Today in Politics, Bulletin 468. 9/27/26

… US Ambassador to China David Perdue said on Fox that in their recent meeting Trump asked President Xi if China wanted to buy weapons systems from the US: “Trump continues say that we sell arms to other people around the world. He actually asked President Xi if he would like to buy some at one point.”

… UN Ambassador Mike Waltz on NBC: Q - “Did President Xi actually commit to stop China’s support of Iran with this war? Waltz: They’ve had, uh, good, strong, and I think fulsome conversations about that support, but I’ll leave that to the president to detail.”

… In other words, no he didn’t.

… Dep. WH Chief of Staff Dan Scavino posted an AI video showing himself, his wife and Eric and Lara Trump partying and spraying champaign at the State Dinner honoring Xi. I guess these people aren’t worried about how many people are struggling under their economy as they continue paying tribute to Marie Antoinette.

… NYT: “Gas prices climbed, mortgage costs soared and investors on Wall Street grew jittery this week, intensifying a political maelstrom surrounding Trump with just over a month until voters cast their ballots in the 2026 midterm election. For Americans stung by years of persistently high prices, the end of Sept brought little obvious relief, as a long unresolved war with Iran continued to ripple across the US economy in ways that made the nation’s battle with inflation all the more vexing.”

… “Oil prices whipsawed around $100 per barrel while costs at the pump remained high, with a gallon of gasoline reaching an average of nearly $4.50 nationally by Friday. The more concerning spike occurred in diesel, which topped $6.50 per gallon, raising the possibility that high transportation and shipping costs could make groceries and other goods more expensive soon, too.”

… “The energy shock fanned fears of worsening inflation, which consequently sent yields on some govt bonds to the highest level in more than two decades. That made federal borrowing more expensive, but the problem was not confined to Washington, as the sharp turn in yields also sent rates on 30-year mortgages surging above 7% by the week’s end.”

… German journalist Mathias Döpfner asked right-wing tech billionaire Peter Thiel if he regretted supporting Trump:

• “I think the two admins kind of made opposite mistakes. The first term brought in all these people who couldn’t agree, and it was just all this internal fighting. The second admin overcorrected for the mistake of the first term with all these loyalty tests. So you got an admin staffed by not very smart, but very loyal people. And so, there are all sorts of ways it can be criticized.”

• “There are a lot of things I got wrong. He was crazier than I thought. More dangerous than I thought.”

… Axios: “A pollster for Senate Republicans was met with disbelief on Sat after telling GOP donors and operatives that they could grow their majority in Nov’s midterm elections. One attendee at the NRSC’s Sea Island retreat in GA after the presentation by the pollster, Erik Iverson:

• “Delusional.”

• Another: “The mood is not good.”

• A third: “I think most attendees down here are politically astute and realistic about the headwinds Republicans face.”

• A 4th attendee described conversations at the event as Republicans sarcastically telling each other “we’re winning” and “everything’s good.”

… Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-WI), who is in a hotly contested swing district, on CNN: Q - “Only 33% of Americans approve of how Trump is handling his job. Is he a drag in your district? Van Orden: I am fully supportive of President Trump. And if that’s not popular, that’s just the way it is.”

… Good luck with that.

We make the entire Weekend Bulletin available to free subscribers where about the first third of the daily Bulletins during the week are available. Everyone is also able to participate in the comments section to this one.

Tomorrow is also Ask the Editor where I choose 5 of your questions to answer on the show. Please leave a question you would like to submit for the show in the comments below or even just a topic you want me to talk more about.

If you missed Friday’s Bulletin, you can find it here.

… FITS News (SC): “Conservative Republicans in SC made it abundantly clear during the 2026 primary election cycle that they didn’t want the sister of Lindsey Graham serving as the GOP nominee for US Senate this fall. The Republican establishment – egged on by Trump – refused to listen, and proceeded to launch a multi-million dollar campaign in support of Darline Graham Nordone.

… “At the same time, Trump and his SCGOP allies spent millions attacking Nordone’s Freedom Caucus rival, Rep. Ralph Norman – a move that further alienated the state’s growing conservative base. Now, the consequences of this ongoing alienation are becoming painfully clear for the SC’s GOP ruling class… and for Trump.”

… “A new survey from one of the nation’s most accurate Republican pollsters has revealed the race to be a dead heat. According to poll results released on Sat from Trafalgar, Nordone is clinging to an incredibly narrow advantage over her Democratic rival Annie Andrews. 43.4% said they would vote for Nordone compared to 42.3% who answered Andrews – a spread of just +1.1%. 8.5% were undecided.”

… What makes these numbers even more troubling for Nordone? 59.1% of respondents identified as Republicans, compared to just 29.3% who professed being Democrats. The remainder of the sample – 11.6% – did not identify with either of the two major parties. A top GOP strategist: “This is very, very bad if these numbers are believed.”

… Trump is turning on one of his Republican congressional allies after Rep. María Elvira Salazar criticized his deportation policies, sharing a barrage of posts attacking her and questioning her political future. Salazar recently released an ad warning Trump that some of his immigration enforcement efforts had “gone too far” and that Hispanic voters who helped him win in 2024 “feel betrayed.”

… Trump amplified 14 tweets attacking Salazar. One called her “nothing but a back stabber,” another said, “She tried a stunt and it back fired!” and another urged, “Primary her in two years.”

… The Miami Herald then endorsed Salazar’s Democratic opponent Elliott Rodriguez. Salazar responded. She’s having a tough weekend:

• “Thank you Miami Herald. The Miami Herald Editorial Board endorsement has become the kiss of death for candidates who get it, making it fitting that my opponent received it.”

• “Our community has lost trust in the professionalism of the publication as it’s gone from the paper of record to a rag for the far left. Its endorsements have become a voter guide for who not to vote for.”

… Axios: “The problems for the GOP are everywhere. In the battle for the Senate, once ruby-red TX looks more in play than ever, and FL isn’t far behind. Nor is AK. NC and GA look lost. ME is problematic. The Senate GOP campaign arm is begging donors for another $8.9 million to defend Senate seats in 3 states that Trump won by double digits two years ago - AK, IA and OH.”

… One GOP pollster: “We’re having problems just getting Republican voters to respond to polls. At what point do we think these guys aren’t showing up at the actual polls on Election Day?”

… “What once looked like a long shot for Democrats - taking control of the Senate by flipping 4 Republican-held seats on a map favoring the GOP - looks increasingly plausible. Republicans are now playing defense deep in red America. GOP-aligned groups are spending money in more than a half-dozen districts that Trump won by at least 15 points in 2024.”

… Dem senate nominee James Talarico at a campaign forum:

• “Billionaires are pouring an unprecedented amount of money into Texas to try to buy this Senate seat - they are hoping that Texans will care more about these manufactured culture wars than actual wars. They’re hoping Texans will care more about pronouns than prices. But I think Texans see through this distraction.”

• “Corrupt politicians are profiting off a corrupt war and Texans are literally paying the price - this war in Iran is a disaster. It is killing Americans, driving up the price of gas and diesel, it is wrecking our moral standing around the world. And it must end.”

• “I am extending an open hand to all of our neighbors who supported the president in the last election and inviting them to join this movement we are building across the state.”

… Fox political analyst Karl Rove ripped Republican nominee Ken Paxton at the forum hosted by the Texas Tribune:

• “You’ve got a guy who has multiple girlfriends and $200,000 worth of home improvements from a corrupt business guy for whom he does favors.”

• “My personal favorite is the Uber account in the name of ‘David P’. Since he drives around in a car that has state license plates, it made it a little difficult to have assignations with one of his mistresses, so the corrupt business guy gives him a fake Uber account and the records of that are now in his impeachment proceedings, so we know how often he went to have sex with Laura Olsen. I mean, can you make this shit up?”

• “Trump said he may only spend half his PAC money on the midterms and keep the rest for his presidential library. If he does that, there will be hell to pay. Cause there will be a lot of people who lose close races who are going to say, but for him only onto that money, I might have won.”

… Sen. John Fetterman was also at the forum in TX: Q: “Why not become an independent? Fetterman: Because I’m a lifelong Republican. Host - You mean a Democrat. Fetterman: That’s gonna break the internet. That will get clipped. Yeah, I’m a lifelong Democrat.”

… Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) posted:

• “Without warning or consultation, Congress just received an $810 million package of pocket rescissions from the Admin. This is the most recent attempt by this OMB to undermine Congress’s Constitutional power of the purse. This move shows that OMB intentionally withheld these funds for months to execute this unlawful cancellation of appropriations that were approved on a bipartisan basis and signed into law.

• Not only is the delay itself an impoundment that was not reported to Congress, but also it is a usurpation of Congress’s appropriations powers. OMB is an agency of the executive branch. It does not get to decide which programs are worth funding. The GAO has concluded that pocket rescissions are unlawful and not permitted by the Impoundment Control Act.

• Any effort to rescind appropriated funds without congressional approval is a clear violation of the law. I will work with my colleagues to address these illegal actions.”

… Collins’ post on X received this Community Note: “Senator Collins voted to confirm OMB Director Russ Vought, despite Vought’s known support for the President’s efforts to impound Congressionally-approved funds.”

… Vought said he was going to do this before Trump even took office. It is in the section of Project 2025 that he authored. But Collins voted to confirm him and is now acting outraged that he’s doing what he said he was going to do.

… Collins’ Democratic opponent Troy Jackson: “Susan Collins voted for Trump's pick to lead the OMB. Now she’s surprised he's doing exactly what he promised to do?
She’s the Appropriations Chair who voted with Trump 96% of the time. Expressing concern isn't enough. Mainers see through the bullshit.”

… Michigan’s largest newspaper, the Detroit Free Press, endorsed Abdul El-Sayed today for US Senate:

• “Everything you’ve heard about MI’s US Senate race is true: An extremist is asking voters to send him to Washington, masking an agenda far out of step with MI’s mainstream under the pretense of normalcy. If elected, this man would urge America down a dark path, changing the shape of our nation, perhaps irrevocably. But that man is not Abdul El-Sayed.”

• “El-Sayed, the Democratic candidate for Michigan’s open Senate seat, is a charismatic public servant with an American-as-apple-pie biography: Born in Oakland County, he’s a former high school football player, a Univ. of Michigan graduate who trained as a doctor and married his college sweetheart.”

• “El-Sayed, whose parents were born in Egypt and immigrated to this country, would also be the first Muslim to serve in the US Senate. His detractors imply, or say outright, that El-Sayed’s faith and ancestry are disqualifying. But America is a nation of immigrants and freedom to worship as we choose is written into this country’s founding; such attacks are noxious and ill-conceived. You might even say they’re un-American.”

• “Now, as the Nov. 3 general election nears, El-Sayed, is neck-and-neck with Republican Mike Rogers, a former member of Congress and a consummate insider whose tenure in political office began when El-Sayed was in grade school ‒ and whose politics have taken a dark turn as he’s embraced Trump’s norm-shattering agenda.”

• “Rogers wants voters to believe that El-Sayed is an extremist. But Rogers is a vocal supporter of a radical regime that is working to delegitimize LGBTQ+ Americans, strip the contributions of Black and Brown Americans from our national history, restrict the rights of women to access not just abortion but contraception, place tariffs on our closest allies with devastating economic consequences, deport millions of Americans and conduct an immigration enforcement program that has led to the unjust killings of American citizens.”

• “We find no indication that Rogers would check Trump’s romp through the rule of law, and his own politics are no more encouraging.”

… Speaker Mike Johnson to Spectum News: “When people are promising free things to you, you must ask what the real price is. It is your freedom. It will drive costs up. It will ruin the economy. It will make people more dependent upon government, and that’s the communist’s ultimate goal.”

… Republicans are promising $5,000 checks and a third bailout for farmers.

… NYT reporter Bayliss Wagner: “The Trump admin is airing ANOTHER taxpayer-funded political ad, and this time, it’s from his 2024 campaign. Trump says in the ad: ‘We will demolish the deep state, expel the warmongers from our government... We will rout the fake news media.”

… We are paying for Trump to promote himself with campaign ads during the midterms. Another criminal act committed by a felon who has been given immunity by a Supreme Court after they invented it for the first time.

… Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) was asked about it on CBS: “I don’t think any public official, including Trump or Kristi Noem or John Kennedy, should spend public money on private ads for themselves. I also think we ought to have a rule that no politician can have a building named after him when he’s alive.”

… Trump attended the University of TN’s football game on Sat with Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN) and Natalie Harp. Naturally, TN lost due to the Trump Curse. Getty’s Tom Brenner got a photo of Harp showing something to Trump and Hagerty on her laptop.

… MS NOW: “Two veteran FBI counterterrorism supervisors have been removed from their jobs after a disagreement over an investigation involving alleged harassing phone calls made to the wife of WH deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller. The FBI confirmed the demotions.”

… “The special agent in charge of counterterrorism in the FBI’s Washington field office, Michael Burgwald, and his deputy, Courtland Rae, each have deep national security experience. Burgwald is a West Point graduate who won an award for his role in a counterterrorism case in 2016. Rae worked on the Boston Marathon bombing case. Both were involved in investigating the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.”

… “Burgwald had already drawn the ire of FBI Director Kash Patel over a series of disagreements. But FBI sources said the final straw came after the Washington field office’s counterterrorism section was asked to conduct a threat assessment on a person believed to have been making harassing phone calls to Miller’s wife, conservative podcaster Katie Miller.”

… The unusual request was greeted with disdain inside the FBI, the sources said: “Harassing phone calls aren’t even in the ballpark of terrorism unless an actual terrorist is doing the dialing,” said one former FBI official.

… WaPo: “Major League Baseball has approached the Trump admin about hosting a game at a national park. The admin has scouted locations in Grand Teton National Park to build a baseball park to host an MLB game. Grand Teton is the country’s 8th-most visited national park and is famous for its breathtaking views of the Teton Range of the Rocky Mountains.”

… “National parks are among the country’s most protected federal lands, and constructing a sports facility at Grand Teton could set a new precedent for the use of vast national park land in the Western US. National Park Service Dep. Director Frank Lands visited Grand Teton National Park this week and looked at 3 potential locations for a baseball park within the park’s boundaries.”

… Asst AG for Fraud Colin McDonald on Fox: "Apparently 35% of people have never even used their Obamacare account for any health services. That is a statistical impossibility and it's because these are not real people seeking real care. These are fraudsters."

… I’m not so sure that proves widespread fraud.

… WSJ on US Ambassador to Greece, Kimberly Guiloyle: “Guilfoyle has puzzled govt officials across the region with her extensive efforts to involve Christos Marafatsos, a former produce seller turned ‘Greeks for Trump’ chairman. Marafatsos has attended so many of her meetings that some foreign officials mistook him for her chief of staff. Instead, he’s a top lobbyist for a company she’s been promoting—a fact he often doesn’t disclose, including in meetings with govt officials.”

… ProPublica: “In the first days after Pam Bondi was appointed AG last year, DOJ began shutting down pending criminal cases at a record pace. The cases included an investigation into a VA nursing home with a recent record of patient abuse; probes of fraud involving several NJ labor unions, including one opened after a top official of a national union was accused of embezzlement; and an investigation into a crypto company suspected of cheating investors.”

… “In total, the DOJ quietly closed more than 23,000 criminal cases in the first 6 months of Trump’s admin, abandoning hundreds of investigations into terrorism, white-collar crime, drugs and other offenses as it shifted resources to pursue immigration cases.”

… “The bulk of these cases, which were closed without prosecution and known as declinations, had been referred to the DOJ by law enforcement agencies under prior admins that believed a federal crime may have been committed.”

… “The number of declinations under Bondi marks a striking departure not only from the Biden admin but also the first Trump term. The shift comes as the DOJ has undergone an extraordinary overhaul under the Trump admin, with entire units shuttered, directives to abandon pursuit of certain crimes and thousands of lawyers quitting or, in some cases, being forced out of the agency.”

… “DOJ is retreating from its mission to impartially uphold the rule of law, keep the country safe and protect civil rights, according to interviews with a dozen prosecutors and an open letter from nearly 300 DOJ employees who have left DOJ under Trump. The Trump DOJ, the employees wrote, is ‘taking a sledgehammer’ to long-standing work to ‘protect communities and the rule of law.’”

… Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on NBC that he can’t trust US negotiators:

• "In 2025 they offered negotiations, we accepted, then in the middle of negotiations they attacked us. 8 months later, again they offered negotiations, again we accepted, and again they attacked us in the middle of negotiations. There is no reason we should go back to diplomacy."

• “In 2015, we had a deal, we remained committed to that deal, it was the US that withdrew with zero justification.”

• “We stand firm in the face of any new aggression, even if it comes to a doomsday war.”

… Hollywood Reporter: “So much for free speech. The studio releasing Alex Gibney’s new Elon Musk documentary Musk is finding itself unable to buy an ad on the biggest social platforms. YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram and Facebook owner Meta are all declining to run the trailer for Musk, along with X itself.

… “Distributor Bleecker Street is internally scrambling to understand why the ad has been rejected. The unwillingness of platforms to accept even paid ads is sure to raise concerns about free speech and the dwindling number of companies that control many of the platforms in this country - and ironically provide a proof-text for the very point the film is coming to make.”

… DC photographer Joe Flood posted a photo of the Reflecting Pool today, which is still not reflecting anything other than Trump’s incompetence.