A few weeks ago, Donald Trump gave a prime-time address promising to expose the election interference that had been done to him. The headline revelation, the big new lie? China. China had interfered in our elections. China was manipulating our democracy. China was the reason Joe Biden won in 2020.
Last week, Xi Jinping came to the White House.
You would think that a president who had just told the country that this man’s government stole an American election might raise it. Hold him accountable. Ask for something.
Instead, Xi got the red carpet at Joint Base Andrews. The first time in sixty-four years a president has personally greeted an arriving leader there. Xi got American service members on their hands and knees smoothing the wrinkles out of a rug. Xi toured the new helipad. Xi got a 134-person state dinner with every tech billionaire in America in the room, a toast, and an extension of the trade truce to January 10.
We got nothing on China stealing an election, because there was nothing.
That is either a man too weak to say to Xi’s face what he says into a camera, or a man who knew the whole time it was false. Both are embarrassing.
And it’s the perfect representation of this second term: a near-total failure. Not by my standards, not by his opponents’ standards, but by the standards he set for himself.
Let’s go down the list.
He promised to prosecute his enemies. He has zero convictions.
He wanted James Comey and Letitia James indicted. He said so publicly, demanding Attorney General Pam Bondi act “NOW!!!” His U.S. Attorney in Virginia, Erik Siebert, reviewed the evidence and declined to bring charges. So Trump forced him out and installed Lindsey Halligan — his own former personal lawyer, an insurance attorney who had never prosecuted a case in her life.
She got the indictments. Judge Cameron McGowan Currie threw them out, ruling that Halligan had no legal authority and that the indictments were “unlawful exercises of executive power.”
Two weeks ago, a federal appellate panel heard the Justice Department’s attempt to revive both cases a year later and was openly skeptical.
Joe diGenova, one of Trump’s own lawyers, quit the effort and explained why: “If you want indictments where there’s no evidence, you have an ethical problem.”
He promised to root out the deep state. The people he hired to do it are gone.
Dan Bongino, the election-denying podcaster he installed as deputy FBI director, lasted less than a year before returning to his show.
Andrew Bailey, the former Missouri attorney general brought in as co-deputy, resigned Monday. His portfolio was election integrity. According to CBS News, Kash Patel cut him out of meetings he should have attended because Bailey kept flagging things as unconstitutional.
Pam Bondi is gone. Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence who was supposed to declassify the truth about it all, is gone. Kristi Noem is gone. Karoline Leavitt is gone.
They found nothing. No conspiracy, no cabal, no document. The declassified trove Trump released this summer to prove China stole 2020 contained, instead, the intelligence community’s finding that China stayed out of the election and Russia ran an operation to help him.
With full control of the federal government and unqualified stooges appointed to key positions, Trump has provided zero evidence of election interference.
His attempts to block access to the ballot have failed.
The SAVE Act is dead; Republican leaders concede it won’t pass before November. His executive order allowing the Postal Service to refuse mail ballots was struck down 7–2, with only Thomas and Alito dissenting. His attempt to end birthright citizenship lost 6–3 in Trump v. Barbara. The Justice Department has lost all twenty-three district court rulings in its campaign to force states to hand over unredacted voter files.
The exception came on September 25, when the Supreme Court ruled 6–3 that DHS may use its revamped SAVE database to verify voter citizenship.
The Court permitted individualized checks and pointed out that federal law already bars systematic purges within ninety days of an election. Justice Jackson, dissenting with Sotomayor and Kagan, warned the decision creates conditions for states to cancel the registrations of recently naturalized citizens.
So: if you are a naturalized citizen, or you know one, check your registration this week at vote.gov. If you get flagged, proof of citizenship clears it. Don’t wait until November 3 to find out. (Also DO NOT use votesafe.org; that is a site Elon Musk has set up to collect voter data and presumably do some horrific James Bond villain action with it)
The path to the ballot remains open this Mid-Term. Two fights are still coming after Election Day — making sure every legal vote is counted, and every rightfully elected representative is seated. But the effort to stop you from voting has largely failed.
Why am I saying all of this?
I’m not writing this to manufacture hope, and I’m not pretending the damage isn’t real.
We'll live with the wreckage of this administration for decades. The trade agreements China signed with Canada and across South America don’t dissolve when a new president takes the oath. The distrust we've built with our allies doesn't reset in January 2029. And the families ICE tore apart, the people detained unconstitutionally, the man shot in front of his daughter in Biddeford — none of that is undone by an election.
But there’s a second thing that’s also true. He is weak, and we shouldn’t fear him.
Reuters/Ipsos has him at 32% — the lowest approval rating of his political career, not just this term. Every major poll released in late September had him underwater by at least fourteen points, most by twenty or more. He is net negative in 47 states and the District of Columbia. In Kentucky, Ohio, Texas, and Nevada, his net approval has dropped more than twenty-five points since he took office. Half the country strongly disapproves; fifteen percent strongly approve.
And the collapse is happening inside his own coalition. Republican approval fell from 82% to 73% in a single week. Among his own 2024 voters, strong approval has gone from 53% to 35%.
So if the midterms break the way they look like they'll break, there should be no hesitation. Subpoena everything. The tungsten deal, the crypto billions, the casualty database, the Kushner fees, the killed investigations.
Don’t relax. The votes still have to be counted, and the winners still have to be seated, and those fights are coming.
But stop being afraid of him.
Donald Trump is a failed president. Not a dangerous strongman who failed — a failed president who spent two years telling us he was dangerous.
Start to believe that. Start to act like it’s true.
Quick Hits: What You Need To Know
Trump is running campaign ads with your money. Three White House spots tagged "Paid for by the U.S. Government" have aired on NFL games, SNL, and Fox News Sunday at a cost above $1.7 million, funded by $20 million OMB pulled from Customs and Border Protection.
A senator tried to trap Jack Smith and confused the Hawks with the Hawkeyes. Eric Schmitt accused Smith of lying about attending a Warriors–Hawks game in Atlanta. In reality, Smith had been at a Maryland women's game against the Iowa Hawkeyes. Watch the clip. It’s straight out of a Veep episode.
Democrats lead in eight Senate races. Nate Silver's averages: Cooper +8.8 in North Carolina, Ossoff +8.2 in Georgia, Brown +4.1 in Ohio, Talarico +3.4 in Texas, El-Sayed +3.2 in Michigan, Jackson +2.5 in Maine, Peltola +2.4 in Alaska, Turek +1.9 in Iowa.
Impeachment talk is back, with three names. Trump, Pete Hegseth, and OMB Director Russ Vought, whose "pocket rescissions" would cancel roughly $810 million Congress already appropriated, including $567 million in refugee services.
The midterms are in 34 days.
Sources:
Sources
The Xi visit
NBC News — UN speech
The Hill — state dinner guest list
ABC News — arrival and dinner
Rolling Stone — full 134-name list
The prosecutions
ABC News — Currie dismissal
NBC News — “unlawful exercises of executive power”
Democracy Docket — Halligan appointment, Siebert ouster
Washington Post — appellate panel skeptical
The departures
CBS News — Bailey resignation, Patel cutting him out
CNN — election-security portfolio
Axios — Bongino timeline
The Daily Beast — Bondi, Noem, Leavitt, Gabbard departures
The ballot
NPR — USPS rule blocked 7–2
CNBC — “unlikely to succeed on the merits”
CNN — SAVE ruling explained
NPR — Jackson dissent, naturalized-citizen risk
JURIST — 65 million verified, 28,635 flagged
Trump v. Barbara, decided June 30, 2026, 6–3
Oligarch Watch — votesafe.org
The polling
Reuters/Ipsos — 32%, career low; GOP approval 82% → 73%
Newsweek — underwater in 47 states and D.C.
Strength In Numbers/Verasight — 50% strongly disapprove, 15% strongly approve, 53% → 35% among 2024 Trump voters
Newsweek — state-by-state declines
Instead of "can" that should be "country.'
DJT is, and always has been, a fraud. He is a first-class conman. He, in many ways, is a modern PT Barnum. This can will be paying the price for his incompetence for a long time. I still can't believe people were stupid enough to fall for his BS.