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The Felon Slides Into His Lame-Duck Era

The Felon has started making comments that the mid-term elections were "rigged."  Some voices on the right called him out on the lie and stated the obvious: the GOP losses were so massive and so spread across the country that it would have been impossible to have rigged the results. Indeed, the Felon is facing a new world where like it or not he is becoming a lame duck.  Deference from Republicans is seemingly weakening and Thomas Massie, an out-going Republican who lost his primary when he was targeted by the Felon has introduced articles of impeachment against Pete Hegseth and guaranteed that either now or in the new Congress convening in January there will be a public examination of Hegseth's failed war plans in the Middle East that led to the destruction of American bases, 23 servicemembers being killed and hundreds more wounded. Incredibly, the Felon continues to claim victory and even claimed that no servicemembers had been lost - an obvious bald faced lie. Then there's appointment of Josef Goebbels like Stephan Miller as chief of state suggesting there will be no let up in horrific deportation operations that pushed Latino voters into the Democrats' arms. The next two years will likely not be pretty as the new Congress launches investigations of the Felons failed policies and his shocking corruption and self-enrichment.  A piece at The Atlantic looks at this new reality:

When [the Felon] President Trump posted on Saturday that he’d asked Dana White, the head of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, to be the new White House press secretary, it felt like a callback to the freewheeling first-term Trump.

“I am pleased to announce that the Great Dana White, a violent Fighter and Warrior, has been offered the job of Press Secretary of the United States,” . . . By weekend’s end, the possibility of the appointment had dissolved, though not without a subplot of speculation that Trump was confusing the impresario with another Dana White who had actually served as a Pentagon spokesperson during his first term. CNN reported that White had declined, and last night, Trump told reporters he never meant it anyway. “I was only kidding, but Dana loves the idea,” he said.

Perhaps. Trump has a long record of launching outlandish ideas and then playing them off as jokes when they don’t work out. If it was all a jape, then the weak stab at humor seems to underestimate the electorate’s frustration with his antics. If he was serious and got rejected, it’s even worse. . . . . “Donald J. Trump is now officially, thoroughly a lame duck.” Now we’re getting a glimpse of what that looks like in practice.

Start with the cool reception that Trump’s elevation of Stephen Miller to White House chief of staff received among Republicans. Representative Marlin Stutzman called it a “horrible decision.” Another legislator told Fox News that his reaction was “utter disbelief.” When a Politico reporter informed one member of the choice, they replied, “Please tell me you’re lying to me right now, just to get a reaction.” . . . . but whether or not they acquiesce with the president matters less now that the GOP is so outnumbered in Congress.

One test of where House Republicans actually stand will come this week. Thomas Massie, a renegade GOP member who Trump helped defeat in a primary earlier this year, refiled articles of impeachment against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth today. Although Speaker Mike Johnson (speaking of lame ducks) had temporarily stymied Massie’s impeachment efforts in September by sending members home until after the midterms, the House is now back in session. Rounding up enough Republican votes to move the articles forward will be difficult but not impossible; a significant number of GOP members lost their seats last week, including many of the more moderate representatives, which means they are less in Trump’s thrall. Assuming that Hegseth is not impeached this month, it seems all but inevitable once Democrats take over. This weekend, presumptive Speaker Hakeem Jeffries said he’s a “hard yes” on impeachment.

Republicans’ losses have produced infighting elsewhere in the party too. As Miller moves to take over, fallout from his predecessor Susie Wiles’s tenure continues.

One person in particular left somewhat unmoored by the results is Vice President Vance, who built his entire profile on closeness to a politician whose toxicity is now made plain. In a long post-election X post, Vance pinned the midterm defeat on the Iran war. . . . But Trump does not seem inclined to cooperate. For one thing, he continues to defend the war. On 60 Minutes last night, he acknowledged the political fallout but said, “I think, historically, this will be a very good decision. Is it a good decision for today and tomorrow? Maybe not.” Speaking with reporters last night, he once again declared victory in the unresolved war with Iran and then claimed, falsely and callously, that “we haven’t lost anybody. No soldiers.”

At other times, though, Trump has sounded unusually chastened since Election Day. He told The New York Times that he looks forward to working with the Democrats. He also acknowledged on 60 Minutes that his deportation policy, which “might be too tough,” could explain the GOP’s shellacking. “I think I got an A-plus for closing up the border,” he said, “but I get hurt because we also took people that had good jobs, that created one violation, or breaking of the law, and that was that they came into the country illegally.” A deescalation on immigration enforcement seems unlikely with Miller as chief of staff, given his role in implementing that policy, but the fact that Trump was willing to offer conciliatory remarks suggests that he is beginning to recognize the challenges of life as a lame duck.

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2028 Is Going to Be Even Worse for Republicans?

The shock waves for last weeks blue tsunami continue to reverberate even as the Felon disclaims any responsibility for the election debacle and most congressional Republicans refuse to lay blame on the Felon and/or undo the policies the Felon implemented that fueled the revolt by voters in the first place.  Even JD Vance who  is struggling to reinvent himself in anticipation of 2028 a a presidential run and is asking everyone to ignore his role as cheerleader for the Felon's failed policies, is only willing to say that the Iran war was a causation while ignoring the Felon's cruel and deliberately inhumane deportation policy, shocking corruption, and the horrific "big beautiful bill."  Vance is not the only would be 2028 Republican presidential candidate that will have a difficult time recasting themself as a vote worthy candidate in two years.  With Rep. Massie introducing his impeachment resolution today against Pete Hegseth, more details of Republican misrule and likely war crimes will be coming.  Added to this is the Felon's selection of Stephen Miller - the architect of the anti-immigrant brutality - which will likely add more ICE outrages to the public consciousness and Hispanic voter revulsion. And then there's the reality that NONE of the Republican presidential candidates did anything to stop the Felon's excesses, self-enrichment and shocking corruption. A piece in the New Republic looks at the 2028 election cycle:

If you’re looking for evidence that the right isn’t sure how to respond to the Republican Party’s historic collapse in Tuesday’s midterm elections, you could do worse than a graphic Fox News host Laura Ingraham blasted to her audience on Thursday. . . . She and her fellow Republicans have suffered a collective shellshock from the worst midterm defeat since Watergate. President Trump only wants to talk about his tacky building projects. Vice President JD Vance is nakedly trying to salvage his own presidential ambitions by throwing everyone else under the bus. Racist goon Stephen Miller is the new chief-of-staff. It’s a terrible time to be a Republican, and it will only get worse. All you can do is lash out.

If you want the full picture of Republican panic, however, you’ve got to look at another Fox graphic, this one built out of a tweet from former speaker of the House—and architect of the GOP’s 1994 midterm massacre of the Democrats—Newt Gingrich. . . .  It’s worth examining Gingrich’s thinking. Yes, he is a fossil. But he has managed to remain a consummate Republican politician in his semi-retirement, and his wife, airbrushing enthusiast Callista Gingrich, is Trump’s ambassador to Lichtenstein. Gingrich led one revolution in the 1990s and survived another. He knows his party. He also knows his party’s in trouble.

Gingrich doesn’t quite stick a knife into Vance, but he comes as close as he can. He shrugs off the vice president’s weaselly attempt to avoid blame for Iran, which is fair enough: As vice president of an administration overseeing that war, it is going to be very hard for Vance not to be saddled with the political and economic fallout, which will likely extend until 2028. Gingrich goes further, though, blaming Vance for defending Vivek Ramaswamy’s disgusting, failed gubernatorial bid in Ohio—essentially saying Vance not only has lousy instincts, but is a bad person too: “A good bit of the luster has come off the bloom.”

Well, what about the luster of the other blooms? It’s clear that Gingrich is eyeing Secretary of State Marco Rubio as a safer and more competent successor, writing, “The number of people who want to draft [him] is staggering.” This may be true, but it’s also absurd, given that Gingrich has already (rightly) acknowledged just how important a role the Iran War played in the GOP’s midterm meltdown. Rubio is arguably the third most prominent public face of that war, ahead of JD Vance and behind Trump and...

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who is also, absurdly, included in Gingrich’s list. For one thing, Hegseth is the most likely fall guy for the administration if two scalps are deemed necessary after Tuesday’s defeats (Chief of Staff Susie Wiles was cut loose on Friday, in favor of Stephen Miller). His department has been embroiled in more controversies than any other during this administration—some of which of unfathomably stupid, like his imposition of grooming standards, and others that are unfathomably horrific, like the extrajudicial killing of suspected drug runners in the Caribbean. . . . he’s fit to start culture wars, not oversee actual wars. He also has a wealth of personal problems, including infidelity and allegations of substance abuse.

There have been rumors that if Hegseth gets dumped from the Pentagon, the administration could try to save face by getting him appointed to replace Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn, should she retire. But if you look at Tuesday’s blue wave, it would be hard to feel confident about Hegseth’s chances of holding that seat. If a Republican would struggle to win a statewide election in Tennessee, could you really count on them winning a presidential election?

Looking outside the administration, the options are hardly any better. Trump humiliated Ted Cruz in the presidential primary in 2016, running the simplest attack one can against the Texas senator: Nobody likes him. (Cruz may have another issue: He has four years left in his term runs. So if he were to somehow win the presidency in two years, then Democratic Governor Gina Hinojosa would be able to appoint his replacement. From there, it may get even worse. Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton has the charisma of one of those 12-foot Home Depot skeletons (and kind of looks like one, too). Former Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin is slightly less stiff, but it’s hard to see his gee-whiz vibes—not to mention his relative moderation—gaining traction in a Republican primary. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis looked like the natural successor a few years ago, but Trump hates him for trying to run against him in the 2024 primary, and there’s little reason to believe that the bad blood between them has gotten any better. It’s hard to imagine him winning a Republican primary while Trump is still kicking.

And that gets to the biggest problem, which Gingrich doesn’t mention: Donald Trump. He will exert a huge amount of influence over whom the Republicans chooses as his successor—not only because he will still be president, and thus remain the party’s leader, but he will also likely wield a massive war chest that Republican presidential hopefuls will fight over like children scrapping in the dirty for candy after the piñata pops. Republicans are delusional right now if they think they can turn the page. Gingrich’s list of possibilities is so pathetic in part because it bows to this reality, without explicitly saying so.

It’s possible, of course, that another charismatic outsider could emerge and win the day. But Trump had been sniffing around the GOP presidential nomination for years before 2016—there’s no one out there like that now. Even if there were, it would be hard to believe that after more than a decade of the Trump show, anyone would vote for a reboot of it.

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Americans Want to Move on From Trump: He's Not Listening

 In the lead up to last week's mid-term elections, the Felon repeatedly told crowds to vote as if he was on the ballot.  Voters all across the country listened to that directive and voted for Democrats up and down the ballot, both to protest the Felon's Nero like rule and, just as importantly, to punish Republicans voters viewed as the Felon's enablers and/or accomplices. The result was a generational defeat for Republicans and victories for Democrats in places once never thought possible even six months ago.  The message to anyone not delusional is that the majority of Americans want the country to return to the rule of law, ICE thugs to be removed from the nation's streets, programs restored that were cut to fund tax cuts for the super wealthy, and the Felon restrained and his corruption and lawlessness stopped.  In true malignant narcissist form, the Felon has denied any responsibility even as many in the GOP who survived the electoral debacle want a course change as the GOP faces a likely far more difficult 2028.  By appointing Stephen Miller - the architect of the Felon's cruel and inhumane deportation push - as his chief of staff, the Felon has signaled that he intends double down on the very policies that voters strongly rejected.  Where this leaves Republicans seeking to move forward and rebuild in preparation for 2028 is not enviable.  A piece in The New Yorker looks at the election defeat and the lesson the Felon is ignoring:

Two generations ago, in the fall of 1974, President Gerald Ford and the Republican Party approached the midterm elections with considerable dread. That August, Richard Nixon had learned that he could no longer outrun his crimes in the White House. One tape recording in particular, the so-called smoking gun, proved that he had conspired with his aide H. R. Haldeman to obstruct the investigation into the Watergate break-in. The Republican elders Barry Goldwater, John Rhodes, and Hugh Scott told Nixon that impeachment in the House of Representatives was now certain, and conviction in the Senate likely. Nixon resigned, handing over his office to Vice-President Ford. A month later, Ford issued Proclamation 4311, pardoning Nixon for any crimes that he might have committed as President.

Until then, despite a dreadful economy, Ford had enjoyed approval ratings as high as seventy per cent. But the Nixon pardon was political poison, for both Ford and the G.O.P. His popularity plummeted by more than twenty points. And, in the midterms, the Democrats gained forty-nine seats in the House and four seats in the Senate.

This week, some commentators, having exhausted the usual marine metaphors for midterm blowouts (a “blue wave” quickly became a “blue tsunami”), scurried to find historical points of comparison for the astonishing nationwide triumph of the Democratic Party. More than a few settled on the post-pardon midterms of 1974.

In sheer magnitude, this week’s Democratic victory—a sweeping repudiation, above all, of Donald Trump and the low, dishonest decade he has defined—makes the post-Watergate humbling seem modest. Both houses of Congress flipped, giving Democrats a substantial majority in each. The new Senate Majority Leader needn’t worry if, say, John Fetterman strolls across party lines. Nine of the ten most populous states will have Democratic governors. For those already anticipating the Presidential race in 2028, it’s significant that all the traditional battleground states (which Trump won just two years ago) have elected Democratic governors. The Party scored in unlikely places, particularly in the Midwest and the South. Texas, the second most populous state in the Union and reliably red for a generation, will have a Democratic senator (James Talarico), governor (Gina Hinojosa), and state House. Kansas—seriously, Kansas—elected a Democrat to the Senate for the first time in ninety-four years. Democrats also chalked up amazing wins in both Carolinas. The geographic shift was as pronounced as the demographic one.

The diversity of “firsts” was heartening. The first Muslim in the Senate: Abdul El-Sayed, of Michigan. The first Black female governor: Keisha Lance Bottoms, in Georgia. The first Latino governors to be elected in Texas (Hinojosa) and California (Xavier Becerra). New Mexico will have the first female Native American governor (Deb Haaland), and Minnesota will send the first Native American woman ever to the Senate (Peggy Flanagan). Even the near-misses were stunners. . . . . This all happened after years in which the President and the Vice-President have deployed racist epithets, jokes, and myths.

The scale of the victory left no room for Trump to contrive a conspiracy theory and challenge the outcome. On Election Night, he was, by his perverse standards, gracious. He blamed Fox News for the Republican losses, “by constantly and consistently putting on the Dumocrat opposition.” Separately, he claimed, “I wasn’t on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!” #Classic.

The results were driven by the most urgent economic concerns of the voters: the spike in fuel prices, which followed the misbegotten tariffs and the war in Iran; the high cost of groceries, housing, and health care; and, for some, anxiety about data centers, artificial intelligence, and what all this portends for employment. But what is so striking about Trump’s second term is that he entered office intent, it now seems, on flaunting his cynicism, his greed, and his scorn for the American people. It was as if he actually meant to squander his support as quickly as possible. How else to explain the heedlessness of his behavior in office? On Day One, he gave pride of place at the Inauguration to a lineup of moguls who had agreed to bow to his power and his ego. . . . As in any tin-pot autocracy, this was the price of doing business. Trump’s populism was always a fraud. Now he plainly didn’t care who knew.

Trump has shown contempt for the law, as he hollowed out the Department of Justice and ordered federal agents to menace American cities from New York to Minneapolis to Los Angeles. He has shown contempt for culture and education, as he threatened and defunded one invaluable institution after another. He has shown contempt for competence, by stocking his Administration with preposterous, often odious, fourth-raters: Pete Hegseth, Kash Patel, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Kristi Noem, Stephen Miller

Abroad, Trump’s contempt for restraints on his power has been equally conspicuous. The United States’ closest allies found themselves coping with his arbitrary tariffs, his threats to shatter alliances, and his periodic intimations of invasion.

The most consequential result of the midterms has been to break the fever of Trumpism and to diminish its threat to democratic institutions, to personal and civil liberties, and to decency itself. Trump’s unique brand of lurid authoritarianism has finally lost appeal, and he has lost the plot. The election was also a vindication for those who had refused to submit. We are all too familiar by now with the many politicians, law partners, billionaires, C.E.O.s, university presidents, and others who cowered before Trump. Part of the reason we will survive the Trump era is that many more did their work honorably. Judges, civil-rights lawyers, academics, election officials, curators, artists, and countless ordinary citizens stood up. Their resistance to Trump’s bullying, corruption, and heartlessness has gained new political force.

This is a moment of enormous relief and celebration. Trump can still do damage, and, in defeat, may prove even more unhinged and vengeful. But restraints in Congress and beyond are now far stronger. This aging autocrat, repudiated by an electorate he once believed to be under his spell, has been significantly weakened.

The next Congress will succeed not through an obsession with retribution and punishment but by delivering on the myriad hopes and demands of the voters who elected its members. The Democrats of 2026 have won an extraordinary opportunity. What they make of it will determine what this election means. 

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