Morning Frame is a daily digest for news-obsessed, confident, and charming readers. It highlights what stories are emerging, crossing partisan bubbles, and fading. Powered by Narrative Prism software, which ingests thousands of bits of media every day.
Thursday, October 1, 2026
A brand new AP/NORC poll shows Donald Trump’s approval rating at its lowest in either term, with 31% approving and 69% disapproving. The poll was taken between 9/24 and 9/28, and suddenly casts an even darker cloud over the president’s repeated pleas that voters act like he is on the ballot for the coming midterms. In related news, Fox News pundits have gotten the memo. Wednesday night, Jesse Watters flatly predicted that the Democrats will take the House, though he bravely called the Senate staying red. In the previous hour, Byron York basically argued a similar point as Watters, and just two hours earlier, Brit Hume said on the same network that what Republicans "have to worry about is the opinions have solidified and not in their favor." Hume’s comments were newsworthy enough to lead the 6 am hour of Morning Joe. Meanwhile, the hijacked FlyDubai jet has sparked a narrative framing battle over what rises to the level of “terrorism.” Oh, and Sec. of War Pete Hegseth called partisan media he says are “lying” about munitions stockpile shortages “treason,” which is fun.
01. The Right’s Own Pundits Call the House for Democrats as Trump Flies to Texas to Prop Up Paxton
[Gaining Traction]. Yesterday, the Republicans stepping away from Trump were candidates with races to run. Today it’s the commentariat who talk to his voters every night.
Fox News host Jesse Watters took a viewer question about predicting the midterm results near the end of his show Wednesday and gave an answer he said Brit Hume had warned him not to give.
“Screw it. Democrats take the House, Republicans hold the Senate. Fine. I made it,” he said. “I’ll deny it if you ever call me on it.” Hume had already told Special Report viewers that Republicans “don’t have much going for them this cycle.” Fox News contributor Byron York told the Ingraham Angle audience that redistricting probably won’t save the House. Morning Joe found Hume’s analysis so…insightful, that it opened Thursday’s show on it.
Trump’s diagnosis for poor polling is the time-honored bipartisan chestnut of “messaging.”
“We’re doing an extremely poor job of promotion,” he said Wednesday, and he’s flying to Denton this afternoon to fix it, standing next to Ken Paxton, who was caught on tape telling donors the convention “dropped our numbers.” Trump says he hasn’t heard that, and anyway the convention drew “four times what the NFL did.” (It did not.)
Mike Dubke, Trump’s first-term communications director, called it a convention “that no one remembers happened.” David Urban, a former Trump campaign adviser, was asked on CNN which side he'd rather be on 33 days out. In the House, “I'd rather be Jim's party,” meaning Democratic operative Jim Messina's. On Fox & Friends, commentary on the leak targeted Paxton, not Trump. Brian Kilmeade said, "I don't get his conclusion," while later, Lawrence Jones “doesn’t trust the New York Times.”
TAKEAWAY: Republican campaign data has been going from bad to worse for the past month or so, but can things go from worse to worser? This morning the answer is a decided “YES” as an AP/NORC poll has Trump at his lowest approval rating in either term. Only 31% approve of his job as president, which is getting dangerously close to George W. Bush’s record low approval of 25% in Gallop’s polling at the end of his second term.
02. A Fight Breaks Out Over Who Gets to Call the FlyDubai Hijack a Terrorist Attack
[Emerging]. Yesterday this was a plane that fell three miles and landed. Today it’s an argument over the word “terror,” and the networks picked sides along predictable lines.
A FlyDubai copilot stabbed his captain on the way to Tel Aviv and put the plane into a deep and sudden nosedive. The captain, Smit Machchhar, got the cockpit door open while bleeding, a plumber pulled back on the yoke (the plane’s “steering wheel”), and two off-duty pilots landed the plane safely in Saudi Arabia. Every network told that part of the story the same way. They split on what to call it.
On Fox & Friends, a passenger named Tal told Brian Kilmeade that while it was happening “the global media is reporting it as a fight between two pilots,” and that the press assumes “by default, it cannot be a terror attack” when the victims are Israelis. Kilmeade told him, “Not here.”
On CNN, Alex Plitsas said it “will be investigated as an act of terrorism” and then explained why nobody should use the word before there’s a claim or a motive. Two hours later, Juliette Kayyem was still telling CNN viewers, “we don’t want to get ahead of the story.”
MS NOW’s Chris Hayes‘s show reported, citing a source, that Netanyahu would “harness” the attack for next month’s election.
Benjamin Netanyahu didn’t wait. He told Sean Hannity the copilot “stabbed him or he hit him with an axe” and told Fox & Friends this morning the man “underwent Islamist radical indoctrination.” Hannity tied the attack to Iran and told him on air, “I’m saying to my friends in Israel get out and vote for my friend Bibi.”
TAKEAWAY: Lydia Moynihan tweeted an early NY Times report on the apparent hijack attempt and used it as Orwellian evidence of bias. And given what we now know about the attack, it did seem off. But news outlets can only report on what they know at the time, and it was a breaking story; the terror details had not yet emerged. Meanwhile, CNN is caught up in the definition of “terror,” which reminds me that semantics are the last refuge of scoundrels.
03. Hegseth Remakes the Military in His Own Image With a 20 Percent Cut to the Generals
[Gaining Traction]. Yesterday’s address to Quantico was just a preview of today, which becomes 20 percent of the generals on their way out, and Hegseth telling the press that smearing the troops is treason.
Sec. of War Pete Hegseth told the troops at Quantico that 20 percent of the generals and admirals will be gone by the end of the year. “The media calls that a purge. I call it accountability and long overdue.” He said “partisan activism that intentionally smears the troops” is “a national betrayal. It’s treason.” He said the department is done with “fatties” and “trannies.” In the same speech, he announced a four-star command for drone warfare, a future-weapons task force run by Elon Musk, Palmer Luckey and Newt Gingrich, and a new base.
CNN ran the cut, the slur and the “treason” line, and had Adam Smith answer it. “That’s not treason. That’s a free press.” Harrison Mann, a former Army major, called Hegseth’s new “American heritage” officer program “a pretty shallow dog whistle for white people.” MS NOW played the “fatties” clip, had fun with Musk and Gingrich running the future of warfare, and never got to the press. Fox News covered Hegseth’s military task force as a news reader, though it said nothing about the cuts or the dig at the “lying” press in the transcripts we reviewed.
TAKEAWAY: Hegseth’s wanton use of the word “treason” to describe members of the press who report on the news is not just a threat to the First Amendment, but honestly not all that surprising anymore for an administration that consistently prioritizes its own messaging desires over constitutionally protected rights. The fact that it’s no longer surprising is “the way we live now.”
“Before you know it, you get people that get carried away in their job and whatever it may be, and all of a sudden, then you’re dragging people away that have lived on your street corner for 15 years, and I don’t know that we need to be doing that stuff.”
That’s West Virginia Sen. Jim Justice, a Trump loyalist from a state the president carried by more than 40 points, telling Politico Tuesday that ICE should dial back raids that have reached rural communities. “To get better, the first thing you got to do is admit you’re doing something wrong,” he said. But by Wednesday he was clarifying on social media that he fully supports the president’s immigration agenda. CNN put his comments next to a record: more than 140,000 ICE arrests from June through August.
The data tells the real, better stories beneath the headlines.
Trump Won't Rule Out the Insurrection Act Before the Midterms: Asked by TIME whether he'd rule out declaring a state of emergency before the midterms, Trump said, "I don't rule anything out or in." On the Insurrection Act, he said, "I've never used it. I could use it. A lot of people think I should use it sometimes." (TIME)
UK Prime Minister Thanks Man City’s Owners After Guilty Verdict: PM Andy Burnham drew massive backlash after he said he’d be “really concerned to lose them” and thanked Man City’s ownership for investing in the city he once served as mayor. BBC had asked him whether he feared Manchester City’s Abu Dhabi owners might sell after the club was found guilty on almost all of the Premier League’s 115 financial charges (GB News)
Tennessee Inmate Survives Two Lethal Injections: The state’s only woman on death row was taken to a hospital Wednesday after two doses of pentobarbital failed to kill her. Gov. Bill Lee halted all remaining executions this year pending a third-party review. (NewsChannel 5)
Based on transcripts from the 6 and 7 a.m. hours of Fox & Friends, CNN This Morning, News Central, and Morning Joe.
President Trump is scheduled to appear next to GOP Senate candidate Ken Paxton in Denton, Texas, today at a particularly curious time ahead of the midterms. Paxton trails Democratic rival James Talarico in the deeply red Longhorn State, but he’s also dealing with leaked audio in which he complains about Trump’s GOP Midterm Convention, held in his backyard in Dallas just three weeks ago. “To be honest with you, the numbers — when we did that convention — it dropped our numbers,” the New York Times reported. “Everybody’s numbers dropped. Right now, yeah, not good.” It’s not yet clear if his numbers did drop following the convention in which Trump offered adult Americans $5,000 checks if Congress remained in Republican control, but what has dropped is Trump’s approval rating since, according to an AP-NORC poll just out today. That puts his past demand that voters act like he’s on the ballot in starker relief.
The Morning Frame tracks which political stories are spreading, which are stalling, and how you can tell the difference. Powered by Narrative Prism.