Put in the hot seat on affordability by that British dinosaur on Fox News, House Majority Whip Tom Emmer on Friday claimed he’s feeling good about the GOP’s chances in the midterms because someone sent a meme that said “$4 gas, $6 diesel – not acceptable, but it’s not gonna get me to vote for a communist,” causing the old British anchor to laugh heartily at Emmer’s spirit.

Not to dampen the cheerful determination and hopeful tenor, it’s just that, lol… Forget the part about the meme, which is so fucking on-brand for a supposedly serious Republican to be now acting like that kind of bullshit matters, but the actual content of said meme and how it fits in to what legions of election data eggheads are thinking these days: No, there probably won’t be all that many GOP 2022/Trump 2024 voters flipping to Democrats in 2026. Like 5 or 10 percent of them flipping would be the most you could realistically expect and even that might be pushing it despite the loud anecdotes.

But that’s not and never was the problem for the GOP. Like this site wrote in the immediate aftermath of the 2024 election, the fact that no fewer than five Trump-backed Republican statewide candidates – for governor in North Carolina, and Senate in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin – lost while convicted felon President Trump carried their states was an indicator of possible serious weakness downballot for MAGA going into this year. Now it’s been a year and half of absolute malpractice both in policy and politics by the party so forget the fucking no-info voters who checked the box for Trump and left the rest of the ballot empty. They’re long gone. Now it’s all the mid- or even higher-propensity GOP voters who, yes, probably won’t “vote for a communist.”

They also just won’t show up at all. And as much as this sounds like a joke, think about it: If you live in rural Kansas and diesel’s $6 a gallon, do you really want to drive your Ford F-3500 15 miles to go vote or are you going to want to just stay home and watch Fox News on election day?

A complaint filed to the House Ethics Committee by David Wheeler, the guy who in 2021 got sandbagged on reporting claiming Colorado MAGA Congresswoman Lauren Boebert had formerly worked as an escort, accused the very same 38 year-old grandmother GED diploma holder of sexing up no fewer than two female and one male members of her offices congressional staff, the Colorado Times Recorder reports on more white trashery from the famously dashing QAnon fangirl.

One interesting tidbit about Wheeler and his “American Muckrackers” outfit that moves the old reporting on the hooker story – which he admits was “sloppy” – from “probably true, evidence weak,” to “essentially confirmed to be true” from the Times Recorder’s story: “This isn’t the first time Wheeler has made claims about Boebert based on undisclosed sources. In June 2022, Wheeler launched a website stating, among other claims, that Boebert had previously worked as a paid escort. The site featured an image of a woman who was not her, one of several errors Wheeler later acknowledged and called ‘sloppy,’ though he defended his underlying claim about her past.”

“Boebert threatened to sue him over the claims, but never did. Instead, Wheeler filed a defamation lawsuit against her over her public threats of legal action. That lawsuit, which was also filed under oath and penalty of perjury and included the main claim about her paid escort work, was eventually settled with undisclosed terms,” the CTR continued. So yeah, she was an escort and Wheeler was sandbagged by some GOP operatives who suckered him in by seeding the real evidence with an easily-identifiable pic of Michigan booze lady Mellisa Carone – the maniac who lied about having all that “insider info” about Dominion Voting Systems – that had already been circulated publicly.

“Over the years, there have been many Hoaxes, all generated by the Radical Left Dumocrats, for purposes of destroying our Country. RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA, UKRAINE, UKRAINE, UKRAINE, Global Warming, Impeachment Hoax #1, Impeachment Hoax #2, Men in Women’s Sports, Transgender for Everyone, and now, the decimation, or destruction, of AI, commonly known as Artificial Intelligence.”

“And I, as President of the United States, will not stand by and let this happen. It all began with an attack on our Data Centers, until people realized how wealthy and prestigious they were for the Communities in which they were built. Higher Salaries, Lower Taxes, and Safer Streets, was the result, and the crazed Data Center attack has largely failed, so now, in much the same way as they changed the term ‘Global Warming’ to ‘Climate Change,’ in that it covers a much larger ‘territory’ of doubt, they are going straight at AI. We will not in any way hinder or stifle the Growth of this incredible Industry. Rather, we will cherish it, help it, and watch over it, as it grows! However, we will also be looking for BAD, and we can do that, very easily, with our already existing Criminal and Civil Justice System. For this purpose, I am forming the AI Force, much like I did Space Force, which has been a tremendous SUCCESS, in my First Term. To that end, I will be announcing, in the near future, the AI ‘Czar’ – Only High IQ individuals need apply! AI is the next Industrial Revolution, or Internet, but will be even larger and more impactful, possibly as much as 25 percent of our Country’s GDP. We are leading China, and the rest of the World, and I intend to keep it that way!” posted the Orange Puppet on Saturday. Lol at the “czar” thing. Isn’t the David Sacks douchebag already the AI czar?

Also lol at “Men in Women’s Sports, Transgender for Everyone” being among the “Hoaxes,” since, yeah, that’s an accurate enough descriptor of how common transitions surgeries are. Fox News and other outlets perpetuate a gross exaggeration if not an outright hoax of the “threat” that trans people represent to ordinary Americans… a great many of whom, funny enough, are affected by the propagation of AI and have a lot of serious concerns about the disruption caused by its spread.

A Friday report in Politico spells out how badly convicted felon President Trump’s succumbing to a behind-the-scenes charm offensive by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has screwed Empire State Republicans, leading with “Not too long ago, Republicans were salivating at the thought of using New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani as a far-left boogeyman,” leaving them with “moderate Gov Kathy Hochul has emerged as the GOP’s go-to foil,” as though the competently bland, low-profile technocrat caucasian female without any defined vulnerabilities is somehow supposed to be the same grade of MAGA rage heroin as a Muslim socialist immigrant from Uganda.

“There’s not a Democrat in the party in a swing district who wants to be near her,” said an anonymous state Dem official, adding “Her numbers aren’t as bad as four years ago, but they’re certainly not good.” Of course chaining Dems to the governor invites the question of whether Republicans want to be chained to the Orange God Emperor. “I don’t think it’s anywhere near as potent as the president of the United States,” said consultant David Carlucci. “It is just a lash out as really one of the few options they have in terms of just playing the blame game.”

Republican Michigan Congresswoman Lisa “I’d like to speak to the manager” McLain tells Axios in an exclusive interview that her advice to GOP colleagues in tough races is that “the word ‘socialism’ doesn’t really resonate” with voters these days, so she’s taking it up a notch or two.

“The word ‘communism’ resonates,” said McClain, adding she even made a catchy little tagline for those who really need a campaign trail scorcher: “Common sense versus communist crazy.”

McClain then conceded that it’s important not to “gaslight” voters about prices… because it doesn’t work. She fuckin said it: “You have to have empathy. I shop at the same grocery stores and fill my gas tank up at the same pumps that everybody else does. I don’t think gaslighting works,”

“I am proud to announce that, effective immediately, I am banning Fake News CNN, MSNOW (who recently changed their name from MSNBC due to lack of viewership and credibility!), and Politico (The recipients of an illegal and ridiculous $8 Million Dollar subscription, an All Time Record, directly from the United States Government, under Crooked Joe Biden, in order to keep them ‘alive.’ Seems like corruption to me!), from the White House as a result of their constant ‘reporting’ FAKE NEWS!”

“Media Outlets shouldn’t be able to constantly write or report FICTION and LIES when they’re covering the President of the United States, the Trump Administration, or the United States of America. Other Fake News Media Outlets to follow,” posted the fat attention whore on Friday.

Lol at Politico, they kinda had it coming. CNN far less so, MS Now not at all. Trump will probably ban Axios next for only calling this a 5D chess move rather than a 15D chess move. Then CBS News will get the boot for making his scalp under his hair plugs too shiny during an interview with Tony Dorkupil that took three hours but was edited down to 20 minutes by Bari Weiss’s team.

A little over a half hour after Trump’s post CNN’s Brian Stelter told anchors that the network’s team had not been ejected from the premises. “Certainly, if there is an attempt to remove journalists from the White House, well, our cameras are rolling. I think viewers will see it happen,” said Stelter.

“Kash Patel, the FBI director, temporarily halted some cooperation with the agency’s counterpart in Canada this month after the nation’s public broadcaster reminded its journalists of a longstanding policy not to refer to the Sept 11 attacks as ‘terrorism’ without attribution to experts, according to multiple officials with knowledge of the event,” says the lede to a Friday New York Times report that need be copied verbatim here as to avoid obscuring the astonishing fucking pettiness and, of course, the bitchy hypocrisy from a crew whose brand is all about opposing language policing.

Was it stupid and bizarre for the CBC to have such “a longstanding policy” in place? Yes. It is. You do not have to reflexively disagree with K$H on that specific opinion simply because it is his. It is very goddamned stupid, downright bizarre, and more than just a little offensive to the families of those killed in the worst terrorist attack in American history. Also just simply embarrassing to regular Canadians who would prefer that their taxpayer dollars not cover the operating costs of a network that seems almost hellbent on going reaching the logical endpoint of the most eggheaded institutional microaggression-prevention choose-your-own dated AM talk radio bullshit stereotypes.

And then there’s what K$H actually did: Cut off all of his agency’s contact with the national law enforcement agency of the neighbor with which the United States has had brotherly relations with for the better part of two centuries because of a complaint with how their national broadcaster conducts their news coverage. Read that again and then realize that he was more concerned with how the CBC defines terrorism than he was that the RCMP could warn the FBI that, say, they intercepted a phone call in which a Quebec resident suspected of links to ISIS ordered an unknown individual in Vermont to drive to Boston and blow himself up on a crowded public bus.

The CBC reversed the policy late last month and K$H reversed his FBI/RCMP unfriending. Luckily there were no ISIS or Al-Qaeda attacks for him to be offended over the CBC’s coverage of it.

“Unwatchable and Failing CNN is so dishonest. Everything they say is slanted against the Republican Party. They are truly FAKE NEWS! Thankfully, very few people are watching!” posted convicted felon President Trump on Friday, likely after having watched CNN for an hour or so.

Love the “Everything they say is slanted against the Republican Party,” as though the MSM didn’t help grease the skids for him with their “fairness” and “neutrality” back in 2024.

Thank you, President Trump!!!!!

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) September 17, 2026

What’s maddening about this post is that, if it came 18 months ago, you could just chalk it up to “lib-owning” given the context of the libs having been suffering some serious ownage during that excruciatingly hellish stretch. One little extra “fuck you” to those who agonized over the gleeful destruction of what little good was left in American national civic life. Free insult to add to the psychic injury of the annihilation of USAID, the Cybertruckifaction of DC, and so on. You didn’t like it back then, and that was the point of “taking credit” for something so stupid and meaningless.

Now that electoral consequences for their reign of terror are steadily approaching? Sure as hell is a lot harder to decide whether the fucking 24 year-old dipshit White House social media lackey who replied to Wendy’s tweet was in the same frame of mind as thought it were still March 2025 or whether this is some kind of twisted, knowing self-denigration satirizing their vastly diminished public standing. In that respect it’s actually kind of even more frustrating, that it’s impossible to impute the intent given the radically different circumstances that Team Orange currently finds themselves in – circumstances far, far worse than simple “thermostatic shifts in the electorate.”

The joke still sucks either way. That part of this mystery you can at least hang your hat on.

Revealing the depth to which the American people are being sold out to the multi-trillion industry that has birthed the technology that has a non-zero chance of wiping the human race off the face of the planet, the Trump Administration is entertaining at least 12 proposals covering 17,600 acres of Bureau of Land Management territory in Arizona, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, and Wyoming, the Washington Sun (formerly NOTUS) reports on a big win for the Orange Allah’s stock portfolio.

Convicted felon President Trump’s regime is expected to shift a fleet of attack drones operating over Africa against ISIS and Al Qaeda to South America over the next few weeks to start blowing up random drug labs, CNN reports on what can only assume is thirst for easy “wins.”

A canvasser wearing a t-shirt bearing the logo for “Stronger Maine,” a PAC supporting hopefully doomed incumbent Republican Senator Susan Collins, was at some point in the last few days caught on a Ring camera stealing a package off a voter’s porch and bolting to his vehicle, per an undated copy of the home security surveillance footage shared by clip guy Aaron Rupar on Thursday.

What’s odd about the 30 clip is that for at least two, possibly three seconds after the guy – who looks like caucasian rapper Vanilla Ice – had knocked on the door and made an entry into the app on his phone, seemed to notice the doorbell camera as though he realized he should’ve pressed it instead of knocking. Of course a 25 to 35 year old male Mainer – who actually on closer inspection looks more like Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst than Vanilla Ice – working for a Republican PAC as a canvasser for friggin Susan Collins isn’t all that likely to be particularly sharp or virtuous of a person.

Still, IF he noticed the doorbell as it appears he did, then how the freaking hell did he not notice the camera on it? Really the only scenario in which he comes across as marginally less of a MAGA dipshit is if he had seen the doorbell and the faint blue backlighting around the button was turned off or obscured or whatever, giving the canvasser the false impression that the Ring device was malfunctioning or deactivated, leaving him free to help himself to a voter’s Amazon package.

Marginally less of a MAGA dipshit. It’s still going to be pretty easy to track him down and add another tremor to the already shaky, jittery, deeply concerning outlook for Susan Collins 2026.

WOW! This South Florida Congressional candidate absolutely SCORCHED President Trump on how ICE raids have caused widespread suffering and misery among Miami-area Latino families! “Mr President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far. In July, 50 percent of the 50,000 people that were detained had no criminal record. Be careful what your advisers are telling you about immigration policy. The same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today. You can be for immigration what Lincoln was for slavery and Reagan was for communism. I’m not talking about giving them amnesty. I’m talking about giving them a dignified life in this promised land,” said Maria Elvira Salazar, a former Telemundo anchor running and the daughter of refugees who fled Castro’s Cuba, currently running in Florida’s 27th District.

Oh and, fun fact: Salazar is an incumbent Republican congresswoman. Yeah. Her internal polling must be fucking catastrophic if she’s cutting this kind of ad for her reelection campaign. Really the only tell is that she blames “your advisors” rather than the fat fuck himself, because the Pharaoh cannot fail, he can only be failed. She still risks Trump’s wrath with this ad given the insubordination, more so in the unlikely event he notices the very obvious implication that he’s not in control.

Thus the grating Mediaite/RawStory headline. See the previous article and a shit ton of others here for the lower-key, subtler acknowledgements that Republicans are freaking the fuck out going into November. As for actual paid advertising this one may be for the history books for its starkness.

A few paragraphs down into the Thursday New York Times report headlined “Republicans Reel on the Midterm Map as Deep-Red Areas Come Into Play” is a fairly interesting tidbit about convicted felon President Trump’s political team spinning up new PACs to run ads for his loyal candidates in far right rural districts and states: “Notably, Mr Trump’s operation has been using newly created super PACs instead of his main one, MAGA Inc, to book ads in states other than Texas. One result of that move: The damaged MAGA brand will not appear in the disclaimers of the ads.”

They’re going through all this extra paperwork and shit simply to avoid saying “This message paid for by MAGA Inc Political Action Committee” at the end of TV spots and at the bottom of banner ads in Kansas, Nebraska, Texas – including in the new districts that Trump commanded Lone Star State Republicans to gerrymander last year because he’s “entitled” to them – and elsewhere that Team Orange fears Democrats could make gains amid skyrocketing diesel and fertilizer costs.

House Republicans actually got around to passing the Ratepayer Protection Act on Tuesday, Yahoo Tech reports on a bill whose future was thrown into doubt by dickhead Steve Scalise’s very feckless public opposition to putting it to a floor vote because of “principled” reasons.

Note how there’s bulletproof glass in what’s supposed to be the tyrant’s safe space.

Remember how convicted felon President Trump spent like 14 months constantly screaming at now-former Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell – even accused him of somehow stealing tens of millions worth of construction materials from the Fed building’s troubled renovation project and selling them on the black market or whatever stupid shit until a judge shut down the “investigation”?

That was funny. Even funnier is that Trump was finally rid of “Too Late” Powell and got to appoint a new guy… Well another new guy since Trump appointed Powell back in 2018. Enter Kevin Warsh, billed as a harcore MAGA loyalist who would do whatever Trump demanded on interest rates.

In related news Trump just posted “Interest Rates in the United States should be 1 percent, or less, because we are the Best Credit in the World — BY FAR. Our Country is BOOMING with new Investment! If we stopped Trading with every country that we have a Deficit with, which is most of them, we would make, at least, 1.5 Trillion Dollars a year. The word ‘Deficit’ is nothing more than a fancy word for LOSS. We are ‘carrying’ almost every country in the World, and that cannot go on any longer. LOWER THE INTEREST RATES FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND FAST!” after the Fed, now led by Trump-appointed Chairman Kevin Warsh, raised interest rates on Wednesday, lol.

Jesus Dork Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday decided he’d had enough not working for the American people and sent the House of Representatives home for the next two months, Punchbowl’s Jake Sherman reports. The abrupt schedule change simply cancels Thursday’s votes, so it’s not like there was much more not working for the American people on the calendar anyway.

A new Bowling Green State University/YouGov survey of likely voters in Ohio finds that 25 percent of respondents think former Senator Sherrod Brown – who vacated his office on January 3rd, 2025 after losing his 2024 reelection bid to possibly closeted now-Senator Bernie Moreno – is still currently one of the two members of the Buckeye State’s delegation to the chamber rather than the outside challenger to incumbent appointee Jon Husted in this November’s special election.

Brown leads Husted 48 to 45 percent among the respondents despite having a net 12 percent favorability advantage of 42 to 41 favorable to Husted’s 35 to 46 percent favorable/unfavorable. Brown pulls 7 percent support from Trump 2024 voters to Husted’s 1 percent of Harris voters. The Dem also holds a massive 49 to 34 percent lead among 2024 non-voters. The polling’s crosstabs unfortunately did not show Brown’s support among those who think he’s still a senator.