On Monday, the eve of the midterm election, Vice President JD Vance traveled to Rome, New York for a campaign rally where he called Blake Gendebien, the Democratic nominee running for Congress in the district, an “asshole” and a “lunatic.” Gendebien responded in a phone conversation with TPM hours after Vance’s remarks. 

“It is unbecoming for the office, but he can call me whatever he wants to, because I’m focused on what really matters to families in the North Country,” Gendebien said.

Gendebien went on to accuse Vance and President Donald Trump’s other allies of ignoring the district outside of the election.  

“I find it interesting that after two years of upstate New York and the North Country struggling with high fuel, gasoline, food, fertilizer, and now heating oil costs — we’re losing our hospitals and this tariff fight with Ontario and Quebec is driving prices up even more — they only want to fly into the district, throw insults, and try to save my opponent’s floundering campaign,” Gendebien said, referring to Republican candidate Anthony Constantino, a bombastic entrepreneur and staunch Trump loyalist. 

“They’re not here to listen to people about how the policies are disproportionately hurting us in rural America,” he added.

Gendebien is a dairy farmer running as an unabashed moderate. Polls show his unconventional campaign has been wooing Republican voters in the district, which has long been a GOP stronghold. A recent survey also indicated Gendebien has pulled ahead of his rival, Constantino.

In the conversation with TPM, Gendebien homed in on an incident where reporter Jake Lahut said Constantino told him to “ask Grok” when Lahut asked the Republican candidate to name the district’s largest city. That city is Rome, where Vance rallied on Monday.

“What’s hilarious is that they traveled all this way to show Anthony Constantino what is the largest city in the district because, as of a couple weeks ago, he was gonna ask Grok to find out — and he’s rarely here,” Gendebien said.

According to Gendebien, Constantino is planning to have his election night event on Tuesday at the headquarters of his online sticker business, which is located in Amsterdam. 

“Even his watch party is going to be outside of the district,” Gendebien said. 

Gendebien also noted this would put the event “right underneath” a massive “VOTE FOR TRUMP” sign that Constantino erected at the building. Constantino’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

Along with the sign and the online sticker business that made him a wealthy man, Constantino has made a name for himself with a rap album that included verses cheering Trump and bashing Democrats. When asked if he’d listened to Constantino’s music, Gendebien responded that it is out of step with the district they are both running to represent. 

“I think a profanity-laced rap album is not part of the North Country’s culture,” he explained. 

As for his own musical tastes, Gendebien told TPM he prefers Guns N’ Roses and AC/DC, 

“I like ’80s rock,” he said. 

During his speech, Vance launched into his insults of Gendebien while accusing the Democrat of being controlled by his party’s leadership, specifically House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul. However, Gendebien has actually notably criticized his fellow Democrats. For a time, he even demurred when asked whether he would be voting for Hochul in tomorrow’s election. 

Gendebien told TPM he will indeed vote for the governor. But he also rejected the attempts from Vance to paint him as a radical progressive or even a typical party-line backer. 

“I’m a pragmatic reflection of the North Country. I’m an old school, conservative, free market Democrat. I’m a dairy farmer and my wife is from Cuba. She didn’t leave Cuba — escape Cuba — in order to marry a communist. I’m pretty sure of that. And I don’t know too many far-left radical dairy farmers,” Gendebien said. 

Based on what he’s seen so far, Gendebien predicted he will win a “clear victory.”

“The early voting numbers are very good. They’re above the 2022 midterms and they’re approaching the 2024 presidential year,” said Gendebien. “There’s a tremendous amount of buzz.”

And, while he had harsh words for Vance and is clearly staking out his own lane among the Democrats, Gendebien indicated he’s willing to team up with anyone who shares his priorities if he makes it to Washington. 

“I’m an independent voice. I’m running my own campaign,” he said. “But I’ll work with anybody that wants to help me lower the cost of heating oil, save our hospitals that are failing right before our eyes, and end this bad tariff war with Ontario and Quebec.”

The National Pool Guy has spoken. 

President Donald Trump took the stage on Monday afternoon, in the closing moments of the midterm election, to deliver an extremely important message: the reflecting pool on the National Mall has, as he put it, “struggled with leaks, and algae, and very severe problems having to do with weather, and heat, and cold. 

“Believe it or not, it’s never worked,” he said of the famed decorative body of water, which has sat in the nation’s capital for decades. “And it’s never worked because it was always loaded up with leaks and problems.”

Ahead of the speech, it was assumed that the president’s remarks from the National Mall would be a final argument for the campaign, which is widely expected to end in a massive blowout for his Republican Party. However, the majority of Trump’s speech was focused on the pool and his troubled efforts to renovate it. Trump presented himself as an expert tactician and shared details about pool construction and care with the nation. Overall, the president said he was “very proud” of the botched renovation and described the event as “the official opening of the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool.”

“The pool is now better and more beautiful than it’s ever been before,” Trump declared.  

Of course, anyone who’s followed the saga of Trump and his pool over the past several months might recall that it was seemingly fine prior to his attempt to give it a makeover. That effort, which was led by a business owned by a Trump donor, was plagued with issues that saw the pool taken over by bright green algae. 

Trump responded to that mess by making questionable and unproven claims of vandalism. His administration even pursued a criminal case against one alleged culprit that was ultimately dropped by prosecutors. During his remarks on Monday, Trump repeated his assertion that dastardly mischief makers were behind the muck. And, once again he failed to provide any convincing evidence to back up these claims. 

“We went through a lot with vandalism,” Trump said. “The vandalism was unprecedented.”

As he spoke before a small crowd that seemed mostly composed of government workers, Trump also claimed that prior presidents had failed to adequately maintain the reflecting pool. He suggested one of their solutions involved river water. And, while Trump wouldn’t explicitly say why the waterways in the Washington D.C. area were inappropriate water sources for a decorative display, his comments certainly seemed like an oblique reference to the human waste that can be discharged into the Potomac. 

“It became a very dirty, filthy, stagnant mess. It was a real problem,” Trump said of the pool, in the past. “They actually tried using the water from the Potomac — and the water from the Potomac doesn’t work because of certain reasons that I won’t go into.”

Yet the strangest thing about this speech may not have been the improbable mysterious vandals or even the roundabout presidential references to fecal matter. The fact that Trump was focused on touting his renovations and pool maintenance chops on the eve of a consequential election that will decide the balance of Congress was simply extraordinary.

At multiple points during his remarks, Trump did try to bring up his larger efforts to swarm Washington D.C. with federal law enforcement and to beautify the district with monuments that some see as dog whistles for white nationalists. Even when it came to these things, he continued to make bizarre and improbable claims, like suggesting crime had been virtually eliminated in the capital city. His boasts on that front went far beyond the figures touted by his own Justice Department in August when they cheered a 45 percent drop in homicides after federal troops took to the streets. 

“We’ve actually fixed 83 statues and fountains throughout the city,” Trump said. “Maybe the most important thing we fixed is the crime, because the crime is down close to 90%. It’ll be 100%. If there is such a thing.” 

Yet, whenever he briefly referenced issues beyond the reflecting pool, Trump quickly returned to the topic. 

“We fixed the leaks. We resurfaced the bottom in a beautiful dark blue — very dark blue. They call it ‘American Flag Blue,’ but it’s very dark,” explained Trump. “If you had a regular blue — like, I personally love the lighter color blue — but then you wouldn’t have any reflecting. It wouldn’t be a reflecting pool.”

At points, Trump even pulled out visual aids, large before and after photos of the pool prior to his passion project. His background in real estate development and his love of decoration was clear when he showed these off while delivering a long, rambling discourse on “joints,” “pipes,” “rebar,” and the difficulties of color-matching granite. 

“We installed 330,000 square feet of a very strong coating — not strong enough to withstand box knives and knives — but by normal standard pretty, pretty much the strongest coating you can get,” Trump said. 

Even as he circled back to the alleged vandalism, Trump’s various photo displays included no proof of the supposed perpetrators. Along with blaming these unseen villains, Trump suggested the two Democrats who have preceded him in office were at fault for many of the pool’s woes. 

“The joints that were here that we took out, they were put in there a long time ago and we took it out,” recounted Trump. “Obama and Biden put in much of it, but it was all very defective material. And that’s one of the reasons it leaked so badly.” 

Trump then turned to the grass around D.C.’s national monuments. He showed pictures indicating how this had indeed been vandalized with “86 47,” a slogan that Trump argued was inspired by one of his greatest rivals: former FBI Director James Comey. The Trump administration has been engaged in an effort to criminally prosecute Comey, who previously investigated the president, for making a social media post with the phrase, which is rooted in restaurant industry parlance for removing a troubled customer. But for Trump, it’s so much darker than that. 

“This was sad because this was the grass and it was totally vandalized up here,” Trump said as he held up photos of the scorched earth. “And this was put out on the surface ‘8647.’ You know what that means? That was a Comey phrase. 8647, that means ‘kill 47.’ That’s a mob expression that Comey, I guess, was the first one that I heard put it out. So, not nice.”

That incident was evidently particularly painful for Trump since he truly appreciates vibrant foliage. 

“Like the human being, grass has a life also,” the president said. 

In general, Trump framed the alleged attacks on the reflecting pool in highly emotional terms. 

“This is a massive piece of —  piece of pool. There’s never been anything like — when you look at the side — it’s the biggest anywhere in the world by far and was treated with a lot of love. Then, it was treated with a lot of hate,” Trump said, adding, “We’ve got to stop the hate.”

After over 20 minutes that were largely pure pool, Trump did indeed address tomorrow’s midterm elections. The president, who is facing historically low approval ratings amid spiking prices and an unpopular war he launched with Iran, touted his own record on foreign policy and the economy. He also trashed the Democratic Party candidates running against his allies using highly exaggerated and questionable accusations.  

“These are the most dangerous candidates ever put up. There’s never been anything like what we’re seeing jihadists and Muslim Brotherhood members and people that nobody can even believe what we’re looking at,” Trump said. 

Trump suggested voting for his fellow Republicans was a vote for the American way of life. 

“We have to keep our Congress strong, free — a little bit of apple pie, there’s something very nice about that,” said Trump. 

Yet, time and again, he returned to the theme of the pool and his various beautification projects in the nation’s capital. He claimed the makeover had stopped a wave of deadly attacks surrounding the city’s famed tourist attractions. While he didn’t share any real world examples, Trump spun a graphic vision of these horrific incidents from his mind. 

“We’re not calling people now from Iowa to tell them that their son has been killed, he’ll be coming home in a casket. Somebody from Indiana — family from Indiana — ‘I’m sorry to inform you, but your son was standing at the base of a very beautiful monument and he was killed instantly and he’ll be coming home to you in a coffin.’ We don’t do that anymore,” said Trump. 

Overall, the president made it painstakingly clear that he believes there are very violent forces swirling around D.C. — especially in the pool.

“Look, it’s not an easy thing,” Trump said as he recounted the renovations. “The algae is brutal. It forms easily.”

Murkowski Endorses a Dem, Denounces Trump’s Attack on Alaska’s Election

Like Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), the pattern with Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), a relatively moderate voice in today’s extreme GOP, is that while she may critique Trump publicly, she often votes to support his policies when it matters.

But in recent days, Murkowski has been offering some substantial, pre-election pushback to the president.

On Tuesday, she endorsed a Democrat for governor over Trump’s chosen candidate.

“I have found fault with the Dunleavy administration,” she told Alaska News Source of the current governor, Republican Mike Dunleavy, who is term-limited. “I think that they have left federal money on the table. I think in certain areas, where we have worked hard to put opportunities from the federal side, here, into the state, the state has failed with it.”

“I think it’s been a hard eight years in many different areas, and Alaskans are looking for something different,” she added, describing Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins, the Democrat, as a “young Alaskan with a view and a perspective that I think Alaska needs right now.”

JKT, as he’s often called, is up against three Republicans, one of whom, Bernadette Wilson, was endorsed by Trump. He was already favored to win, in part because of the split Republican field.

Murkowski has supported Democrats before — she endorsed Mary Peltola’s campaigns for House in 2022 and 2024. Her more significant move, I’d argue, was on Friday denouncing the DOJ’s pre-emptive lawsuit seeking to block Alaska from certifying its election if a Democrat wins, a lawsuit Trump said he ordered.

“The State of Alaska has already handled this by clearly distinguishing the candidates on this year’s ballot,” she said, pushing back on the DOJ’s premise that two Dan Sullivans on the ballot had hopelessly tainted the election.

“The Department of Justice should never have filed this lawsuit,” she said.

That clear-eyed assessment from the most prominent Republican voice in the state predictably triggered Trump to lose it. Over multiple Truth Social posts, he called Murkowski “Republicans’ Worst Senator, by far,” “a DISGRACE to Alaska and our Country,” and falsely suggested she fraudulently won a previous race.

“They’ve been trying to get rid of Lisa Murkowski forever in Alaska,” he claimed.

Flávio Bolsonaro’s Big Escape

• When Brazilian authorities ordered Flávio Bolsonaro — the recently defeated, Trump-aligned candidate for president — to turn over his passport this week amid a money laundering investigation, he scoffed that he would never think of fleeing the country.
• But yesterday morning, news began to emerge in various South American outlets that that may, in fact, have happened.
• Its unclear how Bolsonaro ultimately made his escape, with some reports suggesting it was via Argentina, to the south, where President Javier Milei is an ally of the Bolsonaro family and Trump, and others suggesting he left via Venezuela, to the north.
• Regardless, it was the Trump administration that offered his family refuge, and by Tuesday evening he was in Florida.
• The journey inspired a bit of déjà vu, as his father took a similar trip after a 2022 auto-coup attempt he led, reminiscent of January 6, failed.
• Flávio Bolsonaro promised to keep rallying his allies from the U.S.

‘We Don’t Need Fifty More Data Centers’

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes is making the waning days of her campaign for reelection all about the widespread backlash to data center construction in her state — and the ways in which she has worked to try to limit an explosion of artificial intelligence infrastructure in Arizona that drains the state’s already-low water supply. If she can harness bipartisan and pervasive public outrage on the issue, she may be able to not only boost her own reelection prospects, but also help Democrats down ballot who may be on the verge of taking back one chamber of the state legislature for the first time in 60 years.

Bernadette Greene-Placentia would like you to know the story of her rape is not an “October Surprise.” 

She did not conspire with the media to publish the graphic details of her sexual assault on the same day early voting ballots were sent out to voters in Arizona. Her harrowing account of being bludgeoned and violated by two men in the middle of the night in a suburban parking lot is not a “hoax” she concocted to win over voters’ sympathies. Her fragmented memories of the attack, and her initial reluctance to go to authorities, are not evidence of an elaborate lie, nor of a nefarious Democratic plot to wrest control of Congress, as some right-wing influencers have suggested. It was hard enough coming forward to say she was raped, she told TPM. Now she has to contend with all these men, with millions of followers online, loudly asserting that maybe she wasn’t. She can’t help but remember that these men publicly trying to poke holes in her story have mothers. “Is this really how you were raised?” she wants to ask them.

Can the Democrats Really Be Doing This Well?

With three weeks until Election Day, those who evaluate the electoral landscape — race raters and prognosticators — are bringing their analyses of various contests in line with the ongoing wave of rosy polls for Democratic candidates. Toward the end of last week, one race rater, Cook Political Report, moved its assessment of 18 House contests toward Democrats. Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia, another race rater, changed its assessment of Alaska’s governor and Senate races, which it had rated as “toss-ups,” to “leans Democratic,” and shifted four House races toward Democrats.

TPM also obtained a not-previously-reported memo from Eurasia Group, the political risk consultancy that advises hedge funds and institutional investors about what to expect from global elections, among other topics. It upgrades the odds for Democrats in both chambers of Congress. The consultancy now places the odds that Democrats flip the House at 90% (up from 85%) and the odds that they flip the Senate at 60% (up from 55% at the end of September).

It predicts a growing likelihood (40%) of Democrats winning a 20-plus seat majority in Congress, based in part of Democrats’ growing numbers on the generic congressional ballot. That’s a far cry from the outlook for the GOP last spring, amid its post-Callais gerrymandering onslaught. And the memo predicts that Republicans’ last-minute deluge of money is “probably too late” and will not be enough to save them. “Evidence that spending has swayed voters is scant,” it reads.

This is all going on as the Democratic Party’s approval rating remains not-great, though recent polling shows it to be rising. Here at TPM, we have a theory of what’s going on there: Voters are not happy with how Democrats have fought Trump. That does not mean they are happy with Trump — in fact, the Democratic Party’s low approval, per this theory, is an outgrowth of Trump’s low approval. It leaves room for voters to rally behind new Democratic candidates while maintaining their discontent with the party writ large.

But that could, of course, be wrong, and, under other theories, it may speak to weakness in Democratic support that the polls are not otherwise flushing out.

The Eurasia Group memo sees Republicans’ best hope now as the possibility of a massive polling error. “We think that polling misses in 2020 and 2024 mostly resulted from underestimating Republican support, especially among voters without a college degree, when President Donald Trump was on the ballot, and that there is no reason to expect similar bias this year,” it reads. “However, this kind of polling error is impossible to predict in advance, and the possibility that it recurs is a major reason our odds for Democrats are not higher.”

Trump and His DOJ Go All In In Minnesota

This electoral backdrop is essential for understanding the latest travesty in Minnesota, where Rep. Ilhan Omar’s (D) house was raided Monday as part of a criminal investigation that “Border Czar” Tom Homan teased a month ago.

• Reports suggest the investigation focuses on immigration paperwork Omar’s father filed on her behalf decades ago.
• The right has been agitating for awhile to denaturalize Omar, with Fox News and the New York Post even publishing explainers on why doing so would be so hard in order to keep their readers’ expectations in check.
• The November election looms over all of this. Some polling has suggested the contest between Peggy Flanagan (D) and Michele Tafoya (R) in Minnesota is close. Trump has, accordingly, been stoking anti-Somali hate in the state, as we noted on Friday. That continued over the weekend, with Trump stating in Ohio: “The Republican Party, we believe that Somalia bandits, third-world gangs, and jihadist sympathizers do not belong in Ohio, they do not belong in America. We got to get them the hell out of here.”
• The DOJ typically has a “blackout” period within 60 days of an election during which it refrains from taking steps in political cases. That was ignored here, with Attorney General Todd Blanche, per the Washington Post, signing off on the raid.
• TPM will have more on this developing story later today.