GOP Lawmaker Warns This Election Is Going to Be Rough for Republicans

The Republican Party is in trouble this election, and may lose its majority in the House of Representatives—so says Texas Representative Tony Gonzalez, a Republican himself.

Speaking at the Texas Tribune Festival on Thursday, the congressman said he believed the party would lose in November due its own actions.

“What’s frustrating me is I firmly believe that House Republicans are going to lose the majority—and we’re going to lose it because of ourselves,” Gonzales said.

Gonzalez said that a culture of blame had taken hold of his party, as well as the Democrats, pointing to a cycle of oversight hearings opposed to whichever party was in power.

“It’s not rocket science here. You know the economy, it’s really real. I mean, more and more middle-class Americans are falling further and further behind in access to quality health care,” said Gonzalez. “Are we talking about this? Are we talking about some of these kind of kitchen table issues? No—it’s all about who we’re going to impeach.”

Gonzalez was censured by the Texas state Republican Party earlier this year for voting for gun safety legislation, and increasing same-sex marriage protections. He also directed some of his criticism toward Democrats, who failed to break through for a major victory in the state.

“Texas Democrats are failing to deliver the message. They are stuck in all-or-nothing, and guess what? They’re getting nothing,” Gonzalez said. “That works out well for Republicans.”

Texas Democrats “haven’t evolved into going, ‘How do I win a race? How do I deliver a message for the general population, and not just my base?’” Gonzalez added. “And anytime you get stuck in that, you’re going to lose.”

Gonzalez hasn’t shied away from criticizing his party in the past, attacking Representative Matt Gaetz for “paying minors to have sex with them at drug parties” and Representative Bob Good for endorsing his opponent, “a known neo-Nazi,” in a CNN interview in April.

“These people used to walk around with white hoods at night. Now they’re walking around with white hoods in the daytime,” Gonzalez said at the time.

The Texas congressman isn’t the only member of his party who has been critical of the GOP’s lack of results recently. Last November, Representative Chip Roy yelled at his colleagues for failing to accomplish anything significant, and in January, Representative Andy Biggs complained on Newsmax that his party has accomplished “nothing” since winning control of the House in 2022.

Gonzalez isn’t likely to win over many of his colleagues, though: The National Republican Congressional Committee immediately issued a statement saying that they “disagree” with him.

Hours after the Justice Department announced it is charging a former Trump adviser over his work with Russian media, Donald Trump made a shocking promise: He’ll lift U.S. sanctions on Russia.

The Justice Department on Thursday charged Trump’s 2016 campaign adviser Dimitri Simes, as well as his wife, Anastasia, for working with a sanctioned Russian state television network and laundering the profit. According to the indictment, the couple received over $1 million, a personal car, and a driver for their work with Russia’s Channel One. (Simes, by the way, is mentioned over 100 times in the Mueller report, for his relationship with Trump allies like Jared Kushner.)

Given the news, when Trump took the stage at the Economic Club of New York on Thursday, the first question from the panel of business leaders was about Russian sanctions. H. Rodgin Cohen, senior chair of law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, asked the former president if he “would strengthen or modify any of these economic sanction programs, particularly Russia.”

Trump then went on a rant about the problems of sanctions, stating clearly, “I want to use sanctions as little as possible.”

“You’re losing Iran, you’re losing Russia. China is out there trying to get their currency to be the dominant currency,” he said, explaining that he believes sanctions of countries like Russia weaken the dollar. “There’s so much conflict with all these countries that you’re going to lose” the dominance of the dollar.

During his time in office, Trump imposed new sanctions on Iran and North Korea but was so reluctant to impose sanctions on Russia, despite election interference and its use of chemical weapons, that lawmakers had to force his hand. As he described to Cohen on Thursday, Trump was quick to take the punishment away. “I use sanctions very powerfully against countries who deserve it, then I take them off.”

The sanctions that Dimitri and Anastasia Simes violated were put in place “in response to Russia’s illegal aggression in Ukraine,” U.S. Attorney Matthew M. Graves said in a statement.

Thursday’s indictment comes on the heels of another Justice Department case charging two Russian state media employees in “a scheme to create and distribute content to U.S. audiences with hidden Russian government messaging.” Several prominent pro-Trump influencers were implicated in the case.

Donald Trump couldn’t come up with a meaningful answer when asked about how he would make childcare affordable Thursday.

Speaking at the Economic Club of New York, the Republican presidential nominee gave a long, meandering answer to the question and didn’t even mention children or any possible solutions to the issue, even though he was asked what specific legislation he would pass.

“It’s a very important issue. But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I’m talking about that, because, look, childcare is childcare. It’s something you know you have to have it, in this country you have to have it,” Trump’s answer began, before he went off on a tangent about economic numbers.

“We’re going to be taking in trillions of dollars, and as much as childcare is talked about as being expensive, it’s, relatively speaking, not very expensive compared to the kind of numbers we’ll be taking in. We’re going to make this into an incredible country that can afford to take care of its people,” Trump added, still failing to actually answer the question.

Trump’s incoherent answer was somehow worse than the one his running mate, J.D. Vance, gave Wednesday at a Turning Point Action event in Arizona when asked a similar question. Vance told conservative pundit Charlie Kirk that he would suggest people turn to their family members to help with childcare, or, if family members were not available, to loosen education requirements for childcare workers.

Aside from the fact that these answers indicate that the ostensibly pro-family Republican Party has poor solutions to making childcare less expensive, they also show Trump’s increasing cognitive decline. He was asked a straightforward question on how he would make childcare less expensive and the specific legislation he would pursue to make that possible. Trump either had no interest in a coherent answer or wasn’t capable of providing one. Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign had a quick response.

“Billionaire-bought Donald Trump’s ‘plan’ for making child care more affordable is to impose a $3,900 tax hike on middle class families,” Harris campaign spokesperson Joseph Costello said in a statement. “The American people deserve a President who will actually cut costs for them, like Vice President Harris’ plan to bring back a $3,600 Child Tax Credit for working families and an expanded $6,000 tax cut for families with newborn children.”

Is Trump capable of presenting, or even understanding, substantive policy ideas? His apparent mental state says he is not, and media coverage seems to gloss over discussions about his condition. Perhaps the upcoming debate with Harris next week will finally expose him in front of a national audience.

X owner, Tesla chief, and SpaceX executive Elon Musk could pick up another role should Donald Trump win in November: leading a government efficiency task force.

The task force would have the authority to audit federal spending and regulations, and came at the recommendation of Musk himself, Trump said in remarks Thursday to the Economic Club of New York.

“At the suggestion of Elon Musk, who has given me his complete and total endorsement—that’s nice, a smart guy, he knows what he’s doing, he knows what he’s doing! It’s very much appreciated—I will create a government efficiency commission tasked with conducting a complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government and making recommendations for drastic reforms,” Trump told the subdued crowd of business executives. “We need to do it. Can’t go on the way we are now.”

According to Trump, the commission would develop a plan to “totally eliminate fraud and improper payments within six months,” aiming to slash trillions of dollars from the federal budget while promising not to alter government services. He did not identify any specific programs that could be slashed to save the cash, making budget experts from both parties very wary of the ambitious promise, according to The Washington Post’s White House economics reporter Jeff Stein. The commission as a whole represents an apparent dig at spending under the Biden-Harris administration.

Musk and Trump have grown closer since the tech billionaire formally endorsed the Republican presidential nominee after an assassination attempt in July. That same month, Musk pledged to give $45 million a month to a pro-Trump super PAC (a promise he later walked back.) The pair also shared a long, sprawling talk on X in August (the details of which may have violated FEC regulations.)

Ahead of Trump’s speech, Musk took to X to confirm that he would be open to such a role.

“I look forward to serving America if the opportunity arises,” Musk wrote in a post. “No pay, no title, no recognition is needed.”

Musk had already previewed his potential federal job on Tuesday, tweeting that he “can’t wait” to take on a cust-cutting role. “There is a lot of waste and needless regulation in government that needs to go,” he warned.

But regardless of his enthusiasm, Musk’s previous attempts to rein in spending at his companies don’t bode well for the government should he take on such a role. After acquiring Twitter, Musk laid off roughly 75 percent of its staff—a decision that infuriated investors and ended up tanking the social media behemoth’s value by 90 percent, in Musk’s own words.

MAGA Republicans are more than happy to excuse the right-wing influencers at the center of a Russian propaganda scheme.

Right-wing influencers like Tim Pool, Dave Rubin, Lauren Southern, and Benny Johnson all worked with Tenet Media, a Tennessee-based firm that the Justice Department revealed Wednesday was secretly funded by Russian state media employees in “a scheme to create and distribute content to U.S. audiences with hidden Russian government messaging.” The indictment charges two Russia Today employees with providing nearly $10 million to the media company that often spouted Kremlin talking points.

In response to the charges, the pundits and their allies are saying they just didn’t know any better. In fact, they’re the real victims.

“Should these allegations prove true, I as well as the other personalities and commentators were deceived,” Pool wrote.

Johnson echoed the line, writing, “We are disturbed by the allegations in today’s indictment, which make clear that myself and other influencers were victims in this alleged scheme.”

Even Representative Matt Gaetz bought their argument. “Tim and Benny were deceived, as the indictment clearly lays out,” he wrote just hours after news of the indictment.

Propagandist Ben Shapiro also came to the rescue, stating that Pool, Johnson, and Rubin “aren’t the issue” because “they were apparently deceived by the company founders, who were allegedly taking Russian cash.”

Donald Trump too boosted the talking point, as he posted a clip of conservative columnist Michael Shellenberger on Fox News arguing that “this is really small ball stuff” and “two of the influencers that were targeted did not know it was Russian money.” (If that is the case, wouldn’t it be true that the rest did?)

It’s hard to believe that the members of Tenet Media “didn’t know” anything about the scheme. In fact, you can watch Pool describe nearly exactly what he engaged in, during a podcast conversation: 

Let’s see if playing clueless works out for them.