Welcome to the Jim Acosta Morning Memo on a Midterm Monday morning after Trump spent the weekend partying and rallying and watching Haley Stevens drop a bomb in a razor-thin Senate race.
Lace up your gloves and let’s go!
Haley’s Vomit: Leading off with the big news of the weekend, Congresswoman Haley Stevens dropped a bomb on Sunday when she toured Detroit with MAGA Mike Rogers and announced she’s endorsing him over Abdul El-Sayed. Here’s her decision in a nutshell.
Michigan is a swing state, and I have a divided household, as some of you have heard, up until last night. But even my own mother cast her vote for Mike Rogers, as my own father cast his vote for Abdul.
This is a very close election. We all know that. But Abdul made very clear that I was not welcome in his campaign, that he didn’t need me there, that he didn’t want me there.
Abdul Keeps Cool: El-Sayed responded to the news at a press conference by largely staying on message.
But when pressed by reporters, here is what he had to say about Haley Stevens.
Ad Hominem: Stevens lost a bitter primary race to El-Sayed, but had endorsed him and was in talks to appear with him this weekend.
Some have chalked this up to lingering sour grapes, but the rift erupted ostensibly over her demand that El-Sayed denounce a third-party ad that critics have decried as anti-Semitic.
El-Sayed had no connection to the ad.
Endorsing Racism: Regardless of the reason, Stevens has thrown her support behind a man who champions Trump’s every despicable instinct, and with whom he has run a shockingly racist campaign against El-Sayed.
What’s more, she did so just hours after Trump explicitly made one of those attacks while he praised Stevens at a Halloween party at Mar-a-Lago.
That is a stink that simply will not wash off. In a few hours, we’ll know what effect it had, if any.
It’s here! Looking for the very best in election coverage? Follow the Midterms right here for commentary and real-time election results and analysis from experts across Substack.
MAAP Check: just hours before the votes are cast. There are currently ten “tough call” races in the Senate, only four of which favor Republicans at the moment.
If you run the best-case scenario, where Democrats take every close Senate race, you get a whopping 58 Democratic seats when the dust settles.
Go check out the full MAAP for yourselves and go ahead and use our scenario-builder to make your own map and share it on social media.
Flipping Out And Flip-Flopping:
