🤬 How Are Democrats This Dumb!?

Peter Rothpletz on liberals fumbling what should have been their best week of the Trump era, calls for “hooligan Halligan” to be disbarred, and Nicki Minaj addressing the United Nations?

On this day, in 1945, the Nuremberg war trials began as 24 Nazi leaders were put on trial before judges representing the victorious Allied powers. I can’t believe I have to say this in the year of our Lord 2025, but, yes, Nazis are bad!

Good morning! Peter here with a heart full of gratitude for my Zeteo colleague Swin for covering for me yesterday. The man is a champ. I missed you all very much, but I won’t lie… my event Tuesday evening was freakin’ awesome. 👀 Peep the bottom of the newsletter for a photo of me and friend of Zeteo Jennifer Welch canoodling.

In today’s ‘First Draft,’ Democrats on Capitol Hill fail to fully capitalize on Donald Trump’s political humiliation, the president agrees to meet with Zohran Mamdani, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers is cancelled for his chummy communications with Jeffrey Epstein, the California gubernatorial race gets even more crowded, and Mike Waltz declares himself the “Honorary Ambassador to the Barbz.”

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Dems in Disarray… Again…

US Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries arrives for a press conference with House Democrats to speak about healthcare and the planned vote to end the government shutdown outside the US Capitol on Nov. 12, 2025. Photo by Saul LoebAFP via Getty Images

Late yesterday, in an act of total, complete, and highly uncharacteristic surrender, Donald Trump announced on social media that he would bend to overwhelming, bipartisan political pressure and finally, at long last, call on his Justice Department to disclose the information it has related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

“I HAVE JUST SIGNED THE BILL TO RELEASE THE EPSTEIN FILES,” Cheeto Benito bellowed – yes, in all caps – with laughably faux confidence. “As everyone knows, I asked Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, to pass this Bill in the House and Senate, respectively. Because of this request, the votes were almost unanimous in favor of passage.”

Sure, Jan.

Make no mistake, this week represents possibly the single greatest humiliation Donald Trump has experienced not just this year… but this decade, the entirety of the Trump era, since he descended from that ghastly, gaudy, golden escalator in 2015.

The House approved the Epstein bill with a 427-1 vote, despite unprecedented carrot and nuclear stick tactics deployed to whip lawmakers like Reps. Lauren Boebert and Nancy Mace. Obviously, they failed.

One might imagine Democrats would be seizing upon this moment in every way conceivable. FINALLY, the party is united. FINALLY, the Bad Orange Man is folding like a Temu-ordered suit, FINALLY – yeah, you’re wrong. Sorry! And I’m truly apologetic because I worship the rule of three.

After succeeding in properly wounding Trump for the first time in a decade, wounding him to such an extent that ALL BUT ONE member of the House GOP voted for releasing the Epstein files, Dems are… Jesus Christ… yes, they are indeed in disarray.

Because instead of riding this wave, instead of letting Trump’s humiliation marinate in the public consciousness, the Dems promptly catapulted themselves face-f*cking-first into two entirely avoidable dumpster fires.

Let’s start with how they decided to defend the indefensible: putting a Captain America shield over ostensibly either a moronic or morally suspect member of their caucus.

In the generally Trump-centric nuclear waste dump that was the Epstein files, the country learned that Democratic Rep. Stacey Plaskett literally received talking points from the *AT THE TIME* **KNOWN** sex pest during a congressional hearing. That is to say… Plaskett was LITERALLY being fed questions from an infamous predator.

Now, in my ideal version of the Democratic Party, a lawmaker who cozies up with pedophiles should be shot straight to the 95th moon of Jupiter. But in my just-clears-the-bar version of the Democratic Party, that lawmaker would at least be called out by her fellow members after said pedophile becomes America’s most famous pedophile. In the actually-exists version of the Democrat Party, we have normally highly principled Rep. Jamie Raskin proclaiming that Plaskett just “took a phone call from one of her constituents.” What. The. Actual… You know the rest… Is that how Raskin would defend a Chicago lawmaker texting with Al Capone? What the heck are we doing here?

If all of this was not enough, Democrats are now rallying around… undermining democracy. Congresswoman Marie Gluesenkamp Perez is under IMMENSE fire for calling for a vote condemning Rep. Chuy Garcia for resigning and telling nobody but his chief of staff in time for candidates to register for the primary.

What’s more, per Axios, some progressive caucus members are discussing a retaliatory measure or two against Rep. Gluesenkamp Perez for her efforts to rebuke García.

Now, here’s what’s tough… Garcia has a stellar progressive record – and he’s been EXTREMELY clear-eyed about the genocide in Gaza. Gluesenkamp Perez has not. What’s more, her voting record leaves a lot, A LOT, to be desired.

But here is where I present my hot take: election integrity is important. You know, the take Democrats argued 23 seconds ago?

This seems like common sense!

And yet, we have nominally progressive – and often very compelling – Congressman Greg Casar claiming that “The only resolution about Congressman Chuy García that should be considered by Congress is one to honor and thank him for his many years of excellent public service.”

Ummm…no.

Casar and his team should be utterly ashamed of that statement.

García has done many years of excellent public service, but we should be open in condemning him for saying voters in Illinois don’t matter at the same time as we are trying to argue voters across the country must be protected from Trump’s fascist attempts to gerrymander and undermine democracy.

The issue at hand is not that Democrats are, for once, failing to stand up for what is right. The issue, this week, is that they are harming themselves politically in order to stand up for what is wrong.

And doing so the very week that Donald Trump is finally being hung by his own conspiratorial petard via the Epstein files is the very textbook definition of political malpractice.

🗞️ What You Need to Know

• Dummy vs. Mamdani: President Trump announced late yesterday that he will meet with “Communist Mayor of New York City, Zohran ‘Kwame’ Mamdani” in the Oval Office on Friday. Get your popcorn!

• Summers’ Winter: Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers announced his resignation from OpenAI’s board and stepped away from his teaching duties at Harvard University, despite initially saying he would continue serving as a professor, after newly released emails revealed his oh-so cozy friendship with Jeffrey Epstein.

• Flying blind: The Bureau of Labor Statistics will not release October’s jobs report, citing the agency’s inability to collect data during the government shutdown. The move will leave economists without a key economic health indicator amid warnings of a looming recession. Data, WHO NEEDS IT!?

• New Newsom?: Billionaire philanthropist and climate activist Tom Steyer has officially joined the race to replace term-limited California Governor Gavin Newsom. Steyer is the latest to announce his bid, following the likes of former Rep. Katie Porter and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. Personally, I don’t think any of them have a shot in hell. I’d keep my eyes on growing speculation that Rep. Eric Swalwell will run.

• FOX toasts MBS: Trump pulled out all the stops at a lavish White House dinner in honor of his guest, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Also on Trump’s guest list were Fox anchors Bret Baier and Maria Bartiromo, who apparently are A-OKAY with the royal, who, per the CIA, orchestrated the brutal murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi VIA a BONE SAW.

• Tar Heel Hell: Since Sunday, ICE Agents have turned ‘Operation Charlotte’s Web’ from an immigration crackdown on North Carolina’s most populous city to a statewide terror campaign. Officials have now arrested over 250 people, nearly double the number of arrests from the beginning of the mission.

🧠 Pop Quiz!

What has California gubernatorial candidate Tom Steyer vowed to do before he dies… or at least shortly thereafter?

Keep your eyes out for the answer below!

🍨 The Scoop

Trump’s Effort to Jail His Enemies Keeps Blowing Up in His Face

OHHH BOY, schadenfreude is one heck of a drug… look at this delicious reporting from Zeteo’s Swin Suebsaeng and Andrew Perez:

If you’re Donald Trump and you want the federal government to jail your enemies, this New York Times headline is what you don’t want: “Trump Loyalist Admits Grand Jury Never Saw Final Comey Indictment.”

The administration’s latest spurt of Coen Brothers-level ineptitude occurred when Trump’s hand-picked prosecutor, Lindsey Halligan, admitted Wednesday that a full grand jury never saw the final indictment returned against former FBI Director James Comey. The admission came after a judge ordered the Department of Justice to turn over grand jury transcripts to Comey’s defense team – an unusual move – based on concerns that a prosecutor may have undermined “the integrity of the grand jury proceeding.”

Within the upper ranks of Trump’s government, this latest development went over as well as you might expect. “There go our chances of imprisoning Comey!” one senior Trump appointee vents to us.

Four senior-level sources in the Trump administration tell us that high-ranking officials, including at the FBI and DOJ, were once again fuming about Halligan and the Comey case. These officials were talking on Wednesday as if it was a foregone conclusion that Halligan has irreversibly botched the Comey prosecution. Some wondered if she would get disbarred.

“How is she worse at this than I thought she was going to be?” asks one White House official.

Incredible. Simply incredible.

🇵🇸 Don’t Forget Gaza

• Israel kills dozens: In yet another blatant violation of the ceasefire, Israel, over the last 24 hours, has killed more than 32 people in Gaza, including at least 12 children, and injured 88 others, in airstrikes that Hamas called a “serious escalation.”

• UNRWA mandate extended: A preliminary UN resolution to extend UNRWA’s mandate from mid-2026 to mid-2029 passed 149-10 with 13 abstentions. The vote marked the first time Germany withheld support from the UN agency.

• And in the occupied West Bank… Israeli forces raided two towns in what is a near-daily reality in the territory. In Al-Lubban Al-Sharqiya, a village south of Nablus, and the town of Hizma, northeast of Jerusalem, troops fired live ammo and threw stun grenades.

🚨 Don’t Miss It!

Join Zeteo contributor John Harwood and former ABC News journalist Terry Moran LIVE on Substack at 2 pm ET (11 am PT / 7 pm GMT) as they discuss attacks on journalists and the Trump-era media landscape. They’ll take your questions, too!

💬 Quote Unquote

“You can’t go through 50 states. You have to get one approval. Fifty states is a disaster. Because you’ll have one woke state, and you’ll have to do all woke. You’ll be back in the woke business. We don’t have woke anymore in this country. It’s virtually illegal. But you’ll have a couple of wokesters, and we don’t want to do that.”

-Donald Trump on why AI should be federally regulated. LOL.

🌏 Anywhere But America

• 🇷🇺🇺🇦 26 killed in Russian attack: The death toll from yesterday’s Russian missile attack on two residential buildings in the western Ukrainian city of Ternopil rose to at least 26 people, including three children. An additional 73 people were wounded, according to Ukraine’s Emergency Service.

• 🇨🇳🇯🇵 China cuts seafood imports from Japan: China suspended imports of Japanese seafood following threats made by Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi to take military action against China if it attacks Taiwan.

• 🇪🇺🇸🇩 EU to sanction RSF leader: The European Union is expected to impose sanctions on Rapid Support Forces (RSF) Deputy Commander Abdelrahim Dagalo in Sudan, according to Reuters. The RSF has been credibly accused of several human rights abuses in the ongoing Sudanese genocide.

• 🇮🇱🇱🇧 Israel ramps up strikes in Lebanon: Israel carried out another round of airstrikes in southern Lebanon on Wednesday, killing at least one person. The Israeli military claimed the strikes targeted a weapons storage facility used by Hezbollah.

• 🇮🇱 Even Israeli judges are skeptical: Israel’s top court ordered the Israeli government to explain why it didn’t form an independent state commission to probe Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks. Haaretz reported that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has until January to respond.

• 🇬🇧🇷🇺 UK threatens Russian spy ship: UK Defense Secretary John Healey announced that a Russian spy ship off the coast of Scotland used lasers to prevent the Royal Air Force from tracking its activity, and that the UK has “military options ready” if the ship travels any farther south. In response, the Russian Embassy said that “the actions of our country do not touch [the] interests of the UK” and that the British should “hold off” on any military response.

📊 Poll of the Day

2026 isn’t looking so hot for Republicans, according to the latest polling conducted by The Argument.

Sorry, MAGA, but it looks like you can’t even gerrymander your way out of this one.

---

🧠 Trivia answer:

SPREAD THE WEALTH. Tom Steyer and his wife, Kat Taylor, signed The Giving Pledge in 2010, committing to give the majority of their vast resources to philanthropic causes either during their lifetimes or in their wills.

🤦 WTF

Yes, that’s none other than rapper Nicki Minaj posing with Ambassador Mike Waltz after giving her UN speech about the plight of Nigerian Christians.

It’s certainly not the first time the leader of the Barbz has cozied up to MAGA, but at least this time she’s not tweeting about her cousin’s friend’s swollen testicles.

ICYMI From Zeteo

EXCLUSIVE: Zohran Mamdani and Mehdi Discuss His Mayoral Transition, Party Politics, and Even Bollywood

‘Drop Now on the Floor’: British Muslim Journalist Discusses His Horrific ICE Detention

‘Things Happen’: Trump Defends MBS Over Murder of Jamal Khashoggi

ZETEO LOVES JENNIFER WELCH!

Zeteo’s Melanie Riehl, Akshay Gokul, and Minnah Arshad contributed to this newsletter.

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Editor’s note: This newsletter has been corrected to reflect that all House Republicans except one voted for releasing the Epstein files.