On Tuesday afternoon, after Katie Zacharia’s disastrous first briefing as White House press secretary, a White House official told MS NOW, “She needs to get much better, fast, otherwise she’ll break Scaramucci’s record,” set, of course, by Anthony Scaramucci, who served as Donald Trump’s communications director for 11 days in 2017.

Three days later, she did what few thought possible by breaking that record. As a truly brutal first week neared its end, MS NOW reported:

After a turbulent five days in the role, Katie Zacharia is out as White House press secretary, two White House officials familiar with her departure told MS NOW on Friday.

The details — whether Zacharia voluntarily left her role or was directly fired — are still unclear. On Friday, President Donald Trump told reporters that he asked Zacharia to “reconsider” her role.

After Richard Nixon resigned in 1974, thus elevating Gerald Ford to the presidency, the Michigan Republican needed a new White House team. Ford tapped Jerald terHorst, a veteran journalist, to be the press secretary, and he seemed like a perfectly sensible choice.

The arrangement, however, did not last. A month into Ford’s tenure, the new president issued a controversial pardon to Nixon, and terHorst, unwilling to defend the decision, resigned. His tenure — just 31 days — was the shortest of any White House press secretary ever.

A half-century later, Zacharia’s time in the office lasted roughly one-sixth the length of terHorst’s tenure.

During a brief Q&A with reporters just outside the White House on Friday afternoon, the president made it sound as if he were doing his newly minted press secretary a favor.

“It’s not an easy job, and I think she was really treated very unfairly,” Trump said, adding, “I told her, ‘I think you’re better off being happy, and I’m not sure you can ever be happy in this job.’”

Asked whether Zacharia would continue to serve in his administration, the Republican said, “Yeah. In some form — but maybe a more pleasant form.”

Q: "Will Katie [Zacharia] continue to be in the administration?"Trump: "Yeah. In some form. But maybe a more pleasant form…I just think the press has been very tough on Katie and I said, 'There's no reason for you to have to do this.'…We'll make a determination."

— The Bulwark (@thebulwark.com) 2026-10-16T17:25:17.043Z

The development marks a stunning turn of events, including the exposure of Zacharia’s extensive record of peddling unhinged conspiratorial nonsense via social media, her misleading claims about her legal credentials, her work at a business that she described as “sort of a pyramid scheme” and her concession that she tried and failed to pass the California Bar Exam.

The president is already trying to blame this remarkable fiasco on the news organizations that reported accurate information, but as the dust settles, Trump and his team should at least try to consider a few lessons.

First, meritocracies are good, and hiring random people because the president saw them on television is bad.

Second, some routine vetting of prominent White House officials is a standard and responsible move.

And third, picking an unqualified press secretary three weeks before nationwide elections, having her move across the country and then throwing her into a difficult role without any meaningful preparation is a recipe for inevitable failure.

Put another way, there’s a fair amount of blame to go around for this humiliating debacle, which has managed to make the entire White House appear even more incompetent.

The post As Katie Zacharia’s tenure ends after just 5 days, here are some lessons for Team Trump appeared first on MS NOW.

A couple of months ago, Donald Trump appeared on a conservative radio show and said that “a lot of people” wanted to see the president pardon himself in his first term.

“I had the absolute right to do it,” he said. “Instead, I fought it through the courts and won.”

While that wasn’t an entirely accurate summary of recent history — Trump, who was convicted of several felonies in New York, only “won” when the federal criminal cases against him ended upon his return to the White House, not because they were adjudicated in his favor — the president’s rhetoric about his “absolute right” to pardon himself stood out.

This week, he returned to the issue during an interview with Newsmax’s Rob Finnerty.

Trump suggests he is going to pardon everyone, including himself: "I'm allowed to do a self-pardon … I don't want to see people that work for me go through years of nonsense"

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-10-16T00:20:10.130Z

Asked specifically whether he’s “seriously considering a self-pardon” before he leaves office, the president initially hedged, saying he’s done “nothing wrong,” before adding, “I’m allowed to do a self-pardon. I’m allowed to pardon. … The pardon is very powerful. I know that. They say it’s the most powerful thing a president has, the power of pardon.”

As my MS NOW colleague Jordan Rubin explained in detail just last week, whether presidents can actually pardon themselves is a matter of some controversy. Ahead of Richard Nixon’s resignation in 1974, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel prepared a memo concluding that presidents can’t pardon themselves, though OLC opinions are not binding on the courts, and the matter has never been tested — at least not yet.

But also of interest was the other point Trump made as part of the same exchange.

On the topic of pardons, the Republican went on to say, “I can tell you this, I don’t want to see my people go through — because these people are lunatics on the, on the left — I don’t want to see people that work for me go through years of nonsense, hire lawyers and everything else, all for nothing.”

This came a few weeks after Trump also told Time magazine that he’s prepared to issue pardons to members of his administration.

Time will tell whether he follows through, and just as notably, just how many members of his team are considered for presidential clemency. But that Trump keeps making comments like these might very have a real impact in the White House and throughout the executive branch: The president is effectively letting a small army of political appointees know that, no matter what they do as part of their duties, he’s inclined to hand them a pardon, whether or not they deserve one.

Systemic government corruption is already a problem in the Trump era. The signal he’s sending to his team is likely to make matters worse.

The post ‘I’m allowed to do a self-pardon’: Trump opens the door to pardons for staff and himself appeared first on MS NOW.

Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.

* According to the latest third-quarter fundraising reports to the Federal Elections Commission, Democratic Senate hopeful James Talarico raised $64 million between July and September, which is the best quarter any Senate candidate has ever had in American history. His Texas rival, Republican Ken Paxton, raised $10.2 million over the same period.

That said, the scandal-plagued state attorney general is receiving some extraordinary backup from billionaire GOP megadonor Elon Musk, who is almost single-handedly financing Paxton’s candidacy at this point.

As MS NOW reported, Musk donated $158 million to the Senate Leadership Fund, the super PAC aligned with the Senate Republican leadership, and one day after Musk opened his wallet, the Senate Leadership Fund “transferred the exact same amount of money to a pro-Ken Paxton super PAC called Texas PAC.”

Whether Texans have any concerns about a billionaire trying to flood the race with cash for Paxton remains to be seen.

* Speaking of fundraising, Punchbowl News took a closer look at third-quarter Federal Election Commission reports and found that in the six states that are likely to determine the Senate majority — Texas, Alaska, Ohio, Maine, Michigan and Iowa — the Democratic nominees “raised between three and six times more than their Republican opponents.”

* In Colorado’s gubernatorial race, Democratic state Attorney General Phil Weiser this week picked up endorsements from several prominent current and former Republicans. As The Denver Post noted, the list included former Rep. Ken Buck, who went so far as to cut a video for Weiser in which he acknowledges it may be “unusual” for a congressman from the longtime GOP stronghold to back a Democrat. In the video, Buck says a shared belief in “integrity in politics” unites the two.

* On a related note, in New Hampshire’s closely watched U.S. Senate race, Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas also picked up some Republican support this week, including an unexpected endorsement from Don Bolduc, the Trump-endorsed Republican Senate nominee from the 2022 election cycle.

* In Kansas’ closely watched U.S. Senate race, incumbent Republican Sen. Roger Marshall didn’t need another controversy, but he managed to get one anyway. The Associated Press reported that the GOP senator worked on a water rights dispute, failing to mention that his solution would benefit a bordering property that he owns.

* And in Michigan’s U.S. Senate race, Donald Trump, on a nearly daily basis, has decided to deliberately call Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed by the wrong name, “Mohammed El-Sayed.” Asked why, the president said, “I don’t know. I feel like it.”

The post Friday’s Campaign Round-Up, 10.16.26: Elon Musk spends massively for Ken Paxton appeared first on MS NOW.

As part of a tough re-election campaign in Maine, incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins has emphasized on countless occasions that she’s willing to defy President Donald Trump and other GOP leaders. But while there’s some truth to that, the senator’s critics have long emphasized the asterisk that comes with that record.

The New York Times took a closer look at her voting record, which shows that Collins has broken with her party more than any other Republican senator. That said, the same record “reveals that her defections … have rarely thwarted the president during his second term.”

In other words, the longtime GOP senator has demonstrated a willingness to break ranks, except when her vote might actually affect the outcome. Or, as the Times’ report put it, “one of the most dominant and long-running lines of attack against her” is that Collins “only defies the president when it doesn’t matter.”

On Thursday night, in her fourth and final debate against Democratic nominee Troy Jackson, the Maine Republican was presented with a clear opportunity to prove her critics wrong. It did not go well.

YIKES#mesen #mepolitics

— danny (@dabbs346.bsky.social) 2026-10-15T23:18:56.838Z

A moderator asked Collins, “Can you name a time when you voted against your party and President Trump where it actually changed the outcome significantly?”

The senator began by saying there were “several examples,” though she specifically pointed to one: Early last year, Collins said, she helped organize an effort to defeat Pete Hegseth’s defense secretary nomination, though her effort ultimately didn’t work and the unqualified former Fox News host was confirmed.

“So that didn’t change the outcome,” the moderator replied.

Remember, Collins has faced one specific criticism throughout her re-election bid, and it was highlighted by The New York Times in a front-page article published this week. The senator and her team had plenty of time to come up with examples (any example!) to prove her critics wrong.

But she couldn’t. Then, presented with the opportunity and platform, Collins flubbed it, effectively proving the underlying point.

Whether Jackson and his party turn the debate exchange into a new campaign ad remains to be seen.

The post Pressed on her work with Trump, Maine’s Collins trips over key part of her record appeared first on MS NOW.

During a town hall event on CNN this week, Democratic Senate hopeful James Talarico voiced a sentiment that was well received by attendees: “We have an affordability crisis because we have a corruption crisis.”

The message has become increasingly common as the midterm election cycle has unfolded. Indeed, Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia, in particular, has built much of his 2026 candidacy on the proposition that corruption isn’t only a major national issue, it’s also the principal cause for the problems plaguing regular Americans in their everyday lives. “You aren’t the problem. Neither are your fellow Americans,” Ossoff routinely tells Georgians. “Corruption is why things don’t work for ordinary people.”

There’s fresh evidence that the argument is resonating with the public.

A Gallup poll released last month found that 89% of American adults believe that government corruption in the United States is widespread — up 10 points from a year ago, and 30 points from a Gallup survey conducted in 2006. Earlier this week, The Associated Press released the results of its latest national poll, which similarly found that most Americans believe that Donald Trump “is profiting off the presidency in unethical or illegal ways and is focused more on his wealth than helping people like them.”

But it was the latest Fox News poll that arguably surprised people most. The editorial board of The Washington Post noted:

President Donald Trump’s ouster of Kimberly Guilfoyle as ambassador to Greece this week reflected a belated recognition by the White House political team that corruption is a galvanizing issue in the midterms.

A Fox News poll released Wednesday indicates that corruption has become voters’ top concern, edging out inflation and gas prices. Six in 10 respondents said they’re “extremely concerned” about corruption. … The Fox News finding isn’t an outlier. An Economist-YouGov poll last month showed that most registered voters think Trump is corrupt. A Reuters poll in August revealed that almost 7 in 10 Americans — including about half of Republicans — believe Trump’s private business interests influence his presidential decisions.

These public attitudes are based on a lot more than just cynical assumptions. On a nearly daily basis, Americans are confronted with a fresh round of allegations surrounding the president and his team. “The cesspit of corruption that is Donald Trump’s presidency is finally getting the attention it deserves,” economist Paul Krugman recently observed. “It’s about time. … The level of corruption that Trump has engaged in and enabled in others is completely unprecedented — self-dealing that, as Trump would say, is like nothing anybody has ever seen before.”

This week, MS NOW host Catherine Rampell wrote a column for The Bulwark in which she added, “Donald Trump is robbing Americans blind.” The headline on her piece read, “Just. So. Much. Corruption.”

Voters’ attitudes on this should send a signal to policymakers about their post-election priorities. We’ll learn in a few weeks whether Democrats can win a majority in either (or both) of Congress’ chambers; but if they do, some will no doubt make the case that the party should focus almost entirely on kitchen-table issues.

And while such a strategy would make sense, the midterms are making clear that there’s a direct link between corruption and affordability — and there’s a real public appetite for accountability and reform.

The post Democrats have made corruption a key midterm issue. Polls show voters agree. appeared first on MS NOW.

In the months leading up to Texas’ Republican U.S. Senate primary, the party was divided into a couple of camps. On one side was incumbent Sen. John Cornyn, who enjoyed the enthusiastic backing of most GOP leaders and their aligned super PAC, and who was generally seen as a safe choice who would fare well in a general election.

On the other side was the senator’s intraparty challenger, state Attorney General Ken Paxton, who enjoyed support from the party’s MAGA base, despite being the most scandal-plagued candidate of his generation, and who was generally seen as an enormous risk.

There were reports that Donald Trump was tempted to play it safe, before he ultimately endorsed Paxton, who cruised to an easy primary victory. The results haven’t exactly gone the way the president likely hoped.

Over the past several weeks, a variety of high-quality polls have been conducted in the Lone Star State, and not one of them has shown Paxton leading Democratic state Rep. James Talarico. This has generated a fair amount of panic in GOP circles, where the idea of losing a Senate seat in Texas had been largely unthinkable as the year got underway.

With this in mind, Trump is now taking a predictable step: He’s trying to avoid blame for a possible electoral disaster. Indeed, the president published a lengthy tirade to his social media platform on Thursday afternoon in which he tried to pre-blame Republicans he doesn’t like for a defeat that hasn’t happened yet. From the online rant:

Sadly, and very stupidly, John Cornyn, and his Liddle’ Buddy, Super RINO, Karl Rove, are doing everything possible to make it hard for Ken Paxton, the Greatest Attorney General in the History of Texas, and one of the Best in the United States, to win the upcoming Midterm Election. … They are hurting Texas and, more importantly, hurting the United States of America!

If Ken Paxton loses, it will be because of WEAK and INEFFECTIVE Political Hacks like John Cornyn and Karl Rove, who have ineffectively opposed me for my entire political career.

As a factual matter, it’s true that Cornyn has done effectively nothing to help Paxton since their primary, but the suggestion that the senator is actively undermining his party’s nominee is difficult to take seriously (leaving aside the obvious contradiction of blaming a Paxton loss on “ineffective” opponents). The state attorney general’s troubles are his own fault, not Cornyn’s.

But these details are less striking than the implication that if Trump genuinely believed Paxton was well positioned to win, the president wouldn’t be looking to shift the blame for this race away from himself.

This is not to say that Talarico definitely will win — we should find out in 19 days — and with far-right megadonors throwing an enormous amount of money at Texas, it’s still possible that Elon Musk and company will successfully buy the seat for Paxton.

But Trump’s angry missive does not speak well of Paxton’s chances.

The post Fearing Ken Paxton’s defeat in Texas, Trump tries pre-blaming John Cornyn appeared first on MS NOW.

For White House press secretary Katie Zacharia, the past week has clearly been something of a whirlwind. It was, after all, just seven days ago when Donald Trump announced that the former conservative commentator would serve as his new chief spokesperson. Quite a bit has happened since.

Monday, Oct. 12: As Zacharia begins her tenure in the West Wing, multiple news organizations report on her extensive record of peddling unhinged conspiratorial nonsense via social media.

Tuesday, Oct. 13: Zacharia holds her first press briefing (with an emphasis on “brief”) and leaves little doubt that she is wholly unprepared for the job. One White House official tells MS NOW, “She needs to get much better, fast, otherwise she’ll break Scaramucci’s record,” referring to Anthony Scaramucci, who served as Trump’s communications director for 11 days in 2017.

Tuesday, Oct. 13: After her embarrassing train wreck, Zacharia, who has repeatedly identified herself as an attorney, is asked in which state she had passed the bar exam. The press secretary responds that she had “moved to China,” which didn’t make a lot of sense.

Wednesday, Oct. 14: The Campaign for Accountability files a bar complaint in California against the press secretary (Zacharia’s home is in the Golden State), alleging that she misrepresented her legal credentials.

Wednesday, Oct. 14: When Wired magazine asks Zacharia about her work with Beachbody, a fitness company that ran a multilevel marketing operation, she describes the business as “sort of a pyramid scheme.”

Wednesday, Oct. 14: A partner at the law firm Zacharia worked at in China tells The New York Times that it often hired foreigners for language assistance and to help Chinese staff understand foreign business culture. Though Zacharia claimed in the past to have worked on “international transaction law” at the firm, the partner tells the Times her role at the firm would have likely been similar to a paid internship.

Thursday, Oct. 15: Zacharia sits down with a radical conspiracy theorist for an interview on a conservative media outlet called Real America’s Voice. She concedes that she tried and failed to pass the California bar exam. This would be less of a problem were it not for Trump repeatedly mocking those who have failed bar exams as evidence of being unintelligent.

In the same interview, she blames her embarrassing briefing from earlier in the week on the fact that the briefing was in the morning, the day after a holiday.

Thursday, Oct. 15: Zacharia wraps up the day with an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, in which she continues to struggle.

oh my god this interview was a disaster for Zacharia. I've never seen Hannity do someone who works for Trump like this

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-10-16T01:25:27.499Z

Friday, Oct. 16: Zacharia returns to Fox News, where she’s asked if there’s anything she’d like to clean up from her troubled interview the night before.

I think it’s fair to say her first week could have gone better.

As speculation swirls about Zacharia’s future, there are a couple of questions hanging overhead for the White House team she recently joined.

First, did anyone on the president’s team make any effort to vet her before she was hired? Or was this a situation in which Trump simply saw someone make comments he liked during some cable news interviews?

Second, who thought it would be a good idea for the president to choose a new press secretary, three weeks before nationwide elections, have her move across the country, and throw her into a difficult role without any meaningful preparation?

Clearly, Zacharia is failing as the new press secretary, but there’s a fair amount of blame to go around for this fiasco.

The post Katie Zacharia’s attempts at damage control aren’t going especially well appeared first on MS NOW.

Today’s edition of quick hits.

* A case worth watching: “The Trump administration sued California election officials Thursday, asking a judge to bar the state from counting mail-in ballots for next month’s midterm elections from people the federal government has identified as ‘likely’ noncitizens until their status can be confirmed.”

* First, Donald Trump announced an “energy ceasefire” between Russia and Ukraine. Then, Russia ignored the deal, and now, Ukraine is retaliating in kind: “Ukraine attacked a Russian oil refinery Thursday, abandoning a brief truce involving energy-related targets that it said Moscow did not heed, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he felt betrayed by U.S. President Donald Trump.”

* On Wednesday night, in reference to the war with Iran that the American president launched, he told reporters, “As soon as I want it to end, it’ll end.” But if that’s the case, shouldn’t Trump explain why he doesn’t want it to end?

* Remember when Trump picked this guy to serve as the U.S. attorney general, and JD Vance invested time and effort, shepherding the Florida Republican around Capitol Hill?: “Former Rep. Matt Gaetz is facing allegations of sex trafficking by two women who filed a civil lawsuit against him and two other men in federal court Thursday.”

* I’ll be keeping an eye on this one: “Federal authorities are investigating letters containing ‘suspicious substances’ that were mailed to multiple congressional and election offices nationwide, law enforcement officials said Thursday.”

* This report is emblematic of the Republican senator’s entire career: “Two North Carolina lawyers recently tapped by President Donald Trump for lifetime posts on the federal bench managed to get sign-off from GOP Sen. Thom Tillis — despite their involvement in the high-profile prosecution of former FBI Director James Comey.”

* So many no-bid contracts: “It was early June, and the White House had an ‘urgent and compelling’ job: Four chandeliers needed to be installed in the West Wing. Why the rush? ‘In this particular case, the environment of the 250th anniversary, the birthday, and other events [redacted],’ reads a previously unreported contracting document dated June 5. … President Donald Trump’s 80th birthday fell the following Sunday — June 14 — the same night as the UFC fight on the White House lawn.”

* It’s proving to be quite a month for Kimberly Guilfoyle: “Eric Deters, the Republican donor who accused Kimberly Guilfoyle of asking him to wire her $100,000 to pay her American Express bill in exchange for her help with the Trump administration ahead of her Senate confirmation hearing, has filed a defamation lawsuit against Guilfoyle and her legal team.”

See you tomorrow.

The post Thursday’s Mini-Report, 10.15.26 appeared first on MS NOW.