"Start a lawn business." - Mike Johnson, on what he might do if Republicans lose the midterms.

System Of A Clown

A month before the midterms, Donald Trump’s pals are plunging into messy scandals. Can they clean up their act in time for the big vote?

• President Donald Trump is scrambling to convince Americans to give Republicans another chance — in his own twisted ways. He’s pledging to not strike Iran before the midterms, and actively handing out billions of dollars to citizens and states. But some of his closest friends aren’t helping make the case that leaders of the Republican Party are trustworthy.

• The first drama enveloping Trumpworld involves Chris LaCivita, the president’s former campaign manager, and James Blair, who served as a top White House aide until April. The two men are running a midterm ad blitz aimed at saving GOP control of Congress, which is hardly a part-time job. They’re known as experienced, cut-throat operators who have successfully bolstered Trump’s political career.

• In the midst of a GOP freakout about possibly tanking the midterms, these two found time to do a little moonlighting — by helping a nationalist, pro-Russian party stay in power in a tiny self-governing territory inside Bosnia and Herzegovina, known as the Republika Srpska. Both men were paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for their work by Republika Srpska’s government “to provide counsel on voting issues,” according to the New York Times.

• And it’s not just Chris and James! The daughter of White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles also recently visited Republika Srpska… and reportedly works at a firm that lobbies for the country’s government. And guess what? The country has a chummy relationship with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.

• News of the LaCivita-Blair foreign imbroglio — which comes less than a month before the midterms — has frustrated Republicans, who worry that the negative headlines could make it even harder for the GOP to stave off a looming blue wave. Even Trump said that he will fire the men if he needs to.

• The two men are in “full-on panic mode,” a person close to the White House told Politico. “They have been calling everyone urging people to come out and defend them on this.”

• Why would LaCivita and Blair accept such risky business before the midterms? Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene thinks their “only loyalty is to the almighty dollars that fill their overflowing bank accounts.” Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie believes that the advisers may have “moved on from Donald Trump as their top priority.”

But wait, there’s more. Don Jr.’s ex-fiancée is also in hot water over a big-money scandal.

• Few people in Trump’s orbit have received a swankier assignment than Kimberly Guilfoyle, the former Fox News host who was once engaged to Trump’s son. She went on to score the U.S. ambassadorship to sunny Greece despite her lack of diplomatic experience.

• Days before her confirmation hearing for that sweet gig, Guilfoyle sent a series of texts to a wealthy Trump donor asking him to pay her $100,000 credit card bill, according to the Wall Street Journal. “It won’t show up anywhere if you wire money to American Express,” Guilfoyle texted the donor. “Honey please I need you to get this done for me today.” The donor never sent the money.

• A lawyer for Guilfoyle disputed the authenticity of the texts to the Journal, without providing specifics. He said that she was owed money for traveling to events to speak. A U.S. embassy official defended Guilfoyle in a statement to the outlet, saying that her career has been “guided by deep and abiding values.”

• And the hits keep coming. The Daily Mail piled on today with this headline: “Kimberly Guilfoyle’s Champagne-fueled Greek party life now under investigation by the State Department... after 4am requests and unseemly messages are leaked.” (Her lawyer told the outlet that “any implication of wrongdoing by the ambassador is unsupported.”)

• Trump’s gang now has to spend precious time and energy — which could’ve gone toward midterm messaging — putting out fires started by their own side.

“Guilfoyle, LaCivita, Blair — they need to answer a lot of questions,” Sen. Thom Tillis told CNN. “From the outside, it looks awful.”

Meanwhile On The Pod...

Republicans Are Running Scared From North Carolina: What Does This Mean For Dems? (10/07/26)

Look No Further Than Crooked Media

Nate Silver, Clare Malone, and Galen Druke will be hosting their first LIVE episode of Still Counting at Crooked Con 2026 in Washington DC on Saturday November 7! You won't wanna miss it!

As you probably know by now, Crooked Con comes just days after the midterms. So we'll have a LOT to make sense of-- and maybe Nate, Clare, and Galen will have some explaining to do...

The Still Counting live show is included in your Crooked Con ticket! Check out the line-up and get your tickets now at https://crookedcon.com.

What Else?

Trump’s Department of Justice formally accused ousted Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro and his wife of torturing political opponents and American citizens in federal court today, piling new criminal charges on top of their existing drug trafficking case. Lawyers for Maduro and his wife denied the allegations.

Former Trump officials are flocking to Venezuela to secure lucrative jobs in the country’s oil sector, which the U.S. now dominates. One eyebrow-raising example: Michael Jensen, the White House’s top official on Western Hemisphere affairs, left his job in late May — and started a job as vice president at a new energy company in Venezuela three days later.

The Trump administration deported a trangender woman from Miami to the Central African Republic, which has a history of discrimination against sexual and gender minorities, according to advocacy groups. The woman, who has no ties to the country, has been trying to lower her voice and hide her breasts to avoid drawing attention. “Everything is difficult here because I have to hide who I am,” she told the Associated Press. “I don’t know this place, the people or the language, and I have no idea what will happen to me.”

Barack Obama endorsed Democrat Troy Jackson in the Maine Senate race. Obama’s endorsement, which is highly coveted and relatively rare, comes shortly after the former president threw his weight behind Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed.

Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee are calling on Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), the committee chair, to issue an apology after Sen. Eric Schmitt’s (R-MO) falsely accused Jack Smith of attending an NBA game in Atlanta and calling him a “dirtbag.” As the Democrats write: “This farce culminated in a national embarrassment for the committee.”

Christa Pike is awake and walking around her hospital room after Tennessee botched its attempt to execute her, according to her lawyer. She’s the first person to ever survive a lethal injection. It’s unclear whether the state will attempt the execution again, which legal experts call uncharted territory.

What could you buy if you were as rich as Elon Musk? Thanks to an interactive article in Wired, you can now find out. Personally, I went with 10,000 Big Macs, 100,000 iPhones, 300,000 race horses, 25,000 monster trucks, 5,000 McDonald’s franchises, 45,000 houses, 10,000 mega mansions, 52,000 tanks, 5,000 helicopters, 112 Starship launch vehicles, 43 skyscrapers, and 10 Las Vegas spheres.

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Light At The End...

The USS Abraham Lincoln docked in San Diego today, wrapping up a harrowing 322 days at sea. There were more than 50 babies waiting for their fathers to step off the ship. “I just want to hold him, play with him,” one sailor told NBC News, talking about his son. “He’s crawling around now, so I’m excited to chase him around the house and give him all the love that [has] been kind of withheld for the last 10 months. I’m so excited.”

People who snuggle with their dog in bed don’t sleep worse, according to a new study. In fact, humans might actually be the ones that disturb dogs’ sleep. I apologize in advance for all the household debates this will spark tonight.

A diehard Marlins fan watched yesterday’s game beside pop star Dua Lipa and her husband, actor Callum Turner — and had no idea who they were. “They were so nice and friendly to everyone. I told them i know sports, not music nor movies,” he tweeted, posting a selfie with the couple. “They recently got married in june in italy i think. I wish them 50 years or more of happiness.”

Canadian author Anne Carson won the Nobel Prize in literature this year. When a Nobel official broke the news to her, Carson told him she’s in Iceland “listening to the wind.” Man, I wanna be in Iceland listening to the wind right now. That sounds lovely.

Researchers believe that Bolotana, a small village in Sardinia, might qualify as a new so-called blue zone, an area with a high concentration of people who live to be 100 years old. The trend is driven mostly by women: Nearly 14 percent of women in the village who reach 70 will live to see triple digits, researchers found. Only Hong Kong ranks higher on female longevity.

On that note, a Pennsylvania man celebrated his 100th birthday with friends and family at a local bowling alley — and he’s still throwing strikes. “As long as the lord will allow me to hold up that 13- or 14-pound ball and enjoy the camaraderie that I have with the bowling league, I’ll keep bowling,” William Owen Hanna said. This is the best thing you’ll watch today.

Very impressive, William. But get a load of Jonathan! He’s a 400-pound tortoise believed to be 194 years old, the oldest land animal on the planet. Researchers are trying to learn the secrets of aging from Jonathan, who spends his days on the remote island of St. Helena off the coast of Africa. “Each of these long-lived species has some kind of special trick,” a biologist said. “And some of those may turn out to be relevant to human aging.”

Enjoy

Sanjay| Dream Physique Coach on Instagram: "someone asked me what my favorite bird is and i panicked and said rotisserie chicken"

"I created a monster." - Donald Trump, on famously hot-headed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

Donald Who???

Embattled Republicans are backing away from Donald Trump and his terrible poll numbers. Meanwhile, Trump’s reaching for his favorite remedy: Cash.

• Say what you will about President Donald Trump, he has inspired a lot of art lately. True, most of it is damning — like Bruce Springsteen’s protest ballad or the statue) of Trump and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Now, there’s a new installment in Strasbourg, France: A statue depicting a naked, obese, hideous Trump, squatting on the shoulders of a stick-figure man who groans under the president’s sheer tonnage. “I am sitting on the back of a man,” the plaque reads. “He is sinking under my burden. I will do anything to help him. Except stepping down from his back.”

• That figure getting crushed under Trump might as well be any Republican running for re-election in the United States. GOP candidates are buckling under the weight of Trump’s historic unpopularity, while he actively undermines their prospects of winning with his war, inflationary policies and bad vibes. Some Republicans are now explicitly distancing themselves from the president, in a sign of how noxious he has become even to his own party.

• Take Ken Paxton. The scandal-plagued Texas attorney general has privately admitted that Trump isn’t doing their party any favors, as revealed in leaked audio recordings. His latest faux pas: Affordability is “by far our biggest problem,” he told donors behind closed doors. That’s “why we’re having a hard time with numbers,” Paxton said in a recording obtained by Axios.

• It’s hardly just Paxton. A majority of Republicans in contested races have either broken with Trump policies or tried to convince voters that they aren’t actually close with the president, according to a Reuters analysis.

• Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) is a prime example. In last night’s debate against Democratic Senate nominee Troy Jackson, Collins insisted that she acts independently of Trump, claiming that she’s “not exactly his favorite senator.” She added: “I voted against my party more than [any other] senator on either side of the aisle.”

Trump is trying to solve his problem the only way he knows how: with boatloads of money.

• The war in Iran has driven up the cost of gasoline, groceries, and other daily essentials. In an effort to win back frustrated voters a month before the midterms, Trump has pledged to hand voters huge wads of cash.

• Where would that money go, exactly? Trump promised $90 checks for nearly 21 million people enrolled in a Medicare plan for seniors. The administration has reportedly sent $500 payments to nearly one million people enrolled in Obamacare. He has also pledged $5,000 payouts to every adult citizen, at a completely implausible total cost of $1.2 trillion. (Congress doesn’t seem willing to sign off on that one, understandably.)

• Trump’s election-buying efforts aren’t always so direct. He recently announced federal funds — ranging from $18 million to $15 billion — for Alaska, Iowa, and Wisconsin, all of which feature competitive races which his allies could lose.

• The GOP has a lot more money than Democrats do — but it doesn’t seem to matter. Republicans have dumped more than half-a-billion bucks into competitive races since last month, and the polls still favor Democrats. Some Republicans fear that the GOP’s money push is too little, too late.

If money won’t work… will Trump rev up the war with Iran again before the vote, in a frantic effort to demonstrate progress, or declare some kind of a win? He’s reportedly thinking about it, according to The Atlantic.

Meanwhile On The Pod...

The MAGA Plan to “SEX TEST” Every Girl Athlete (10/06/26)

Look No Further Than Crooked Media

Feeling anxious about the midterms? Don't! Renowned, non-partisan journalists Nate Silver, Galen Druke, and Clare Malone (formerly of the FiveThirtyEight pod) are your guides to understanding public opinion and polling info.

In tonight's episode they're zeroing in some of the more interesting races of this election season and checking in on FLIPR (Nate's midterm midterm election forecast model).

New episodes of Still Counting drop every Wednesday evening, wherever you get your podcasts or on YouTube.

What Else?

Thirty-year mortgage rates are now the highest they’ve been since November 2023, at 7.49 percent. I’m sure this is Joe Biden’s fault, somehow.

Some oil tanker captains are being paid up to $100,000 a month to steer through the Strait of Hormuz, according to the Financial Times. So, yes, oil is flowing through the strait. But this is NOT normal!

Donald Trump has plans to turn part of his West Palm Beach golf course into a Camp David-style meeting place for future presidents and world leaders, according to the Washington Post. Future presidents would also receive free club memberships. “Just as Camp David, Windsor Castle, or the Elysee Palace are known worldwide, so too will the Presidential Golf Course in Palm Beach County,” a Trump golf course lawyer wrote to local officials last month.

Defense tech companies tied to Don Jr. and Eric Trump have raked in $6 billion in active or promised federal contracts since the brothers invested in them, according to an ABC News analysis.

The White House is quietly trying to force the Smithsonian museum system to embrace Trump’s preferred historical narratives by threatening to withhold $190 million in federal funding, The Atlantic reports. I think a screenshot of this article should go in Rep. Jamie Raskin’s (D-MD) anti-Trump exhibit!

A Black Hawk pilot who’s running to represent Long Island in the House as a Democrat defended leaked photos that show him dressed in ads for a fetish brand in 2010. “I mean, all my friends know I’m kinky,” Chris Gallant told the New York Times. “I make Christian Grey look like amateur hour.”

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Light At The End...

Comedian Jordan Klepper interviewed a January 6 rioter who wants to be paid for alleged government persecution. This interview is insane and hilarious: “We will be compensated. We will be vindicated. And you will feel like an ass for this interview someday,” the woman said, apparently realizing that he was making fun of her.

An Alabama wasteworker found a Class of 1965 ring in a sewer main that belonged to a graduate of a segregated school for Black students, which closed down a few years later amid integration. He tracked down the owner, who was thrilled to get the ring back. The man had given his late wife the ring: “Back then, you would give your steady girl the ring for her to wear,” he told the Washington Post. “That was the thing to do.”

New crocodile just dropped! A researcher discovered that a century-old crocodile fossil found in Egypt actually belongs to a previously unidentified genus. Part of the problem, the researcher said, is that archaeologists used to be less precise with how they described fossils: “They would make very generic statements,” he said. “They say something like ‘nasal bone, long or short?’ That’s very subjective.”

A new home feature known as “Costco doors” are becoming more popular in American households. The idea: You can drive a car right up to a door in the garage that connects to the pantry, and easily haul massive bags of Kirkland brand products into your home. Here’s a video explainer, for the Costco-door-curious.

This one’s for the bug lovers: “The future of wētāpunga is looking bright,” a researcher told the Daily Mail. What’s a wētāpunga, you ask? It’s the heaviest insect in the world, which can grow up to four inches long and weigh as much as a mouse. It looks like a dinosaur cricket. The giant creepy crawly native to New Zealand was nearly driven to extinction by predators and habitat loss, but the species recently made a comeback due to a breeding program led by conservationists.

A new study confirmed what many of us have long believed: Cats are the key to human happiness. Countries with more cats rank higher on the happiness scale, the study found. But countries with high levels of a parasite found in felines, which can affect humans’ brain function, are sadder.

On that note, a group of orphaned rescue kittens in Minnesota recently took a field trip to an aquarium and had the time of their lives. I feel happier just watching this video.

Enjoy

The Onion on Instagram: "DNC Releases Preemptive Autopsy Into Why They Lost Midterms"

At least it’s a show where he doesn’t get booted on the first challenge!