Democrats had a big night on Election Day. The bluenami was also filled with tons of nationwide firsts, with many candidates breaking the so-called glass ceiling.

Here are some notable ones:

James Talarico, the charismatic Texas state representative who campaigned by talking extensively about his Christian faith, has defeated state Attorney General Ken Paxton, who was Donald Trump’s hand-picked choice, in Tuesday’s most high-profile U.S. Senate race. Late on Tuesday evening, Talarico led by more than a million votes, and the Associated Press called the race just before 11 p.m. Eastern time.

This marks the first time a Democrat has won a statewide race in Texas since 1994, and another such result, perhaps even more surprising, followed almost immediately. Democrat Gina Hinojosa has won the Texas governor’s race, according to the AP, beating Republican incumbent Gov. Greg Abbott by more than 700,000 votes.

The big blue wave of 2026 has featured numerous surprising results, including the upset victory by Democrat Annie Andrews over Republican Sen. Darline Graham in South Carolina’s Senate race. But these dramatic and unexpected Democratic wins in Texas stand out. The Senate campaign between Talarico and Paxton became one of the most expensive state-level races in American history, and according to CNN analyst David Axelrod, Hinojosa was outspent 10 to one by Abbott. Talarico’s campaign also became a major target for Democratic donors and an opportunity to vent their frustration and anger with Trump’s second presidential term. 

A combined $573 million were spent by Talarico and Paxton, as well as their defeated primary opponents, over the course of this campaign. Much of that spending was the result of Elon Musk, the world’s richest man. The CEO of SpaceX and Tesla pumped an estimated $474 million into this race, virtually all of it to support Paxton, setting a new record for a single donor in a political campaign. Most of that money was funneled through went to Musk’s personal super PAC, but around $168 million went to the Senate Leadership Fund. Another $10 million went to the pro-Paxton Lone Star Liberty PAC, which spammed voters with AI-generated robocalls attacking Talarico. Meanwhile, Talarico’s campaign and Democratic PACs raised about $133 million.

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Although Talarico, like other Democrats, focused on affordability and fighting corruption, he also sought to challenge the dominant view that only Republicans can be devout Christians. His campaign attracted various right-wing conspiracy theories, including claims that he was an emasculated “secret vegan” who suffered from mental illness. Democrats worried that this viral misinformation might overshadow numerous allegations about Paxton, including a Wall Street Journal report that he partied in Dubai with two fugitives from U.S. justice and a woman who wasn’t his wife.

Although Talarico has led in recent public polls, the size of his victory was unexpected. At this writing, it appears almost certain that Democrats will win the Senate, having already flipped seats in both South Carolina and North Carolina, where former Gov. Roy Cooper easily won the open seat held by outgoing Republican Sen. Thom Tillis. Democrats also lead the Senate races in Iowa, Maine and Ohio, although those races remain undecided.

The post Talarico, Hinojosa win big in Texas despite Elon Musk’s millions appeared first on Salon.com.

Benjamin Netanyahu didn’t win last week’s election in Israel. But he didn’t exactly lose it either. The real loser may have been Israel’s fragile democracy, already corrupted from within, perhaps past the point of no return, by Netanyahu’s decades-long death-grip on power.

On the eve of a momentous election in the United States, the parallels are both inexact and unavoidable. Israelis must now decide what kind of country they will have, or at least what kind they aspire to have. They must decide whose votes actually count, and whether some citizens are more equal than others. 

Those same questions also confront Americans, both in this week’s midterm elections and, in a more general sense, on the larger political and historical stage. No doubt it is tempting for liberals and progressives to express outrage at the blatant flaws and contradictions of Israeli democracy. But to invoke the Christian tradition here, it might be better to remove the plank from your own eye before trying to remove the speck from your brother’s. 

On the surface, the electoral arithmetic in Israel appears straightforward. Parties opposed to Netanyahu’s far-right government won 67 of the 120 seats in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. So a majority coalition of anti-Netanyahu forces is clearly achievable, right? You would think so, except that 19 of those 67 seats were won by Israel’s “Arab parties,” an all-time high, and that startling fact has thrown the entire political system into confusion.

Netanyahu and his allies have spent the last week airing groundless allegations that the election was fraudulent or rigged, a refrain that Americans are likely to hear a great deal in coming days. What the Zionist far right means is that too many Israeli Arabs — meaning the Palestinian population that remained in Israel after the state was created in 1948 — decided to vote this time, an outcome that no one expected, and that none of the parties representing the Jewish majority particularly wanted. 

Now, in a masterstroke of historical or perhaps biblical irony, Israel’s Arab minority — which is not a monolithic group in political or cultural terms, and until now has never been electorally significant — holds the balance of power, and perhaps the nation’s future, in its hands. 

Gadi Eisenkot, the former general who leads the centrist-Zionist opposition to Netanyahu, promised during the campaign not to form a government with Arab support. Over the last several nights, thousands of demonstrators in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem have urged him to do precisely that, since the only realistic alternative is the grim default setting of Israeli politics: another wobbly right-wing government headed by Netanyahu, which means more brutality and destruction in Gaza, more war with Iran and more settler violence in the West Bank. 

As Gideon Levy of the left-leaning Israeli newspaper Haaretz explains it, 

The future of Israel now depends on its Arab citizens and on the attitude of its Jewish citizens toward its Arab ones. Eighty years after the Nakba and the establishment of the Jewish state, Israeli Palestinians may determine its fate. Is there greater historical justice than that?

The election’s unexpected results are “a cause for rejoicing,” Levy writes, in that they have presented Israelis with a clear choice “between a government led by Benjamin Netanyahu and a government that includes the Arab parties.” If the “change bloc” within the Zionist majority cannot accept a coalition with Arab Israelis, he continues, “they will make it clear that they are actually the same as Netanyahu, that they prefer even the devil Netanyahu over repressing their racism. … [E]veryone will know that racism is the supreme value in this country, across the board, above any other value.”

That ferocious language certainly does not represent mainstream Israeli opinion, but it’s fair to say the strong emotion beneath Levy’s words is far more widely felt. I don’t think it’s possible for a non-Jewish observer (such as myself), however well educated or sympathetic, to understand the anguish felt by Jewish people — wherever they live, and whatever their political views — at the enormous distance between what Israel originally represented to the world, or claimed to represent, and what it represents now.

I’m old enough to remember when most American liberals and progressives viewed the state of Israel in overwhelmingly positive terms, as a locus of charismatic or heroic renewal for the people Hitler couldn’t kill, infused with the spirit of European socialism and, not far below the surface, the collective guilt of the Holocaust. I grew up in one of the most left-liberal corners of America, surrounded by educated adults who supported the civil rights movement, opposed the Vietnam War, hated Richard Nixon and loved Israel. Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan were beloved celebrities; the Six-Day War of 1967 and the Yom Kippur War of 1973, as narrated by U.S. media, were straight-up battles between the forces of light and darkness. 

That says more about the moral blindness or willful innocence of American liberalism, I must admit, than it says about Israel. In any event, when I saw Joe Biden’s fateful bear hug with Netanyahu on the tarmac of Ben Gurion Airport in the aftermath of the dreadful Oct. 7 attack, I understood it. I recognized the country Biden was coming from, because I came from there too: It was the Democratic majority of the not-so-distant past, when Israel was embraced as a light to the nations and left-wing radicals who brought up the Palestinian cause were being unreasonable hotheads, if not openly antisemitic and a little bit Nazi. 

What Israel has become during Netanyahu’s long and destructive reign is now clear to most of the world, and most of all to the many Jewish or Israeli critics who have been speaking difficult truths for many years, often at enormous personal cost. I am disinclined, however, to judge too harshly those who cling to the vision of Israel as an exceptional nation — one that has stumbled, perhaps, but may yet regain its true path. 

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Like I said earlier, we should mind the plank in our own eye first. Isn’t that the same vision that many Americans still cling to? That somehow, on the other side of this dreadful phase of our history — yes, a full decade of Donald Trump, but I’m afraid the damage goes back a lot further than that — the “indispensable nation” variously articulated by Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy and Barack Obama is still there, still retrievable, still bending its moral arc toward justice.

Americans and Israelis are conjoined by history, for better or worse, and now see each other as distorted reflections, through a glass darkly, as the King James Bible puts it. We face versions of the same decisions this week, about whose votes count and whether the highfalutin words of our constitution apply to everyone. About whether to see terror and tyranny for what they are, and turn the page.

The post The dark paradox of Israel’s election — and ours appeared first on Salon.com.

Happy Halloween — and welcome back to the future.

My neighbor showed me his kids’ Halloween costumes today; a vampire, a zombie and a clown. “They’re going as Stephen Miller, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Pete Hegseth,” he told me.

Laugh or cry, we’ll be here all week. Try the veal.

I wonder what a Todd Blanche outfit looks like? The image of Frankenstein’s monster, for some reason, sticks in my mind.

It’s time to sit back, relax and enjoy the elections — a midterm extravaganza featuring two flailing political parties jockeying for supremacy in a nation full of educated young adults working as cabbies and delivery drivers who aspire to be “influencers” while their parents wonder how in the name of God they’ll be able to afford retirement. 

To be able to handle that good news, maybe you can channel your inner Hunter S. Thompson, without resorting to dropping a couple of hits of acid or snorting lines of cocaine in Studio 54 while Donald Trump ogles the dancers in tight pants, female and male alike.

Then again, you might need a tall glass of Wild Turkey 101 on ice (Thompson’s favorite) when you hear Trump say that Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Mary Peltola should be prosecuted because there are two Dan Sullivans running for office in Alaska, or declares that the country “would be gone” if he hadn’t won the presidency two years ago. 

Everything old is new again. At any rate, we’ve seen this carnival roadshow before, though it seems a bit different this time. Trump has less energy as he flails about dancing to the Village People. He plays before smaller crowds every week. He seems to be on stage only to get laughs. “Am I right?” he whispered hoarsely with a big grin last Saturday night in Georgia, after mocking Democrats one more time. He apologized for his raspy voice and kept going with the low-energy insult comedy. His small crowd chortled and ate it up.

In the last week on the campaign trail, Trump has appeared at a livestock arena, a school gymnasium, a hockey rink and, on Thursday in Rock Hill, South Carolina, at a venue that holds just 1,200 people. He doesn’t seem to care. He’s on autopilot. The war in Iran? He’s got nothing. The war in Ukraine? Nothing. Corruption, immigration, AI (sorry, never “SI”), the economy and any other real-world issue? He’s either got nothing, or it’s all nonsense we’ve heard before: The Democrats, Joe and Kamala, and marauding bands of violent dark-skinned immigrants and communists are to blame. As for the economy, he tells us he’s doing great and making billions. We should all be happy. 

Forget it. He’s done with campaigning, quite literally. The White House confirmed Thursday that two campaign stops planned for Kansas and Iowa this weekend have been canceled. What happens next is what we need to watch. It must be the season of the witch. Or as Thompson himself told us, “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.”

Thompson was covering Richard Nixon when he penned that epigram, but it is equally applicable to covering the surreal spectacle of vampires, zombies, ghouls and degenerates awkwardly shuffling across the MAGA landscape. It certainly should be a factor in understanding what Trump does on Nov. 4 and afterward. Ask anyone, Republican or Democrat, and they’ll all say the same thing: Whatever happens is likely to be simultaneously annoying and frightening. 

Trump has already filed suit against Alaska’s election results, even though the election has yet to occur. In Missouri, the GOP lost three times trying to gerrymander districts in a case that went to the Supreme Court, all in hopes of gaining one seat in the House. That move may have backfired big time. Not only did Republicans fail to gain a guaranteed seat, but in Missouri’s Second District Democrat Fred Wellman is poised to pull off a miracle against Republican incumbent Rep. Ann Wagner (albeit with little support from party leaders in D.C.). Trump appears ready to file suit there as well. Some insiders say he might try to sue in every state where an incumbent Republican loses. Check your favorite gambling app for the over/under on that.

At the same time, there’s a constant susurrus from Trump about “voter fraud” that surfaces wherever his candidates look to be failing. There are rumors of National Guard and ICE officers roaming the countryside on Election Day hunting and bagging anyone with a good tan who speaks something other than English. Long voting lines and randomly closed precincts are a given. A general feeling of chaos among the electorate, whipped into a frenzy by the president himself, is expected. There’s still stray talk about invoking the Insurrection Act and declaring martial law. What’s the over/under on that move? 

I’m actually tired of the talk. We all know Trump will not go gentle into that good night. If the GOP loses control of Congress, his administration will likely see more people convicted and jailed than Nixon’s during the Watergate weirdness that made Thompson “turn pro.”

On the other side of the aisle, the aging Democratic leadership looks as lost and confused as Trump. Some in the party want to remain silent, cross their fingers and hope for the best, fearful of Democratic infighting and hopeful that Trump is really on his last legs. Others want to defeat Trump then turn on the “establishment” Democrats.

I don’t want to listen to this from either side. After covering Trump for 10 years, he reminds me of my children during their pre-pubescence, always cocksure, arrogant and wrong. My children grew up to be adults. Trump never has. The same can be said for some of the more argumentative Democrats.

The Democrats, as is often the case, lack focus and leadership at the national level. The headless horsemen run amok, trying to scream “The Trumps are coming!” while fighting with each other, even before they hold any power. It does not exactly inspire confidence. Younger voters find each party equally repellent, and for good reason. If Democrats win a majority in the House, as nearly everyone expects, and the Senate, as a growing number of Democrats have the audacity to hope, how long will it be before they slice each other’s throats over their marginal political differences while what remains of the GOP looks on with glee? 

Still, the Republican Party at this point looks like a horde of zombies led by Art the Clown. To extend the horror-movie metaphors even further, Trump is such a crude cartoon character that if he isn’t the Terrifier then maybe he’s Pinhead from “Hellraiser.” 

But our president can still generate media attention, even as his crowds continue to diminish. He may soon be reduced to appearing before middle school PTA meetings across the South, but he’ll still be on TV. As one of the younger members of the White House Correspondents’ Association recently said, in all earnestness, “We’ll miss him when he’s gone.” Some reporters even find his insults of the press amusing. I don’t agree, but I admit that my experience is limited to the Ronald Reagan presidency — and every one since then. 

Some of us were here before Trump, and will still be here when he’s gone. For lazy reporters, or those who’ve never covered another president, Trump makes the job easy. He doesn’t hold real news conferences. He has no policies. We don’t have directives to read or position papers to study. There are no long meetings with press secretaries. Come to think of it, there’s no press secretary. Covering Trump is easier than covering a traffic accident, and twice as gory. That’s how he governs. 

It’s obvious to even the most casual political observer that Trump’s campaign tactics are the signs of a desperate man with dwindling influence. After he lost control of Congress in the 2018 midterms, he purged his staff and yanked press passes from reporters. Some senior officials quit. Expect a repeat of all that, beginning next week. Only now most of my colleagues in the press pool will wag their tails and bark a bit before waiting for a presidential treat.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, unless he gets appointed as a senator from Tennessee, is most assuredly a goner. Even the Republicans in Congress dislike him, and Trump, who never accepts responsibility for anything, still needs a scapegoat for the war in Iran — the one he has claimed is over on more than a dozen occasions. 

While Speaker of the House Mike Johnson says he’ll do his job and seat every Democrat who wins in the midterms, Trump is eagerly searching for ways to stop that from happening. Some believe he’ll try to stage another insurrection, while others believe he’ll let government funding run out and spend the rest of his presidency presiding over a government shutdown, in effect dissolving Congress.

Whatever he does won’t work. His recent public appearances add up to a tell on how badly he will fail. High school basketball teams in Kentucky are filling gymnasiums better than this president.

White House pool reports from Trump’s campaign stops no longer mention the venue capacity or attendance, but the empty seats in those modest arenas and his listless rhetoric, combined with ever-louder outbursts from protesters, are evidence enough that this guy isn’t what he once was.

Whether he’s complimenting another man’s (or woman’s) behind, berating reporters or making deals with Russia while screwing over former allies, his raging incompetence is still center stage at these increasingly feeble campaign events. We still can’t look away. 

I recently watched a documentary about the fall of the Bronze Age civilizations. It was an era of climate change, supply chain collapse, earthquakes, famine, disease, migration, drought and armed incursions and invasions. Stop me if you’ve heard any of that before.

What worries one of the archaeologists in the documentary and causes him to lose sleep is how similar our world is to that one.

We are ripe for catastrophe, and poor leadership exacerbates the problems we currently face. “How resilient will we be? How will we get back up?” the documentary asks. Those are excellent questions to ask now.

After the midterm elections are settled, we may learn some answers. If Hunter S. Thompson was right, maybe there’s some hope. After all, I’ve never seen politics any weirder than this. 

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Trump looks done, in ways I’ve never seen him look done before. I’ve seen him stumble, fall and constantly deflect reality. He’s always managed to survive those stumbles. Not now. The cancellations, his delusional ramblings, his anger and increasing desperation, the smaller crowds, the raspy voice combined with the collective shoulder-shrug I see from even his closest allies — countered by the quiet optimism of the Democrats and their muted sniping at each other — have created a stew of weirdness that Thompson might find eclipses the waning days of the Nixon administration.

All this leaves us pondering two questions: How far will Trump go to challenge the outcome of the midterms, and what will the Democrats do with power if they get it? 

Trump’s waning influence may ultimately be the deciding factor in both questions.

If I’m wrong, I’ll admit it. But if the Democrats win both houses of Congress, I don’t think Trump will do much of anything after the midterms. He will make lots of threats. But he has to deal with the zombies in his administration and all the fires they have started: wars, battles with immigrants, court cases, affordability issues, the economy, personal corruption, racism, misogyny, the destruction of healthcare and education and the existential problems brought about by ignoring climate change. That’s too much for almost any leader, and way above his level. For the next two years, we’re likely to see Trump in the White House on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and in Bedminster or Mar-a-Lago the rest of the week, somewhere on the back nine. 

Meanwhile, we teeter on the brink, and any one of those issues I just mentioned could push us over the edge. During the Bronze Age, a natural climate disaster led to the decline of the culture. Today we can do that ourselves. 

The week ahead will be challenging week, no matter what happens. I need to channel my inner Morgan Freeman, from the film “Se7en”: “Ernest Hemingway once wrote, ‘The world is a fine place and worth fighting for.’ I agree with the second part.”

The post After Trump’s looming midterm loss, how ugly will it get? appeared first on Salon.com.

Donald Trump’s new White House “pep secretary,” Katie Zacharia, introduced herself to America in the Brady Briefing Room this week, to anticipated criticism from Democrats and some unexpected criticism from Republicans.  

At first, the press pool acted like that was just business as usual. It didn’t last long. As of Friday afternoon, multiple news reports indicate that Trump has already seen enough, and has asked Zacharia to step down from her role at the White House after just five days on the job.

According to a post on X by reporter Aaron Rupar, Trump told the press corps he had said to Zacharia that “she was treated very, very unfairly by the news. Let’s call it the fake news. I said, ‘Katie, do you need this? I don’t think you need this.’ We’re talking about doing something. I want her to have a good life. She’s being brutalized by the media.” 

In all likelihood, that will end one of the shortest tenures of any Trump White House official, only about half the length of the notorious Anthony Scaramucci during Trump’s first term.

Maybe Zacharia was just unlucky. After all, she made her debut on Oct. 13. She showed up 15 minutes late. She spent the next eight minutes telling us how great Trump was. She took questions from just three people. She was gone 15 minutes later. In her praise of Trump, Zacharia sounded like former press secretary Sean Spicer talking about Trump’s inaugural crowds nearly a decade ago as she made dubious claims about the number of attendees at the president’s recent campaign rallies in high school gymnasiums and small arenas. 

“Attendance is at record highs as enthusiastic, hard-working Americans are lining up and packing arenas to support President Trump,” she said with a straight face. Yep. The lies have already begun. Don’t act surprised. 

When she finally took questions, only Breitbart (which lavished her with praise for allowing them in the building), Fox News and the Daily Mail got to ask questions. She dropped one legitimate piece of news: The president had asked for Kimberly Guilfoyle’s resignation as U.S. ambassador to Greece, based on her evident corruption and widely reported misbehavior, which even Trump didn’t try to defend. The punchline to that incident came a short time later as Trump was departing the White House, when he barely acknowledged Guilfoyle’s existence: Kimberly? Kimberly who? 

A handful of defenders noted that the new press secretary had only a day to get ready for her debut. “Katie Zacharia had less than 24 hours to prepare for her inaugural briefing, as she juggled a cross-country move, and only received briefing materials this morning,” the Wall Street Journal reported. OK, so who forced her to go on stage, and why? 

She could have taken all the time she needed. It’s not like we were getting press briefings every day anyway, and Trump always says he’s his own best press secretary. So there was no pressure from the press, although more reporters than usual showed up to be part of Zacharia’s inaugural standup routine.  

I’ve worked with incoming press secretaries at all levels, from City Hall to the White House. The best of them took the time to study policy briefings, meet department heads and the most active beat reporters before holding their first briefing. By doing that, they avoided being criticized for a lack of preparation and having to look for names on an index card. They also got a feel for the issues and questions they needed to address. Getting to know someone is the key to any long-term relationship, whether professional or personal.

That sort of protocol has long since been forgotten and abandoned, at least at the White House. Today we can’t get into the upper press area of the West Wing to talk with the press secretary. She didn’t take the time to get to know us, and as a result we once again got a low-grade sideshow. Don’t expect anything more, and don’t expect the press to push back. The White House Correspondents’ Association is in “go along to get along” mode. It’s cringeworthy to watch and heartbreaking to endure.

There was no reason to expect much of Zacharia’s first staged appearance, and that’s why no one should be surprised to see her draw as much criticism for her attire and demeanor as for the content of the information she provided. She appeared nervous, at one point calling her husband “my president.” She giggled at herself for that: “That’s a good one.”  That was self-deprecating, which I appreciate. As for her attire, it was professional, but not something I would wear. As for being nervous, that’s to be expected. But again, why did she feel the need to brief us on her first day in the office?

She called on Trump-friendly media exclusively, and then excused herself, saying she had to travel to Alaska with the president, who’s hoping to shore up support for incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan, one of many struggling Republicans this fall. 

Mind you, if Zacharia had arrived on time, she could have doubled her time with us. Why start late and then cut it short? If she knew she was going to leave with Trump, there was no reason to soil her laundry doing a shortened briefing. Either show up on time or do it upon your return, after you get settled. Nobody would have said anything about that — and nobody would care if they did. That might have given the president another excuse to belittle the press.

I know some Republican lawmakers and even some reporters who believe that Trump set up Zacharia for failure by ordering her first appearance. That certainly isn’t beyond Trump. He’s the best when it comes to lowering expectations.

Those expectations at the moment are so low as to defy measurement. 

Just this week Trump has announced his pleasure with a DHS investigation into Rep. Ilhan Omar’s immigration papers, a deal to import diesel fuel from Russia, and possible new air strikes on Iran, while Vice President JD Vance made a weird homophobic joke about Texas Senate candidate James Talarico and Speaker Mike Johnson claimed to have no idea why gas prices are spiking. Meanwhile, Trump blamed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for not ending a war that began with Russia’s invasion of his country.

Of course, none of these issues were brought up in the new pep secretary’s very short briefing, the strangest of those issues being the bizarre deal made with Russia. In an attempt to lower prices at the pump, which have spiked because of the war Trump started, the president now says he’s ready to buy diesel from Vladimir Putin’s government.

Just to refresh everyone’s memory, Russia is backing Iran in its war with the U.S., reportedly providing intelligence on U.S. bases to the Iranian military. In essence, Trump agreed to pay an enemy government that is helping those trying to kill Americans in a war that’s entirely his doing. And all this to eradicate a supposed threat that Trump had claimed didn’t exist at all because he “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year earlier.

Come to think of it, a two-hour briefing on just that subject wouldn’t have been enough to explain that insanity. How do you tell the press that we’re paying our enemies to attack us?

Even so, that wasn’t the peak of insanity this week. 

A few days earlier, a judge in Virginia ruled that the Trump administration had misled the public with a long list of false accusations about Mary Comans, the former chief financial officer of FEMA. 

“Armed only with false statements, high-ranking government officials undertook a premeditated campaign to impugn the personal and professional integrity of Ms. Comans, a non-partisan, career public servant,” U.S. Magistrate Judge William E. Fitzpatrick said. “Their intent was to disseminate false and derogatory information about Ms. Comans as widely as possible.”

Comans was accused of money laundering, willfully violating a presidential executive order, undermining public safety and misspending federal funds. As the judge found, none of that was ultimately true. He added that “high-ranking” government officials accused her of such things while “knowing they were false.”

Dealing with that insanity might also require a two-hour press briefing. 

Finally, there’s the matter of the lawsuit filed by CNN, MSNOW and Politico against the Trump administration. Judge Timothy Kelly ruled Tuesday night that the temporary restraining order preventing Trump from banning those outlets from the White House would remain in force while their lawsuit proceeded. 

Trump had also engaged in “unlawful viewpoint discrimination” by banning those reporters, Kelly said. The president also apparently never gave those news organizations any meaningful list of standards they had to comply with or risk losing their press passes. Trump’s actions, the judge said, “likely did not … come close to satisfying Karem.” 

Yes, that’s me. He was referring to the Karem v. Trump case in 2019, when I beat the administration in court on three occasions and got my press credentials back. And the judge is right, by the way: Trump’s actions don’t satisfy me. But unpacking my own victory over Trump would be a tough task for the best press secretary. So would dealing with any of this week’s issues, let alone dealing with a president who seems to have reached peak insanity, especially for a brand new press secretary who just moved to town with questionable credentials.

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To be completely fair, Trump threw Zacharia to the dogs with no prep time, no knowledge of the issues she would have to handle and no readiness to handle even the straightforward questions about her own legal background. (She graduated from law school but is not a licensed attorney in any state.)

Zacharia read a bunch of lies off a written statement, smiled at us and got out of there. It now seems possible that her first day briefing the White House press will also be her best day, as well as her last day. The aforementioned Anthony Scaramucci publicly mused that she may not last as long as he did at the White House (which was 11 days). I’ve heard some reporters saying they won’t even bother to learn how to spell her name. 

But what we saw in the briefing room this week was far more troubling than one woman falling on her face. It was a panicky president approaching peak insanity throwing a scapegoat on stage in an effort to deflect attention from his ruthless and corrupt conduct. True to form, the press corps took the bait, and seemed more interested in what Zacharia was wearing and whether she’d exaggerated her qualifications than in the important issues facing this country as a result of the president’s insanity.

I have plenty of empathy for anyone working in the Trump White House, but no sympathy for anyone who willingly joins the lunacy, particularly at this late date. 

The midterm elections are at hand. Trump is criminally negligent and mentally unwell. Anyone who goes to work for him now is just asking for trouble.

Just ask Katie Zacharia. If you can find her. 

The post After that disastrous debut, Katie Zacharia is already history appeared first on Salon.com.

On Wednesday in the Oval Office, Donald Trump made clear that he’s not happy with how his political rivals have treated him and stoutly reserved his right for revenge. “They impeached me twice. I certainly — even to this moment I can do whatever I want, if I want.” Trump said, before claiming that only his respect for the office of the president keeps his behavior in check.  

If this were a sitcom— and it feels like a bad one — we would now hear a laugh track followed by groans.

Clearly Trump has never understood the foundational concepts of American politics. Political ethics, the art of “half a loaf,” the truism that “all politics are local” and the principles of public service over private enrichment are lost on him. Those are just sayings on trophies Trump has minted for himself since he’ll never get the Nobel Peace Prize. 

He certainly doesn’t understand compromise or the importance of local issues. Consider his enthusiastic support for data centers, the only issue currently uniting Americans. He’s too busy feathering his own nest while laughing off any pretense of ethical behavior. While we can certainly criticize Trump for ignoring the foundations of our democracy, the same could also be said of Congress, most state houses and many city councils. And, hey, let’s not talk about the local pool board. That’s where stuff really gets weird. Sometime I’ll tell you about my former neighbor in Gaithersburg who thought “Robert’s Rules of Order” had something to do with sharing spouses. 

Recent polls of likely voters in the midterm elections make it clear that a significant majority are extremely tired of the nonsense promulgated by Trump and others. Yeah, those are just polls and they only offer you a vague snapshot in time. That being said, it isn’t just about the polls. Donald Trump is so scared of what’s coming that he’s limited his campaign activities to shoring up support in the deepest red districts of America while threatening Democrats with hellfire and damnation.

No one could be more delighted than the Democratic National Committee, whose pitch to the electorate consists of three words: “We’re not him!” It’s a simple message, if not exactly an inspiring one, made possible by Trump’s overwhelmingly inept corruption. At least for now, the Republicans have lowered the bar so far under a despotic president that even the dysfunctional Democrats might crawl over it. 

Where I see real hope for change is at the local level. Some of the most promising Democrats have led energetic and engaging campaigns, with more public appearances in front of potential constituents than most Republican incumbents have ever dared to hold. The pitch is reaching disgruntled voters of all stripes, including Latinos, Republican women and independents.  Some of them, like retired Army officer Richard Ojeda, the Democratic nominee in North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District, and Fred Wellman, another military vet running in Missouri’s 2nd District, have independently and successfully put themselves within striking distance in traditionally red districts. Trump won Wellman’s Missouri district by eight points in 2024, and won Ojeda’s Tar Heel State district by double digits. With more than three weeks to go, both races are statistical dead heats.Wow. It appears that talking to the electorate and not acting like a bully can have positive effects. Who knew?

Meanwhile Trump still preaches his gospel that the economy is in great shape and people are doing better than ever; “I think we’re going to do very well,” he said recently. “We’re letting people know what the Republicans have done, and it’s incredible. And prices are now coming way down. And oil, as soon as the war is over, which will be soon, will be coming way down.”

While his stump speech wears thin, Republican incumbents are also running against a Democratic Party that has already lost twice to Trump, forcing us to confront what might happen if the Republicans win again. In the first two years of the second Trump administration, he has effectively destroyed the First, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth and 10th amendments. With a continuing GOP majority in Congress, the other five are toast as well.

It’s more interesting to consider what happens if the Democrats, despite their best efforts, actually win control of Congress. Can they make substantive changes? Obviously, Trump will veto any bills the Democrats pass. During the 2011 debt ceiling crisis, House Speaker John Boehner famously remarked that the House had passed a plan, and it was up to Barack Obama to sign it. Will the current crop of Democrats be satisfied to offer that response in 2027? 

I doubt it. There’s already talk of impeaching both Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Trump himself — at least according to Trump. My bet is on Hegseth. At the very least, that would undermine Trump’s control of the military, which he would eagerly wield to suppress the will of the people. It was an outgoing Republican member of Congress, Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who proposed impeaching the “secretary of fashion,” and it’s widely believed that more Republicans could be persuaded to vote Hegseth out following a big blue wave. Actually removing him from office would require 67 votes in the Senate, always a tall order. But Hegseth is as popular in Congress as a canker sore on a first date. On Thursday, he revived the medieval notion of holding public executions, always a sign of civility, and after a Democratic takeover of both houses, the remaining Republicans will have their own futures to think about. As Brad Pitt said in “Fight Club,”  it’s about “survival of the fittest, baby.” 

If Hegseth is actually removed, the smart money would have Congress then turning its attention on Trump. Only then, the argument goes, would Trump be weakened enough that it might be possible to impeach and convict him, finally removing him from office. I’d want to whip the votes to make sure you could get a conviction before even starting down that road. But many angry Democrats want to bypass Hegseth and immediately try to impeach the president. Knee-jerk reaction? Thy name is politician.

Of course, it’s also possible the Democrats might opt to do nothing about Trump once they get a majority, which is more or less their national campaign strategy. But with no ability to pass legislation, I suspect they’d focus their energy on investigations, some of which would go nowhere and all of which would further fuel our nation’s bitter divisions. But is there another, better option?

Six weeks before the 2020 election, when Trump’s chances of winning looked bleak, he let us know he’d be willing to sponsor or support an insurrection. He urged us to stop counting the votes. We got the insurrection when we didn’t. So what’s he telling us now? One persistent fear is that he may try to snatch ballot boxes in hotly contested districts and claim victory, while screaming about election fraud. Others are fearful that with the complicity of the Republicans in Congress, he’ll let government funding run out in mid-December and shut down the government again. 

As he says, he’ll take whatever action he wants. That has included moving B-1 bombers from a base in England because of a supposed terror threat from Iran, a nation he claims is on its knees, along with a suggestion that the Iranians might “take out” Los Angeles and San Diego. Not exactly Trump’s finest hour. 

His public pronouncement that he can do whatever he wants to Democratic leaders, combined with implied threats against American cities, proves one more time that this American president is an existential threat to humanity. Anything and everything is transactional to Trump, even the sacrifice of millions of innocent lives, both Democratic and Republican. More horrifying still, his statement was met by extended cheers from his exuberant audience of nearly 6,000 people who showed up in Nebraska on Oct. 5. 

The punchline here is this: That was the second time in a week that Trump played before a very small crowd. It looks better, I suppose, to have a thousand people kept from entering a venue than seating them in a spacious arena he can no longer fill. In Ohio, he played to about 5,000 people in a high school gym and later threatened to jail reporters who pointed out that he hadn’t filled that “arena.” 

Trump has clearly given up on retaining control of the House and pulled out of the U.S. Senate race in North Carolina. This week he has grown increasingly dark in emails to his MAGA contributors. Tuesday, he told his supporters, “One seat slips, then another, and the gavel changes hands like a throat being cut in silence. The other side does not need a landslide. They need the dark to do their work for them. A tired voter. An empty chair. A man who tells himself the night will pass if he stays indoors.”

No one believes Trump wrote that macabre bit of poetry, evocative of a “Halloween in the Heartland” tale of terror. It stinks of a collaboration between Susie Wiles and Stephen Miller.

At the end of this road, if the Democrats seize a majority in both the House and the Senate, Trump will become a Manhattan sewer rat cornered in a dank alley fighting over a rotting slice of pizza. 

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Government shutdowns, name-calling, blame-spreading, ballot seizures and even a failure to seat the winning Democrats in Congress are all conceivable between the morning of Nov. 4 and the moment the new Congress is sworn in. But I detect a couple of tells that indicate Trump’s threats are empty. First, his notoriously low popularity likely won’t lead to a more successful result than the Jan. 6 insurrection, although the effort could be more dangerous and desperate.

The second tell is that we’re already hearing talk among Republicans about moving beyond Trump. Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio will supposedly run for House minority leader and outgoing Speaker Mike Johnson will be shown the door. Jordan has stayed in the shadows since Trump’s return, allowing Johnson to gaslight reporters and the public with his creepy smile. Will Jordan become the new face of the Republicans following Trump’s departure? Will JD Vance, who’s been campaigning in Alaska recently? (I make that suggestion with a straight face.) Then there’s Marco Rubio, the man in the Trump administration who wears all the hats and avoids most of the criticism. They are all jockeying for position in an uncertain future.

The surest sign Trump is faltering is his shrinking crowds — and his desperate efforts to hide that fact.

Trump may stay in office until January of 2029, and he may not. Nature, politics and his unexplained health issues will have a say in that matter.

But as both Republicans and Democrats contemplate a future without him, perhaps even one based on democratic principles, Trump becomes increasingly insignificant while, at the same time, increasingly dangerous. We cannot afford to forget that.

 

The post What will Trump do after the midterms, with nothing left to lose? appeared first on Salon.com.

On Thursday afternoon in Dallas, in what looked like a farewell tour, the president of the United States told his Texas followers to “Hold your nose” and vote for Republican Senate candidate Ken Paxton, a man he also described as a “pain in the ass.”

Donald Trump then sped off in the presidential limo known as the Beast — at nearly 100 mph, according to pool reports — and headed for an event in Oklahoma. Republicans gazed in mock wild wonder, palms outstretched, claiming they have no idea why they’re staring at potentially historic losses in the midterm elections next month. 

Afterwards a MAGA supporter told me that Trump’s performance was just “presidential humor.” And fair enough. Donald Trump has spent a lifetime being, in effect, the Wednesday night open-mic comic at a backroom bar in some college town in Missouri. 

Neither capable of growth nor understanding, he’s that guy with just one punchline. He’s a one-trick pony: “Sir, she said. Sir.” He’s the most talentless man ever caught in the bright glare of the light he demanded from the world.

But he is persistent. That’s his superpower. The grift? Oh, that part he learned from experience. But he’s naturally persistent, and out of that grew the corruption, fearmongering and boundless anger — all driven by his superpower. He learned to be transactional. Every failure is fuel for the next fiasco.  

The first Trump administration was an accident, largely brought about by the split I witnessed firsthand between Hillary Clinton’s and Bernie Sanders’ supporters at the Democratic convention in Philadelphia during the last week of July 2016. What a shock: The Democrats destroyed their chances through infighting. Who knew?

Trump never thought he’d win that election. Some Republicans, who later fled the party, never accepted him as a legitimate heir to the GOP’s legacy when he did. Now, critics and fans alike have pointed out that there’s no doubt he’s the rightful heir to the Republican Party of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush; more corrupt than Nixon, a happy practitioner of Reagan’s economics and more of a mean-spirited-wimp than Hunter S. Thompson ever thought Bush could be. 

Trump’s refusal to bust up monopolies while cutting staff to the National Park Service and selling off public lands has removed any illusions that he might be a Teddy Roosevelt Republican. His lack of military service takes him out of the realm of being a Dwight Eisenhower Republican. As for Abraham Lincoln, Trump has tried his best to divide a nation, not unite one. 

Since Trump never thought he’d win in 2016, he never really planned anything; he let the Republican establishment run things until he got comfortable sleeping in the big chair in the Oval Office and declaring each week “infrastructure week” while doing nothing about it. 

Then came COVID, and in 2021 Trump found himself out of power after, of course, refusing to concede the election and inciting a failed insurrection. That failure fueled his persistence and led to his 2024 re-election. The failure also fueled his anger. His subsequent 34 felony convictions in New York and the federal investigations into his actions became motives for Trump to seek and destroy all who tried to bring him to justice.

His persistent greed, anger and need for revenge empowered him during his first 100 days back in office in 2025, leading to sweeping, Nazi-esque changes sold to the public by discrediting or co-opting the media. 

Meanwhile, the former East Room of the White House looks like Dresden during postwar reconstruction; the Kennedy Center is starting to resemble a Greek ruin; the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool is empty and broken, and for some reason that can only be understood under the influence of hallucinogens and Red Bull, he now wants to build a triumphal arch and stuff it with weapons.

We have no idea why we’re at war with Iran and no idea how to negotiate a peace. Trump’s latest attempt at that answer came in the Oval Office on Wednesday when he said, for what must be the fifth or sixth time, that he could just blow Iran up. 

At least 58 people have died after being remanded to ICE facilities. Homeland Security chief Markwayne Mullin shrugs that off and says nothing ICE does is controversial and he’s not running “Holiday Inns — these people broke the law.” His superpower seems to be life-ending, militant ignorance.

Then there’s Russia, Ukraine, China and a host of other scandals. Those include but aren’t limited to spending taxpayer money on political ads, the price of diesel fuel, the slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza, antisemitism, misogyny and the L.A. mayor’s race. 

While covering Trump is always a challenge, covering his minions is another story. Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri, who made his bones trying to kill the Affordable Care Act and challenging the results of the 2020 election, made a complete fool of himself this week in the Senate while attacking former special counsel Jack Smith. 

Schmitt’s superpower is apparently making an ass of himself in public. By misrepresenting nonsensical evidence, he accused Smith of perjury. When called out for his sophomoric display, he then went on right-wing media and lied some more.

Smith, who still reminds me of Coach Beard in “Ted Lasso,” explained that his prosecution wasn’t politically inspired. It was driven by facts. “My service has spanned both Republican and Democratic administrations. I am not a politician, and I have no partisan loyalties,” he said. “My career has been dedicated to serving our country by upholding the rule of law and the core principles on which our country was founded,” Being driven by facts and principles is a pretty decent superpower and should describe most people, including reporters, lawyers, scientists, politicians and clerics. 

“The charges against President Trump were the result of the evidence,” Smith said. “Grand juries in two separate districts reached this conclusion based on his actions. Rather than accept his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results and prevent the lawful transfer of power.”

That conclusion shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone after all this time. Trump told me in the Brady Briefing Room, six weeks before the 2020 election, that “If you stop counting the votes” there wouldn’t need to be a peaceful transfer of power. He’d just stay on indefinitely.

Trump thus teaches us that persistence pays off even if the proposition is criminal and the facts aren’t in your favor. That’s why he currently commands the center ring of the circus.

Meanwhile, down in Texas, we have the aforementioned Sideshow Ken Paxton, one of the most loathsome individuals ever to climb out of the primordial ooze and declare himself a human being. This is a man so vile that even Trump hates him, and so do the Trump-happy Texas Republicans who have been known to embrace faith healers and hunt snakes in shorts and cowboy boots. They tried to rid themselves of Paxton, but he somehow slipped away.

Paxton’s superpower is his lack of spine and his greasy nature. That, combined with Trump’s (ahem) support, is the reason Paxton isn’t in prison. 

But time has its way with everyone. After more than a decade of deploying his superpower, Trump is noticeably faltering, even conceding from the Oval Office this week that his party may lose the midterms. The man who has traded on fear, corruption and grift for so long that he looks like a cartoon Tasmanian devil without the charm has now come to resemble Otis, the sleepy town drunk in “The Andy Griffith Show” (look it up, for heaven’s sake). 

Waiting in the wings is “Hillbilly Elegy” JD Vance, worming his way through the crowd. That’s his superpower: He’s a bearded human worm. If you don’t like him, you might place a bet on Marco “The Juggler” Rubio. His superpower is handling a variety of tasks without the loud explosive thud of total failure often seen from Trump, Vance and Pete Hegseth, who’s more like the the secretary of fashion than the “secretary of war.” That makes “Li’l Marco” a bright star in Trump’s dark firmament, even if it’s evident nobody likes him.  

Hegseth, on the other hand, is among the dimmest. His superpower seems to be the ability to cosplay a vain summer camp counselor in the Adirondacks from a bad Hallmark comedy.  

For the comic book fans out there, the Republicans are led by a Yellow Lantern with fading powers, delusional in his beliefs and actions, too fearful to change and faced with the overpowering realization that his time in power is quickly coming to an end. 

He even sent an email to supporters Thursday claiming “This could be my final four weeks as president.” Sure, it was another grift, as well as fatalistic and totally disingenuous. 

They may have to pry Trump out of the Oval Office with a crowbar and a handful of sedatives in 2029, if he lasts that long. But next month’s midterm elections, should they go as badly as Trump obviously fears, will mean the effective end of his presidency. What comes after that could be chaos. Don’t expect mature or professional behavior from a party that can’t tell the difference between an NBA game in Atlanta and a women’s college basketball game in Silver Spring. Just realize it’s the same party that wants to punish transgender Americans while rewarding the ultra-rich. 

The only question that matters is this; Does Trump have enough juice left in his Yellow Lantern ring for one last fearful victory? At his mini-convention in Dallas he told his followers to “cheat like hell.” At the same time Trump asked everyone to vote as if he were on the ballot; unfortunately for the Republicans, many will do just that. At this point, it’s almost as if Trump is campaigning for the Democrats. 

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Seems appropriate. Most of the Democrats are counting on winning by simply saying, “I’m not Trump.”

Folks, they’re not putting Vance out in the field for the Donald’s sake. He’s there for the same reason: Because he’s not Trump. Soon enough, JD could graduate from the sideshow to the center ring.

Should Trump and the Republicans suffer the historic midterm blowout everyone sees coming — barring armed confiscation of ballot boxes — the president will play the victim, a martyred hero who will claim the elections were rigged and blame Joe Biden, China, Canada, our NATO allies and Iran. If he somehow finds a miraculous recharge for his ring, he will use his superpower to foment further revenge and retribution. Every failure is fuel for the next fiasco.

I’ve been told that everyone has a superpower. If so, I’ll defer to what my father told me was mine: asking annoying questions. I still have a few for you, Mr. President.

The post Trump’s superpower is fading. Can he recharge before the midterms? appeared first on Salon.com.