**Is Donald Trump trying to tank the midterms? **He keeps handing the Democrats political gifts — including his bizarre bit today as America’s pool guy.
Imagine posing next to the site of one of your most famously dunderheaded mistakes, some unforced error that earned you the mockery of an entire nation because it exposed your helpless incompetence. You draw yourself up proudly, point to your famous blunder and declare:
This is why America should vote for my party.
That was President Donald Trump today as he stood beside the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, the iconic monument that now reminds everyone this self-proclaimed real estate genius can’t even fix a pool. “We’ve done a great job here,” Trump said, falsely blaming “vandalism” for his own inability to renovate this basin for six months.
Trump’s team spent millions trying to fix the landmark, struggling valiantly with an algae bloom that filled the basin and new waterproof coating that separated from the concrete bottom following his botched renovation. The Interior Department debunked Trump’s claims about vandals,
citing faulty work by a contractor. Weeks after arresting an alleged vandal, the Department of Justicedropped the charges. Even U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirrosaid vandalsaren’t to blame. But Trump won’t stop lying, claiming today that a “group of people slashed the hell out of it.”
Today’s spectacle crystalizes how Trump put his own party in so much political peril in tomorrow’s elections, as if he were
tryingto tank the midterms.
Famously immune to admitting defeat, Trump made the mind-boggling decision to return to the very spot of that grand embarrassment for his closing message in his midterm blitz. Trump apparently believes that hosting a rally at this venue could help his party. In reality, it’s further evidence that he’s out of touch with political reality — and unwilling to accept that he’s a major reason why Republicans are staring down a catastrophe.
**The latest polling is sparking panic on the right — **as Democrats try not to get carried away with giddy optimism.
For all the pomp and circumstance today, Trump is prepping excuses for defeat. “For some reason, the sitting president doesn’t win the midterms,” he said. “But we gave this a very strong shot.”
I’d bet that he read the latest
New York Times/Siena polls, which everyone in politics can’t stop talking about. The results showed Democrats leading Republicans in seven Senate races in battleground states. (James Talarico is up 7 points in Texas.Texas!) Democrats need to flip four seats to win the Senate, and they’re already widely expected to win the House.
“One year ago, when people asked me whether Democrats could win the Senate, I said we needed a perfect storm to have a chance,” Crooked’s Dan Pfeiffer wrote in
his Message Box newsletter. “It [is] abundantly clear that the perfect storm has arrived.”
The polls, of course, could be wrong. They have been before. But there are three strong reasons for Democrats to be confident this cycle: The
Timesadjusted its polling methodology to better represent conservative voters. More Americans disapprove of Trumpthan ever before. And the GOP is running a slate of weak (or downright terrible) candidates against strong Democratic hopefuls.
**And then there’s Trump’s half-hearted closing message. **“The country has never done better,” he told reporters at his lavish Halloween party at Mar-a-Lago over the weekend. Does anyone actually believe that?
** Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed’s **campaign said that it raised $2.4 million yesterday, its largest single-day haul on record. The influx of cash came after Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI), who lost to him in the primary, stunned the country by withdrawing her support and instead endorsing former Rep. Mike Rogers, a Republican. “I’m at peace with this,” Stevens
** The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court **to stop California from counting 20,000 alleged noncitizen ballots. A federal appeals court denied the request last week.
** Trump’s DOJ vowed to appeal a federal judge’s decision** to throw out a lawsuit to pre-emptively challenge the results of the Alaska Senate race if Democrat Mary Peltola wins. Trump’s team argued that the judge didn’t factor in the possibility that a so-called “spoiler” candidate with the same name as incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK) may have entered the race to confuse voters. (Counterpoint: Alaska uses ranked-choice voting, so anyone who is confused can simply rank both Dan Sullivans.)
** The average price of gas during Trump’s second term** is expected to exceed that of any other president as of today, thanks to Trump’s war in Iran. Iranian leaders offered to open the Strait of Hormuz within two days if the Trump administration agrees to demands including sanctions relief and the release of frozen assets, which Trump’s team has previously been unwilling to do.
** Ukraine accused Russia of using the Melania Trump-brokered **ceasefire in a small town to rearm troops and strengthen its military positions. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov offered this response: “This is standard practice in such situations. But I’m not familiar with the specifics.”
** Trump’s Qatari Air Force One flew as low as 400 feet** over the nation’s capital as part of a stunt for a Halloween party on the White House lawn last week, according to flight data. To put that into perspective, the Washington Monument is 555 feet tall.
** Trump vowed to “protect” tech bro Elon Musk if Democrats** win power in the midterms and investigate the gazillionaire. The president also said that he’d consider pre-emptive pardons for his staffers and other allies, if Democrats come after them.
** Musk is trying to launch his own mobile phone company **through SpaceX, which has recently had talks with Boost Mobile to acquire or use its network, the
** A federal judge dismissed the Trump DOJ’s complaint** against two former federal agents who had been accused of downplaying their knowledge of the Hunter Biden laptop scandal while testifying in front of Congress. Trump’s DOJ just can’t stop losing!
** Four NASA crewmates emerged from a chamber **that simulated a mission to Mars — after 378 days. Since last October, the crew had been living in a 3D-printed habitat where they grew plants with soil that’s supposed to mimic what’s on Mars, and communicated with NASA officials just as they would if they were 140 million miles away. (I wish they could’ve put me in this thing beginning January 20, 2025. Sounds kinda relaxing, tbh.)
** Scottish police arrested a man who allegedly **had drugs in his car… and discovered a lamb named Pablo eating a bag of french fries in the back seat. Pablo was eventually returned to his owners and is in good health, though I would recommend he eat carrots, lettuce, or whatever lambs eat instead of fast food.
** Runners high-fived NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani as he handed out **water around the 13th mile of the New York City marathon over the weekend. When one runner stopped and told him she was getting married in Central Park,
** A Florida woman became a local celebrity after **a bar’s surveillance footage caught her stopping on her way to a Halloween party while wearing a banana costume to check on a driver who had crashed his car. The bar named a cocktail after the woman, made of rum and banana, in her honor.
