Wednesday tabber, there's no other ...
WOW. When even CNBC is BLASTING Democrat Senators over their government shutdown, you know it's bad:
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) October 29, 2025
CNBC: "Are you ready to vote with the Republicans to reopen the government at this point, as a reasonable Democrat?"
SEN WELCH: "You know, I'm not there yet..."
CNBC:… pic.twitter.com/5ehdcUQdCW
CNBC: "This is the right way to do it? By people not getting paychecks at the TSA? This is extortion!"
Ed: The Democrats' cover story is not holding. Saturday will be the crisis point. The media is not buying this as a Republican shutdown, perhaps not even those who first carried that water. When SNAP recipients run out of funds this weekend, the media coverage will be brutal.
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Politico: Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Wednesday he expects to engage “pretty soon” with a group of rank-and-file Senate Democrats about ending the 29-day-and-counting government shutdown. ...
“They’re looking for an off-ramp,” Thune told reporters. No meeting between the GOP leader and Democrats is on the books at this point, according to two people granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive situation.
“What I told them all along is, as soon as they’re ready to open up the government, that we will ensure that they have a process whereby they can have the chance to get their legislation voted on, their policies voted on,” he added. “I think they’ve become more interested, and I hope that’s continues.”
Ed: They'd better take that off-ramp soon. This will get ugly fast this weekend. There will be runs on food shelves, angry conflicts in grocery stores, and news stories about poor families not having access to food. That will be a disaster for Senate Democrats, maybe even in Virginia and New Jersey, where voters will elect new state constitutional officers next week. Democrats are playing with fire.
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GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN: As the shutdown drags on, SNAP/food stamp benefits could be cut off starting Nov. 1 — impacting 40 million Americans. Panic is spreading online, with some threatening riots and looting. @WillieNelsonTV breaks down why the SNAP program has failed. pic.twitter.com/WRH3NIO5D5
— Salem News Channel (@WatchSalemNews) October 29, 2025
Ed: I agree that SNAP is bloated. Having 40 million people on this program in a nation of 330 million is absurd, especially if illegal aliens are sapping those resources. However, we should not lose sight of the fact that millions of Americans really DO rely on this program, and that Democrats are exploiting that to get even more benefits for illegal aliens reinstated.
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Breitbart: “Just so everybody understands, what they are primarily interested in doing is covering up, masking the failure of Obamacare,” [Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI)] said, explaining that it is what extending all of the enhanced subsidies is about.
It is to “obviously mask how they allowed premiums to skyrocket on the individual market because the faulty design, the enhanced subsidies, that’s something they put in place during COVID. They’re supposed to be temporary. They scheduled them to expire,” he said.
“They realized if those subsidies expired, people are going to really understand how — what a massive failure Obamacare is, and so they’ve concocted this to try and blame Republicans for the skyrocketing premiums of Obamacare,” the senator explained.
Ed: That's a large part of it. However, what Schumer hoped to get was a repeal of the One Big Beautiful Bill -- the reconciliation package that the GOP successfully passed earlier this year -- in order to claim a victory over Trump. And Schumer has no problem throwing poor Americans under the bus to attempt it.
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From colleague Chase Williams. Blumenthal on paying the military during the shutdown: There is money to pay our military, and it should be done. And the administration has an easy path, not only to paying the military now, but ending the government shutdown by a commitment to…
— Chad Pergram (@ChadPergram) October 29, 2025
And the administration has an easy path, not only to paying the military now, but ending the government shutdown by a commitment to extend the health care tax cuts and make sure that we reopen government.
Ed: Democrats have an easier path -- end the filibuster and allow a floor vote on the clean CR. This isn't an executive-branch issue; it's a legislative issue, and Democrats are obstructing the process. And everyone is starting to figure that out.
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President Trump appeared to concede Wednesday that he can't run for a third term in the White House in 2028, an idea that both he and his supporters have floated in the past.
— CBS News (@CBSNews) October 29, 2025
"It's a very interesting thing. I have the best numbers for any president in many years," the president… pic.twitter.com/phxFLRuAsh
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Axios: President Trump acknowledged Wednesday that "it's pretty clear" he can't be elected a third time, after months of teasing a run in 2028. ...
Driving the news: Just days after seemingly declining to rule out another stay on Pennsylvania Avenue, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One, "I guess I'm not allowed to run."
Ed: Trump knows he can't run for another term. Even if the Constitution didn't bar it -- and it does, it does -- he'll be 82 years old in 2028. That's too old even for a man with Trump's vitality. All of this has been kayfabe. Trump's trolling the media because he enjoys it, but he also knows it makes Democrats even more irrational, which helps Trump with his cornering strategy. This also allows him to remain the target of the media/Democrat attacks rather than his potential successors, such as JD Vance, Marco Rubio, Ron DeSantis, et al. He's running interference for the next class of potential nominees by teasing a third term, and will probably keep it up until the midterm cycle ends.
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BREAKING: An entire CNN panel was just exposed after they all let rumors about Trump running for a third term TRIGGER them.@ScottJenningsKY: "I think he‘s TROLLING the Democrats. Which he LOVES to do, and they fall for it EVERY TIME." pic.twitter.com/6U02DNOvkw
— Gunther Eagleman™ (@GuntherEagleman) October 28, 2025
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Ruth Marcus at the New Yorker (via e-mail): To be clear: it’s not crazy, in tactical, political terms, for Bannon to float this notion and for Trump, as he initially did, to fan the flames. It’s crazy to imagine that Donald Trump will be President on January 21, 2029, after his term is over and he is no longer constitutionally eligible for the office.
So what was this fire drill all about? I’ll take off my lawyer hat and put on my political-pundit hat, and note that other Presidents in their second terms, before and after the Twenty-second Amendment, have chafed at the idea that they’re time-limited, by norm or by law, and that they are therefore lame ducks. For Trump, keeping the hope of a third term alive has multiple benefits. It energizes a base that loves the idea. It keeps him relevant for longer. And it drives the left bonkers to see “Trump 2028” hats on the Resolute desk—which, from Trump’s point of view, is a good in itself and also serves as a useful distraction mechanism. I mean, shouldn’t we be having a highfalutin conversation about the legality of blowing up alleged drug traffickers? We should—but Trump would probably rather distract us.
Ed: That's a pretty astute read from Ruth Marcus. We don't agree on a lot, but I respect her acumen. It doesn't negate the other benefits I outlined above, either -- it just adds to them.
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Propaganda wears a thousand masks. Now it is taking them off. https://t.co/yAGcUzHBiW
— Walter Kirn (@walterkirn) October 29, 2025
Ed: I wrote about this earlier today as well.
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Ruy Teixeira at the Free Press: That reality undercuts the payoff from a big-tent strategy. A Democrat running in a conservative area can deviate from party orthodoxy on, say, gender issues—but even if local activists and progressive commentators grit their teeth and stay quiet, voters still see the D by the candidate’s name. They still know that the national party believes biological males should compete in girls’ sports, that “gender-affirming” medical treatments for children should be readily available, and that to question these ideas is to be on the wrong side of history itself.
In other words, voters know whose tent it is, even if a few heterodox guests are allowed inside. This is especially the case since the welcoming mat for dissenters in the party has been mostly rolled out for progressive left heroes like Mamdani, whose unorthodox positions on economic issues are forgiven, even as his profile on social and cultural issues simply deepens the problems with the party’s national image. The tent opens on the left, much less so on the right. ...
Advocates of the big tent must face the facts: The party’s many unpopular and unworkable positions—on everything from energy to identity politics—have to genuinely change if Democrats hope to win back skeptical voters. Simply holding their noses and letting a few candidates deviate from orthodoxy won’t work.
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Btw, 20 years ago every American leftist was very excited about socialism in Venezuela. Don’t let them tell you “that’s not what we mean,” Venezuela is exactly what they want for you https://t.co/US6UZzIlF2
— tantum (@QuasLacrimas) October 29, 2025
Ed: I can't wait for all of them to suddenly realize that Chavez and Maduro never tried "true socialism." This is precisely what the Democrat Socialists have in mind for America ... and many Democrats share the same vision.
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There is no First Amendment right to blocking traffic and impeding federal law-enforcement. https://t.co/zIynYNRW2X
— Amy Curtis (@RantyAmyCurtis) October 29, 2025
Ed: The Left keeps insisting that violence is speech while simultaneously arguing that speech is violence. Now some of them will pay the consequences for that idiocy. That's exactly what this benighted activist will argue in court if she's not "backing down," and she's likely to end up with a very painful lesson in both civics and vocabulary.
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Chuck, buddy, if you truly cared about the SNAP recipients, you'd end your filibuster today.
— Phineas Fahrquar (@irishspy) October 29, 2025
You're cynically using these people as weapons. It's nauseating. https://t.co/y44cefHe75
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