Ted Cruz Is Hanging On by the Skin of His Teeth, Republican Poll Warns

Ted Cruz is hanging on by a thread in his Texas Senate race, according to internal polling from a GOP super PAC.

A memo from the Senate Leadership Fund obtained by Politico shows serious trouble for Cruz and several other Republicans in competitive Senate races this November. Indeed, the majority of the candidates listed are losing their races.

In his race against Democratic challenger Colin Allred, Cruz is up by only one point according to the super PAC. The document notes that Allred “has been heavily outspending” on television ads.

The Democratic former professional football player has run a noticeably different campaign from Beto O’Rouke’s in 2018, skipping surrogates and large barnstorms and opting for a more moderate approach. Despite running a more centrist campaign, Allred has been buoyed by Democrats’ exceptional fundraising. In the third quarter, Allred raised $30 million to Cruz’s $21 million across three different fundraising accounts. The Senate Leadership Fund noted that increasing GOP outside spending is perhaps the only way to keep Cruz’s lead for the Senate seat. The numbers are so bad that Cruz is often begging for donations in his media appearances.

The other major “trouble-spot” noted in the memo is Nebraska’s Senate seat, where incumbent Republican Senator Deb Fischer is being challenged by  independent candidate and former union president Dan Osborn. The polls are so inconclusive the super PAC said it needs to “assess whether intervention is necessary to protect the seat.”

The polling also shows Republicans majorly trail in swing states like Michigan and Ohio, as well as Maryland by as much as eight points, but the the super PAC still tried to delusionally spin that the “environment is ripe for a GOP win.”

Republican leaders want you to ignore the evidence of your eyes and ears as they rewrite their narrative about the 2020 presidential election.

In the waning days leading into Election Day 2024, some of Trump’s closest allies are refusing to yield to the truth: that Trump lost the last election—a bad omen ahead of November.

On Sunday, ABC News’s Martha Raddatz pressed Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance on why he wouldn’t admit that Trump didn’t win during the last election cycle.

“I’m just going to assume that if I asked you 50 times whether he lost the election, you would not acknowledge that he did. Is that correct?” Raddatz asked.

“Martha, you ask this question, I’ve been asked this question 10 times in the past couple of weeks. Of course Donald Trump and I believe there were problems in 2020, you haven’t asked about inflation—” Vance began.

“No, no, I’m sorry. Let’s stick to this. I know, I know—Why won’t you say that? Why won’t you say that?” Raddatz continued, attempting to hold Vance to the question as he bulldozed over her audio.

“Because Martha I believe that in 2020 when big tech firms were censoring American citizens, that created very serious problems,” Vance responded after some time. “By the way Martha, you’re a journalist, you represent the American media. Look at the polling on this. A lot of Americans feel like they were silenced in the run-up to the 2020 election. That is such a bigger issue.”

“If you—I just want to—but I don’t understand why you won’t just say that you believe it,” Raddatz interjected.

“Just say what? That I think the 2020 election had some problems? I’ve said that repeatedly,” Vance threw back.

“Did Donald Trump lose? That’s the question, and you know that’s the question,” Raddatz said.

“Martha, I’ve said repeatedly that I think the 2020 election had problems. You want to say rigged, you want to say he won, use whatever vocabulary term you want,” Vance said, returning to his talking point about Facebook’s alleged censorship. “The fact that you’re so obsessed with what word I used to describe this phenomenon rather than the phenomenon itself suggests something very broken in the American media.”

But Trump’s right-hand man isn’t the only MAGA ally to aggressively skirt a confession about the results of the 2020 election. Speaking with NBC News’s Meet the Press on Sunday, House Speaker Mike Johnson couldn’t help but qualify his answer as to whether he would certify the results of the upcoming election, regardless of who wins.

“Regardless of who wins, you’ll certify the results?” asked Kristen Welker.

“Regardless? Of course, yes, if the election is free and fair and legal, and we pray and hope that it is, there’s a lot of work being done to make sure that’s true,” Johnson said. “I think this one’s going to be so large there’ll be no question. I think Donald J. Trump is your next president, and that can’t happen soon enough.”

When Welker pointed out that saying “if” the election is fair, as well as Trump’s continued lack of a concession over the 2020 vote, was likely to undermine voter confidence in the upcoming election, Johnson was quick to brush off her concerns.

“The point is the process works. We have the peaceful transfer of power. We did in 2020,” he said, conveniently ignoring the fact that an armed and violent mob stormed the Capitol to try to prevent that transfer of power.

Donald Trump’s baseless attacks against federal relief efforts for Hurricane Helene came to life over the weekend, when officials in North Carolina reported encountering truckloads of militia members “out hunting FEMA.”

An official with the U.S. Forest Service, which is assisting in relief efforts in North Carolina, sent several federal agencies an urgent warning Saturday afternoon, according to The Washington Post.

“FEMA has advised all federal responders Rutherford County, NC, to stand down and evacuate the county immediately,” the official said.

FEMA’s message warned that National Guard troops “had come across x2 trucks of armed militia saying they were out hunting FEMA.”

The Forest Service official told the Post that responders had been relocated to a “safe area” but that the incident had paused efforts to clear roads of debris, deliver supplies, and aid in search and rescue operations.

This incident follows weeks of toxic misinformation about federal assistance amplified by Trump and other MAGA Republicans. The Republican presidential nominee has repeatedly criticized federal relief efforts, and falsely claimed that $1 billion was redirected away from FEMA to help undocumented immigrants.

This incident also comes shortly after MAGA Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene boosted an antisemitic conspiracy theory positing that the government controls the weather, which then was echoed in slews of antisemitic attacks against FEMA’s Director Jaclyn Rothenberg.

On Friday, Trump took to Truth Social to claim that North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper and other Democratic leaders “were blocking people and money from coming into North Carolina to help people in desperate need.”

Cooper slammed Trump’s claim, calling it a “flat out lie.”

“We’re working with all partners around the clock to get help to people. Trump’s lies and conspiracy theories have hurt the morale of first responders and people who lost everything, helped scam artists and put government and rescue workers in danger,” Cooper wrote in a post on X.

It seems Trump’s words have the potential to hurt more than morale, as residents are now reportedly taking up arms against relief workers. In the end, Trump’s own conspiracies are preventing the swift recovery of the region, which, ironically, is mostly home to his own supporters.

A MAGA influencer is trying to spread a nasty rumor about Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz. The issue is it reads more like fan fiction than facts.

“DocNetyoutube,” whom Washington Post media reporter Will Sommer describes as “an up-and-coming new player in the ‘making things up’ corner of online Trumpworld,” claims he has proof that Walz sexually assaulted a student during his time as a high school teacher.

In a series of “drops,” a term popular in the QAnon community, DocNetyoutube on Sunday posted several alleged screenshots of communications between himself and Walz’s anonymous victim. But the posts have several red flags about their authenticity.

The email dates are formatted in an inconsistent way, with misplaced commas and strange text alignment. Another clue is what appears to be a typing cursor that still appears on the screenshots, indicating that the internet personality most likely wrote them himself.

Much of DocNetyoutube’s conspiracy hinges on him breaking the news of a student who went to a concert with Walz and his wife while the couple were teachers at the same Nebraska school. The story isn’t new. The New York Times published this story in August, noting that after the anonymous gay student confided in them, the couple took them to an Indigo Girls concert, a rare queer-friendly event in the area.

But on Sunday, the MAGA conspiratorial account tried to claim that the media was “trying to get out in front of this story,” instead of acknowledging that he was publishing old news. The internet personality claimed to have a “statement from the victim” to prove the legitimacy of the posts. The anonymous statement noted that Walz has a Chinese symbol tattooed on his upper thigh. “I remember he explained to me what it meant, but I do not recall at this time,” the supposed student wrote in the statement. In the comments on X, MAGA users quickly spun out about whether Walz could have gotten that tattoo laser removed or could have done a skin graft procedure. Very normal stuff.

Baselessly calling Walz a groomer is nothing new. Laura Loomer has previously spread similarly vague allegations against Walz. “There’s a reason why he shakes his wife’s hand and panders to the gay community, and it’s not because he’s awkward.… It will all come out,” she wrote on X in August, citing no evidence.

Several X-verified QAnon accounts have also spread the claims far and wide, boosted by Elon Musk’s algorithm. Earlier this month, the pro-QAnon podcast “RedPill78” interviewed an anonymous man who alleged he was a former foreign exchange student at Walz’s high school who was inappropriately touched by the Democrat.

Previously, terminally online Republicans also tried to push the narrative that Walz was grooming children by being the faculty adviser of the newly formed Gay-Straight Alliance at his Minnesota school. In reality, queer students appreciated his support. “It was important to have a person who was so well-liked on campus, a football coach who had served in the military,” one former student at the school told The New York Times. “Having Tim Walz as the adviser of the Gay-Straight Alliance made me feel safe coming to school.”

Since that talking point didn’t stick, it appears they had to escalate. Of course credible assault allegations should always be taken seriously. But if Republicans don’t want to vote for someone who has touched someone inappropriately, perhaps they shouldn’t vote for the convicted rapist.

At a campaign rally in Arizona Sunday, Donald Trump denied reports that he is showing signs of cognitive decline, attacking critics for singling out his mispronunciations.

“They watch for weeks and weeks. For weeks and weeks, I’m up here ranting and raving. Last night, a hundred thousand people. Flawless. Ranting and raving. I’m ranting and raving. Not a mistake. And then, I’ll be at a little thing and I’ll say something a little bit like ‘The.’ I’ll say ‘duh.’ They’ll say he’s cognitively impaired,” Trump said.

“No, I’ll let you know when I will be. I will be someday, we all will be someday, but I’ll be the first to let you know,” Trump added.

Trump has in fact continued to sound more erratic and bizarre as the presidential race enters its final weeks. At a Wisconsin rally just over a week ago, he compared himself to a fly, struggled to pronounce words like “Midwestern” and “evangelicals,” and spread misinformation about Hurricane Helene. In a New York rally in September, he stumbled over words like “migrants” and “Russia” and had trouble stringing sentences together.

His cognitive decline was evident to everyone watching the first (and almost certainly last) presidential debate with Kamala Harris, where Trump went on long-winded rants unrelated to the questions asked.

Trump’s speech patterns and alertness look very different from eight years ago, and psychology researchers see compelling evidence that Trump is significantly less sharp than he was at the start of his presidency, with increasingly incoherent speech. The media is finally starting to give the issue attention, which probably prompted the media-obsessed former president to bring up his cognitive decline at his rally. But will all of this evidence convince voters that Trump should not return to the White House? Right now, polls are showing the race between Trump and Harris to be nearly deadlocked.