Chump's DESPERATION TOUR continues as the final days for voting in the midterms gets closer. Six days. November 3rd is the final day to vote. Trevor Hunnicutt (REUTERS) reports:
US President Donald Trump campaigned on Monday in deeply Republican Mississippi, predicting victory for a Republican Senate candidate based on what he deemed to be a booming US economy, while also repeating his claim that oil prices would soon plummet.
Trump, a Republican, has been on a campaign blitz through normally safe Republican states ahead of the November 3 vote, with party strategists telling Reuters they are on edge about races from Alaska to South Carolina, in part because of voter discontent over how Trump's tariffs and the Iran war have fueled inflation.
Riding lower than low int he polls and he's going around speaking to sparse crowds and praying that they'll believe his lie about the "booming US economy." It's not booming. He's destroyed it. The war on immigration has impacted every business but especially the construction industry. The tariffs are a tax on the American people. The war on Iran has led to huge inflation. But he stands up before the last fools who'll still believe him and insults them by speaking of the "booming US economy."
THE DESPERATION TOUR gets sadder and sadder as Chump's dementia worsens.
Small numbers and Chump's embarrassing remarks with no one to tell him how sad he comes off.
President Donald Trump is hopping from rally to rally in the election’s closing stretch, and he has a simple explanation for what he says he is seeing: wherever he shows up, Republicans start winning. “Every single place I go, people that are down are now winning,” he told reporters Oct. 23 before heading to a rally in Fort Myers, Florida.
The confidence sits awkwardly beside the data. Three new surveys last week put Trump’s approval at a record low, and the broader polling picture has grown darker for Republicans, who are now fighting to protect congressional majorities that once looked reasonably secure. That collision — a president selling himself as an asset while his numbers sink — has made the final stretch a running argument inside the GOP about whether he helps more than he hurts.
He has created a "tough environment" for GOP candidates as Dan Merica (WASHINGTON POST) notes:
Republicans in Mississippi, especially those running for Senate, aren’t supposed to face serious challenges. The Democrats’ last Senate win in Mississippi was in 1982 — before your newsletter writer was born.
But the poor national environment for Republicans, fueled by President Donald Trump’s unpopularity and the GOP-controlled Congress going along with Trump’s tariffs and war in Iran (both of which have led to higher prices), have pushed incumbent Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith into an unexpectedly tough race against Democrat Scott Colom, forcing the Republican to do something odd: Campaign.
It hasn’t gone great.
Hyde-Smith has raised a little over $6 million in her reelection bid, not insignificant, but far less than other Republican incumbents in tough races. Trump traveled to Mississippi on Monday night to stump for Hyde-Smith, and her brief speech made it clear she was relying on a president who won the state less than two years ago by 23 percentage points for help.
“Is this not the best president in our lifetime?” she exclaimed, before exiting stage left.
Hyde-Smith hasn’t exactly been using the media to her advantage, from calling security on a reporter in the Capitol to saying again in a recent interview that consumers can turn to proteins other than beef amid high prices, doubling down on a comment her opponent happily turned into a viral attack ad.
“Thank goodness when mothers want to feed their families when you go out shopping, there are proteins, you want to feed meat, there are some cheaper prices,” she said.
Hyde-Smith certainly may still win. She is the favorite. It is Mississippi, after all.
But her campaign reflects a broader trend in this year’s midterms: Republicans who haven’t had to campaign in years are being forced to do so by the national environment — and, in some cases, surprisingly strong Democratic opponents. And conditions like this can lead to a few surprises.
You have to wonder how many GOP incumbents are kicking themselves now for not drawing a line between themselves and Chump over the last two years. Instead, they all largely competed with one another to see who could hump his leg and now that he's fallen so low in the polls, they're having to campaign like they did when they were first running for the Senate. Chump has not helped them one bit. Their allegiance to him has not helped them. Daniel Wolfram (DAGENS) notes:
With just about a week to go before the midterm elections, one would think that all the Republican candidates who are in tight battles against their Democratic counterparts would seek Trump’s help and endorsement.
But after inflation, tariffs, culture wars, and the war against Iran, Republicans are breaking ranks with Trump and his administration.
Some candidates are even refusing to campaign with him.
There is a great example of that down in Texas, where the incumbent governor, Greg Abbott, is facing stiff competition from his Democratic opponent, Gina Hinojosa.
When Trump was in Texas earlier this month, Abbott was asked why he did not choose to campaign with the president. Abbott excused himself by citing already planned events that day.
[. . .]
“These candidates know how to read a poll,” said a GOP strategist to Politico when asked why many Republicans are now jumping ship, adding: “They know he is kryptonite.”
Kryptonite? Kathianne Boniello (MEDIAITE) reports:
A new poll shows almost half of likely midterm voters are casting their ballots next week with President Donald Trump at the top of their minds — and a majority are fired up about the looming election.
A Marist/NPR/PBS poll of 1,289 registered voters found 44% of those asked “say their vote for Congress is mainly a vote against President Trump,” while 21% are going to the ballot box with a favorable view of the commander in chief and 35% said Trump is “not influencing their vote very much.”
The poll, released Tuesday morning, had a 3.7% margin of error.
The economy continues to plague Americans. Juliana Kaplan (BUSINESS INSIDER) notes, "Republicans are feeling the high-cost crunch. The latest consumer sentiment reading out of the University of Michigan finds that, across the board, Americans are still feeling bad. While self-identified Republicans still feel better than their Democratic and Independent counterparts, they're increasingly feeling the pinch of rising prices." Yes, it is getting harder and harder even for GOP voters to continue lying to themselves about the economy. Alexander Marrow and Anuja Bharat Mistry (REUTERS) add, "The world's top consumer goods and food companies, from Coca-Cola and Procter & Gamble to Nestle and Reckitt, have warned of further price hikes next year to cover rising costs even as shoppers remain reluctant to splurge on groceries. Higher energy, raw material and freight costs as a result of the US war on Iran mean that the companies making everything from laundry detergent to soda and snacks face a balancing act to protect profit margins." So, yes, prices have gone up and appear to be still on the way up. And Americans are already feeling the pinch -- both in terms of costs and in terms of quantity. J.R. Duren (INDEPENDENT) explains, "Empty stomachs are becoming more common as grocery prices soar, a new study has found. Half of Americans reported skipping meals now because of rising food prices, according to a survey, conducted in August, by financial firm Self Financial."
A group that Chump's struggling to connect with? Farmers. Mallory Wilson (THE HILL) reports:
Farmers are a key voting group for Republicans, but their votes could be on the line, with the Iran war and President Trump’s tariff and trade wars driving up production costs along with diesel and fertilizer prices.
The Trump administration has been rolling out financial assistance packages and projects for farmers in hopes of shoring up the electorate in next week’s midterm elections. Yet they may be right to be anxious about the voting bloc’s turnout.
“Yes, I think they’re nervous. Yes, I think they should be, and yes, I think that farmers are pretty ticked off,” said Amy Frederiksen, a former Minnesota Republican Senate majority leader.
Farmers are hurting. So are ranchers. Which brings up Chump's hair brained notion to help Americans at the grocery store: Import beef. What happened there? Sasha Rogelberg (FORTUNE) explains:
At the nexus of an ongoing affordability crisis and midterm election push, the Trump administration’s effort to reduce beef prices appears to be falling short.
President Donald Trump signed a proclamation in August to temporarily increase the quantity of beef in the U.S. by importing 300,000 metric tons of lean beef trimmings into the country at a reduced tariff rate. The imports were scheduled over 90 days, from September through November.
“This deal will reduce prices for Americans while giving space for our Great American Beef Herd to grow again,” Trump wrote on Truth Social announcing the policy.
But as of Oct. 19, the U.S. has imported just 59,423 metric tons of beef, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data, or just 20% of the target. And ground beef averaged $6.79 per pound as of September, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, down from $6.92 in August, but still above $6.32 a year ago.
This 7% year-over-year increase in beef, due to persistently high demand as well as dwindling herd sizes, has far outpaced the 2.5%-2.9% hike in overall U.S. grocery prices, which has become representative of America’s affordability woes. Trump has identified beef prices as a key issue to address during the second half of his term, as he targets policy toward the typically loyal Republican base of farmers.
[. . .]
Part of why Americans aren’t seeing a noticeable difference in beef costs is because the type of beef being sent from overseas doesn’t typically hit retail shelves, Peel noted. Lean beef trimmings are often combined with fatty trimmings produced from cattle in American feed lots. This combination of beef is usually used by fast food restaurants, not grocery stores where many American consumers are looking for relief.
Turning to the Secretary of Defense Priss Pot Hegseth, Ron Dicker (HUFFINGTON POST) notes talk of a novel way for Priss Pot to respond to a potential impeachment:
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is “angling” for Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) to appoint him to her Senate seat so he can avoid potential impeachment, Puck reported on Sunday.
Blackburn is likely to win her race for Tennessee governor, opening up the post for the rest of her term ending in January 2031.
Hegseth and his family set up residence in Tennessee in 2022. Rep. Tim Burchett is also interested in the Senate seat, according to Puck.
The House is expected to vote on an impeachment resolution filed by Republican Rep. Thomas Massie (Ky.) against Hegseth after the elections ― and it is expected to be close. Democrats have been “aligning to call for the defense secretary’s ouster or resignation,” Semafor reported earlier this month.
The progressive advocacy group MoveOn told HuffPost there might more momentum toward impeaching the secretary than President Donald Trump.
“There’s a lot of ways to hold folks accountable. I think impeachment is one of them, and I think just from the perspective of our members at MoveOn, our members don’t want to take any of those options off the table,” spokesperson Joel Payne told HuffPost.
Specifically, Journalist Leigh Ann Caldwell [PUCK] wrote Hegseth is prodding Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) to appoint him to her seat, if she wins the Tennessee gubernatorial race and vacates it. And that appears likely, with Blackburn enjoying a huge lead in the polls.
“Hegseth lived in Tennessee for three years before he took over the Pentagon, but his short tenure there might not count as real Tennessee roots,” Caldwell wrote.
Ellen Mitchell (THE HILL) notes US House Rep Thomas Massie is not backing down on his call to impeach Hegseth:
Republican Rep. Thomas Massie (Ky.), on Monday indicated he would reintroduce articles of impeachment against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth should he remain at the Pentagon after Congress returns to Washington, D.C., following the November midterm elections.
Massie, who kicked off the impeachment process against Hegseth in September over the war in Iran, wrote on social media that a reporter asked him about his plans for that effort.
“Will you reintroduce articles of impeachment against SecDef Hegseth when Congress returns to DC?” Massie wrote the unnamed reporter as asking.
“If he’s still SecDef,” Massie wrote as his reply, using an abbreviation for secretary of Defense.
Congress plans to vote on Hegseth’s impeachment -- their only mechanism to remove the Pentagon chief -- upon their return to Capitol Hill next month.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said Democrats will run Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth “out of town” if they take the majority in the November midterms.
Jeffries told MS NOW that Democrats will take action to knock Hegseth off his perch atop the Pentagon if President Trump doesn’t push him out himself. Democrats have zeroed in on Hegseth as criticism of high gas prices amid the Iran war have become a key talking point on the campaign trail.
“Pete Hegseth needs to be pushed aside by the president, or we’re going to have to deal with that situation if he is not,” Jeffries told MS NOW.
Priss Pot can't stay out of the news. He's forever preening in ways that you don't remember, for example, Leon Panetta, Lloyd Austin or Chuck Hagel doing. Tom Boggioni (RAW STORY) notes:
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s obsession with what he considers manly traits puts him in a distinct minority, according to a new poll.
The survey, conducted by YouGov for The Bulwark and the podcast “Pablo Torre Finds Out,” found that Americans give the former Fox News weekend host poor marks as a model for men. Of the nine men in the poll, only President Donald Trump fared worse.
The Bulwark noted that Hegseth “obviously sees himself as a paragon of masculinity,” pointing to his push to rebrand the Pentagon as the Department of War, his order requiring service members to be screened for low testosterone, his frequent workout videos with troops, his mockery of overweight people as “fatties” and his well-documented skepticism of women in leadership.
“With the amount of effort the secretary puts into demonstrating his manhood, you’d think he’d be seen as a kind of model for young men who are struggling academically, socially, professionally, and emotionally in today’s world,” the Bulwark's Brendan Hartnett wrote. “But a new national survey … shows it’s exactly the opposite.”
Only 28% of American adults said Hegseth is a strong role model for American men, while 39% said he is not. Among 18- to 29-year-olds, just 18% saw him that way, compared with 34% who didn’t.
Hartnett wrote that the findings expose the limits of Hegseth’s “alpha male preening.”
When not preening, he surrounds himself with fellow crazies.
A little-known Pentagon aide who has helped shape some of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s most inflammatory speeches has a years-long trail of racist, homophobic and conspiratorial posts online, according to a CNN investigation.
Ryan Higgins, Hegseth’s senior adviser for religious issues, has become central to the Pentagon chief’s turn toward Christian nationalist rhetoric, multiple sources told CNN. Those sources credited him with some of Hegseth’s most incendiary lines, including a February speech to the National Religious Broadcasters in which Hegseth attacked the “Godless left.” Three sources said Higgins has also played a primary role in the effort to launch the Pentagon’s new Office of Religious Affairs.
CNN combed through hundreds of Higgins’ social media posts, livestreams and archived blog entries spanning roughly a decade.
In February, he defended a Truth Social video Trump shared depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes, calling it “funny,” if perhaps in poor taste for the office, and noting Trump had made Biden a monkey too. In January, responding to tabloid coverage of crimes allegedly committed by immigrants in Europe, he wrote of violent illegal immigrants and even many asylum seekers: “They act like barbarians, killing and raping our white women.”
He has written that “Islam teaches death to all who do not comply.” Thousands of active-duty U.S. troops practice that faith. He has called same-sex marriage “abominable.” He also speculated about how many abortions Kamala Harris might have had, citing what he called her “long record of sleeping around.”
His posts have continued since he joined the Pentagon. He has railed against “the satanic cult of LGBTQ,” mocked a same-sex couple’s adoption as “two dudes buying babies” and compared abortion to the Holocaust.
Big news this week, Daniel Bates (THE i PAPER) reports:
On Monday, with just days to go before crucial elections that could lose Donald Trump’s party control of Congress, Democrats dropped a bombshell.
It was a 53-page report describing in exhaustive detail Trump’s links to the late paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Titled: “The case against Donald Trump in the Epstein files”, the dossier was released by Democrats with just over a week until the US midterm elections.
But the document also represents something else that should cause grave worry to the President: a warning shot that the Epstein story is about to get a lot worse for him.
If Democrats retake the US House of Representatives as is expected, they have made clear that they intend to keep pressing Trump on his links to Epstein.
They want to know about what the report calls the Department of Justice’s (DoJ) “desperate attempt to cover it up” by failing to release files about the two men.
Control of the House will give Democrats the majority on powerful committees like the Oversight Committee, giving them subpoena power.
And the report comes with a call for action. Erin Mansfield (USA TODAY) notes:
Democrats are calling for an independent investigation into the ties between President Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, who were known friends in the 1990s in South Florida before having a falling out.
The lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee made the recommendation in a 53-page report that ties together previously public documents of Trump and Epstein's relationship and includes a new allegation that Trump raped a beauty pageant contestant in 1993.
Led by Rep. Jamie Raskin, of Maryland, the Democrats said the Department of Justice should appoint a special counsel because the DOJ and the FBI have been covering for the president and are too conflicted to investigate Trump or Epstein associates.
This being a big and important topic, you might assume the media jumped onto it. You would be wrong. Jacob Weindling (JEZEBEL) observes:
House Judiciary Committee Democrats released a new report yesterday, detailing disturbing new allegations against Donald Trump and his alleged involvement in Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking operation. As Nathalie Baptiste detailed for Splinter upon its release, “The explosive report contains interviews with five women who said Trump assaulted them while Epstein was present, including Beatrice Keul, a beauty pageant winner who previously said she refused his sexual advances in 1993, and who now says she was raped. As is always important to point out at times like these, shame and fear often keep survivors from immediately reporting their assaults.”
This kind of informative and straightforward description of a thing that happened is not something you will find in mainstream media summaries of it, if you can find any summary at all. I searched for “Epstein” on NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Associated Press, Reuters, and The New York Times’s websites, and found two outlets covering it.
Only two. We covered it yesterday. We're covering it again today. Joe Sommerlad (INDEPENDENT) notes of Beatrice Keul:
Keul told Judiciary Committee staff who interviewed her for the new report that she was 24 when she flew in from Zurich to attend the American Dream Pageant in Manhattan and met Trump at a lunch associated with the contest.
Over the course of a 15-minute conversation, the then-real estate tycoon promised to arrange a visa for her and to help her get into New York University, Keul told the committee.
When Trump stepped away, she said she was then approached by Epstein, who said: “I’m Jeffrey, Don’s best friend.”
She claims Epstein invited her to a party at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s residence in Palm Beach, Florida, and assured her: “You know I can take care of you. We organize many parties with Don… Flights, accommodations, you don’t have to worry about anything.”
The report states that Keul was then approached by a Trump representative later that day and invited up to the future president’s suite, explaining that she saw the chance of a further meeting with the influential businessman as “a lucky break for the purpose of furthering her career and education.”
“Upon entering, Trump reportedly grabbed Keul from behind and forcibly raped her; in the process, tearing her dress and causing bleeding and bruising on multiple parts of her body,” the report recounts of her allegations.
Keul described the alleged rape as “brutal,” according to House Democrats, who said she remembered Trump sitting on the bed afterwards, repeating his promise to help with her visa and enrollment in higher education and reminding her: “The show must go on.”
and
Issued just nine days before the midterm elections, the report details inconsistent – and in some cases, inaccurate – public statements the president has made about his relationship with Epstein, including a claim that he never flew on Epstein’s plane, when flight logs show he did. The two men were friends from the late 1980s until the early 2000s." Casey Loving (THE WRAP) quotes US House Rep Jamie Raskin, the Ranking Member on the House Judiciary Committee, "You've got to read the report. The detail is extraordinary. But we’re not even trying to make the case here. We're not prosecutors, but we're saying the Department of Justice has completely abdicated their responsibility, and why? We cannot understand any reason other than they're trying to protect Donald Trump, so we're demanding an independent special counsel to take this over from the Department of Justice with the hopes that the truth will come out and justice will be done for hundreds and hundreds of victims." And Bennito L. Kelty (RAW STORY) reports:
Julie K Brown has been covering the Epstein crime story for decades now and she notes, "What’s different now is that there seem to be patterns and similarities in their stories even though many of the women didn’t know each other. The Committee’s Democrats say 11 of them were young women who were raped and assaulted by Trump 'alongside, and in coordination with, with' Epstein; two of them were teenagers -- Katie Johnson and Jane Doe whose horrific allegations were dismissed by the FBI." Towhid Rafid (ATTACK OF THE FANBOY) covers the Dems House Judiciary report here. Bridget Luckey covers the story for LAW COMMENTARY here. Angelique Brenes covers the story for PEOPLE here. Aayush Sharma covers it for PARADE here. Justin Harp covers it for US here. And Allison Beck covers it for MIAMI NEW TIMES here.
Video coverage since yesterday's snapshot includes:
Let's wind down with this from Senator Elizabeth Warren's office:
“With the new policy in place, it is a virtual certainty that watered-down inspections will miss key deficiencies that put residents at risk.”
Washington, D.C. — U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) along with Senators Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Ranking Member of the Special Committee on Aging, and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) sent a letter to Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Mehmet Oz, raising serious concerns regarding the agency’s newly implemented Risk-Based Survey (RBS) program. The administration’s policy puts an estimated 114,300 nursing home residents in nearly 1,700 facilities at risk by limiting the number and scope of required federal and state inspections. CMS recently released the full list of the nursing homes that will be subjected to shorter, less rigorous reviews and inspections.
Nursing home residents depend on comprehensive, thorough, and unannounced surveys to detect, correct, and prevent abuse, neglect, and substandard care. By allowing these minimal inspections, the new CMS approach weakens oversight and puts nursing home residents at greater risk of mistreatment, injury and abuse,” wrote the senators.
Warren’s letter highlighted a new analysis by Consumer Voice, which showed that the criteria CMS uses to identify lower-risk facilities eligible for reduced scrutiny do not reliably reflect high-quality care. For example, Consumer Voice found that dozens of homes on the reduced survey list have had a resident abuse tag or icon on the CMS Care Compare website since September 2025 and that about half of the newly RBS-eligible nursing homes would not have been eligible a year ago — indicating that, at best, they have a very limited record of providing high-quality services.
“CMS has adopted the RBS against a broader backdrop of rolled-back nursing home standards, including the elimination of new minimum staffing standards and delays to nursing home financial transparency requirements. These actions already place nursing home residents at risk — and the new policy of limited surveys will only make matters worse,” continued the senators.
Senator Warren requested that CMS release information on whether the RBS adequately protects nursing home residents and follows federal statutory requirements by November 9, 2026.
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More troubles for Chump7 hours ago
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Chump's continued decline7 hours ago
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