week, you would expect Republicans to take a stand, at the very least signal to the president that something has to change before it's too late. After all, Marjorie Taylor Greene said last week, “this is Trump’s fault." She added: “It’s $8.49 for diesel in California. It’s $6.59 in Georgia. I don’t care if it’s Georgia or California. It’s way too high.”

Yet while some Republicans, like Mike Rogers, are giving lip service to bringing the war to an end, that's about it. Even with the end times approaching, no one else seems ready to stick their neck out. Trump is polling at 29 percent in one survey, but panic is being accompanied by paralysis. All but four Senate Republicans, including Iowa's Chuck Grassley, voted against a resolution Thursday to block Trump from ordering more strikes on Iran. They voted to continue supporting the war, despite the war eating their party from the inside out.

Even Jon Husted balked on that vote. The Ohio senator, who is in a tough race against Sherrod Brown, made news this week by appearing to distance himself from Trump. "The war needs to come to an end as quickly as possible so that we can lower gas prices," he said. Yet when it came time for action to meet the conviction of his words, he chickened out. Husted is a stand-in for his party. GOP voters may be screaming for relief. GOP candidates may be panicking. Yet so far, most Republicans will not choose to defy Donald Trump.

Even Iowa's Steve Deace, who can clearly see the portents of doom on the horizon, believes what's needed is more Donald Trump, not less. "We need the president out on the stump ASAP," he wrote. Deace called on the president to "articulate specifically what the mission and victory is in Iran and Hormuz, because out here in the cheap seats it feels like another Middle East War quagmire regular folks are paying for on both ends all over again."

This is it, though. It only gets worse from here. "Blaming the American president for price inflation is a way of life here," Virginia Heffernan wrote for The New Republic during "panic week." "Live by it; die by it. Trump did nothing but savage Joe Biden for high prices born of the Covid pandemic. Now he expects a pass for inflation he’s actively helped create."

The far right has abandoned the president. ("I don't just want Republicans to lose," Nick Fuentes, the white supremacist, said. "I want Republicans to be annihilated from the face of the planet.") So have rightwing pundits. ("The war, cost of living (especially gas), and how he acts like he doesn’t give a s--- is what has pushed ['Red America'] over the edge," Rod Dreher said.) Meanwhile, Donald Trump is so depleted that he can no longer walk in a straight line.

The wheels are coming off, wrote journalist Mark Halperin this morning.

"As I sift through my inboxes and social media feeds over the most recent extended news cycle," he wrote, "what I see instead is ... a political figure who is swimming against the tide of a Blue tsunami as big as Connecticut, not because Ken Martin is suddenly a genius, but because an unpopular war and high consumer prices is no way to win a midterm election."

If the Republicans won't choose to defy Trump, well, democracy will choose for them.

In American politics, the simplest explanation is probably the best. Why are some Republicans suddenly and conspicuously breaking from Donald Trump? Not just any Republicans, but ruby-red Republicans, in ruby-red states, in the span of days?

The answer is probably diesel.

The price reached $6 a gallon two Fridays ago for the first time. Since then, every new day has smashed the previous day's record. I checked this morning. AAA says the national average was $5.57 this time last month. Last week, it was $6.23. Today, it's $6.52.

Paul Krugman put it this way.

"Diesel is currently selling at more than $200 a barrel. It’s true that there is always a 'crack spread' between crude and diesel, but it’s typically on the order of $20. So the price of diesel is currently roughly what we would normally expect with crude at around $190."

So it's only Tuesday. At this rate, the average is going to reach $7 by the end of next week. (It's already there in Hawaii, according to Newsweek. Meanwhile, in California, it's almost $8.)

The US economy is complicated, but the extortionate price of diesel is getting people's attention, and not just any people – Trump's people. Middle-aged white working-class men who might otherwise be trusted to ride-or-die with him are rethinking their loyalty fast.

"This truck is gonna sit and rot now until this idiot president is out of office," said a Trump supporter in a video that went viral. "I voted for him and I'm so sorry I voted for him."

He added: "I never thought I would say this – I miss Joe Biden."

It's a large amount of pain being felt in a small amount of time, and the speed with which the Republicans have responded to it is pretty extraordinary. Just last month, the Republican National Committee warned GOP candidates against distancing themselves from Trump.

"[Trump] is the biggest turnout machine for mid- to low-propensity voters and we need those voters to get to the polls,” the RNC's Natalie Baldassarre told Politico in August. “If members are choosing to keep an arm’s length from the president, they risk alienating their base [and] they risk 15 to 20 percent of their key Republican voters not turning out.”

It's different now.

"We encourage candidates to run the races they need to run to best represent the voters," she told Politico Sunday. "The president understands when candidates need to add nuance."

How do we explain this heel-turn?

Diesel, probably.

Jackson Karki, a campaign staffer for the Republican who is running for the Senate in Michigan, did not cite diesel as the reason for his despair, but I bet he was thinking about it. Last Thursday, the fifth day in a row in which the price of diesel shattered records, he wrote:

"Very, very bleak."

He implied that the war was to blame after saying that "the vibes on the ground are the worst I’ve seen in my life. No one wants to promote candidates, no one wants to knock doors, no one wants to do s---. Attendance for any rightwing event is at all time lows anywhere I go. Thank you Donald Trump for ruining it for us ... and handing the country over to socialism."

He's not alone in blaming the president.

His boss, Mike Rogers, released an ad Monday implying the war is causing food costs to spike. "The war has to end and end quickly," he said. Rogers followed in Ashley Hinson's footsteps. She's the GOP Senate candidate in Iowa. Yesterday, she said, "Iowans are being squeezed and shouldn’t have to foot the bill at the pump or the checkout line for the war in Iran. We need to use every option at our disposal to provide some relief from high prices."

Rogers had previously supported the president's war. "Iran has waged war against the United States for 47 years," he said when the war began. "Iran is an imminent threat to our country and must not have a nuclear weapon." So did Hinson. In the Congress, she voted six times – including last week – against House resolutions that would have brought the war to an end.

What changed their minds? You guessed it.

Both focused on diesel.

Diesel holds a special place in American politics. Unlike gasoline, it reflects the interests of white working-class men perhaps better than any other indicator. These men and their livelihoods are woven into the fabric of the economy, in agriculture, transportation, construction, manufacturing, etc. They are not very online. They are not ideological (which is not to say apolitical). To the GOP, these men represent the great globular middle. When they get mad at hell, Republicans pay attention, because they believe they are "real Americans."

Everyone knows that when the price of diesel goes up, the price of everything goes up, especially the price of food. But I don't think Republicans would be running scared on account of food costs alone. Admittedly, I am guessing, but I don't think it's a coincidence that high-profile Republicans are distancing themselves from Trump as the price of diesel breaks new records every day. They are hearing very clear signals from priority factions within their coalition, signals that could suggest imminent collapse from the inside out.

I mean, even Byron Donalds, the Republican congressman who is running for governor in Florida, stripped references to Trump from his campaign website, after bragging about getting an endorsement from the president in the president's home state. The homepage used to ask supporters to "Chip in to Support Trump Endorsed Byron Donalds." No longer.

I don' think "affordability" did that.

Diesel did.

Though Republicans may want an end to the war, that may be out of Trump's hands, at least until the midterms are over. Iran is not only tightening its grip on the Strait of Hormuz, thus throttling oil flows, it has widened the war to include US allies. The Iran-backed Houthi militia destroyed the east-west pipeline in Saudi Arabia. It was being used to bypass the strait. Moreover, Ukraine has been targeting diesel facilities in Russia. Reuters said Middle East diesel exports have been cut in half while diesel stocks in Europe have hit record lows.

You can see why "polls for Republicans are just getting worse by the day in a way that isn't actually all that common in midterms," Nate Silver said today. The pollster speculated that the reason might be gas prices or AI. But I think it's diesel. We may be approaching a tipping point, as we did during the pandemic, after which the crisis can no longer be contained.

Politically, for the Republicans, diesel could be to 2026 what covid was to 2020.

Only much, much worse.

The president of the United States said he was at ground zero in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attack in New York. On Tuesday, during a memorial service in Washington to mark the 25th anniversary of that horrible day, Donald Trump gave the impression he was part of the recovery effort as well as among those who were rescued.

It was a big lie, but it was more than that.

It was stolen valor.

Trump said because he was constructing "a big building in New York" at the time of the city's rescue-and-recovery operations, he "took the whole crew down [to ground zero] right after [9/11] happened." He said "we went down, it was a big group of people. Wasn’t too much we could do, I’ll be honest — it was, you know, it was raw, and nobody’s seen anything like it."

Trump said "we had other buildings; the United States Steel building was creaking, really creaking, and we thought it was going to fall down ... but it never came down."

Trump said "I remember — I’ll never forget two firemen. We thought it was coming down on top of us, and two firemen — big, strong guys — and I’m not the smallest guy in the world — they grabbed me under the arms, said, ‘gotta get out of here.’ And they literally lifted me up."

Every word here is a lie, including "a" and "the." Daniel Dale, Martin Longman and Judd Legum establish the facts. So did New York magazine. "Naturally, his appearance couldn’t pass without a bit of weirdness." In response, the president accused the magazine of lying.

It's a game Donald Trump likes to play – speak in a way that makes him look like the most dominant man in the room, whom everyone must pay attention to, then accuse those who point out his lies, exaggerations and outright delusions of grandeur of acting in bad faith. Trump has been playing this game a long time. New Yorkers are especially familiar with it. In October 2016, before that year's presidential election, the Daily News ran this cover story.

But again, these are not just lies. They are stolen valor.

"Stolen valor" is a term usually reserved for people who lie about military service. Here's how the Armed Forces Benefit Association defines it: "Stolen valor is essentially a lie. It involves falsely claiming military service, rank, recognition or even someone else's identity."

The Stolen Valor Act of 2013 made it a federal crime for a person "to fraudulently claim to have received a valor award specified in the Act, with the intention of obtaining money, property, or other tangible benefit by convincing another that they received the award."

But I think it's fair to apply the term more generally to anyone who wants a piece of the fame and fortune of heroic acts, but none of the cost, risk or sacrifice that comes with them.

A decade ago, Donald Trump wanted the glory of supporting the families of 9/11 victims without actually giving them any money. On Tuesday, he wanted the glory of dispatching "more than 100 men" to ground zero without actually dispatching anyone, much less himself.

He wants the valor, but not the work that goes into earning it.

So he steals it.

Trump's theft should have made for banner headlines, especially on the 25th anniversary of 9/11. It is tempting to say it would have been if he were a Democrat. However, that might overlook how much American politics has shifted in the last quarter century, a shift that I think was captured by Jesse Ventura when he was on Paul Rieckhoff's podcast in February.

"This last election was a choice, a very simple one, in my opinion," Ventura said. "You have the choice between the Constitution and the criminal, and this country chose the criminal. Now they’re all appalled at what’s happening? What would you expect the criminal to do when he gets in there? He’s gonna hire other criminals to work with him. They all will be an ilk together, a big group. You put a criminal at the top of America, a convicted felon.

Expect crimes when you elect a criminal, but don't expect them to be limited to bribes, corruption and other obscenities. We put a criminal at the top of America. If he acts like he's entitled to take for himself a piece of the honor reserved for heroes, that's on us as much as it is on him. To be sure, Donald Trump is stealing valor. But we the people are his accessories.

Almost 3,000 Americans died on 9/11. Four and a half thousand US military personnel died in the Iraq War. (As many as 400,000 Iraqis died with them.) Donald Trump's theft should be more than "a bit of weirdness." The public should see it as a ferocious national scandal.

But it won't be, because a scandal would force us to confront the truth: that a majority of voters traded the rule of law for the fraudulent promise of "economic security" (to borrow Chris Christie's exceedingly charitable framing of the 2024 election). The media is indeed deferential to Trump, but most of us do not want to be held accountable for our choices.

Better to avert our eyes.

Even if that results in the sacrilege of the hallowed dead.

Liberals have a bad habit of putting the views and values of Republicans at the center of their attention. We do it without thinking about it, because it's normal. And it's normal, because I think we tacitly accept the argument that our views and values can't be broadly persuasive on their own. Making progress will require making better choices. One of those is pushing Republicans out of the center. They are not the arbiters of our reality. We are.

For example, liberals believe the GOP is a boy's club. We believe Republican misogyny is structural, from the top down. We frequently note that the president demeans women. (We frequently mourn that he won twice when running against a woman.) And we believe that whatever lip service the Republicans give to women, their goal is holding power for men.

Because we believe these things, a liberal news outlet made sure its audience saw this.

Many liberals will argue that Marjorie Taylor Greene's comments are evidence that a new majority may be coalescing in opposition to the Republican agenda. To be sure, I think there's something to that interpretation. But whatever the case may be, the result is that Greene is the center of our attention, and with that so is the implication that liberals do not have the authority to say that the Republicans are a sexist organization bent on controlling women. (Indeed, Greene says she's not doing what liberals do, "shoving" women's rights "in men's faces.") Our beliefs are insufficient to being broadly persuasive. We have to get validation from "the other side." We can't be right on our own. For that, we need permission.

Liberals puts the views and values of Republicans at the center of our attention partly out of necessity. The Washington press corps does not treat the parties equally. There's one standard for the Republicans, another for the Democrats. To the news media, one party represents power that's natural and legitimate while the other represents power that must be constantly tested. Here's how I explained it last week to Alex Wise, host of Sea Change Radio, when he noted that what reporters agree on is that America is a center-right nation.

Yeah that’s what they agree on. I mean what they are really agreeing on, and they won’t say it, is that the true center of power in America is whiteness, and the true consensus is white supremacy. That’s what they’re really saying, but they’re not gonna say that, because that would be gauche. That would be impolite or some other word that a snob might use. But that’s what they’re really saying, though. And by the way, that's why the press looks at the Democrats as slightly illegitimate, because the Democrats are a multiracial, multi-ethnic, and multi-religious party, whereas the Republicans are white, white and white, all the way through. They therefore represent to the media, politically, historically and culturally, an automatic natural legitimacy. That I wish more people would really understand. That is the double standard that animates all of political journalism.

Given this double standard, liberals often feel like there is no choice. We have to put Republicans at the center, because those are the media's rules. (Even the liberal media conforms to them.) The result is that liberals end up playing Lucy and the football, taking the risk of trusting a fundamentally untrustworthy system in order to achieve our goals. This arrangement is so maddening that Leigh McGowan completely lost it on CNN recently. In doing so, "PoliticsGirl" represented every single liberal in America who screams at their TV.

But it doesn't have to be this way. I want to point to two examples. One is by Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff. The other is by Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan. Both men have demonstrated how liberals can liberate themselves, campaign by their own rules and control the terms of debate in order to bring their views and values to a broader public.

You probably already know about Ossoff.

On the strength of "travels with Natalie," Ossoff bent everyone's attention his way, including Donald Trump's, and with that attention, he accused Trump of being a paper-tiger president. During an appearance on MS Now, Ossoff said Trump "retreats into this bubble of West Wing aides, who are his security blanket, to make him feel good about himself, to reassure him that he’s doing a great job, to help him while he designs his new ballroom, and he adorns the Oval Office in gold, and picks the interior decorations on this new luxury, flying palace he received from a foreign prince, when every single minute of every single day what the president of the United States should be doing is bearing his most solemn burden of care."

With that, Ossoff pushed Trump out and made himself the center of attention.

In El-Sayed's case, he rejects the "rule" that says he must apologize for something somebody else said, ie, what prominent tankie Hasan Piker said. (I wrote about him last spring.) Piker, who is viewed by some (me) as an antisemite, supports El-Sayed. The "rules" therefore state that El-Sayed must denounce Piker to denounce antisemitism. That El-Sayed did denounce antisemitism isn't enough, however, according to those same "rules." El-Sayed must denounce Piker, too. MS Now's Katy Tur: "Why not fully disassociate yourself with him?"

His answer, in essence? No one defines my campaign but me.

I'm going to leave the challenges of big tent-building for another time. (Bill Scher takes on the question in the Washington Monthly.) My focus is on the press. To that end, every Democrat knows the score, El-Sayed said. This campaign is about voters and their struggles, not "a streamer in California," he said. And then he throws the question back at Tur, raising viewers' awareness of the choices she is making. "I get that in the media, it's a lot easier to pick out one person and be like, 'this is what this [campaign] is about.' This is why a lot of people get so frustrated about politics and political media, because it doesn't actually speak to the challenges they face." (With that one sentence, by the way, El-Sayed summarized James Fallows' classic article, published in 1996, about "Why Americans Hate the Media.")

In reply, Tur says "it's not just the media and I reject that framing." She gives up the game. Her real question isn't why didn't El-Sayed "fully disassociate" from Piker? It's why isn't he playing by the "rules"? Tur implies that he isn't allowed to frame the facts. Only members of the press corps have that authority. With that framing, she put the views and values of Republicans – namely, El-Sayed's opponent, Mike Rogers – at the center of attention. Katy Tur isn't asking. She's telling. And Abdul El-Sayed is saying no: my campaign, my rules.

These are just two examples, but I think they are hopeful and point the way forward for liberals who are in the bad habit of accepting the argument that our views and values are not persuasive on their own. They are, or can be once we have made better choices. One of those is pushing Republicans out of the center. They are not the arbiters of our reality. We are.