March 20, 2026 - Pensito

Strait of Newt

March 20, 2026 Buck Banks

Need a way around the Strait of Hormuz? Just ask Newt Gingrich.
We assume he didn’t know his repost was satire, which is rich.
He suggested dropping a few megatons,
And BOOM! Hormuz problem be gone!
Then you’d have a deep, wide and only slightly radioactive ditch.

Working-Class White Voters Are Abandoning Trump

March 20, 2026 Buck Banks

-26 points

G. Elliot Morris: “In our data, this group recalled voting for Trump by 22 points in 2024. But these voters now give him a net approval of -4 — or a 26-point swing against him.” “The working-class whites who powered Trump’s rise are, for the first time, opposed to how he’s handling his job as president.”

Being Trump’s Veep Is a ‘Guarantee of Humiliation’

March 20, 2026 Buck Banks

“The vice president is realizing that signing on with Donald Trump might seem like a shortcut to the top, but it’s actually a guarantee of humiliation.”

— David Graham

Hassett: Consumers Are ‘The Last of Our Concerns’

March 20, 2026 Buck Banks

“It would hurt consumers and we’d have to think about if that continued… But that’s like really the last of our concerns right now.”

— Trump economic adviser Kevin Hassett told CNBC if the Iran war “were to be extended, it wouldn’t really disrupt the U.S. economy very much at all.”

Most Say Trump’s Economy Is Getting Worse

March 20, 2026 Buck Banks

Day: March 20, 2026

Strait of Newt

Working-Class White Voters Are Abandoning Trump

-26 points

Being Trump’s Veep Is a ‘Guarantee of Humiliation’

“The vice president is realizing that signing on with Donald Trump might seem like a shortcut to the top, but it’s actually a guarantee of humiliation.”

— David Graham

Hassett: Consumers Are ‘The Last of Our Concerns’

“It would hurt consumers and we’d have to think about if that continued… But that’s like really the last of our concerns right now.”

— Trump economic adviser Kevin Hassett told CNBC if the Iran war “were to be extended, it wouldn’t really disrupt the U.S. economy very much at all.”

Most Say Trump’s Economy Is Getting Worse

59%

A new Economist/YouGov Poll finds 59% of Americans say the economy is getting worse.

Poetic Justice

Verbatim

“One woman at a rally in New Jersey told me last week that she was ‘nauseously optimistic.’ That may capture a lot of people’s last-minute jitters.”

— Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), quoted by Axios, on what Democrats feel ahead of the midterm elections.

“I think Congress made a mistake not protesting turning the Rose Garden into what looks like the entrance to Liberace’s bathroom.”

— Former President Bill Clinton, quoted by The Wrap.

“Boy, they are scraping the bottom of the barrel. It feels like a real desperation play to me, because it has got zero basis in the law.”

— Republican election law expert Ben Ginsberg, quoted by Politico, on the Trump administration’s effort to invalidate Alaska’s election results.

Numerati

3,824

$1.4 billion

-35 points

31%

63% to 38%

KFF Poll: “With the 2026 midterm campaigns in full swing and early voting about to begin, there is a wide enthusiasm gap between partisan voters, with Democratic voters 25 percentage points more likely than Republican voters to say they are ‘more motivated’ than usual to vote (63% vs. 38%).”