Trump abruptly CANCELS midterm rallies

Abdul El-Sayed has a counteroffer for the president, who said this week that he should have to pass a metal detector to get into the Senate.

“I will go through a metal detector if you will sit for a lie detector,” El-Sayed said Thursday night.

“My first question, Epstein. Second question, did you win the 2020 election?”

“I will go through a metal detector every day if you sit through a lie detector one time.”

Earlier that day at his rally in Rock Hill, South Carolina, Trump had a message for Michigan voters. “If you’re Black or if you’re Jewish and if you vote for Abdul, you’re crazy,” Trump said.

Then he added, “You’re crazy anyway.”

About two hours later, JD Vance said that “anybody who would divide us by the color of our skin and say that you’re more or less American… that person is a scumbag.” Apparently without irony. He literally told a Black woman running for Senate that she doesn’t belong in America just weeks ago.

El-Sayed, a physician and epidemiologist, also said RFK Jr. “is an expert on people who never contributed anything to science.”

He wasn’t done. Of the vice president, he said, “They keep sending JV here. JV has zero charisma.”

A CNN poll this week has El-Sayed leading Rogers 49% to 42%.

We’d pay good money to watch that polygraph.

Five days before the midterms, Trump called off his Saturday rally in Salina, Kansas, and a planned stop in Iowa. The RNC says he’ll do “tele-rallies” instead, piped to nearly 20 states. Tonight’s rally in Daytona Beach is still on.

When he landed in Washington on Thursday, a Reuters reporter asked him why he was skipping Kansas.

“Oh, you’re sick to ask that question. You are sick,” Trump said.

“You’ve been following me for two weeks. I feel perfect. You are disgusting. Put yourself in shape. You look like hell,” he said, and walked away.

“I don’t feel I have to go to Kansas,” he also said. A CNN poll out the same day had Democrat Adam Hamilton ahead of Sen. Roger Marshall there, 49% to 45%.

The internet has some thoughts about why he might be canceling these stops.

He was flying back from South Carolina, his second trip in two weeks to prop up Sen. Darline Graham. Trump pushed for her appointment after her brother, Lindsey Graham, died in July. The latest NYT/Siena poll has her tied with Annie Andrews at 48%, in a state Trump won by 18.

“It’s a f---ing train wreck,” Republican Rep. Nancy Mace told MS NOW. “It’s a mess.”

On stage in Rock Hill, Trump told the crowd Graham was in the lead. “In politics you never know, right?” he added.

Outside, one man told a Fox News reporter, live on air, that he’d come to see the “cult” in person.

The president feels perfect. He’d just rather phone it in.

The New York Times reports that Trump “erupted” when he learned what his former lawyer Alina Habba was being paid by the family of Venezuelan billionaire Julio Herrera Velutini.

Under a four-year contract, the family pays her $10 million a year plus bonuses, more than $50 million in all. She started January 1. Within weeks, Trump pardoned Herrera Velutini.

Trump, “angered” by how much she stood to make, has been telling aides and allies she ought to hand over part of the money to his planned presidential library or some other entity bearing his name, according to the Times. He also reportedly told an ally the family should stop paying her.

Habba has denied any role in the pardon. Back on Oct. 21, a White House official said, “Alina Habba had nothing to do with this presidential pardon.”

Herrera Velutini’s daughter, Isabela Herrera, gave $3.5 million to a Trump-aligned super PAC.

So nobody was paid for that pardon, and Trump is furious he wasn’t.

Pete Hegseth has fired Lt. Gen. Brett Sylvia, the Joint Staff’s top strategy and planning officer.

The Joint Staff first put out a statement praising his 32 years of service. Then it pulled it, saying “upon further review, we determined that the statement did not appropriately reflect the full circumstances.”

An unnamed official accused Sylvia of leaking classified information. None of it has been backed up publicly, and no charges have been announced.

Asked about the firing on Thursday, Trump went with a different pronoun. “She’s got problems,” he said. “She’s gonna have big problems. We’re very much looking for leakers.”

All he heard was Sylvia. Nobody corrected him.

Hegseth has now overseen the exit of at least 26 generals and admirals. Rep. Yassamin Ansari has filed articles of impeachment against him, and Republican Rep. Thomas Massie has a resolution of his own.

Trump isn’t worried. “He is a great warrior. I think he is the best at his job in many, many years,” he said.

That’s a glowing review from a man who isn’t sure who got fired.

A federal judge in Boston on Thursday blocked a key piece of the Trump administration’s Medicaid work-requirement rules.

Under the rule, people with qualifying medical conditions would also have had to show those conditions “significantly impair” their ability to work before they could be exempted.

Twenty-five states and Washington, D.C., sued in June. U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns sided with them on that piece.

The states face “the burden of costly and intensive alterations to their eligibility verification systems,” Stearns wrote in his 16-page ruling.

He let two other limits stand, and the work requirement itself is still coming. Starting Jan. 1, expansion enrollees ages 19 to 64 will have to work or volunteer 80 hours a month, or be in school at least half time, to keep their coverage.

HHS didn’t respond to the AP.

That’s a real win for people too sick to work. The rest of the fight is on Tuesday’s ballot.

Patrick Stewart, who gave us Captain Jean-Luc Picard and Professor X, has died at 86. His family said he died “in the loving care of his beloved wife Sunny” after a “brief and poignant journey” with Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body dementia.

He was born in 1940 in Mirfield, England, and spent 16 years with the Royal Shakespeare Company before Star Trek: The Next Generation made him a star in 1987. He played Charles Xavier in eight X-Men films.

Off screen, he was an activist for survivors of domestic violence, LGBTQ+ equality, refugees and veterans’ mental health.

“Like me, Jean-Luc has lived an unusual life that has taken him far beyond the bounds of normal human experience,” he wrote in his 2023 memoir.

“We will forever cherish the peaceful ease and reflection on his face, an enduring reminder of his invincible grace,” his family said.

Rest easy, Sir Patrick.