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Monday, October 5, 2026
President Donald Trump kicked off his much-hyped rally tour in support of Republicans facing headwinds in the coming midterm election with a curious message. “I can go ramp, I can go stair, I could go another stair,” before mocking former President Joe Biden for “never find[ing] the stairs.” No, that isn’t his entire messaging, but it was but one moment in a string of curious moves over the weekend that saw Trump share the personal cell number of Senator Tom Cotton over a daylight saving bill, his hammering Fox News for not covering his weekend rallies, and an increased number of Truth Social memes and messaging that, frankly, sit outside the standard decorum of presidential behavior. Is he losing it, or is he just “fucking around?” Or is his fucking around a symptom of losing it as his approval polls nosedive and even his most loyal Republican allies, like Byron Donalds, are forced to move away from the president’s political standing as a matter of survival.
01. Trump’s Erratic Closing Argument Gets Weirder After a Weekend of Intraparty Feuds and $90 Checks
[Gaining Traction]. Republicans predicted they’d lose the House last week. This weekend Trump responded by blasting Fox News, sharing a senator’s cell number, and promising to “shove it up their ass.” Hey girl.
At a rally in Ohio Saturday night, Trump told the crowd, “I know more about everything than anybody in this room, anybody, anywhere in the world,” and at another stop he said Republicans are “on the cusp of beating radicalized lunatics and villains” and “we’re going to put them down.” That was after he posted Senator Cotton’s private cell phone number on Saturday and directed people to call him about daylight saving time.
By Sunday, he was telling Republicans to vote by mail, a thing he spent years calling rigged, and announce a “Super Intelligence Force” on Truth Social. He also asked voters to “pretend I’m on the ballot” and promised to “shove it up their ass.” He wasn’t done.
His closing argument for the midterms seems to be writing A LOT of checks. Twenty million seniors will get $90 this month out of a Medicare account Trump called a “slush fund” in his own post, and he’s promised every adult will get $5,000 if Republicans keep Congress. Socialism!
Juan Williams said on Fox News Sunday that the $5,000, the TV ads and “the crude language” are “a sign of desperation.” Jonathan Lemire said on Morning Joe that the party’s closing argument this week “appears to be about daylight savings time.” David Drucker had a shorter explanation for the mail-vote flip. “It’s just the id talking.” If true, we sure do seem to be suffering a dearth of White House superego at the moment.
TAKEAWAY: On two separate occasions this weekend, Trump attacked Fox News for their decision not to air his rallies over the weekend, which suggests two things: 1) those rallies no longer rate for the network and 2) no one at the White House has explained that to Trump. Add those two things together, and Fox News might be doing the White House a massive favor by not airing his rallies.
02. Republicans’ Private Doubts About Trump Go Public With Tillis Counting 30 Senators Who Share Them
[Gaining Traction]. Last week, the breaks with Trump came one senator at a time. On Sunday, Thom Tillis revealed that at least 30 share the same doubts.
North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis is retiring; his book comes out tomorrow, and he's speaking out. On 60 Minutes, he told Ross Douthat that Republicans are headed for an “electoral bloodbath,” that “we will have a sort of dictator king if we’re not careful,” and that at least 30 Republican senators have reservations about Trump that they only voice in private.
Tillis appeared on Morning Joe Monday morning, and said the party has “become unmoored,” called Pete Hegseth “an actor” who is “not a manager,” said Trump “puts an incompetent secretary of homeland security in place,” and said nobody reported, “the number of times that I’ve actually stood up to the president.”
He has company this week, including from people who are staying. John Kennedy said on Meet the Press that telling voters “not to believe their own lying checkbooks is not going to work.” Republican candidates in New Hampshire and Maine told the White House they don’t need a presidential visit, Jonathan Lemire reported.
Byron Donalds tried it quietly when his campaign removed prominent mentions of Trump from its website last month. When Trump found out, he warned that Donalds risked losing without him, the Wall Street Journal reports. On Sunday, Donalds was on Fox News insisting he supported the president.
TAKEAWAY: It’s too early to say that Trump’s primary threat dam is breaking, but Tillis represents a growing number of members of the YOLO caucus of the GOP (or maybe its the DNGAF caucus?) Either way, if the GOP gets hammered in the midterms, the losing party's circular firing squad will largely be aimed at the commander in chief.
03. The Latino Coalition Trump Built in 2024 Walks Away
[Gaining Traction]. The polls said red states were in play last week. Today’s poll suggests it’s partly because the Hispanic voters Trump added in 2024 are leaving the GOP.
A new NBC News/Telemundo poll shows Latino men backing Democrats for Congress 53 to 39, and Latino voters as a whole preferring Democrats by 24 points. That’s twice the margin of 2024, whenTrump won Latino men by 10 points.
Trump’s approval with Latinos is 27 percent. Nearly 80 percent disapprove of him on the cost of living, two-thirds think immigration enforcement has gone too far, and a third say they or someone close to them now carry ID because of ICE. Democrats’ standing with these voters is about where it was in 2024, while the GOP’s net favorability has dropped 18 points.
Republicans drew House maps based on the assumption that the 2024 numbers would hold. They are not.
Politico’s Jonathan Martin said Trump “frittered away” his immigration advantage “in historic ways” on Meet the Press, and pointed to the Florida and Texas seats that are at risk. Ex-Miami Mayor Francis Suárez appeared on Fox & Friends to discuss the new polling data and offered rare criticism by blaming inflation that’s come as a result of the Iran war for hurting Trump’s standing with Latinos
TAKEAWAY: Play stupid games (with outrageously aggressive ICE agents targeting potential immigrants only by appearance) and win stupid prizes (by losing Hispanic voters in droves by what is viewed as naked and un-American xenophobia)
“I was one of the first people to come out and say that was the wrong move to sign that executive order.”
That’s Zach Lahn, the Republican nominee for governor of Iowa, on Face the Nation Sunday, in a notable break with Trump’s executive order boosting glyphosate in a state with the second-highest cancer incidence in the country. Lahn is running on nitrates, pesticides, and breaking up “Big Ag” monopolies, and is currently behind Democrat Rob Sand by 11 in the NYT/Siena poll. (CBS News)
Russian Lab Researcher Dies After Suspected Plague Exposure: A 28-year-old researcher died overnight after she broke a test tube at a laboratory in Russia’s Irkutsk region. Local authorities have reportedly quarantined contacts, but Russia has not confirmed the case as pneumonic plague. (CNN)
US Military Removes B-1 Bombers From Britain After New Iranian Threat: The Pentagon withdrew all 12 B-1s from RAF Fairford on Sunday. Officials cited a new Iranian threat following last week’s plot against the same base. (NY Times)
FBI Arrests Accused Chinese Agent at LAX for Spying on Taiwan’s President’s Son: Federal prosecutors charged Wanying “Heather” Zhang with acting as an agent of the Chinese government after she allegedly traveled to Seattle to photograph and record a relative of Taiwan’s president. (Fox News)
Based on transcripts from the 6 and 7 a.m. hours of Fox & Friends, CNN This Morning, News Central, and Morning Joe.
President Trump spent his weekend complaining. He complained about Senator Tom Cotton, Fox News coverage, and some really bad polling suggesting a historic blowout in the midterms just four weeks away. At the top of this newsletter, I mused whether he is just “fucking around” with his constant aggrievement, decorum-flouting, and bizarre behavior, or whether he is “losing it,” as his critics have long insisted. Why not both? But the “it” that he’s ostensibly losing isn’t his cognitive ability, but his political mojo, the same charm he’s used to hold sway over the Republican Party for a decade, which is now running away from him. Like Fonzie without his leather jacket, but Trump doesn’t seem to have any recourse but to return to the same tired material he’s been using, unable to hear the crickets from the audience. Even Shecky Greene eventually played to an empty room in the Catskills, and that’s increasingly what this last run of Trump rallies before the midterms feels like.
The Morning Frame tracks which political stories are spreading, which are stalling, and how you can tell the difference. Powered by Narrative Prism.