Hey everybody. Happy Tuesday. Hope you had a good long weekend, and thanks for being here.
Quick note before we start. I published a piece on my Substack this morning about something new that’s been happening to me lately: Republicans stopping me on the street to say thank you. Up until recently, it was mostly Democrats. I get into why I think it’s happening, and why it might be the most hopeful thing I’ve seen in a while. You can read the full piece here.
Our top story today: the man who actually ran Trump’s Department of Homeland Security was never confirmed, never paid, and, according to the Wall Street Journal, was shopping himself to foreign governments the whole time. Corey Lewandowski controlled billions in DHS contracts as a so-called volunteer. Then he went to Qatar and the Emirates and offered to help them with DHS business on the side. Another week, another corruption story that would’ve been a massive scandal in any other administration.
We’ll also get into the White House celebrating Labor Day with an AI video that has no workers in it, Jared Kushner sitting down with Putin and talking about his “aspirations,” the redistricting scheme that’s blowing up in Republicans’ faces, and new polling numbers that give Democrats their biggest edge in almost twenty years.
So do me a favor. Like this video, share it with someone who needs to see it, and subscribe so you never miss an episode.
Let’s get to it.
1. The Secret Boss of DHS
Corey Lewandowski was Trump’s first campaign manager back in 2016. Last year he showed up at DHS as a special government employee, which is Washington-speak for a temporary outside adviser. You’re supposed to work 130 days a year, tops. Lewandowski worked the whole year, and he didn’t take a salary.
What he took instead was control. The Wall Street Journal reported last night that Lewandowski was, in their words, the shadow secretary of DHS. He and Kristi Noem installed allies across the agency. He had a hand in billions of dollars in contracts. He had authority over tariff collection, border security, and immigration enforcement. When a major tech contractor refused to give him a one-on-one meeting, their contract got slashed from 2.7 billion dollars to one billion.
While he held all that power, Lewandowski approached officials from Qatar and the United Arab Emirates and offered to help them, for pay, with issues that fell under DHS. The Journal says those officials were stunned. They already had relationships with senior Trump officials. They didn’t need a middleman, and they didn’t understand why the guy who ran DHS was asking to be hired. Both countries said no. The department’s internal watchdog is now investigating and weighing a criminal referral. Lewandowski denies everything.
Now, keep that story in your head, and look at what the President posted this weekend.
That’s an AI image of Trump day-trading from the Oval Office, with a caption claiming he’s made hundreds of billions of dollars on stocks for the country, not himself. He offered no evidence. He posted it in the middle of a ten-hour spree of AI images that also had him riding horses with George Washington.
Look, this should be a huge story. A guy nobody elected and nobody confirmed ran DHS off the books and tried to sell himself to foreign governments. But this administration produces so much corruption that we’ve basically lost the ability to be shocked.
Remember, this is the president who told voters he’d drain the swamp. So here’s my question for the MAGA faithful. Do you honestly think he’s kept that promise? Because the swamp has never been swampier.
2. Trump's Worker-Free Labor Day
Look, I was in Congress for twelve years, so I’ve written my fair share of these holiday posts. The messaging on Labor Day is a no-brainer: celebrate the American workers who keep this country running, and give them the spotlight they deserve. For an administration that is apparently so focused on American jobs, Labor Day should be a home run. So what did they put out to mark the holiday? Let’s watch together:
An AI-generated video of a White House pen being manufactured. First, you have the choice of product: not steel, or automobiles, or even semiconductors. Of course not: how could anything be more valuable or iconic than a pen with Donald J. Trump’s name on it? I have to get my hands on one of those!
But even more egregious is the fact there’s not a single American worker in that 38-second video. The production line depicted is completely automated; there’s not a single human in that fake factory.
Users on X quickly noticed and pointed out the conspicuous absence in a community note. So the White House posted a second video, of shoes walking to work. Also AI. Also no actual people.
Finally there’s a third, a 90-second campaign ad in which Trump congratulates himself for putting workers first. Which is interesting, because here’s what he promised those same workers back in June:
Very good shape by Labor Day. So let’s check. Job growth has slowed to about 30,000 a month, down from over 200,000. The labor force has shrunk by more than a million people since January. Diesel just hit a record $5.85 a gallon. At the end of Biden’s term, around half of Americans said it was a good time to find a quality job; that number has cratered to 28% under Trump.
No wonder the White House needed AI-generated videos to celebrate the holiday. What real worker would want to stand next to that record?
3. Kushner Cozies Up to Putin
On Saturday, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff met with Vladimir Putin for more than three hours before having dinner at the Kremlin.
It was their first trip to Moscow since January. Trump promised to end the war in Ukraine on his first day in office. Then he got into office and apparently forgot. And for the last six months, the war getting his attention has been the one he started in Iran. During that time, Putin has gotten bolder. Russian strikes have been brutal. Just a day before Trump’s envoys arrived, Russian drones hit the HQ of Ukraine’s security service in Kyiv.
Unfortunately, the meeting produced no breakthrough. The Kremlin offered the usual diplomatic platitudes, calling the meeting “constructive and candid.” Kushner and Witkoff then took Putin’s “assessments” to Kyiv the next day.
Here’s how Kushner described the negotiations.
Helping Putin achieve his aspirations. Senator Mark Kelly said it best: no American should care about a war criminal’s aspirations. To me, the aspirations of the Ukrainian people are a lot more compelling: they simply want to keep the country they love. Kushner later said he’s looking for a “win-win.” He also noted there’s no such thing as forever enemies or forever allies.
While he and Witkoff were chatting it up with Putin, our NATO allies were off the coast of Iceland training to hunt Russian nuclear submarines. But for the first time in the history of that exercise, U.S. forces were absent. Two years ago we sent amphibious assault ships full of Marines. But this time those ships were tied up in the Middle East fighting Trump’s war of choice.
So there you have it. Our envoys are in Moscow worrying about Putin’s aspirations. Our allies are in the North Atlantic learning to fight without us. And Putin, who’s been at this since 2022, has every reason to keep waiting. Remember that these envoys aren’t seasoned diplomats or negotiators. We’re talking about Trump’s son-in-law and one of his real estate buddies. This is the B team. Nobody wants them to succeed more than I do. But if this is who we’re depending on, I don’t have high hopes.
I’ve said it before. Putin doesn’t want a win-win. He wants Ukraine. And every day we treat his aspirations as legitimate, we tell our allies that theirs aren’t worth much.
4. GOP Sweats the Seats It Rigged
Remember the plan? Last summer, the Trump administration ordered Republican states to tear up and redraw their congressional maps to flip Democratic seats. Eight states followed through, which was enough, in theory, for the GOP to hold the House.
The result has been a disaster. Politico reports that Republicans are now sweating half of those seats. The problem is simple. The maps were drawn on the assumption that Trump’s 2024 gains would hold. They haven’t.
To manufacture new seats, Republicans not only had to splinter support for the Democrats but also spread their own voters thinner. Safe districts became merely favorable ones. That math works when the environment is neutral. But when conservative and moderate voters sour on Trump, those slimmer margins collapse.
Take the case of Texas. Newly drawn districts capitalized on heavy Latino support, which Trump once carried by double digits. But that support hasn’t held, jeopardizing the gains that Republicans had hoped for. As a Dallas-based Republican explained, “Picking up five seats will be difficult considering the headwinds Republicans face this cycle.” He’s only confident of gaining two.
Similar events are taking place in other states like North Carolina, Ohio, and Florida.
Even the GOP’s national redistricting strategist admitted that it doesn’t guarantee results amid these setbacks. “Redistricting is construction, not sales,” he said in a recent interview. He then explained: “Just because you build it doesn’t mean [voters are] going to come.”
He’s right. A map might change the terrain, but it doesn’t make voters show up. Republicans resorted to political engineering to survive this election. Now the votes they took for granted are walking away. And Democrats are seizing on the opportunity.
5. The GOP Is Bleeding Voters
Gallup recently released its latest party identification data, which signals a huge upswing in support for the Democratic Party.
Forty-nine percent of Americans now identify as or lean Democrat. Thirty-nine percent say Republican. That ten-point gap is the largest either party has held since 2008. It also marks a fourteen-point swing since the end of 2024, when Republicans led this measure by four points.
And there is no doubt that Trump is the primary cause.
Republicans spent 2024 winning over voters who were concerned about the price of groceries and the safety of their neighborhoods. Unpredictable tariffs and a new war have pushed prices higher. The deportation campaign brought masked agents and chaos into their communities. And while this unfolded, Trump and his family enriched themselves at the public’s expense.
The GOP has tied itself to a losing President. Now they are feeling the pressure. Here’s GOP Senator Rick Scott’s desperate plea for Republican turnout in the midterms.
If Trump loses the House, he gets impeached. If he loses the Senate, his agenda is over. That’s a Republican senator’s closing argument for voting Republican. Think about that pitch. It’s not, “we lowered your costs.” It’s not, “we ended the war.” The best he can offer? Vote for us, or Trump will be held accountable.
Rick Scott meant that as a warning. But for millions of voters, he made the case for showing up in November. Just not the voters he meant to.
Some other stories that caught my eye:
Politico reported Monday that Robert Skjonsberg, a senior advisor to GOP Sen. Mike Rounds, has quietly worked as a registered lobbyist for Meta, tobacco giant Altria, and more than a dozen other clients while on the Senate payroll. Rounds’ office says its general counsel “consulted with the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Ethics, which provided guidance to make certain there was and is no conflict of interest.” But the overlap is hard to ignore. Rounds has introduced several AI bills since Skjonsberg registered to represent Meta last year, and he has worked on agriculture legislation that could affect the same trade groups Skjonsberg lobbies for in South Dakota. Skjonsberg is no junior aide either. He managed Rounds’ first Senate campaign, served as his chief of staff for seven years, and earned more than $153,000 from the senator’s office in the last 12 months on record. Ethics experts said the arrangement is a clear violation, with one calling it “the most obvious conflict of interest I can imagine.”
An Amazon cargo jet overran the runway at Miami International Airport on Sunday afternoon, killing five people on the ground and injuring five more. According to the New York Times, the Boeing 767 struck a van carrying airport cleaning workers, plowed through a perimeter fence, and hit an SUV on a public road before stopping in a field. All five people killed were inside the van. The two pilots survived. NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy described “utter devastation” at the scene. She said it was too soon to determine a cause, though investigators are looking at flight systems and the thunderstorms moving through the area, which produced wind gusts near 30 miles per hour before the crash. This is the second cargo plane crash at a major U.S. airport to kill people on the ground in less than a year, after a UPS plane crashed on takeoff in Louisville last November. And it caps a troubling stretch for American aviation, which includes the January 2025 collision over the Potomac and the March collision at LaGuardia Airport.
