This is the Oct. 29, 2026, edition of “The Tea, Spilled by Morning Joe” newsletter. Subscribe here to get it delivered straight to your inbox Monday through Friday.

“These are not serious people. They don’t have solutions to actual problems, so they’d rather have the media and you talking about the Cheesecake Factory. That’s the game they’ve been playing for the last two years.”

— Former President Barack Obama, criticizing the Trump administration at a rally outside Atlanta yesterday

Modern political history offers few closing arguments as out of touch, self-defeating, or downright bizarre as the one President Donald Trump has made on the behalf of his fellow Republicans ahead of next week’s midterm elections.

As I write in my latest piece for The Atlantic:

Trump’s primary rationale for why voters should support the GOP, as best I can tell, is that the affordability crisis is a “hoax,” Bill Maher is a “loser,” and Sen. Jon Husted of Ohio has a nice physique.

That easy-to-mock message has been accompanied by a staggering number of missteps. Just for starters, he’s belittled the impact of his stalled war with Iran, sided with Russia as it continues to pummel Ukrainian cities, defended an attack ad from the GOP candidate for Ohio governor that repulsed other top Republicans, downplayed high energy prices while boasting that U.S. oil and gas companies are “making a freaking fortune,” embraced AI as the nation turns against it, obsessed over White House construction projects, and spent a lot of time talking about handsome men, Husted being just one.

I took a look at some of Trump’s recent rallies, and very few of the arguments he makes are actually helpful — or even relevant — to Republican candidates.

He’s broken key promises to drive down costs, deport only “the worst of the worst,” and stay out of foreign wars.

He’s on the wrong side of many of the day’s top issues.

And he now lives, even some Republicans privately think, in a gilded bubble, palling around with billionaires, oblivious to — and, even worse, uncaring about — the problems facing so many voters.

His approval rating has slipped to the low 30s, and he’s become so politically toxic that some Republicans in tight races don’t want him anywhere near their state or congressional district, fearing his rallies will do more harm than good.

Yet the president plans to spend much of his time on the campaign trail in the coming days, largely in deep red states now suddenly in play.

Read more in The Atlantic.

CHARTS OF THE DAY

Source: Gallup poll of 1,200 U.S. adults, conducted Oct. 1-19, 2026. Margin of error: ±4 percentage points

A CONVERSATION WITH ANNE APPLEBAUM

A new investigation in The Atlantic documents the suffering of civilians in Russian-occupied Oleshky, Ukraine — and warns of a Kremlin propaganda spectacle as American journalists prepare to visit under a humanitarian ceasefire credited to Melania Trump.

Anne Applebaum, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and staff writer at The Atlantic, joined “Morning Joe” today to discuss the upcoming media visit, the Trump administration’s approach to Ukraine, and her recent reporting from Venezuela.

JS: Your colleague Zarina Zabrisky has written about the horrors of Russian occupation in Oleshky. What happens to Ukrainians living under Russian control?

AA: When the Russians go into a piece of Ukraine and take it over, they murder the leaders. They arrest people who have Ukrainian flags or symbols. They set up concentration camps — they call them filtration camps — to interrogate people and sometimes torture them. They remove the Ukrainian language and change the school curriculums.

And they shoot dogs. Why? Because the dogs make noise and might attack soldiers, and the Russians want control. And of course, they also kidnap children.

JS: Ukraine has repeatedly sought a humanitarian ceasefire. Why is Russia agreeing now, just days before the midterms?

AA: Oleshky is a town that’s been deprived of food and outside medical supplies since December, so people have been starving. The Russians have finally agreed to a ceasefire, and they’ve credited Melania Trump. It seems to have been negotiated by her PR guy who did her documentary. They’re allowing in some reporters from Newsmax, and maybe Fox News.

JS: And what do you expect those American journalists will see?

AA: The belief is that there’s going to be a kind of propaganda show where people say, “Oh, we’ve always been well treated by the Russians.” These are all Ukrainians, and the concern is that they’ll be taken to Russia rather than allowed to cross the river to Kherson, which is under Ukrainian control.

It’s a real test of the integrity of those journalists. Will they help cover up what’s happened in places like Oleshky, or will they tell the real story?

WG: Can Ukraine survive with President Trump effectively throwing his lot in with Putin?

AA: This war is over when the Russians decide to stop fighting. What the Trump administration has done for the last year and a half is give the Russians the feeling that it’s worth continuing. In other words, the Kushner and Witkoff negotiations have prolonged the war. Having said that, the Ukrainian front line is holding. They are not about to collapse, and there’s no indication that they will stop fighting.

JS: And what about the pressure on Ukraine to give up territory?

AA: This is not a real estate deal. It’s not like, “Oh, we’ll give you this block for that block, and you can build your building.” When you give up territory, it means giving up people to this totalitarian regime. If surrender means the Russians come in, kill your leaders, kidnap your children, and destroy your culture, why would you stop fighting?

JL: You recently traveled to Venezuela. How does what you saw compare with the Trump administration’s account?

AA: What we’ve created is a coalition of two kleptocracies. You have the Trump administration doing very opaque oil deals with what was the Maduro regime. Now Venezuela is run by Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s former vice president.

But opposition leader María Corina Machado has just returned, and the scenes of joy show Venezuelans’ desire for democracy. They want to make their own decisions and have their oil benefit them.

Katty Kay: And what has changed in daily life for ordinary Venezuelans since Maduro’s departure?

AA: Not much. There’s still very high inflation. I went to a market in Caracas where the prices were written on a whiteboard because they have to be changed every day. People talk about the difficulties of paying for education for their kids. Everybody still thinks about emigration. The feeling is that they’re trapped and waiting for a change.

This conversation has been condensed and edited for brevity and clarity.

The post In the closing days, few of Trump’s arguments are actually helpful — or even relevant — to Republican candidates appeared first on MS NOW.

From MS Now.