Today in Politics, Bulletin 244. 11/6/25

… ‘Sandwich Guy’ Sean Dunn, who was charged after throwing a Subway sandwich at Border Patrol agent Greg Lairmore, was found NOT GUILTY by a jury today. NBC: Lairmore had testified that the sandwich ‘exploded all over’ his chest and claimed he could smell mustard and onions. But a photo showed that the sandwich was still in its wrapper on the ground after it hit Lairmore in his bulletproof vest.”

… Corporate propagandists teamed up with Trump propagandists to lie about Thanksgiving: “Walmart just announced that prices for the Thanksgiving Dinner is now down 25% since under Sleepy/Crooked Joe Biden, in 2024. AFFORDABILITY is a Republican Stronghold. Hopefully Republicans will use this irrefutable fact!”

… Except it was another lie. Trump’s post was hit with this Community Note fact check: “Missing context. The 2025 Walmart Thanksgiving meal used in this example contains 15 items while the 2024 meal contained 21 items. Additionally, most of the brand name items in the 2024 meal were replaced with Great Value items in this comparison.”

… Politico: “Judge orders Trump admin to provide full SNAP payments to states for November. Judge McConnell is sharply rebuking the Trump admin for what he said was defying his order to make full SNAP payments by Nov. 5. He has ordered USDA to make the full payment to states by tomorrow.”

… “McConnell said Trump’s Truth Social post was essentially an admission of his ‘intent to defy the court order when he said ‘SNAP payments will be given only when the government opens.’ As a result ‘people will go hungry, food pantries will be burdened and suffering will occur.”

… “‘It’s likely that SNAP recipients are hungry as we sit here,’ McConnell says. He also says Trump and his allies have admitted to withholding SNAP benefits for ‘political reasons’ rather than to preserve child nutrition programs, which the judge said was a pretext.”

… Hours later, the Trump admin filed an appeal. They are going to fight as hard as they can to prevent hungry people from getting food.

… PA Gov Josh Shapiro: “Trump doesn’t give a damn about our people, if they’re hungry, or if they’re going without a Thanksgiving meal because he’s holding their benefits hostage. On Tues night, Pennsylvanians showed up - and we told him exactly what we think about the chaos he is causing.”

… Republicans, including Trump were all over Fox last night mimicking Zohran Mamdani’s campaign platform emphasizing affordability. OH governor candidate Vivek Ramaswamy: “People feel like electric bills are too high, healthcare costs are out of control, grocery prices or you think about the daily cost of living with the affordability of housing, we’re the party that has the right solutions.”

… Vivek has reinvented himself by co-opting about 6 different personas in the last 2 years. Now he’s changed his entire messaging to mimic Mamdani. When he ran for president he went through 3-4 different transformations.

… Fox host Laura Ingraham: “Affordability is exactly what President Trump is focused on. That’s why he’s trying to use tariffs to improve the fiscal situation.”

… A huge tax on all imported goods makes them more affordable? MAGAnomics.

… Mike Johnson: “Mamdani and Democrats want to talk about affordability? We love that subject. It’s the Republicans who are working every day to make life more affordable for working families and it is not a talking point for us. We’re delivering.”

… Q: “Food prices are still going up. Grocery prices are still going up. How do you respond? Johnson: All of the economist have shown that food prices always go up. There’s an inflationary level that’s built in to grocery prices.”

… Q: “There were some significant reversals of Trump’s gains with the Hispanic population in NJ. Are you concerned about Republicans retaining those voters? Johnson: No. I do believe the demographic shift we were able to see in the 2024 election will hold.”

… Johnson: “Off-year election results in isolated places are never indicative of the upcoming mid-term election. Don’t read too much into it. You shouldn’t. If you do you will miss it. The GOP is in excellent position to win big next year. When I say I’m bullish about the mid-terms, we are.”

… Rep. Marge Green on CNN: Q - “Johnson and Thune have downplayed the election results. Are they wrong? Greene: I don’t think they should downplay it. In Georgia we lost 2 very important Public Service Commission seats that were statewide races. I think that should be a big wakeup call.”

… Q - “Do you think the high cost of living under President Trump is a major reason Republicans lost the election the other day? Greene: It’s a massive reason.”

… DNC Chair Ken Martin: “Think about the 13 seats that we won in the VA House. 7 of those 313 seats that we won haven’t been won by a Democrat in 40 years. This is how deep and wide Tuesday’s victory was. What happened throughout the country was a landslide for Democrats. The foot is on the gas, no brakes. We’re doing this all the way through November of 2028.”

… Sen. Ted Cruz on Fox: “The left showed up in big numbers. And common sense conservatives did not. If that happens a year from now, we face disaster in the midterms.”

… MD Sen President Bill Ferguson, who has been blocking his own party’s push to redistrict his state to respond to Republicans: “The resounding Democratic victory shows we don’t need to rig the system to win. When we provide a better vision about the future - lower costs, better services, and real solutions to protect against Trump - voters overwhelmingly choose our leadership.”

… VA Sen. President L. Louise Lucas responded to her Democratic counterpart: “Get our victory in Virginia out of your mouth while you echo MAGA talking points. Grow a pair and stand up to this President. This is just embarrassing.”

… Disgraced former Rep. George Santos, recently released from prison with his Trump pardon, says he’s leaving NYC after Mamdani was elected, so the mayor-elect is already cleaning up crime in the city before he even takes office.

… Steve Bannon to Politico on Mamdani’s win: “People better understand they have a fight on their hands. This guy is a serious guy. I’ve said this from the beginning - I said early in the primary. Forget the Republican Party in NY - that’s a joke - but the national Republican Party and some of the smartest strategists do not realize the power of the Working Families Party and the Democratic Socialists of America for ground game. Modern politics now is about engaging low-propensity voters, and they clearly turned them out. This is very serious.”

… Bannon then said what he thinks Trump need to do to deal with Mamdani: “I think tomorrow - and I’ve argued from the beginning - this guy’s citizenship should be checked immediately. It ought to be addressed. It ought to be addressed by the State Dept, DHS and DOJ. Go through all of it. If the guy lied on his naturalization papers, he ought to be deported out of the country immediately and put on a plane to Uganda.”

… Ted Cruz on Fox: Ted Cruz: “The heart of the Democratic Party today is communist and jihadist and extremist.”

… MSNBC: “Josh Shapiro says Mamdani called him after the PA Gov. criticized him in July: ‘We had a very long and an honest conversation. I told him how some of his words landed on me. I thought it was a very productive and honest conversation.’”

… Shapiro to Semafor’s David Weigel: “Mamdani called me, and we had a very lengthy conversation, and I was very direct with him about how hurtful some of the words were that he used or that he allowed to be used around him. He explained to me his perspective, which I thought was helpful for me to hear, and on some things, we agreed to disagree. But I thought it was a healthy dialogue, and I appreciate the fact that he reached out.”

… Moderate Dem consultants/pundits and their progressive counterparts have been in a debate on social media about whether Dems need to follow the Mamdani model to win the midterms or if Dems need to follow the Spanberger model to win. My opinion is that it’s a big country. Different approaches work in different places. Candidates who connect with their specific constituencies is the model. NYC is not VA and vice-versa. I think the candidates should ignore the punditry class and listen to people in their states/district.

… CNBC: The US saw a huge spike in announced layoffs in Oct, reaching levels not seen in 22 years. According to new data from Challenger, Gray & Christmas, companies cut 153,074 jobs last month—an increase of 183% from Sept and 175% higher than Oct of last year. It’s the largest number of cuts for any Oct since 2003 and adds to what has become the worst year for layoffs since 2009.

… Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT): “Trump’s economy suuuuucks.”

… Bloomberg: “The surprising resilience of the US economy this year is masking underlying weakness among low- and middle-income households, as higher-income Americans continue to drive growth. Economist Peter Atwater: ‘I feel like our economy today resembles a top-heavy Jenga tower.’ In the popular Jenga game, wooden blocks are stacked and then carefully removed by players until the tower becomes too fragile and collapses. The reference is apt as the stock market surges to fresh highs even as hiring stalls and layoffs creep up.”

… Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s: “It makes the economy highly vulnerable if anything goes off the rails for those high-income, high-net worth households. A downturn in the stock market would knock the wind out of these high income households - the last pillars of strength in the economy - and raise the risks of recession.”

… WSJ: “America’s biggest builders are struggling to sell homes even when they offer buyers a 4% mortgage. Their experience suggests rate cuts alone won’t be enough to boost weak sales in the wider housing market. The number of completed but unsold new homes has reached levels last seen in the summer of 2009. At the end of last year, builders were confident that sales would recover in 2025 and built tens of thousands of units to have enough supply for the spring-buying season. But demand didn’t pick up, and more homes sat unsold.”

… CNBC host: “This is really crazy. The median age of first-time home buyers is 40 years old. That’s a shocking number. That’s a record high. And by the way, in 2021, that number was 33 years old. It’s a huge problem.”

… Economic Times: “The Federal Reserve quietly pumped $125 billion into the US banking system over 5 days, marking its largest short-term liquidity move since the 2020 COVID-19 crisis. On Oct 31 alone, the Fed injected $29.4 billion through overnight repurchase agreements, allowing banks to trade US Treasuries for cash to ease funding stress.”

… “This massive cash infusion, the biggest in 5 years, signals a complex balancing act by the Fed between controlling inflation and preventing financial cracks, stoking excitement about potential crypto rallies amid easing credit conditions. The ‘money printer’ is indeed active again, quietly flooding banks with cash in a critical moment for US finance and crypto markets.”

… Melania Trump will receive the ‘Patriot of the Year’ award from Fox at their annual primetime Patriot Awards show tonight.

… Novo Nordisk executive Gordon Findlay fainted in the Oval Office during a very long, drawn out series of speeches by Trump, RFK Jr, Dr. Oz, and several other Trump admin officials and drug company CEOs. Fox reported he is fine. The Empathizer-in-Chief was on top of his game dealing with the situation:

Andrew Harnick, Getty

… The press conference resumed after the guy was taken out of the room, and Trump then said this to the Novo Nordisk CEO: “Maybe you should give us a piece of the company like I’ve been asking for.”

… Stan Veuger from the American Enterprise Institute: “They told me if I voted for Kamala we’d get full-fledged communism, and they were right.”

… Jim Stewartson: “Stalin would have had the common decency to do it behind closed doors.”

… Newsmax’s immediate response to the medical emergency in the Oval Office while covering it live: “President Trump, we want to be clear, is okay.”

… Before that drama, Dr. Oz said that part of their announcement was the cost of fertility drugs were going to be lower: “We’ve dropped in fertility drugs to make a lot of Trump babies hopefully by the midterms.”

… Speaker Emeritus Nancy Pelosi is ending a long and illustrious career as she announced today that she is not running for re-election. If you are a regular reader of this Bulletin, you knew this was coming last week since I reported that she would announce after Prop 50 election.

… Gavin Newsom: “Nancy Pelosi has inspired generations. Her courage and conviction to SF, CA, and our nation has set the standard for what public service should be. Her impact on this nation is unmatched. Thank you, Madam Speaker. Wishing you the best in this new chapter - you’ve more than earned it.”

… Mike Johnson: “Former speaker Nancy Pelosi announced her retirement this morning. That’s a very important sign that I hope you all will look into. Even the famous San Francisco liberal is not far left enough for the neo marxists.”

… It could also be that she would be 87 years old at the start of the next term and doesn’t want to be Diane Feinstein.

… Trump was asked to make a statement about the former Speaker’s retirement announcement: “I think she’s an evil woman who did a poor job. I thought she was terrible.”

… A moving tribute.

I jumped on the election night coverage with the brothers on Tuesday night and ended up doing 5 hours until 1 AM after my normal 12 hour day writing this Bulletin. That was a seriously long day but what a great one it was! We had 1.5 million people watch that, which was amazing.

Then I did my show Uncovered last night where we recapped the election and did a deeper dive into the hot stories right now. If you missed that you can find the link here. Thank you to everyone who voted in these past elections and for watching, reading and sharing my work.

… Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick was on Fox talking about the oral argument before the Supreme Court on his tariff scheme: “The justices were on the President’s side. You’re hearing it here from me, President Trump is going to win this case!”

… I listened to the hearing. Maybe he was listening to a different one. Trump is going to lose this case - I predict he will get 2-3 votes at best.