3 Trump toadies Democrats should impeach first

DARTS, ANYONE?  President Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks are seen on Jan. 18, 2025.AP

 

Hegseth, Patel, RFK Jr. are worst of the worst 

 

by Lisa Needham

Staff

Wednesday, November 4, 2026 at 12:00 PM MST

 

REPUBLISHED BY:

Blue Country Gazette Blog

Rim Country Gazette Blog 

Look, we’re going to have to pace ourselves here. We’ve got a lot of people who deserve impeaching. We might have to do these, like, two at a time. We probably need to hire some sort of logistics coordinator or project manager to make sure we can shuffle these folks out the door with minimum fuss and maximum mockery. 

But listen, every race, long or short, needs a warm-up, right? So let’s start with the people who we know that even the surviving sliver of Republicans hate. 

Here’s who is getting dropped through a trapdoor we’ve just built into the Congress floor:

1. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth

Here’s the thing about Pete Hegseth: He’s so bad at his job that even if you actually love what Pete Hegseth stands for, you can still hate Pete Hegseth. Like, even if we set aside his propensity for committing war crimes, there’s so, so much more. 

A defense secretary who decides to decimate his own military during his own ill-advised war? The guy who seems to be lying about how many munitions he’s wasted on said war? The guy who makes more than half of the military want to quit early? 

Defense Secretary Pete HegsethAP

Who knew that hiring a sentient bottle of hair gel with a Crusades tattoo would turn out so poorly for the country?

But the biggest reason why Hegseth is first on the list is that the knives aren’t just out for him; they’ve already been lovingly sharpened and wiped down with soft cloth until they positively sparkle. 

GOP Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who’s out the door and has nothing to lose, said even before the midterms that he was ready to reintroduce articles of impeachment against Hegseth. And GOP Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, also out the door with nothing to lose, said that he’s going to spend his lame-duck session going after Hegseth. 

As for Democrats? Today, we are all Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, who used her victory speech last night to do some priority-setting: “Yes, we’re going to go after Hegseth.” 

Yes, ma’am, yes we are. 

2. FBI Director Kash Patel

Here’s the thing about Kash Patel: He’s so bad at his jo—whoops, sorry. Didn’t mean to repeat myself there. But Patel really has beclowned himself in spectacular fashion. From his inept staff purges to screwing up major investigations to using government resources to fly hither, thither, and yon with his fake country singer girlfriend, Patel just sucks at his job. 

He’s also been a big part of protecting President Donald Trump from having his sterling reputation tarnished by the publication of the Epstein Files and has been more than willing to deploy the FBI as a tool of harassment.

FBI Director Kash PatelAP

If there’s anyone who will be absolutely devastated to be thrown, feet first, out the door, it’s probably going to be Patel. Not because he loves his job, but because he has turned not doing his job into an art—a very special Make-A-Wish for one very special boy. 

Once Patel isn’t in government—once he doesn’t have the force of law behind him—who is going to hang out with him? No more partying with the U.S. Men’s Hockey team, my wee little dude. No more assigning a full FBI security team to your girlfriend so she can get her hair done. No more snorkeling at the Pearl Harbor memorial, because what is wrong with you, you ghoul? 

Enjoy returning to podcasting, Ka$h. Oh, and maybe restarting your clothing line? You know, the one where the website has been down for months because it was hacked? Is there anything this guy doesn’t suck at?

3. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Now, this guy is a genuine goblin. Perhaps Kennedy will take a moment away from bathing in beef tallow and working out with Kid Rock to show up before Congress to hear all of the reasons it’s going to bounce him ass first onto the pavement. 

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.AP

But if he doesn’t, no worries. He can be removed in absentia just as easily. 

The man is absolutely responsible for deaths. Maybe not Elon-Musk-level deaths, but deaths aplenty nonetheless. Throw him out over his decimation of vaccines. Throw him out over the fact that he lied to Congress in the first place about what he would do with vaccines. Throw him out over his “let them eat peptides” approach to healthcare. 

Heck, throw him out because he works out in jeans, because what the actual hell. Just throw. Him. Out.

 And speaking of really, really, really bad guys...

Corporate America Courted Trump. Now a Blitz of Investigations Is Coming.

 

Democrats are laying the groundwork to investigate some of the country’s largest companies, setting off a scramble among executives who courted the president. (photo: Getty)

 

Zeroing in on Apple, Meta, Elon Musk companies 

 

Pranshu Verma / The Washington Post

 06 November 26

 

Democrats are preparing to unleash a wave of investigations that will probe the most sensitive and controversial actions of America’s largest corporations over the past two years, sparking a reckoning among Silicon Valley and Wall Street executives who courted the Trump administration — and who are now bracing for an onslaught.

Days after winning majorities in the House and Senate, Democrats are setting sharp priorities. They are zeroing in on Apple, Meta and the companies led by Elon Musk as early targets for congressional investigations, according to two people familiar with the plans.

The House is laying the groundwork to investigate President Donald Trump’s use of Musk’s AI chatbot, Grok, to plan the military operation and capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, according to those people. Lawmakers are also eyeing Apple over its hosting of tracking apps used by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Meta over its demands that local governments sign nondisclosure agreements related to data center development.

This report is based on interviews with five congressional staffers, lobbyists, venture capitalists and lawyers familiar with the preparations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private matters, along with recordings of meetings reviewed by The Washington Post.

Those possibilities have prompted a flurry of activity in Washington, where corporate lawyers are hosting emergency online meetings, gatherings in co-working spaces and intimate bar conversations to dispense advice to founders and C-suite executives on how to prepare for the highly public investigations about to rain down on firms with ties to the Trump administration.

Multiple firms have crafted pitches for why they should serve as Musk’s personal counsel, aware that the world’s richest man is likely to receive a barrage of subpoenas and that any casework stemming from those investigations will be both lucrative and the highest-profile investigative work available in the coming year, according to two of the people.

It remains unclear in Washington’s corporate legal circles, however, whether Musk’s current team can manage these efforts, according to the two people.

“This is a new era,” a lawyer at a prominent Washington law firm warned corporate executives in a private online meeting on Thursday. “If your company is caught up in this oversight, it’s likely to be much more highly publicized.”

Since Trump started his second term, tech billionaires and corporate executives have flanked the president at White House lunches, donated to his planned ballroom project and showered him with gifts in the Oval Office. Members of the Trump family, along with Wall Street executives, have also invested in a slew of firms that now receive billions of dollars in government funding.

Democrats have signaled privately and publicly that one major focus will be holding the business dealings of corporate America to account, in what some see as a generational reckoning for a cohort of firms with close ties to the Trump administration.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland), who is poised to become chair of the House Judiciary Committee next year, said Wednesday that House lawmakers will target areas where the government has “been absolutely poisoned and contaminated by quid pro quo corruption.”

“We’re going to be advancing a whole series of investigations and hearings to shine a light on the corruption and then advance the laws that we need to shut this down for good,” he added.

“Lawyer up,” Rep. Robert Garcia (D-California), the incoming chairman of the House Oversight Committee, wrote on election night.

Across Washington, firms are preparing for a multitude of investigations. Venture capitalists have advised Silicon Valley start-ups to close funding rounds before the end of the year in case money dries up in the event that executives are called into hearings or the Pentagon’s spending plans are curtailed, according to one person.

Jamie Bair, head of the congressional investigations practice at the law firm Crowell and Moring, said that the Democrats’ control of both chambers of Congress heightens the expectation that they will move with speed and severity.

“This is the story on everybody’s mind,” he said.

Apple, Meta, X and Musk did not immediately return requests for comment.

‘A whole new world’

On a rainy Thursday in Washington, corporate executives signed in to an online meeting to discuss how to prepare for potential upcoming congressional investigations.

The advice from the white-shoe lawyers was stark. Capitol Hill probes require a different skill than traditional lawsuits, a lawyer said, and it’s apparent that Democrats are throwing out the old playbook of polite investigations in favor of being much more aggressive.

The attorney noted that immediately after the midterm elections this week, lawmakers such as Garcia accompanied their warnings of upcoming investigations with Instagram posts that received media attention and thousands of reshares.

“That is a whole new world compared to what sort of traditional Hill oversight publicity has been,” the lawyer said.

Congressional panels such as the Senate Foreign Relations and House Foreign Affairs committees will have a “higher-profile role” in oversight, the lawyer added, because the people affiliated with the administration have had many business dealings with foreign governments. “We would expect to see them pile into that space,” he said.

Republicans may still be looking to do their own oversight, even though they are in the minority. If Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) becomes the House minority leader, he may bring his reputation for partisan oversight to proceedings to counter Democratic machinations.

“If it’s Mr. Jordan, the chances that [Republican strategy] has an aggressive oversight-oriented lens to it, driven by their own political interests, gets even higher,” the lawyer said.

Lawmakers made it clear even on election night that investigating Silicon Valley would be a priority. “The titans of Silicon Valley dig bunkers for themselves and warn that the artificial intelligence they’re creating risks human extinction,” said Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Georgia) in his victory speech.

Tech executives “are going to need to plant new forests for all of the subpoenas we’ll be printing,” Sen. Ed Markey (D-Massachusetts) said Tuesday night in a post on X.

After winning his race in Michigan, Democratic Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed, said in a victory speech that he would be “taking on the corporations and the billionaires, special interests who’ve rigged the system against us for far too long.”

Bair said investigating corporations will be the best way to hold the Trump administration to account. It is likely investigators will issue congressional letters to the Trump administration and not get answers, he said. But corporations are likely to get more detailed letters of inquiry, and they are more apt to respond, and thereby more likely to divulge information about their dealings with U.S. officials, he said.

“That is the playbook you’re going to see,” Bair added.

Many of the Capitol Hill investigations will probably center on how the companies courted Trump and how they used that relationship to attain better fortunes.

A memo from the Groundwork Collaborative, a think tank, noted that large tech companies, private-prison corporations and natural gas firms would be “high-value” targets because of what they may have given Trump, what they may have received, and what kind of behavior they may have engaged in, the memo noted. The Washington Sun earlier reported the document.

Robert Kelner, chair of the election and political law practice group at the law firm Covington … Burling, said there’s “no question” that a wave of Democratic investigations will happen and that clients are hiring lawyers and determining what their priorities for legal protection will be.

“We’ve been telling clients all year that winter is coming,” he said. “Now winter has arrived.”

Are Elon's halcyon days drawing to a close?

The Great Sleeping Giant of the US Has Awakened...

  “The biggest divide in this country is not left versus right,” said the newly elected Texas Senate candidate James Talarico. “It’s top versus bottom.”

 

...looked at what's happening...and roared a thunderous "NO!" 

 

 Robert Reich / Guardian UK

05 November 26

 

The great sleeping giant of the US has awakened, taken a hard look at what’s become of the nation, and roared a thunderous “NO!”

What occurred on Tuesday was not – as some are saying – the inevitable midterm swing of the pendulum against the party in power. Texas hasn’t elected a Democratic senator since 1988. The last time Kansas elected a Democratic senator was 1932.

Nor was it just the economy. Americans are unhappy with high prices, to be sure, but inflation isn’t out of control. The country is not in a depression or recession. Unemployment remains quite low.

Nor, finally, was it all due to Donald Trump. Despite Trump’s repeated efforts to get voters to “pretend” he was on the ballot, he was not. Most Republican candidates barely mentioned him and many Democratic candidates stressed local or statewide issues rather than fixate on him.

Something much larger is responsible for what occurred: anti-establishment populism. It’s burst forth against the mammoth corporations that have scored record profits while most Americans have had to pay more. Against the mega donors and super Pacs that have flooded US politics with more campaign money – legalized bribes – than ever before.

And against the big tech billionaires who have become the most powerful force in the US economy and society – as well as Trump’s and the Republican party’s most visible backers.

The irony is that anti-establishment anger propelled Trump into the presidency in 2016 and again in 2024. Many Americans had found his politically incorrect rants and “America first” nativism to reflect their own anger at being disrespected and left behind. “I am your warrior,” he told supporters when he announced his candidacy for the 2024 election.

But during his second term, Trump has morphed into the very establishment he had railed against. He gave tax cuts and subsidies to tech billionaires. He’s promoted their AI, pushed their datacenters, put Elon Musk in charge of the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge), advocated their crypto, and went to war in the Middle East – not only causing gas prices to soar but making big oil billions (or, as Trump bafflingly boasts, “we’re making an absolute fortune in our country”) and enriching big tech weapons makers and investors, including his family.

Many who voted for Trump in 2016 and 2024 have now abandoned him because of this blatant corruption, crony capitalism and eagerness to be on the gilded side of the US’s new Gilded Age. According to CNBC’s late October poll, corruption was the top issue on voters’ minds.

Meanwhile, anti-establishment populism has taken firm hold in the Democratic party. “The biggest divide in this country is not left versus right,” said the newly elected Texas Senate candidate James Talarico. “It’s top versus bottom.”

Sherrod Brown regained his Senate seat from Ohio largely due to voter anger at datacenters and the big tech billionaires behind them.

Abdul El-Sayed never tired on the campaign trail of reminding Michigan voters that his opponent, Mike Rogers, was backed by big corporations and mega donors.

Even Kansas’s victorious Adam Hamilton – who during his run for the Senate adamantly rejected the leftist label his opponent wanted to impose on him – campaigned on making datacenters pay for their own energy, banning lawmakers from trading stocks, expanding Medicare drug-price negotiations, and cracking down on price-gouging.

Hamilton also rejected money from corporate Pacs, as did most Democratic candidates for the Senate.

The real question in my mind is whether, come January when they control Congress, Democrats will take advantage of the new populism to enact measures most Americans need, such as Medicare for All, and reforms most Americans want, such as tougher anti-monopoly laws and limits on campaign contributions (even if this requires a constitutional amendment).

Trump is likely to veto any such initiatives, of course, but at least they’ll lay down markers for the 2028 presidential election – which, judging from what we’ve seen in the midterms, is likely to be a populist doozie.

 Abdul El-Sayed never tired on the campaign trail of reminding Michigan voters that his opponent, Mike Rogers, was backed by big corporations and mega donors. 

"WE THE PEOPLE": AMERICA IS BACK!

Blue Wave Crashes on Trump

     Senator-elect James Talarico at an Election Night event in Austin, Texas. (photo:  Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

 

Absolute landslide returns Dems to control of both houses

 

CANADA: Will you be our neighbor again?

 

Benjamin Wallace-Wells / The New Yorker

 04 November 26

The Republican Party has only the President and his policies to blame for its historic losses in the 2026 midterms.

For nine months, on Nicollet Avenue in Minneapolis, there has been a makeshift memorial for Alex Pretti, the registered nurse who was shot and killed by federal agents while trying to shield a fellow-protester during last winter’s deportation campaign in the city. On Tuesday, after Minnesotans cast their ballots in the state’s Senate race, many of them pressed their “I voted” stickers onto a lamppost at the memorial, as if completing a picture. The gestures suggested something about this year’s midterm elections which, as the evening wore on, turned out to be true: that it was a mundane event that held unusual moral stakes.

During the two years since Donald Trump won reëlection, he has pushed the country toward a brink. Trump won only a narrow Presidential majority in 2024, and his party held a majority in each chamber of Congress by just a few seats. Even so, the President faced little institutional resistance as he pushed the federal government-eroding DOGE program, the senseless and costly tariffs, the authoritarian power of the crackdown on migrants, the feckless Iran war. He could pursue these goals because he had convinced most of his party, and many members of the public, that his victory over Kamala Harris meant that half of the country would irrevocably be on his side.

The results of the midterm votes are still rolling in. But the rejection of the President is undeniable and uncomplicated, and it reached deep into what had long been understood as conservative territory. His party has lost its Senate race in Ohio—and looks likely to lose in Michigan, where the post-industrial economy had long supplied the symbolic heart of Trumpism. It has lost in Texas, where Democrats had not won a statewide race in more than a hundred contests, stretching back to 1994, and in South Carolina. It has lost in Iowa and in Kansas, which has not seated a Democratic senator since the Great Depression. There are counties in southwestern Kansas where Trump won two years ago by about thirty-five points—Finney County, Seward County, Ford County—that, as the tallies accumulated in the state’s U.S. Senate race, were voting narrowly for the Democrat. For a decade, the country had become used to a fixed map—blue in the cities, deep red in the outlying areas. Now there is some instability around the edges.

One specific issue, or an especially weak Republican candidate, might make sense as an explanation in particular races. But the truth is that Trump’s past two years have offered voters a menu of reasons to turn away from him. In South Texas, it might have been the cruelty of the immigration raids; in Kansas, the effect of the Iran war on diesel and fertilizer prices; in South Carolina, an especially poorly chosen Republican candidate. Over the course of the long Trump decade, many liberals had come to assume that conservatives were so devoted to the culture war that they were politically impervious to events. But this time, in such places, the news made it through. All of it mattered.

Somewhat suddenly, almost nothing in U.S. politics seems certain. The Democratic Party has lately been understood as an aging, defensive entity, with a nursing-home veneer. But this year’s campaigns have elevated a group of younger and newer Democrats (Jon Ossoff, in Georgia; James Talarico, in Texas; Abdul El-Sayed, in Michigan) who have found it quite natural to denounce the oligarchic and authoritarian elements of the status quo, and to separate themselves from some elements of the Party’s doctrine. The South, the most deeply conservative region in the country for nearly all of its history, suddenly has a purple hue. Is J. D. Vance still the presumptive next Presidential nominee? Will the Republican Party still pliably fall into line behind the man who lost in Texas?

And though the Democrats have made astonishing breakthroughs, their near-term future is a little cloudy, too. The intraparty fight, between its insurgent, youthful left and the legacy party, a contest intense enough that at times it seemed to crowd out the whole rest of American politics, is still unresolved—both sides can claim vindication, and can point to new champions emerging from the midterms. The Party itself remains generally unpopular. Perhaps most important, with the liberal grassroots awaiting a Presidential primary to come, lower-wattage figures (Hakeem Jeffries, Chuck Schumer) are now in charge. For a political formation that might now have a claim on a majority, the Democrats remain curiously faceless.

Even so, one instance of clarity came around 11 P.M., as Fox News flashed the graphic predicting that the Democrats would win control of the House of Representatives: we are no longer in the shadow of 2024. In culture and in politics, conservatives had insisted that Trump’s victory in that election was the defining one, and that it reflected a culminating turn against “wokeness,” against internationalism, against modern ideas about gender or race—a more atavistic America was being unleashed. Trump called into Fox News just after midnight, sounding a little whimsical and discursive. “It’s just a point in time,” the President said. “There was a mood in the air, I guess.”

In a similar way, perhaps, the 2024 election, and the atmosphere it ushered in, now looks a bit more like an aberration, and the idea that it represented a historical pivot seems more like the wishful thinking of a few people who stood to benefit from it. The experience of the past two years has mattered—tallied, among other places, in the “I voted” stickers that climbed up the memorial in Minneapolis. Elon Musk spent nearly two hundred million dollars to keep Texas red, and the Republicans blew it. Of course, it looks like a slightly different Texas, this morning. It looks like a slightly different country. 

Supporters cheer as they watch early election results before Democratic Senate candidate Texas state Rep. James Talarico arrives to speak at an election night event in Austin, Texas, on Nov. 3.

Eric Gay/AP Photo/Eric Gay

We Face Our Nation’s Fourth Great Crisis

 

 "This election is about we the people — and about the idea of America."

 

Ken Burns / The New York Times

03 November 26

 

There have been three great crises in American history: the Civil War, perhaps the defining event in our history after the Revolution itself, the Great Depression and World War II. These events tested our republic and our resolve in fundamental ways, but the center always held — elections took place, there was a peaceful transfer of power and the judiciary was still independent. Our core democratic institutions remained fundamentally strong, respected by the public and our leaders alike. The guardrails of our democracy held and were even strengthened as we emerged from each.

As we go to the polls today in this most consequential of midterm elections, we face our country’s fourth great crisis. Because of misinformation, which the current administration encourages, age-old fears and conspiracies have created a sense of us versus them that is fundamentally at odds with a healthy democratic society. Elections are in doubt, the highest court seems compromised, history has been distorted, books have been banned, and dictators have been coddled while our closest allies have been ridiculed and dismissed. People are rightly concerned whether our institutions are at a breaking point.

I’ve spent the better part of the past two years crisscrossing the country, discussing the release of our PBS series on the American Revolution. No matter where I went or to whom I spoke, people asked me the same questions: What did I learn about our complicated and fragile republic over the nearly 10 years it took to make the film? Can a country as divided as ours survive? What might our founders think of us today?

I think the founders would be hugely disappointed that so many members of the legislative branch have ceded so much power to the executive branch, which has filled that vacuum with corruption and assaults on the rule of law, even undermining the fundamental right to vote. John Adams, who insisted that a republic could not function without virtuous leaders, would be appalled at the prevailing vulgarity and incompetence.

From the start, the creation of the United States was unlikely. For most of human history, people had lived under authoritarian rule, but in the 13 former British colonies clinging to the Eastern Seaboard, people (white men) would create something new: citizens.

“All experience has shown,” Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence, “that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.” Maintaining a democracy would be difficult, an active exercise that would simultaneously try to honor our individual freedoms (what each of us wants) and our collective freedoms (what we need).

George Washington’s great achievement was not just winning a war against overwhelming odds, but persuading 13 new states with different economies, religious beliefs and competing interests that they were now part of something new in which old animosities would yield to an individual, as well as collective, sense of union. There would be an “us,” with no “them.”

During the Constitutional Convention in the summer of 1787, delegates understood that in the many compromises they would strike, they also had to engineer defenses against the rise of a tyrant. 

In a letter to James Madison, Jefferson worried that a president who lost an election might “pretend false votes” and “hold possession of the reins of government.” Alexander Hamilton was also concerned that an “unprincipled” man would “mount the hobby horse of popularity” and “throw things in confusion.” “In a government like ours,” he wrote, no one is “above the law.”

Today, nearly six years after an angry mob stormed the Capitol to overturn the results of the 2020 election, election denial is still part of the current administration’s playbook. Only four of the 13 Republican candidates in highly competitive Senate races have said that they would accept the outcome of the upcoming elections unconditionally.

It hasn’t always been that way. During Watergate, as damning evidence accumulated, members of President Richard Nixon’s own party concluded that their obligation to the Constitution was greater than their obligation to him or the G.O.P. In August 1974, Republican congressional leaders went to the White House and told Nixon that his support in Congress had collapsed. He announced his resignation the next day.

Citizens today should remember that our democracy relies on an ongoing conversation between them and the past. At Gettysburg, only a few months after the largest battle ever fought on American soil, Abraham Lincoln asked the living to dedicate themselves to “a new birth of freedom,” recognizing that every generation must renew and expand on the promises first made in Philadelphia. Dwight Eisenhower, who knew better than most the terrible cost of war, reminded us in his farewell address that only “an alert and knowledgeable citizenry” could preserve liberty and security.

I’m optimistic that the American people recognize that our democratic institutions and sense of decency can bring us together.

We have come back from crises before. We were more divided than we are today during the Revolution, the Civil War, Reconstruction and Vietnam. For 250 years, our country has prevailed in fits and starts, forging achievements, however imperfect, related to race and equality in American life.

But given our divisions, as we vote we must each ask ourselves: What kind of leadership will see us through the current crisis? Why do we continue to support leaders who are invested in deepening our divides, who tap into conspiracy theories to frighten the public, deny facts and, to quote Alexander Hamilton, “throw things into confusion,” so that they “may ‘ride the storm and direct the whirlwind’”?

Most midterm elections are seen as referendums on the policies of the president. This one is no different. But there’s something more fundamental at stake here, beyond policy differences. This election is about the people — who are empowered to check our chief executive — and the candidates running for Congress, who either have sworn an oath to the Constitution or hope to do so. Whether they are prepared to honor their oath should matter enormously to everyone who values the idea of us — the idea of America.

Republicans have their cowardice to blame for their midterm mess

AP

The next few installments of Congressional Cowards—a weekly

series highlighting the worst Donald Trump defenders on Capitol

Hill—will focus on the midterm elections as Republicans grow 

desperate and despondent about their odds of maintaining their 

congressional majorities.

Caving to Trump at every turn paved the way for their electoral demise.

 

by Emily Singer

Daily Kos Staff

 

REPUBLISHED BY:

Blue Country Gazette Blog

Rim Country Gazette Blog 

 

The midterm elections are just two days away, and by all measures Republicans are set to have a terrible night—with their control of the House gone and their Senate majority hanging on by a thread.

After all is said and done, there will unquestionably be a lot of finger-pointing as Republicans fight over who’s to blame for the mess they are soon going to find themselves in.

But ultimately what they should be doing is looking in the mirror, as it’s their own cowardice and refusal to stand up to President Donald Trump that’s to blame for why they will find themselves out of power when the new Congress is sworn in.

Indeed, this installment of Congressional Cowards—the final one before the midterms take place—is a look down memory lane at how Republicans caved to Trump at every turn over the past two years, paving the way for their own electoral demise.

Let’s roll the tape, shall we?

Republicans cheered Trump’s cruel mass deportation agenda, giving his Immigration and Customs Enforcement goons a de facto blank check and carte blanche to round up and deport anyone who merely looked Hispanic. They continued defending the conduct of Trump’s immigration goons even after they began killing Americans who dared to stand up to agents’ behavior.

Protesters gather near a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility Scarborough, Maine, one day after the shooting of Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, on July 14.AP

Indeed, Trump’s deportation actions were so draconian and evil that it turned immigration from an issue that benefitted Republicans at the ballot box to a massive liability. It caused Hispanic voters to turn away from the GOP and erased any gains the party made with the critical voting bloc in 2024—a shift that is imperiling Republicans in states like Texas and Florida, where Republicans could lose races they have no business losing based on 2024’s results.

Meanwhile, for virtually all of 2025, Republicans ran cover for Trump on the Epstein files, blocking efforts to force the release of the government’s documents on the now-deceased pedophile because Trump didn’t want them to see the light of day (for good reason).

Ultimately, Republicans did vote to require Trump to release the files—but only when one of their own lawmakers successfully maneuvered a bill to the floor that forced their hand.

Their work to shield Trump from having to release the Epstein files has been a major line of attack from Democrats both on the campaign trail and in attack ads. And voters are bringing it up as they heckle Trump at his rallies over the last few weeks in otherwise deep red areas—showing that too has been a drag on their midterm chances. 

Cartoon by David HorseyDavid Horsey/Tribune Content Agency

Meanwhile, Republicans abandoned their GOP’s long-held trade positions to allow Trump to levy idiotic tariffs on our own allies and largest trading partners. Those tariffs hit the rural communities that backed Trump by large margins especially hard, as countries like China refused to buy crops from American producers. 

What’s more, the tariffs raised input costs on everything from fertilizer to farming equipment, hurting farmers so badly that farm bankruptcies are spiking under the Trump-induced economic pressure.

It’s why Republicans are now struggling in agricultural heavy states like Kansas, Iowa, Ohio, Texas, and South Carolina—states the GOP has no business losing but very well could on Tuesday night.

But of all the GOP’s actions, it was their rolling over to allow Trump to wage war in Iran without congressional approval that was the nail in their proverbial coffin this election cycle.

Republicans let Trump launch attacks on Iran without justifying his plan to Congress, letting Trump entangle the U.S. in yet another foreign conflict despite a pledge not to start new forever wars. And then, once it became clear the war was damaging the global economy as well as the United States’ standing in the world, they still refused to stop him. 

Eight months later, Americans are not any safer than they were before the war began, and instead are now paying a steep economic price for Trump’s bloodlust and ineptitude. 

Gas prices are displayed at a Chevron gas station, in downtown Los Angeles, on March 31, AP

Only a handful of Republicans ever broke with their party to vote for a war powers resolution—and by then it was too late. They were already on record defending the war, which has spiked gas prices and the cost of living here at home, so angering the GOP base that many of their voters may just stay home or even defect and vote for Democrats.

Ultimately, when this midterm election cycle started, all Republicans had to do was keep the economy humming along and I’d probably be sitting here writing today that the GOP was likely going to keep its House majority and that the Senate was never in reach for team blue.

Instead, Republicans are now staring down a cresting tsunami that will sweep them out of power and cause Trump and the GOP headaches for the next two years. 

Trump livid at Obama's description of White House decor as 'Saddam Hussein-inspired Cheesecake Factory'

 

Cheesecake Factory line infuriates our president of gluttony and gilded excess

ByDavid Edwards 

Raw Story 

10/30/2026

President Donald Trump lashed out at former President Barack Obama for overlooking the “filth” in the White House after Obama mocked Trump’s renovations as a Cheesecake Factory opened by a dictator.

Trump made the remarks Monday when a reporter traveling with him asked whether he had a further response to Obama’s Cheesecake Factory joke.

Also Read: Trump risks decimating GOP in must-win state by rewarding loyalty

“No,” Trump said. He then spent more than three minutes defending the renovations, a reply far longer than the joke that prompted it.

Obama made the joke Saturday at a campaign rally in Ohio, his first appearance for this fall’s midterm elections, NBC News reported.

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He was mocking Trump’s ballroom construction and the gold accents added throughout the White House, the network reported.

During his speech, Obama criticized President Trump for spending time renovating the White House and adding gold finishes to the Oval Office and anywhere else he could..

He also criticized the decision to build a 400 million dollar ballroom to host foreign leaders and major events while most Americans struggle to put food on the table and go to the doctor..

“Does anybody really think this guy in the White House right now is spending all that time thinking about these issues?” Obama said. “I mean, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but he seems very focused on home renovations. He should be on HGTV.”

Obama then dropped the line:

“He’s got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory,” Obama continued, invoking the late Iraqi dictator.

“I’ve taken care of the White House,” Trump told reporters. “I fixed it with the finest artisans in the world.  We reskinned it. The exterior plaster was broken, cracked, and the painting was terrible.”

“He doesn’t notice dirt and filth that had been cleaned, where the walls hadn’t been cleaned for years,” Trump said of Obama. “He doesn’t notice areas that haven’t been painted.”

“In my opinion, he’s not smart at all because the way he ran the country, only a stupid person would run the country like that,” Trump said.

“And for you to say it’s a Cheesecake Factory, that just shows why you were a lousy president,” Trump said into the camera as he wrapped up.

Conservatives had spent the weekend defending the restaurant chain, with commentators accusing Obama of sneering at working-class Americans who eat there, Daily Kos reported.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who should be focusing on making life more affordable for average Americans, instead took up Trump's defense Monday, two days after Obama’s joke, in a video posted on X.

The video shows him walking out of a Cheesecake Factory to a Fox Business reporter and camera waiting outside.

“An interesting lunch choice today,” the reporter told Bessent before asking what he ordered. “Oh, I have what I always had,” Bessent replied, naming “the French dip cheeseburger.”

“This is the man who built the museum and it looks like Darth Vader’s tomb,” Bessent said when asked about Obama’s joke, an apparent reference to the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago.

“I had a great meal, always have a great meal, and I would tell the Martha’s Vineyard set to give it a try,” Bessent added, referring to the Massachusetts island where the Obamas own a home.

Then Obama went in for the kill, pointing out that while Trump and his billionaire surrogates were mobilizing a “whole-of-government response” to defend a restaurant chain from a joke, they were ignoring the grinding economic reality facing ordinary families. 

Mad as hell and sweating like he's there already.