WHY WAS ERIC SCHMITT BEING GROOMED FOR STARDOM IN THE FIRST PLACE?

Former special prosecutor Jack Smith was interrogated at a Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing yesterday. If you know what happened, you know this ended as a massive embarrassment for Republicans -- and for one in particular -- but if you don't, here's a brief summary:

Trump and his allies have argued for years that Smith weaponized his powers as a politically motivated cudgel, and on Tuesday, [Missouri senator Eric] Schmitt and his aides were going to prove it. They were well prepared for the showdown. They didn’t just have a smoking gun — they had a chart printed on poster board....

But as it turns out, the Schmitt team’s whole setup was based on a dumb mistake. They apparently thought they’d found proof Smith was in Atlanta the day after a pair of local prosecutors announced an affair, revealing some kind of anti-Trump collusion between them.

This local prosecutors Smith was accused of meeting were Fani Willis, the Fulton Country DA, and a hired prosecutor with whom she was having an affair, Nathan Wade. Willis had acknowledged the affair a day before Smith's alleged trip to Atlanta.

The proof was a series of text messages about a basketball game Smith attended on February 3, 2024, which they believed was an Atlanta Hawks game. But Smith had actually attended an Iowa Hawkeyes game in Maryland that night. The whole sequence — Schmitt’s accusation followed by the humiliating correction — plays out painfully over a little more than seven minutes.

This is worth watching unedited. Senator Schmitt bullies a bewildered Smith, declares that he's caught him in a perjury trap, and calls him a "dirtbag." Then the next questioner, Democrat Amy Klobuchar, correctly IDs the team Smith watched as the college women's team whose star was Caitlin Clark.

A phenomenal moment in the Senate.

Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., claims he has evidence Jack Smith went to a HAWKS game in Atlanta.

Smith denies it.

Schmitt declares he has busted Jack Smith for perjury.

Smith, vexed, says he went to HAWKEYES game in Maryland.

Watch the whole thing: pic.twitter.com/J07o5Uwfxi

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) September 29, 2026

And we know Smith attended that Iowa Hawkeyes game because he was seen on camera there.

This is priceless. Check out how local news is reporting on Sen Eric Schmidt’s clown-show grilling of Jack Smith. They found Jack Smith at the game… “Top corner, section 109, row 1. In fact, that seat doesn’t even exist in Atlanta.”

[image or embed]

— Christopher Webb (@cwebbonline.com) September 29, 2026 at 9:25 PM

Senator Schmitt faceplanted in what was supposed to be a career-making moment. We know that was the plan because shortly before the hearing got underway, we were fed this "scoop" by one of Axios's top reporters, Jim VandeHei:

Sen. Eric Schmitt is drawing buzz as a possible Vance VP in 2028

First-term Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) — who was a tough-on-crime state attorney general, and now is vice chair of the Joint Economic Committee — has grown close to Vice President Vance and is seen as a top prospect to become a potential 2028 running mate.

We hear the VP views Schmitt, 51, as trustworthy, intelligent, articulate and a deft political operator.

That's unlikely to happen now -- Schmitt didn't just get his facts spectacularly wrong, he got his facts wrong on the subject of sports, something millions of Americans care about and understand in detail. Normal Americans care about sports. Top reporters and pundits in the still male-dominated world of politcal journalism care about sports. This is an embarrassment Schmitt will take to his grave. It won't be forgotten.

But there's something wrong with our political culture when a mainstream news outlet can describe an extremist like Schmitt as a potential rising star who might join a presidential ticket. While Democrats are routinely warned that it's risky for their party to run candidates in statewide and national races who are merely progressive, Axios is touting Schmitt even though he's clearly a white nationalist.

Last year, Schmitt hired a white supremacist staffer who'd lost a job with Ron DeSantis for being too much of a Nazi:

... Missouri Senator Eric Schmitt hired former DeSantis speechwriter Nate Hochman as a policy adviser in February [2025].

... Hochman was unceremoniously fired by Governor DeSantis’ presidential campaign in July 2023 because he’d created and shared a “fancam” of the candidate that heavily featured the Black Sun or Sonnenrad. First designed to adorn the floor of Heinrich Himmler’s castle Wewelsburg, the symbol has been readily adopted by neoNazi groups in recent decades. And Hochman decided it should be in bright red, spinning in front of his boss’ face as the triumphant finale to a propaganda video.

Also:

... the never-Trump conservative outlet the Dispatch revealed details of a Twitter Spaces recording of a 2022 conversation between Hochman and the white supremacist Nick Fuentes.

In that exchange, Hochman complimented Fuentes, saying, “You’ve gotten a lot of kids based” and calling him “probably a better influence than Ben Shapiro on young men”.

Between the time DeSantis fired him and the time Schmitt hired him, Hochman wrote racist and sexist columns for right-wing and publications.

... Hochman cited Jonathan “L0m3z” Keeperman, who says women in the workplace are the cause of societal decline and proudly publishes antisemitic ravings, in order to second Keeperman’s argument that men have to retake the world from women....

... he called Juneteenth and Martin Luther King Jr. Day “part and parcel of the mythology of the New America, which vies to destroy and replace the myths, heroes, and traditions of the old republic,” ... and bemoaned the modern day lack of appreciation for the antebellum South and the good name of Robert E. Lee.

After Schmitt hired Hochman, the senator delivered a "blood and soil" speech at the National Conservatism Conference that may have been written, or at least influenced, by Hochman:

In the speech Schmitt criticized legal immigration, and said that America was not a "universal proposition" open to anyone. He said, "Our people tamed the continent, built a civilization from the wilderness ... We Americans are the sons and daughters of the Christian pilgrims who poured out onto the ocean's shores ... America belongs to us, and only us."

In the speech, Schmitt also

identified America with colonial violence, including “the pioneers striking out from Missouri for the wild and dangerous frontier, the outnumbered Kentucky settlers repelling wave after wave of Indian warband attacks from beyond the stockade walls”, [who] he said would be “astonished to hear that they were only fighting for a proposition” rather than “a homeland for themselves and their descendants”.

And:

As for those who would raise questions about America’s glorious past—including those Americans who joined protests after George Floyd’s murder in 2020—Schmitt said, “America does not belong to them. It belongs to us. It’s our home. It’s a heritage entrusted to us by our ancestors. It is a way of life that is ours, and only ours, and if we disappear, then America, too, will cease to exist.” Who is the “we” in that declaration? The descendants of the European Christians who claimed the West.

The fight at hand, Schmitt contended, “is about whether our children will still have a country to call their own....”

That last sentence sounds a lot like the neo-Nazi Fourteen Words.

We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.

But our political culture has normalized this. It has decided that a slighly milder version of this kind of talk doesn't disqualify J.D. Vance from being vice president or perhaps president. So if it doesn't disqualify Vance, why should it disqualify Schmitt? And why should Schmitt's belief that Donald Trump won the 2020 election -- something he's asserted since he was Missouri's attorney general -- disqualify him when nearly every Republican officeholder in America asserts the same thing without consequence?

In 2020, Schmitt was among 17 Republican attorneys general who joined Texas attorney general Ken Paxton in suing Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania to invalidate their electoral votes in the 2020 United States presidential election. The suit claimed the four states' presidential vote tallies were unconstitutional; no evidence supported these claims and the arguments had already been rejected in other state and federal courts.... On December 11, 2020, the Supreme Court rejected the suit in an unsigned opinion.

It appears that no one short of a self-declared Nazi is too far right to be perceived as a potential vice president or president. It appears that being an early adopter of Donald Trump's biggest Big Lie isn't disqualifying. That's how our politics works.

TRUMP IS FINALLY USING HIS POWERS FOR GOOD

Donald Trump's powers might have weakened in his second term, but he still has the ability to identify institutional weaknesses that he can exploit. He knows which institutions won't punish him for transgressions, or will let him off with a slap on the wrist.

He also knows that his defiance of these institutions will make news. So, for instance, he recently banished three major news organizations from the White House press pool. A court ruled that he couldn't do that, so he let the news organizations back in -- and then banished one of them, CNN, from Air Force One. He pushed these news outlets around, which made him feel powerful, and then, when he lost a legal challenge, he found a way to defy the court, which also made him feel powerful. And the whole thing was a multi-day news story. He felt powerful because he made that happen.

There's just one problem: the majority of Americans still hate him. All this might have pleased his base, but his base is shrinking rapidly.

And now he's delivering the same one-two punch in the form of taxpayer-funded ads for himself. The ads are illegal, though there's no institution that will hold him accountable for them. The ads are on the air and his defiance of the law is making news.

But the ads are terrible. I posted the "Love Me" ad last week.

So I was just watching Fox News and this commercial played during Jesse Watters show. It says “Paid for by the US Government.”
This is clearly a campaign ad. And the singers are just singing over and over again, “Love me” - over images of Trump. @CBSMiami @CBSNews pic.twitter.com/eCkEZpipWx

— Jim DeFede (@DeFede) September 24, 2026

That one, at least, has some copy focused on issues. If you think America's biggest problem right now is the specter of communism, and if you believe that Trump has revived manufacturing and given ordinary Americans a massive tax cut, this could be an effective ad -- if it weren't insistently asking us to love Trump.

But then there's ad #2, which might as well be called "I Don't Feel Your Pain."



The voiceover, from a Trump speech, is just patriotic pap. It offers no acknowledgment of the votetrs' discontent:

In all the chronicles of the ages, never before has any nation celebrated so magnificent a triumph as this one. We are the freest people on earth, and by the grace of God, the United States of America is the most successful, most accomplished, most exceptional nation ever to exist in human history. Liberty has prevailed here because of the culture and character of the people who declared it, defended it, and preserved it. We reach a milestone like no other and celebrate with joyful hearts and soaring spirits because after two and a half centuries, we know that this is not an ending. This is only the beginning of the golden age of America. God bless you all.

An ad #3 is just a recycled Trump 2024 campaign ad, featuring Trump making promises that supporters expected him to fulfill by now.



I said above that Trump's skill is to attack weak institutions. He's doing that here. The ads are on the air, paid for with your tax dollars, unlawfully. Voters are seeing the ads and learning about how he's brazenly skirting the law to create and broadcast them.

But that's great! I'm delighted that he's still so good at getting attention that even people who don't watch the TV programming where these ads have appeared and don't have social media algorithms that would put the ads in their feeds will learn about them anyway. I'm glad because it means that millions of people will see these bad, tone-deaf ads and learn that tax money was squandered on them, in defiance of the law.

In other words, the usual Trump double-tap -- do a brazen thing that's attention-grabbing, then get more attention as everyone discusses how Trump did the brazen thing -- is working to the Democrats' midterm advantage. Democrats should be thrilled that these bad ads are out there, and thrilled that stories about their illegality and cost are also out there. Without meaning to, Trump is finally using his attention-grabbing and criminal talents for the good of the country.

WHY AREN'T PUNDITS ENCOURAGING REPUBLICANS TO MOVE TO THE CENTER?

Democrats appear poised to win Senate seats in a number of states Donald Trump won in 2024 -- according to Real Clear Polling, they're leading by 2 points or more in Texas, Ohio, Michigan, Alaska, Georgia, and North Carolina. Trump won some of these states by double digits -- but in Maine, a state he lost, Susan Collins in trailing by less than a point. She might win. She might survive a blue wave.

By some measures, Collins is the most moderate Republican in the Senate. She's certainly moderate-coded -- being something other than a right-wing ideologue is her brand, even though her votes against the party line rarely have much impact.

When Democrats have a bad election cycle -- whatever the actual reason -- pundits and Democratic consultants rush to inform us that Democrats fell short because voters perceive them as out-of-touch ideological extremists. Centrists said this repeatedly after Kamala Harris lost the 2024 presidential election, in a year when inflation dragged down not only the Democrats but parties in power worldwide.

The notion that Democrats lose elections because they're radical and alienating was conventional wisdom for quite a while after 2024. Do you remember when Ezra Klein interviewed Ta-Nehisi Coates last September, shortly after the murder of Charlie Kirk, and Klein hijacked what should have been a discussion of Kirk by droning on and on about his particular obsession at the time, which is that Democrats are too ideological and weird to win in the heartland? Klein said:

I look at the last eight, 12 years, and what I see having happened is we, the coalition I am in, the things I believe in, lost ground.

... We’ve written a lot of people off, and in writing them off, we are losing....

... I think of the huge backlash to Bernie Sanders for going on Joe Rogan’s show because Rogan was transphobic. Such a big backlash that when I defended him — I became a Twitter trending topic. And to Elizabeth Warren for going on Bill Maher’s show — Bill Maher is Islamophobic. There were protests at Netflix when they brought on Dave Chappelle.

I think there was a politics of content moderation that took hold that was more about enforcing boundaries of what were and were not ideas we should be engaged with — rather than about engaging them, even if opportunistically.

... Do people feel like, even if they disagree with us on some things, they have a place with us? And my experience going around the country, talking to people — I’ve been on a lot of right-of-center podcasts lately — is that, rightly or wrongly, what they took, and something that really empowered Trump in the last election, was a sense that they didn’t.

They feel like we were against them, and if so, they were going to be against us. And I think that’s, in the end, doing politics badly.

I don't think this is completely off base. I think it's preposterous to imagine that Harris lost in 2024 primarily because of (frequently unsuccessful) efforts to cancel prominent people, but some voters do think Democrats are needlessly censorious.

But they believe this because it's a major topic of conversation in the right-wing media, especially in parts of the country where Fox News is mainstream news, the channel that's on TV in the diner, the bar, the waiting room at the auto repair shop or the hospital emergency room. It's also a major topic of conversation among Democratic pundits. So of course many people believe it's a big problem. They're constantly told that it's a big problem.

In 2026, why isn't anyone arguing that Republicans are telling millions of voters that don't "have a place with" the GOP? Republicans are alienating Muslims with Islamophobia and Hispanics with an out-of-control immigration crackdown. They're alienating non-tradwife women with talk about how it might be better if women didn't vote or work outside the home. They're alienating people who believe in vaccinatrion and cancer research.

I don't think this is the reason a blue wave is building -- I think it's high prices for gas, diesel, and groceries -- but our political culture was happy to reject the conventional wisdom about elections ("It's the economy, stupid") when Democrats lost in 2024. Why aren't they doing the same thing now with respect to Republicans?

In that conversation with Ta-Nehisi Coates, Ezra Klein said this:

I’ve been thinking about Obamacare. When Obamacare passes, there are Democratic senators in Arkansas, in Louisiana, in West Virginia, in Missouri, in Indiana, in North Carolina, in South Dakota, in North Dakota.

And I’ve been thinking that, for a lot of us — to twist a line about capitalism — it has become easier to imagine the end of the country than winning a Senate seat in Missouri or Arkansas. And I think that’s a problem.

In November, Democrats might win Senate seats in Kansas, South Carolina, Texas, Iowa, and Alaska. An independent who's been endorsed by Bernie Sanders might win in Nebraska. Portions of the red wall really might sustain damage this year.

Maybe pundits should be putting Republicans on the defensive the way they routinely put Democrats on the defensive, by asking whether the party simply alienates too many voters to be successful nationwide.

IF THE GOP SUFFERS BLOODBATHS IN 2026 AND 2028, REPUBLICANS WILL STILL LIKE THEMSELVES MORE THAN DEMOCRATS DID AFTER 2024

A poll from the right-leaning Trafalgar Group shows Lindsey Graham's sister, Darline Graham Nordone, clinging to a 1-point lead over her Democratic opponent, Dr. Annie Andrews, in the South Carolina Senate race. South Carolina is heavily Republican, so I assume Graham Nordone will win the race, but she appears to be struggling. She leads by only 2.6 in the Real Clear Polling average.

When Democrats struggle in an election, they respond with breast-beating and self-abnegation. They conclude that the country is undergoing a culture-wide "vibe shift" toward Republicans and away from themselves. They wallow in self-hate. They tell themselves that in order to survive as a party, they need to be less Democratic.

That's not how Republicans do things. If Graham Nordone ekes out a win -- or even if she loses -- in a state Trump won by 18 points in 2024, they'll say it's because their candidate wasn't Republican enough, as "Republican" is currently defined. Here's a post from Will Folks, founding editor of FITS News, an influential right-wing politics site based in South Carolina:

Conservative Republicans in South Carolina made it abundantly clear during the 2026 primary election cycle that they didn’t want the sister of fiscally liberal warmonger Lindsey Graham serving as the GOP nominee for U.S. Senate this fall.

Unfortunately, the Palmetto State’s Republican establishment – egged on by U.S. president Donald Trump – refused to listen, and proceeded to launch a multi-million dollar campaign in support of left-of-center “Republican” Darline Graham Nordone.

At the same time, Trump and his SCGOP allies spent millions attacking Nordone’s Freedom Caucus rival, U.S. congressman Ralph Norman – a move that further alienated the state’s growing conservative base.

Now, the consequences of this ongoing alienation are becoming painfully clear for the Palmetto State’s GOP ruling class... and for Trump.

Folks summarizes the Trafalgar poll numbers and writes:

As we noted earlier this week, many Norman supporters plan to write the congressman’s name on their 2026 ballots – a movement that is likely taking at least 1-2% out of the Republican’s right flank. Meanwhile, Nordone has been completely outflanked by Andrews the affordability front.

“This is a perfect storm,” [a] Republican operative unaffiliated with any of the campaigns told us. “A terrible GOP candidate, a divided Republican party, an unpopular president and economic headwinds that an otherwise unelectable Democrat candidate is deftly capitalizing on.”

See? Apart from doing a better job on affordability, the answer is to double down on Republicanism. A Freedom Caucus Republican, Folks insists, would have done much better in this race. The problem couldn't possibly be that the entire Republican Party has effectively rubber-stamped Trump's failed presidency, and has nothing to offer voters when the country seems to be badly off course.

Meanwhile, in Iowa, a Democratic sweep of the top two races (governor and senator) is possible. Steve Deace, a very influential Iowa Republican broadcaster and operative, posted a cry for help on X this past week:

Yesterday, Iowa House Republicans were informed by their own pollsters that if you are in a +15 district you’re within the margin for error, if you’re in a +10 district you’re underwater, and that this might end being an even worse midterm environment than 2006.

... if the environment is this bad in my home state, where Trump has been the most popular political figure over the last decade, I can’t imagine where it is everywhere else.

But as far as Deace is concerned, the Republican approach to governance is still absolutely correct, with one exception (and he's not even sure that's an exception):

Whatever we’re doing or not doing in Iran/Hormuz has become a 2020 Covid lockdown level of political albatross. This is approaching TARP bailout levels of unpopular in my home state. We are risking what’s left of the Trump presidency on this, because if Democrats take control the legislative branch the Trump domestic agenda we all voted for will largely cease between what a Democrat Congress will do and the courts have already been doing. Not to mention what it will cost individual states like my own, which we have worked so hard to make so red these last 20 years (with Trump’s help).

This whatever/kinda/sorta/but not really war has become an existential misuse of political capital. Many of us never thought it was worth it, and more and more it appears voters agree. We have to save our own country and our own way of life first before we can save anyone else. We have to save America before we can save the world. If a plane is endangered, you are told to put on your mask first otherwise you’re of no use to help save anyone else.

After 2024 -- a year when Democrats lost the popular vote in the presidential by a mere one and a half points -- prominent Democrats and left-centrist pundits began to talk as if the party had gotten everything wrong, and as if Republicans were right about many things (cozying up to angry young men, throwing trans people under the bus). Deace thinks Republicans are still the people who will save America -- and could be doing that right now if it weren't for this pesky war.

I desperately want us to win. I desperately want this presidency to fulfill all the great promise it had coming out of the 2024 election. But whatever this currently is, isn’t it.

And maybe the war isn't a problem -- maybe it just isn't being sold correctly! And maybe Republicans aren't demonizing Democrats enough!

We don’t have to just sit here and take the L. It doesn’t have to end this way. We can still win. There’s plenty of ammunition to hammer the Democrats with.

We need the president out on the stump asap. We need better and way more aggressive messaging. Stop running fake and gay ads about how often so-and-so shows up for votes, and instead mercilessly hammer Democrats on the wickedness they’re voting for. Articulate specifically what the mission/victory is in Iran/Hormuz, because out here in the cheap seats it feels like another Middle East War quagmire regular folks are paying for on both ends all over again.

Even if there's a blue tsunami this year, and another one in 2028, Republicans will still have more self-esteem than Democrats had after losing a fairly close race in 2024. They'll blame Trump's political instincts, and a limited number of his bad decisions. They'll never blame their entire approach to politics the way Democrats do.

I think Democrats will have a very good 2026. Will our political culture say there's been a "vibe shift"? I suspect not. Pundits will say the country is anti-Trump, not culturally Democratic. And prominent Democrats will probably agree.

Republicans still think most of the country is culturally Republican, and they'll believe that even after an electoral bloodbath -- maybe even after a second one in 2028. And that self-confidence is likely to be what they build on if Democrats regain control of D.C. and the pendulum swings, as it usually does.

TRUMP'S MEDIA BAN IS WORKING PERFECTLY -- FOR HIM

The Atlantic's Quinta Jurecic believes that President Trump's efforts to prevent Politico, CNN, and MS NOW reporters from covering him has been a failure and an embarrassment for him:

Last Friday, Trump announced on Truth Social that he would ban journalists from the three outlets from the White House “as a result of their constant ‘reporting’ FAKE NEWS!” The reporters promptly sued; in the meantime, the television networks responsible for White House pool coverage suspended that work. The counterproductive result was an odd several days during which Trump went without the traditional passel of reporters hanging on his every word.

Jurecic says the press-pool boycott revealed Trump's "impotence." The New Republic's Timothy Noah agrees:

It quickly became apparent that the news networks possessed all the leverage. This was demonstrated most hilariously on Monday when the White House website’s livestream of a Trump gaggle, in which Trump cut the ribbon on a new White House helipad, was inaudible.... Trump ... lost access to a huge distribution network on which he relies to spread his utterances, however inane, across the globe.

As does The New Republic's Greg Sargent. He quotes a Trump Truth Social post:

CNN and MSDNC, to show you how fake they are, today refused to cover one of the Biggest and Most Beautiful Events to take place in many years, the arrival at the White House of the Highly Respected President of China, Xi Jinping, and his beautiful wife, Madam Peng. The event was magnificent — Actually made for Television but, because they’re Fake News, and because they knew how good it would be, they didn’t want credit to be given to “TRUMP,” they refused to be there.

Sargent writes:

Though a judge has now temporarily blocked Trump’s ban, the immediate result of the pool suspension was that the participating networks didn’t film Xi’s arrival. So there was no widely aired coverage of Trump’s grand ceremonial reception of him—hence his fury.

In angrily pretending the news organizations boycotted the event to deny him attention during a successful moment, all Trump really demonstrated is that he badly needs their attention. Thus, their decision to join together in defense of excluded colleagues has located a real weak spot—and nailed it with a direct hit. That’s the true source of his furious outburst.

But if the battle with the three news organizations backfired on Trump, why is he trying to prolong it?

First there was this on Thursday, after Judge Timothy Kelly (a Trump appointee) ordered the ban lifted:

When the press arrived at the White House gates ... the reporters from the three disfavored outlets were still barred from entering.... the TV press pool refused to resume operations until [Friday] morning. The result was that Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s state visit to the White House yesterday took place without any American live television coverage. Trump also barred some—though, confusingly, not all—CNN and MS NOW journalists from covering the state dinner, which does not directly violate Kelly’s order but could land the White House back in the courtroom.

And now there's this:

The White House on Friday night blocked CNN from accompanying President Trump on a Saturday trip to Tennessee, a network spokeswoman confirmed....

The decision immediately raised the question of whether the television pool would cover the president’s trip. The TV pool, a rotating group of networks that share the work of filming the president’s daily activities, had boycotted those responsibilities this week after Mr. Trump first banned CNN from participating in the pool.

If, as Sargent says, news organizations are hurting Trump where he's most vulnerable -- his desperate need for attention -- then why is he continuing to put the media's pool coverage at risk?

The answer is obvious: Trump might not be getting his ordinary coverage from the press pool, but his fight with the media is getting massive amounts of media attention. The world's neediest attention seeker is getting the attention he seeks.

The main battle Trump is fighting right now -- the war with Iran -- isn't going very well, so Trump is picking a different battle, with the media, an enemy he knows his (shrinking) base hates. The base loves this, and loves Trump for picking this fight.

However, I don't see how this helps Trump's party as midterm voting begins. The GOP's numbers just get worse and worse, as do Trump's numbers. But he doesn't care. He's just seeking love from the voters who haven't abandoned him.

*****

Trump seems to be doing that a lot these days. The Washington Post notes today that instead of campaigning for an embattled Republican or two this weekend, Trump is focusing on sports:

President Donald Trump has vowed to go all-out campaigning for Republicans ahead of November’s midterm elections, which he has said could decide the fate of the country.

But first: it’s time for golf and college football.

Trump is set to travel to Tennessee on Saturday to watch a high-profile clash between the University of Texas and University of Tennessee’s college football teams....

The president will then head to a golf club outside Chicago for Sunday’s final round of the President’s Cup tournament, where he will serve as honorary chairman.

He's not campaigning.

His trips to Tennessee and Illinois are not expected to swing local races. Neither state is expected to be key to determining the outcome of November’s midterms. Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan election prognosticator, does not identify a single House seat in either state as a toss-up or otherwise in play.

And when he's scheduled to resume campaigning, he's traveling to friendly territory, not to battlegrounds:

Next week, the president is set to resume campaigning, but in Oklahoma and Alabama, two deeply red states.

Oh, but this is totally about the midterms.

Republican officials say they hope those appearances will spill over into media markets in neighboring states, Texas and Florida.

So why not just go to Texas and Florida?

Trump is laser-focused on self-soothing. You can see that from his travel schedule. And fighting with the media is part of that, even when he loses in court.

IS THIS AN ANTI-REPUBLICAN WAVE OR AN ANTI-STATUS-QUO WAVE?

Yesterday, Nate Silver wrote this:

A New York Times/Portland Press Herald/Siena poll out this morning had some disappointing news for Democrats, with Susan Collins leading Troy Jackson by 3 points in Maine.

Other NYT polls had Democrats ahead by 5 points in Michigan and New Hampshire. Still, this poll feels like a “heat check” for Democrats....

Polls have shown Democrats massively overperforming in red states, especially in the Midwest....

By contrast, though, Democrats’ polling has been pretty “mid” in blue states.

Sure, maybe Collins, as one of the few truly moderate members left in Congress, is an exception to the throw-the-bums out mood. The other NYT polls were perfectly fine for Democrats....

In some ways, it’s more surprising to see Chris Pappas only ahead by 5 points in New Hampshire — or Peggy Flanagan in a close-ish race in Minnesota, or Kathy Hochul struggling to achieve a double-digit lead in New York. (Though other polls disagree there.)

So if you take the polls at face value, we’re seeing a blue wave that’s … overwhelmingly concentrated in red states.

The Times poll of Maine is, as the paper's Nate Cohn admits, an outlier -- both the University of New Hampshire and the University of Massachusetts have just released polls showing Jackson beating Collins. But the Democratic leads are modest -- 4 points in the UNH poll, 5 points in the UMass poll.

Democrats are beating past performance in red states by double digits. Why not in blue states?

I think two things are happening this year: many voters are eager to punish President Trump, and many voters are eager to vote against the status quo. In red states -- Ohio, Iowa, Texas -- those motives combine to help Democrats. If you're an anti-Trump and anti-GOP partisan, you're especially motivated to vote Democratic this year -- and if you're not a partisan but you think this country is going to hell in a handbasket, you want to blow the system up. The system where you live is Republican, and has been for years. So you want to vote Democratic, too.

But in blue America, "blow up the system" voters see Democrats as the system. I think that's what's keeping some Democrats in Maine, New Hampshire, Michigan, Minnesota, and New York from achieving strong showings in the polls.

I'm being somewhat flexible in my definition of "blue America." New Hampshire isn't really blue -- it has a Republican governor and a Republican House and Senate. But the state's entire congressional delegation is Democratic (the Senate seat is currently held by retiring Democrat Maggie Hassan), and it's a very small state surrounded by other strongly Democratic states. Nearly one in six New Hampshire workers work out of state, and most of those commuters work in very blue Massachusetts. New England is regionally blue. So voting Democratic doesn't seem like a way to blow up the system.

In Maine, Susan Collins has always managed to persuade a large portion of the electorate that she's different from the rest of the system. Those voters don't want to blow her up. And in New Hampshire, the Republican Senate candidate is a member of the widely admired Sununu family. So my template doesn't fit every blue or blue-ish state perfectly. But in general, I think it explains why Democrats aren't running away with many Northern-state elections.

A Democratic wave election seems extremely likely this year even though much of America is wary of the Democratic Party. That's because voters are very angry at Trump and very angry at the system. Democrats haven't improved their image much. They haven't established a strong identity that's being embraced by the voters. It's going to work out this year, but in the long term they'll need to be seen as a party that stands for popular, compelling ideas, and they'll need to show results. They're overperforming this year because they're out of power nationally and locally in many places, at a time when millions of people hate the majority of people in power.

MIGHT AS WELL FACE IT, TRUMP'S ADDICTED TO LOVE

Okay, this is weird:

So I was just watching Fox News and this commercial played during Jesse Watters show. It says “Paid for by the US Government.”
This is clearly a campaign ad. And the singers are just singing over and over again, “Love me” - over images of Trump. @CBSMiami @CBSNews pic.twitter.com/eCkEZpipWx

— Jim DeFede (@DeFede) September 24, 2026

The tweet comes from Jim DeFede, a CBS reporter in Miami. I agree with Trump that the midterms are a referendum on him, and I agree with DeFede that this looks like a campaign ad -- but if that's what it is, it's the neediest campaign ad ever. "Love me"? Over and over? Seriously? It's fine as a pop song ("Love Me" by JMSN, pronounced "Jameson"; the song was released in 2023). But as a message from a candidate, or pseudo-candidate? Donny, you seem desperate.

This is also weird:

Trump posted this photo on Truth Social this morning. Look close! #TravelWithNatalie

[image or embed]

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) September 24, 2026 at 7:58 AM

Rupar is pointing out the fact that this photo has obvious AI or Photoshop tweaks, most notably the fact that Trump isn't wincing, as he is in the original AP photo (click to enlarge).

But I'm struggling to understand what the point of the post is. "Only Trump"? "Only Trump" what? Only Trump could meet with Xi Jinping while serving as president? Only Trump could order a military flyover as president? Only Trump could have a young blond aide as president?

Natalie Harp is called "the Human Printer" because she prints out stories that are flattering to Trump and presents them to him -- but this isn't a new thing. During his 2016 campaign and his first term, aides supplied him with positivity this way. In May 2017, Politico's Shane Goldmacher reported:

White House and former campaign aides have tried to make sure Trump’s media diet includes regular doses of praise and positive stories to keep his mood up — a tactic honed by staff during the campaign to keep him from tweeting angrily.

The link in this passage goes to an earlier Politico story by Tara Palmeri:

The key to keeping Trump’s Twitter habit under control, according to six former campaign officials, is to ensure that his personal media consumption includes a steady stream of praise. And when no such praise was to be found, staff would turn to friendly outlets to drum some up — and make sure it made its way to Trump’s desk.

But the two items I've posted above aren't just pro-Trump news stories or MAGA opinion pieces. They're delivery systems for pure, uncut Trump worship. They're intended to feed praise and love to Trump in the most addicting form.

I don't know if what we're getting in the Natalie Harp era is driven by Trump's desperation for positive regard as he fails at more and more aspects of his job while aging in a way he can't ignore, or whether Harp is consciously choosing to direct praise and love to Trump in the purest possible form. I suspect that it's the former, and that Harp is just giving Trump what he's jonesing for, in stronger and stronger dosages. But it's not healthy -- though if he's become like a junkie, someone who devotes most of his waking hours to obtaining the drug he needs (which would explain the renovation obsession), this might be keeping him from doing even more damage to America than he's doing now.