SINCERETALK

President Donald Trump's attorney general, Todd Blanche, has frequently indicated that he plans on meddling in the midterm elections per his boss' desires. Now a conservative columnist is calling him out — not only for this, but for his other alleged abuses of power. After reviewing Trump's and Blanche's ongoing and/or unsuccessful attempts to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey, his daughter Maurene Comey and former Trump official Cassidy Hutchinson, conservative columnist David French wrote for The New York Times on Sunday that "I’m going to stop there, but even as I do, I feel as if I’m misleading you. I’m stopping because of space, not because that’s the end of the outrages. In case after case after case, the Department of Justice is targeting Trump opponents, making frivolous arguments and engaging in vindictive, meritless prosecutions." He added, "I blame Trump, but I also blame Blanche. He doesn’t understand his own job. We all know that T...

Donald (“pretend-I’m-on-the-ballot”) Trump has made this election into a referendum on him. Good. He is a historic anomaly whose election to the highest office in the land — twice! — will forever be a stain on the judgment of the American people. A president who lies incessantly; who generates fear and fuels hatefulness; who viciously attacks the free press, political opponents, and all who disagree with him; who uses his office for personal gain; and who cozies up to dictators such as Vladimir Putin while turning against our historic friends, such as Canada. For the sake of our democracy and our future, we must send a clear signal on Tuesday that we find Trump repugnant. A rejection beyond mere repudiation. A clear vote of no confidence. While Trump and his Republican enablers have manufactured false threats to America — Americans who are Muslim, Mexican Americans, Latino Americans, transgender Americans, fraudulent voters, “globalists” — they dismiss the real threats to America that...

At a Cleveland rally last weekend, former President Barack Obama went viral for a joke that Donald Trump has given the White House an overhaul look, as if Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory. Anita Chabria of the Los Angeles Times says the president took the bait. “Trump lost it,” she writes. Chabria argues that if there is anything we have learned about the president in recent years, it is that he is as fond of gold as he is of hating Obama. Adding, “Roll them together in one moment, and the leader of the free world can’t help but freak out.” Chabria also draws attention to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who is worth at least $500 million, visiting a Cheesecake Factory , where he had no trouble calling out Obama for elitism over the restaurant reference in his joke about Trump. In her view, Obama was not just cracking a joke but was “masterful at political strategy” in eliciting a response from the president. “It was rage-bait, crafted for engagement,” she says. She obser...

Former White House press secretary Katie Zacharia, who was removed from her role after only five days following a shaky maiden voyage and inconsistencies concerning her legal background, said she is still surprised at the Sean Hannity interview that may have been the final nail in her short career at the White House “I'm just as perplexed about what happened specifically with Sean Hannity,” Zacharia told Newsmax host Rob Finnerty Tuesday night . She added that even though Hannity’s fatal scrutiny of her legal background may have been the break-point where Trump reconsidered her hiring, she said Hannity's team had made overtures to her about a job spot earlier in the year. “I got a phone call from them asking me if I would consider being Sean's California man on the street, basically asking Californians what they thought of Gavin Newsom ahead of potentially a presidential run that Gavin Newsom might make,” Zacharia said. “So Sean Hannity's team, after being on with hi...

A shrimper in deepest red Mississippi was begging President Donald Trump to lower diesel fuel prices before the whole shrimping industry goes kaput. “Whether he wins midterms or not, we need you,” said Mississippi shrimper Maynard Dubuisson, a longtime Trump supporter who says soaring diesel costs are pressing fishermen and small shrimp-related businesses to the edge of disaster. “We voted for you. We put you in office and we depended on you. We have no other choice. There is no other choice.” Dubuisson said marine supply stores, like shrimping vessels, are not “ moving products .” “The supplies for these boats cost a lot of money because of the high cost of shipping. Everything's very expensive, and they're not selling anything. Those stores are just about to go out of business also,” Dubuisson told Bulwark editor Will Sommer . He added that the same doldrums are hitting everything from processing plants to local grocery stores. “Let me school you up on this: Baylor, Alabama ...

President Donald Trump's attempts to bribe voters into supporting his Republican Party during the 2026 midterms is backfiring on him, at least according to his own niece, psychologist Dr. Mary L. Trump. "Among all of the nonsensical things that have come out of Donald’s mouth, we’re starting to see some real desperation," Trump said on Tuesday . "I wanna show you a collection of some of the outrageous promises Donald has been making to his crowds, also kind of known as bribes, about how much money they’re going to get if they simply vote Republican. Let’s take a look and we’ll talk about it on the other side." The niece's supercut showed Trump saying, on various occasions, "They just sent out nearly one million refund checks for $500 each. 20 million seniors on Medicare will soon be receiving a deposit of nearly $100 directly into their bank accounts. I am going to give all adult citizens in the United States of America $5,000. It’s only if we win, don...

President Donald Trump was just humiliated in court – by a judge who invoked Dr. Seuss in order to do it . "Rarely, if ever, has the United States Department of Justice urged a federal court not to believe the sitting President," Judge Ana C. Reyes said in her ruling on Monday. She referred to how Trump's Department of Justice is urging her to not interpret the president's own statements about destroying historic cherry trees to renovate the East Potomac Golf Links as literal truth. "Not to believe him that a cabinet secretary has 'developed' a federal land project," Reyes continued. "Not to believe him that the secretary’s agency will destroy a historic golf course already on the land. Not to believe him that 'Restoration work' will begin 'IMMEDIATELY!' Not to believe him that the course 'will be closed' for over a year. Not to believe what the President has repeatedly told the American public. And yet, here we are....

Even though billionaire David Ellison is widely criticized for seemingly turning CBS News into a pro-President Donald Trump outlet, he is reportedly going full steam ahead with plans to streamline CBS News and presumably also make it more MAGA. "David Ellison is offering buyouts to employees at CBS News and other Skydance properties," reported The Daily Beast's Laura Esposito on Monday . "The Trump-friendly billionaire is extending the offer to employees at the vice-president level or below with 15 or more years of service, the New York Post reported on Monday. Employees in the U.S., as well as the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, the United Arab Emirates, and other countries are eligible." She added, "The shake-up comes as Ellison, the son of Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison, succeeded in his bid to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery under the Skydance Paramount umbrella—after months of fielding legal hurdles and accusations that the deal would create a monopoly....

President Donald Trump announced on Monday that he is pursuing a third prosecution against former FBI Director James Comey, this time accusing the bureaucrat who arguably helped him win the 2016 presidential election , and whose subsequent firing led to another FBI investigation into the president. In response to this, Trump's opponents claimed that the president was abusing his power to pursue a political grievance — while his supporters gloated. "James Comey has broken his silence on his third indictment in a video on his Substack: “Well they’re back — again," posted Benny Johnson, a conservative commentator . "He’s still trying to convince everyone he’s innocent… we’ve all seen the evidence. You’re getting exactly what you deserve, Jim."" Steve Guest, who used to work for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), wrote on X . "WOW. Hillary Clinton’s birthday wish came true already!" He added, "I’m old enough to remember Hillary & her 2016 campaign goin...

President Donald Trump had a bizarre moment at a rally that even comedian John Oliver questioned as evidence that something was seriously wrong with him. During his Sunday show, Oliver showed a clip of Trump's random "URRPP!" exclamation during the rally in South Carolina for Darline Graham, sister to the late Sen. Lindsey Graham (R), the Daily Beast called it . Snopes referred to it as "EHHH!" At the top of the show, before he jumped into his big story, Oliver played the Trump noise. Mid-sentence, the president erupted into a sound that left even those behind him questioning what was happening. “In South Carolina this week, when he tried to talk up their governor, things, even by his standards, got a bit weird," said Oliver Trump rambled about former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R), saying that he didn't want her to be governor, so he moved her over to the UN. Then the sound erupted. “I’m sorry. We all heard it. What was that noise?!” Oliver said...

Larry Sabato, the decades-long University of Virginia political analyst, had a dire warning for Republican congressional candidates last week: You’re going down in the U.S. House of Representatives. And you might lose your slim majority in the U.S. Senate, too, after the Nov. 3 elections. “It’s either going to be a sizable blue wave, or it’s going to be a tsunami,” Sabato, founder and director of U.Va.’s Center for Politics and head of the eponymous Sabato’s Crystal Ball , told nearly 250 people at The Slover building in downtown Norfolk last week. The perennial prognosticator relayed similar comments to me in a brief interview just before his address. The Crystal Ball, a nonpartisan political analysis newsletter, forms its projections by polling, reporting, studying electoral history and other factors. Sabato said Democrats could win at least 224 seats in the House of Representatives (they now trail Republicans 218-214, with one independent and two vacancies). In the Senate, he ...

Multiple polls show Trump’s approval at record lows, but I think what’s happening runs deeper than this. Something very dramatic is occurring. Many people who consider themselves non-political or independent — or moderate Republican or who even voted for Trump in November 2024 — can’t avoid seeing what’s come so clearly into the open. And they’re finding it disgusting and terrifying. They’ve watched Trump order the National Guard into cities over the objections of mayors and governors. They’ve watched Trump’s ICE agents drag people out of their beds in the middle of the night, zip-tie them and their children, and haul them away. They’re watching the Justice Department argue that if the Democrat wins in Alaska’s Senate race, she shouldn’t be certified. They’re seeing Trump threaten to revoke the citizenship of Representative Ilhan Omar. They see Trump direct the IRS, FBI, and Justice Department against liberal groups that oppose him. They’ve watched him push broadcasters to take off t...

President Donald Trump's presumed 2028 successor remains the same, but he appears unwilling to make their path to the GOP nomination a simple one. In a new piece for The i Paper , reporter and columnist Sarah Baxter outlined the moment this past week when Trump shattered Vice President JD Vance's 2028 "dreams" directly to his face. Before that, her description began during his interview with journalist Mike Halperin on Air Force Two, where Vance insisted that, "if I run, the President will endorse me ,” while stressing that the two have not discussed the matter "You think? The President wasn’t having any of his cheek," Baxter wrote. "Asked if Vance was right about this at a White House event, Donald Trump shook his head." “Well, I’ll tell you this,” Trump said. “He’s a very talented person, he’s a very good person, but we’ve, literally, I don’t think we’ve ever talked about it.” Following that remark, Baxter explained, the camera focused in...

For two people who once occupied high rungs of the Republican Party’s communications ladder the admission must have been difficult: Republicans have hung themselves. Former Republican communications director Doug Heye and GOP communications director Tara Setmayer could muster no strength Friday night on CNN to defend the party’s capitulation to President Donald Trump in his second term. Both blamed the party for Trump’s most Friday move to personally direct the Department of Justic to insert itself in Alaskan elections if Republicans lose. Trump freely admitted that he ordered his politicized Department of Justice to insert itself into an election if and only if his side loses. And Attorney General Todd Blanche — who was Trump’s defense attorney in his hush money case that he lost — made clear that he has no problem serving Trump in that role as AG. This, they said, left no misperception of a separation and independence between the department of justice and the White House. But Hey...

Conservative Wall Street Journal columnist Holman W. Jenkins, Jr is quick with advice for any world leader trying to look able-minded while rendering globe-spanning and potentially terrible decisions. “My political advice to the president: Avoid giving signs of senility, an imminent hazard given his constant need to be on stage. Nothing would more quickly resolve the growing cognitive dissonance of his base than the idea that he’s no longer the same Mr. Trump,” said Jenkins . “Then even a Democratic impeachment won’t save him.” But that’s not the persona President Donald Trump has been presenting in his doings with Russian President Vladimir Putin. He said the Putin lines that Trump keeps falling for are making the nation’s ‘very stable genius’ look — at the very least — like something other than “a strategic genius.” “Speaking of senility, it will be time to take away gramps’s phone if he falls for the Putin telemarketer line ‘Donald, just get me a couple more small cities in the Don...

On Friday, a family member of President Donald Trump warned that Trump’s busted sense of empathy is making “every single one of us worse off” as the nation hurdles toward chaos and cruelty. “Empathy is being attacked as something that is not necessary, that is somehow antithetical to human greatness, when of course the opposite is true,” said Trump’s niece Mary Trump, a psychologist with a podcast. “Our ability to be empathetic is one of the greatest things about being human, and the inability to be empathetic is an egregious failing.” But in Trumpland, she said the idea of having no empathy whatsoever catches on because her uncle “wields his cruelty with such Joy, and he loves humiliating people who are less powerful than he is,” she said, citing Trump’s recent attacks on an adult victim of abuse who is Trump’s target because she’s a Democrat. But how did “Donald become such a creature?” she asked. Look to Trump’s father, Fred Trump, who Mary described as a paragon of cruelty him...

Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS) has already aroused controversy for his closeness to President Donald Trump and allegedly harassing poor patients when he was a doctor. Now a conservative newspaper is adding a new controversy to his list — supporting a supposedly "left-wing, tax-and-spend" policy. "No politician wants to campaign on promises of difficult Social Security reforms," The Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote on Thursday . "Even so, the Republican surrender on the old-age entitlement that’s gathering steam is something else. Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas is the latest to call for a giant tax increase even without any policy reform." The Journal added, "Mr. Marshall, the Republican incumbent, is in a tight Senate race with a centrist-presenting Democratic challenger, and Social Security inevitably came up in debate this week. Senators elected this year will be in office when the old-age program’s trust fund runs out in 2032, which will trig...

Economic journalist and author Hamish McRae reports that Wall Street is not so secretly praying for President Donald Trump to get toppled. “Big money here in America will welcome it if Donald Trump is roughed up by voters in the US midterm elections, now less than two weeks away,” said McRae, who pointed out that news is focused on the size of Trump and Republicans’ drubbing and not its economic benefit to financial markets. “The prospects here are almost certainly good – good for the U.S. of course, but on balance good for the rest of us too,” said McRae, citing two reasons. Financial markets, he pointed out, almost always do well after the midterms. Sounds nuts, but share prices “almost always rise in the year that follows.” “The basic answer seems to be that historically the party in control of the White House loses seats in Congress, and that curbs the power of the president. The result is dubbed gridlock – a time when it’s impossible to pass substantial legislation – but busines...

CNN anchor Anderson Cooper managed to maintain his composure Wednesday night as newsroom editors served up an excruciating supercut of President Donald Trump professing his fawning love of the male physique. “Erstwhile Manhattanite and derriere aficionado, President Donald J. Trump, whose approval rating, according to a new CNN poll, is currently at a bouncy 32 percent, thanks to all his political junk in the trunk, is once again making sure voters know that, as far as he's concerned, Ohio junior senator Jon Husted is an unmitigated smoke show,” said Cooper, who then set unloaded his first clip. “I'm studying his body. I've never studied the body of a man before. It's not my thing. Nothing wrong with it, of course. Nothing. I always preceded by saying ‘nothing wrong.’ But it's never been my thing, to be honest with you. But I looked at his --- and then I looked at his legs, and I said, his --- is like. It's like a pile of muscle.” “Just to be clear, that was l...

President Donald Trump has added $2 trillion to America's budget deficit in 2026 , swelling the ballooning debt to $40 trillion. Even as economists continue to express alarm about the daunting math , a top economist argued on Wednesday that the deeper issue is in fact Trump himself. People do not trust him because of things like him running up the deficit, and that impacts the economy. "How they evaluate the job the government is doing on economic policy," Dr. Justin Wolfers , a non-resident senior fellow at Brookings and the Peterson Institute and a University of Michigan professor of economics and public policy, wrote on Wednesday regarding American voters. "You can see why this might matter: If policy is good, you might be optimistic about your economic future. If it’s bad, you’re likely more pessimistic." Wolfers described a phenomenon which he dubbed "America’s confidence in our economic managers. To turn it into a single number, take the share of peo...