One of the few good things you can say about our decades-long relationship with Donald Trump is that he still knows how to surprise us. Expect him to tear into the upstart politician he’s branded a “communist lunatic”? He’s so charmed by New York’s mayor-elect that he starts doing Zohran Mamdani cosplay. Assume he has a basic understanding of what magnets are and how they work, since he’s graduated high school? Thinkagain!
His latest unexpected maneuver: using the full power of the presidency to … reboot the Rush Hour movies? Semafor reported on Sunday night that Trump has been pressuring his billionaire friend Larry Ellison, the largest shareholder of Paramount, to bring back the Jackie Chan–Chris Tucker franchise:
But now Larry Ellison, one of Trump’s most prominent financial supporters, owns a second-tier studio, Paramount, and is on the cusp of taking control of the great Warner legacy, with the giant library and sprawling production that come with it.
… Now, the president is offering some creative input on potential upcoming projects.
Trump appears to want to revive the raucous comedies and action movies of the late 1980s to late 1990s. He’s passionate, for instance, about the 1988 Jean Claude Van Damme sports flick Bloodsport. A person directly familiar with the conversations told Semafor that the president of the United States has personally pressed the Paramount owner to revive another franchise from Ratner: Rush Hour, a buddy-cop comedy starring Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker that blended physical comedy, martial arts, and gags about racial stereotypes.
In days of yore, no one would expect the president to use his influence to get his favorite Hollywood project made. While that does seem like the kind of weird 12-year-old boy request Trump would make, it’s surprising that he cares so much about Rush Hour in particular. You can picture him demanding a Cats revival, another Home Alone installment, or a Gone With the Wind remake that portrays the South even more positively. But (as far as we know) Trump hasn’t been hosting Rush Hour viewing parties at Mar-a-Lago.
The only recent hint that Trump is a major Rush Hour fan (Rushie? Hour-head?) is that the franchise’s director, Brett Ratner, is directing Amazon’s forthcoming Melania Trump documentary despite being “canceled” following sexual-harassment and -misconduct allegations in 2017. And I guess you could make something of Trump trying to revive the career of Chris Tucker, another celebrity who appears in the Epstein files (and has not been accused of any wrongdoing). But let’s leave that project to the conspiracy theorists. The president just has a passion for ’90s martial-arts/buddy-cop films. Who knew?!
Where the midterms may be decided. Photo: Pete Kiehart/Bloomberg/Getty Images
You’d need a 3-D bingo card to keep up with all the gerrymandering decisions that have been made around the country since Donald Trump began a drive this summer to rig midterm-election maps for 2026. But at the moment, it’s increasingly clear the big GOP advantage Trump envisioned when he pushed Texas into an abrupt gerrymander in July has faded and perhaps even disappeared. The New York Times’ Nate Cohn took stock of the situation:
This week, Republicans encountered yet another round of roadblocks in Texas and Indiana. The two states once seemed likely to help the Republicans flip as many as seven Democratic-held districts combined, but after a federal court ruled against the new Texas map and Indiana failed to redraw its map, it suddenly seems possible that Republicans might not gain even a single district in these states.
Without those seats, it’s now imaginable that the Democrats — not the Republicans — will narrowly win this year’s redistricting wars, and net the most seats heading into the 2026 midterm elections.
Cohn estimated that before all this activity, Republicans could lose the national House popular vote by 0.2 percent and still retain control of the House. With new maps in place in California, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, and Utah, that cushion increased to 0.9 percent — enough to really matter in a close national midterm election. If the adverse judicial decision earlier this week nukes the new Texas map, the GOP advantage would turn into a Democratic advantage of 0.6 percent. Add in the expected offsetting gerrymanders on tap in Republican-controlled Florida and Democratic-controlled Virginia, and you wind up with a Democratic advantage of 0.5 percent.
All this back-and-forth maneuvering more or less leaves in place a national landscape in which the historically indicated Democratic midterm wave, even if it’s just a ripple, will be enough to flip the House and destroy the GOP trifecta that has made it so easy for Trump to implement his radical 2025 agenda. But there are two potentially big shoes that could still drop in Washington from the Supreme Court.
First of all, Texas has appealed the federal-district-court decision dismissing the new gerrymandered House map adopted this summer to SCOTUS, which could set aside the lower-court order and let the good times roll for the Texas GOP. Cohn estimates that development would change the bottom line if everything else happens as expected from a 0.5 percent Democratic advantage to a one percent Republican advantage, a potentially significant shift.
But second of all, the really large intervention could come from the pending SCOTUS decision in Louisiana v. Callais. Many observers fear or hope the Court will all but kill the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in that decision, eliminating the powerful impetus many states (especially in the South) had to adopt maps that gave nonwhite voters a good shot at winning or influencing the outcome. That it turn could lead Republican-controlled state governments in the South to conduct last-minute gerrymanders to eliminate nearly all majority-Black or plurality-Black Democratic U.S. House districts before the midterms (19 of them, according to one estimate). It would be a real bloodbath. But even if they choose to move in that fateful direction, SCOTUS might not act in time to let the blood flow in 2026. And of all the arcane mysteries surrounding Supreme Court decisions, the timing is among the most mysterious.
Suffice it to say that the outcome of Trump’s bid to rig the midterm landscape is in the hands of exactly those black-robed lifetime appointees who may also determine the fate of Trump’s power grabs on tariffs, domestic deployment of military units, the rights of federal employees, control of federal agencies, election rules, and many other areas of political and civic life. If you’re involved in politics or political journalism, don’t plan any vacations for next June or July when SCOTUS traditionally drops its bigger decisions.
Trump could again draw in all the congressional leaders and force them into a deal. Photo: Melina Mara/Getty Images
This isn’t the first time that we’re reading stories about Republicans taking their first baby steps toward a post–Donald Trump future. Pundits, rivals, and opponents have been looking over the horizon for signs that Trump’s grip on his party would fade since 2016. But the combination of sinking presidential job-approval ratings, terrible off-year election results, occasional acts of congressional defiance, and more-deranged-than-usual Truth Social posts has revived talk of Trump’s mojo eroding. Add in the fact that the president has run his last campaign and you can understand why the “lame duck” label is beginning to stick to him. If his so-far-faithful servants on the Supreme Court let him down in a series of big cases between now and next July, a real jailbreak atmosphere could infect the GOP and the whole world of political observers who have had to live with this turbulent man every minute for a decade.
This trend has to be excruciating for the president, who believes he has already saved the country and has earned the right to a perpetual victory lap in which he consolidates his lofty place in global history by ending wars and cutting big investment deals wherever he goes. Instead he’s having to deal with a rebellion in the very core of his MAGA movement over his relationship with the late Jeffrey Epstein, and cope with widespread public concerns over the “affordability” of life in America. This last problem clearly baffles and sometimes angers Trump, who has bought his own spin about the economy being better than ever and on the brink of new heights thanks to AI.
There is, however, something he could do right now that would reestablish his relevance, confirm his mastery of Congress, and address affordability concerns while reducing the odds of a GOP midterm apocalypse. He could reengage on the issue of extending Obamacare subsidies and buy some time for his party to finally figure out what to propose on health care.
As you may recall, the Democratic calculation immediately before and throughout the recent record government shutdown was that Trump would negotiate a subsidy extension deal and impose it on his party. But he refused to come to the table, and instead, began denouncing Obamacare itself as though it was still 2015. He also began encouraging Republicans to go back to the poisoned well of proposals to repeal and replace Obamacare with some sort of beefed-up individual health accounts instead of fixing the current system and heading off a huge insurance-premium price spike. It has sure looked like Trump was leading his party back to the agenda that bombed in 2017 and led to the loss of the House in 2018.
But now there are Republicans in both congressional chambers trying to steer their party and their president back to a temporary Obamacare subsidy patch that can head off electoral disaster while letting them continue to talk about some wonderful Obamacare alternative that will appear a bit down the road (say, after the 2026 midterms). As Punchbowl News reports, the talented dealmaker Katie Britt seems to be front and center in this effort:
Republican senators have been privately lobbying President Donald Trump to support a limited short-term extension of Obamacare subsidies, arguing it would save the GOP from a 2026 drubbing and buy time for Congress to pass a longer-term health care plan that mirrors the president’s preferences.
Sen. Katie Britt(R-Ala.) has spoken with the president several times this week to pitch the idea, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.
Britt seems to have a special rapport with Trump based in part on her physical appearance. She’s also a shrewd politician who understands her party’s immediate needs:
A short-term extension of the Obamacare subsidies could mean one, two or even three years, with strict eligibility crackdowns, such as income caps and anti-fraud provisions. A Trump-led push would provide political cover for vulnerable Republicans; it would also save Thune from having to deal with a divided conference.
There’s activity in the House, too, where a bipartisan group that includes Democrats Tom Suozzi and Josh Gottenheimer and Republicans Don Bacon and Jeff Hurd have a two-year extension plan, per Punchbowl:
The billwould add a new income cap, extending the enhanced credits for families of four earning less than $200,000 per year and phasing them out for families of four earning between $200,000 and $300,000.
One other ideaunder discussion is a one-year subsidy extension with income caps and fraud-prevention changes, paired with a commission to negotiate a longer-term solution next year.
Time’s a-wasting, though, since the Senate vote on health care that John Thune agreed to is coming up in weeks and the politics of a short-term Obamacare subsidy-extension deal are tricky. Some Democrats are fine with Republicans doing nothing and giving them a powerful midterm message. And again, there is zero way House Republicans allow a vote on, much less agree to, any Obamacare extension unless Trump calls them in and demands it, along with all sorts of rhetorical window dressing about his determination to kill Obamacare and atomize its remains sometime real soon.
A deal is still a long shot. But Democrats need to retroactively vindicate their government-shutdown strategy, which fell short of its principal goal when Trump refused to play his part. Republicans need to get the Obamacare premium spike out of the news until November 2026. And Trump needs to show he’s still the Man, the straw that stirs every drink in American politics. The ingredients are there for the deal that has eluded everyone for so long.
One of the major narratives that came out of the very poor showing of Republicans in the 2025 elections is that the GOP struggles to win when Donald Trump is not on the ballot. Certainly the president himself shares that belief, as he said on Election Night in no uncertain terms on social media: “‘TRUMP WASN’T ON THE BALLOT, AND SHUTDOWN, WERE THE TWO REASONS THAT REPUBLICANS LOST ELECTIONS TONIGHT.”
This was cold comfort for Republicans who understand that Trump isn’t going to be on the ballot in 2026, either. But beyond that, the narrative may not even be true. Polls keep showing that Trump is increasingly a drag on his party and that his weaknesses in the electorate very much resemble the GOP’s weaknesses on November 4.
There’s now little question that the president’s job-approval ratings have been steadily sliding downward for the past couple of months. On September 20, his net approval average at Silver Bulletin was at minus-7.5 percent (44.9 percent approval, 52.4 percent disapproval). On November 20, it was at minus-14.1. percent, which is a new low for his second term. The intensity of his unpopularity is high and rising: 45.2 percent of Americans strongly disapprove of the job Trump is doing as president, again per the averages at Silver Bulletin.
On particular issues, his net approval remains underwater on all the major categories: immigration (minus-7.2 percent), trade (minus-18.8), the economy (minus-20.2), and inflation (minus-34). The numbers for immigration, the economy, and inflation are at second-term lows. The last two are noteworthy given the importance of “affordability” in the 2025 Democratic victories (reflected in Trump’s own messaging beginning the moment the November 4 results were in) and, beyond that, the importance of these issues in Trump’s 2024 victory.
A poll from Fox News released on Wednesday probed more deeply into public sentiment on the economy and showed that the administration’s argument that high prices were caused by Joe Biden isn’t working anymore:
By a nearly 2-to-1 margin, voters say Trump is more responsible for the current economy than Biden (62% vs. 32%). Unsurprisingly, there’s a large partisan gap, as Democrats are nearly 40 percentage points more likely than Republicans to blame Trump. Somewhat surprisingly though, 42% of Republicans blame him, while a 53% majority says Biden is responsible. Among independents, 62% say Trump and 29% Biden.
Not all polls break down the electorate, but those that do are pretty consistent in showing that Trump’s 2024 coalition is shrinking back from the hard-core MAGA base. New polling from The Argument reinforces that impression forcefully:
Republicans are hemorrhaging support with the young, nonwhite, and disengaged voters who powered Trump’s victory in 2024. Here are a few tidbits to show just what I’m talking about:
Democrats are winning 25% of nonwhite Trump 2024 voters. Among white voters, this number is just 4%.
Among registered voters who didn’t vote for either Harris or Trump in 2024, Democrats receive 62% of the vote — a 25-percentage-point lead. Among the white voters of this group, Democrats lead by two points; among nonwhite nonvoters, they lead by 48 points.
Democrats win 64% of young voters in our survey, for a lead of 28 points. (For context, in 2024, they won this group by just 10 points.)
Exit polls from the 2025 elections showed exactly the same pro-Democratic trends among young and non-white voters in New Jersey and Virginia. If the numbers persist into 2026, it’s hard to imagine Republicans hanging on to their control of the House — particularly if Trump’s effort to change the landscape through gerrymandering continues to flounder. In addition to Trump’s popularity issues, and despite their own well-known problems, Democrats are now opening up a significant lead in the congressional generic ballot, an approximation of the House popular vote next year. According to RealClearPolling, the average Democratic lead on the generic ballot is 4.8 percent, another 2025 high. At Decision Desk HQ, the Democratic lead is 5.4 percent; Republicans led by 5.3 percent there at the beginning of 2025. The Argument explains what these trends might mean in the results:
If the election were held today, Republicans may be facing a blue wave larger than the 2018 midterms, which resulted in a commanding Democratic House majority. Put simply, they are in really bad shape.
How bad? Consider this: In our survey fielded right after the election, Nov. 10-17, Republicans trailed by four percentage points among registered voters. When we pushed undecided voters to pick a side, that deficit expanded to six percentage points. And after that was filtered to just those who said they were likely to vote, it grew even further, to 7.6 points.
So neither the GOP nor its leader are doing that well at the moment, particularly on the affordability issues that they now recognize are so crucial to swing voters. Some Republican candidates in 2026 will choose to cleave to Trump even more fiercely, and others may try to achieve some distance, but they’re probably joined at the hip for better or worse.
Scott Bessent knows an inflationary idea when he hears one. Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images
During both his presidential terms, Donald Trump has longed to make Americans happy by mailing them checks from the government adorned with his own signature in case anyone wants to write him a thank-you note in the form of a vote. So it’s not surprising that his big idea for responding to the rise of “affordability” as a national political issue is to send out $2,000 checks, allegedly to be financed by his trade-war tariffs. Do people think tariffs boost consumer prices? Okay, then, here’s a rebate! Or a “tariff dividend,” as he calls it.
Now, that is very unlikely to come to pass for a variety of reasons. For one thing, Trump is vastly overestimating the tariff revenue that’s coming in. For another, his own administration and perhaps soon the Supreme Court are putting the brakes on his tariff offensive. And even more obviously, authorizing $2,000 checks from Trump for everybody at this particular moment has zero support among Democrats and not much support among Republicans, who mostly seem to be rolling their eyes over it. If they take it seriously at all, they tend to recommend that any “tariff dividends,” should they actually emerge, be used to reduce the public debt that Trump has never seemed to worry about for a moment.
But the most telling (not to mention hilarious) reaction to the “tariff dividend” idea has come from Trump’s own Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, as Axios reported:
The administration is hopeful Americans won’t necessarily spend the $2,000 tariff checks President Trump has promised, and instead pump them into “Trump accounts” for kids, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says …
The risk of rising prices remains a huge concern for consumers, and against that backdrop, Fox News asked Bessent Tuesday night how the government would avoid another bout of stimulus-driven inflation if the checks happen.
“Maybe we could persuade Americans to save that, because one of the things that’s going to happen next year” is the start of “Trump accounts” to save for kids, Bessent said.
So the president wants to send checks to folks who are worried about making ends meet today, tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow. But his top economic adviser is telling them not to cash those checks to pay for their living costs but to save them instead because (quite accurately) spending the money might boost living costs even more.
Bessent was clever enough to couch this blatant contradiction of the president’s wishes in a recommendation that the money should go into Trump-branded savings vehicles (the subsidized kiddie savings accounts created by the One Big Beautiful Act). But it’s probably not what the president had in mind when he imagined grateful Americans using those checks to pay for groceries and gasoline while uttering a prayer of thanksgiving for their benefactor the president — and vowing to vote Republican in the 2026 midterms.
The Department of Justice’s assistant attorney general for civil rights, Harmeet Dhillon, who’s had a bad week. Photo: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
At some point earlier this year, Donald Trump took a look at his shaky political standing and decided two things. First, he really wanted to hold on to the trifecta control of the federal government that made all his 2025 power grabs possible. And second, he recognized that keeping control of the U.S. House during the 2026 midterms would probably require a big thumb on the scales, which he could most easily achieve by quite literally changing the landscape. He went public in July with a national effort to get red states to remap their congressional districts immediately so that the GOP would go into the midterms with a cushion larger than the likely Democratic gains. And it all began with a blunt demand that Texas give the GOP four or five new seats in a special session that was originally supposed to focus on flood recovery.
Texas complied, and other red states followed suit, even as Democrats — most notably in California — retaliated the best they could with their own gerrymanders. But now, the original map-rigging in Texas has just been canceled (subject to U.S. Supreme Court review) thanks to the ham-handed incompetence of the Trump administration, as Democracy Docket explains:
A federal court Tuesday delivered a devastating blow to Texas Republicans’ attempt at a mid-decade gerrymander. And the court found that a July letter sent by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) — intended to justify the GOP’s aggressive redraw — effectively handed voting rights advocates a smoking gun proving it was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. …
Unless the U.S. Supreme Court reverses it — Texas has already said it will appeal — the state must use its 2021 congressional map for the 2026 elections, killing what had been the GOP’s biggest planned redistricting gain of the decade.
The blow to Trump’s plans came from two federal district-court judges (one of whom is a Trump appointee) who were part of a three-judge panel. Their order made it clear that DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, under the direction of Trump appointee and longtime Republican operative Harmeet Dhillon, stupidly insisted on making its instructions to Texas Republicans revolve around the racial makeup of the desired new districts, which is a big constitutional no-no:
“It’s challenging to unpack the DOJ Letter because it contains so many factual, legal, and typographical errors,” the judges wrote. “Indeed, even attorneys employed by the Texas Attorney General — who professes to be a political ally of the Trump Administration — describe the DOJ Letter as ‘legally unsound,’ ‘baseless,’ ‘erroneous,’ ‘ham-fisted,’ and ‘a mess.’”
The judges noted that while Texas insisted the 2025 map was drawn for partisan reasons, the DOJ letter made no such claim and framed its demands entirely around race.
That omission was pivotal.
The grand irony is that this same DOJ Civil Rights Division subsequently sued California to invalidate that state’s voter-approved gerrymander on grounds that the legislators who drew the map had taken race into account in designing the new districts. Trump’s lawyers live in a house with no mirrors, it seems.
The Texas ruling came at a time when Trump’s whole map-rigging exercise seems to be unraveling all over the country. On the very same day, Indiana’s Republican-controlled state Senate killed a special session that Trump, J.D. Vance, U.S. senator Jim Banks, and Governor Mike Braun had all demanded in order to wipe out two Democratic U.S. House districts. Kansas Republicans have similarly balked at Trump’s orders to kill a Democratic district. Voters in Missouri seem poised to cancel that state’s recent gerrymander designed to eliminate a Democratic seat in a ballot initiative. Fearing litigation, Ohio Republicans cut a deal with Democrats to make two Democratic-controlled House districts a bit redder instead of flipping them altogether. And on November 4, voters in Virginia solidified Democratic control of that state’s legislature and elected a new Democratic governor, which greatly facilitated plans to remap that state’s congressional districts to flip as many as three GOP seats.
Republicans could still gain seats in Florida, and a U.S. Supreme Court review of the Voting Rights Act could create all sorts of chaos. But Trump’s gerrymandering crusade will soon hit the wall of 2026 candidate filing deadlines. As Punchbowl News observes, his party could actually lose ground overall: “It’s not impossible to imagine that [Democrats] end up netting more seats than the GOP in these mid-decade redraws, a stunning change of circumstances that didn’t seem possible only a few months ago.”
Trump clearly opened a Pandora’s box in Texas, and he and his party — not to mention his bumbling and heavily politicized legal beagles — are now dealing with the consequences.
Between Republicans’ big election losses and the resurgence of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, it’s been a stressful month for Donald Trump. So the president has fallen back into an old, comforting habit: hurling sexist insults at women who dare to question him.
Trump’s making disgusting comments about female critics (calling Alicia Machado “Miss Piggy,” referring to Megyn Kelly having “blood coming out of her wherever,” etc.) was a major theme of the 2016 election. He toned down the nasty remarks about women while in office but never fully stopped (see much of his caseagainst Kamala Harris). And of course, his agenda, aesthetics, and general vibe are all steeped in misogyny. But in recent days, Trump has been displaying his disrespect for women, and female journalists in particular, more openly than usual.
The first incident happened on November 14, when Trump was taking questions from reporters on Air Force One. Bloomberg correspondent Catherine Lucey asked what Epstein meant when he wrote that Trump “knew about the girls.”
Trump dodged by raising questions about Bill Clinton’s relationship with the late sex offender (interesting strategy) and dismissing the contents of the newly released Epstein files. When Lucey tried to ask a follow-up question, Trump snapped, “Quiet. Quiet, Piggy,” while waving a finger at her.
As the moment went viral this week, Trump followed it up by berating another reporter, Mary Bruce of ABC News, on Tuesday in the Oval Office. Her offense: daring to ask about the appropriateness of Trump hosting Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, since U.S. intelligence concluded he had orchestrated the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Trump denounced ABC as “fake news,” defended his family’s business in Saudi Arabia, and insisted the crown prince has done a “phenomenal job.” Then he shrugged off the Washington Post columnist’s murder and dismemberment, which the prince has denied any involvement in.
“You’re mentioning somebody that was extremely controversial,” Trump said of Khashoggi. “A lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about. Whether you like him or didn’t like him, things happen, but he knew nothing about it. You don’t have to embarrass our guest by asking a question about that.”
When Bruce asked another good question a few minutes later, this time about the Epstein files, Trump attacked her further, calling her a “terrible person.”
“You know, it’s not the question that I mind, it’s your attitude. I think you are a terrible reporter,” he said. “It’s the way you ask these questions. You start off with a man who’s highly respected, asking him a horrible, insubordinate, and just a terrible question. And you could even ask that same exact question nicely. You’re all psyched up, someone psyches you over at ABC. You’re a terrible person and a terrible reporter.”
Trump also said, “I think the license should be taken away from ABC. Because your news is so fake and so wrong,” suggesting FCC chair Brendan Carr “should look at that.” (Of course, Carr did just that over comments made by Jimmy Kimmel in September and it didn’t go well.)
On Tuesday, the White House defended Trump’s “Piggy” remark, claiming the only person out of line was Lucey.
“This reporter behaved in an inappropriate and unprofessional way toward her colleagues on the plane,” an administration official said in a statement. “If you’re going to give it, you have to be able to take.”
So to recap, making Trump and other powerful men a bit uncomfortable is deeply offensive and totally intolerable. But journalists need to shrug off everything from sexist insults to state-sponsored murder. Hey, “things happen”!
Trump repeatedly came back to how much fun he had “working” as a McDonald’s fry cook during the 2024 campaign. At one point, he claimed that Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin told him his “skit” was the most-searched thing ever.
“They called me the following day, after I did that McDonald’s little skit — because it wasn’t a commercial, you got it for nothing,” he said. “And I didn’t know them. They told me … that it received more hits than anything else in the history of Google and that record, it still stands.”
This claim makes absolutely no sense, but conveniently, it’s impossible to verify because Trump offered no details on what “it” meant. Does he think “Trump McDonald’s” is the most-searched term in the history of the search engine? Is he referring to the page views for some campaign video? Who knows!
In a statement, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer said he would take immediate action on the Epstein legislation once it’s approved by the House.
“Once the House passes the bill to release the Epstein files today, I will move for the Senate to immediately take it up and pass it—period,” he said.
Schumer continued, “Republicans have spent months trying to protect Donald Trump and hide what’s in the files. Americans are tired of waiting and are demanding to see the truth. If Leader Thune tries to bury the bill, I’ll stop him.”
Trump and his dangerous friend. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
The president of the United States had a busy weekend. When he wasn’t golfing at Mar-a-Lago, excommunicating Marjorie Taylor Greene from the MAGA movement, or executing a bizarre U-turn on the Epstein files, Donald Trump chose to plunge into shark-infested ideological waters by defending Tucker Carlson’s right to interview any damn antisemitic white supremacist he felt like interviewing, as the New York Timesreported:
On Sunday, Mr. Trump, speaking of Mr. Carlson as he traveled back to the White House after spending the weekend golfing at Mar-a-Lago, said, “You can’t tell him who to interview.” The president then insisted that he “didn’t know much about” Mr. Fuentes, whom he previously dined with at Mar-a-Lago in 2022, an episode that also caused a furor.
If Mr. Carlson wanted to interview Mr. Fuentes, then “get the word out,” Mr. Trump said. “People have to decide. Ultimately people have to decide.”
Arguments over Carlson’s friendly interview with Nick Fuentes sharply divided Trump’s allies on social media, all but blew up the influential Heritage Foundation, and embarrassed Republican pols, including longtime Carlson buddy J.D. Vance. Fuentes has long been a figure at the far-right fringes of MAGA-land who arouses particular anger among Jews, Israel-loving conservative Evangelicals, and assorted normies shocked to find they are in a coalition with this happily racist dude. It was a fraught subject for Trump to address, as Axios explains:
Trump’s defense of Carlson interviewing a man labeled a white supremacist by the Justice Department puts him at odds with Republicans like Texas Sen. Ted Cruz who have condemned Carlson.
More broadly, it underscores MAGA’s divided approach toward tolerating racism, sexism and antisemitism on the far right …
Trump on Sunday finally waded into the Republican warfare after weeks of critics blasting Carlson for hosting the Holocaust denier on his podcast.
Fuentes quickly tweeted out, “Thank you, Mr. President!” As well he should: It’s hard for anyone to exclude Fuentes from the MAGA movement when its founder and unquestioned leader appears to think he is one of those “very fine people on both sides” he talked about after Fuentes joined white rioters in Charlottesville back in 2017. And in Fuentes’s wake are the so-called Groypers, a nasty breed of young transgressive activists who alternate between white-supremacist views and plain nihilism. Conservative culture warrior Rob Dreher recently quoted an estimate that “between 30 and 40% of Republican staffers in Washington under the age of 30 are followers of Fuentes.” He’s a big deal and perhaps the wave of a nightmare future.
The broader message Trump is sending to Republicans and conservatives generally should be familiar by now. While most politicians carefully balance the interests of swing and base voters in plotting their strategies, Trump always chooses the base, which he believes will have an advantage in a political environment he has worked hard to polarize. And in his ongoing conversations with his base, he has a “no enemies to the right” policy so long as the craziest of the crazies are personally loyal to him. He always offers consolation prizes to supporters who are offended by the extremists in his ranks. Jewish Republicans and their Christian allies, for example, have Trump’s unquestioned support for Israel’s war in Gaza, his reflexive Islamophobia, and his bullying of college campuses with pro-Palestinian protesters. So if they have to share a political blanket with antisemites and even neo-Nazis, it’s all in the family, and political power covers a multitude of sins.
We’ve seen this movie before. Photo: Sid Hastings/Alamy Stock Photo
The big miscalculation Democrats made in handling the recent government shutdown was their belief that Donald Trump could be induced to force an extension of soon-to-expire Obamacare premium subsidies on congressional Republicans as part of a deal to reopen the government. He never even agreed to negotiate on the subject. So instead, the booby prize Democrats won was a guaranteed Senate vote on the Obamacare subsidies by the second week in December (huge premium spikes already announced by most insurers will go into effect on January 1 if no action is taken). The House promised nothing, and the Senate pledge is vague enough as to be potentially meaningless if a workable deal isn’t crafted in advance.
There is a possible deal that would combine a minimal (probably one-year) extension on the subsidies with so-called Republican reforms (e.g., cutting off benefits at some fixed income point, measures preventing fake beneficiaries, and perhaps some GOP policy baubles like enhanced health savings accounts). But as health-care-policy maven Jonathan Cohn observes, it’s unclear how much of an appetite there is for compromise:
Compromise requires meeting somewhere in the middle and already some members of the GOP are doing the opposite — taking this new round of debate as a cue to dust off ideas that would roll back or repeal big pieces of Obamacare. And these efforts seem to have attracted the interest of Trump, who has been posting messages like “Obamacare Sucks” on social media.
Any bill will need 60 votes, just like the measure to reopen the government. And it would have a prayer in the House only if it’s truly bipartisan and if Trump comes down hard on conservatives who would vote against the Second Coming of Christ if it were in any way connected with the 44th president and his legacy health-care program.
Unfortunately for the roughly 42 million people who depend on Obamacare policies for their health insurance, the White House seems less interested in a compromise on subsidies than in replacing them and perhaps undermining the entire structure set up by the Affordable Care Act, as Politico reports:
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz said Monday that he’d spent “a good part of the weekend with the White House” working on a plan to replace ACA subsidies with a new policy.
“We have lots of great ideas,” Oz said on Fox News on Monday. “But I don’t want to show our cards. As the president often says, why would I telegraph to you what we are going to do? …”
“We want a health care system where we pay the money to the people instead of the insurance companies and I tell you, we’re going to be working on that very hard over the next short period of time — where the people get the money,” Trump said in the Oval Office on Monday.
As Cohn notes, this sort of talk is the kind of thing we heard from Trump and his party when they were unsuccessfully trying to kill Obamacare during the president’s first term:
Conservatives have long argued the best way to reform health care is by giving people more control over their health care dollars, which typically means scaling back insurance so that it covers only catastrophic expenses, and then having people pay for everything else out of their own pockets using money they’ve put into private accounts that get some kind of government assistance.
Past versions of these proposals have, upon inspection, looked more like vehicles to givewealthy people a tax break. They have diverted money into broker and management fees. And as a practical matter, they have threatened to do what many other conservative proposals would — namely, to break up insurance pools so that people who are in good health spend less, while those who need medical care spend more.
In other words, Republicans would prefer to return to the days of widespread age and health-condition discrimination by insurers and then encourage people to rely less on insurance to begin with. Many health experts warn that this approach would encourage younger and healthier people to bail out of risk pools and leave their less fortunate fellow citizens with reduced coverage at higher costs.
If this is the direction Trump and the GOP are headed, there won’t be any feasible bipartisan deal in Congress in December — or at the next pressure point, January 30, when the current government-reopening measure expires. That might be why some Republicans have talked about abandoning bipartisanship altogether and pursuing another budget-reconciliation bill (like the recently enacted One Big Beautiful Act) to “reform” health care and achieve some other GOP legislative priorities on simple party-line votes. Trump himself, of course, would prefer to just “nuke” the filibuster and let Senate Republicans do whatever they want on health care or anything else they choose to address. Since that seems unlikely, we could enter a time machine to go back to 2017, when Republicans tried and failed to use reconciliation to “repeal and replace Obamacare.” Indeed, in a recent interview with Laura Ingraham, the president himself referred to Trumpcare — the term used generally for his repeal-and-replace legislation — for his vision of an improved health-care system.
You get the sense listening to the president and his supporters that they are mostly focused on finding some rhetoric to show interest in the affordability concerns that are depressing Trump’s job-approval ratings and threatening GOP plans for the midterms. If that’s all Republicans care about, it’s very bad news for people losing health coverage, because they can’t afford the insurance that’s been keeping them alive.
Death by Lightning overdoes the depiction of James Garfield as a sort of Cincinnatus called from the fields to save his country. Perhaps it was to reinforce our sympathy with the slain president, or maybe it’s a product of the show’s sometimes labored parallelism between Garfield and Guiteau — which was also a theme of Candice Millard’s source material — but the series definitely downplays Garfield’s significance before he was nominated president.
James A. Garfield, Republican Candidate for President, and Chester A. Arthur, Republican Candidate for Vice President, in 1880. Photo: Vic Arnold, A.S. Seer’s Printing Establishment/Glasshouse Vintage/Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
When the series’ Garfield, played by Michael Shannon, leaves his Ohio farm to attend the 1880 Republican National Convention, he comes across as a bucolic figure who was on the margin of politics after obscure but brave service in the Civil War. When Treasury secretary John Sherman asks Garfield to place his name into nomination in Chicago, you wouldn’t know Garfield was a veteran of 17 years in Congress whose reputation as an orator rivaled that of Roscoe Conkling (more on him in a minute). You also wouldn’t know that Garfield, despite his humble upbringing, had been a college president and an ordained minister before rising to the rank of major general in the war. In fact, he was the only president ever to have served as clergy.
Garfield was a pretty big deal in Republican politics in 1880, even if no one thought of him as a presidential contender. According to Kenneth Ackerman’s book, the future president Benjamin Harrison had tracked down Garfield in Chicago to ask if he’d be willing to accept the nomination if a deadlock between Ulysses Grant and James Blaine developed, which is exactly what happened. It wasn’t as wild an idea as the miniseries suggests, though Shannon as Garfield convincingly conveys a humility that makes his elevation seem semi-miraculous.
More money for you! Signed, DJT. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the one policy Donald Trump consistently favored was the mailing of “stimulus checks” (technically, economic-impact payments) to individual taxpayers, bearing his signature, as though this federal-government largesse was a gift from the president himself. Indeed, he pitched a temper tantrum not long before his first term ended because the stimulus checks Congress authorized him to send out were $600, while he much preferred $2,000. Such direct payments to the whole country were later, of course, denounced by many conservatives as inflationary, mostly when they were continued by a Democratic president and Congress in 2021 (Joe Biden, by the way, didn’t sign those checks, though he later joked that maybe he should have).
Trump’s desire for a $2,000 check he could take credit for survived his four years out of power. Early this year, he embraced an incredibly half-baked idea to give taxpayers a $5,000 “DOGE Dividend,” to reflect the vast savings that Elon Musk was then claiming he was going to generate from chainsawing federal agencies. Unfortunately, DOGE wasn’t saving much of anything at all, so people waiting for their $5,000 checks were disappointed.
The 47th president didn’t give up, though; he keeps looking for a big, fat cookie jar full of money he can gift to the great unwashed, particularly now that they are so stubbornly finding life in the economic paradise of Trump 2.0 less than affordable. His latest big idea is a “tariff dividend,” as broadcast by a Truth Social post on November 9, shortly after affordability-obsessed voters gave his party a spanking:
We are taking in Trillions of Dollars and will soon begin paying down our ENORMOUS DEBT, $37 Trillion. Record Investment in the USA, plants and factories going up all over the place. A dividend of at least $2000 a person (not including high income people!) will be paid to everyone
Much like the DOGE Dividend idea, the tariff dividend lollipop has some math problems, as was pointed out by those spoilsports at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget:
Assuming these dividends are designed like the COVID-era Economic Impact Payments, which went to both adults and children, we estimate each round of payments would cost about $600 billion. In comparison, President Trump’s new tariffs currently in effect have raised approximately $100 billion thus far and — including those tariffs that have been ruled illegal pending a Supreme Court appeal — are projected to raise about $300 billion per year.
That’s a good point about Trump counting — or in this case, vastly overcounting — his chickens before they hatch, given widespread expectations of an adverse judicial decision on the authority he cited for his tariffs. There are also reports that the administration plans to pursue major exemptions from the tariffs of food and other essentials in the very near term. On top of all that, the circular nature of this massive transfer of dollars is hard to ignore. If the dividends are supposed to offset the cost to consumers of tariffs (Trump doesn’t admit that exists, but anyone with basic economics credentials does), why not refrain from imposing those tariffs in the first place? It’s just a vast money-go-round.
The odds are vanishingly low that the “tariff dividends” are happening, of course. They would require congressional approval, including 60 votes in the Senate, and Democrats aren’t going to help Trump out of his self-imposed affordability problems. There’s also a chance that the administration is just going to rebrand tax proposals it has already made, some of which have already been enacted, hints Treasury secretary Scott Bessent:
“I haven’t spoken to the president about this yet, but the $2,000 dividend could come in lots of forms,” adding, “It could be just the tax decreases that we are seeing on the president’s agenda. You know, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on Social Security, deductibility of auto loans.”
So the president’s dreams of cash-on-the-barrel vote buying may have to be watered down and pushed into the future a bit. It’s very clear he won’t give up on the best of all economic messages: Here’s more money for you, courtesy of Donald J. Trump. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
Photo: Tom Brenner/The Washington Post via Getty Images
When I was a brand new prosecutor at the Southern District of New York, the office’s elite mob prosecutors tried John Gotti Jr. three times within a year. All three times, the jury hung. Throughout the doomed prosecutorial trilogy, I’d go over to the courtroom and watch bits of the trial, enthralled at the cinematic spectacle: witnesses named Mikey Scars and Little Joey, bugged social clubs, beefs and sitdowns and hits gone good and bad.
Prosecutors technically can re-try a case after a hung jury, but generally will stop after two tries, maybe three if there’s a compelling need. After the third Gotti trial resulted in a hung jury, the SNDY did the right thing and dismissed the indictment.
Three years later, federal prosecutors in Florida decided to give it another go. They indicted Gotti again, a fourth time, on charges that incorporated much of the SDNY’s original case but added a few wrinkles. By that point, I had become a supervisor in the organized crime unit, and we wanted no part of it. Long story short: Gotti successfully moved the case back up to the SDNY, it landed in my lap, we tried him again, and the jury hung again. After the trial ended, we spoke with the jurors. About half of them wanted to convict, and the other half thought he was guilty but objected to the serial prosecutions of the Gambino Family boss. “You can’t try the same guy four times. That’s just not fair,” one juror said to me.
This was my hard but vital lesson in jury nullification. Sometimes juries just tell prosecutors to screw off.
Jury nullification has a potent but largely unspoken role in our criminal justice process. Judges do not instruct jurors that they can disregard the actual evidence and reject a case for political or emotional or other extraneous reasons. But who can stop a jury from doing just that, after all? They don’t attach a “Statement of Reasons” to a verdict form; they simply check “Guilty” or “Not Guilty,” no explanation sought or given. Defense lawyers at times try to give jurors a little wink-and-nod, but prosecutors and judges aggressively police any suggestion of nullification.
Even though it’s not formally on the books, jury nullification has its role in our democracy. Just as the jury serves as a bulwark of liberty by determining whether a defendant’s guilt has been proved beyond a reasonable doubt, so too can a jury reject cases that might be technically valid but just too much bullshit, in the broader (non-technical) sense.
This is what’s happening now to Justice Department prosecutors in Washington D.C. and elsewhere. The contagion will spread as the DOJ systematically abuses its discretion and power.
Take, for example, Sean Dunn — the D.C. Subway sandwich thrower who was acquitted last week on charges of assaulting a federal officer. A grand jury had initially rejected felony charges, and prosecutors should’ve gotten the hint right there, given that grand juries apply a low burden of proof and typically will indict anything the prosecutor puts in front of them. (Not doing the ham sandwich joke — and it was salami, anyway.) Undeterred, prosecutors pressed on with a misdemeanor assault charge and took Dunn to trial. It didn’t go any better.
This feels ridiculous to declare out loud but here goes: The sandwich thrower was obviously guilty. He intentionally and angrily threw an object at a uniformed federal officer, and hit him. The problem, of course, is that the charges don’t pass what we at the SDNY used to call the straight-face test: If you can’t make the case without cracking a smile, it’s not worth bringing.
The D.C. jury apparently applied that test and came out with an acquittal, notwithstanding the prosecution’s valiant effort to paint the hurling of a footlong as a dangerous attack. The law enforcement agent testified that he “could feel it through his ballistic vest” and, in the tragic aftermath, he “could smell the onions and mustard” before finding an onion string hanging off his equipment, and a mustard stain on his shirt. Courtroom observers reportedly laughed, and the jury apparently did too with its verdict.
This is a developing trend. In the weeks after President Donald Trump deployed the National Guard in Washington D.C., various grand juries rejected proposed federal cases involving silly or sympathetic conduct and petty (potential) charges. One case involved verbal threats made by an intellectually disabled man who had consumed seven alcoholic beverages and politely thanked the officers who arrested him. In California, grand jurors rejected proposed indictments of anti-ICE protesters, while trial juries have returned at least two acquittals. And in Virginia, a grand jury voted down one of the proposed charges against James Comey, and barely approved the other two. (If either the Comey or Letitia James cases reach trial, don’t be surprised if jurors engage in a bit of nullification, given the political tone of those prosecutions.)
Part of the problem lies in the cases that the Justice Department has chosen to bring. But more fundamentally, this is about a loss of trust. Before the current Trump administration, it was exceedingly rare for federal judges to call out the truthfulness of DOJ prosecutors. Sure, judges routinely rebuke prosecutors and reject their arguments – I’ve been there – but typically impugn the prosecutor’s honesty only in the rarest circumstances.
But in a string of federal cases, judges have openly chided the DOJ for its overreach, its failure to comply with at least the spirit of judicial orders, and its tendency to not quite fully tell the truth. One federal judge in Maryland lambasted prosecutors for their conduct on the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case: “You have taken the presumption of regularity and you’ve destroyed it in my view.” A judge in Washington D.C. flayed prosecutors for flouting his orders in an immigration case, characterizing the government’s position as, “We don’t care, we’ll do what we want.” Another D.C.-based judge noted pointedly, “Trust that has been earned over generations has been lost in weeks.” A federal judge in Illinois determined that the government’s portrayal of violence in Chicago was “simply untrue.”
Trump presently faces little meaningful opposition to his agenda, and to his excesses. The Executive Branch has largely been purged of objectors (or even some who faithfully do their jobs). The Republican-controlled House and Senate provide no friction, while Democrats flail helplessly. And the Supreme Court generally (though not always) has gone Trump’s way on executive power.
One of the few remaining checks comes from the most humble of sources – the everyday civilians who get that dreaded notice in the mail and wind up serving on grand juries and trial juries. Other than voting, it’s the most basic, populist exercise of American democracy. As long as the Justice Department continues to play politics and undermine its own credibility, don’t expect the nullification trend to stop. As I learned years ago on the Gotti case, sometimes the people have simply had enough.
Here’s a brief overview of their friendship and falling out, and how Trump’s political career intersected with Epstein’s prosectuion.
1980s to early 2000s: Trump and Epstein are friends. They are spotted partying together on multiple occasions, Trump flies on Epstein’s private jets at least seven times, and his name and number appear in Epstein’s “little black book” (along with several Trump family members and many other famous and powerful figures).
2004: Trump and Epstein have a “falling out,” as the president put it years later. The cause may have been a real estate battle, but Trump has not confirmed this.
2006: After Florida police investigate multiple claims of Epstein sexually abusing underage girls, Epstein is indicted on just a single count of soliciting prostitution. Florida officials are accused of giving Epstein special treatment, and the FBI launches an investigation.
2008: Epstein pleads guilty to two state charges after striking a plea deal with the U.S. attorney in Miami, Alexander Acosta, to avoid federal prosecution (Acosta then served as Trump’s Labor secretary in his first term). Epstein is sentenced to 18 months in jail, but serves most of his sentence in a work-release program that lets him leave jail during the day.
July 6, 2019: Epstein is arrested on federal sex trafficking charges in New York. Acosta resigns from the Trump administration days later amid public outcry over his decision not to prosecute Epstein years earlier.
August 10, 2019: Epstein is found dead in his Manhattan jail cell. His death is ruled a suicide.
2024: Thousands of pages of court documents from an Epstein civil suit are unsealed, reviving interest in the case. Trump is mentioned multiple times, but the documents don’t reveal any incriminating information about him. During the 2024 campaign, Trump suggests he’ll declassify the federal government’s Epstein files if reelected.
February 2025: Attorney General Pam Bondi publicly teases the release of more Epstein files, suggesting in a Fox News interview that the “client list” is “sitting on my desk right now to review.” Days later, right-wing influencers are given binders of Epstein materials at the White house, which turn out to be previously released documents.
July 7, 2025: In an unsigned memo, the FBI and DOJ say that following an “exhaustive review” they have determined that there is no “client list,” and nothing in the Epstein files warrants further investigation. The memo presents a previously released jail surveillance video as proof that Epstein killed himself — but it’s missing a minute of footage. The memo says there will be no further Epstein document releases.
Adelita Grijalva, the 218th signatory on the Epstein Files Tranparency Act. Photo: Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call/Getty Images
This afternoon, Mike Johnson finally administered the oath of office to new Arizona Democratic congresswoman Adelita Grijalva. The Speaker held off this moment for well over a month under the guise of not wanting to do serious business while the government was shut down (the House wasn’t technically in recess, and Johnson had sworn in Republicans at similar moments earlier this year).
Grijalva won the seat vacated by her father’s death in a September 23 special election. Her delayed swearing-in was generally understood to have been attributable to her pledge to become the 218th signatory on a discharge petition to force a House vote on the Epstein Files Transparency Act, a piece of legislation co-sponsored by Republican Thomas Massie and Democrat Ro Khanna that the White House would love to consign to the bottom of the sea. It would force the release of whatever the Justice Department has on the late sexual predator and his associates.
Grijalva has now signed the petition, and last-minute efforts by Trump himself to get one or more of the four Republicans on the petition to withdraw their names failed. So this triggers a process that Johnson can only do so much to delay. Politico explains:
The completion of the discharge petition, a rarely used mechanism to sidestep the majority party leadership, will trigger a countdown for the bill to hit the House floor. It will still take seven legislative days for the petition to ripen, after which Johnson will have two legislative days to schedule a vote. Senior Republican and Democratic aides estimate a floor vote will come the first week of December, after the Thanksgiving recess.
The Speaker may be able to play some games in how the House votes on the Epstein-files bill via his control of the Rules Committee, which will deal with possible amendments and all sorts of timing issues. But the whole point of a discharge petition is to tie leadership’s hands, which is why it’s used so rarely.
If it passes, it would create some interesting issues in the Senate, which will be soon be setting up some sort of vote on extending Obamacare premium subsidies, as promised by John Thune as part of the deal to reopen the federal government. High drama on two issues in the same time frame will be a moment of political peril for Republicans. They will likely display some of their most unpopular prejudices: indifference to the plight of Americans facing much higher health-care costs and a protective attitude toward Donald Trump and his possible implication with really bad stuff in the Epstein files.
It’s unclear what the Senate would do with the Epstein Files bill. Administration allies could filibuster it and block it with 41 votes, though that would be a bit ironic given Trump’s own recent attacks on the filibuster itself. Still, even if both chambers pass the legislation, Trump would have to sign it, which isn’t happening.
As votes are teed up in House or Senate, there will be competitive leaks of Epstein-files material by each party (such as the Epstein emails mentioning Trump that House Oversight Committee Democrats released today) either showing there’s smoke and fire or that it’s all a nothingburger. The White House and its congressional allies cannot be too heavy-handed in dismissing demands for more disclosure given the longtime importance of Epstein in various MAGA conspiracy theories. And even if Republicans can minimize disclosure, it’s not going to be helpful to their midterm election prospects to have these issues being broadly and actively discussed in 2026. So they will likely handle the Massie-Khanna bill with fire tongs and try to dispose of it as quickly as they can.
Donald Trump’s Jeffrey Epstein problem came roaring back to life on Wednesday, when members of the House released 23,000 pages of documents from the late sex offender’s estate.
House Democrats released three emails that suggested Trump knew all about Epstein’s sex trafficking, though he’s always denied any knowledge of his former friend’s crimes. An email Epstein sent to journalist Michael Wolff in 2019 said of Trump, “Of course he knew about the girls as he asked Ghislaine to stop.” In another 2011 email to his accomplice Ghislane Maxwell, Epstein claimed Trump “spent hours at my house” with one of the sex trafficking victims.
Here’s a roundup, which we’ll keep updated, on the big bombshells, wild accusations, and embarrassing chatter in the new trove of Epstein emails.
In an email sent to Maxwell in April 2011, Epstein wrote, “i want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is trump.. [REDACTED VICTIM] spent hours at my house with him ,, he has never once been mentioned. police chief. etc. im 75 % there”
Maxwell replied, “I have been thinking about that…”
Photo: House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
At the time Trump was a reality TV star and businessman, not a politician. As the New York Timesreported, around this time “Epstein was emailing staff members about negative press coverage he had recently received about the abuse that took place inside his home in Florida.”
In a January 2019 email to Wolff, which was partly redacted, Epstein mentioned Mar-a-Lago, then said, “trump said he asked me to resign, never a member ever,” adding, “of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislane to stop.”
Photo: House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
In the months prior to this email Wolff had authored a book about Trump and the Miami Herald had published a series of reports on the lenient 2008 plea deal Epstein struck with federal prosecutors in Florida. In the summer of 2019, Epstein was arrested on federal sex trafficking charges and died in a Manhattan prison weeks later.
On December 15, 2015, the night of a GOP presidential primary debate, Wolff told Epstein that he’d heard CNN was “planning to ask Trump tonight about his relationship with you — either on air or in scrum afterwards.”
Epstein replied, “If we were able to craft an answer for him, what do you think it should be?”
Wolff suggested Epstein should “let him hang himself.” “If he says he hasn’t been on the plane or to the house, then that gives you a valuable P.R. and political currency” he wrote, saying that could later be used to “hang” Trump later, or “save him, generating a debt.”
Trump was not asked about Epstein during the debate; it’s unclear if he was asked about him later that night.
Photo: House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
In April 2016, a Reuters reporter reached out to Epstein attorney Martin Weinberg for comment on a story about a woman, who went by the pseudonym Katie Johnson, who had filed a lawsuit accusing Epstein and Trump of raping her in 1994, when she was 13.
Epstein forward the exchange to Michael Wolff with the note “here we go.” Wolff replied, “Well, I guess if there’s anybody who can wave thus [sic] away, it’s Donald. Let me know if there’s anything I can do.”
Epstein then denied the allegation, saying “no, obviously someone who is deranged, but lets see, it will be released by reuters this afternoon supposedly.”
(Johnson filed three suits over the same rape allegation; two were dismissed and then she withdrew the third case days before the 2016 election. As Vox noted at the time, the circumstances around the cases were bizarre.)
In a December 2015 email to Landon Thomas Jr., who was then a reporter at Times, Epstein claimed Trump was so distracted by the women that he almost walked into a glass door.
“Read the [BuzzFeed article] re my airplane logs and hawaiian tropic contest,” Epstein wrote. “Have them ask my houseman about donald almost walking through the door leaving his nose print on the glass as young women were swimming in the pool and he was so focused he walked straight into the door.”
In another December 2015 exchange, Landon Thomas Jr. pointed to a quote from his 2002 profile of Epstein for New York Magazine, saying that now everyone thinks he has “juicy info on you and Trump.”
Epstein replied, “would you like photso [sic] of donald and girls in bikinis in my kitchen.” Thomas answers, “Yes!!!”
The journalist then seemed to urge Epstein to go public about his relationship with Trump, highlighting a statement from the Trump campaign to BuzzFeed denying their connection. “I am serious man – for the good of the nation why not try to get some of this out there. I would not do it myself, but would pass on to a political reporter.”
Epstein replied with a link to an article about Norwegian heiress and businesswoman Celina Midelfart, with the comment, ” my 20 year old girlfriend in 93, that after two years i gave to donald.”
In September 2017, Landon Thomas Jr. warned Epstein that John Connolly was “digging around again” for a project about him. Earlier that year Connolly, investigative journalist and former NYPD detective, published the book Filthy Rich: The Shocking True Story of Jeffrey Epstein — The Billionaire’s Sex Scandal with co-author James Patterson.
While discussing a 2018 New York Timesopinion piece about Trump’s first impeachment with Kathy Ruemmler, former White House counsel to President Obama, Epstein said, “you see, i know how dirty donald is. my guess is that non lawyers ny biz people have no idea. what it means to have your fixer flip.”
In December 2018, Epstein compared Trump to a mafia don in identical messages sent to Kathy Ruemmler and his attorney Reid Weingarten.
He said, “you might want to tell your dem friends that treating Trump like a mafia don, ignores the fact that he has great dangerous power. tightening the noose too slowly , risks a very bad situation. gambino was never the commander in chief. there was little gambino could do as the walls closed in not so with this maniac.”
Weingarten agreed, saying Trump was starting to “behave very erratically.”
Epstein responded, “borderline insane. and corroborated by some that are close.”
In a 2017 email to Epstein, the former Treasury secretary and Harvard president made a joke about women being stupid, predicted President Trump’s “world will collapse,” then lamented, “I’m trying to figure out why American elite think if u murder your baby by beating and abandonment it must be irrelevant to your admission to Harvard, but hit on a few women 10 years ago you can’t work at a network or think tank.”
In another 2017 email to Larry Summers, Epstein said, “recall ive told you ,, – i have ment some very bad people ,, none as bad as trump. not one decent cell in his body.. so yes-dangerous.”
About a month before Trump met with Russian leader Vladimir Putin in 2018, Epstein suggested that Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, should talk to him for insight into Trump.
“I think you might suggest to putin that lavrov can get insight on talking to me,” Epstein told Thorbjorn Jagland, a former prime minister of Norway who was leading the Council of Europe at the time, per Politico.
Epstein claimed he’d previously advised Vitaly Churkin, Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations, who died in 2017.
“Churkin was great,” Epstein wrote. “He understood trump after our conversations. it is not complex. he must be seen to get something its that simple.”
On July 16, 2018, the day Trump met with Putin, Larry Summers asked Epstein, “Do the Russians have stuff on Trump?,” adding “Today was appalling even by his standards.”
Epstein replied, “Not that i know. I would doubt it. He was totally predictable!! Not sure why it is not obvious, can explain on the phone.”
In another email, Epstein said his email was full of similar complaints about Trump’s meeting with Putin.
“I’m sure his view is that it went super well,” he told Summers. “he thinks he has charmed his adversary. Admittedly he has no idea of symbolism. He has no idea of most things.”
In response to a question about voters in last week’s elections citing the economy as their top concern, Trump floated a conspiracy theory about Democrats feeding negative talking points to every major news network. His evidence: Nobody uses the archaic word manufactured anymore!
“More than anything else, it’s a con job by the Democrats,” Trump said. “You know they put out something, ‘Say today, costs are up.’ They feed it to the anchors of ABC, CBS, NBC, and a lot of other, you know, CNN, etc. And it’s like a standard. I’ll never forget, they used a word like manufactured. Remember the word manufactured? ‘It’s a manufactured economy!’ Nobody uses that word. Every anchor broke in, manufactured. They do exactly what they say. It’s such a rigged system.”
The president insisted that, contrary to what you might have heard or experienced firsthand, “costs are way down.”
Later in the interview, he dismissed voters’ economic concerns for an entirely different reason. Americans aren’t worried about the cost of living because they’re falling victim to a fake-news “con job,” they’re actually happy with the economy, but the “polls are fake.”
He’s going to dominate the midterms just like he dominates his party. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
While presidents are always a dominant influence over the political parties they lead, that sway tends to fade toward the end of their tenures if they serve two terms. This is why they are typically called “lame ducks” at some point after being reelected. But Donald Trump is already well past the usual sell-by date because he has been his party’s presidential nominee three times. The prior politician with such an extended hold on a major party was Richard Nixon (nominated and defeated in 1960, elected in 1968, and reelected in 1972). Though Nixon won his last race in 1972 by a huge landslide, that didn’t turn out well for Republicans (Nixon resigned in 1974, and the GOP subsequently lost the White House).
At the moment, Trump seems to be defying the lame-duck precedent. No president has ever had a more dominant position in his own party, having crushed all intraparty dissent in his triumphant 2024 reelection campaign and then reduced the usually proud congressional leaders of the GOP to the status of loyal satraps. Whatever their private misgivings, all Republicans publicly sing his praises. And the most frequently uttered excuse for the major Republican underperformance in the off-year elections on November 4 was that Trump wasn’t on the ballot to bring those low-propensity voters who tilted his way in 2024 back to the polls.
The problem now, of course, is that Trump won’t be on the ballot in the 2026 midterm elections, either. So if the key to victory is to turn out every single pro-Trump voter, that would mean making the midterms even more of a referendum on the incumbent president than it will be in any case. That would certainly be Trump’s preference, of course; the Sun King always believes he is the source of all radiance. Unfortunately, as his steadily eroding job-approval ratings show, his agenda is not very popular. And when it comes to his administration’s greatest weakness, a perceived inability to reduce living costs, his current prescription seems to be to claim things are better than they appear, as the Associated Press reports:
President Donald Trump took a victory lap on the economy on the one-year anniversary of his successful election, boasting of cheaper prices and saying the U.S. is the envy of the globe even while the Republican Party faced a rebuke from voters anxious about their own finances in Tuesday’s off-year elections.
Trump, speaking Wednesday at the America Business Forum, said he thinks that communication was the problem, insisting that “we have the greatest economy right now” and that “a lot of people don’t see that.”
“These are the things you have to talk about,” Trump told a packed arena at Miami’s Kaseya Center that included top business executives, global athletes and political leaders. “If people don’t talk about them, then you can do not so well in elections.”
This, too, was the economic-messaging strategy of Joe Biden for much of his term in office, and it rather clearly did not work. It’s true that owning the status quo and treating it as threatened by the nefarious opposition is a way to mobilize already-loyal base voters. But it’s a bad idea if swing voters aren’t happy, and they definitely aren’t happy now. So looking ahead to the midterms, Republicans have a classic base voter–swing voter dilemma that won’t resolve itself.
Perhaps swing-voter-sensitive Republicans can convince their leader to modify his policies and priorities to make them more generally popular. But Trump is not exactly renowned for taking advice, particularly if that means admitting error. And for his entire career, he has pursued a base-in, rather than a center-out, political strategy, counting on polarization to put him in a position to win with superior voter mobilization and the mistakes of his opponents.
If Republicans decide on yet another MAGA messaging extravaganza with Trump at the center as always, then the one thing we know for sure is that the GOP’s persuasion strategy for swing voters will be strictly negative. If you cannot occupy the political center, you try to push the other party out of the center by regular assertion that it is extremist. Trump is without question a master of this tactic, and we’re already seeing him warming up for 2026 by calling Zohran Mamdani a communist and treating the entire “radical left” Democratic Party as beyond the pale. One question Republicans will have to answer, however, is whether key elements of the electorate will get tired of polarization theater and finger their president as the main perpetrator. Any way you slice it, though, he will not get out of the spotlight until his political career has ended, if then. And that’s a problem for the GOP.
Flags are flown at half-staff at the White House on November 4 for Dick Cheney. Photo: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
Dick Cheney, the “War on Terror” architect turned Donald Trump critic, is a divisive figure among both Democrats and Republicans. But he was vice-president for eight years and an influential figure in American politics. So following the news that Cheney died on Monday at the age of 84, many top Republicans found ways to pay tribute to him.
“Scripture is very clear: We give honor where honor is due,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson at his daily press conference. “The honor is certainly due to him.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune said, “Dick Cheney was a lifelong public servant who believed very deeply in our country and brought his considerable knowledge and intelligence to its service.”
Around midday on Tuesday, the White House said flags should fly at half-staff for Cheney. As the AP explained, a statement on the VP would usually precede the order to lower flags:
An announcement or the issuance of a proclamation generally happens before the flags are lowered, but the White House did so without advance notice on Tuesday.
Press office aides confirmed the flags had been lowered in remembrance of the Republican former vice president.
But as of Friday the White House still hasn’t issued an official statement on Cheney, and Trump hasn’t shared any condolences.
Lest anyone think President Trump was simply too busy to say anything on the death of a giant in conservative politics, he posted on Truth Social seven times on Tuesday morning. In addition to sharing some more typical thoughts on various topics before voters this Election Day, Trump insulted Jewish Zohran Mamdani supporters:
He threatened to withhold SNAP benefits until after the government reopens:
When asked at her daily briefing on Tuesday if the president has spoken to anyone in the Cheney family or has any thoughts on funeral arrangements, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt gave a brutal response.
“I don’t believe the White House is involved in that planning, or at least hasn’t gotten to it yet,” she said. “I know the president is aware of the former vice president’s passing, and as you saw, flags have been lowered to half staff in according to a statutory law.”
Cheney’s funeral will be held at 11 a.m. ET on Thursday, November 20 at the Washington National Cathedral. It’s still unclear if Cheney will lie in state. Thune stalled when asked about arrangement for the former VP on Tuesday, as The Hillreported:
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said that Republican leadership staff is reviewing “protocol” about the possibility of former Vice President Dick Cheney lying in state in the Capitol Rotunda.
“I think we’re checking the protocols on that. I’ll let you know soon,” Thune told reporters Tuesday when asked about honoring the vice president by placing his flag-draped casket at the center of the rotunda, an honor usually reserved for former presidents.
It’s no surprise the White House has nothing to say on Cheney’s passing. In addition to being the father of top Trump antagonist Liz Cheney, the former VP was vocal about his opposition to the president in his final years. In an ad for Liz Cheney’s unsuccessful effort to fight off a primary challenge from a MAGA candidate in 2022, Dick Cheney looked right into the camera and called Trump a threat to the nation.
“In our nation’s 246-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our Republic than Donald Trump,” he said.
As we’ve seen time and again, Trump doesn’t let even death get in the way of a good grudge.
