Bad Optics

 Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics.  For a reality-TV guy, Trump has seemed remarkably inattentive to optics.

📺FAKE FOX NEWS: In shocking example of MAGA propaganda, @foxandfriends Weekend replaces footage of Trump's attendance at Dover AFB dignified transfer yesterday with video clip of Trump attending similar transfer on December 17, 2025 — all because he wore a baseball cap yesterday https://t.co/B06cdaAWRi pic.twitter.com/7iyoxUrM1D

— Bad Fox Graphics (@BadFoxGraphics) March 8, 2026

Fox News admits to airing an old dignified transfer video on its program this morning, one that did not show Donald Trump wearing a white ball cap. pic.twitter.com/Wi0xleC0lU

— Aaron Parnas (@AaronParnas) March 8, 2026

Trump to Latin American leaders: "I'm not learning your damn language. I don't have time." pic.twitter.com/02eQBPS9Gv

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 7, 2026

The Trump Administration's choice to end their "Shield for the Americas" summit with the Monty Python Flying Circus theme march is inspired. I take back everything bad I ever said about the regime pic.twitter.com/01rFCKuKrs

— Laura Jedeed (@LauraJedeed) March 7, 2026

Karoline Leavitt doesn’t rule out a draft.

How about the answer is NO DRAFT AND NO BOOTS ON THE GROUND because we campaigned on NO MORE FOREIGN WARS OR REGIME CHANGE!!!

Liars every single one of them!

Not my son, over my dead body!!!!!
pic.twitter.com/UTLn4WXFRV

— Former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@FmrRepMTG) March 8, 2026

Trump now says $100/barrel oil “a very small price to pay” and calls anyone who disagrees a “fool” pic.twitter.com/COdfvvJKDE

— Andrew Feinberg (@AndrewFeinberg) March 8, 2026

The Epstein Story Isn't Going Away

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments. Scandals persist.  Especially Epstein.

 Julie K. Brown and Claire Healy at Miami Herald:

Three FBI interviews that contain graphic sexual and physical assault allegations against President Donald Trump were released Thursday by the Justice Department. The reports were follow-up interviews a woman gave to the FBI in 2019, when the agency was investigating Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex trafficking crimes.

There is no indication in the reports whether the FBI was able to verify her claims. The White House on Thursday called the woman’s allegations “baseless.” But a DOJ source told the Miami Herald that agents found her to be credible – and that they would not have interviewed her four times if they thought she was lying. In the end, she declined to cooperate with their investigation, and they lost touch with her, the source said.

Favour Adegoke at Yahoo:

Federal investigators have released a new legal document that contains several suspicious findings in relation to Epstein's death by suicide.

According to the New York Post, one of the guards tasked with monitoring Epstein's tier, Tova Noel, searched for the latest update on the sex offender just moments before he was found dead by hanging in his cell, and also made an unexplained bank deposit of $5,000 ten days prior.

Noel was one of the officers who were accused of falsifying records to claim they checked on Epstein throughout the night of his August 10, 2019, suicide.

However, the document reveals that she googled "latest on Epstein in jail" at 5:42 am and then again at 5:52 am. It was about 40 minutes after her colleague, correctional officer Michael Thomas, found Epstein dead.

The document notes that Noel also searched for furniture online and reportedly missed out on completing her routine checks on Epstein, while Thomas checked for motorcycles.

Bad Times

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments -- now including a war in the Middle East.

 Sam Sutton and Megan Messerly at POLITICO:

Donald Trump won reelection on the promise of restoring the economy and eliminating illegal immigration.

But in the last week, both issues have threatened to turn into liabilities: A stagnant labor market and soaring gas prices amid the Iran conflict are hammering the economy, and the ouster of Kristi Noem from the Department of Homeland Security has cast new light on the administration’s increasingly unpopular immigration agenda. The economic backdrop has grown ominous — Wall Street analysts are warning that surging oil prices could lead to stagflation — and the blitzkrieg of bad news has jeopardized the GOP’s ability to keep voters focused on Trump administration policies that were designed to help with the rising cost of living.

“If you combine an economy that people don’t like with a prolonged war that you know nobody in his base believes they voted for, that’s a toxic problem,” said one Trump ally granted anonymity to speak freely. While Trump isn’t on the ballot this year, his party needs the president’s poll numbers to improve to keep the House and Senate.

“Don’t drag this war out,” the person said. “That’s my best advice for the administration. The country is in no mood for a prolonged war.”

The Iran conflict has put immense upward pressure on oil and gas –- prices at the pump have climbed by more than 11 percent in a week. Now, with employers shedding payroll and Trump pressing reset on who’s leading his immigration agenda, the president is on the backfoot on the two issues he needs to own for his party to win the midterms.

 Justin Lahart at WSJ:

The U.S. lost 92,000 jobs in February, a sign that the job market continues to struggle in nearly every sector.

The hiring numbers, reported Friday by the Labor Department, fell far short of January’s gain of 126,000 jobs. They were worse than the gain of 50,000 jobs that economists polled by The Wall Street Journal had expected to see.

The unemployment rate was 4.4%.

The labor market slowed markedly last year, with the U.S. adding the fewest jobs outside of a recession since 2003. That was in part due to the Trump administration’s cuts to the federal workforce through a combination of layoffs and voluntary buyouts, but it also reflected the cautious approach to hiring that many businesses adopted to combat uncertainty about tariffs and other policy measures. Expectations that artificial intelligence could reduce staffing needs might have further cut into hiring plans.

Despite some high-profile announcements, the overall level of layoffs remains low. But businesses are limiting the number of new workers they take on. Moreover, job growth was highly uneven, with the healthcare and social-assistance sectors driving gains over the past year, and most other sectors shedding jobs.

The Daines Switcheroo

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections. 

Manu Raju at CNN:

GOP Sen. Steve Daines made the last-minute decision to abruptly pull out of his Senate race to prevent Democrats from fielding a top recruit for the open Montana seat, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

Daines was aware that if he withdrew too soon then Democrats would have a chance at fielding one of several potential Democrats — namely former Sen. Jon Tester or former Govs. Brian Schweitzer or Steve Bullock. Any of those Democrats could have put the state on the map in the midterms and likely have sucked up enormous cash, as Democrats have done in red states like Alaska and Ohio, scrambling the race for the majority in the fall.

Instead, Daines withdrew from the race minutes before the Wednesday evening filing deadline. Kurt Alme, who was US attorney in Montana, filed to run eight minutes before the deadline. With the deadline closed, no top-tier Democrat can now jump in the race.

While Daines taped a video recently in Montana explaining his decision not to run, he didn’t know until after Alme resigned as US attorney Wednesday afternoon that he planned to run for the seat, the sources said. Daines planned to run for a third term if Alme had passed on a bid, according to the sources.

President Donald Trump was aware of the internal deliberations, as were Senate GOP leaders, and the president issued a Truth Social post praising Daines and endorsing Alme minutes after the filing deadline closed.

Trump said on social media that Daines had decided to “pass the torch” to Alme.

Democrats sharply criticized Daines and the GOP for engineering a move to anoint a successor and deny voters a chance to consider from an array of candidates, including in the primary. But it resembles a similar move made last year by Democratic Rep. Chuy Garcia in Illinois.

The timing of the announcement quickly drew criticism from another candidate in the race, independent Seth Bodnar, who said in a statement that Daines “has so little respect for Montana Republicans that he withdrew at the last minute to coronate his handpicked successor instead of giving them a voice at the ballot box.”

CNN reached out to Daines’ office for comment.

GOP's Nazi Problem: Florida Edition

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration was full of ominous developments -- including a tranche of racist and anti-Semitic chats by prominent Young Republicans.  Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, defended Tucker Carlson after his softball interview with Nazi wannabe Nick Fuentes.\

The party's Nazi problem continues.

 Claire Heddles at Miami Herald:

The secretary of Miami-Dade County’s Republican Party started a group chat primarily for conservative students last fall — and within three weeks it was filled with racist slurs, someone wrote dozens of ways of violently killing Black people and the chat was renamed after what one member described as “Nazi heaven.” In WhatsApp conversations leaked to the Miami Herald, participants used variations of the n-word more than 400 times, regularly described women as “whores,” used slurs to talk about Jewish and gay people and mused about Hitler’s politics.

Interspersed throughout were discussions about events promoting the Republican Party at Florida International University. The school told the Herald the chat logs are part of an ongoing criminal investigation.

The conversations included some of the campus’ top conservative leaders: the county GOP secretary, FIU’s Turning Point USA chapter president and the former College Republicans recruitment chair. The group chat — verified by two people in the group — reveals the extent of racism and extremism within the highest ranks of campus Republican Party leadership in Miami at a time Florida’s Republicans are reckoning with an increasingly emboldened far right.

Texas Primary 2026

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections. 

Mia McCarthy at POLITICO:

While the outcome wasn’t shocking, the confirmation of a May 26 runoff between Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and state Attorney General Ken Paxton confirmed the fears of many Republicans who now face a likely scorched-earth campaign that could seriously hobble the victor in November’s general election and drain resources from tough races in places like North Carolina and Maine.


Democrats, meanwhile, are seeing their dream scenario play out: State Rep. James Talarico has defeated Rep. Jasmine Crockett outright in the Democratic primary, giving the candidate many strategists see as the party’s best chance to finally turn the Lone Star State blue a clear path to November.

Tuesday’s results showed some surprising strength for Cornyn after he trailed Paxton, a MAGA firebrand, in most polls. The veteran senator is about a point ahead of the AG in the latest returns.

But for national Republicans, keeping Cornyn afloat will be expensive and will risk damaging Paxton if he ends up being their nominee. In the absence of a Trump endorsement for any candidate, Cornyn and his allies have already spent more than $100 million to take out Paxton.

The Akin Ploy does not always work: Republicans tried to boost Crockett but failed.

Megan Lebowitz and Ben Kamisar at NBC:

Texas state Rep. Steve Toth defeated Rep. Dan Crenshaw in a Republican primary in Texas, NBC News projects, unseating Crenshaw after a race that centered on which candidate more closely aligned with President Donald Trump.

Crenshaw becomes the first member of Congress to lose renomination in the 2026 midterm election cycle.

Toth challenged Crenshaw — the lone GOP House member running for re-election in Tuesday’s primaries who didn’t have Trump’s endorsement — from the right, arguing that his foreign policy and immigration views did not sufficiently align with those of the MAGA movement. Toth, an ordained pastor, also secured a late endorsement from Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas.

Crenshaw, who is in his fourth term, has at times bucked his party by backing aid for Ukraine and criticizing Trump allies for their claims that the 2020 election was stolen. But he sought to tie himself closely to Trump throughout the campaign in the solidly Republican 2nd District

 

MAGA and Mixed Messaging

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments -- now including a war in the Middle East.

JACK BLANCHARD with DASHA BURNS at POLITICO:

After a remarkable weekend of radio silence from officials, the Trump administration has shifted gears and is now trying to blitz the airwaves with positive messages making the case for war — which the president himself said “can be fought ‘forever’” on Truth Social last night.

Count ’em: Over 13 hours yesterday, we got Trump speaking at the White House. VP JD Vance went on Fox News in primetime. Secretary of State Marco Rubio gave a press conference on the Hill, while Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and his top Gen. Dan Caine did the same at the Pentagon. Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and NATO Ambassador Mike Waltz both did Fox last night. And press secretary Karoline Leavitt went to bat on social media — pushing back at MAGA influencers critical of the administration.

The reason for the shift is clear: As Leavitt’s lengthy post on X laid bare, the White House feels pressure to push back on heavy criticism — most crucially, from across its MAGA base — that a convincing case for war has not been made.

And the anger on the American right is real. Tucker Carlson. Megyn Kelly. Matt Walsh. Mike Cernovich. Candace Owens. Sean Davis.There are plenty more.

Here’s the problem: The White House response is not landing well. Trump’s strategy of offering different lines to almost any reporter who calls is mixing the message. And we’re now up to at least 19 of these ad hoc phone interviews since war broke out three days ago. (For those keeping track, yesterday’s callers included CNN’s Jake Tapper, NewsNation’s Kellie Meyer, the Daily Telegraph’s Connor Stringer, Fox News’ Bret Baier, Rachael Bade, Washington Reporter’s Matthew Foldi and the Sun’s Harry Cole. We should also add WaPo’s Natalie Allison and CNBC’s Joe Kernen, who Playbook missed from the weekend tally.)

Through this mish-mash of rapid-fire questions and snatched phone calls Trump has at times dabbled with regime change and freeing Iran, then insisted it was all about the nukes. At one point, the campaign might only last a couple of days, he said. Then suddenly it was “four to five weeks.” No wonder Walsh and Cernovich sound confused. And the poll numbers are only getting worse.

An even bigger problem erupted on Capitol Hill last night, where the generally on-message Rubio and Speaker Mike Johnson set out a very different justification for war. Their claims that the attacks were necessary because Israel was poised to strike Iran anyway — meaning America would have been hit in response — have gone down incredibly badly with “America First” types who already feared the U.S. was being dragged into Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s war.