Saturday's Final Word

You got me browsin', tabbin' out of my mind, you got me linkin' and I'm surfin' my time ...

This is really interesting. Interviews with El-Sayed are both useless and extremely revealing. By asking simple, straightforward questions, @bretbaier helped viewers see and understand how El-Sayed works.

— Byron York (@ByronYork) October 24, 2026

Ed: El-Sayed basically exhausted a too-polite Baier. That pugnacious attitude should have prompted Baier to talk over him and keep asking the question of why El-Sayed signed the letter demanding Morsi purge the Egyptian media of all opponents to the Muslim Brotherhood. Baier did force El-Sayed into this fit of juvenile pique and an adolescent tantrum, but in an era of 'he fights,'  I'm not sure it didn't help El-Sayed. The arrogance on display is hardly attractive, however. Speaking of arrogance, though ...

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Semafor: Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed’s campaign is launching a new TV ad with a unique approach: spotlighting conservative pundits’ praise for the progressive — and criticism of GOP nominee Mike Rogers.

The new ad will get a six-figure buy, according to details shared first with Semafor. It features El-Sayed saying that “free speech is under attack, and we should be making America healthy again,” before pointing to a screen that plays laudatory words from Fox News host Jesse Watters (“he beat the machine”), Tucker Carlson (“I wouldn’t vote for Mike Rogers at gunpoint”), and others.

Ed: Republicans do NOT love El-Sayed. Tucker might, but Jesse Watters certainly doesn't. See the ad below to see how El-Sayed carefully carved around Watters's commentary.

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He wouldn't be doing this if he thought he was winning btw. Clearly, he has a problem with black voters and independent voters seeing him (correctly) as too extreme.

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) October 23, 2026

Ed: I suspect that the El-Sayed campaign built this messaging strategy months ago as a way to close the sale. I don't think they anticipated how much trouble El-Sayed's history would create, however, especially with black voters. El-Sayed has nearly no chance to win by gaining crossover voters; he needs to shore up the Democrat base first. Rather than this being a desperation move, I see it more as a clueless refusal to admit to the reality of their position in the final ten days. That may be a result of bad polls; the campaign actually relied on Wedgewood poll data for its public claims of domination. 

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Carl Cannon at RealClearPolitics: Veteran GOP pollster Jim McLaughlin, noting that beginning in June Wedgewood gave Democrats leads in all the battleground races (Texas, Michigan, Georgia, Maine, Ohio and Kansas), expressed the view all their fake data was intended to promote Democrats over Republicans in the midterms.

“These are suppression polls trying to support their favored Democrat candidates and trying to suppress money, volunteers and donors on GOP campaigns,” McLaughlin said. “I would like to see some attorney general go after these folks for fraud and election interference.”

On Wednesday, poll aggregators from Nate Silver and The New York Times to Decision Desk HQ were scrubbing their averages to remove the influence of this fraud from their data. News outlets like Newsweek were going back and correcting or deleting some of their stories.

Not to sound smug, because we’re not perfect, but there was always an easier way for political junkies: They could just rely on RealClearPolitics.

Ed: As I have noted more than once, RCP knew better than to include either Median or Wedgewood in its aggregation. However, the problem isn't the aggregators but the entire polling industry. Six different pollsters put El-Sayed up by double digits in the Michigan primary, all listed by RCP, and El-Sayed barely won by a point. All of the polling in Wisconsin had Francesca Hong ahead by even bigger margins, and she actually lost the Democrat gubernatorial primary. The reason Median and Wedgewood successfully hoaxed most of the media is not that they were providing outliers in an otherwise competent industry, but because their faked data mirrored all the bad data being published by supposedly reliable pollsters. I like RCP and Carl makes a good argument here, but he's missing the big picture. 

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Probably a dozen or more families are able to sit at the dinner table tonight with their wonderful little child, safe and sound- only because of this man's bravery. He's a true hero and deserves the thanks of all Americans.

— Buck Sexton (@BuckSexton) October 24, 2026

Ed: Amen. 

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Politico: A center-left group representing younger Democratic officials has deleted a post criticizing Rep. Maxine Waters and the Capitol Hill “gerontocracy” after pushback from one of its members, Rep. Ritchie Torres. ...

“We respect everything Maxine Waters has done for her district and for America in her 88 years, but we also think that Democrats shouldn’t be enabling the gerontocracy that voters have repeatedly rejected,” according to a screenshot of the post obtained by POLITICO.

Two people granted anonymity to discuss the incident said the 38-year-old Torres, who has publicly supported Waters’ bid to stay atop Financial Services, raised concerns about the post with Rep. Jake Auchincloss, who chairs Majority Democrats. It was later deleted.

Auchincloss, 38, did not see the post prior to it being put up and is not in the chain of command for the Majority Democrats’ social media, according to a House Democratic aide with knowledge of the matter who was granted anonymity. The Massachusetts lawmaker agreed that it should come down after he was shown it, the aide said. The group has previously criticized aging lawmakers.

Ed: Profiles in Courage, this ain't. I wrote about the original demand from Majority Democrats to put Waters out to pasture and wondered whether we'd see pushback. They're absolutely correct, especially given Waters' corruption while serving on the committee and her general lunatic antics outside of it. The next session of Congress will have Dems bowing to the gerontocracy, again. 

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New from me: Georgetown Law’s Student Bar Association passed a resolution this week condemning a Jewish attorney on Sen. Ted Cruz’s staff and accusing her of Islamophobia after she appeared on campus to discuss the Muslim Brotherhood and her work representing victims of terrorism. Erielle Azerrad, Cruz's deputy chief counsel, spoke to students about the Brotherhood’s origins and how the group had expanded its operations in the US. She also noted the Muslim Students Association’s ties to the Brotherhood, though she disputed that such ties meant all Muslim students, or even all MSA members, were connected to the terrorist group. The resolution accused Azerrad of promoting "Islamophobic beliefs and conspiracy theories" at the event and having a "well-documented record of false, bigoted, and harmful anti-Muslim rhetoric." Full story for @jewishinsider here: https://t.co/vsGh9Xawo8

— Emily Jacobs (@emilyfjacobs) October 23, 2026

... and her work representing victims of terrorism.

Erielle Azerrad, Cruz's deputy chief counsel, spoke to students about the Brotherhood’s origins and how the group had expanded its operations in the US. She also noted the Muslim Students Association’s ties to the Brotherhood, though she disputed that such ties meant all Muslim students, or even all MSA members, were connected to the terrorist group.

The resolution accused Azerrad of promoting "Islamophobic beliefs and conspiracy theories" at the event and having a "well-documented record of false, bigoted, and harmful anti-Muslim rhetoric."

Ed: Georgetown Law has its head fully up its backside in ways that suggest a comprehensive moral and intellectual collapse at Georgetown University. The Muslim Brotherhood is an organization that multiple Muslim countries have banned for ties to terrorism, and its subsidiaries here in the US have been named as unindicted co-conspirators in a money-laundering case that funneled material support to Hamas. The tag "Islamophobic" means nothing at all, especially not in the context of debating the potential risk of a network that Muslim nations ban and disavow. (Full disclosure: I know Ms. Azerrad slightly and consider her a sharp and courageous thinker.)

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Axios: U.S. intelligence finds Iran has "substantially increased" its efforts to target American diplomats and officials in the Middle East and beyond, with lethal plots reaching "advanced stages," according to an Oct. 23 memo to Secretary of State Marco Rubio obtained by Axios.

Why it matters: U.S. officials say the intelligence is one reason the State Department is drawing down personnel at several American embassies across the Middle East, amid mounting fears of a broader regional conflict.

• U.S. officials also fear that Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen could expand their attacks beyond Saudi Arabia to other countries in the region.
• Adding to the volatile security environment is the prospect of renewed U.S. and Israeli military operations against Iran, potentially after the midterm elections.

Ed: That would explain why the State Department ordered non-essential personnel and families to return to the US last week from Gulf state postings. Or did Georgetown Law students consider that "Islamophobic" too?

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This is close to one my "impending fall of the Mullah Regime" indicators. A major Russian aerial/ground evacuation from Tehran with lots of people and records, like we saw from Baghdad to Syria immediately before Operation Desert Storm, is at the top of my indicator list.

— Trent Telenko (@TrentTelenko) October 23, 2026

Ed: That's certainly one interpretation. I'd posit two others, none of which are mutually exclusive. First, Putin might be getting serious about settling with Ukraine, and the pull-out might be in exchange for more favorable terms from Trump. Second, the Russians may believe that the IRGC is desperate enough to restart large-scale attacks on Gulf states that would result in massive retaliation by the US and want to get the hell out of the way. I prefer Telenko's scenario, of course, but these two may also explain it. 

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Anthony Galli said the funniest thing I’ve read all week: “Wait until she visits Chinatown!”

— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) October 24, 2026

Ed: That's the Tweet of the Week. 

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BREAKING: The US Department of Justice is reviewing the forceful ejection of fans wearing XX-XY t-shirts at Friday's Portland Thorns game. "The Justice Department is aware of these reports and will review the matter thoroughly. Where the facts and the law warrant action, the Department will not hesitate to act." A DOJ spokesperson also told me, "Based on what is known so far, the conduct described appears to raise viewpoint discrimination and First Amendment questions rather than sex discrimination. The Department is reviewing it." https://t.co/hDJ4AS61mI

— Jackson Thompson (@JackThompsonFOX) October 24, 2026

"The Justice Department is aware of these reports and will review the matter thoroughly. Where the facts and the law warrant action, the Department will not hesitate to act."

A DOJ spokesperson also told me, "Based on what is known so far, the conduct described appears to raise viewpoint discrimination and First Amendment questions rather than sex discrimination. The Department is reviewing it."

Ed: I smell a lawsuit incoming too, aimed at the Portland Thorns, the WNBA, and the security guards who laid hands on this woman. They are not covered by qualified immunity. Stay tuned. 

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Has one media member asked her this one simple question? “How would you feel if a republican senator said they wanted to jail Democrats to intimidate young people who share a worldview with the Democratic Party from becoming active in politics?”

— John Ondrasik (@johnondrasik) October 24, 2026

Ed: No, because the Protection Racket Media is all-in on slinging propaganda. 

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Last night's lyric: "Friends in Low Places" by Garth Brooks.

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