Greetings and welcome to this slightly logy, over-woozy 108th performance of the Carnival of Fools! Please forgive our weekly performers (well, performer, at this point) for flagging somewhat near the end of the season — it’s hard to keep a campaign going when you’re scheduled to do nothing but pratfalls for the audience’s amusement. But here we are, at these late stages of the 2026 midterms, somehow holding it all together.
Yes, it’s been quite the Carnival ride this midterm season for all of us: not quite like 2024 (which with its psychotic ups and downs and loop-de-loops felt like riding pell-mell into your own grave), but more like that janky “Haunted Mansion” you used to spend your adolescent amusement-park tickets on, where the zombie ghost would predictably pop out at the end from a dark corner to scream “BOO!” at you. You got used to it the second time through and started talking back. Third time through, you started practicing curse words to spice up your vocabulary. I wish we were back on that harmless amusement ride right about now.
So yeah, anyway, it’s another column about Trump.
The Roller Coaster Plunges
Speaking of amusement-park rides, did you ever have that sick swoony feeling that comes once you’ve hit the top of a roller coaster’s precipice and know that the bottom is about to fall out? (“It’s all downhill from here,” and not in a good way.) It’s the reason why, unlike some of my more deranged colleagues, I am not a fan of the strangely planned horror of roller coasters. In fact, that methodical click-clack-CHUNK sound that you hear in the front cab as you approach the summit of one has been a frequent nightmare of mine since adolescence. Perhaps because that’s when I first began to relate it to the inevitable onrushing beats of real life.
And here we are, days away from October in a midterm year. This is beginning to feel a bit like a nightmare as well, a familiar one where all the inexorable beats are hit and we all go plummeting downwards — to wake up on the other end, not dead but brutally scarred. My historically minded colleague Dan McLaughlin once observed that parties facing electoral doom in a November election rarely turn their fortunes around after September — but the bottom sure can fall out from underneath them after that, as time takes its toll and opinions get baked in. So here we go.
With the Wall Street Journal’s newest opinion poll, putting the president at a miserable 37 percent approval rating, I think it’s fair to say that the cake is baked, like it or not. This is the impression of the Republican Party that most (not all) voters will take into the booth with them: the impression of Trump and his unanswerable minions pretending to party it up at state dinners with our (actual, not merely ideological) sworn geographic enemies in China to celebrate their rank privilege.
I have held out my hopes for the GOP’s prospects in November: Partisan gerrymandering (like it or not) has decreased the elasticity of House districts, so that the Republican wipeout in the lower chamber will be mediated by hard geographic (and demographic) realities. In the upper chamber? Abdul El-Sayed is a grotesque parody of woke antisemitism. Troy Jackson has literally spawned two children with his second cousin. But statewide overall, in Senate and governor’s races? We’re getting to Katy-bar-the-door levels here as the winds pick up (ideally not high enough to lead to a flattening in Kansas). And if you wonder why the GOP is facing brutal headwinds in Iowa’s governor’s race (CLICK) or why Trump is fighting off his own once-hardcore representatives in Florida Latino districts (CLACK) then get ready for the RUUUUMBLE as we tumble down and around to our destination.
All of the familiar beats that signal a GOP reckoning are being heard — and delivered to us with such “Let them eat cake” sass, too. Americans currently suffer under tariffs, obscenely inflated gas prices, and inexplicable trade wars against our geographic neighbors, while Xi Jinping gets a personal tour of Trump’s unfinished vanity ballroom and his personal insult wall of former presidents. But he’s doing this for America, right?
Meanwhile, Trump’s close-held allies grotesquely fatten and enrich themselves, feeding upon an open economic wound that looks, for all the world, as if Trump tore it open on purpose, specifically to give himself and his chosen people a chance to feed upon America’s gushing bloodline. It’s not a popular position to revel in, but Trump’s people genuinely don’t seem to care; we’re testing the far outer bounds of human decency in this administration now, as if daring the public to see how much they can take. Good luck in November.
Trump Bans Media, Then Complains About the Empty Room
The reason I really worry? I can read the tea leaves from those who are purportedly “in charge” of this whole mess. Namely, Donald Trump himself — who knows full well he’s doomed at this point, if you trust the media briefings. (He just isn’t handling it all that well.) So this weekend, Trump flipped out at the mainstream media — who, recall, forswore pool coverage of the president’s public events until he rescinded his random “fight-me-please” ban on some networks and outlets — for not giving his big China bash the due it properly deserved:
CNN and MSDNC’s Ratings have dropped considerably. The primary reason is NO CREDIBILITY! They only write badly about a man who won the Election IN A GIANT LANDSLIDE, winning all 7 Swing States, the Popular Vote, and 86% of the Counties, etc., and whose Popularity has grown because of the unprecedented SUCCESS our Country is having on both the World Stage, and at home. CNN and MSDNC, to show you how fake they are, today refused to cover one of the Biggest and Most Beautiful Events to take place in many years, the arrival at the White House of the Highly Respected President of China, Xi Jinping, and his beautiful wife, Madam Peng. The event was magnificent — Actually made for Television but, because they’re Fake News, and because they knew how good it would be, they didn’t want credit to be given to “TRUMP,” they refused to be there. That’s why they have such poor Ratings. Tonight’s State Dinner at the White House, for President Xi, will be spectacular! The Media will be in attendance. President DONALD J. TRUMP
Imagine that! Selectively banning certain media outlets, provoking outrage from all the rest, and timing all of this just before a major state visit! But of course, Trump wasn’t thinking that far ahead enough in the future. So now, instead of rescinding his fruitless ban, Trump is frustratedly poking the media with a stick, muttering, “Do something!”
But he’s weak now, and the media clearly seem to finally realize it – they haven’t buckled. And Trump is clearly cracking. He used coverage of his recent U.N. speech to brag about how he had circumvented the networks’ coverage withdrawal, and went on to personally insult Kaitlin Collins, trying to provoke her on-air. She didn’t react, infuriating Trump even more. (Again, the logic of a frustrated bully: “Do something! Take the bait!”)
Trump Breaks Bread with Man About to End the World
Amid all the chaos, a pause for a moment: Donald Trump sat down for a dinner with one of America’s top five most awkward human beings (non-Musk category) on Sunday, as he broke bread with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei — whose AI product, remember, we are handily warned every other day, can end the world. We can only imagine how it went, given that Amodei is notoriously odd yet also incalculably influential.
Amodei, for those not keeping score in our recent AI doomstakes, is firmly on the side of doom despite benefiting from it: This thing, which I profit from developing to its utmost, will kill all mankind — unless the government forces everyone else to stop, so that we can. (You’ve hopefully seen the SNL parody of Amodei already, played to agonizing perfection by Jane Wickline.)
I must emphasize that I am an extreme AI skeptic. But SNL does a decent enough job of explaining what I believe to be the rotten core of Amodei’s industry flex. “I’m just crazy enough to pull this trigger unless you force everyone around me to help solidify my profitable industry position” is the sort of negotiating stance taken by either an egotistical madman or an Effective Altruist (and I dare you to explain to me the difference, in detail) but not by anyone serious about the threat of AI.
A plea to restrain all competitors — except those with entrenched positions in the AI (and thus presumably national security) world — is nothing less than a plea for the federal government to permanently hook the money hose up to several (but select) inscrutable Silicon Valley companies in perpetuity, to the exclusion of all others. I have refrained thus far from commenting on our current cycle of AI panic, simply because the hands pushing the desired outcomes are now far more discernable than they were before. But now that their profit-taking motives are becoming clearer, I am forced to conclude that however skeptical I may be of AI, I am far more skeptical of the companies pushing its seeming omnipresent future — for their own ends.
Until next week.