“When I ran for office, I said he is a chaos candidate and would be a chaos president. Unfortunately, so far chaos organizes the presidency right now.”
— Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), telling the Miami Herald that she isn’t going to vote for Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton for president, but she has no plans to vote for a third party candidate.
Conservatism is temporarily dead. I mean, if you look at it, we have two candidates. Donald Trump is barely a Republican. He’s certainly not a conservative.
Trump, you know, to his credit was very smart at exploiting these kind of opportunities. He’s a master at understanding how the media works – more than anybody I’ve seen in politics. Kudos to him for, you know, kind of creating the environment and then manipulating the environment to his effect. The tragedy of this though, is that there isn’t going to be a wall built. And Mexico’s not going to pay for it. And there’s not going to be a ban on Muslims. None of that is – this is all like an alternative universe that he created. The reality is, that’s not going to happen. And people are going to be deeply frustrated and the divides will grow in our country.
— Jeb Bush, telling NBC News that voters are going to “feel betrayed” by Donald Trump if he wins the election.
It had to be hard for Gov. Rick Scott (GOP-TEA) to ask Pres. Obama to declare a disaster in Orlando worthy of federal funding. After all, Scott’s request for all American taxpayers to cover the bill for the mass shooting at Pulse nightclub flies in the face of everything that tea partyers hold dear. As they say, they are Taxed Enough Already.
“I urge you to declare an emergency under the Stafford Act so that ‘the full resources of the federal government’ can be made available for the individuals, families and communities impacted by this ‘horrific massacre,’” Scott wrote.
Scott has gotten his response. We can save you some time and tell you the answer was, “No.” But reading the full letter from FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate is just too much fun, so here it is.
Jeb Bush came out of Loserland to endorse Toxic Ted Cruz,
And Li’l Marco Rubio just bristled and pouted at the news.
From down in Florida,
South of the I-4 Corridor,
Jeb explained: “I always knew that Marco Rubio would lose.”
The United States and Ukraine no longer seem to be in synch,
After Trump lifted Russia sanctions with a grin and a wink.
Trump coordinated it with Putin,
Who ramped up the drone shooting,
After Trump and Elon Musk throttled Ukraine’s Starlink.
“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.
“If it wasn’t for President Trump the United States of America would not exist right now. This man saved America. He saved our military from collapse. He saved our economy from destruction. He saved our border from annihilation. He saved our country from threats at home and abroad which would have been the end of the American dream for ever.”
— Stephen Miller, quoted by The Guardian, pledging “total devotion” to President Trump.
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.”
President Donald ?Trump’s approval rating fell to a record low as Americans worried about high gasoline prices and appeared ready to punish his Republican Party in the November 3 congressional elections, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll that closed on Monday. Some 31% of Americans approve of Trump’s ?performance in office, down a percentage point from two weeks earlier and the lowest level in ?either of his presidential terms, the four-day poll showed.
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%).”