Inside:
MAGA’s Terrible, Horrible, No-Good Week
State Update: The Battleground Board
End of Campaign Spin Patrol
Sign Your Name to the Denial
The 2028 Map Without the MAGA Sun Belt Wall
Strategery: Andy, Put the Money in Florida
Trump’s Taxpayer-Funded Ad Campaign
Trump’s Insane Interview
One More Reason To Hate Data Centers
MAGA’s Terrible, Horrible, No-Good Week
There’s a tell I learned in my old line of work: as election season closes, a campaign that thinks it’s winning talks about the other guy. A campaign that thinks it’s losing spends its days explaining itself, throwing things against the wall, and working too-clever bank-shot attacks.
By midweek of this trainwreck of a week, the MAGA Party was explaining everything...and in politics, famously, if you’re explaining, you’re losing.
By Thursday night, they were throwing out attacks so random and niche as to defy imagination, and they were working on 4-bumper bank shots they’d never land.
The money story broke Tuesday. The Wall Street Journal reported that Customs and Border Protection paid for the slick Trump spots running during NFL games and on the Sunday shows. Democratic appropriators say DHS moved $20 million into the effort, routed through a CBP account for “commemorative events” and funded with border money from the Big Bad Bill.
AdImpact counted 2,766 airings in a single week. One of the ads is nearly identical to a 2024 campaign spot.
All of them were, frankly, risibly bad.
John Thune told reporters he liked the message, but taxpayers shouldn’t be paying for it, which is about as close as Thune gets to open revolt.
