Today in Politics, Bulletin 213. 9/23/25

… There are two key elections to watch tonight, as Democratic candidates look to keep their streak going where they outperform the results of the 2024 election in one district after another across the country. The two races are a state senate race in GA and a congressional race in AZ.

… CNN: “A special election in Arizona is expected to deliver the decisive signature to the push for a vote to release the Jeffrey Epstein case files. The race in AZ’s 7th District will determine who will fill the seat vacated by the late Democratic Rep. Raul Grijalva, who died from cancer in March. Grijalva’s daughter, Adelita Grijalva, is looking to follow in her father’s footsteps. She is heavily favored against Republican Daniel Butierez.”

… “Once securing the needed signatures, Massie has to wait at least 7 legislative days before bringing the bill to the floor, and House leaders can also take up to two legislative days before they put it to a vote. Arizona’s 7th District, which stretches along the state’s southern border with Mexico and includes parts of Tucson and the Phoenix area, is solidly Democratic and voted for Kamala Harris by 23 points in Nov.”

… In the Georgia state senate race, Democrat Debra Shigley is likely to lose the dark red district to Republican Jason Dickerson, but party leaders are hoping she dramatically outperforms their candidate in 2024 who lost 70%-30%. Shigley has run such a great campaign that Gov. Brian Kemp has activated his full political machine to shore up Dickerson in a race that would normally be a walk in the park for any Republican.

… So for Dems to outperform again tonight, Grijalva has to win in AZ by more than 23 and Shigley has to be within 40 points of Dickerson.

… IL Gov JB Pritzker on MSNBC: "One of the reasons Trump wants to send troops into America cities is because he wants to be able to take control of the 2026 elections. If they've got troops in cities, and it becomes a kind of norm for people, then it won't be abnormal for them when they're going to vote having troops at ballot boxes"

… Sec of State Marco Rubio was on CBS before Trump’s speech to the UN: Q - “The US has exploded 3 boats now in international waters. Why not just stop them and board them to stop the flow of drugs? Rubio: Because interdiction doesn't work.”

… Rubio was then asked to preview Trump's speech to the UN: "You can anticipate that the president will point to his own history with the UN going back to his time as a developer. He actually offered to fix the UN building and instead they decided to go in a different direction.”

… As you might expect from Rubio’s teaser, Trump’s speech to the UN was as nuts as his presser on autism yesterday:

• "I'm really good at predicting things. During the campaign they had a hat - a best-selling hat - 'Trump Was Right About Everything.' And I don't say that in a braggadocios way, but it's true. I've been right about everything."

• "We're getting rid of the falsely named 'renewables.' By the way, they're a joke, they don't work. They're too expensive, they're not strong enough to fire up the plants that you need to make your country great. The wind doesn't blow, those big windmills are so pathetic and so bad."

• "Not only is the UN not solving the problems it should, it's actually creating new problems for us to solve. The best example is the number one political issue of our time - the crisis of uncontrolled migration. Your countries are being ruined. The UN is funding an assault on Western countries you have to end it now.”

• “You are destroying your countries. They are being destroyed. Europe is in serious trouble. They have been invaded by a force of illegal aliens like nobody has ever seen before. Illegal aliens are pouring into Europe. You should listen to me, because I'm really good at this stuff. Your countries are going to hell."

• "I have ended seven unendable wars. The Abraham Accords were also big thing. But I get no credit for that. Nobody gives us any credit. Everyone says I should get the Nobel Peace Prize for these achievements."

• Trump also complained that the UN rejected his bid to renovate their HQ. "I said at the time that I would do it for $500 million, rebuilding everything. I used to talk about, I'm going to give you marble floors. They're going to give you terrazzo."

… Reuters national security correspondent Jonathan Landay: “Trump at UN claims he ended a war between Serbia and Kosovo that never existed.”

… WaPo’s global affairs correspondent Ishaan Tharoor: “A senior foreign diplomat posted at the UN texts me: ‘This man is stark, raving mad. Do Americans not see how embarrassing this is?’”

… Some of us do.

… Fox host Harris Faulkner, as the network returned to studio after Trump’s speech: “President Trump unfurled raw truth to countries in attendance there and to the rest of the world."

… Fox’s first guest after the speech was Senate Majority Leader John Thune: Q - “What are your thoughts on what you have heard at the UN from President Trump today? Thune: Straight talk from the president, he puts out the unvarnished truth.”

… CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale had to talk fast to get through Trump’s firehose of lies: “The conflict involving the Democratic Republic of Congo and neighboring Rwanda has not actually been resolved. We have good reporting from just a day ago talking about how hostilities have continued.”

… “He said that grocery prices are down during his presidency. They're up and the pace of the increases is accelerating as the tariffs take effect. He has claimed that inflation has been defeated. In general, no inflation is also accelerating. It was 2.9% last month, up from 2.7%. He said that European electricity bills are high, which is true, but that ours are coming way down. No, in the US they are increasing sharply, up 6.2% in Aug compared to a year prior.”

… “He claimed that China builds a lot of wind turbines and manufactures them for others, but refuses to use it itself, barely uses wind power. In fact, China is the world leader in the use of wind power. It is building additional wind power in China far faster than the pace at which the US is building in the US itself. So the idea that China is just foisting this terrible source of energy on other countries while refusing to use it is a reversal of reality.”

… “He claimed that he has secured $17 trillion in investment in the US. Well, just yesterday, his own WH press secretary said it was about $9 trillion in investment. So I don't know where the additional $8 trillion in a day has come from. And even that initial $9 trillion the press secretary claims is highly dubious, counting a whole bunch of things that aren't actually spending, but rather are vague commitments from various countries.”

… After the speech, Trump addressed the media about immigration: “But you know, we have a border, strong, and we have a shape and the shape doesn't just go straight up. That shape is amorphous when it comes to the atmosphere.”

… Trump then posted this on Truth Social: “It was a great honor to speak before the UN. I believe the speech was very well received. It focused very much on energy and migration/immigration. I have been talking about this for a long period of time and this Forum, was the absolute best from the standpoint of making these two important statements.”

… “I hope everybody gets to watch it! The teleprompter was broken and the escalator came to a sudden halt as we were ridding up to the podium, but both of those events probably made the speech more interesting than it would have been otherwise. It is always an honor to speak at the United Nations, even if, their equipment is somewhat faulty.”

… Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt then posted this: “If someone at the UN intentionally stopped the escalator as the President and First Lady were stepping on, they need to be fired and investigated immediately.”

… MAGA podcaster Brendan Dilley: “If we discover that the UN deliberately turned off the escalator and risked injuring the president and First Lady we should bomb them. All of them.

… EscalatorGate is going viral all over MAGA twitter tonight. They are pissed and are certain this was an Antifa plot.

… Gavin Newsom: “I only walk up escalators because that’s what REAL MANLY MEN do.”

… AP’s UN correspondent Farnoush Amiri: “A UN official said the UN understands that someone from the president’s party who ran ahead of him inadvertently triggered the stop mechanism on the escalator. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the White House was operating the teleprompter for Trump.”

… Tom Homan went on Laura Ingraham’s show on Fox and was asked about the bribery scandal: Q - “They said you took $50,000 in cash in a bag from an undercover FBI agent. Homan: I did nothing criminal or illegal. It’s hit piece after hit piece. I make more sacrifices than anybody to serve in govt. I get more death threats than anybody. After all the sacrifices I’ve made to serve this country they keep coming after me. They’re trying to dirty me up. Well, I’ve got news for them - Tom Homan isn’t going anywhere.”

… At no point in the interview did he ever deny taking the cash, despite Karoline Leavitt claiming yesterday that he never got any money. If he never took the cash, that is the first thing he would have said.

… MSNBC: “Democrats on the House and Senate Judiciary committees have launched separate but related oversight inquiries into the Homan matter, demanding all relevant documents from the FBI and DOJ. Lacking subpoena power, they are unlikely to get what they’re asking for. But they certainly could interview career officials involved in the investigation and senior FBI and DoJ officials in the last admin who were briefed on it.”

… The Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network said Trump’s claim in his press conference with RFK Jr and Dr. Oz yesterday that there was “virtually no autism” in Cuba because they can’t afford Tylenol is ridiculous: “Cuba’s autism rate in 2023 was 83.3 per 10,000 children, nearly identical to the US rate of 80.9 per 10,000.”

… Dr. Vin Gupta to Meidas: “The fact that he’s putting this out there—a blanket statement, ‘Don’t take Tylenol’—that’s irresponsible. There isn’t another option. It is safe. That’s what the best-quality research shows. And how irresponsible, using the podium of the WH to put this out there when you’re not even offering an alternative. You’re just telling people to grit their teeth through it. That is dangerous. An untreated fever is dangerous. Untreated pain in pregnancy is dangerous.”

… Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA): “I understand and applaud President Trump’s desire to address this issue and to support HHS. HHS should release the new data that it has to support this claim. The preponderance of evidence shows that this is not the case. The concern is that women will be left with no options to manage pain in pregnancy. We must be compassionate to this problem.”

… Cassidy and Susan Collins, both up for re-election in 2026, cast the key votes to confirm RFK Jr. Cassidy is well aware that RFK Jr is dangerous and unfit, but he is focused on keeping Trump from endorsing his primary opponent rather than the health of Americans.

… WaPo - “Several aides to Republican members of Congress, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to press, also said that their offices were unsettled by Trump’s remarks, having already received constituents’ complaints about the admin’s vaccine policies. Two former Trump admin officials and one current official said they were deeply frustrated and worried about Trump’s decision to amplify anti-vaccine talking points.”

… Infectious disease pediatrician Dr. Paul Offit to WaPo: “It was the most dangerously irresponsible press conference in the realm of public health in American history.”

… Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) on Newsmax: "In 56 years of tracking Tylenol, there have been 39,540 death reported to FAIRS. That's 706 per year. For ivermectin - remember the one that they said was so dangerous - in 29 years reporting, 493 deaths, 17 a year."

… Economist Dean Baker: “Can Ron Johnson really be this stupid? Hundreds of millions of people take Tylenol every year, how many people in this country take ivermeticin? You know very few people die from Russian Roulette, in the Ron Johnson world, that means it's very safe.”

… Kristi Noem said on Fox that she felt physically threatened by Gavin Newsom’s post that she was “going to have a bad day”: “It was cryptic. And it was really menacing. It immediately panicked my family and friends. While it was cryptic, it was still very menacing. Within a couple of minutes of that being posted. I started to get text messages and phone calls, family and kids saying are you okay mom?”

… Newsom’s post to Noem was about CA passing a law prohibiting ICE agents from wearing face coverings.

… WSJ: “The use of the Treasury’s exchange stabilization fund could signal a major escalation in trying to assist Argentina. The fund, which was created in the 1930s, can be used to supply loans to foreign countries that are facing dire financial difficulties. Congress allows the Treasury secretary to have full control over the use of the exchange stabilization’s funds.”

… “Brad Setser, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that it would be ‘incredibly unusual’ for the Trump admin to unilaterally provide financial assistance to Argentina, noting that the US typically has taken such actions in coordination with other countries and the IMF.

… “Establishing a ‘swap line’ with Argentina would effectively mean lending the country dollars that it could use to buy pesos, thereby strengthening the currency. In that case, the US would risk not getting repaid. But that would still be less risky than if the US bought pesos, because the peso could potentially weaken much further against the dollar, sticking the US govt with an even bigger loss.”

… Trump met with Argentinian President Javier Milei to discuss the bailout backstage after his UN speech: "He's done a fantastic job. It's an honor for me to endorse the President — and the future President — of Argentina."

… Such a fantastic job that he’s here begging for American taxpayers to bail out his failing economy.

… Reuters: “Bessent's offer of support without conditions such as fixing the problem of an over-valued peso may be ‘a way of just financing capital flight for little purpose, said Mark Sobel, a former Uzd Treasury and IMF official who is now US chairman of the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum.”

… Sobel added that it will be a challenge to overcome investors' long-embedded urge to flee Argentina during a crisis: "Markets have had over 100 years of Argentine over-borrowing, hyperinflation and serial defaults, and so when Argentina hits the skids, investors remember that. And they're not going to go, 'Milei is different.'"

… Journalist Ben Norton: “Argentina's economy is in free fall under Javier Milei. The currency is collapsing, the bond market is in crisis, the huge bubble he inflated in the stock market has popped, and manufacturing output (ie, the real economy) has crashed. Milei was already gifted a $42 billion lifeline from the US-controlled IMF and the World Bank (after Argentina already owed more debt to the IMF than any other country), but even that was not enough to stabilize Milei's crazy Austrian School experiment.”

… “So now the US govt is pledging to bail out the proud self-declared ‘anarcho-capitalist’ Milei by giving him even more money through US swap lines and buying Argentina's bonds and currency with US Treasury funds. The US govt is doing this not only to prop up one of its most loyal puppets in Latin America, but also in order to benefit wealthy US investors who hold Argentine stocks and bonds, and US corporations that want Argentina's lithium.”

Reminder there is no Bulletin on Wednesdays because I have my podcast Uncovered where I do a deeper dive into the biggest stories of the week, and then Ask the Editor where I answer 5 of your questions. If you have a question for Ask the Editor or would just like me to go into more detail on a certain topic, post it in the comments section of this Bulletin.

If you missed yesterday’s Bulletin, which was a wild one, you can find it here.

… NYT: “TikTok is just one part of the rapidly expanding Larry Ellison family media portfolio. Ellison’s son, David, who recently secured an $8 billion deal for Paramount and CBS and is busy putting his own stamp on them, is widely reported to be