By Jeffrey Blehar
Tuesday, September 29, 2026
Speaking of amusement-park rides, did you ever have that
sick swoony feeling that comes once you’ve hit the top of a roller coaster’s
precipice and know that the bottom is about to fall out? (“It’s all downhill
from here,” and not in a good way.) It’s the reason why, unlike some of my more
deranged colleagues, I am not a fan of the strangely
planned horror of roller coasters. In fact, that methodical click-clack-CHUNK
sound that you hear in the front cab as you approach the summit of one has been
a frequent nightmare of mine since adolescence. Perhaps because that’s when I
first began to relate it to the inevitable onrushing beats of real life.
And here we are, days away from October in a midterm
year. This is beginning to feel a bit like a nightmare as well, a familiar one
where all the inexorable beats are hit and we all go plummeting downwards — to
wake up on the other end, not dead but brutally scarred. My historically minded
colleague Dan McLaughlin once observed that parties facing electoral doom in a
November election rarely turn their fortunes around after September — but the
bottom sure can fall out from underneath them after that, as time takes its
toll and opinions get baked in. So here we go.
With the Wall Street Journal’s newest opinion poll, putting the president at a miserable
37 percent approval rating, I think it’s fair to say that the cake is baked,
like it or not. This is the impression of the Republican Party that most
(not all) voters will take into the booth with them: the impression of Trump
and his unanswerable minions pretending to party
it up at state dinners with our (actual, not merely ideological) sworn
geographic enemies in China to celebrate their rank privilege.
I have held out my hopes for the GOP’s prospects in
November: Partisan gerrymandering (like it or not) has decreased the elasticity
of House districts, so that the Republican wipeout in the lower chamber will be
mediated by hard geographic (and demographic) realities. In the upper chamber?
Abdul El-Sayed is a grotesque parody of woke antisemitism. Troy Jackson has
literally spawned two children with his second cousin. But statewide
overall, in Senate and governor’s races? We’re getting to Katy-bar-the-door
levels here as the winds pick up (ideally not high enough to lead to a flattening in Kansas). And if you wonder why the GOP is
facing brutal headwinds in Iowa’s governor’s race (CLICK) or why Trump
is fighting off his own once-hardcore representatives in Florida Latino
districts (CLACK) then get ready for the RUUUUMBLE as we tumble
down and around to our destination.
All of the familiar beats that signal a GOP reckoning are
being heard — and delivered to us with such “Let them eat cake” sass, too.
Americans currently suffer under tariffs, obscenely inflated gas prices, and
inexplicable trade wars against our geographic neighbors, while Xi Jinping gets
a personal tour of Trump’s unfinished vanity ballroom and his personal
insult wall of former presidents. But he’s doing this for America, right?
Meanwhile, Trump’s close-held allies grotesquely fatten
and enrich themselves, feeding upon an open economic wound that looks, for all
the world, as if Trump tore it open on purpose, specifically to give himself
and his chosen people a chance to feed upon America’s gushing bloodline. It’s
not a popular position to revel in, but Trump’s people genuinely don’t seem to care; we’re testing the far
outer bounds of human decency in this administration now, as if daring the
public to see how much they can take. Good luck in November.
Trump Bans Media, Then Complains About the Empty Room
The reason I really worry? I can read the tea leaves from
those who are purportedly “in charge” of this whole mess. Namely, Donald Trump
himself — who knows full well he’s doomed at this point, if you trust the media
briefings. (He just isn’t handling it all that well.) So this weekend, Trump
flipped out at the mainstream media — who, recall, forswore pool coverage of
the president’s public events until he rescinded his random “fight-me-please” ban on some networks and
outlets — for not giving his big China bash the due it properly deserved:
CNN and MSDNC’s Ratings have
dropped considerably. The primary reason is NO CREDIBILITY! They only write
badly about a man who won the Election IN A GIANT LANDSLIDE, winning all 7
Swing States, the Popular Vote, and 86% of the Counties, etc., and whose Popularity
has grown because of the unprecedented SUCCESS our Country is having on both
the World Stage, and at home. CNN and MSDNC, to show you how fake they are,
today refused to cover one of the Biggest and Most Beautiful Events to take
place in many years, the arrival at the White House of the Highly Respected
President of China, Xi Jinping, and his beautiful wife, Madam Peng. The event
was magnificent — Actually made for Television but, because they’re Fake News,
and because they knew how good it would be, they didn’t want credit to be given
to “TRUMP,” they refused to be there. That’s why they have such poor Ratings.
Tonight’s State Dinner at the White House, for President Xi, will be
spectacular! The Media will be in attendance. President DONALD J. TRUMP
Imagine that! Selectively banning certain media outlets,
provoking outrage from all the rest, and timing all of this just before a major
state visit! But of course, Trump wasn’t thinking that far ahead enough in the
future. So now, instead of rescinding his fruitless ban, Trump is frustratedly
poking the media with a stick, muttering, “Do something!”
But he’s weak now, and the media clearly seem to finally
realize it – they haven’t buckled. And Trump is clearly cracking. He used
coverage of his recent U.N. speech to brag about how he had circumvented the
networks’ coverage withdrawal, and went on to personally insult Kaitlin
Collins, trying to provoke her on-air. She didn’t react, infuriating
Trump even more. (Again, the logic of a frustrated bully: “Do something! Take
the bait!”)
Trump Breaks Bread with Man About to End the World
Amid all the chaos, a pause for a moment: Donald Trump
sat down for a dinner with one of America’s top five most awkward human beings
(non-Musk category) on Sunday, as he broke bread with Anthropic CEO Dario
Amodei — whose AI product, remember, we are handily warned every other day, can
end the world. We can only imagine how it went, given that Amodei is
notoriously odd yet also incalculably influential.
Amodei, for those not keeping score in our recent AI
doomstakes, is firmly on the side of doom despite benefiting from it: This
thing, which I profit from developing to its utmost, will kill all mankind —
unless the government forces everyone else to stop, so that we can. (You’ve
hopefully seen the SNL parody of Amodei already, played to agonizing
perfection by Jane Wickline.)
I must emphasize that I am an extreme AI skeptic. But SNL does a decent enough job
of explaining what I believe to be the rotten core of Amodei’s industry flex.
“I’m just crazy enough to pull this trigger unless you force everyone around me
to help solidify my profitable industry position” is the sort of negotiating
stance taken by either an egotistical madman or an Effective Altruist (and I
dare you to explain to me the difference, in detail) but not by anyone serious
about the threat of AI.
A plea to restrain all competitors — except those with
entrenched positions in the AI (and thus presumably national security) world —
is nothing less than a plea for the federal government to permanently hook the
money hose up to several (but select) inscrutable Silicon Valley companies in
perpetuity, to the exclusion of all others. I have refrained thus far from
commenting on our current cycle of AI panic, simply because the hands pushing
the desired outcomes are now far more discernable than they were before. But
now that their profit-taking motives are becoming clearer, I am forced to
conclude that however skeptical I may be of AI, I am far more skeptical of the
companies pushing its seeming omnipresent future — for their own ends.
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