A former Republican lawmaker lamented recent election victories by MAGA candidates in Arizona during a new interview on MS NOW, warning that it could lead to a world of hurt for the party in the midterms. Charlie Dent, a former Republican lawmaker from Pennsylvania, told MS NOW's Alex Witt that the recent victories of candidates like gubernatorial candidate Andy Biggs, a Republican congressman who supported President Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, and Mark Lamb, a Trump-endorsed candidate to replace Biggs in the House who faced a sexting scandal ahead of the primary, could weigh on the party going forward. "It doesn't help, and it makes it much harder for ... not just Arizonans, but Republicans generally to win general elections," Dent said. Dent's comments came at a time when Republicans are gearing up for a tough midterm season. Democrats have won a slew of statewide races since Trump's second term began, prompting some analysts to suggest the party could win back both the House and Senate in November. However, some analysts also worry that Trump may be trying to blunt those gains through illicit means. For instance, Trump recently gave a national address about alleged foreign interference in the 2020 general election, which some saw as the president laying the groundwork to contest the upcoming election results if Republicans suffer steep losses. Dent said the recent MAGA election victories put Republicans in a position to lose more than they gain. "Arizona has done this before, by the way, with Kari Lake and other nominees who are simply repulsive to a lot of, I'll say. To mainstream voters, those more centrist voters, independents, [they are a] total turn-off," Dent said. "So, election deniers, they might please the president in some elements of the base. But republicans end up losing far more than they gain." "I never quite understood it," he added. "I don't know when Arizona Republicans are going to learn their lesson. They haven't had a lot of success statewide since Governor [Doug] Ducey. And so, it looks like they're [going to] have another bad year."
People close to President Donald Trump are giving GOP candidates some startling advice as the midterms approach, according to new reporting. MS NOW's Jake Taylor revealed on Sunday's edition of "Alex Witt Reports" that Trump White House insiders are quietly telling GOP candidates to distance themselves from the messaging Trump has put out about the war in Iran. Taylor pointed to the consistent negative polling about the war and Trump's public messaging that the war is going well as reasons allies have put forward for candidates to create the airspace. "They're advising, whether they're incumbents or challengers, Republican candidates to essentially not talk about the war the same way President Trump is," Taylor said. "They're encouraged to actually put some distance [and] space between the way Trump talks about the war and the way they do, because they're aware they don't have a winning strategy when it comes to the midterms."Taylor's report underscores the growing divide between Trump and the Republican Party over the war against Iran. Several Republican lawmakers have sharply criticized the president for launching the war without Congressional approval, although that feeling has yet to metastasize into an official vote to curtail Trump's war powers. "Obviously, we are just 100 days out [from the midterm elections]," Taylor said. "Every bit of messaging on this matters. And the Republicans around Trump know that, and that's why they're encouraging others to distance themselves from his language in this moment."
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) sidestepped a question about New Jersey’s disclosure that thousands of noncitizens were mistakenly registered to vote, instead criticizing President Donald Trump and Republicans over election messaging. “I continue to have confidence in state and local authorities in making sure that there’s going to be a free and fair election […]
Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) on Sunday said President Trump likes the daily strikes on Iran, which paused going into the weekend after nearly two straight weeks of attacks on Iranian infrastructure. “I think we ought to continue the blockade and starve them out,” Kennedy said on CBS News’s “Face the Nation” with Margaret Brennan. “I…
The following is the full transcription of an interview with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, an Independent, a portion of which aired on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on July 26, 2026.
A "disheveled and exhausted" Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) was heard complaining before he died that his GOP colleagues wouldn't help him, The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday.The new revelations come from documentary filmmaker Alex Holder, who had “been granted extensive access to Graham since 2023” for a documentary he was filming about the South Carolina Republican, per the Journal. Holder revealed a number of new details about Graham to the Journal, chief among them being what occupied Graham’s mind in his final weeks.“Graham frequently looked tired, prompting Holder to ask if he was doing OK,” the Journal’s report reads.“Graham would say he didn’t have time to sleep because he needed to finish off the Iranian regime; sort out a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine; and establish ties between Saudi Arabia and Israel by the end of the year," the report stated. "At one point, when Graham looked ‘absolutely disheveled and exhausted,’ Holder said, the senator complained that others weren’t helping him.”Graham had long been a proponent of U.S. military action against Iran, and played an outsized role in pushing President Donald Trump to approve a more aggressive posture against Tehran. In a newly published video filmed by Holder of Graham’s reaction to the U.S. attacks on Iran in late February, Graham could be seen struggling to contain his excitement.“Look what we’ve done here," Graham could be heard saying. "I almost cried."Holder told the Journal the GOP senator remained dedicated to achieving his self-imposed goal of toppling Iran, among other things, despite a growing weariness. Holder told the Journal, “He’d say, ‘There’s no way I can die yet.'"🇺🇸🇮🇷 Unreleased documentary footage of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham reveals his years-long effort to push for regime change in Iran and lobby President Trump to expand U.S. military action against Iran, according to WSJ.The footage shows Graham speaking candidly with world… pic.twitter.com/xIb8gRWS1J— Megatron (@Megatron_ron) July 26, 2026
President Donald Trump is so weak that political experts anticipate potentially Democrats flipping the House of Representatives, Senate or both — and yet an anti-Trump Republican strategist warns they may be undone by incompetence at the top of their organization. “The Democratic National Committee is failing every person reading these words,” Steve Schmidt, who advised President George W. Bush, wrote for his Substack on Sunday. “You should be very angry about it because that failure is neither providential nor pre-ordained. It’s a choice — like Trump — and it’s killing the United States of America.”Schmidt reviewed the party’s financial travails, writing that “the MAGA Republicans have more than $128.5 million cash on hand compared to the Democratic National Committee, which is more than $2 million in debt. It’s also on track to spend exponentially more money on politics in Guam, Puerto Rico, the Northern Marianas, the Virgin Islands and American Samoa than across Mississippi and Louisiana, both of which have great US Senate candidates.”He added, “It’s unacceptable. The DNC is terribly led by Chairman Ken Martin. A sign of the political ineptitude of both [Senate Minority Leader] Chuck Schumer and [House Minority Leader] Hakeem Jeffries is their inability to deal with what must be dealt with.”He went on to quote The New York Times story that shed light on these travails. The report found that when it came to Democrats’ troubles “at the center is Ken Martin, the 53-year-old party chairman, who has found himself increasingly isolated, gripped by the fear that he will lose his job and relying on a vanishingly small circle of people he trusts, according to interviews with more than two dozen Democrats, including current and former D.N.C. officials and members. Most of them spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the party’s troubled state of affairs.”The Times added, “Mr. Martin’s fraying nerves are showing. In a pique of frustration in early July, he threw his phone at the desk of a junior aide while upbraiding the person. The phone-tossing incident resulted in a formal complaint to the D.N.C.’s human resources department.”Schmidt condemned Martin’s reported behavior, writing that “personally, I’m sick of the tolerance for losing and the Democratic Party mediocrities, careerists and hustlers who can’t, won’t, and will never stop losing because deep down they’re simply doing what they’re good at: losing.”He continued, “The problem is that we’re losing the country because it isn’t being properly defended by the institution that’s built to stand up to MAGA and be for something better. It’s one of the foremost tragedies of this whole era. It’s deeply true and very real.”AlterNet previously reported on criticisms of Martin’s performance. In June anonymous high-ranking DNC sources told AlterNet that Martin has failed to prepare for Trump’s attacks on mail-in voting, mishandled releasing an autopsy of its failed 2024 presidential campaign and refused to adequately address threats to voting security on electronic machines, even though it admitted that "any assessment of the state of technology in the Democratic party would be incomplete without an acknowledgement that comprehensive data warehouses like Phoenix represent an irresistible target for hackers and other bad actors seeking to undermine the integrity of the modern political process."
