To our Jewish readers: Sorry, we're a bit late on this—chalk it up to being ill—but G'mar Chatimah Tovah. We do not know if an exclamation point is appropriate on the (belated) occasion of such a solemn holiday, so we're sticking with a period.

Trump Threatens Iran with Annihilation

If you haven't studied World War II fairly closely, you may not be aware of exactly how much most Americans loathed the Japanese back then. There was Pearl Harbor, of course, followed by a brutal 4-year war during which the Japanese often fought dirty and committed many war crimes.

The anti-Japanese sentiment gave rise to some ugly behavior from Americans. Japanese internment probably comes to mind first, for most readers. There was also viciously racist anti-Japanese propaganda, including cartoons from the likes of Disney and Warner Bros. American tank battalions in the Pacific theater would sometimes decorate their tanks with the skulls of dead Japanese soldiers. This was against the rules, but few officers, if any, had any interest in actually enforcing those rules. On some level, this sentiment made possible the deployment of nuclear weapons against Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Harry S. Truman made the decision he thought was correct, and necessary, but if the target had been white people (even if they were Nazis), that might have given him pause.

Truman's response, after unleashing devastation that wiped out a quarter of a million Japanese civilians in two fell swoops, is instructive. After the first nuclear strike (Hiroshima), Truman delivered a speech in which he said, in so many words, that Americans might hear about the terrible damage done by the bombs, but that everyone should remember this was necessary to end the war and that the Japanese started it at Pearl Harbor. After the second nuclear strike (Nagasaki), the U.S. government worked hard, with significant success, to keep photos or video footage of the bomb damage from reaching Americans. Most of the well-known visual evidence of the aftermath of the bombings was not known to Americans until the 1970s or 1980s.

What is the purpose of beginning with this (brief) history lesson? Well, Donald Trump was in New York City yesterday to speak to the United Nations General Assembly. And in his speech, he advised the delegates:

I have a big decision to make. Will a deal be made with Iran that lets them rebuild and create a far greater country than it ever was before? Maybe one of the greatest in the Middle East or even the world. Or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic, and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill and destroy people and countries again?

We don't know what response Trump was hoping for, but it wasn't the one he got. If we were to describe it in a word, based on accounts of people who were there, and on looking at video of the speech, that word would be "eye-roll."

Every person sitting in that room is a veteran diplomat/politician. They know that the U.S. could theoretically rebuild Iran in the way that Trump proposes. After all, the U.S. did that with Japan, Germany and other nations after World War II. However, that is an expensive, long-term commitment. Trump ran on a platform of reduced American involvement abroad, and most certainly has no intention of implementing the Marshall Plan v2.0. He also represents a political party whose members soil themselves when so much as one dollar flows to Iran, even if that dollar actually belongs to Iran. There is no way the Republicans would allow that kind of investment in a country full of Muslims.

The folks in the room also know Trump has no intention of annihilating Iran. He doesn't even have the fortitude to order air strikes that would help Saudi Arabia. He certainly doesn't have the fortitude to order something more substantive (and the implication, presumably, is a massive nuclear strike). Even if Trump was willing to go nuclear, the Saudis and Israelis would be furious. Plus, it would be open season if any other nation felt like it wanted to start lobbing a few nuclear weapons at its enemy (looking at you, North Korea).

One has to assume that the UN General Assembly wasn't the real audience for the speech. The real audience, presumably, was American voters (with Iran as a secondary audience). From that vantage point, we would say the speech was... a complete and total failure. As we have already noted, U.S. voters by and large are not on board with a new Marshall Plan for Iran or anyone else. And those voters who DO like the idea don't trust Trump to implement it.

And then there's the "annihilation" talk. Returning to where we started this item, Americans in 1945 largely hated, hated, hated the Japanese. And yet, the politically savvy Truman realized that, even under those circumstances, annihilation (or something that was annihilation-adjacent) was not something the American public could stomach. In the end, Americans are human beings, the Japanese are human beings, and annihilation is just a bridge too far.

Iran may not be popular with the American people right now, but they are nowhere near as loathed as the Japanese were in 1945. And so, while talk of annihilating Iran might make Trump feel strong, and might make him feel like his... hands are bigger than they really are, it's going to go over like a lead zeppelin with every voter who isn't a Pete Hegseth clone. Also, threatening the Iranians with annihilation is not going to make them more open to peace talks and to finding middle ground.

The bottom line is that Trump has absolutely no idea what to tell Americans, or anyone else, about this mess of a war that he personally created. Truth be told, we don't know if even a skilled communicator, like Franklin D. Roosevelt, or John F. Kennedy or Ronald Reagan could talk their way through this mess. Trump's best option here is almost certainly to shut up, clench his fists, and hope that the damage done to the GOP in November is less than he fears. But Trump's instinct is to keep talking, and to keep digging the hole deeper, and he's clearly running that playbook here. He's even cleverly finding venues where the lack of a press-pool microphone isn't a problem.

Also, we had an item yesterday titled "Iran Gets Even More Quagmire-y," in which we talked about the pressure the Saudis are under, and how the Iranians have successfully shut down one exit point for oil shipments from the Kingdom of Saud (the Strait of Hormuz), while the Iranian-client Yemeni Houthis have largely shut down another (Bab al-Mandab Strait).

We were simplifying a bit, in part for clarity purposes, and in part due to illness, but there is a third way to get oil from Saudi Arabia to the rest of the world, namely the Suez Canal. Several readers took us to task for omitting this, so we'll address it now, and why it's not all that much of a solution to the overall problem. To start with, here's a map of Saudi Arabia:

The blue star is Hormuz, the red star is Bab al-Mandab, the orange star is Suez.

There are three problems that a "Suez only" situation presents. First, most of Saudi Arabia's oil fields are in the east, and so if they're going to use Suez, they have to get the oil all the way across the country to the Red Sea. They have a pipeline that is used for that purpose; it is known as the—wait for it—East-West Pipeline. Undoubtedly, they worked very hard on that name. Anyhow, everyone knows that pipeline is key, and that includes the Iranians. So, they have been attacking the East-West Pipeline, and have managed to shut it down a couple of times.

The second problem is that, like the Panama Canal, the Suez Canal can only accommodate a certain number of ships per day. Generally speaking, maximum daily capacity is about 100 ships. And, of course, the Saudis are competing with many other nations for that space, since 12% of all global shipping traffic goes through the Suez. So, there is an upper limit to exactly how much oil can be rerouted.

The third problem, and arguably the biggest one, is that Suez is a fine and dandy option when the Saudis are servicing customers in Europe and/or the Americas. It's a lousy option for customers in Asia, who purchase the bulk of Saudi oil. One of those major Asian customers, the UAE, can be reached by land. The others, not so much. That includes both India and China, who each purchase about 10% of all Saudi oil exports, or about four times as much as the U.S. purchases. To get oil to (most of the) Asian customers through Suez, Saudi ships have to travel all the way around Africa. This increases shipping time by about a month and, of course, increases costs.

If someone told this to Trump, he would probably say, "Too bad for China and India." But all the rest of us, having been given a crash course in the economics of petroleum in the last 6 months, know that oil is a global commodity. If China and India (and South Korea and Japan and Singapore) can't get Saudi oil, or if they can't get it at a competitive price, they will look elsewhere, which will serve to drive up costs of non-Saudi oil. So, Americans and other western customers of the Kingdom of Saud will feel the pinch, even if the Suez remains an unhindered conduit.

The bottom line is that the whole situation is now a giant mess. If we were president, we flatter ourselves we would never have been stupid enough to create this mess in the first place (of course, we also would never have palled around with a serial pedophile, thus creating a need for a distraction). And we thank the deity of your choice that we are not responsible for fixing this mess, because we have absolutely no idea how to do so at this point. (Z)

Two Republicans Want Donald Trump Jr. Investigated

We have written a couple of times about Donald Trump Jr.'s wedding after-party, which was primarily funded by a Russian oligarch that Junior barely knows. It could not be more obvious that the oligarch, who is close with Vladimir Putin, was buying influence with the White House.

The odor is strong enough that even some Republican senators are calling for an investigation, with two of them even going on the record with their support. The first of those is Sen. John Curtis (R-UT), who doesn't like being a U.S. Senator, is almost certainly one-term-and-done, and who comes from a state that is red but leery of Trump. The second of those is Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), who is a normie Republican who only pretended to be MAGA when he felt he had to, and who is now giving an object lesson in why it's better to keep party members you don't like inside the tent, pissing out, rather than having them outside the tent, pissing in.

Also note that while he hasn't quite gone so far as to call for an investigation, another tent-pisser, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), said that Trump Jr.'s actions raise "serious questions" and that he'd be OK with starting an investigation once the election is over. It appears that all three Republican senators are still Team GOP enough to not want to get this started before the election (and besides, the Senate is barely in session between now and then). However, once the election is over, particularly if there is going to be an incoming Democratic majority, then all bets are off. And note that Tillis and Cornyn are both members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, so those two, plus the Democrats on the Committee, are enough to get the ball rolling, no matter what the other Republicans think.

Every time we write about this, we hear from a few folks who point out that Trump Sr. will just pardon Trump Jr. This may be true, but it does not mean that an investigation is without value. First, if someone can find a civil violation here, then a pardon cannot erase that. Similarly, it is possible that Trump Jr. committed some sort of state-level crime. For example, he lives in New York, which has a very expansive RICO statute. A presidential pardon cannot erase that, either. And finally, an investigation serves notice that the corruption is not going unnoticed, and that anyone who decides to indulge could find themselves on the wrong end of a subpoena at some point in the future.

Note also that these blanket presidential pardons have never been tested in court, and it could eventually end up being the case that "Get Out of Jail Free" does not actually mean "Get Out of Jail Free." Just yesterday, Katie Miller, wife of Astaroth Stephen, was worrying about the legal costs that her family will bear if the Democrats begin a bunch of investigations. Either she is not persuaded that a presidential pardon is forthcoming, or she is not persuaded it's a panacea for all of their potential legal problems.

Also, since we are a full-service site, let's play Pollyanna for a moment. We suspect that many Republican officeholders know that MAGA is not the future, in part because Trump is (once again) increasingly toxic, and in part because he is not going to be able to pass the crown to someone else (even if he's willing to try, which he might not be). If the Democrats start a bunch of investigations, with even a little Republican buy-in (from people like Curtis, Cornyn and Tillis), this might be cover for other Republicans to defect from MAGA. "We really had no idea the extent of the lawbreaking/corruption," they might say. That would be a lie, of course. But people might overlook it, under the circumstances.

We will also note that "Republicans are fleeing Trump" pieces have become something of a cottage industry this week. Here's a selection, all from the last 48 hours:

• Axios: GOP breaking with an unpopular Trump
• NBC News: GOP defections from Trump start to pile up
• The Daily Beast: Why Trump's Ultra-Loyalists Are Finally Turning on Him
• CNN: The GOP stampede away from Trump is growing--including in pretty red districts
• The Washington Sun: Survival Over Loyalty: Why Republicans Are Breaking With Trump

And, while we're at it, let's note a bit of the data reported in the latest poll from Echelon Insights. They asked Republicans which they support: Donald Trump or the Republican Party. And 56% said they support the Republican Party first and foremost, while 34% said they support Trump more than they support the Party. We're not sure what that means, since the Republican Party and Trump have become one and the same. However, that certainly looks like a signal that supporting Trump is not a requirement for the majority of Republican voters, at least not anymore.

We have sensed the end of Trumpism before, and have obviously been wrong. But if his disastrous foreign and tariff policies lead to a shellacking in November, and if Republican officeholders believe that Republican voters are drifting away from MAGA as Trump enters his lame duck period and draws ever closer to the end of his career, then this really could be when people start to say that the emperor has no clothes. (Z)

The Democrats' Momentum Sure Looks to Be Real

This week, our postings make us look like we've become an official organ of the Democratic National Committee, because it's been wall-to-wall bad news for Donald Trump and his political party. We don't love that dynamic, but we are also bound to report the election-related news that we think is important. And pretty much all of the election-related news this week, with the possible exception of New Hampshire's Senate race being a nail-biter, has been good for the Democrats.

We have the Senate polls that we run almost every day, of course. We've written quite a few items this week about some of the issues (beef, diesel fuel, the war in Iran) that could very well be hurting the GOP, including in red states. We had an item about Republicans who are in tough races, and are semi-rebelling against Trump, or else trying to pretend he doesn't exist. We have written about Donald Trump's approval rating, both nationwide and in states with key Senate races.

And now, another way of looking at things, namely the race raters. These are the folks who try to take a holistic look at the Senate (and other) races, and to make their best projection based on the available data, as well as the raters' gut feel for American politics. There are three entities that have been doing it this way for many years, namely the Cook Political Report, Inside Elections and the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia (a.k.a. Sabato's Crystal Ball). Others have horned in on this general shtick, the way that some people tried to steal Siskel & Ebert's "two thumbs up" (even though that's trademarked), but these three are the founding parents of holistic projections. So, we're going to take a quick look at where the three of them have the Senate, about a month and a half before the election.

What particularly motivates us to write this item today is that Sabato, for what must be the fourth or fifth time in the past few weeks, moved a bunch more races in the direction of the Democrats yesterday: the governor's races in Florida, Nevada, Ohio and Texas; the U.S. Senate races in Iowa, Kansas and Michigan and the U.S. House races in FL-27, IA-02 and TX-09. Note that all of those, save the U.S. Senate race in Michigan, involve seats currently held by a Republican.

Here is how the three gold-standard race raters have each of this year's Senate races (* = retiring; # = defeated in primary):

State	Current Holder	Cook	Sabato	Inside
Alabama	Tommy Tuberville*	Solid R	Safe R	Solid R
Alaska	Dan Sullivan	Toss Up	Toss Up	Tilt R
Arkansas	Tom Cotton	Solid R	Safe R	Solid R
Colorado	John Hickenlooper	Solid D	Safe D	Solid D
Delaware	Chris Coons	Solid D	Safe D	Solid D
Florida (special)	Ashley Moody	Solid R	Safe R	Solid R
Georgia	Jon Ossoff	Lean D	Likely D	Tilt D
Idaho	Jim Risch	Solid R	Safe R	Solid R
Illinois	Dick Durbin*	Solid D	Safe D	Solid D
Iowa	Joni Ernst*	Toss Up	Toss Up	Tilt R
Kansas	Roger Marshall	Likely R	Lean R	Likely R
Kentucky	Mitch McConnell*	Solid R	Safe R	Solid R
Louisiana	Bill Cassidy#	Solid R	Safe R	Solid R
Maine	Susan Collins	Toss Up	Toss Up	Toss Up
Massachusetts	Ed Markey	Solid D	Safe D	Solid D
Michigan	Gary Peters*	Toss Up	Lean D	Toss Up
Minnesota	Tina Smith*	Likely D	Likely D	Likely D
Mississippi	Cindy Hyde-Smith	Solid R	Safe R	Solid R
Montana	Steve Daines*	Solid R	Safe R	Solid R
Nebraska	Pete Ricketts	Likely R	Likely R	Likely R
New Hampshire	Jeanne Shaheen*	Toss Up	Lean D	Toss Up
New Jersey	Cory Booker	Solid D	Safe D	Solid D
New Mexico	Ben Ray Luján	Solid D	Safe D	Solid D
North Carolina	Thom Tillis*	Lean D	Lean D	Tilt D
Ohio (special)	Jon Husted	Toss Up	Toss Up	Toss Up
Oklahoma	Alan Armstrong*	Solid R	Safe R	Solid R
Oregon	Jeff Merkley	Solid D	Safe D	Solid D
Rhode Island	Jack Reed	Solid D	Safe D	Solid D
South Carolina	Darline Graham	Solid R	Safe R	Likely R
South Dakota	Mike Rounds	Solid R	Safe R	Solid R
Tennessee	Bill Hagerty	Solid R	Safe R	Solid R
Texas	John Cornyn#	Toss Up	Toss Up	Lean R
Virginia	Mark Warner	Solid D	Safe D	Solid D
West Virginia	Shelley Moore Capito	Solid R	Safe R	Solid R
Wyoming	Cynthia Lummis	Solid R	Safe R	Solid R

The current count for each of the three race raters:

• Cook Political Report: 12 D, 7 TU, 16 R, 0 I
• Sabato's Crystal Ball: 14 D, 5 TU, 16 R, 0 I
• Inside Elections: 12 D, 4 TU, 19 R, 0 I

Now, let's add in the seats that aren't being contested this year (34 for the Democrats/Independents who caucus with the Democrats, 31 for the Republicans):

• Cook Political Report: 46 D, 7 TU, 47 R, 0 I
• Sabato's Crystal Ball: 48 D, 5 TU, 47 R, 0 I
• Inside Elections: 46 D, 4 TU, 50 R, 0 I

Those numbers are certainly a little more bearish for the blue team than our current count, which is 53 D, 3 TU, 44 R. However, let's resolve the tossups. If tossups were truly random, then each party could expect to win 50% of them. However, they are not truly random, and tend to correlate with each other. That is why all seven of the swingiest states went for Donald Trump in 2024, six of the seven swingiest (all but North Carolina) went for Joe Biden in 2020, and five of the seven swingiest (all but New Hampshire and Minnesota) went for Trump in 2016.

This admittedly limited data set suggests that a fair guess is that 6/7 of swing state results will correlate. So, let's give 6/7 (85%) of the swingy Senate races to the Democrats, who certainly appear to have the favorable environment. Just for simplicity, we'll also assume that Nebraska is the state (or one of the states) that bucks the trend. Under those assumptions, you end up with this:

• Cook Political Report: 54 D, 46 R
• Sabato's Crystal Ball: 52 D, 48 R
• Inside Elections: 49 D, 51 R

Incidentally, if you apply the same assumptions to our numbers, you end up with 55 D, 45 R.

It is not too much of a surprise that our numbers-driven approach produces a slightly (but, in two of three cases, not substantially) more extreme result. Race raters tend to be more cautious, because they don't want to make big, embarrassing mistakes. And if you don't believe us on that point, perhaps you will believe G. Elliott Morris, the fellow who replaced Nate Silver at 538 before 538 was shut down. Morris had a long piece yesterday headlined "The race raters are lowballing the Democrats." Looking at the same trio of raters we just did, he says they tend to err heavily on the side of the party in power in rating races as toss-ups, and that the solid majority of those races end up going to the party that is out of power. It's a pretty good analysis; consider clicking through and reading the whole piece.

Ultimately, we are just trying to find different ways of looking at the available information to see if all these crazy Senate polls, with Democrats leading in places you would never expect them to lead, could possibly be accurate. And we think the overall picture we've painted this week strongly suggests they could be. And note that even if you dislike the assumptions we made for the third and final case above, there are two incontrovertible facts in play. The first is that control of the Senate will be decided mostly (or entirely) by those toss-up seats. The second is that toss-up elections definitely do correlate with each other.

The only potentially squishy elements of our assumptions are: (1) that it will be a Democratic year, and (2) that the year will be good enough for the blue team to cause 75% or 80% or 85% of the swingy elections to break in their favor. At this point, however, while "this is going to be a Democratic year" may not be a fact, per se, it's getting pretty close. Meanwhile, the size of the wave doesn't actually have to be that big for there to be some serious correlation. Donald Trump lost the popular vote in 2016, and yet took 71% of the swing states. He won the popular vote by just 1.5% in 2024, and took 100% of the swing states. It doesn't necessarily take that big a margin. (Z)

MAHA Turns on RFK Jr.

Donald Trump struck a bargain with Robert Kennedy Jr., basically "I'll give you HHS if you tell MAHA I am their candidate." It was, very probably, a shrewd political move. Certainly, it added some votes the Republican column, and Trump did win the election. But these days, MAHA is not happy with either one of their alleged champions.

There are a couple of things that have rankled the MAHA crowd, but the big one right now is mRNA vaccines. These are the cutting edge when it comes to immunology. However, MAHA is convinced that they are the devil's work, and they are not content to merely take a pass themselves. No, they want mRNA vaccines to be wiped from the face of planet Earth, so that nobody can get them. And they are furious that Kennedy and Trump have not made that happen.

Consequently, yesterday 100 MAHA types—most of them well-known within the movement, and some of them, like Tucker Carlson and Marge Greene, also known more widely—signed and published an Open Letter to Secretary Kennedy and President Trump. It's 8 single-spaced pages of crazypantsery, but here's the gist, helpfully labeled "Executive Summary":

As influential leaders within the MAHA and health freedom movements, we are writing to object to policies under your oversight related to the mRNA platform, and to call you to act on our policy goals.

While the centerpiece of the MAHA and health freedom agenda has been removal of mRNA shots, you have failed to take decisive action on this front despite overwhelming credible evidence to the harm of this technology. Instead, your policies related to mRNA technology are neutered and self-defeating, putting pregnant women and children at risk, misleading parents and eroding their rights, and failing to help those harmed by vaccines.

If you continue to ignore our central issue of removing the mRNA platform, the MAHA and health freedom movements will withdraw their support of you, and you will face the political consequences.

Thereafter, it gets both really boring and really infuriating at the same time.

Initially, we decided to write up this news to make a general political point. In politics, if you can find a concentrated group of single-issue voters (Second Amendment, anti-choice, pro-Israel, etc.), it's very tempting to throw them a bone or two, in hopes of bringing them into the tent. That's exactly what Trump was doing when he made his deal with Kennedy; Trump himself doesn't care about MAHA's agenda, and he certainly isn't interested in getting rid of vaccines. If he did that, then he wouldn't be able to get vaccinated himself, and to protect the government's most valuable asset (in his view).

The problem here is that MAHA isn't really single-issue. It's more like 20 issues, and if a politician is wrong on any one of them, it's usually a dealbreaker. Many of them are also extremely unreasonable and kind of nutty. If you build your political coalition with one of them as the foundation, you're building on a house of sand. And as you pander to them, you end up saying things that alienate voters who don't think mRNA vaccines are wicked and evil, and who might like to get the kiddies vaccinated, so they don't, say, die of COVID.

So, the general political point is that MAHA just isn't worth it, for either political party. They are proving that right now—they got to control HHS, and got some of their loony ideas implemented, and it wasn't enough. Better to ignore them, and if they want to waste their votes on whoever the "woo" candidate is (say, Marianne Williamson), then so be it.

As we were writing this, however, it occurred to us that it also fits in with the leitmotif of the week. If you're looking for evidence that Donald Trump's coalition is fraying, well, MAHA is part of his coalition, and they are definitely thinking twice about him. (Z)

Today's Senate Polls

When you look at the day's polls, and the best news for your party is "Maybe we're not losing Texas by as much as some of the other pollsters say we are!" then that is a bad day for your party. (Z)

State	Democrat	D %	Republican	R %	Start	End	Pollster
Alaska	Mary Peltola	52%	Dan Sullivan*	48%	Sep 10	Sep 12	AK Survey Research
Michigan	Abdul El-Sayed	47%	Mike Rogers	40%	Sep 16	Sep 20	Suffolk U.
Texas	James Talarico	47%	Ken Paxton	46%	Sep 15	Sep 19	YouGov

* Denotes incumbent

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