Pensito Illustration It’s been six months and still the Dems don’t understand
What happened in the election and how the disaster began.
Their ideas so far have been anemic,
But now they’re going psychologic
With SAM — short for “Speaking with American Men: A Strategic Plan.”
Trump lying about genocide in South Africa by showing photos from a rebel attack in the Congo
Racism and lying in the Oval. Having been subjected to the Trump clown show for too long, we all knew he had to be lying about the purported white genocide in South Africa. Now fact checkers at Reuters have uncovered the truth. “Trump’s image of dead ‘white farmers’ came from Reuters footage in Congo, not South Africa.” Trump ambushed South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in the office with photos of people handling body bags. He claimed the bodies in the bags were farmers who were massacred because they were white. In fact, Reuters learned, the photos showed humanitarian workers with bodies of victims of M23 rebels in the Congolese city of Goma in February 2025.
Best at being worst. Whether Trump will best presidents Andrew Johnson and James Buchanan to become the worst president in U.S. history remains to be seen. But four months into his second term, Trump takes the prize as the most brazenly corrupt chief executive the country has yet to produce.
According to Huffpost, “Trump is taking his efforts to use his office for personal enrichment — the very definition of corruption — selling face time to those who put money into his bank account by purchasing nearly $200 million worth of his branded souvenir crypto coins. Just four investors in the $TRUMP coin grift collectively own 2.7 million coins, worth a total of $38.3 million, based on the $14 price per coin that day.
In past presidencies, especially during the Warren G. Harding administration, the thieves were in the cabinet or the lower ranks. The current level of corruption is unprecedented, Heather Cox Richardson, a Boston College historian, tells HuffPost. “Interestingly,” she says, “the real financial corruption in an administration is around the president, not usually the president himself.”
It’s not ‘deporting.’ In the latest outrageous act of kidnapping people and renditioning them to foreign sites, Trump goon squads have seized Vietnamese and Burmese migrants and flown them to South Sudan, violating a court order in the process and likely committing criminal contempt.
Everybody hates Elon. Trump’s circle is not holding back about their heart-felt dislike for former Pres. Elon Musk. From The New Republic:
Musk’s unceremonious exit from government followed widespread reports that several senior Trump officials practically hated the tech billionaire, finding him abrasive, unfunny, and pompous — with some describing Musk as the “most irritating person” they’d “ever had to deal with.”
“I have been in the same room with Elon, and he always tries to be funny. And he’s not funny. Like, at all,” a senior Trump official told Rolling Stone last month. “He makes these jokes and little asides and smiles and then looks almost hurt if you don’t lap up his humor. I keep using the word ‘annoying’; a lot of people who have to deal with him do. But the word doesn’t do the situation justice. Elon just thinks he’s smarter than everyone else in the room and acts like it, even when it’s clear he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
No, you’re out of control. Reacting to the nearly 40 nationwide injunctions against the administration in the past four months, Trump’s solicitor general, John Sauer, complained to the U.S. Supreme Court last week that the federal judiciary is out of control. “But another explanation is also available,” Adam Server, writing in “Trump Is Tired of Courts Telling Him He’s Breaking the Law,” in The Atlantic. “An out-of-control executive who ignores constitutional restraints on his authority also results in a lot of injunctions. Even accepting the premise that there are too many nationwide injunctions, executive—not judicial—overreach seems like the actual problem here.”
Pensito Illustration What’s small and round and piles up until you have too many?
Don’t worry, the U.S. Mint has a plan to ensure there aren’t any.
It’s bought its last copper blanks,
Which’ll save $56 million, so thanks!
Next they’re gunning for the nickel after killing off the penny.
Grifting for the grifter: Ed Martin stoking the 2020 insurrection
Fascist Idiocrat spotlight: Yale fascism expert Timothy Snyder puts Trump’s recently demoted U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia in the spotlight:
Ed Martin is a major actor in Trump’s attempted regime change to authoritarianism. His particular role is to transform the law into a tool to intimidate Americans. After a stint as interim US Attorney for DC which was marked by unprecedented weaponization of the position, Martin will now continue his work for Trump as the official “weaponization czar.”
This is a new position within the Justice Department, designed by the Trump administration, to punish people who have committed no crimes. Martin was originally placed on the “weaponization working group” seemingly ex officio when he was a US Attorney; he will now continue as its chairman. On Martin’s account, his assignment will be to publicly single out Americans who have not been found guilty of anything, or for that matter even indicted. He says there will be “no limit to the targets.”
Mixed Signals. Yet more confusion at the top. On Tuesday, as Republicans were arguing, not about whether to cut Medicaid, but rather how deeply to slash into the nation’s healthcare system, Dear Leader did an about face, warning his House MAGA minions: “Don’t fuck around with Medicaid.” It’s likely Trump saw the KFF Health Tracking Poll in April that found that a whopping 76 percent of voters disapprove of MAGA’s cuts to Medicaid. That includes 79 percent of Independents and 55 percent of Republicans.
Equalizer in Chief: His nibs says he’s invented a new word to describe his plan to reduce drug costs that actually raises the costs. “Basically, what we’re doing is equalizing,” Trump said. “There’s a new word that I came up with, which is probably the best word. We’re gonna equalize where we’re all gonna pay the same. We’re gonna pay what Europe’s gonna pay.” Europe pays more, so Americans will pay more.
Let them eat tariffs, Trump says, referring to Walmart, MAGA’s favorite retailer. He’s demanding that the company “eat the tariffs” instead of raising prices – which is a prime example of authoritarian economics.
Comey folds: Former FBI director James Comey was spotted leaving his home and ducking into a black SUV with the Secret Service before speeding off. CNN reported that Comey is cooperating with the Secret Service amid blowback over his “86 47” beachside post—which critics, including Trump himself, have alleged was a veiled assassination threat against the 47th president.
Elon throttled Starlink because Ukranians were killing Russians,
But by throttling it, Elon enabled Russians to kill Ukranians.
So the world’s richest, weirdest guy,
Gets to decide who lives and who dies?
That’s too much power in the hands of a dude who wants to be a Martian.
“Stephen Miller is a stone-cold racist. His track record speaks for itself, and I’ve got zero interest in working with that kind of individual.”
— “House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller a ‘stone-cold racist’ and said he can’t work with him,” Punchbowl News reports.
“Take, for example, the French Revolution. Remember when Marie Antoinette said, ‘Let them eat cake’? Now, is that a problem of accountability and tyranny, a corrupt government? Or is it a problem of affordability and standard of living? It’s both! Authoritarianism and tyranny are extremely expensive for the people. And it’s the exact same thing when you go down the line with Donald Trump. So, are we going to go after the corruption? Yeah, you’re damn right. And are we going to go after affordability and making people’s lives easier? Yeah, you’re damn right. We’re going to do both of them.”
“Here’s the problem with the red meat: It becomes an addiction. Once you go there and you put that out there, then you’re forced to defend it. So what do they do? They double down. They triple down again.”
— Sen.-elect Abdul El-Sayed (D), quoted by the Washington Post, on Republicans relying on anti-Muslim attacks in the Michigan U.S. Senate race.
<2>U.S. inflation was higher than expected last month as the rising prices that powered sweeping Democratic victories in last week’s midterm elections appear likely to pose ongoing challenges for the White House and the Federal Reserve, the Associated Press reported. The consumer price index rose 0.4% from September to October, the Labor Department said Tuesday, down from 0.6% the previous month. The government did not report a yearly inflation rate because last year’s government shutdown meant no data was released for October 2025. But excluding the volatile food and energy categories, core prices rose 0.3%, the same as the preceding month. Both figures were a tenth of a point higher than forecast, and at an annual rate would be well above the Fed’s 2% target.
President Donald Trump’s approval rating held near the lowest level of his political career, depressed by national concerns over rising prices that tanked his Republican Party in last week’s midterm elections, according to ?a Reuters/Ipsos poll completed on Monday. Some 32% of Americans approve of Trump’s performance ?in the White House, unchanged from two prior Reuters/Ipsos polls conducted between late ?October and early November. It was one percentage point higher than his 31% rating ?in a Reuters/Ipsos poll in mid-October, the lowest of his career in politics, reported Reuters.
A record number of women are running for state legislative seats this November, more than two-thirds of whom are Democrats, reports Florida Phoenix. Across the 46 states with legislative seats on the ballot, a total of 3,824 women are running — up from 2022’s previous record of 3,621 women candidates, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. Women make up 35.5% of all state legislative candidates this cycle. Currently, women hold about one-third of state legislative seats across the country — a record level of representation but nowhere near parity.
“Prediction markets about the 2026 midterm elections have surpassed $1.4 billion in trading volume as Election Day fast approaches,” CNN reports. “This year has seen massive growth in the prediction industry, where people can bet on real-world events like sports, entertainment and the weather. While small-scale election markets have been around for a while, they gained traction before the 2024 presidential election and have seen huge numbers for the 2026 midterms.”
G. Elliot Morris: “Low-knowledge 2024 voters say they backed Trump by 8 points, according to our poll. Today they give him a net job approval of ?27, a 35-point shift. Compare that to Trump’s approval rating among voters who got both questions right: These voters backed Harris by 1 point and now give Trump a net ?24 approval, a 23-point shift. … Low-information voters have moved against Trump at a higher rate than high-information voters, by 12 points.”