Republican Candidate Publishes AI Prompt About Trump’s Unpopularity

Minnesota GOP House candidate Eric Pratt accidentally left an artificial intelligence prompt up on his website that showed him asking the AI tool to avoid talking about President Trump due to his dismal approval ratings. 

“Residents want everyday purchases to be affordable, bad actors to be held accountable, and for their reps to lead with common sense,” the prompt reads. “The President is not popular, so all messaging should be focused on local politics and needs.”

While it has since been taken down, the mistake can still be viewed via the Wayback Machine.  

While it’s a bit bleak that a congressional candidate used AI to speak for him on his own website, Pratt’s gaffe reaffirms one of the most consistent dynamics of this midterm cycle: Trump’s tenure and record are a negative for Republicans going into November, not a plus. Gas prices are high due to the Iran war he started. Communities across the country are still being terrorized by immigration agents. Inflation has only gotten worse with tariffs. 

Things are getting so bad internally that candidates and GOP operatives are privately complaining about the hard place Trump has stuck them in. Texas Senate hopeful Ken Paxton called Trump a “drag” on his campaign in a leaked audio clip earlier this month. One GOP source told Politico that Trump’s unpopularity had made midterms “a lot more difficult to navigate.”  

“He has constantly been distracted and not focused on what the voters care about. It’s insane,” said another.

This all comes as Trump’s approval rating hits a record low, at 33 percent according to a recent Washington Post poll. 

Pratt has yet to offer comment on his own situation, but the prompt does not inspire confidence in his chances against Democratic opponent Matt Little, especially in Minnesota’s 2nd district—a community that has seen perhaps the darkest side of the Trump administration in the wake of the killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good. Pratt will have an uphill battle. The AI prompt certainly isn’t doing him any favors. 

Vivek Ramaswamy’s disgusting campaign advertisement featuring his opponent Amy Acton’s estranged mother is already backfiring.

The Ohio GOP gubernatorial nominee’s team finally claimed credit Tuesday for an ugly attack ad featuring Donna Arthur, who lost custody of Acton after years of documented issues, including homelessness and sexual abuse by a stepfather. In the video, Arthur accused her daughter of lying about her upbringing.

The video did not originally include any sponsors or political disclosures. Now Ramaswamy’s campaign is paying $4 million to stream the ad because it did well with “persuadable” voters, Axios reported. It’s a surprising move considering that the rhetoric was so far afield from responsible campaigning that even Republicans are recoiling.

Meghan McCain slammed the “dastardly” ad, and Utah Senator Mike Lee’s longtime aide Dan Hauser publicly apologized for sharing it online.

A Republican operative close to Ramaswamy’s campaign told Politico’s Playbook Wednesday: “It’s so gross to forsake family members for politics. I think it’s bad. It’s just morally bad.”

Another senior GOP operative familiar with MAGA Inc.’s strategy told Playbook: “If Republicans are failing to lay out a reason to come vote for them and saying, ‘Here’s what I, as a candidate, am for, what I am going to do to make your economics better,’ there’s a good chance they’re going to lose.”

Not only does the advertisement fail to deliver a closing argument, but more than anything, it serves to resurface Acton’s devastating family history and remind people why they hate Ramaswamy so much in the first place.

The ad is reminiscent of his clash with former Republican presidential hopeful Nikki Haley, when he brought up her daughter during a debate. In response to his latest low blow, Haley said Tuesday: “He’s a bad guy. It’s a shame he continues to get away with it.”

Acton’s campaign responded with its own advertisement Tuesday, in which her brother Philip Stearns discussed the abuse they experienced as children. “I experienced a lot of abuse, but Amy always got the worst of it,” he said.

“Shame on Vivek. It’s the contempt he has for Amy. It’s the contempt he has for Ohio. He’s not fit to lead,” he added.

Trump administration envoy Steve Witkoff thinks Russian President Vladimir Putin is a “humanitarian.”

The comment came after Russia on Wednesday released 74-year-old Stephen James Hubbard, an American who spent four years locked up under accusations of being a Ukrainian mercenary.

“He’s a 75-year-old man. You talk so much about my president, President Trump, being a humanitarian,” Witkoff said to Putin. “You are a humanitarian also, sir, and I salute that. I commend you.”

Hubbard was no mercenary, and the Russian president is no humanitarian. In reality, Hubbard was a Michigan native who lived a nomadic lifestyle, entering a relationship with a Ukrainian woman and choosing to stay in the country when the relationship ended. He was arrested by Russia in 2022 and was tortured and starved while in prison.

This rhetoric from Witkoff—a former real estate developer who has somehow become the most trusted international diplomat aside from Trump’s own son-in-law, Jared Kushner—was widely panned.

“No. Putin is stone cold killer,” Republican Senator John Cornyn wrote, opposing the Trump administration’s fealty to the Kremlin.

“Absurd simpering obsequiousness from a representative of the most powerful country on earth, and another American humiliation, to add to the growing, growing list,” Jimmy Rushton of The Kyiv Independent said.

Putin is also currently wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court, as his war on Ukraine has resulted in the deaths of at least 125,000 Ukrainian soldiers and 15,000 civilians. He has also created a Ukrainian refugee crisis, forcing millions of people to flee their homes since he began his invasion in 2022.

Democratic nominee for Congress and former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander was detained by the Israeli military in the occupied West Bank Wednesday morning. 

“I’ve been detained by the IDF, along with a group of rabbis & volunteers. We were simply harvesting olives in a grove near Nehalim in the West Bank,” Lander posted on X with a picture from a bus showing Israeli soldiers standing at the front. “The occupation is a crime under international law. Harvesting olives isn’t a crime under any law I know.”

Lander was among 90 volunteers with Rabbis for Human Rights who were detained near Nahalin, a village close to Bethlehem, while helping Palestinian farmers harvest olives. The group told The Jerusalem Post that the farmers weren’t able to access their groves for three years.  

According to the Post, Israeli troops arrived two hours after work had started and declared the area a closed military zone. The volunteers agreed to leave the area, but were still detained. The group was mixed between foreign activists and Israeli citizens. 

Lander posted a video about his trip before he was detained, saying, “Our goals for the trip are to help protect the olive harvest—and to shed a light on the reality of the occupation. To ensure that international solidarity goes beyond the harvest, to become a sustained commitment to protecting Palestinian communities from settler violence, forced displacement, and the ongoing threats to their right to remain on their land.”  

Lander’s detention comes after Washington Post journalist Heidi Levine was beaten and robbed by Israeli settlers at an olive tree grove in the West Bank last week. U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee issued a rare condemnation of the attack, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed the facts of the “alleged” attack are still under investigation. They have yet to comment on Lander’s detention by Israeli forces.  

Texas’s five biggest counties smashed voter turnout records on the state’s first day of early voting in the midterm elections.

Harris, Dallas, Bexar, Travis, and Tarrant counties all eclipsed early voting records for at least two of the last three elections, Sawyer Hackett, a political strategist, posted on X Tuesday. Some of those records were set during President Donald Trump’s last midterm elections, in 2018.

Voter turnout was high in the few counties won by former Vice President Kamala Harris during the 2024 presidential election. In Harris County, the state’s most populous county, more than 104,600 people cast their ballots on Monday. That breaks the previous midterm record set in 2018, when 63,188 votes were cast and Democrats went on to recapture the House.

In Dallas County, home to more than two million people, 76,079 voters cast their ballots, eclipsing the 2018 midterm record of 59,389, Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins reported.

In Bexar County, 42,776 voters cast their ballots on the first day of early voting—the highest first-day turnout for a midterm election or non-presidential election in the county’s history.

In Travis County, 40,777 voters cast their ballots, surpassing records from 2022 and 2018, according to the county clerk’s office.

Turnout was also high in some counties where Trump was more popular—but that doesn’t mean Republicans have sealed the deal. In Tarrant County, 50,149 voters cast ballots, a 20 percent increase in voter turnout from 2018. Trump previously won Tarrant county by five points in 2024, after President Joe Biden flipped the county in 2020.