Trump Gives Bonkers Defense for Doxing Tom Cotton

The president feels absolutely no remorse about doxing Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton.

Donald Trump rationalized the stunning overstep while speaking with reporters Saturday, defending the decision to post Cotton’s personal phone number as a method to pressure him into bending to Trump’s position on daylight saving time.

“We want to get away from this ridiculous way and custom of—every twice a year, turning your clocks back, turning your clocks forward, being late to dinner, being late for very important meetings, it’s ridiculous,” Trump said.

“We don’t want to change clocks twice a year. It’s very expensive, it’s got many problems,” Trump continued.

The House passed the Sunshine Protection Act in July, moving to officially do away with the notion of daylight savings within the 50 states. But Cotton’s staunch opposition to the bill—largely over the prospect of dark winter mornings—has stalled its progress in the Senate.

While addressing the matter on the Senate floor last year, Cotton warned that in some parts of Arkansas, sunrise would not occur until after 8 a.m. if they chose to do away with daylight savings, forcing children, commuters, farmers, and construction workers to begin their days in darkness.

“No one likes changing the clock, me included, but Congress has enacted permanent Daylight Savings Time multiple times before and repealed it each time once Americans experienced absurdly late sunrises in the winter,” Cotton wrote on X Saturday, responding to Trump’s remarks. “Arkansans don’t want their kids going to school in the pitch dark, and I’ll always put Arkansas first.”

Trump’s pressure campaign was not as well received by Cotton’s fellow Senate Republicans, however. In an interview with NBC News, Louisiana Senator John Kennedy said that Trump “can go from zero to a–hole in about three seconds.”

“Every now and then, there are disputes in Congress that have existential significance for the future of Western civilization. Daylight savings time is not one of them,” Kennedy told Kristen Welker on Sunday. “I don’t think he should have given out Tom’s cell phone number. I don’t think that’s going to help convince Tom.”

Former White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt—who resigned from her post in August to spend more time with family after birthing her second child—just got a new job at Fox News.

“Karoline’s firsthand experience in the White House and on the presidential campaign trail gives her a distinct understanding of today’s political landscape,” Fox News Media chief executive Suzanne Scott said in a statement.

In her own statement, Leavitt promised to bring “the unique perspective and candor that defined my tenure with the Trump administration.”

Leavitt joined the Trump administration in 2019, and in 2024 ran an unsuccessful campaign for Congress in New Hampshire before returning to serve as White House press secretary. She was the youngest press secretary ever at 28 years old, and has still not been replaced. She often made headlines for complete falsities, lying about Trump blocking $50 million worth of condoms to Gaza, blaming a deadly collision between a military helicopter and an American Airlines flight on DEI, calling the Epstein files a “Democratic hoax,” and saying that wrongly deported Salvadoran national Kilmar Ábrego García was a “foreign terrorist” and “MS-13 gang member” who was “engaged in human trafficking.” All lies.

Trump’s “machine gun” will appear across various shows and time blocks on the right-wing network, using her voice and institutional legitimacy to push what will likely be an unapologetically pro-Trump agenda.

In a leaked audio recording, Texas Attorney General and Republican Senate nominee Ken Paxton lamented that he isn’t in control of his own campaign. 

At a fundraiser in September, Paxton spoke candidly about his flailing campaign, according to the recording shared with Politico and published Monday.  

“I’ve never been in a race where I felt less control over the campaign and, like, what issues are going to matter because it’s all coming—you know—from D.C.,” he said. “I don’t control the message or what we’re doing.

“I don’t have ability to change anything,” Paxton continued. “So I have to live with whatever I’ve got. So it is a challenge.”

The audio was leaked by someone who does not support Paxton, and confirmed by another attendee. One attendee said that Paxton never specifically referred to Donald Trump’s team. Nick Maddux, Paxton’s campaign adviser, said that the candidate was “obviously” referring to the fact that campaigns don’t coordinate with super PACs. 

Trump has repeatedly pledged his desire to see Paxton elected but hesitated to commit any part of his $400 million MAGA Inc. war chest to help him win. Instead, Trump has focused on making the midterm elections a referendum on his own presidency. Last month, Trump held a fundraiser in Houston that was touted as a lifeline to Paxton’s campaign—but the money actually went to the Republican National Convention, according to The Wall Street Journal. 

Paxton has long struggled to match Democratic candidate James Talarico’s funding. According to their latest quarterly filings with the Federal Election Commission, Talarico’s campaign had raked in $31.6 million, while Paxton only raised $9.3 million. The latest New York Times/Sienna poll found that Paxton was six points behind Talarico. 

This is the second piece of audio leaked about Paxton. Last month, the attorney general was caught trashing Trump’s disastrous midterm convention.

The Trump administration is watching Brazil’s presidential election results closely.

Over the weekend, right-wing candidate Flávio Bolsonaro, a son of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and President Trump’s preferred candidate, advanced to a runoff with incumbent President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, a leftist.

The White House has done all it can to boost Bolsonaro and cement Trump’s influence over Latin America. Trump has backed conservative allies in Colombia as well as Argentina and kidnapped Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro. The day after Maduro was brought to the U.S., in January, the State Department posted a picture on social media with Trump and the slogan, “This is OUR hemisphere.”

In total, seven right-wing candidates have won presidential elections across Latin America in the last 18 months, with Trump publicly backing most of them.

“We’re doing very well in South America,” Trump said in September. “Lots of people that I got elected.”

Trump was a strong supporter of the elder Bolsonaro, and they share some odious similarities. Bolsonaro refused to accept losing Brazil’s 2022 elections to Lula, and his supporters stormed government buildings in response. Unlike in the U.S., Bolsonaro and his allies were arrested and put on trial for the coup attempt, with investigators uncovering a plot to kill Lula and his running mate.

Trump’s response was to threaten the country with exorbitant tariffs over the “witch hunt,” as he put it, in July 2025. Undeterred, Lula went ahead with Bolsonaro’s trial and the former president was convicted and sentenced to 27 years in prison. In May this year, Lula and Trump had a frosty meeting with no cameras at the White House. Then, as elections neared, Trump dispatched two State Department officials to investigate “electoral integrity,” only for Brazil to deny their visas and accuse them of interfering in the country’s elections.

Lula used Trump’s efforts in his reelection campaign, accusing Flávio Bolsonaro of being “Trump’s candidate,” and called out Trump at the United Nations General Assembly last month. It remains to be seen whether those efforts will help Lula to win the October 25 runoff.

Two recent polls show that the majority of Latino voters have all but abandoned President Trump—reaffirming a development that’s been brewing since he returned to office and began his draconian immigration crackdown.

The new NBC News/Telemundo poll has Latinos going for Democrats by a margin of 59 percent in the upcoming midterm elections, almost doubling their support from 2024. The new CBS News/YouGov poll tells a similar story, with 60 percent of Latino voters preferring Democratic House candidates. Overall, 69 percent of Latino voters disapprove of President Trump’s performance ahead of the midterms.

This comes two years after Trump won a groundbreaking 42 percent of them, sparking discourse about a new multicultural Republican coalition. That dream seems to be all but dead, as those same voters have responded extremely negatively to Trump’s handling of the economy, his lack of action on the affordability crisis, and his mass deportation campaign.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that these voters will automatically turn out for Democrats now—more Latinos (42 percent) still have a negative view of the party, as it has not fully taken advantage of two years of violent arrests, kidnappings, shootings, pepper balls, and killings.