At 6:19 pm, somewhere between Shannon, Ireland, and Washington, DC, the President of the United States barged into the press cabin on Air Force One. Still wearing the deep navy suit and now-wrinkled white shirt, but without the tie he was wearing earlier, he had an urgent question for the press: “I just wanted to make sure everyone’s okay with music, right?” He told the press that he was only there to see if they agreed that “the music’s great, right?” He told them that he picked the playlist himself because he wanted to “make you happy.” They, in return, exchanged small talk just long enough to bring down his guard before jumping at the opportunity to ask him questions. One reporter cut right to the chase, asking about China and President Xi’s upcoming trip to Washington, D.C., and whether Trump plans to ask him about reports that entities in China may have provided Iran with satellite imagery that was used when three American military members were killed.
Trump’s response was, “They do what we do.” And then he added, “Uh, I think he’s behaved reasonably well, and we behave reasonably well. You know, when they say that China spies on us, I say you’re right, and we spy on them, too. You know, we spy on them, too.”
As he finished saying this, he started to back out of the cabin before changing his mind, possibly realizing what he had just said and how devastating it was. Because whether he meant it or not, he said that the loss of First Lieutenant Tyler James Feehan, Private Isabella Gonzales, and Staff Sgt. Angel S. Rampersad from Iranian missiles hitting the housing area where they were sleeping, reportedly with the help of Chinese entities’ satellite imagery, was China acting “reasonably well behaved,” and that he had no plans to confront Xi, let alone even mention it.
Over the past couple of days, the Wall Street Journal reported that the United States government was able to connect satellite images given to Iran by Chinese entities to the July 17 ballistic missile strike on Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan. The Iranian missile attack hit the housing area where American troops were sleeping, killing three soldiers and wounding four others.
The U.S. had already claimed to have destroyed Iran’s radar and air defense capabilities, though intelligence assessments painted a more complicated picture. What is clear is that without the satellite imagery from Chinese entities, Iran may not have been able to target that exact location in the first place. This news is not surprising because we already know that China is not our ally and certainly not our friend. But this connects them to actual deaths of American military members.
In less than two weeks, Donald Trump plans to welcome China’s leader with open arms. He has been sharing his excitement about this visit for months. Xi is one of the men Trump considers his equal, someone he respects and often speaks about in high regard. Just this past May, he told Xi, “You’re a great leader. It’s an honor to be your friend.” He also told reporters that “Sometimes people don’t like me saying it, but I say it anyway.”
This is the complete opposite of how he speaks about and treats the leaders of the countries he should align himself with, our allies from countries like France, Germany, Canada, or the United Kingdom. He treats the leaders of countries that share our democratic values and whom we have stood beside for generations with very little respect, while continuing to treat men like Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin as friends and equals.
While still talking to the press on Air Force One, the war between Russia and Ukraine was also brought up. In true Trump fashion, he used that opportunity to do something outlandishly inappropriate, he blamed high diesel prices on Volodymyr Zelensky. He made the decision to blame the president of a country currently being attacked, and not blame the invading country for the fallout of the war and its effects on the price of fuel. “The problem I have with Ukraine and Russia is that a lot of the diesel comes from Russia, and the Russia plants are being hit by Ukraine,” Trump said. “And I’ve asked President Zelensky not to hit the diesel plants, refineries.” He then added, “The diesel is being driven up by the fact that it’s having a hard time coming out of Russia, and that’s a case that hurts the world.” He went even further, saying, “This isn’t done by the Middle East. This is done by what’s happening with Russia and Ukraine.”
His words were deliberately misleading, said to protect Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin and paint Zelensky as the villain. While Ukraine’s strikes on Russian refineries have contributed to the shortage, the far larger disruption has come from Trump’s war in Iran, which has choked off roughly a fifth of the world’s oil supply through the Strait of Hormuz. Trump knows this. He has said so himself, multiple times, that fuel prices are a result of the Iran war, and he has even told his fellow Americans we have to accept higher fuel prices to stop Iran from having nuclear weapons. But now that the midterm elections are less than 51 days away and people are becoming more outraged by the high gas prices, he has suddenly decided to blame the country fighting for its survival.
With the global energy crisis becoming worse by the day, Donald Trump feels cornered and clueless on how to fix this. Now he has to face the reality that things won’t get better before the midterms. Because over the last week, another route used to move oil out of the region has become endangered, leaving both of the world’s most critical oil shipping corridors under threat at the same time, something that has never happened before. The Strait of Hormuz has been an unreliable route for months now. This past week, that other route was impacted when Iran-backed forces took over the port of Mokha before moving down Yemen’s Red Sea coastline, taking control of Perim Island, too, which sits directly inside the Bab al-Mandeb Strait.
That second strait sees roughly 12% of global seaborne oil trade and is the primary route for cargo moving between Europe and Asia. Saudi Arabia had been using the Red Sea as its backup route, so that none of it had to pass through the Strait of Hormuz. To make this all worse, the Houthis also struck a Saudi pipeline on Friday, which forced it to close and left that alternative route under attack too. This too caused oil to surge and gave Iran another opportunity to limit the flow of oil, making consumers all over the planet have to pay even higher prices.
We can’t keep living like this. Something has to change. We desperately need leaders who are willing to stand up to Donald Trump and who will take any and all opportunities to fight back, even now before the midterms instead of waiting until January when a new Congress could be seated.
This morning I watched House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos. I was once again reminded of how slow and lacking the Democratic response has been. When he was asked whether Democrats would go after impeachment if they take back the House, his answer was, “No, we haven’t ruled anything in, and we haven’t ruled anything out.” His lack of an actual answer and the political double talk is exactly how we got here. How he answered was how Democratic leadership has responded for years, and it has failed us over and over again. After January 6th, we had a real opportunity to take a stand against corruption, and even though some lawmakers tried, their response fell flat. So many of them have left the few actually taking a stand and speaking out, lacking the support that should be there from the entirety of the Democratic Party. There should be a gathering of every Democrat in Congress, standing shoulder to shoulder, demanding Trump and his enablers’ corruption end every single day. Everything that wasn’t done has led us to today. We need Democrats with fire in their bellies. We need people willing to get in there, right now, and fight for their country without thinking about winning another six-year term and playing it safe. We already have people just like that showing up more and more, and they are already terrifying the Republican Party.
These are the Abdul El-Sayeds and the Jon Ossoffs. They both are bringing passion to the fight we haven’t seen enough of. Ossoff gave a campaign speech this weekend where he told a crowd of people in Georgia that the Trump administration is “the Epstein class.” He connected Trump’s war to the high gas prices and to our increasing grocery bills. People want politicians who they can trust to deliver the truth, and this type of campaigning is working. What he has been saying has made an election that Democrats were predicted to barely win into one where it looks like they have a decent lead. Abdul El-Sayed won the Democratic Senate primary in Michigan running on a slogan he repeats often at his events, “money out of politics, money in your pocket, Medicare for all.” That is the messaging we need, and we need it repeated often. Republicans are so afraid of him that Ted Cruz used his time speaking at the desperate Republican Midterm Convention attacking him by name, to which someone in that crowd shouted, “he should be shot.” I rewatched that video, and it’s not completely clear that Cruz heard the first time it was said, but it does appear that he heard it the subsequent times, and he did nothing. Zohran Mamdani already proved in the last election in New York that working-class messaging can beat out establishment and centrist politicians and win. This does not mean we do not vote blue down the line. It means we demand better, and we think about who we really want leading our parties and our country after we right this ship.
We have our work cut out for us right now. We have to get people who are against everything Trump is doing, but are on the fence about this new type of politician, to start showing up for them. We need to help them see that the careful, centrist approach has failed to hold a single person accountable for six years of democratic destruction and that it is time to demand something better. The ones the GOP is afraid of, and for good reason. The ones they are calling dangerous and communists. We need to make sure they understand that this is not the time to sit out an election because they do not understand or are not in love with the democratic candidates placed before them. We can have those discussions over the next two years before the next general election. Right now, this is an all-hands-on-deck call to action.
Back in February, I wrote about a speech given by Judge J. Michael Luttig, a George H.W. Bush appointed conservative federal judge, after he warned that Trump represents a “clear and present danger” to our American democracy. On Thursday, he published a piece in The New Republic warning that even if Democrats win the House in November, Republicans could refuse to seat them; something I have shared is one of my greatest concerns aside from the vote itself. He went even deeper with his analysis than I did, including how Speaker Mike Johnson could replace the House Clerk with a loyalist who could refuse to list Democrats on the roll of representatives-elect, which would then trigger a constitutional crisis that could paralyze the country for weeks or months while the courts sort it out. Luttig called it “The Final Battle for America’s Democracy.” That is why we need voter turnout the likes we have never seen before and also why we need to be prepared to take action if this were to happen. What that looks like, I can’t say. But likely protests that shut down our economy and normal lives.
In another article published today, this time from the Washington Post, we learned that election officials across the country are already preparing for seized ballots, ICE agents at polling places, and the USPS rejecting large batches of ballots. Many of these voter suppression tactics are currently being litigated as the Trump regime’s threats increase. This administration is hell-bent on interrupting our free and fair elections. The officials making plans to mitigate and circumvent these attacks are wisely doing so.
Something has to change, and that something starts with us. We can’t wait around until the next First Lieutenant Tyler James Feehan, Private Isabella Gonzales, and Staff Sgt. Angel S. Rampersad are killed, and their commander in chief is more concerned about showing the man he calls “reasonably well behaved,” whose country is connected to their deaths, a great time in our capital.
As expected, the weight of watching the highest office in the land become so hollow and emptied of basic human decency is catching up to so many of us. We know how quickly 51 days can go by, especially when we remember that we are coming up on the two-year anniversary of Trump winning his second term. Yet at the same time, every day has felt long, filled with sadness for the lives he has already cost and anticipatory grief over what he is going to do next. If it feels like there are not enough people who care, know that around the 30-day mark that should change. There will be more talk and concern once ballots start going out and the election feels more real and imminent. Our job is to get as many people as humanly possible to vote. When we do that, not if we do that, we will finally be able to change the direction this country is headed. That is why I still have hope for America. And you should, too.
I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather
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This commentary represents my personal opinions and analysis of matters of public concern, informed by publicly available information. Any references to individuals constitute opinion and commentary protected under the First Amendment.
Picture of the day: I shared in the past that this sweet girl suffered a stroke-like event after a procedure not too long ago. She has made a remarkable recovery, but it was very stressful for a while there. So when I walk into the room and find her like this, or worse, completely upside down, I’d be lying if I didn’t say it scares me every single time until I can see her breathing. The way she places her toys like this is new, though. I’m actually impressed by the way she organizes them before completely passing out.
Sources used in the writing of this post:
President Trump Gaggles with Press on Air Force One En Route Joint Base Andrews, Sep. 13, 2026: YouTube Video
https://www.npr.org/2026/08/01/nx-s1-5914671/iran-military-death-rampersad-funeral
https://www.npr.org/2026/09/11/g-s1-142842/us-diesel-6-a-gallon
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/11/diesel-price-iran-strait-hormuz-ukraine-russia.html
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/6085055-gop-cruz-muslim-democrats-midterms/
I’m very concerned about what Trump will pull for the November elections. It will be something drastic. I promise he is so afraid of being out of the presidency where he belongs out. Although I am considered elderly at 80, I humbly say that the older Democrats that are in the party. Do not need to be running for president. The ones that have been around and been so non-outspoken they should stay in the position they have that is my true feeling we need Youngblood like the guy that people are saying is Iranian we need Gavin Newsom. Some people may not like him, but he knows what to say and he can fight him and that’s what we need and also the senator from Georgia that is running for his seat again when I hear him speak at his rallies. The only thing I can think of is that should be our next president. I read where Trump had said that this senator was not even known in Georgia, and that people were not coming to his rallies. All you’ve got to do is look and listen, and you will see that people are coming and they are listening and they are agreeing with him. That is someone that we have got to have a run for the presidency but I agree with you somethings gotta be done before January and the new hopefully Democratic fellas can take their place in Congress.
With two terrible wars slowly merging, it seems as though "drill baby drill" has inadvertently morphed into burn baby burn.
Democratic leadership is addicted to corporate money. They must be replaced.
We cannot mention enough, the names of the people paying the price for our failed learship.