Trump Speaks. Democratic Oppo Researchers Say "Thank You, God!"

 Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.  In 2024, the book explains, the Democrats' problems involved reality, not just messaging.  Two years later, Republicans own the reality problems, including the Iran quagmire and the resulting economic pain. Tariffs make things even worse. Indeed, it is hard to think of any president who has indulged in such needless midterm self-sabotage.

It goes beyond policy.  He pushed weak Republican candidates for nomination in Texas, South Carolina, Georgia, and elsewhere.

And his rhetoric has become an ammo dump for Democratic opposition researchers.

TRUMP on HIGH GAS PRICES: We’re making money like we’ve never made before. They’ll say: President Trump is bragging about all the money they're making while people are suffering at the pump. I don’t give a damn. We’re making a freaking fortune. https://t.co/KZ2pYsTPyR

— Acyn (@Acyn) October 25, 2026

Trump: "Why do we always have to take people from shit house countries? We can't we take people from Norway and Sweden and Denmark? By the way, Denmark gave us Greenland ... what do you take, Venezuela or Greenland? We got them both!" https://t.co/M1WvEMP5Yy

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 24, 2026

Trump: "Somalia -- 98% of the people here now from Somalia don't work. They don't have to work because they steal so much. They all have a Mercedes Benz. Low IQ and they live better than you do." https://t.co/J6dMA1JHfZ

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 24, 2026

Republlicans and Muslims

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments. For more than a decade now, Trump has appealed to bigotry against Muslims.

Aaron Blake at CNN:

On Tuesday, Republican primary voters in Michigan gave a double-digit victory to a congressional candidate who had dropped out of the race, choosing him over Amir Hassan, a President Donald Trump-backed former Muslim with an identifiably Arabic name.

On Wednesday, some people attending a Trump speech in Las Vegas booed the mention of another Arabic-sounding name before GOP Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo urged them to stop. Austin Abdelnabi was a police officer recently killed in the line of duty, and his brother once worked at the White House.

Either of these episodes could be dismissed as coincidences — as one-offs that say little about much of anything.

But it would seem little coincidence that they happened as Republicans this week launched an overtly Islamophobic campaign against the new Democratic Senate nominee in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed.

But some good news from Ben Kasimar at NBC:

Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee has lost his Republican primary, NBC News projects, falling to a former state official in a primary season that has seen an unusually high number of incumbents lose renomination.

Charlie Hatcher, the former state agricultural commissioner, rode support from prominent establishment Republicans to a victory over Ogles, a controversial congressman backed by President Donald Trump. He is a heavy favorite in the general election in the deep-red district.

Ogles was outraised and outspent on the airwaves, largely because of a massive ad effort from a pro-clean energy group — a last-minute campaign Ogles criticized in an interview with Fox News.

While Ogles had arguably the most important endorsement in a GOP primary in Trump’s, Hatcher had backing from Gov. Bill Lee, former Gov. Bill Haslam and other prominent Republicans, like former Trump Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue.

Ogles has faced various controversies over the years. He said this year that Muslims don’t belong in American society, deleted a homophobic social media post after having blamed a staffer and argued last year that the federal government should revoke future New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s citizenship and deport him.

Trump Attacks the Pope and Compares HImself to Jesus (not kidding)

 Our books have discussed Trump's low character, which was on display this weekend.

Trump attacks the Pope in a Truth Social rant, calling him “weak” and attacking his views on foreign policy, Iran, and even his legitimacy as pontiff—claiming he wouldn’t be Pope if Trump weren’t president. pic.twitter.com/hsBOFeq7pi

— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) April 13, 2026

The president posted this not long after attacking the Pope: pic.twitter.com/RlRhO63ZCo

— Adam Wren (@adamwren) April 13, 2026

Breaking News: Pope Leo XIV said he had “no fear of the Trump administration” after President Trump lashed out at him on social media. https://t.co/kMG1tDPHND

— The New York Times (@nytimes) April 13, 2026

Trump v. Catholics

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments -- now including a war in the Middle East.

Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling at TNR:

 Relations between the U.S. and the Catholic Church have not been the same since January, when senior U.S. defense officials shared an abrasive message with a Vatican official.

Days after Pope Leo XIV delivered his State of the World speech, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby summoned Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the Vatican’s U.S. representative, to a closed-door Pentagon meeting for a bitter lecture.

“The United States,” Colby said, according to a blistering new report by The Free Press, “has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world. The Catholic Church had better take its side.”

One U.S. official present at the meeting brought up the Avignon papacy, a period in the 14th century in which the French monarchy bent the Catholic Church into submission, ordering an attack on Pope Boniface VIII that led to his downfall and subsequent death and forcing the papacy to relocate from Rome to Avignon, a region inside France.

The Trump administration had taken issue with the pope’s critique of its militaristic proclivities. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other top Pentagon officials were particularly aggrieved by portions of Leo’s January 9 speech in which the pope argued that “a diplomacy that promotes dialogue and seeks consensus among all parties is being replaced by a diplomacy based on force,” and that “war is back in vogue, and a zeal for war is spreading.”

The pope’s address was dissected line by line and interpreted as a hostile message toward the administration, reported Letters from Leo Substack writer Christopher Hale.

It was difficult not to interpret Leo’s comments as an immediate commentary on Donald Trump’s second administration, which had at that point bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities, kidnapped Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, fiercely advocated for the dissolution of NATO, and threatened America’s allies, including claiming that the U.S. would seize control of Canada and Greenland.

But the blatant intimidation tactic is the first of its kind ever made by American officials to the Catholic Church. There are no public records of any previous meetings between Vatican and U.S. officials at the Pentagon, let alone an instance in which the world power suggested that it could force the Bishop of Rome into captivity.

The Vatican was so alarmed by the Pentagon’s warning that Pope Leo cancelled his plans to visit the U.S. later in the year, reported Hale, who noted that “many in the Vatican saw the Pentagon’s reference to an Avignon papacy as a threat to use military force against the Holy See.”

Pope Leo calls Trump’s ‘whole civilization’ Iran threat ‘truly unacceptable’https://t.co/5IYt7BhsMb

— The Hill (@thehill) April 8, 2026

GOP's Nazi Problem: Florida Edition

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration was full of ominous developments -- including a tranche of racist and anti-Semitic chats by prominent Young Republicans.  Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, defended Tucker Carlson after his softball interview with Nazi wannabe Nick Fuentes.\

The party's Nazi problem continues.

 Claire Heddles at Miami Herald:

The secretary of Miami-Dade County’s Republican Party started a group chat primarily for conservative students last fall — and within three weeks it was filled with racist slurs, someone wrote dozens of ways of violently killing Black people and the chat was renamed after what one member described as “Nazi heaven.” In WhatsApp conversations leaked to the Miami Herald, participants used variations of the n-word more than 400 times, regularly described women as “whores,” used slurs to talk about Jewish and gay people and mused about Hitler’s politics.

Interspersed throughout were discussions about events promoting the Republican Party at Florida International University. The school told the Herald the chat logs are part of an ongoing criminal investigation.

The conversations included some of the campus’ top conservative leaders: the county GOP secretary, FIU’s Turning Point USA chapter president and the former College Republicans recruitment chair. The group chat — verified by two people in the group — reveals the extent of racism and extremism within the highest ranks of campus Republican Party leadership in Miami at a time Florida’s Republicans are reckoning with an increasingly emboldened far right.

Pushback Against Trump

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments.   But there are some green shoots, too.

Mike Allen at Axios:

Look how 2026 has started for Trump, and the new pushback he faces, as synthesized by Axios' Zachary Basu:

⚖️ Retribution: A federal grand jury unanimously rejected the Justice Department's attempt to indict six Democratic lawmakers over a video they made urging service members to refuse unlawful orders. It's at least the fifth time that charges against Trump's adversaries or protesters have been turned away by a grand jury. A federal judge also shut down Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's attempt to punish Navy veteran Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) over his role in the video.
🚨 ICE raids: Trump's border czar Tom Homan announced an end to the 10-week ICE surge in Minneapolis yesterday. The president acknowledged his mass deportation campaign could use a "softer touch."
🪖 National Guard: Trump withdrew federalized National Guard troops from L.A., Chicago and Portland after repeated legal defeats and opposition from local leaders, dealing a blow to his efforts to crack down on crime in Democratic-run cities.
📦 Tariffs: Six House Republicans joined Democrats to pass a resolution rescinding Trump's tariffs on Canada. The vote became possible only after a smaller group of Republicans staged a floor rebellion against GOP leadership.
🗂️ Epstein files: Trump's push to shut down MAGA's Jeffrey Epstein obsession backfired spectacularly. The Justice Department is still grappling with backlash, with Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) voicing rare criticism over revelations that DOJ tracked what lawmakers searched while reviewing the unredacted files.
📽️ Racism: A chorus of Republicans, led by Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), condemned Trump's reposting of a video that depicted Barack and Michelle Obama as apes. The White House initially defended the decision to post the video, but removed it from Trump's account, blaming a staffer. Later, the president said he "didn't make a mistake."
🇩🇰 Greenland: Trump dominated Davos last month with his threats to seize Greenland by any means necessary — only to retreat amid market turmoil, European fury, warnings from congressional Republicans, and a vague "deal" promising the U.S. greater access to the Arctic territory.
🏦 Fed: The DOJ's criminal investigation of Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell has drawn deep skepticism from Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who has vowed to block confirmation of Powell's successor, Kevin Warsh, unless the probe is dropped.

Trump's Racist Video: "No, I didn't make a mistake."

Our books have discussed Trump's low character, which was on display this week.

Erica L. Green, Isabella Kwai and Zolan Kanno-Youngs at NYT:

President Trump posted a blatantly racist video clip portraying former President Barack Obama and the former first lady Michelle Obama as apes, but he insisted he had nothing to apologize for even after he deleted the video following an outcry.

The clip, set to “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” was spliced near the end of a 62-second video that promoted conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and was among a flurry of links posted by Mr. Trump late Thursday night. It was the latest in a pattern by Mr. Trump of promoting offensive imagery and slurs about Black Americans and others.

Speaking to reporters on Air Force One on Friday, Mr. Trump said he only saw the beginning of the video. “I just looked at the first part, it was about voter fraud in some place, Georgia,” Mr. Trump said. “I didn’t see the whole thing.”

He then tried to deflect blame, suggesting he had given the link to someone else to post. “I gave it to the people, generally they’d look at the whole thing but I guess somebody didn’t,” he told reporters.

Still, Mr. Trump offered no contrition when pressed. “No, I didn’t make a mistake,” he said.

The White House response to the video over the course of the day — from defiance to retreat to doubling down — was a remarkable glimpse into an administration trying to control the damage in the face of widespread outrage, including from the president’s own party.

The clip was in line with Mr. Trump’s history of making degrading remarks about people of color, women and immigrants, and he has for years singled out the Obamas. Across Mr. Trump’s administration, racist images and slogans have become common on government websites and accounts, with the White House, Labor Department and Homeland Security Department all having promoted posts that echo white supremacist messaging.

 

House Minority Leader HAKEEM JEFFRIES has posted a new new video about the Trump video from Truth Social. Here is what the top House Dem said:

"This disgusting video, posted by the so-called president, was done intentionally.

"Fuck Donald Trump and his vile, racist and…

— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) February 6, 2026

Trump Disses Christians and Posts Racist Video

Our books have discussed Trump's low character, which was on display this week.

David Gilmour at Mediaite:

President Donald Trump shared a 2020 election conspiracy video to Truth Social on Thursday night that briefly depicts former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama as apes.

The 62-second video, shared at 11:44 p.m. ET, is largely focused on pushing a conspiracy about manipulated vote-counting machines that projected former President Joe Biden would win states like Georgia. But an AI clip spliced into the end of the video shows the faces of the Obamas superimposed on apes’ bodies for roughly a second, accompanied by The Tokens’ song “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.”

The clip carries a watermark linked to a pro-Trump account on X with tens of thousands of followers.