The Common Ills

Tuesday, October 13, 2026

Tuesday, October 13, 2026. Turnout for Chump's Desperatin Tour continues to dwindle, Chump can't connect with voters, Priss Pot Hegseth has a huge host of problems, Jeffrey Epstein remains an issue, and much more.

Daniel Hampton (RAW STORY) notes:

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Monday aired humiliating footage of pervasive empty seats at President Donald Trump’s rally in Youngstown, Ohio, one week after Trump insisted he has never had an empty seat and never will.

Collins, hosting “The Source,” showed video from CNN’s crew inside the Covelli Centre revealing bare stretches in the arena’s upper levels. She allowed that it was hard to know how much to read into the turnout, then turned to Trump’s own claims.

“But he is the one who’s saying there are these big overflow rooms,” Collins said.

Her guest, Democratic strategist Karen Finney, said Trump was trying to spin his events as if it were still the 2016 or 2024 campaign, and argued Democrats should want him on the road.

“I say keep him out there because he is mobilizing Democratic voters. He is doing more for our base, frankly,” Finney said.

Collins wasn't the only reporter who noticed. Washington Post White House correspondent Emily Davies posted on X in real time as Trump took the stage, writing: "There are entirely empty sections in the arena where Trump is currently hosting a rally in Youngstown, Ohio. Both parties see this area as key to winning the races for Senate and governor. These photos were taken as Trump walked on stage."

Chump's Desperation Tour rolls on and does so with frustration on the part of Chump. Edith Olmsted (THE NEW REPUBLIC) explains:

President Donald Trump’s midterm campaign rally blitz has him down in the dumps.

During the initial leg of his nationwide-tour of half-full high school gyms, the president has been in a “foul mood,” one person with knowledge of his behavior told The Washington Post Monday.

Trump is still speaking in rooms that are packed with supporters -- seeing as he’s purposefully touring in deep red areas -- but this time around, the venues are smaller, and the vibe is different. Trump’s speaking events don’t feel so much like pep rallies as they do stops on a farewell tour.

Trump is a lot less popular now than he was the last time he hit the campaign trail. The president has even become a liability to some Republican candidates. Ahead of his visit to Syracuse on Friday to support the New York Republican gubernatorial candidate, conservative radio host Bob Lonsberry urged him to cancel, according to the Post. “Stay away, Mr. President,” he wrote on social media. “The last thing Bruce Blakeman needs is a visit from you.”

He's had to move to smaller venues and even those don't fill up. The Desperation Tour comes with a built-in whiff of . . . desperation. Chump is lumbering around the country with low energy and much less interest on the part of the public in catching him. Tom Latchem (DAILY BEAST) notes Chump is in a battle with reality currently:

Donald Trump has flooded social media with posts celebrating his rally crowds after a series of embarrassing reports exposed their dwindling attendance.

The president, 80, kicked off his week by sharing at least seven posts and several videos on Truth Social that praised his ability to draw big numbers. The early morning Monday barrage included screenshots of posts by MAGA influencers declaring that his supporters were more enthusiastic than ever.

The posting spree came hours after Trump boasted that his campaign events were “legendary,” despite evidence of empty seats and a Daily Beast/PunchUp investigation last Tuesday that revealed how much his audience has shrunk since his first presidential campaign.

He's lying. He's like a certain pop singer who cancelled a tour because it was not selling tickets but publicly insisted she had decided to stay home with her newborn. No, she only decided that after she discovered she couldn't sell tickets. Brandon Weichert (NATIONAL SECURITY JOURNAL) writes:

November 3 is just around the corner, and President Donald J. Trump faces a historic defeat in this year’s Midterms.

Of course, he doesn’t see it that way.

As he keeps telling the world, the negative polling for Republicans is not “his” polling numbers.

Contrary to what the forty-seventh president believes, however, the negative poll numbers indicate how unpopular the president’s policies are.

One new Financial Times/Focaldata poll highlights how deeply unsatisfied with the GOP American voters are when it comes to their handling of the economy, inflation, and the war with Iran.

According to the poll, Republicans will lose significant seats in the US House of Representatives.

The president’s overall approval rating is currently a meager 34 percent, the lowest of his presidency (and lower than George W. Bush’s approval rating when the GOP lost the 2006 Midterms).

Marni Rose McFall (NEWSWEEK) notes data that appears to offer very bad news for Chump:

Early voting data from Ohio could be a stark warning for GOP candidate and incumbent Republican Senator Jon Husted.

Husted faces a challenge from former Senator Sherrod Brown in a special election to finish the term for which Vice President JD Vance was elected in 2022.

With the campaign season in its final weeks, a new CNN analysis shows that after the first few days of early voting, affiliated Democrats make up larger shares of pre-election voters than in the 2024 presidential election. Even in Republican parts of the state.

Historically, the party in the White House loses seats in the midterms when the president is unpopular. All 435 House seats and 35 Senate seats are up for election in November, along with key gubernatorial races.

It's 21 days until election day. Early voting goes on in many states but the last day to vote is election day November 3rd. There's not a great deal of time left for Chump's Desperation Tour to land any impact. And besides, it's had little impact so far. Brandon Weichert (NATIONAL SECURITY JOURNAL) notes:

According to an October 12 NBC News report, President Donald Trump is scrambling to sustain the Republican Party’s ailing poll numbers going into the 2026 Midterm Elections.

Despite his public claims to the contrary, Trump clearly fears the outcome of the impending Midterms.

If the GOP loses the Midterms, it will seriously impede the Trump administration’s future policies.

In fact, if the Democrats win sizable majorities in the House of Representatives and a Senate majority, the Trump team could soon face significant legal jeopardy.

As Trump works the campaign stops harder, he might be surprised by how small the crowds are. Whereas he once commanded legions of loyal voters at the height of his power, crowd sizes are shrinking.

David McAfee (RAW STORY) notes:

Things have gotten so bad for Republicans heading into the midterms that some of their strategists don’t want anyone to see the polling, according to a top election analyst.

Jessica Taylor, Senate and governors editor for the Cook Political Report, said on MS NOW this weekend that a single conversation from last week captured the mood.

“The overall environment is just so bleak right now,” Taylor said. “I talked with one strategist last week and they said, you know, no one even wants to show anyone polls because they’re so bad right now.”

The host asked whether Republicans were really on their back foot. Taylor pointed to where the party is spending its money.

“Just to tell you how bad it is, the fact that Republicans are spending in Kansas and South Carolina right now,” she said. “It’s little fires everywhere that are turning into potentially big fires.”

Amira Turner (THE MIRROR) offers details about a Desperation Tour stop in Syracuse, New York:

He continued to lose his audience. Videos circulating on social media show one supporter sitting directly behind him, checking his watch. Trump’s speech then took a left turn as he started discussing cars, “lines of different states, and you'll see one has Cadillacs, because they like Cadillacs better than they like Mercedes, but one has an Escalade, and one has a 50-year-old Chevy.”

Attendees seemed bored and confused by the president’s word salad, prompting social media comments about the state of his fanbase.

A viral edit of Trump’s speech zooms in on audience members' disinterested faces as Simon and Garfunkel's The Sound of Silence plays.

To the tiny crowds that turn out for the Desperation Tour, Chump talks about things that matter . . . to him. He lies about affordability and the economy. And he whines. He whines a whole lot. And while Americans are struggling to put food on the table and to afford gas for their cars, Chump's forever whining. Lee Moran (HUFFINGTON POST) explains:

The president floated the possibility of rechristening either the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean during a campaign rally in Tennessee on Saturday.

“We’ve got the Gulf, we’ve got a beautiful lake, and now someone said, ‘You need a river,’” he claimed. “So, we need a river, we need an ocean. So, I was thinking of either the Atlantic or the Pacific.”

“We call it Trump Ocean or Ocean of the Americas, something like that,” Trump added.

The president has already used executive orders to attempt to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America” and Lake Ontario as “Lake America,” although the orders can’t force other countries to follow his lead.

He has also talked about renaming the state of New Mexico as “New America.”

No one in the country is losing sleep because neither the Pacific nor the Atlantic Ocean is called "Trump Ocean." No one.

Moving on to the Secretary of Defense Priss Pot Hegseth, Michael Tomasky (THE NEW REPUBLIC) responds to Hegseth's call for live streaming an execution:

Donald Trump has done a lot of repulsive things as president and taken this country down moral sinkholes most of us never thought we’d encounter. But if he approves the livestreaming of the execution of Nidal Hasan -- and Hegseth’s announcement last week was just a recommendation; Trump said over the weekend that he will decide -- it will easily be the most depraved thing he’s done.

Hasan’s crimes are sickening. He killed 13 people, including a pregnant woman, and injured 32 more when he opened fire at Fort Hood, Texas, on November 5, 2009. I’m an opponent of the death penalty, mainly because there’s just way too much evidence that our justice system wrongly convicts people. Since 1972, 203 people sentenced to death in this country have been later exonerated. I’ll admit, though, that in cases of premeditated mass murder like this one, where the crime was unspeakable and the guilt is clear, I don’t lose much sleep when I learn that the perp will be put to death.

But televising it is barbaric. Turning the killing of a human being, any human being, into a spectator sport is about as sick as it gets. The United States of the mid-1930s was not exactly a progressive Eden, to say nothing of the Commonwealth of Kentucky. A Black man was lynched in the state just two years before Bethea was put to death. But even in that place and at that time, people in positions of power knew that killing a person for public amusement was one moral bridge too far and moved to outlaw it.

It’s not too far for Hegseth. The man who has overseen a disastrous war that has cost you and me $45 billion and 81 aircraft worth more than $3 billion thinks it’s a grand idea. He laid it out last week to some right-wing “news” outfit called Real America’s Voice. A “no-brainer,” he said. “It hadn’t been since World War II since we’ve done that. Well, I kinda like the mentality we had in World War II. Which was win.”

Where does one even begin? As if turning murder into a piece of theater is on par with the global fight to stop fascism. As if taking a human life on TV is a “win” comparable to the defeat of Hitler. What kind of monster talks like this?

Priss Pot Hegseth does. He's the kind of monster that talks like that. And Americans have had enough of him. Jazmin Tolliver (HUFFINGTON POST) notes:

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) slammed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and his “failed” leadership after Hegseth said the public will be able to watch the execution of the Fort Hood shooter, Nidal Hasan.

Tillis criticized Hegseth Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” after moderator Kristen Welker asked him what he thinks the impact of televising the execution will be.

“It’s another example of where U.S. lives, American lives will be put at risk,” Tillis replied. “Terrorist organizations will use this as a recruiting tool. It will radicalize other people. And this is not who we are.”

Tillis argued that while the Fort Hood shooter “should be put to death,” there is “a way to deal with this that’s proper, and there’s a way to deal with this that’s more improper than I have ever observed in my life.”

Further discussing the livestream plan that has faced bipartisan pushback, the North Carolina senator reiterated his stance: “It’s another example of what Pete Hegseth and all of his bravado needs to get the hell out of the Department of Defense because he is a failed leader.”

Meanwhile, William D. Hartung (THE HILL) calls out another of Priss Pot's 'brilliant' ideas:

In a speech that covered a lot of ground, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced recently that he was creating a panel called “Project Meridian,” to look at the future of warfare. It will be led by three individuals: Elon Musk of SpaceX, Palmer Luckey of Anduril, and former Georgia House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.).

The appointment of Musk and Luckey to head the panel should sound alarm bells on Capitol Hill. Both men lead companies that have received billions of dollars in Pentagon contracts. And if our future strategy relies heavily on automated warfare, uncrewed vehicles and other AI-driven systems, they stand to make tens or hundreds of billions more in the decades to come.

In a rational approach to security, strategy drives budgets, and budgets purchase weapons that fit that strategy. In addition, military personnel, their civilian counterparts, and the growing ranks of government contractors need to be trained to use those systems effectively.

But this textbook version of national defense strategy rarely plays out so neatly. There are disagreements on strategy within the executive branch, including on when it is worth launching wars like the current conflict with Iran. Congress is also generally divided on key issues of war and peace.

In addition, decisions on weapons purchases too often hinge on where the systems are built, not whether they are aligned with a coherent strategy. Congress often adds more units of a given system to the budget than the Pentagon has requested, or prevents the department from retiring systems it sees as obsolete.

And then there's this . . .

Hegseth lied. Repeatedly. He lied about the fallen and he lied about the injured.

Turning to the late Jeffrey Epstein who died in jail. The close friend and roll dog of Chump was a pedophile and sex trafficker. His assistant Ghislaine Maxwell was moved by Trump from a low security prison to a minimum security prison that's considered to be Club Fed and where she gets all these perks that she's not entitled to but then due to her convictions, she's not even supposed to be in a minimum security prison. But she's Chump's friend and he put her there -- some say to keep her from talking about what she knows. Poppy Wood (THE TELEGRAPH OF LONDON) reports:

Democrats have begun naming associates of Jeffrey Epstein whose identities were redacted in official files.

Leon Botstein, a former president of Bard College in New York, resigned from his remaining academic posts on Wednesday after Jamie Raskin, a Democrat and senior member of the House judiciary committee, wrote a letter to the university linking him to several emails in the tranche of documents relating to the Epstein investigation.

It included an email from May 2014 that was attributed to Mr Botstein, in which the author asked Epstein whether a young woman was “for me, or are you keeping her for yourself”.

In the publicly available version of the file, Mr Botstein is not named. However, Democrats are privy to the unredacted version and Mr Raskin’s letter said the email address used was “President@Bard.edu”, at a time when Mr Botstein was president of the college.

The congressman alleged that the woman, referred to as Jane Doe in the letter, was being “groomed” at the time by Epstein, the paedophile billionaire who died in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

Tessa Solomon (ART NEWS) adds:

Botstein led Bard College from 1975 and was known as a deft fundraiser who helped earn the small institution global renown. Bard is home to the Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS), one of the most prominent graduate programs in curatorial practice in the United States, as well as its affiliated CCS Hessel Museum of Art. Over his five-decade tenure, Botstein helped make the college's curatorial program a must-watch.

But his reputation was dealt a grievous blow by the Epstein files, which showed that Botstein corresponded closely with the late financier for years, including after Epstein's conviction for soliciting a minor for prostitution. In one widely reported 2013 exchange, Botstein signed off with "Miss you," and elsewhere wrote of treasuring his "new friendship" with Epstein, even wishing him well after news broke of his sex-trafficking scheme.

Bard College commissioned an independent review of Botstein's relationship with Epstein in April. Conducted by the law firm WilmerHale, the review determined that Botstein had not committed any crimes but found that his ties to Epstein cast doubt on his leadership. "In his public statements and his statements to the Bard community, President Botstein minimized and was not fully accurate in describing his relationship with Epstein," the review concluded.

The review also noted that Botstein had visited Epstein's now-notorious island, invited Epstein to visit Bard, and accepted payments from him. According to the review, Botstein "forcefully" argued that raising money for Bard was "paramount": "His view was, ‘I would take money from Satan if it permitted me to do God's work.'"

Botstein remained closely involved with Bard after his resignation, serving as artistic co-director of the Bard Music Festival and leader of The Orchestra Now, the college's graduate-level music program. He also continued to conduct the American Symphony Orchestra. His lingering presence, however, was divisive on campus.

Let's wind down with this from Senator Elizabeth Warren's office:

Amid increasing concerns over utility costs and other data center problems, the report finds that the “data center industry is bulldozing local communities… leaving ordinary citizens stuck with the bills.”

Warren releases 27-page report with findings of investigation of AI data center operators

Text of Report (PDF)

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) released a new report, Power and Profits: How the AI Data Center Boom Costs Households and Communities, containing the findings of their nearly yearlong investigation into how AI data centers raise costs for communities.

The report found that Big Tech data center companies are not doing enough to pay their “‘fair share,’ and … continue to aggressively seek financial subsidies from residential ratepayers and state and local governments. This leaves ratepayers, taxpayers, and local communities shouldering many of the costs while Big Tech reaps the benefits.”

On December 15, 2025, the lawmakers sent letters to Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, CoreWeave, Digital Realty, and Equinix, requesting detailed information on their plans to mitigate their data centers’ impact on local communities following reports of data centers driving up residential utility costs.

The Senators’ staff supplemented this investigation with additional information obtained from interviews and discussions with representatives of these companies over the past year. The investigation reveals that some of the wealthiest companies in the world are not doing enough to pay the full costs of their data center development and in fact continue to aggressively seek financial subsidies from residential ratepayers and state and local governments. Specific topline findings of this investigation include:

1. The data center companies are not paying their “fair share.” While the data center companies publicly claim they support paying the energy costs required to serve their facilities, all data center developers made clear that their commitments to paying their “full energy costs” and “full cost of service” refer to the costs of infrastructure exclusively benefitting them and do not cover the full spectrum of costs that data centers impose on residential ratepayers.

The companies broadly opposed “but-for” cost allocation standards requiring them to pay the full cost of any upgrades triggered by their facilities — upgrades that would not have been needed but for the existence of the data center—instead arguing that these costs should be shared by all ratepayers. Moreover, while the companies point to new state regulations as sufficient to prevent costs from being shifted onto consumers, they regularly lobby state legislatures for more favorable terms, including through playing states off of each other by threatening to move elsewhere.

“[T]he companies commit to paying for infrastructure that solely benefits them, but dispute how much they should pay for shared infrastructure that is paid for by all ratepayers but was only built to accommodate the data center,” wrote the senators.

2. Data centers avoid scrutiny by seeking NDAs that limit community input on AI data center locations and impacts. All four Big Tech companies routinely request nondisclosure agreements from utility companies, landowners, other commercial partners, and in some cases even government officials. Several of the Big Tech companies explicitly acknowledged that the goal of requesting NDAs with public officials is to limit public scrutiny by preventing the local community from learning about the project.

For example, Meta stated that “[m]aintaining confidentiality during project development increases efficiency and speed by enabling all stakeholders to remain focused on the needs of a proposed project,” implicitly excluding local residents from the group of relevant stakeholders.

3. The data center companies continue to aggressively seek tax breaks that cost states billions in lost revenue while providing little evidence of economic benefits. While the developers surveyed often downplayed or avoided acknowledging the billions of dollars in tax incentives they receive from state and local communities throughout the Congressional inquiry, in practice, they actively seek out lucrative tax incentive packages. They acknowledged that they will continue to request and accept sales tax exemptions on chips and other equipment, the most valuable form of tax break for data centers. Despite accepting billions of dollars in financial subsidies from state governments, none of the seven companies surveyed were able or willing to offer comprehensive quantitative evidence on full-time job creation at their facilities.

This investigation made clear that the industry receives enormous handouts while making questionable claims about paying its fair share of electricity costs, using NDAs to keep communities in the dark, accepting billions in tax incentive packages from state and local communities, and failing to provide clear evidence of permanent jobs or economic development benefits where data centers are built.

“In sum, this investigation finds the data center industry is bulldozing local communities and using their economic resources to play states and local communities against one another, creating a race to the bottom in which state and local policymakers feel they have no choice but to accede to the data centers’ demands — and leaving ordinary citizens stuck with the bills,” concluded the senators.

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