natalie harp

Conservative National Review writer Noah Rothman is throwing in the towel on Republicans this year. There’s really nothing for it now, he says, but for the party to learn from its mistakes — and there’s so very much to learn.

“Republicans are set to endure another defeat. And perhaps this time, they’ll even take a moment to consider why voters turned their backs on the party,” said Rothman. “That would be a rare thing for the GOP in the Trump years.”

This is because President Donald Trump “short-circuited the process” that Rothman said typically culminates in parties coming to terms with loss after his 2020 defeat. Instead, after losing without conceding, Trump convinced Republican voters and lawmakers that they hadn’t really lost at all. Likewise, the party learned nothing from its dismal 2022 midterm performance.

“With recriminations flying over his abysmal taste in candidates and Ron DeSantis’s star rising, Trump brushed aside Republicans who urged him to take a beat before announcing his return to politics,” said Rothman. “Within a week of the GOP’s underwhelming performance, Trump was a presidential candidate again, stifling an evaluation of his failures by those best positioned to address them.”

And today, instead of examining where all they’ve gone wrong, Republicans are trying to sow doubt about the legitimacy of likely Democratic victories, so that the GOP “may thus once again cheat itself out of a valuable confrontation with defeat and refuse to incorporate the voters’ verdict into their appeals to the American electorate that should accompany that bitter experience.”

But elections aren’t just for voters “to blow off steam,” argues Rothman.

“They are a crucial feedback mechanism. They stave off sclerotic government and tunnel vision in its elected officials,” he said. “They remind complacent administrations who their constituents are by diluting the influence of powerful and moneyed interests. They help systems dispense with incompetent or exhausted officials, and they surface information otherwise invisible to cosseted central authorities.”

They’re not just here for appearance, Rothman raged. They serve a practical purpose.

“… [T]he parties that take their electoral losses seriously often benefit in the long run,” said Rothman, referencing Democrats’ failures in 1988, which he said shifted the party away from “flaccid, enervated leftism that had allowed America’s cities to crumble and its welfare rolls to balloon.”

Similarly, Britain’s Labour Party readjusted itself during the Margaret Thatcher years when the party got shutout, giving Tony Blair the chance to move away from the “nationalization of industry … as crime spiraled, wages stagnated, and public spending ballooned.”

It’s not like Republican self-assessment has to get too deep, said Rothman. It’s very clear where the party has gone wrong.

“The voters wanted 2019 back when they went to the polls in November 2024. What they got was an administration besotted with protectionist schemes that increased consumer costs, a war … for which their support was never solicited, an unscrupulous campaign of retribution and abuse targeting Trump’s critics, and a cast of … figures who don’t even seem self-conscious about working the levers of government to line their own pockets.”

If the party gets dumped next week, it will be because “the voters are telling the party something.”

“Those who care about its future would be wise to listen,” Rothman concluded.

President Donald Trump has been losing support among his base on issues ranging from the economy to his corruption, but despite that it has been conventional wisdom since his first presidential campaign that aligning with Trump's movement attracts audiences to media outlets.

Now the biggest conservative media outlet of all is finding that's no longer the case — and adjusting accordingly.

"It was satisfying to learn that Fox “News,” long the biggest blight on American journalism, is losing viewers just before a momentous election," reported Dan Rather and Team Steady on Thursday. "And it’s not a small drop. Fox has lost more than a quarter of its viewers compared to a year ago. It was the largest decline of any cable news channel in the month before an election in a decade, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Fox still has the largest audience of any American cable news channel. But while Fox has been losing viewers, CNN and MS NOW have both been gaining."

Rather and Team Steady added, "It turns out that this election is just not much of a turn-on for the propagandists at Fox. The downward trend at the cable channel matches the drop in approval ratings of the president, whose numbers have fallen off a cliff. So who is dragging down whom? Fox believes it’s Trump. The channel has long deemed Trump rallies must-see TV. This month, not so much. In October, it aired only nine of 24 Trump events."

They continued, "And when they do air them, the man-on-the-street interviews aren’t what they used to be. At a Trump rally to support Senate candidate Darline Graham in South Carolina on Thursday, a Fox reporter asked an attendee why he was there. “There’s nothing like seeing a cult right up front,” he responded. The reporter quickly abandoned the interview."

Speaking with AlterNet in August, cult expert Dr. Steven Hassan explained that Trump and his movement are indeed cult-like, in large part because they are encouraged to remain loyal to the president even when his behavior actively harms them. He achieves this by creating an in-group/out-group mentality.

"We are social beings, and we're emotional beings primarily," Hassan told AlterNet. "So a key point in my BITE [Behavior, Information, Thought and Emotional] model of authoritarian control is information control. I emphasize how these destructive groups, like the Trump movement, are lying all the time. And part of the appeal is really about using emotionally leading rhetoric to scare people, to create "the other," to demonize. I'll quote Eric Hoffer's 1951 book, "The True Believer." He said, "The strength of a mass movement is proportionate to the vividness and tangibility of its devil." We know that, evolutionarily, we're going to overreact to anything that's a perceived danger or threat to us."

Hassan added, "So "owning the libs" means that they are a danger, and he's going to save people from them."

President Donald Trump and many economists claim the U.S. economy is pumping along on all cylinders — but if you take that claim to Americans, you’re probably in for a fight.

“Unemployment and layoffs are historically low. Consumer spending data suggest that Americans are splurging on things like live entertainment, travel and eating out. The economy is growing at its fastest pace in a year,” reports Bloomberg. “[but] by many measures, people are miserable.”

A significant percentage of Americans say the economy feels “stacked against them” and polls show they are stressed over about the cost of living, they’re anxious about job security, and most certainly pessimistic about their economic future.

“And don’t even get them started on gasoline prices,” said Bloomberg reporter Jeffrey Sparshott.

Americans are still struggling with sticker shock as prices continue to rise, even as Republican strategists try to make the case that at least the rate of inflation is slower than it has been in the past. But consumers don’t care about the rate of the rise, if the numbers are already too high to match their comparably stagnant paychecks.

“Americans’ hourly earnings are, on average, up about one-third since the end of 2019. But adjusted for inflation, pay has barely kept up with rising prices,” said Sparshott. “And even the marginal gains Americans have made are beginning to evaporate. Inflation-adjusted pay was down from a year earlier for six straight months as of September.”

Worse, Sparshott said many consumers “are simply locked out” of the economy.

“Entry-level college graduates have had an especially tough time cracking the job market, and the ranks of long-term unemployed are growing,” he argued, despite sector-specific strength and a low unemployment rate masking a sluggish job market.

“Employers aren’t laying off many workers, but overall they aren’t hiring many workers, either. That’s left some people feeling stuck in place,” he said. In fact, Glassdoor’s employee confidence index, which measures worker optimism, says that confidence fell in September to the lowest level in the survey’s 10-year history.

And consumer savings? Forget it, said Sparshott. Wages are the main contributor to income for most Americans up until retirement, but sluggish wage growth alongside ballooning prices have “forced many to save less — or not save at all.”

Another weird characteristic of the Trump economy is how Republicans themselves feel about it, said Sparshott.

People generally feel better about their economy when their party is in the White House. After Trump was reelected president in 2024, consumer sentiment surged among Republicans and dropped among Democrats even before his inauguration.

“But since the start of 2026, measures of sentiment have slumped across political affiliation, geography and income, suggesting a wide swath of Americans harbor concerns about the economy,” Sparshott said.

A pair of journalists who have written inside information-filled accounts about President Donald Trump explained his brazen corruption simply: He does not care if Americans are angry or Republicans are hurt at the polls.

"Where are we?" MS NOW anchor Nicolle Wallace asked on Thursday to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan. "We’re five days out from an election where every single poll I’ve seen that’s become public, whether it’s commissioned by Democrats or Republicans, has Democrats very likely taking over the House, potentially the Senate as well."

Wallace added, "Are they worried about the flagrant corruption, the pay-to-play, the mixing of business with foreign policy?"
When Haberman and Swan asked for clarification as to who "they" is and Wallace said she meant Trump and others in the White House, Swan replied "if it’s involving him, I don’t think Donald Trump is worried, obviously."

Wallace asked, "Because of immunity, or because he thinks it’s not illegal?"

Swan replied, citing an example, that "Donald Trump wants a cut." Both journalists made it clear that, when it comes to everything from harming American foreign policy to the domestic political fallout of their corruption, Trump is indifferent as long as he personally benefits.

For example, they mentioned how Trump did not inform Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang that China might be spying on him out of fear it would disrupt US-China trade negotiations and the AI industry, both of which involve businesses from which Trump is personally profiting.

"Trump more broadly sees Nvidia’s success as completely connected to the success of the U.S. economy," Haberman said. "He doesn’t want to do anything, as you played some tape, to disrupt the artificial intelligence boom, to disrupt their chip sales. He didn’t want to do anything to disrupt his relationship with Xi Jinping and China. So there are no incentives, from Trump’s perspective, to upset anything there. So he didn’t act on that information."

Since taking office for his second term in January 2025, Trump has been linked to an unprecedented $377 billion in corruption. He has personally increased his net worth by roughly $2 billion, much of it from cryptocurrency projects in which the vast majority of his investors lost everything. The overt profiting from being in office by Trump and his family — which have engaged in foreign policy projects from Kazakhstan to Albania since he took office — is especially controversial because of criticisms of former President Joe Biden's son Hunter profiting while in office.

"I made a big stink about Hunter Biden. We had to take a firm stance that this was wrong," Republican attorney Richard Painter recently said. "Donald Trump, he’s encouraging it. And it’s 1,000 times worse than [what] Hunter Biden did."

- YouTube youtu.be

Right-wing enthusiasts over at Blaze Media are seeing shark fins circling President Donald Trump and MAGA in the aftermath of the disastrous election for Trumpy Brazilian candidate Flávio Bolsonaro.

Bolsonaro fled Brazil after losing a presidential election against President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Even as Bolsonaro called himself the nation’s legitimate leader he fled to Miami after a Brazilian Supreme Court justice ordered him to surrender his passports in connection with a money-laundering investigation. His father, Jair Bolsonaro, is already serving a 27-year sentence for corruption.

But Blaze Media writer Auron MacIntyre says MAGA would be fools to not see the threat rolling in from Brazil.

“Republicans should prepare to defend the constitutional order while they still have the power to do so. Nobody is coming to save us,” warned MacIntyre.

Even if an independent agency did argue that the MAGA-curious Bolsonaros were cheated out of a victory, MacIntyre complains that it is unlikely that a government or international body is willing to take action to pressure Brazil into removing Lula and installing Flávio. Lula remains in office, and, as MacIntyre describes it, he “will be allowed to further consolidate power and punish his enemies,” putting Brazilian conservatives in an “increasingly dangerous political situation.”

But even as Trump sics his DOJ on liberal politicians and his perceived political enemies, MacIntyre warns that “American conservatives should recognize the danger” coming out of Brazil for MAGA.

“Donald Trump lost a bitterly contested election in 2020, fought the result in court, faced criminal prosecutions connected to efforts to overturn it, and eventually returned to the White House. The parallels are hard to miss,” said MacIntyre. “When judges and prosecutors become participants in an all-or-nothing political struggle, appeals to their neutrality will satisfy fewer and fewer Americans.”

“Meanwhile, American progressives are making plans for a new institutional crisis of their own,” MacIntyre claimed, even as Republicans dither away their flimsy congressional majority.

“To call congressional Republicans a total failure may be too generous,” said MacIntyre. “Failure assumes they were trying.”

Instead, he complains Republicans are trying to “run out the clock on Trump and wait for MAGA to loosen its hold on the party.” They would rather preserve their place in a “failing political arrangement and throw the country into chaos” rather than confront and toss the liberal establishment that has it out for Trump.

“Conservatives had better understand what time it is,” warned MacIntyre. “A stern lecture about civic responsibility will not stop a riot. Brilliant arguments about separation of powers will not restrain officials determined to bend the rules. A court’s seal does not make every political judgment impartial. If a constitutional crisis arrives, the right will need more than faith that its opponents will play fair.” The Bolsonaros can flee to Trump’s America, but MAGA has “nowhere else to go.”

“There will be no neutral power waiting offshore to repair our institutions, no foreign president to return the country to us,” he cautioned.

President Donald Trump is seeing ominous signs to his power as anti-fascists in other nations successfully circumvent authoritarian hurdles to remove far right leaders from power. In a recent report, the situation facing Americans under Trump was compared to that of peoples in the nations of Brazil, Serbia and Hungary.

"In Brazil’s election on Sunday, democracy prevailed. After losing the 2022 election, Jair Bolsonaro pushed false claims that the election was rigged," reported The Fulcrum's Julie Roland and Marcelo Ramirez on Thursday. "Then, in a January 6th–like episode, his supporters stormed Brazil’s Congress, Supreme Court, and presidential palace. Brazil’s electoral court banned Bolsonaro from office until 2030 for his attacks on the voting system, and its Supreme Court later sentenced him to 27 years for plotting a coup. Trump called him a “good man,” slapped a 50 percent tariff on the entire country in protest, and Bolsonaro’s son ran in his place, against President and Workers’ Party candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva."

Roland and Ramirez continued, "The algorithm picked a side. There were more than 1,100 reports of largely pro-Lula accounts being removed or throttled on Meta’s platforms, and Lula’s own ad account getting briefly suspended. Brazil’s electoral court had to give Meta 24 hours to prove it wasn’t playing favorites. Meta denied any favoritism, but few were convinced; hundreds protested outside Meta’s São Paulo headquarters. Americans have reason for doubt, too. During this month’s No Kings rallies, Meta disabled the No Kings Instagram account for more than four hours, blaming a bot-detection glitch."

Despite the algorithms being biased against Lula, the reporters noted that he managed to win in his runoff election.

"The same day, Serbia flipped," the journalists said. "After the concrete canopy of a newly renovated train station in Novi Sad collapsed in 2024, killing 16 people, students took to the streets…and never really left. The youth lobby doesn’t have deep pockets, but it has something money can’t buy: energy. Thanks to the highest voter turnout since Serbian independence, their youth-led party Student List won a majority. Aleksandar Vučić’s camp conceded. I’ve written before about why so many young people sit out elections, but Serbia just proved what happens when they don’t."

They added, "Earlier this year, community power won in Hungary, too. Viktor Orbán spent 16 years building a propaganda machine and empire, JD Vance flew in to campaign for him, and Trump promised American “economic might” only if Orbán’s party won, but grassroots politics prevailed. Orbán’s opponent, Péter Magyar, went town to town, village to village, for two years, including in Orbán’s rural base. Then, in April, Hungarians turned out in record numbers, winning Magyar’s party a two-thirds majority. Orbán conceded."

Zeteo reports Republican operatives and lawmakers are freaking out as President Donald Trump continues to tear down walls and break new barriers — for the other team.

“They’re bleeding us in Kansas,” a GOP lawmaker on the Hill told reporter Asawin Suebsaeng this week, as the Republican Party flails in places it never expected.

Once a credit to the party for his ability to draw a cultlike MAGA legion, Trump is now a sinking anchor and a pariah driving away precisely the kind of independent Americans Republicans need to stay afloat. The personal blows to the president just keep coming as Trump gets sidelined by his most dependable media supporters. Even Fox News has reduced its coverage of his campaign rallies as disenchanted MAGA followers tune out and the company loses viewership. According to a new CNN analysis, the network, which once broadcast Trump's speeches in full, no longer does so routinely. And new Nielsen figures show Fox losing 27 percent of its total-day audience in October compared with the same month last year.

But now the pain is hitting in outlandish places as Republicans bewail the party having to invest money and resources in what was formerly bastions of deep-red politics.

“These Republicans all think it’s, in the words of a Trump White House official, ‘inexcusable’ that Kansas was ever in play, even in the current environment,” said Zeteo reporter Asawain Suebsaeng. “Several sources have told me they are prepared to at least partly blame [Trump-backed senatorial candidate Roger] Marshall if the GOP and Trump suffer a historic ‘bloodbath’ next week.”

And even if Marshall manages to beat his Democratic opponent Adam Hamilton, “a solid number of elite Republicans would be happy to hurl some of the blame at their own man,” said Suebsaeng.

“Whether this is cynical scapegoating or a fair assessment, the thinking goes: We may very well lose Ohio, Texas, and elsewhere because we had to waste time and money bailing YOU out,” said Suebsaeng, summarizing the claims of GOP operatives.

“These GOP sources tell me that many of the senator’s Republican cohorts, including other lawmakers on Capitol Hill, are absolutely furious with him, and at the fact that the party and Trump’s outside political operation have had to plow a significant amount of resources and millions of dollars into defending Kansas – again, Kansas! – of all places,” reports Suebsaeng.

And it does not help that Trump is plummeting in popularity while Marshall himself “uniquely resented on the Hill, not by Dems but by other conservatives who find him, among other things, lazy, stubborn, and not a team player,” Suebsaeng said.

Zeteo reports that President Donald Trump and Republicans are “engaging in an all-out effort to challenge the results of next week’s midterm elections in a desperate campaign to cling to power” for the next two years. But sources inside the White House confirm that Trump is personally issuing the marching orders — regardless of the damage it does to American democracy.

“The president and the White House are steering all of this,” a Trump adviser told Zeteo.

The Trump administration is already spreading unfounded fears of noncitizen voting, in what Zeteo writers Justin Glawe and Asawin Suebsaeng describe as “selectively and vindictively targeting political opponents and liberal state leaders.” They’re also conducting arrests and threatening to criminally prosecute Democratic election officials, and they’re strong-arming the politicized Justice Department to argue in court that an election isn’t legally legitimate unless Trump’s side is the winner in it.

“To help sway the election in Republicans’ favor, the DOJ is apparently violating its own policies by attempting to interfere with how states administer elections and determine the validity of votes,” reports Zeteo. “And even as its lawsuits flounder, the Trump-Vance administration has zero intention of taking its foot off the gas between now and Election Night, and possibly beyond.”

The dark cloud looming over November consists of three scenarios that have election officials "holding their breath,” reports Zeteo. This includes the prospect of the president installing military troops or federal law enforcement in polling locations. It could also include attempts to block the certification of valid election results, either by lawsuit or by outright seizing ballots or voting machines. And Trump himself has suggested he might challenge the election victories of Democrats if Republicans are not victorious in certain elections.

“Again: Trump has refused to rule any of this out,” reports Zeteo, “and has indeed test-run preliminary versions of each authoritarian power grab.”

According to sources speaking with Zeteo, Trump is already hammering away in the background, demanding if his lieutenants and assorted hacks are “ready for different election challenges.”

Trump has already admitted his intent on the record, reports Zeteo, telling reporters that “I’m the one that said do it,” when explaining a Justice Department lawsuit seeking to proactively decertify the outcome of the race for one of Alaska’s U.S. Senate seats if a Republican is not the winner.

It does not matter that Justice Department guidelines are clear that the DOJ is not supposed to interfere with how states handle elections, according to the DOJ’s own website. But consistency is not the Trump administration’s strong suit, reports Zeteo.

DOJ spokespeople did not respond to Zeteo’s request for comment, including on details of whether or not the head of the public integrity section officially waived its own guidelines.

“Either way, the intent of the policies is clear,” Zeteo reports.