WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2026
On Fifth Avenue, shot in the foot: It's one of the sitting president's most famous statements.
He was still just a candidate then. NPR reported this in January 2016:
Donald Trump: 'I Could...Shoot Somebody, And I Wouldn't Lose Any Voters'
With less than two weeks to go until the Iowa caucus, Donald Trump remains characteristically confident about his chances. In fact, the Republican front-runner is so confident, he says his supporters would stay loyal even if he happened to commit a capital offense.
"I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK?" Trump remarked at a campaign stop at Dordt College in Sioux Center, Iowa. "It's, like, incredible."
The businessman, whose Trump Tower stands on the major Manhattan thoroughfare, cracked the joke Saturday to a receptive audience at the Christian college.
Back then, it all seemed possible. For better or worse, much of it actually was!
Despite losing the popular vote, the imaginary shootist was elected president that year. Just last month, on October 11, the sitting president made a somewhat similar statement:
Trump Tells Cheering Crowd: ‘I Could Say the Stupidest Things and You’d Clap’
President Donald Trump spoke before an adoring crowd in Tennessee Saturday, telling his fans, “I could say the stupidest things and you’d clap.”
Trump questioned why he was even in Tennessee since Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN) and Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) were doing so well in their U.S. Senate and governor races, respectively.
“What am I doing in Tennessee?” Trump asked. “So, three times I won the election, the big election three times. I got screwed the second time because they cheated. They cheated. We cannot let that happen again."
[...]
“It’s like, like, I mean, it’s amazing. When you stand up here, it’s just like, the love,” Trump marveled. “I could say the stupidest things and you’d clap. ‘Oh, I love you so—’ It’s true.
“But we don’t say the stupidest things, we say things of common sense. We say things that make sense..."
So the gentleman said. He could say the stupidest things, he said. He then proceeded to prove it, saying for the ten millionth time that he was cheated out of his win in 2020, when he sought re-election.
We aren't here to beat up on President Trump today. In fact, though, he has insisted on saying the dumbest possible things—such as his endless claims about getting cheated in elections—and the things he says have been getting been dumber and weirder and stranger as the past year has struggled along.
Presumably, that's because of the "serious, undiagnosed and untreated psychiatric disorders" and the "obvious cognitive declines" attributed to him by nis niece. Presumably, those syndromes help explain his increasing volume of weird statements and erratic behaviors.
As a general rule, people who are seriously disordered or cognitively impaired haven't chosen to be so diminished. But as the president's statements got dumber and wilder, he was in effect shooting himself in the foot—and the statements got so dumb, and became so numerous, that he did shed millions of votes from millions of voters in the process.
He was now shooting himself on Fifth Avenue—shooting himself in the foot. As he did so, our journalists kept refusing to cover the medical possibilities, and the possible future dangers, involved in this state of affairs.
We start by saying that Scarborough's analysts were largely on target yesterday with respect to the Senate races. On yesterday's Morning Joe, these were their predictions about the number of Senate seats with which Democrats would emerge:
Senate seats to be held by Democrats:
Jonathan Martin: 53 seats
John Heilemann: 54 seats
Mark McKinnon: 55 seats
Claire McCaskill: 53 seats
Yesterday, those predictions seemed quite upbeat. In fact, Democrats are currently in line to hold 54 Senate seats, with Alaska and Mississippi still undecided. The number could go as high as 56!
Let us say it again. Joe Scarborough should be honored for having created the most intelligent discussions in American broadcast news.
This morning, Scarborough was trying to sort through all the victories produced by Democratic candidates. His favorite win was recorded by Gina Hinojosa, the new governor-elect of Texas. He saw her seven-point win over Greg Abbott, the incumbent Republican governor, as payback for all the mayhem aimed at Hispanics by ICE.
For ourselves, the wins we most love were those recorded by a pair of doctors named Annie and Amy—Annie Andrews in the South Carolina Senate race, Amy Acton in the race to serve as Ohio's governor.
We loved the messaging those savvy candidates presented. We think of Jim Burden, Willa Cather's the gender-flipped narrator of Willa Cather's My Antonia. We think of his admiration for the moral greatness of the immigrant women who came into Nebraska and managed to build the greatest and most prosperous farms in that emerging state.
Acton and Andrews and Bottoms oh my—and we pray that Candidate Peltola will find her way through in Alaska. In the face of the frequently ugly "masculinism" of MAGA World, we Blues turned to some brilliants messaging by some highly skilled female candidates to show us how to win in the states where Democrats struggle to win.
There's a great deal more to say about the various types of wins. We'll expect to go there tomorrow. For today, we'll flash back to this:
Earlier this year, the Supreme Court ruled, perhaps reasonably, against the creation of certain "safe seats" in House elections—"safe seats" built upon racial gerrymandering. When that happened, we suggested that we Blues should stop complaining and do this instead:
Dare to Struggle Dare to Win!
Dare to Struggle Dare to Win! Go out and win some freaking seats! In Mississippi, Scott Colom undertook to do just that on the Senate level.
As we type, Colom is ahead of the incumbent Republican senator by 43 votes, with some votes still being counted. We're hoping he scores a win. We're glad he decided to try.
At any rate, the sitting president has been shooting himself in the foot with dangerous gusto of late. In the process, he did manage to lose a very large number of voters!
A vast assortment of Democrats won. As he kept making his very strange comments, quite a few folks didn't clap.
Tomorrow: Key presentations from Talarico, Hamilton, El-Sayed and such
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