Tom Boggioni

President Donald Trump’s belligerent appearance at the United Nations, combined with his plans to fete Chinese leader Xi Jinping, received a thumbs down from a handful of New Yorkers interviewed by MS NOW.

One of them, who voted for Trump twice in 2016 and 2020, was absolutely furious.

In a clip shared by MS NOW host Alicia Menendez, reporter Alex Tabet first spoke with Danielle Trietman and asked, “How do you think the rest of the world is looking at us right now?"

"Like we're idiots," she quickly shot back.

"Why do you think they're looking at us like we're idiots?" she was pressed.

"Because we're making idiot choices," she stated without a pause.

Julia Polisoto, who identified as a Kamala Harris voter, delicately observed, “Unfortunately, the country is not looked very pleasantly.”

Tom Guilfoyle, the Trump voter, had a more furious response.

“In President Trump's second term, how do you think America is perceived around the world right now?” the MS NOW reporter asked.

“Oh, he's blown it completely!” the New Yorker replied. “Our allies don't trust us, and rightfully so. It's going to take years to rebuild the trust we used to have with them. It's a bad situation.”

- YouTube youtu.be

Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman says there's no more room for doubt: President Donald Trump's United Nations address confirms he's deep into what Krugman calls his "sundowning" period.

The former New York Times columnist pointed to Trump's demand that diplomats accept a rebrand of artificial intelligence as evidence the president has lost his grip on reality.

"The United States also totally rejects any attempt to construct a globalist scheme to control the artificial intelligence being spoken of so much, now here and after officially called superintelligence, changing the name," Trump told the General Assembly. "The use of the word artificial makes intelligence fake, it makes it sound fake."

Most coverage of the speech focused on Trump's "belligerence' toward global cooperation or its many falsehoods, Krugman wrote on Substack, but he argued that misses the larger and more important story.

"Isn't the bigger story the fact that the leader of what used to be the world's most powerful nation — I say 'used to be' because America's power is collapsing before our eyes — has clearly and undeniably lost his mind?" he wrote.

Krugman noted he first raised the "sundowning" comparison eight months ago and said nothing since has changed his assessment — a warning he's repeated in recent months. He argued that makes Trump more dangerous, not less, especially if Republicans lose Congress in the midterms.

Even stripped of legislative power, Krugman warned, "Mad King Donald" won't accept blame. "He won't feel that he has failed America, he will believe that America has failed him and try to punish the nation accordingly," Krugman wrote, predicting Trump would turn vindictively on both Democrats and ordinary Americans.

Should Democrats retake the White House in 2028, Krugman cautioned, they'd inherit "a badly damaged nation."

Donald Trump personally picked Michael Whatley to hold onto one of North Carolina's Senate seats for the GOP. Now Republicans are quietly writing it off as a definite loss, the Washington Post reported.

Party insiders are privately conceding the seat is all but gone unless Trump's cratering approval ratings — and the high prices fueling them — "improve dramatically."

North Carolina is one of "nine battlegrounds that probably will determine control of the Senate," where Republicans currently hold a slim 53-47 majority.

Former RNC chair Whatley has trailed Democrat and former Gov. Roy Cooper in nearly every poll by wider margins than GOP nominees are seeing almost anywhere else this cycle.

The financial signals are ugly too: a Republican super PAC, Old North Action, recently yanked $6.5 million in October ad reservations from the race, stoking fears other national GOP groups could bail next -- so far, none have.

"He's not in a left-for-dead situation," one senior Republican strategist with close knowledge of Senate races told the Post before offering the weak hope that " ... there will be a pulse until election day."

Longtime Republican strategist Paul Shumaker, who ran Sen. Thom Tillis' winning campaigns, laid out Whatley's core problem:

"He has to fix the voter enthusiasm turnout gap, and he has to be able to show the ability to win a majority of unaffiliated voters at a time when the president's approval rating is at an all-time low with that universe of voters," Shumaker elaborated.

According to the Post report, "Republican operatives, including some close to Trump, conceded privately to The Post that Whatley has been hampered by his reluctance to distance himself from the president. Whatley, a former state party chair, won Trump’s endorsement to lead the national party in 2024 in part because he boosted Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen."

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have opened a new investigation targeting two men who spent years managing Jeffrey Epstein's affairs — and now oversee his estate.

The Justice Department has launched a probe into Darren Indyke, Epstein's longtime lawyer, and Richard Kahn, his accountant, according to the Wall Street Journal, which cited people familiar with the matter.

Both men now serve as executors of Epstein's estate.

Prosecutors in the Southern District of New York have reportedly spent recent months "scheduling interviews with potential witnesses and have requested documents about their dealings with Indyke, Epstein’s lawyer, and Kahn, his accountant," the Journal reported on Wednesday.

People interviewed described Kahn's and Indyke's roles in legal entities allegedly used to "conceal Epstein's conduct," along with their handling of financial and legal matters involving young women — though the Journal couldn't determine what charges, if any, are being explored.

Indyke and Kahn have long denied wrongdoing, according to the report.

Testifying before the House Oversight Committee in March, Indyke stated in his prepared remarks: "My complete lack of involvement in that misconduct is a matter of record: not a single woman has ever accused me of committing sexual abuse or witnessing sexual abuse, nor claimed at any time that she or anyone else reported to me any allegation of Mr. Epstein's abuse."

A lawyer for Kahn referred back to the men's prior denials; a lawyer for Indyke didn't respond to the Journal's request for comment. A spokesperson for the U.S. attorney's office declined to comment.

Oil executives thought they'd beaten back a diesel export ban. Then President Donald Trump opened his mouth at the United Nations — and sent the industry into a full-blown panic.

On "the sidelines" of the U.N. General Assembly in New York on Tuesday, Trump said he's considering restricting diesel exports as prices hit record highs just weeks before the midterms, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The comment "blindsided" oil executives, including some Trump donors, who believed they'd already won the fight to keep shipments flowing, and lobbyists reportedly scrambled to call White House officials and congressional Republicans to register their objections. It didn't matter — insiders now say some form of export limit looks "inevitable," the Journal reported.

"I think we've invested too much in developing customers overseas, and this is the wrong signal," Dan Eberhart, CEO of oil-field services firm Canary and a Trump donor, told the Journal.

According to the Journal report, "Even if the measure is temporary, U.S. oil companies stand to lose billions of dollars in revenue if they aren’t allowed to ship diesel abroad."

Trump is giving every indication that he is siding with vulnerable Republicans over his own oil-industry allies: Iowa Republicans, including Sen. Chuck Grassley, have pushed hard for a ban, arguing "sky-high diesel costs" are crushing farmers. A White House official said Trump "wants to see gas prices at the pump fall and is evaluating all options on the table."

One energy consultant with ties to refiners told the Journal, "It's all hands on deck. But it doesn't matter. We're not debating policy anymore. They've got to win a couple of key Senate races. The only way to do that is to put the export ban in temporarily."

Industry officials warn the move could backfire by spurring "international prices for the fuel to skyrocket" and lead to "retaliation' from other countries — the kind of unintended consequences that have already drawn scorn from Wall Street Journal's own editorial board.

The Wall Street Journal's editorial board wasn't buying President Donald Trump's latest saber-rattling at the United Nations.

Hours after Trump warned he could "annihilate" Iran's regime during his Tuesday address to the General Assembly, the Rupert Murdoch-owned paper's editors argued the threat would land harder if Trump hadn't already worn it out. The warning would be more credible "if we and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps hadn't heard it several times by now," the board wrote, noting this year's speech was comparatively subdued — "no escalator sabotage" — with the drama confined to the annihilation threat itself.

The editors doubted Iran's regime would suddenly surrender its nuclear stockpile or drop its claim to the Strait of Hormuz, warning Trump could be "blindsided again" the way he was when Tehran blew off an earlier cease-fire. They also noted Iran may be "banking on the midterms" to force Trump's hand — but argued that bet could backfire, since a second-term president freed of election pressure "will have two years left in office, with no political threat hanging over his head" and might prosecute the war "with less restraint."

Adding to the whiplash: later Tuesday, Trump said a three-hour meeting with Iranian representatives had gone "very well," raising fresh hope for a diplomatic off-ramp. The board argued Trump's constant swings between annihilation and peace talks have left "exhausted Americans" unsure what to believe.

"Iran is going to heed what the President does, not what he threatens to do," the editors predicted. "When the annihilation talk rings false, it hurts U.S. deterrence around the world. It also hurts Mr. Trump at home because it doesn’t look like the U.S. is winning. He’s better off explaining his strategy to win the war and for seeing it through—before and after the midterms."

With the midterms just 42 days out, Senate Republicans are facing their own version of the House GOP's great escape — and they can't decide whether to stay and fight or just go home, according to new reporting.

"Anxious" Republicans see little chance of passing anything meaningful before Election Day and are stuck with a "fight or flight" choice, Politico reported on Wednesday.

House Republicans have already bailed on Washington until after the Nov. 3 vote, while the Senate spends this week on a bipartisan bill overhauling college sports — hardly the affordability fix voters are demanding as they increasingly blame President Donald Trump for their financial pain.

Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) summed up the party's paralysis when asked about cost-of-living legislation. "If there was something that we could get done that would help, I'd be all for it," Cramer said. "But I don't know what it would be at this point."

"Should they leave, Republican senators would be essentially standing pat with their legislative record, even with voters clamoring for more help while blaming Trump in a spate of recent polling," Politico reported.

Staying in town means senators must keep facing reporters' questions on the Iran war, soaring energy prices, Trump's White House media ban, and revelations a Russian oligarch bankrolled his son's wedding — "Trump-related controversies" GOP lawmakers would rather keep at arm's length.

Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) isn't ready to give up on legislating, though.

He called it "stupid" not to push through the procedural hurdles to get Sen. Jon Husted's college sports bill to a vote. "When moms and dads lie down and sleep at night, and can't, they're not lying there worried about the football coaches, they're worried about the cost of living," Kennedy said. "It's foolish both policy-wise and political-wise not to put it on the floor. … I wouldn't faint with surprise if Senator Thune said, 'Y'all go home.'"

The dilemma underscores just how thin the GOP's pre-election playbook has become with control of Congress on the line.

Senate Republicans could be headed for a bloody internal brawl if they hang onto the chamber this midterm — and Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) gets a big promotion, Politico reported on Wednesday.

President Donald Trump has long fumed over the "blue slip," a Senate tradition letting home-state senators — including Democrats — effectively veto district court judges, federal marshals and U.S. attorneys nominated in their state. Lee, an avid Trump advocate, is next in line to chair the powerful Judiciary Committee if the GOP keeps its majority, putting him in position to finally give the president what he is demanding.

"The decision risks pitting Lee against his Senate GOP colleagues, many of whom support the status quo. It also all but guarantees a public pressure campaign from Trump, with whom Lee has worked to ingratiate himself over the past two years," Politico reported.

Lee isn't promising to blow the whole thing up, though, Politico reported.

"There is no appetite to just get rid of them," he remarked, adding that "the blue slip itself has had a lot of evolution and it's almost never static," even if he called it "premature" to detail his plans, noting past chairs had made "iterative changes" as needed.

Trump has been blunter, branding the practice an "old and ridiculous custom" on Truth Social and blasting current Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley (R-IA) — who has repeatedly refused to scrap it — over letting "this scam to continue."

Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) said he'd fight to keep blue slips alive in committee and on the floor. "I know who is qualified in my state to be a federal judge a lot better than somebody in Washington, D.C., does," Kennedy said, predicting colleagues would simply "outvote" Lee if he tried to kill the custom.

That math could doom Lee's ambitions with the GOP's Senate cushion expected to shrink next Congress. He'd need "nearly every Republican on the committee" — and in the chamber — to back him, a tall order after Trump's attacks already strained relations with his own party, the report states.

Fox News host Will Cain could barely hide his irritation Tuesday over how warmly President Donald Trump treated New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani a day earlier — and he wasn't alone among MAGA voices grumbling about it.

"Yesterday in New York, a meeting of the minds between MAGA and socialism," Cain said on "The Will Cain Show," framing Monday's sit-down as uncomfortably chummy.

Much of Cain's irritation stemmed from an off-mic exchange a lip-reader relayed to the New York Post. Lip-reader Jeremy Freeman told the paper Trump privately told Mamdani, "What I will say, we'll look after you, but as I say, you're doing great. I'll look after you, you look after the New Yorkers. And we can both make it work. I wanna support you, help me. Come with me to the White House — see how I work."

"According to a lip-reader, it wasn't a good vibe, even when the mics weren't on," Cain said, before complaining, "As the two get closer, starting to look like so too are the ideologies that are represented."

Cain then pivoted to a Wall Street Journal opinion piece from August to bolster his argument, "The Young MAGA Socialists Are Here," fretting it proved "some young folks on the right are considering socialism as a shortcut to the American dream."

He tersely cited the Journal's numbers: 53 percent of self-identified conservatives under 40 back government-run grocery stores, and in a separate 2025 survey, 42 percent of young conservative likely voters said they'd want a Democratic socialist "to win the presidency in 2028."

The segment landed amid a broader MAGA freakout over Trump's cordiality toward Mamdani, who has emerged as the movement's top villain even as the president keeps extending olive branches — a dynamic that's left even Trump's usual defenders struggling to explain themselves.

President Donald Trump went on a sneering tirade just after midnight, once again targeting CNN star Kaitlan Collins and the judge who will hear a lawsuit designed to allow CNN, MS NOW and Politico access to the White House again.

Bringing up his controversial ban on the news organizations, which is headed to court, the president called them “sleazebags” and complained about Collins showing up for his speech to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday.

In the early morning hours he wrote, “All of the SLEAZEBAGS, like Third Rate ‘Reporter,’ Kaitlan Collins, of Fake News CNN, a truly unhappy person, said they weren’t going to be covering me. Then why were they ranting and raving like Lunatics, in the Press Area, at the United Nations? Why was she there?”

He added, “She’s got a ‘TRUMP’ addiction, and so does CNN and MSDNC. They’re all sick, treasonous, and demented! The ‘good news’ is that they have a great, for them, and totally disloyal Judge.”

The “disloyal” judge Trump maligned is U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly, whom he placed on the bench and who previously ruled against the White House in a similar lawsuit filed by CNN in 2018 when CNN’s Jim Acosta received a similar ban.

Embattled Rep. Max Miller's (R-OH) lawyers tried to strong-arm Cleveland TV stations into refusing to run an attack ad aimed at him.

It didn't work.

Miller's attorneys fired off a cease-and-desist letter last Thursday demanding station WKYC refuse to air a Democratic ad they called full of "false, malicious, and defamatory statements," Politico reported. The letter reportedly took aim at claims that a judge approved a restraining order against Miller, that court records document abuse including an incident involving a gun, and that his and ex-wife Emily Moreno's daughter broke her collarbone while in Miller's care.

WKYC ran the 30-second spot anyway Tuesday morning, according to ad-tracking firm AdImpact, and Cleveland stations WEWS and WOIO followed suit. The ad, funded by Democrat Brian Poindexter's campaign and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, features a local sheriff reciting the abuse accusations Moreno — daughter of Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH) — has leveled against Miller, which he has repeatedly denied.

"The ad mentioned is filled with lies," Miller spokesperson Abigail Angelos said in a statement. "Each of the statements in the advertisement are entirely unsubstantiated and contradicted by evidence."

Poindexter didn't back down either — he responded to the legal threat by "ripping up the cease-and-desist letter on camera," repeating the allegations, and soliciting donations to keep fighting it.

WKYC, WEWS and WOIO had not responded to requests for comment as of Politico's report.

The station standoff has dragged what began as a cost-of-living-focused campaign into ugly personal territory. Poindexter had built his bid around his working-class roots and affordability issues before the ad war erupted. Miller's campaign has since gone on offense too, running its own ad — paid for by the National Republican Congressional Committee — accusing Poindexter of past run-ins with law enforcement.

It's the latest twist in a race already consumed by the fallout from Miller's divorce, with both sides now racing to define the other before Election Day.

The Department of Homeland Security isn't letting privacy concerns slow its push to round up immigrants — and it's paying big to break into their phones.

DHS has dramatically boosted funding for Cellebrite, the Israeli digital surveillance firm whose tools let federal agents crack open cellphones and tablets, according to The PunchUp Substack, which cited federal procurement data.

ICE has "earmarked roughly $96 million" for the company under a new five-year contract, a jump of about 170 percent over the agency's previous $35.5 million deal struck in 2019, the newsletter reported. ICE burned through nearly all of that earlier funding and paid Cellebrite an extra $11.1 million just to bridge the gap while the new terms got hashed out. The agency says the technology will help it "further criminal investigations" into "non-cooperative subjects."

According to the report, "DHS has rapidly expanded its surveillance capabilities under the second Trump administration while refusing to confirm exactly who it is targeting, or to what extent. It is facing multiple lawsuits for failing to hand over information on its alleged use of that tech against migrants, protesters, and other groups caught up in Donald Trump’s nationwide immigration crackdown."

"We should not have to go to federal court to force the government to hand over these records," Ian Head, manager of the Open Records Project at the Center for Constitutional Rights, told PunchUp. "This administration wants to hide its abusive, Orwellian behavior, but we are fighting back."

Word of the deal first surfaced in May, the report notes, when DHS was reportedly weighing a contract worth up to $100 million for the phone-cracking tech. The award notice went live Sept. 3, with ICE landing close to the top of that forecast — the latest expansion in a surveillance buildout that's already alarmed senators and left immigrants facing a "terrifying" new front in Trump's deportation machine.

MS NOW’s David Rohde didn’t pull any punches when discussing the stalemate in negotiations the US is engaging in with Russia and Ukraine, and pinned the Trump administration’s softness on Putin, in part, on Donald Trump Jr.

After former diplomat Richard Stengel claimed that Trump administration negotiators Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff believe they can “offer business deals” to Putin to get him to acquiesce, he added, “Putin isn't a rational actor. He's not going to stop invading Ukraine because he has a Starbucks in Moscow or because there's some business deal. He already is wealthy beyond the dreams of Croesus and has made everyone around him wealthy.”

“So the part of the problem is that we haven't used the stick enough,” he complained. “We've been treating him with honey from the very beginning.”

“Makes you wonder why,” host Stephanie Ruhle interjected.

“We’ve always wondered why,” Stengel shrugged. “And we don't know the answer. But speaking of this kind of post-Trump world and post-American world, the Europeans are figuring out we have to help Ukrainians more because the Americans are not there for them.”

Rohde jumped in to add, “I just want to say on Trump and Witkoff and that mentality, I just think it's a useful idiot model. That's the Cold War term where there's an American that the Russians feel they can manipulate through propaganda. And it's that they sort of they get them.”

“This is part of the wedding thing with Don Jr. “ he pointed out. “You know, we talked about that on a previous show. ‘The Russians aren't so bad. There are all these great business opportunities. The lefties are, you know, attacking Putin too much.’ And that's just ridiculous. Again, this is an authoritarian regime; he poisoned and killed his primary opponent and he's, you know, sacrificing thousands of lives for an invasion that never should have happened in Ukraine.”

- YouTube youtu.be

Republican lawmakers who dodged being on the ballot this November are breathing a very public sigh of relief, according to The Washington Sun.

GOP members of Congress were already under siege over President Donald Trump's tariffs and Iran-war-driven gas prices when the Federal Reserve dropped a fresh bombshell last week, hiking rates and sending things "from bad to worse."

Gas now averages close to $4.50 a gallon nationally — near the highs hit when the Iran war erupted in February — with prices in Anchorage topping $5 and reaching as much as $13.99 in Dillingham, Alaska. Diesel is at an all-time high, mortgage rates are creeping back toward 7%, and inflation has stayed above 3% since the war began.

Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) didn't pretend otherwise.

"It's really clumsy. I'm glad I'm not on the ballot, I know that," Cramer told the Sun. "It's hard to convince people the economy's doing great when theirs isn't." He added dryly, "Unless you're an oil man in western North Dakota, you're not really keen on high oil prices."

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), who lost his own primary to Ken Paxton in May, admitted a winning economic message is hard to find right now. "I think I'd talk about different things," he said, calling the rate hike "bad timing" for the party.

Making things worse: "there's little Congress can actually do about it" before members leave town later this month for good until after the election, according to The Sun.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), who is on the ballot, pointed to permitting reform as one unfinished item that "would demonstrate that we understand the concerns of American families."

The grumbling tracks with reports that GOP leadership is privately telling candidates to simply "do a better job" selling Trump's economy — a message even some Republicans admit isn't landing.

Diplomats filing into the UN General Assembly hall Tuesday have no idea which version of Trump they're about to get, according to a report from The Guardian.

President Donald Trump has spent the days before his address flooding Truth Social with a "bizarre' mix of grievances and boasts, leaving attendees on edge, the Guardian's Robert Tait wrote. Topics have ranged from his planned triumphal arch in Washington — which he announced in an early Sunday post would "double as a military complex" stocked with snipers and drones, claiming without evidence the Pentagon requested it — to a bid to rebrand artificial intelligence entirely. On Friday, he posted a list of his "Top 25 Trump Achievements" since returning to office.

"His previous addresses to the assembly suggest that the chances of a non-divisive and uplifting message are low,' Tait reported, adding, "Last year, Trump shocked the august gathering in his first appearance since returning to the White House the previous January by declaring to those present that their countries were 'going to hell' while launching a full-frontal assault on the UN and the concept of open borders."

This will be Trump's first UN appearance since he launched a war against Iran alongside Israel in February, one he predicted would last days and topple Tehran's regime. Seven months later, "the regime still stands," Iran has choked off the Strait of Hormuz — disrupting a fifth of global oil exports — and gas prices and inflation have climbed at home. Polling shows just 36% of Americans think the U.S. is winning, and only 29% approve of Trump's foreign policy overall.

Trump arrives at the podium, in other words, trailing "abysmal" numbers and an unpopular war with no end in sight, the Guardian is reporting, noting that's hardly the backdrop for the triumphant remarks he's signaled are coming.