Attorney General Todd Blanche has been accused of pushing the law to its limits for his boss, President Donald Trump, from facilitating a $1.776 billion slush fund for his cronies to helping him conceal files related to Trump's close friend, the late child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Now Blanche has a warning: If Democrats come after him, he may prosecute them.

"Attorney General Todd Blanche refused Sunday to rule out prosecuting Democratic lawmakers who say they'll investigate Trump officials, a day after President Trump ordered the Justice Department to probe lawmakers," reported Axios' Andrew Pantazi on Sunday. He added that it matters because "the confrontation threatens a constitutional crisis over the separation of powers: Trump is ordering prosecutors to go after lawmakers in a potential effort to hamper Congress' power to hold the executive branch accountable."

He continued, "Driving the news: In a Truth Social post Saturday, Trump accused Democrats of threatening administration officials and Republican donors with investigations and impeachment. 'This is extortion at the highest level, and they should be held accountable for this,' Trump wrote."

In this context, Blanche was asked about Trump's resentment toward lawmakers who investigate him.

"Asked whether DOJ would investigate Democratic lawmakers, Blanche did not identify a criminal statute or confirm that an investigation had begun," Axios said. "Asked whether lawmakers could face imprisonment, Blanche said it depended on what crimes they had committed. On Fox News, he said the possibility of criminal charges depended on what Democrats had said. The White House and Justice Department have not responded to requests for comment."

Democrats are not alone in accusing Trump and Blanche of corruption. Conservative columnist David French explicitly blamed Blanche for much of the Justice Department's abuses of power earlier this month.

"I’m stopping because of space, not because that’s the end of the outrages," French wrote when discussing the corruption. "In case after case after case, the Department of Justice is targeting Trump opponents, making frivolous arguments and engaging in vindictive, meritless prosecutions."

He added, "I blame Trump, but I also blame Blanche. He doesn’t understand his own job. We all know that Trump has an extreme view of executive power that renders him a virtual elected monarch. His administration’s actions extend well beyond conventional “unitary executive theory,” which puts a premium on presidential control over the executive branch. He treats the law as his plaything, deciding on his own whim which laws will be enforced and which ones will not."

President Donald Trump spent much of his second term slashing funds to foreign aid programs like USAID, which exist primarily to provide food, medicine and other humanitarian relief to developing countries. Now Trump is breaking new ground in letting people starve, at least according to a new report.

"For the first time since the 1980s, the U.S. government, faced with this kind of disaster, has done nothing and apparently plans to continue doing nothing," reported The Atlantic's Hana Kiros on Sunday.

Describing how famine has spread in Somalia in large part due to America pausing humanitarian relief there, Kiros wrote that "the Trump administration has said that it paused funding because in January, the Somali government, while in the process of redeveloping a port area, had destroyed a warehouse that contained 83 tons of fortified foods partly paid for by the United States. (The World Food Program’s second in command, Carl Skau, told me that the organization ultimately recovered all of the food.) "

Kiros added, "'The Trump Administration maintains a firm zero tolerance policy for waste, theft, or diversion of U.S. resources,' a State Department spokesperson told me in an email. But the decision may have been in the works weeks before that demolition. In November of last year, the State Department was considering distributing foreign assistance to Somalia, according to an internal document that I reviewed. A plan was drawn up, then, abruptly, on December 1, a senior State Department leader informed people who had worked on it that they should instead prepare for no funds to be sent at all, according to the document.'"

While no official explanation was provided, at least at first, it later came out that Trump administration officials believed Somali immigrants were more likely to commit welfare fraud.

"Whether Trump will ever decide to resume aid to Somalia is uncertain," Kiros wrote. "(The State Department declined to say.) In 1985, Peter McPherson, the head of USAID under Reagan and the architect of FEWS Net, brought photos of skeletal Ethiopian children to the Oval Office, which led Reagan to famously declare 'a hungry child knows no politics' and help the country through a famine, despite its Marxist dictator. McPherson told me that he believes Trump will be moved to reconsider helping Somalia when similar pictures appear on the nightly news. 'Of course, by then, many people will have died,' he said."

Speaking with AlterNet in July, one medical expert testified from her on-the-ground experience that the president's cuts to foreign aid have led to deaths on the ground.

"Elon Musk, singularly, as head of DOGE at the beginning of this administration, through his cuts has led to the deaths of millions," Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease doctor and professor of medicine at the University of California–San Francisco, told AlterNet at the time. "He was the executor of really dismantling USAID — essentially, the work to help the world's poorest children has been decimated by the world's richest man."

Gandhi continued, "I have a project in South Africa, and I can stand absolutely firsthand witness since he also executed the cuts to South Africa — meaning on February 7th, the Trump administration put out an executive order that said we will give no assistance to South Africa because of their 'egregious actions,' like supporting the ICC [International Criminal Court] case against Israel, or they think South Africa is committing a white genocide – all of that means that there's no funding going toward South Africa, even his home country. And I have seen firsthand the effects on deaths, on advanced HIV, people dying of tuberculosis, not able to get HIV medications or preventative medications. Elon Musk is singularly responsible for the deaths of millions."

President Donald Trump's tariffs have become such a political liability that many experts believe they played a direct role in the devastating rebuke Republicans suffered during the 2026 midterm elections. Now that Democrats are poised to reclaim power, a new report reveals that they are targeting Trump's tariffs through these tactics.

"How Democrats can do this once they assume the majority in both chambers could take different forms, Erica York, a senior economist at the Tax Foundation, told The Hill," reported The Hill's Max Rego and Mallory Wilson on Sunday.

"It could be really narrow and just say, ‘These particular tariffs that the president has imposed, we want to … overrule those or … remove those from the books,' she said of potential legislation," York added. “It could be more expansive and say, ‘This authority in general shouldn’t sit with the president, and so we want to bring that back to Congress and not let any president do any tariff under this type of authority.’”

Arun Venkataraman, an international trade lawyer with Covington & Burling LLP, argued Democrats could achieve substantive results if they focus on “specific tariff actions" rather than if they try "to do a broadside against underlying” authorities.

Venkataraman added, “I don’t think we’re going to see them out of the gate on day one completely try to revise all of the U.S. trade laws. I think that perhaps the more focused and strategic approach is to address particular tariffs, and then be able to get Republican support for some of that.”

Speaking to AlterNet after the midterm results, a former economist for President Bill Clinton — Dr. Robert J. Shapiro — argued that the Democratic Party is now going to be the party of low tariffs.

"The party has shifted fundamentally on tariffs, and they're doing so because of the effects of the tariffs and because the tariffs are a signature Trump policy," Shapiro told AlterNet. "Look, the most direct and easy-to-understand step the Democrats can take to address prices is to repeal all the tariffs in the first week. All the Trump tariffs, just repeal them. You pass a law, let him veto it, and then let's see whether you can get enough Republicans in the Senate to support it."

The Trump White House disputes this negative characterization of his tariffs.

“Putting a stop to American workers, farmers, and businesses being ripped off by lopsided trade agreements has been a key foundation of President Trump’s Make America Great Again movement since he first came down the escalator," White House spokesman Matthew Middleton told AlterNet last week. "President Trump will never waver from putting Americans and America First, whether in trade negotiations or through an economic agenda of tax cuts and deregulation. This administration has already secured almost 20 fair trade deals and trillions in manufacturing investments, and will continue to push for deals that deliver even more job growth, wage increases, and opportunities for hardworking Americans."

President Donald Trump's two election victories were largely powered by the so-called "manosphere," a group of right-wing men who insist they are aggrieved for being male and wish to reassert supposedly traditional masculinity. Yet according to a new report, many of these men are seeking to maximize their physical excellence by following a fitness guru who is plagued with scandals.

"He was also accused by former employees and CrossFit athletes in a New York Times exposé of creating a culture of 'routine and rampant sexual harassment,'" reported The Guardian's Edward Helmore on Sunday. "[Greg] Glassman denied such conduct. A spokesperson said the negative accounts were 'a collective effort to devalue the company and buy it for scraps.' He linked racism and the Black Lives Matter movement to the pandemic, tweeting 'It’s FLOYD-19.” He once said on a Zoom call: 'I do not mourn George Floyd.'"

Helmore added, "Stories about profligate spending on private jets, restaurants, alcohol, Mariachi bands and stays at the Four Seasons emerged; Glassman explained he was not the CEO of a publicly traded company caught with his hand in the till. 'The till was mine,' he said. 'I owned 100 per cent of the company.'"

Helmore then spoke with Calum Marsh, author of "The Glass Box" and himself a former regular user of CrossFit.

“CrossFit pursued and cultivated an affinity by naming workouts over fallen service members and plastering its website with images of people in the military, guys jumping out of helicopters and doing pull-ups on the end of a tank," Marsh told Helmore.

Helmore continued that "the association, though never formalized, stuck, and can still be seen today in Trump administration figures, including defense secretary Pete Hegseth, who made physical fitness a military priority and his own physical training, a centerpiece of his command."

Helmore continued, "Robert F Kennedy Jr also has prioritized viral fitness challenges and high-intensity workouts that mirror CrossFit, along with displays of his own physique. Hegseth and Kennedy launched the online “Pete and Bobby Challenge” as part of Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” (Maha) platform."

“There’s a big premium paid to being perceived as being manly and rugged, and that totally ties into the early Bush-era, CrossFit style,” Marsh told Helmore.

Ross Morales Rocketto, political consultant and founder of the 2024 political group White Dudes for Harris, warned a podcaster in July that Trump is actually losing support among men, a group that fled Republicanism in droves in the 2026 midterm elections.

“Donald Trump went from 50 percent approval in this country, that means he had some independents on his side; then he went down to 40 percent, which basically meant any independents he had, those people are gone,” Rocketto said at the time. “They're bailing. He's losing some concerned conservatives. Then you go from 40 to 30 percent and you're literally losing millions of your followers. It means you are losing millions upon millions of your followers, and a lot of them are dudes. They're just guys that kind of got recruited into the movement. They felt like it was cool to back Donald Trump since it was provocative. They don't pay attention to politics. They're like, ‘I don't know. Everyone hates him. Could be kind of cool to see this come back into office.’” Yet he added that because of Trump’s various unpopular domestic and foreign policies, “now they're not happy with what they are seeing. Do you think this is a significant pickup moment? And what might we look for in the numbers at the midterms to see whether folks have really started to bail and gone to the other side?”

Marsh has previously written about the intersection between fitness and politics in 2025, when he covered the alleged right-wing associations of the Pilates fitness movement for The New York Times.

Writing about MaryBeth Monaco-Vavrik, a 24-year-old barre instructor and fitness influencer living in Washington, D.C., Marsh described an Instagram video she posted in which she argued that "pilates is great for your core strength, and for people who are suffering from connective-tissue weakness, etc., but how do we separate that from the fact that its marketing is extremely exclusionary? It’s extremely whitewashed. It’s based on wealth. It’s based on thinness.”

President Donald Trump's political supporters have long been described as cult-like, from their willingness to change their ideology based on Trump's whims to their reflexive distrust of established experts. In light of the Republican leader's politically devastating losses in the 2026 midterm elections, these same true believers are now angry at every voter who did not stand by their man, at least according to a recent in-depth study.

"Last week we assembled a focus group of Republicans who voted for President Trump in both 2020 and 2024, and who, except for some local elections, voted straight-ticket Republican in this year’s midterms," wrote polling expert Sarah Longwell in The Bulwark on Sunday.

"In my conversation with these voters, one thing became abundantly clear in their cacophony of cope: They were not blaming Trump," Longwell added. "Instead, they were blaming the GOP candidates on the ticket for being terrible. They were blaming social media for pushing Trump Derangement Syndrome. And they were blaming their fellow Americans, who they insisted were just too brainwashed and emotional to just hold their noses and vote for the terrible candidates that Republicans offered them."
Longwell proceeded to include relevant examples.

"A lot of the blue wave in Georgia resulted from “irrational thinking,” James, 56, from Georgia, said, by “people who voted for Trump last time, but maybe are not Republicans in general,"" Longwell wrote. "He found these swing voters’ decisions understandable, but unwise: I think maybe they were so frustrated either because of their situation or because they heard in the media they should be frustrated, and so they just voted for the other guy or the other gal. And if any of them think that the Democrat-led Congress is gonna help with affordability, they’re completely irrational."

Longwell continued, "Contempt for opposing voters—whose decisions always seem to be made by emotion or by “the media”—was a common feature of this group. But even amid this wallowing, some of the focus-group participants still acknowledged that the country was in a bad place, and that was pulling people away from the GOP. “I’ve kind of worked through several stages of grief as to what’s going on in Texas,” said Gayle, 75, from Texas. “But I think it’s a perfect storm. I think honest, working-class Texans voted their pocketbook.” But the sympathy just about ended there. More often than not, these voters were appalled that their fellow voters could back Democrats—and suspected they simply weren’t educated in all the ways those Democrats were evil."

She went on, "Here is Gayle again: Even if there were other issues for me, it wouldn’t matter. I’m not gonna vote for a party that’s gonna kill babies. So I think there are people that may not have the understanding of life, and they’re not core-value voters, and so I think they voted their pocketbook.3And here’s Anthony, 58, from Pennsylvania: We had Republicans voting Democrat. People vote, and they don’t vote their core issues. There’s some ideas that Democrats have that are good ideas, but I’ll never vote for a Democrat. . . . One of my big issues is pro-life, you know what I mean? And they’re pro-choice. I can’t vote for a pro-choice candidate, you know?"

Longwell pointed out that, even though Democrats are scorned to not look down on Trump voters, Trump voters do the same thing toward Democrats.

"Cathy, 65, from Texas, wrote the following," Longwell recalled. ""TDS affected a lot of voters, especially women. It seems that the younger generation is fairly swayed by social media, which is a scary trend. They don’t question what they see/read like my generation does. They are not skeptical yet. As far as Texas, many did NOT vote for Paxton. I held my nose and voted for him. But those that did not vote for Paxton, were basically a vote for Talafreako, just like when Perot ran for president.""

Longwell, added, "Note that Cathy here also expressed her displeasure with the Republican choice she was offered. And her dissatisfaction extended beyond Paxton: "As far as Hinojosa, look at Texas and the Hispanic vote, she was able to garner a lot just based on her name. And Abbott did not campaign as much as he probably should have.""

Speaking with AlterNet in August, University of Bristol cognitive scientist Dr. Stephan Lewandowksy argued that one can understand supporters of President Donald Trump by understanding their psychology as analogous to that of internet trolls.

"We know that trolls take pleasure in trolling, which means getting other people upset," Lewandowsky told AlterNet. "And I think that's what we're observing here — this is basically trolling behavior. So would these people score high on the dark triad? I would think yes, but I don't know of any data that's done a personality profile specifically of MAGA voters. We do have it for trolls, though — I have data on that. People have published research on it, and the similarities are just overwhelming. So I'd be very surprised if these were well-adjusted, nice people."

Prior to Election Day 2026, President Donald Trump repeatedly threatened to meddle in the midterms unless they allowed Republicans to retain control of Congress. Upon losing in a pro-Democrat landslide, however, Trump almost immediately conceded the results, surprising those who feared a repeat of his coup attempt after losing in the 2020 presidential election.

According to a pro-voting rights attorney, the media is missing a big part of the story regarding why Trump did not contest the results.

"Donald Trump spent countless hours and taxpayer dollars trying to rig the rules to hold on to power," wrote attorney Marc Elias for the Democracy Docket Newsletter. "The Department of Justice systematically attacked our elections through lawsuits, intimidation and lies. In the end, they failed, because lawyers litigated, election workers did their jobs and the American people voted."

He added, "Sadly, the legacy media largely ignored the real stakes of these long, hard-fought legal battles to protect voters and voting rights in the midterm elections. Their coverage focused on the horse race and on who stood to benefit from each challenge. It ignored the question of right and wrong: Trump was trying to undo democracy, while those of us fighting back were working to protect it."

Not everyone believed Trump had the power to interfere with the midterm elections. Speaking with AlterNet in September, Loyola Law School professor Justin Levitt dismissed the idea that Trump could purge people from the rolls, seize ballot boxes, intimidate voters with law enforcement, file frivolous lawsuits and/or have Congress reject the results.

"None of them will work," Levitt said. "Those five things, and 18 others, all sort of fall down at the point of possibility. You're absolutely right that he will try something: one, maybe several of those, or other things. But none of those things will succeed."

He added, "The short version is he is trying to project power that he does not have. He would love the American public to believe that he actually has operational control of forces able to execute on any of those five things or others, but he doesn't. He's not in charge of the systems that govern the election process. As much as he thinks he is, he's not. And so I have firmly believed for a while that the single biggest risk to the '26 elections is that the American public falls for the marketing stunt and bestows magical wizard powers on a tired old man. That we do it to ourselves. That we get so spun up and freaked out thinking that he's got a magic ring that lets him do whatever he wishes that we decide to stay home, or we decide to trim our own sails, because we imbue him with an aura of invincibility that he has not earned and does not have."

After the election, which vindicated his analysis, Levitt reiterated this fundamental point.

"There are margins that are simply too large to even try the magic wand," Levitt explained. "If the races were closer, a lot closer, he might try and fail, as if there was ever a realistic possibility that he would actually succeed. But at this point, even he can see that there is no magic button to vanish the vote. And so he’s not going to try."

Levitt then reiterated that people should not let their guard down just because Trump suffered a setback.

"He’s delusional," Levitt told AlterNet. "He’s still dangerous. The fact that a major network felt the need to ask him, “Are you going to declare martial law?” which isn’t a thing. He’s deeply disturbed. We’ve got a lot of work to do. So this is a victory lap in the sense that the system held exactly as I thought it would, but that is not to say we are out of danger at all."

When President Donald Trump's Republican Party lost the 2026 midterms in a landslide, the immediate GOP reactions varied, from Trump's surprising decision not to fight the results to conservative interest groups insisting their party would have won if Trump had listened to them. Now a new report indicates that Trump is literally in a state of dazed denial about the historic defeat he suffered on Tuesday.

"In the days since his defeat, he has sounded like a man in denial," reported The New York Times' Peter Baker on Sunday. "With his party still picking through the wreckage of a political earthquake, a seemingly oblivious President Trump signed a steel beam for his new White House ballroom and flew to Florida to give a speech on the space program. He seems flat these days, maybe a little dazed."

After describing how Trump dominated American politics from his surprise victory in the 2016 presidential election until last week, Baker points out that Trump has yet to openly accept that his heyday is behind him, something his predecessors did not struggle to do when faced with similar setbacks.

"Unlike other presidents who suffered midterm defeats, Mr. Trump has largely not acknowledged the setback," Baker wrote. "After Mr. Bush’s Republicans lost both houses in 2006, he admitted it was a “thumping.” After President Barack Obama’s Democrats lost the House in 2010, he admitted it was a “shellacking.” Mr. Trump, by contrast, has offered no expression of humility or much recognition of public discontent with him."

Baker added, "Like other presidents after midterm defeats, Mr. Trump now faces an inevitable erosion of influence. After President Bill Clinton’s Democrats were swamped in 1994, he was left to argue plaintively that “the Constitution gives me relevance.” There were echoes of that last week when the White House was reduced to posting an online message saying, “TRUMP IS STILL YOUR PRESIDENT.”"

Speaking with AlterNet shortly after the midterm results, political analyst and expert Dr. Allan Lichtman discussed two comparison points for the 2026 midterm elections — 1994 and 1894.

"One comparison that immediately comes to mind is the power shift in 1994, when for the first time in decades, the Republican Party took back both the House and the Senate, with major gains in both chambers," Lichtman said. "In fact, the gain in the Senate this time, which is at least seven seats, was exceeded only by the 1994 elections."

In 1994, Democratic President Bill Clinton lost control of Congress to Republicans. When this journalist compared the 2026 outcome to that of 1894, when Democratic President Grover Cleveland lost control of Congress to Republicans, Lichtman agreed.

"I think the analogy is apt," Lichtman wrote. "That was a big rout for Grover Cleveland and his Democratic Party. And interestingly, it presaged what was a long-term Republican sweep of American politics. The only Democratic president after Grover Cleveland and before Franklin Roosevelt was, of course, Woodrow Wilson. It was an even bigger rout than we saw this time. The distinction I would draw, though, is that in 1894, it was almost entirely due to the Great Depression of the 1890s, the worst depression that the nation had experienced before the Great Depression of the 1930s."

He added, "The rout in 2026, of course, was to a significant extent based upon the sour economy, but there was more involved here. The unpopular war was a factor unto itself, independent of its effect on the economy. Typically, we have a rally-around-the-flag effect early in a war, even in Iraq and Vietnam."

Why I vibed with "Drummer Boy."

There is a scene in "Drummer Boy" with which I strongly identified. Benjamin Clem (Lucas Leach) is criticizing King George III's administration and offending the customers at a business he co-owns with his mother Rachel (Melora Hardin) and the film's protagonist, big brother Jeremiah (Joel David Smallbone, who co-directed with his real life brother Ben). Jeremiah orders Benjamin to hold his tongue, but Benjamin cannot stop himself. While I won't spoil the details, suffice to say that his boldness (some might call it pigheadedness) sets the subsequent main plot in motion.

It's worth noting that Benjamin is at a disadvantage when he decides to take his stand, as he has a disabled leg. I am physically disabled myself — I have a hand-eye coordination disability that means I can't drive, a balance disorder that makes it hard to walk straight and a body that feels like a bag of rocks I drag around — and also like Benjamin, I'm prone to expressing my political views even when others tell me to be quiet. You don't need to share those traits to enjoy "Drummer Boy," though; all you need to be is an idealist with a taste for American history and catchy, uplifting Christian pop.

Set during the American Revolutionary War, "Drummer Boy" tells the story of two brothers whose professional and personal lives are caught up in the early phases of America's founding conflict. It was released by Angel Studios, the company that has pushed other subtly right-leaning movies into the marketplace like"The Brink of War" (which was about President Ronald Reagan during the Reykjavík Summit) and "Young Washington" (which was about President George Washington's early military career). In the case of "Drummer Boy," the conservatism mostly manifests in the protagonists' full throated Christianity, which at times seems to imply that American ideas about liberty cannot be separated from Christian theology.

The filmmakers, however, disavow any such intention.

"Look, the separation of church and state is a part of the government, and I believe that is an essential part of that," Ben Smallbone told AlterNet. "For the story of the film, no, we don't make a direct statement about that, and we don't plan to make a direct statement about that in the film. This was the founding of the United States 250 years ago. There was no acknowledgement of really what was gonna happen, who was gonna win. Were the British gonna take over? Were they gonna free the slaves? Were the United States gonna free the slaves if the patriots won? And so this is a story truly trying to discover what unites us instead of what divides us."

Smallbone reiterated, "And so, look, I don't know exactly where that would be stated in the film, but it is not in there presently."

Why I recommend "Drummer Boy."

Taking Smallbone at his word, I can recommend "Drummer Boy" as wholesome family entertainment not only on its surface level, but also beneath the skin, where insidious agendas sometimes lurk. Like the best Angel Studios fare, it is a straightforward story rather than a propagandistic one, and it includes the nuanced characterizations one expects in high art rather than the melodramas often churned out by Christian-leading studios.

Perhaps the movie's most important virtue is its world-building. In many movies set during the American Revolutionary War, especially those intended for families, the late 18th century is presented not as an inhabited era of history but as a style, a patois, an aesthetic, a collection of fashion and architectural choices. By contrast, the Smallbones and co-writer Ramsey L. Ramsey allow their version of colonial America to get its hands dirty. Between the expected period touches, "Drummer Boy" is stuffed with characters and corner-of-the-screen details that massage our minds into suspending disbelief. Before long, "Drummer Boy" no longer feels like a story set in history, but one whose characters could very easily be grappling with modern concerns.

As such, when characters like the Clem brothers quarrel over politics, the fact that we are being educated and provoked to think is secondary to the fact that we are being entertained. The filmmakers, I know, very much hoped this would be the case.

"There's an old saying: We make our plans, but God orders our steps," Joel David Smallbone told AlterNet. "And I'm so proud of the fact that this film is coming out three days after midterm elections, and that as people are grappling with exactly the question you just asked. Is this a reflection of history? Are we repeating ourselves? All of these questions, those are the questions we were asking ourselves as we wrote it. You know, what is freedom? What is forgiveness? Who are we? What is our identity? And I like asking questions, Matthew. That's my heart, is to ask questions. And so I love that you're pulling all of these pieces. My job is to provoke them."

Smallbone then laughed.

"Your job is to ask the question as well," he added.

The question I had asked, incidentally, was whether the Smallbones realized their conservative-leaning audience would soon hear criticisms of King George III that are awfully similar to how people today blast President Donald Trump.

"At one point in the film, the British remind me of, dare I say, President Trump," AlterNet told Smallbone. "They defend King George III by citing the divine right of kings, much as Trump says he was put here by God to lead America; that we must fight a war against France, as opposed to Iran, to protect our way of life; and they confiscate grain like Trump levying tariffs willy-nilly."

None of this was intentional, of course, but it still says a lot about "Drummer Boy" as a deeper narrative that it provoked these thoughts in me. Like the younger Clem brother refusing to be quiet, "Drummer Boy" is a determinedly positive celebration of American history that refuses to shut its mouth. Indeed, it is a tribute to this distinctly American trait, a Valentine to American obstreperousness toward tyranny.

In a year when Americans are debating existential issues, thanks in no small part to Trump's attempts to steal the midterm elections, the message of "Drummer Boy" is particularly appropriate to the year 2026, even as it is also timeless.

Speaking exclusively with AlterNet, one of America's top election and polling experts explained on Thursday why the 2026 midterm elections didn't end with another coup attempt.

President Donald Trump attempted to rig the 2026 midterm elections before Election Day through many methods. These included attempts at restricting mail-in voting, sending law enforcement to the polls, trying to force states to purge voters from their rolls and threatening to file frivolous lawsuits.

After Election Day, however, Trump accepted the Democrats' sweeping takeover of the Senate and House of Representatives. He didn't declare a national emergency to seize ballots or stop the voting. There was no Big Lie claiming without evidence that the election was stolen, such as the one Trump spread after losing the 2020 presidential election. Instead he did exactly what all candidates are supposed to do in a democracy — graciously accept the election results, at least in public.

So what happened?

"This was such a thumping that even he couldn't deny it with a straight face," Kyle Kondik, Managing Editor at Sabato's Crystal Ball (a top election prediction and analysis group that is centered at the University of Virginia), told AlterNet. He also pointed out that Trump could not stop Joe Biden from winning the 2020 election, even though he tried through illegitimate lawsuits and then the Jan. 6th insurrection.

"This is one of the biggest waves in American history," Kondik added, drawing a comparison between voter dissatisfaction with Republican corruption and inflation in two previous sets of midterm elections with the voters' verdict with the current Republican administration's corruption and inflation.

"The Watergate wave of 1974 might be the only comparable election in modern history," Kondik told AlterNet. "This was kind of like 2006, but clearly bigger." The 1974 midterms occurred under President Gerald Ford, who controversially pardoned his predecessor Richard Nixon after he resigned in disgrace for covering up a politically-motivated burglary (the so-called Watergate scandal). The 2006 midterms occurred under President George W. Bush, who was fighting scandal for misleading the public about why America invaded Iraq. Both also struggled with poor economies marked by high inflation.

After both the 1974 and 2006 midterm elections, Democrats capitalized on widespread dissatisfaction with the economy and scandals that they elected Democrats in the following presidential elections (Jimmy Carter in 1976 and Barack Obama in 2008). Kondik indicated that the victorious party could do this again in 2028.

"When there's such a huge swing all sorts of voters move, but the biggest shifts back toward Democrats seemed to be among young people and Hispanics," Kondik told AlterNet.

He continued, "The giant wave only makes the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination more worth having, because Trump is weak and may never truly bounce back in approval. So Trump may drag down whoever the Republican nominee is. I think the fight for the Democratic nomination is wide open."

President Donald Trump's economic philosophy, what could be dubbed "Trumpism," is built on the unquestioned premises that tariffs and tax cuts for the rich create jobs.

Unfortunately, the tax cuts for the rich — when combined with America's ongoing habit of starting wars — have caused rapid inflation and ballooning deficits (under Trump it reached a record $40 trillion). The tariffs, like the Iran war, have also caused prices to spike; similarly, like the literal war, Trump's various trade wars have undermined global confidence in America's reliability as an ally.

Flash forward halfway into his second term and the verdict is in: Americans rejected Trumpism during the 2026 midterm elections by picking Democrats over Republicans in almost every single swing race. Yet despite this rebuke, for ordinary Americans, the policies known as Trumpism mean will exist at least until Trump leaves office in January 2029, and as such they will continue to struggle to afford basic goods and services, creating a so-called "affordability crisis" that Trump dismisses as a "hoax."

Or will they?

One of Trump's predecessors — former President Bill Clinton — actually did preside over low prices, a balanced budget (including four surpluses) and the most jobs created before or since (nearly 23 million). Arguably of greater importance, Clinton achieved these things during a time of peace, as he governed between the Cold War and the Sept. 11th terrorist attacks.

In retrospect, because the ideology that one might refer to as Clintonism can be linked to the most recent period in American history that can economically be regarded as a golden age, the question obviously arises: What can Democrats living in the Trump era learn from the Clinton era?

For answers, AlterNet turned to one of the architects of Clintonomics, Dr. Robert J. Shapiro. After crafting Clinton's economic policies during the 1992 presidential election — the one in which campaign strategist James Carville reminded voters "It's the economy, stupid" — Shapiro served as one of the handful of top economists to craft Clinton's economic policies. The Under Secretary of Commerce for Economic Affairs thus recommended Clinton increase taxes for wealthy people, raise the corporate tax rate, hike Medicare taxes for wealthy people and boost the federal gasoline tax. (He also did not get America into any major wars.)

The result? Low prices, the most jobs created by any president before or since (almost 23 million) and balanced budgets that yielded four surpluses. Enough for any Democrat to want to learn from — and they should want to because, as expert pollster Kyle Kondik from Sabato's Crystal Ball told AlterNet, "the giant wave only makes the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination more worth having, because Trump is weak and may never truly bounce back in approval. So Trump may drag down whoever the Republican nominee is. I think the fight for the Democratic nomination is wide open."

Trump does not agree with the Clinton-Shapiro philosophy on economics. When AlterNet reached out to them, they argued that the current soaring prices and dismal job market don't exist.

“Putting a stop to American workers, farmers, and businesses being ripped off by lopsided trade agreements has been a key foundation of President Trump’s Make America Great Again movement since he first came down the escalator," White House spokesman Matthew Middleton told AlterNet. "President Trump will never waver from putting Americans and America First, whether in trade negotiations or through an economic agenda of tax cuts and deregulation. This administration has already secured almost 20 fair trade deals and trillions in manufacturing investments, and will continue to push for deals that deliver even more job growth, wage increases, and opportunities for hardworking Americans."

With all of this in mind, AlterNet spoke with Shapiro for an exclusive interview about how Trumpism hurt Trump during the 2026 midterms — and what Democrats can learn from Clintonism.

The following interview has been lightly edited for clarity, context and length.

How Trump's tariffs helped Democrats during the midterms.

Rozsa: Now I want to talk about another issue where you, as one of the architects of Clintonomics, differ profoundly from Trump, and that is trade. Clinton, through NAFTA [the North American Free Trade Agreement, which Clinton signed in 1993] and other initiatives, supported free trade. Trump is clearly a protectionist. Do you think Democrats have an opportunity to revive the arguments for free trade now that Trump has shown the catastrophic consequences of abusing tariff powers?

Shapiro: Well, I think they already have. The party has shifted fundamentally on tariffs, and they're doing so because of the effects of the tariffs and because the tariffs are a signature Trump policy. Look, the most direct and easy-to-understand step the Democrats can take to address prices is to repeal all the tariffs in the first week. All the Trump tariffs, just repeal them. You pass a law, let him veto it, and then let's see whether you can get enough Republicans in the Senate to support it.

Rozsa: Are you envisioning a situation in which Democrats vote as a bloc to repeal Trump's tariffs, Trump vetoes the repeal, and then if enough Republicans join the Democrats in overriding his veto, the tariffs will be effectively repealed, prices will go down, and Democrats will get the bulk of the credit for having accomplished this? Is that what you're saying?

Shapiro: Absolutely. That's exactly what I'm saying. Usually there's no direct way to bring down prices. Tariffs are the exception.

Rozsa: Why have Hakeem Jeffries [House Democratic leader, D-NY] and Chuck Schumer [Senate Democratic leader, D-NY] not had this conversation with you? Frankly, I think you should be discussing this with them, not me.

Shapiro: Well, I know that they're reading the polls. They know how unpopular the tariffs are. Look, there was always a part of the Democratic Party that liked tariffs, in particular some of the big industrial unions. But given the current political environment, the Democratic leadership knows that they would be subject to blistering criticism if they fail to repeal the tariffs.

Rozsa: Yes, but there is a difference between them opposing the tariffs and doing something bold like what you suggested.

Shapiro: Right. Well, we'll see. They should understand that the Democrats didn't win this enormous victory because they're Democrats. They won this victory because we have a two-party system, the party in power had failed, and the public was saying, "We're going to give the other party the power to turn things around for us." I think they understand that. I am hoping that the really extraordinary breadth of the victory, which I think is just beginning to sink in — it's not just that we carried these Senate seats in what have been ruby-red states —

Rozsa: Mississippi [where the race between Democrat Scott Colom and Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith remained too close to call as of Nov. 5], South Carolina, Iowa, Kansas.

Shapiro: Right, and Mississippi is the one exception. In all the others, the elections weren't close. These were wins of 5 to 12 percent. Talarico [James Talarico, Texas state representative, who defeated Republican state Attorney General Ken Paxton] won by 12 percent.

Rozsa: Jon Ossoff in Georgia [the Democratic incumbent, re-elected over Republican Rep. Mike Collins] won by 18. Talarico was in Texas.

Shapiro: Right. And Annie Andrews in South Carolina [a pediatrician who defeated Republican Sen. Darline Graham, appointed to the seat after the death of her brother, Sen. Lindsey Graham, in July 2026] won by five. That was not a close race. And Hamilton [Adam Hamilton, a Methodist megachurch pastor who defeated Republican Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas] won by seven, I think.
Rozsa: He is the first Democratic senator to represent Kansas in almost a century. [Kansas had not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1932.]

Shapiro: Right. I think it's also the case that, on balance, the moderate wing of the party has been strengthened, particularly in the House, and also in the Senate, actually. But look, the main thing is the Democrats have found themselves with a very big-tent party that reaches from Elizabeth Warren [Democratic senator from Massachusetts] and AOC [Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York] and El-Sayed [Abdul El-Sayed, progressive physician elected to the Senate from Michigan] to Talarico and Hamilton.

Rozsa: And Andrews.

Shapiro: Yes, and Turek [Josh Turek, Iowa state representative and Paralympic gold medalist, who defeated Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson for Iowa's open Senate seat]

A drama in his own head.

Rozsa: If I may interject again, to bring this back to the Clinton era for a moment: Clinton was able to balance the budget, create these surpluses and pass these free trade policies. Even though there were factions in the Democratic Party that opposed individual aspects of his overall program, when it led to the most job creation any president has seen before or since, and when it led to the surpluses and the beginning of paying down our debt, people saw that it worked. Thirty years later, why don't Democrats point out that this program worked and urge their big tent to make small sacrifices in the name of the greater good that we know can be achieved based on precedent?

Shapiro: Well, I do think this is the kind of program that can be carried out most effectively by a trifecta, with a president leading the way. Look, there are a lot of people who are going to run for president on the Democratic side in '28. It looks like the environment will favor the Democrats nationally, because it's not like Trumpism is going to get more popular. He is likely to be increasingly acting out a drama in his own head rather than what the country wants, and focused on his monumental constructions [including the ballroom being built on the site of the demolished White House East Wing]. And look, his go-to position is fighting and dividing. In that sense, the Democratic Congress becomes an environment in which he will, in his own terms, thrive. I do not think he's going to be conciliatory. I think it's going to be the opposite. So we're going to have a big debate in '27 and '28 over precisely this issue.

Rozsa: Tariffs and budgets.

Shapiro: Yes. Over budgets, and over center-left versus left politics. I think the country always moves between center left and center right. And Trumpism has failed because it was neither. It attacked the center right and went far right.

Rozsa: When you say there will be the left versus the center left in the Democratic Party, I think of how I reached out to the White House back in March with quotes from both a left-wing economist, Richard Wolff [economist and professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst], and two center-left economists, yourself and Ed Gresser [former U.S. trade official, now at the centrist Progressive Policy Institute]. And Kush Desai, the White House deputy press secretary, said, quote, "Those economists are idiots," and he put "economists" in air quotes.

Shapiro: Right.

Rozsa: I want your thoughts on Trump's economic advisers, the people who tell Trump how to manage the economy, people like Peter Navarro [White House senior counselor for trade and manufacturing] and Scott Bessent [Treasury secretary]. How are they going to help or hurt Americans as they continue to struggle with high prices, low wages and reduced economic opportunity?

Shapiro: The Trump administration has two problems with economists. One is that they've been unable to get any economists of stature to come into the administration. That's in sharp contrast to Democratic administrations, and in contrast to George W. Bush's administration as well. And all economists or people who are trying to advise Trump on economics suffer from the same thing, and that is he doesn't want advice. He has certain notions about how the economy runs and about what he wants out of economic policy. The main thing that Donald Trump wants out of economic policy is to make himself and his family richer. That's how they run economic policy.

He's had one economic piece of legislation, and that was the big bill [the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the tax-and-spending law Trump signed in July 2025]. It was notable for reducing taxes not only on high-income people and profitable corporations, but in particular on real estate development. What else does he focus on? He focuses on not regulating crypto when he's making literally $1.5 billion off crypto schemes. He spends his time trading stocks. He had more stock trades last year than every member of Congress combined [a Bloomberg analysis found nearly 28,700 trades in Trump's accounts from January 2025 through June 2026, compared with about 22,200 for all members of Congress]. And his stock trades seem to track government contracting decisions. He's running economic policy for the country in order to make himself and his children richer, and his friends who are along for the ride.

So if Scott Bessent tries to give him economic advice, he's really not interested. When it was 100 percent clear that the economic conditions of the country were eroding support for him personally and for the Republican Party, he made no effort to course correct in order to respond to that. He doesn't care. He really doesn't. He believes that he has a following that is following him as a person, not his policies. And the Supreme Court gave him a legal path to use the powers of the presidency directly to enrich himself [a reference to Trump v. United States, the Supreme Court's 2024 ruling granting presidents broad immunity from prosecution for official acts]. The most obvious being the pay-for-play pardons.

Rozsa: Like the pay-to-play pardons, or his crypto scams.

Shapiro: Right, and the crypto scams. A lot of the crypto stuff had to do with pardons. You buy $75 million worth of his worthless meme coin and you get a pardon, right?

Rozsa: That does seem to be the government we're in. I remember when people got mad at Clinton for the Lincoln Bedroom scandal [the 1996-97 controversy over Clinton inviting major Democratic donors to stay overnight at the White House].

Shapiro: Right. Yes, that certainly seems quaint now.

Rozsa: It seems quite quaint. At least Clinton didn't plow down the Lincoln Bedroom to build a ballroom.

Shapiro: Right.

The future of the Democratic Party.

Rozsa: My final question, and I do unfortunately need to wrap this up, is this: How can Democrats from all over the ideological spectrum come together to effectively address tariffs and the budget? How do they convince certain groups in their coalition to make sacrifices in the name of the greater good, while simultaneously standing strong behind larger strategic goals like repealing the tariffs, and larger moral imperatives like holding corrupt officials accountable?

Shapiro: That's the test of leadership. And the leadership is not limited to Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer. There is political room right now for public officials who would like to be national leaders to try to exercise leadership on these issues. It could come from people in the Senate who are thinking of running for president. It could come from Josh Shapiro [Democratic governor of Pennsylvania] or Andy Beshear [Democratic governor of Kentucky] or Jon Ossoff. Jeffries and Schumer have more leverage, because as leaders, they control things that members want.

But I do want to make one point, and it's something you haven't raised: We really need to think very, very seriously about all these issues, because the next administration is going to have to bail out Social Security. That's a huge issue. It's going to require new revenues for both Social Security and Medicare, and certainly for the expansion of federal support for healthcare, whether it's Medicare for All or access for non-federal workers to the federal healthcare system, whatever approach they take.

Rozsa: May I interject? I know I said I had a final question, but you raised a new point about an issue I'm very passionate about as a disability rights advocate and a disabled person: Social Security. I recently interviewed former Social Security Commissioner Martin O'Malley [former Democratic governor of Maryland, who led the Social Security Administration under President Biden]. O'Malley is very adamant that if we simply raise the cap from $184,500 [the 2026 maximum amount of earnings subject to the Social Security payroll tax] to make sure that all of the rich pay their fair share in Social Security taxes, that in itself can solve the solvency problem.

Shapiro: Raising the cap, or in the extreme eliminating the cap, yes, that generates the revenues. In itself, it's not enough, because you also have to change the benefit formula. If not, someone who is paying Social Security taxes on, say, a million dollars is going to end up with a huge Social Security pension, because the formula is based in part on what you paid in. There's a base, but high-income people get much bigger Social Security checks than average-income people. So it's not simply raising the cap. You also have to reform the benefit formula, so it becomes more complicated. But that's certainly one way to do it. One way to do it would be to raise the cap to, say, $500,000, reform the benefit formula, and include in the $500,000 not just labor income but capital income.

But we're going to have to address not only Social Security, but Medicare, and that will not help you with Medicare. My own view is to preserve the current Social Security taxes with a higher cap, but I think we need to create a new revenue stream for Medicare and Social Security. The obvious one would be some small, broad-based VAT [value-added tax], because Social Security is the smaller part of the problem. Medicare is the bigger part of the problem, particularly if we're going to expand federal support for healthcare.

Rozsa: I actually agree with Dr. Abdul El-Sayed about Medicare for All.

Shapiro: Well, it depends what that means. We don't really know what that means. If it operates like current Medicare, where people choose their own doctors and you can choose supplemental insurance to take care of deductibles and copays, I think it could work. That would make it very similar to the French healthcare system, which is essentially government support for catastrophic care, and then doctor bills, et cetera, being supported in large part by private insurance. I think that could probably work. It effectively moves us toward price controls across healthcare, because Medicare sets the rate of reimbursement, and in that sense it's a very large change. But I think that could work.

If those who think Medicare for All should be a version of the British national healthcare system, which does not have private insurance and in which all medical personnel work for the government — I don't think that'll work. It just hasn't been very successful in England. Whereas the WHO [World Health Organization] says France has the best healthcare system in the world. [The WHO ranked France first in its 2000 World Health Report.] So we've got to define what Medicare for All is. I certainly agree that the government needs to guarantee that everyone gets the healthcare they need. How we go about it is a very complicated set of issues.

Russell Vought, President Donald Trump's Director of the Office of Management and Budget and architect of his Project 2025 agenda, has been one of the most powerful people in Washington since the Republican started his second term. Yet according to a new report, Vought is about to find his job in danger.

"Congressional Democrats obviously have lots of things on their to-do list for next year, starting with cost-of-living issues and cracking down on corruption," wrote The Bulwark's Catherine Ramnpell on Thursday. "But there’s another key priority that has gotten less attention but is no less important: restoring the constitutional separation of powers so that Congress actually controls the power of the purse again."

She added, "Or to put it in more colorful terms: Congress is about to reclaim its cojones, and then go after the low-profile cabinet member who sliced them off in the first place."

After breaking down the details of how Vought has stymied Congress and allegedly behaved illegally, Rampell added, "Once back in the majority, Democratic lawmakers have some tools at their disposal to reclaim the power of the purse. Or at the very least, make it harder for Trump and Vought to keep violating the Constitution."

She continued, "A lot of the tools involve more careful writing of appropriations bills, and taking away any plausible claim Trump has for exercising discretion in spending decisions. For example, lawmakers could be more specific in how they lay out the criteria for awards, so Trump has no effective way to favor friends and disfavor perceived enemies (e.g., by specifying that any state that has had landfall of a storm blowing with hurricane-force winds must be treated as eligible for Stafford Act funding, thereby preventing Trump from withholding those funds from blue states). Congress could also make it easier for private parties to bring a lawsuit when funding gets illegally frozen."

Rampell added, "That’ll help prevent future illegal impoundments. But what about damage already done? Democrats could start by subpoenaing documentation of all the ways Vought has helped the administration break the law."

In August, economist Dr. Robert J. Shapiro — who advised President Bill Clinton during his balanced budgets and four surpluses — told AlterNet that the current $40 trillion deficit is largely Trump's fault.

"Deficits equal to six or seven percent of GDP, which is unprecedented in the postwar era," Shapiro told AlterNet at the time. "It's a real outlier. And that's driven entirely by his tax changes, which carry enormous budgetary costs, plus a wholesale, large-scale increase in defense spending. So how much of this is Trump? A majority of it — not all of it, but a majority."

On Thursday Shapiro told AlterNet that the deficits have also compounded the economic problems facing ordinary Americans, the same ones that played a large role in them turning against Republicans during the midterm elections on Tuesday.

"The debt does have effects that have exacerbated the economic squeeze on people," Shapiro told AlterNet. "Most clearly, financing the debt absorbs so much available savings that other forms of credit, like mortgages and credit card debt, become more expensive. It's supply and demand. There's less savings left over, because when you have a $40 trillion debt, it's not simply that you have to finance an additional $2 trillion each year, because that's the annual deficit now: $2 trillion. In addition, $10 trillion each year comes up for refinancing. That is, the Treasury securities mature, and so you have to float new Treasury securities to refinance the debt that has now matured. You buy a 10-year bond, or you buy a five-year note. Five years later, it matures. You've got to pay it off, and in order to pay it off, you've got to borrow the money."

In the run-up to the 2026 midterm elections, President Donald Trump repeatedly threatened to "nationalize" the contests to guarantee Republican victories rather than allow Democrats to prevail. Yet those who argued he ultimately lacked a magic button to press and cancel the elections wound up being correct. Democrats handily took back the Senate and House of Representatives without a peep of protest from the president.

Instead, according to reports, the president is listening to his fellow Republicans explain why they think the GOP lost. And they often tend to argue that the explanation is that he didn't do enough to further their own pet causes.

"Some conservative groups were quick to blame the losses on what they saw as Republicans abandoning longstanding conservative principles," reported Philip Wegmann of The Wall Street Journal on Thursday. "“Republican consultants got the campaign they wanted, and the defeat they earned. You cannot spend years telling your base to sit down and shut up, then act surprised when they don’t stand up for you on Election Day,” Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser wrote in a memo after the election, citing the administration’s lack of action on abortion as one reason religious voters didn’t turn out in support of Trump’s party."

Wegmann added, "The Taxpayer Protection Alliance, a conservative group focused on limited government, blamed Trump’s embrace of economic populism, particularly the use of tariffs, for driving up costs for voters and driving down GOP support

“These tariffs were a self-inflicted political wound that alienated voters,” the organization wrote in a postelection memo."
He continued, "Some on the right now argue that Tuesday night’s election results ought to force the GOP to return to what Sen. John Curtis (R., Utah) described in a social-media post as “principled conservative values.”"

The journalist went on, "“After the Biden era, Americans wanted an economy that worked for them,” Curtis wrote on Tuesday night. “Instead, they received a hastily executed war, headline after headline of scandals, a ballooning $40 trillion debt, and unpredictable tariffs.”"

Earlier on Thursday, CNN's Kristen Holmes reported that in the White House itself, advisers variously blame the Iran War and the fact that Trump himself was not on the ballot for the losses. One thing they do not blame, though, is the president's own actions."

“Behind the scenes, we’ve seen an enormous amount of finger-pointing and blame-shifting,” Holmes told CNN anchor Jake Tapper. “In terms of the president himself, he has continued to say, and that includes behind closed doors, that he believes the reason Republicans lost was not a rebuke of him, but because, in fact, he was not actually on the ballot."

Holmes added, "And I do want to note one thing here, Jake. He keeps talking about the size of the rallies, saying, ‘I saw all these people, and they did not come out to vote for the candidate.' But I went to a number of these rallies, and I interviewed those voters, and they were people who were already going to vote Republican. So it’s unclear that that’s really what happened here, that they didn’t transfer the love over to the candidates.”

President Donald Trump's Republicans lost the 2026 midterm elections in a remarkable sweep for the Democrats — one made all the more fascinating, MS NOW anchor Nicolle Wallace pointed out on Thursday, because Republicans spent absolutely as much money as they legally and practically could.

“All of Elon Musk’s money didn’t move Talarico’s favorables down a point," Wallace told The Bulwark's Tim Miller. "Didn’t move Paxton’s up, right? Like, Elon Musk spent all of the money that he could pour into the cycle [roughly $200 million]. There was no limit. The number he spent wasn’t because that was all he was willing to spend, that was because that was all that there was to buy in terms of airtime and mailers and consultants that could burn through it.”

Miller mused in various ways on why he found Wallace's observation to be meaningful.

“He’s a trillionaire," Miller said of Musk, who is CEO of companies like Tesla and SpaceX. "He’s the richest guy in the world. He’s got this little fiefdom out by the airport now. They’re pushing data centers in the state. And then he has $200 million plus on TV trying to buy his own senator.”

The Bulwark pundit also said that he found a line Talarico used in his acceptance speech on Tuesday night to be particularly poignant and relevant.

“Texas is not for sale," Miller said. "You cannot come here, take our land, take our rights, and buy your own personal senator.”

Miller added, “The crowd reaction to that was really powerful.”

Despite burning at least one-fifth of a billion dollars to defeat Talarico, and reportedly a quarter-billion elsewhere, Musk does not seem to have voted himself.

"State and local records show that Musk did not vote for her—or anyone," The Daily Beast's Noah Kirsch reported on November, adding at the same time that Musk ''did vote during Flores' race in June, records show, and also previously cast an absentee ballot in the 2020 elections.''

Kirsch linterviewed Cameron County's election administrator that “based on our records, we do not have any indication that Mr. Musk participated in the November 2022 Election in Cameron County." The individual continued that ''Musk could not have voted in another county, since that would have triggered the cancellation of his initial registration."

Kirsch added that "an official in the Texas Secretary of State’s Office confirmed that Musk is only registered to vote in Cameron County, noting that any changes would show up in state databases. The office’s records also showed that Musk did not vote in the midterms."

In October, former President Bill Clinton's Labor Secretary Robert Reich described Musk — who said Reich should go to prison for criticizing him — "as a bully-in-chief in the Oval Office and the world’s wealthiest bully dictating American foreign policy — both of whom are now pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into our elections in order to avoid accountability."

One of President Donald Trump's less controversial foreign policy figures, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, is considering resigning after Republicans suffered historic losses in the 2026 midterm elections.

"Secretary of State Marco Rubio is weighing whether to leave the Trump administration, people familiar with the matter said, as he considers his next moves following Republicans’ midterm elections wipeout this week," Bloomberg's Alan Wickham posted on X on Tuesday. "Rubio and his advisers are going over options for his future, according to the people, who asked not to be identified discussing internal deliberations. He hasn’t made a decision about whether to quit his posts as top US diplomat and national security adviser, and there is no timetable on a possible departure."

Wickham added, "Rubio has spoken to officials at the White House about stepping down, and has been asked to stay, some of the people said. The State Department denied he was thinking about resigning."

While Rubio is linked to the Iran War, which Trump himself admitted played a large role in Republicans' 2026 defeats, he is less blamed in general than Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who has earned a lot of enemies as he carries out purges in the military. Hegseth has reportedly offered to step down, but Trump is reluctant to let go of Hegseth because he personally holds the Defense Secretary in high regard. Then again, he also is reportedly fond of Rubio as well, but may be willing to let Rubio go if the State Secretary proves more amenable to departing than the Pentagon leader.

One thing is certain: Trump is not going to blame himself for Republicans' poor performance on Tuesday.

“Behind the scenes, we’ve seen an enormous amount of finger-pointing and blame-shifting,” CNN's Kristen Holmes told network anchor Jake Tapper on Thursday. “In terms of the president himself, he has continued to say, and that includes behind closed doors, that he believes the reason Republicans lost was not a rebuke of him, but because, in fact, he was not actually on the ballot."

Speaking with AlterNet earlier this week, polling expert and Managing Editor at Sabato’s Crystal Ball Kyle Kondik explained that the recent midterms were "one of the biggest waves in American history. The Watergate wave of [the 1974 midterms] might be the only comparable election in modern history. This was kind of like [the 2006 midterms], but clearly bigger."

Although Trump threatened to overturn the results in court or by force if they went against him, Kondik also told AlterNet that "this was such a thumping that even he couldn't deny it with a straight face."

President Donald Trump's chief of staff, Susie Wiles, has long been viewed as a rare source of stability in a White House that often seems governed by chaos. Yet according to a new report, one of the ways she maintains this equilibrium is by indulging Trump's desire to not hear unwanted information — such as preparing for the possibility that Democrats would reclaim Congress and investigate him.

"White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, in particular, would often shut down conversations regarding a likely onslaught of oversight probes into those operating at the highest levels of the administration, one of the advisers said, believing it could pull focus away from the campaign," reported CNN's Kevin Liptak, Kristen Holmes and Alayna Treene on Wednesday. "She would always say, ‘We are going to win and we’re going to put all our energy into winning,’ the adviser remarked of Wiles’ attitude in the months leading up to the midterm elections."

The journalists added, "Other White House officials argued that Wiles had privately told the White House Counsel’s office to prepare for what Democrats may do, even as she told staff to 'keep their eye on the prize' — as one of them characterized it."

Overall Wiles' position in the White House is increasingly unstable after the Republicans' historic midterm losses. Some of the most prominent far right influencers blame her strategizing for the party's horrible fortune on Tuesday.

“Susie Wiles should be fired tomorrow!” demanded white nationalist podcast host Nick Fuentes, ranting late Tuesday night, reported The Daily Beast's William Vaillancourt on Wednesday. "You’re going to have a 260-seat Democrat majority in the House, a 55-seat Democrat majority, and these deputies for the White House were in Bosnia while this bloodbath was going on, making money from foreign governments.”

He added, "[Wiles] should be fired immediately."

“Vance and Rubio should never get close to the nomination in 2028," Fuentes said. "That’s the point. That’s why we’re doing this. These people should be investigated. They should go to jail. They should lose their jobs. They should have no political future.”

Wiles herself has also reportedly been in a state of panic since the midterm elections, such as calling a crisis meeting last month as she perceived many of Trump's political allies abandoning him.

“Susie Wiles summoned her top advisers to her West Wing office just after 8:15 am Friday for a crisis meeting as a wave of stories about Trump allies cashing in on their access threatened to swamp the White House,” The Daily Mail reported at the time.

Like President Donald Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) frequently referred to Sen.-elect James Talarico (D-TX) as James "Tala-freako." Yet if you expect the Texas Republican to continue with his hostile attitude toward the Texas Democrat, you're almost certainly wrong. According to one expect political analyst, history points to Cruz trying to get along with Talarico — albeit for selfish rather than noble reasons.

"When is Ted Cruz going to change parties?" Lawrence O'Donnell asked MS NOW anchor Rachel Maddow on Wednesday. Cruz, who both noted earlier has said he wants to run for president in 2028, is now the sole Republican elected to a statewide office in the State of Texas, a state of affairs the state has not faced since the 1960s. Additionally, the Democrats' victory in the Senate and House elections is the biggest shellacking an incumbent party has experienced since the 1994 midterm elections under President Bill Clinton.

"Because in the comparable event on the other side of our politics in 1994, when the Republicans won the House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years," O'Donnell told Maddow. "I was working in the Senate at the time, and I had to move to a smaller office because we were suddenly in the minority and all of that. It was totally shocking. It was the shock level of last night."

He continued, "Two Democratic senators immediately switched parties, because they just looked at this and said, “We will never be in the majority again. We’ll never be chairman again. We are abandoning this Democratic Party.” That’s the kind of wipeout you have here. And Ted Cruz is uniquely positioned in the wipeout."

Describing how Cruz's position has changed, O'Donnell concluded that "Ted Cruz isn’t Ted Cruz anymore. He’s not going to be the guy who insults James Talarico when he walks onto the Senate floor. He’s going to be the guy who has his arm around him. You’re going to see this movement. We used to have a lot of states that would have one Democratic senator and one Republican senator."

Ironically, Cruz predicted that Trump might destroy the Republican Party's chances because of his White House policies and behavior. A leaked recording from April 2025 heard Cruz complain about Trump's tariffs by saying, he told the president, "Mr. President, if we get to November of [2026] and people's 401(k)s are down 30 percent and prices are up 10–20 percent at the supermarket, we're going to go into Election Day, face a bloodbath."

According to him, he then added that he told Trump, "You're going to lose the House, you're going to lose the Senate, you're going to spend the next two years being impeached every single week."

Cruz claimed that Trump replied, "F— you, Ted."

https://youtu.be/iBBluoOw88U

President Donald Trump's inner circle is reportedly scapegoating one man for the Republican Party's historic shellacking during the 2026 midterm elections: Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth

Now the knives are out to remove him from power at the Pentagon.

"The House could vote as soon as next week to impeach the Pentagon’s top leader," reported CNN's Adam Cancryn, Sarah Ferris, Zachary Cohen and Alayna Treene on Wednesday. "Many Republican lawmakers and allies alarmed by Tuesday’s wipeout are moving swiftly to pin blame for the election results on Hegseth, arguing behind the scenes that he played a chief role in convincing Trump to attack Iran with no exit strategy — and no plan for managing the inevitable political fallout."

They added, "The knives-out campaign comes despite private acknowledgement from House and Senate GOP strategists that the party’s problems extended far beyond the war, triggering 2008-level losses that will take years to reverse. But for now, party leaders – and many in their ranks – remain unwilling to directly blame Trump for their woes."

The quartet of journalists offered more detail about exactly how Republicans are thinking as they turn on Hegseth.

"Hegseth, a vocal cheerleader for the war, oversold the US’ ability to win the conflict quickly and easily, multiple Republicans argued to CNN, describing on condition of anonymity why many in their party are now turning against the defense secretary," the Times reporters wrote. "They accused him of continuing to advocate for escalation despite little sign that continued bombing has brought Iran closer to surrender."

They added, "The conflict has since turned into a quagmire, they said, entangling the US in the Middle East indefinitely, worsening the affordability crisis, and triggering voters’ midterm revolt against the GOP. On Wednesday, Vice President JD Vance issued an extraordinary statement that “the reason we lost is the war,” though he did not assign any specific blame for the conflict."

Even before the Democrats retook the Senate and House of Representatives by overwhelming margins, there were reports that Hegseth would be in trouble if they took over Congress.

"Two of the officials asserted that Hegseth could work across party lines, depending on how aggressive Democrats were in their investigations," reported The Washington Post's Noah Robertson and Dan Lamothe on Sunday. "Still, several others predicted that his critics, both in Congress and in the Pentagon, could feel more emboldened to oppose him if Democrats take power."

They added, "“Pete has made so many enemies — and uncontrollable enemies,” one person familiar said,"

President Donald Trump's defeat in the 2026 midterm elections gives Democrats an opportunity to hold the Republican leader accountable in a number of ways. Yet according to a recent report, Democrats may also be able to work with Trump on an issue that impacts millions of people's economic futures — the impending insolvency of Social Security.

"Social Security is heading toward insolvency in 2032, and Democrats may take a shot at legislation that would stave off the automatic benefit cuts that would bring," wrote The Wall Street Journal's Richard Rubin and Lindsay Wise on Wednesday. "Many of them favor raising the earnings cap, now $184,500, where payroll taxes stop. Jeffries has talked about expanding the low-income housing tax credit, the earned income tax credit and the child tax credit."

They added, "With Senate control, Democrats will be able to block Trump’s judicial and executive branch nominees, including any Supreme Court picks. Republicans will likely push through as many confirmations as possible before they lose power January 3rd. But once vacancies emerge, the partisan divide will either mean acting officials in key administration positions or compromise nominees who can satisfy Democrats. There are potential areas of compromise between Trump and Democrats, including support for farmers, a tax credit for film production and an overhaul of permitting rules for major projects.”

Speaking exclusively to AlterNet, former President Joe Biden's Social Security Commissioner Martin O'Malley said that he did not entirely agree with the Journal's take on the issue.

"I believe that Social Security is the biggest and easiest, and politically the easiest, affordability win that the new Democratic supermajority in the House could pass," O'Malley told AlterNet. "To claim that Social Security is going totally insolvent is just not true. But in order to guarantee its ability to pay 100% of benefits, we must demand that the super wealthy pay the same Social Security tax rate on their earnings that the rest of us do. And if we do that, we can not only increase benefits to address the affordability issues faced by 71 million beneficiaries, but we can do so in a way that doesn’t add a penny to the national debt or deficit."

AlterNet then asked O'Malley if he supports the four measures mentioned by the Journal: raising the earnings cap, expanding low-income housing tax credits, expanding earned income tax credits and expanding child tax credits

"Those other three things are all fine and good, but none of them would have the impact on as many Americans as increasing Social Security benefits by demanding that the super wealthy pay their fair share, namely the same tax rate the rest of us pay on our earnings," O'Malley told AlterNet. "So all of those other three things are fine, and they’re good things, and they should do them. But there is nothing that would be as popularly supported and applauded, and needed as broadly by as many Americans, as the very straightforward and simple fix of increasing benefits by requiring that the wealthy pay their fair share."

President Donald Trump's historic losses in the 2026 midterm elections — which he had planned on challenging but could not because of the magnitude of his defeat — have so humiliated his Republican Party, one strategist is trying to convince people that Trump is more similar to a Democrat.

"You have to remember Donald Trump has been a Democrat much longer than he’s ever been a Republican," Bryan Lanza, a leading Republican strategist and partner at the Mercury Public Affairs firm, told France 24 on Wednesday. "And a significant part of this tariff policy is not normal Republican policy. So no, I’m not surprised by his tone. And like I said, the president’s always looking for opportunities and deals, and he sees some challenges ahead with Democrats, but he also sees some opportunities."

Lanza went on to blame the tariffs for Trump's losses of both the Senate and House of Representatives on Tuesday night.

"Listen, I think tariff Liberation Day became the biggest mistake," Lanza argued. "And I think he acknowledged that. You saw the president, within 48 hours, sort of pause what Liberation Day was going to be and try to make those adjustments in a different way. I think that sent a message to the American people that this change was going to have a huge impact, but it was going to be sloppy."

The GOP leader then tried to put a positive spin on Trump's performance as president.

":ook, if you look at stocks, they’re at record numbers," Lanza said. "So there are some components of the US economy that are healthy, but there are other components that aren’t as healthy that probably need more focus now. And I think that’s where he has the ability to make the changes."

France 24 then asked Lanza, "What incentive do you think Republican representatives have to remain loyal to Trump? Do you expect any of them to break with him as early as right now?"

Lanze insisted that his party would continue to be loyal to their president.

"I think the potential’s there for Trump to still have significant power within the GOP caucus," Lanza told France 24. "I think the Republicans are looking for a unified approach to dealing with Democrats, and I think they see the presidency as a good weapon, as a good tool. I think they want to see another Republican elected post-Trump. Both sides do, President Trump and the Republicans. So I do think they’ll work together on more things than not, but I do think there is the expectation that President Trump is going to make some changes, which he controls, right?"

He continued, "If you look at the two biggest factors that were a drag on this election, it was the economy, tariffs, which he can unilaterally work with the party to reverse instantaneously, tomorrow. And then the Iran war, which is a lot more complicated and a lot more risky, but he needs to find a solution there. Get those two things moved off the table, and then you see the third year of President Trump. We’ve learned from the first cycle of President Trump that the third year is when the jobs kick in, when the new business comes in, because they’ve done a significant amount of deregulation that will continue to accelerate these things. So I think there are some components he can change fast. The war becomes a more challenging thing, but if he finds a way to extricate us in a strong position, I think you see a rebound pretty quickly."

CNN correspondent Scott Jennings, who is well known for supporting President Donald Trump, admitted on Tuesday night that the Republican Party's poor performance in the 2026 midterm elections proves the GOP leader is the problem.

"I’m so happy," liberal-leaning correspondent Van Jones said as Democrats won key races from South Carolina to Georgia to Texas. "This is like Christmas and a birthday and the Easter bunny and Halloween. This is the repudiation of Trumpism that people have been hoping for: seeing American democracy stand up. Sometimes you have kleptocratic rulers that get in power and they ensconce themselves for decades. In America, 24 months later: knock it off, you don’t want it."

Comparing the Trump movement to a cult, as cult experts like Dr. Steven Hassan have previously done, Jones continued, "And by the way, if you join a cult, at some point the cult leader takes you to Jonestown and tries to get you to drink the Kool-Aid. This is Jonestown for the Republican Party. They drank the Kool-Aid, and they have candidates that are dropping like flies across the country because they did not stand up to this guy when he was doing things that were wrong, when he was violating the law, when he was running over our system. They didn’t stand up to him, and they’re paying the price. It’s Jonestown tonight. You join the cult, at some point you go to Jonestown. That’s where you are tonight, Republicans."

Jennings, after jokingly reminding Jones that he was still seated right next to him, sheepishly admitted that his colleague was correct.

"I’m not going to sugarcoat it," Jennings told Jones. "There’s a political science term for what’s happening. It’s called a country a - - whooping. That’s what’s happening right now."

After Jones heartily agreed, Jennings elaborated on why this is happening.

"There are a lot of reasons for what’s happening right now," Jennings told Jones. "The most immediate issue is cost of living and gas prices, and that is the bottom line. You can read into a lot of other things. You can be jubilant about this, that, or the other. But at the end of the day, the American people have here-and-now concerns, and that’s really the lesson you’ve got to take away from this. And that’s the thing the Democrats are going to have to take away from this. They didn’t really run on a platform. They didn’t really run on any legislation. Heavy is the head that wears the crown, and now they partially wear it in Washington."

He then turned to recent American history for an example as to why his Republicans could take solace in the night's triumph for Democrats.

"To pick out a silver lining, I can only look back at 2010," Jennings told Jones. "The Democrats in the White House, where Axe was, took a bit of a shellacking, I think President Obama called it, and he turned right around and learned from it and ended up getting reelected in 2012. There’s a way to learn from nights like this. That’s what the Republicans are going to have to do. Democrats are going to celebrate tonight, yes. But Republicans have to wake up tomorrow and realize that the great thing about America is there’s always another election, and the work starts tomorrow."

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Despite previously vowing to contest the results of the 2026 midterm elections unless Republicans won them, a new report reveals that President Donald Trump is willing to accept the Democrats' massive victories on Tuesday night, from South Carolina to Texas.

"President Trump said Tuesday night that he would accept the results of the midterm elections and was prepared to work with Democrats," reported The New York Times' Erica L. Green and Tyler Pager on Tuesday. "“I am absolutely willing to accept those results,” he said in an interview with The New York Times. He added: “We’ll work with the Democrats, and we’ll, you know, look forward to working with them. We’ll probably work something out.”"

Green and Pager continued, "Mr. Trump blamed Republican losses on the fact that he was not on the ballot and said he had no regrets about endorsing candidates such as Senator Darline Graham, Republican of South Carolina, and Ken Paxton, the Republican attorney general of Texas. His comments came as Democrats were on track to take control of the House and the Senate, with Ms. Graham having lost her race and Mr. Paxton trailing in his campaign for the Senate. Mr. Trump spoke to The Times shortly before 10:30 p.m. on Tuesday night, while he was watching election results at the White House."

They added that Trump was particularly astonished that Sen. Darline Graham (R-SC) lost to Democratic nominee Dr. Annie Andrews, asking "Wow, that’s amazing. How do you think Lindsey would have done if he ran?”

Speaking to AlterNet in April, Dan Vicuña — the Senior Policy Director for Voting and Fair Representation at Common Cause, a nonprofit good government group with a distinguished pedigree tracing back to 1970 — warned that Trump was planning on stealing the midterm elections.

“What they all add up to is a desire to avoid any accountability to the voters in the midterm elections — to ensure, to preordain the outcome of a midterm that he thinks is going to go badly for him,” Vicuña told AlterNet. “We know, from the Big Lie of the 2020 election to spurring on a violent revolt to overthrow a free and fair election, that he has no respect for democratic norms, for the voice of the people. This is entirely about his own power and his own ego. He will even invest in protecting that ego and protecting his power at the expense of the needs of the public. People are suffering with high gas prices and affordability issues, and he does not care. All that matters is protecting his power, and he has no interest in whether he does that through democratic means.”

He added, “I think this all adds up to a desire to ensure that his party stays in power and his ability to do what he wants — to attack vulnerable communities — remains intact.”

President Donald Trump has long angered his own Republican Party over the Iran War, from keeping his supposed victory plan secret to promising victory so often that it often is not believed. Now a new report reveals that, in light of Republicans' massive midterm election losses, Trump and his inner circle are blaming the war for the president's predicament.

"People close to President Trump are blaming the Iran war for widespread Republican losses on Tuesday night," Wall Street Journal national security reporter Alex Ward posted on X on Tuesday. "Some WH officials and GOP allies said the midterm elections would have looked very diff if the war wrapped up months ago. Fingerpointing inside admin has begun."

One person put in particular peril in Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. Many Republicans join Democrats in Congress in expressing dissatisfaction with Hegseth's handling of the Iran War, from his refusal to provide a consistent explanation for why America invaded Iran to his purging of high-ranking military officials for political rather than merit-based reasons. It is widely-believed that in a Democrat-run Congress, Hegseth would face impeachment or at least be compelled to testify. Some political observers also believe that Hegseth will be fired in the aftermath of a Democratic sweep, much as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld resigned after former President George W. Bush's Iraq War cost Republicans Congress in the 2006 midterm elections.

Experts are not surprised that the Iran War harmed the economy enough to hurt Trump and the Republicans at the ballot box. In April, AlterNet heard from White House spokesperson Kush Desai about economists who said the Iran War would raise prices indefinitely.

“President Trump has been clear about short-term disruptions as a result of Operation Epic Fury, and the Administration went into this military engagement with a plan to mitigate these disruptions to America’s long-term economic resurgence," Desai told AlterNet. "As energy markets begin to stabilize, historic tax refund checks hit the mail, and the rest of the Trump administration’s pro-growth agenda continues taking effect, Americans can rest assured that the best is yet to come.”

By contrast, former President Bill Clinton's top economic adviser Dr. Robert J. Shapiro told AlterNet at the time that “even if hostilities do not restart, the price of oil will not return to pre-Trump levels because there’s a new risk premium that they could restart at any time, increasing tanker insurance costs for example, and because oil infrastructure has been degraded, reducing supply for some time,” Shapiro explained to AlterNet. “An Iran-controlled toll to use the Strait will produce big bucks for Iran, but its impact on world prices for oil, natural gas, helium, etc. should be minimal. Another source of economic friction will be the now-intense uncertainty about what the Trump administration will do next—in the Mideast and in scores of policies at home; and uncertainty dampens investment.”

He added, “As it is, the economy was weakening before this crisis began, and these and other factors will exacerbate those downward pressures. A resolution over the next two weeks will not stop the deterioration in economic conditions.”

Given that President Donald Trump is the first Floridian to ever serve as America's most powerful leader, one would expect Florida Republicans to perform well in the 2026 midterm elections. On Tuesday night, when it came to the two key races — electing Rep. Byron Donalds as governor and keeping Sen. Ashley Moody in her seat — Florida Republicans achieved their goals.

Yet despite this achievement, they are still freaking out.

"Senior Republicans think they're close to hitting a point where the House will be out of reach, with key losses in the Sunshine State piling up," reported Politico's Meredith Lee Hill, Andrew Howard, Alec Hernandez, Sophia Cai and Aaron Pellish on Tuesday. "The only question now is how many seats they lose the majority by at this point."

They added, "That includes districts they redrew to benefit themselves and what looks like a bloodbath with Hispanic voters. Republican incumbents in Florida who weren't even on their party's radar are in trouble. Others like Rep. Anna Paulina Luna barely made it to the finish line in a district Trump won by double digits."

The Politico reporters then quoted Republican strategists, with one saying that “Florida is bad. Real bad." and another arguing that "I didn't have [Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart] in a knife fight on my list."

Still another commented, "A socialist is on track to win Miami-Dade County, where most of the voters fled literal socialism and still refused to vote for Republicans. If that doesn't tell you how big of a colossal f - - - up the first two years of Trump 2.0 was I don't know."

Yet another said, “It’s a ruby-red state. If we have problems there, we have real issues.”

Additionally, the South in general was a terrible night for the Republican Party under Trump. In Texas, Democratic candidate State Rep. James Talarico defeated State Attorney General Ken Paxton in a race that many observers believe would have gone to incumbent Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) if Trump hadn't endorsed Paxton. In South Carolina, Democratic candidate Dr. Annie Andrews defeated Sen. Darline Graham Norton in a seat that had until recently been occupied by Graham's late brother, Sen. Lindsey Graham. Even though establishment Republicans wanted Rep. Ralph Norman, Trump preferred Graham's little sister, and his endorsement helped Graham win her primary only to lose in the general election.

Democrats also won in the South even when Trump did not play a key role in who the Republicans nominated. In Georgia, Democratic candidate former Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms defeated Republican candidate billionaire healthcare executive Rick Jackson in a race in which Bottoms capitalized on high Black female turnout. Bottoms is now the first Black woman to ever serve as governor of a US state.

President Donald Trump's biographer believes that when the Republican leader attempts to overturn elections that he loses, it is not because he is an aspiring dictator, but because he is psychologically incapable of understanding the mathematics of how he could be defeated.

"It is a numbers game," Trump biographer Michael Wolff told journalist Joanna Coles for his podcast with The Daily Beast, Inside Trump's Head. "Donald Trump is, among other handicaps here, is his inability to pay attention. He is functionally innumerate. I mean, he reverses numbers. He can’t grasp numbers. Even when, when you’re talking to him, and I spent a fair amount of time talking to him about specifically about 2020, the numbers morph. I mean, in, within the same minute, he will repeat a number once and then transpose it within the same minute."

Wolff added, "And of him trying to reverse it. I think the general feeling is that Trump is a despot. He was willing to steal the election back."

He then said that he has "always felt that actually he, he doesn’t understand what ha - what happened there" in terms of his defeat. "Everybody else around him does. Everybody in the White House understood. He didn’t understand that he was so wrapped up in, in the numbers because, because people, uh, people only bring him good news because he doesn’t functionally understand numbers. And then he went on to believe, I believe."

Wolff is hardly the first expert to say that Trump seems to be delusional, although others push back against the idea that it is appropriate to diagnose someone you have not personally met.

"I don't think he has a psychotic illness," psychologist Dr. Alan D. Blotcky told AlterNet in October. "I think he's a malignant narcissist who thinks that if he thinks something or believes something, that he can convince the world that it's the truth. So no, I don't think he has a delusional disorder. I don't think he's psychotic. I think he knows what he's doing."

Also in October, psychiatrist Dr. Henry Abraham told AlterNet that "it's not simply that he can't sleep, or that he's awake or supercharged by some medical explanation like stimulant drugs or coffee or too much Diet Coke — I mean, any number of explanations here. But he's pathologically hyped up and manic. In fact, the noun for this is maniac. He's a maniac at night, but he's not a maniac during the day, generally. So it's a nocturnal form of mania which remains to be explained."