Trump spent a month telling Republicans to treat this election like his name was on the ballot. Democrats won both the House and the Senate. So who is he blaming? Not himself. He’s blaming Fox fucking News, then he called into Fox for a 22-minute interview.

He congratulated Democrats, which is what a president should do. But he said the results weren’t about him and put the blame on candidates who didn’t turn out his base. You campaigned for them, Donald. You endorsed them.

Voters had real reasons to be pissed. The cost of living, gas prices, the war with Iran, and a lot of them wanted checks on the president’s power.

Now Republicans are turning on their own leadership. According to Axios, some House Republicans don’t see a path for Mike Johnson to survive. The NRCC chairman, whose whole job was to protect the majority, reportedly lost his own seat. Leadership elections are November 10.

Elections are complicated, and not every loss is Trump’s fault. But I spent two decades in law enforcement, and when you lead, you own the outcome. Everybody here is looking for somebody else to blame.

I’d like to see somebody in that party take responsibility for something. For once.

Imagine you vote for somebody, they win, and Washington decides your district doesn’t get to seat them. According to reporting, that’s being openly entertained in a circle of MAGA influencers heading into the midterms.

Retired Air Force colonel Rob Maness floated a hypothetical about Ilhan Omar being charged and said he wouldn’t seat her as speaker, election or not. I spent twenty years as a cop. A charge isn’t proof. And the Supreme Court already addressed the House inventing new qualifications for elected members in Powell v. McCormack.

The same allegation-versus-proof problem shows up in California. DOJ identified more than 20,000 people it suspects are noncitizens on the rolls. On October 30, a federal appeals court denied the administration’s emergency request. That doesn’t make everyone on the list eligible. It means the government hadn’t earned that kind of intervention in the middle of an election.

Then there’s the civil war talk, from people who, according to reporting, have held civilian roles at the Pentagon. That doesn’t mean the department directed any of it, and nothing in the reporting shows Trump ordered it. The White House sent reporters to the Pentagon, and the Pentagon didn’t respond.

I know what happens when people decide a political emergency gives them permission. On January 6, I was on the receiving end. The guy on the mic calls it a hypothetical. The person listening may hear a mission.

Vote. Protect election workers. Challenge real misconduct with evidence. Don’t let them scare you out of your rights.

Haley Stevens lost Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary to Abdul El-Sayed by less than a point. Then she walked into a Detroit church and endorsed the Trump-backed Republican, Mike Rogers. Her explanation is that she’s standing for her country. Are you fucking kidding me?

You don’t have to like the guy who beat you. You don’t even have to campaign for him. But staying home and actively helping the other side are two very different things. Her longtime chief of staff has resigned, Chuck Schumer called her decision a despicable betrayal, and Trump is praising her.

There’s also the money. The AIPAC-affiliated super PAC reportedly spent about $30 million backing Stevens and attacking El-Sayed, and Michigan voters picked him anyway. Then there’s a new Drop Site News report saying two people working on the Rogers campaign are registered foreign agents tied to an Israeli government-funded PR contract. One of them was standing behind Stevens at the endorsement.

FARA registration isn’t a crime, and the reporting doesn’t show Israel directed her endorsement. But voters deserve to know who’s behind the people speaking for a candidate.

Haley Stevens can live with her decision. Democrats are going to remember it.