Politics

America aches for a consoler in chief

Published

1 year ago

September 11, 2025

The assassination of Charlie Kirk sparked a cacophony of condemnations and grief from leaders across the political spectrum. But missing from the din was the voice of a unifying political leader calling for calm.

No one appeared well positioned to play the soothing role that has fallen in the past to presidents and the nation’s faith leaders.

“I’m looking, but I can’t claim that I can identify that person,” former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels told Blue Light News.

Daniels, a Republican from a more genteel time in American politics, was not alone in his assessment of the bleak landscape.

Bill Daley, former President Barack Obama’s chief of staff, said in an interview that President Donald Trump “is the only one who can do it, because he represents everyone.”

Rep. Don Bacon, the iconoclastic Nebraska Republican, told a reporter he hoped the president would step up to the challenge, adding, “But he’s a populist, and populists dwell on anger.”

In a video statement recorded from the Oval Office late Wednesday, Trump denounced the violence on a Utah Valley University campus that led to the death of the 31-year-old conservative fixture. The president, who survived two attempts on his own life, spoke of the scourge of “demonizing those with whom you disagree day after day, year after year, in the most hateful and despicable way possible.”

But he also laid blame at the feet of the “radical left,” who he said compared Kirk to “Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals.”

Trump has either actively refused or begrudginly — and then only briefly — embraced the role of consoler- or uniter-in-chief. He has routinely demonized his opponents on social media and threatened to withhold federal dollars from causes with which he ideologically disagrees. His previous rhetoric has included boasting he could stand “in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody” without losing voters and he recently ordered the National Guard to patrol cities whose Democratic leaders he argues let crime get out of control.

For some, Trump himself is part of the problem. As president, he has the power to ease an already tense situation — or inflame it.

“There is a violent undertow, and we have to be very careful about unleashing it,” said William Barber, an influential pastor and civil rights activist who co-chairs the Poor People’s Campaign, which advocates for the nation’s lowest-income residents. It was founded by Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968.

He suggested perhaps one person alone can’t fill the role of cooling the temperature.

“Does the president have a responsibility at this moment? Yes,” Barber added. “But I’m saying that in our history there has never been one person. So it’s the president, pulpits and politicians that hold key leadership positions that must step into this moment.”

Asked whether he could be the country’s lead uniter, a White House spokesperson highlighted the following portion of his Wednesday night remarks: “Tonight, I ask all Americans to commit themselves to the American values for which Charlie Kirk lived and died. The values of free speech, citizenship, the rule of law, and the patriotic devotion and love of God. Charlie was the best of America, and the monster who attacked him was attacking our whole country. An assassin tried to silence him with a bullet, but he failed because together we will ensure that his voice, his message and his legacy will live on for countless generations to come.”

And asked how he would like his supporters to respond to Kirk’s assassination, Trump told a reporter, “He was an advocate of nonviolence. That’s the way I like to see people.”

But to another question he replied, “We have radical left lunatics out there and we just have to beat the hell out of them.”

Few know how to sew back together a civic fabric that seems irreparably torn.

“There’s no one trusted broadly enough to play that role,” said Mike Ricci, former House Speaker Paul Ryan’s communications director. Ricci crafted Ryan’s remarks in the minutes after Rep. Steve Scalise was shot at a congressional baseball game practice in 2017. “And in the absence of that kind of voice, it just leaves people retreating more into their own camps: They’re more likely to share what Megyn Kelly says about it than they are the president.”

Trump still has room to seize the mantle, said Ari Fleischer, George W. Bush’s former spokesperson.

Back when the former president climbed a pile of rubble in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001, Fleischer said, “We were still a polarized nation where many Democrats thought George Bush was an illegitimate president because of the Supreme Court ruling in the recount. What changed everything was the fact that America was attacked and our nation rallied.”

“I don’t agree that it’s impossible for leaders to bring people together, because I saw it happen,” he added.

Indeed, FBI Director Kash Patel, a MAGA faithful, attended the anniversary ceremony Thursday alongside New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, an establishment Democrat, in a sign that a few moments and places remain to bridge the partisan divide.

Former presidents looked to offer their own way forward for the nation using the only megaphone they had: social media.

“Violence and vitriol must be purged from the public square,” Bush said in a statement through his presidential center, and Obama posted,“This kind of despicable violence has no place in our democracy.” Former President Bill Clinton vowed to “redouble our efforts to engage in debate passionately, yet peacefully.”

But no one can quite find the words — or the credibility or moral authority — to quell the molten anger of this American moment, an anger that shows no signs of receding ahead of the pivotal midterm elections next year.

Trump is as much an ailment to the body politic as he is a symptom. Declining trust in politicians, a fragmented and siloed media, and decades of waning social and religious institutionsare all colliding.

There’s no Rev. Billy Graham to speak to broad swaths of the faithful and call us to Americans’ better angels. The Pope — an American — hasn’t yet addressed Kirk’s death, though U.S. bishops did, urging for a national reckoning that rids “us of senseless violence once and for all.”.

“Billy Graham … spoke as someone who had something to offer to everyone, as opposed to someone who was speaking on behalf of a tribe— and that’s what we’ve lost,” said Michael Wear, Obama’s former faith outreach adviser.

At its core, Wear said, Kirk’s assasination — and the lack of a unifying leader to emerge in its aftermath — reveals something about American politics in 2025.

“Politicians used to be valued by their most strident supporters for their ability to speak and persuade others who were not among their core supporters,” he said. “Now, the common definition of a good politician is someone who excels at channeling and mobilizing anger among their core supporters against an enemy.”

Politics

Ted Cruz blasts JD Vance as ‘insecure,’ says he’s focused on helping GOP win midterms

Published

4 hours ago

October 3, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Sen. Ted Cruz fired back at JD Vance for suggesting he’s already focused on a 2028 presidential bid, calling the vice president “insecure” while insisting he’s focused on the 2026 midterms.

“In my experience, people engage in political bomb-throwing when they’re feeling insecure,” Cruz said in a phone interview Saturday. “So he’s welcome to make whatever comments he likes. I’m going to keep focusing on the midterms and helping us win on Election Day in the next 30 days.”

Cruz’s comments came in response to an NBC News interview Thursday with Vance in which the vice president suggested Cruz was prematurely eyeing a White House run.

“It is really obvious to me that, at this very moment, Ted Cruz is running for president,” Vance said. “At this moment, I’m not. I’m trying to help elect Republicans. That’s what I’m going to keep on doing.”

Vance is widely viewed as the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, but Cruz has said he doesn’t believe Vance is the sure-fire nominee and suggested he might throw his own hat in the ring. “I’ll certainly be part of the discussion,” he told MS NOW in August.

On Saturday, Cruz told Blue Light News he is dedicated to helping Republicans maintain control of both chambers of Congress. He pointed to his travel this cycle to campaign with candidates in Georgia, Iowa, Nebraska, South Carolina as well as in his home state of Texas as proof. He also said he has trips planned this month to campaign with Republicans in Alaska, Florida, North Carolina and South Carolina.

“Over the last 10 years, there’s no Republican in the country who has campaigned for more Senate candidates, more House candidates, more gubernatorial candidates than I have, and this year will be no exception,” he said.

Cruz rattled off a list of a dozen GOP candidates he’s helped bolster in past years, including former Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, U.S. House candidate Karoline Leavitt — and the vice president.

“Indeed, ironically, I spent a full day on the road with JD Vance, campaigning with him when he was running for Senate in Ohio [in 2022],” Cruz said. “I was very glad he won that race. I was very glad to help him.”

A spokesperson for Vance did not immediately respond to Cruz’s latest comments.

Vance campaigned in Texas and Florida this week and will hold a rally in Alaska on Monday.

Politics

Republicans don’t have a clear boogeyman for this year’s midterms

Published

5 hours ago

October 3, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Republicans have tried to find a new boogeyman this year as they rail against Democratic socialism and the “radical” left: Zohran Mamdani. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Bernie Sanders.

Still more mentioned than all of them, at least in campaign ads: former President Joe Biden.

A Blue Light News review of hundreds of ads running in battleground House and Senate races in recent months shows Republicans largely haven’t seized on progressive icons in paid media. Instead, Biden is the Democrat most likely to be mentioned in GOP ads this cycle, coming up across dozens of races.

President Donald Trump has frequently sought to blame Biden for high prices and other challenges that his administration has faced. Even so, the former president has become a far less useful punching bag for Republicans since leaving office and remaining largely out of the spotlight: At this time in the 2024 cycle, Biden had been mentioned in more than 1,000 Republican House and Senate ads, according to AdImpact data.

The data illustrates how Republicans have been unable to land on a clear villain as they seek to convince voters that Democratic control of Congress would be worse than keeping the GOP in charge. Their warnings about old establishment figures like Biden and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi don’t land like they once did. But they also haven’t been able to seize on emerging democratic socialists like they had hoped to.

Democrats’ foil, meanwhile, has never been more obvious, with Trump’s approval rating in the mid-thirties amid continued high prices and the Iran war.

“No one will match the level of Pelosi for Republicans, in part because the Obamacare vote was such a touchstone moment. And the ‘we have to pass it to find out what’s in it,’” said Doug Heye, a longtime Republican operative who noted he still has “Fire Pelosi” swag from the Republicans’ successful 2010 midterm rout. The then-speaker was central to the GOP’s campaign message that year.

Part of the challenge for Republicans comes from Democrats’ lack of a clear leader. Pelosi stepped down from Democratic leadership at the start of 2023, and her successor, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) does not elicit the same animus from Republicans. In the 2022 cycle, her last term as Democratic leader, Pelosi was invoked in more than 80 GOP ads, Blue Light News’s analysis found. Now, she’s mentioned just a handful of times, while Jeffries hasn’t been mentioned in any battleground TV ads this year, according to the Blue Light News review of transcripts.

Biden was an easy target for the GOP in 2022 and 2024, when Republicans blamed him for high inflation and the cost of living. Now, poll after poll shows that voters are more likely to hold Trump — not Biden — responsible for the current state of the U.S. economy, even as Trump tries to redirect the blame.

Even Kamala Harris, the most recent Democratic standard-bearer as their 2024 nominee, is named less often in paid media this cycle than Biden. And among other potential future Democratic presidential candidates, only California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Ocasio-Cortez appear as Republican foils — and not as often as Harris or Biden.

Ocasio-Cortez is often mentioned by Republicans in the same sentence as Sanders, especially when the GOP seeks to tie Democrats in battleground races to the party’s progressive wing. In Michigan’s hotly contested Senate race, former public health official Abdul El-Sayed was endorsed by both — something his opponent Mike Rogers and GOP outside groups have seized on.

“El Sayed is endorsed by extreme liberals like AOC, Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders,” one recent ad from the conservative super PAC Sentinel Action Fund says.

Some Republicans have sought to run against the progressives even when there are no such ties: One ad that ran earlier this year from Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and the state’s GOP comptroller promised to stand up to Ocasio-Cortez, Sanders and the “new radical left.” Neither Sanders nor Ocasio-Cortez have endorsed in either race.

Most often, the GOP has run ads seeking to tie Democratic candidates to socialism or communism — the concepts themselves — in dozens of House battleground races and nearly every major Senate race. Just this week, the Trump administration launched a national $20 million DHS-funded campaign-style ad spree that features Trump lambasting “communism, socialism, and Marxism.”

But when it comes to specific political figures — like Mamdani, New York City’s mayor — it gets complicated. Republicans once salivated at the prospect of Mamdani as a foil when he was first elected last year. But his first year in office has largely boosted his standing with voters, complicating efforts to turn his tenure into a negative for Democrats.

Trump’s surprising continued embrace of the New York City mayor — just last week, the president stood by Mamdani and said he hoped he would “be a great mayor” — has further complicated GOP efforts to paint him as a villain.

In a handful of swingy New York congressional districts, Republicans have still attempted to tie their opponents to Mamdani, while Democrats have pushed back on the connection. In New York’s 21st District, which Trump won by more than 20 points two years ago, Democratic dairy farmer Blake Gendebien ran an ad arguing that his Republican opponent wants voters to think he’s “running against Zohran Mamdani” but “that’s a load of bull.”

The GOP has characterized prominent Democrats as socialist for decades. As progressives won a series of contested primaries this year, some Democrats worried the rise of figures with ties to the Democratic Socialists of America would give Republicans easy ammunition for the general election.

But being called a “socialist” may not have the same shock value it once did.

“I don’t think just calling a candidate ‘socialist’ works that well for Republicans, particularly this late in the game,” said Matt Towery, a longtime GOP pollster. “If a candidate focuses on parts of the DSA’s platform and can authentically pin it on their opponent, that might work. But Republicans just assume people have a bad reaction to the term socialist, and the term doesn’t elicit the same reaction it used to.”

Politics

‘A slow-moving car crash:’ Republicans are wary of the $200 million-plus price tag to save Ken Paxton

Published

11 hours ago

October 3, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Republicans know they have to spend big to save Ken Paxton. They’re increasingly worried MAGA Inc. won’t throw down in time.

In private conversations over recent weeks, senior Hill Republicans and GOP officials have nudged President Donald Trump’s team to start spending more on the Texas Senate race before it’s too late, according to three people with direct knowledge of those conversations, who were granted anonymity to discuss them.

Those fears escalated after audio leaked of Paxton privately trashing Trump’s midterm convention, with some worrying it could impact whether MAGA Inc. continues spending after a current wave of GOP ad bookings run out Oct. 12.

A Trump operative told Blue Light News that MAGA Inc. and its affiliates are expected to spend near $45 million on direct mail, TV, and digital advertising in Texas through Oct. 12, an increase from its previous $20 million to boost Paxton. But they said the team is still assessing how much more money to send in the final weeks, in consultation with Senate Republicans and their top super PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund.

The Trump operative, who like others in this article was granted anonymity to speak candidly, would not commit to any plans when asked by Blue Light News.

With national Democrats starting to finally spend for their Senate nominee, James Talarico, after months of holding off, and as polling of the race tightens, Republicans expect the cost of salvaging Paxton’s campaign will only skyrocket. And, they’ve started to panic.

“It’s a five-alarm fire, no doubt,” one GOP senator said. “Can we put it out? I hope so.”

“This is a slow-moving car crash that we’re witnessing right now,” a Republican strategist in the state said. “And there’s a 75% chance that the ultimate result here will be catastrophic from a GOP Senate majority standpoint.”

A fourth Republican, a national operative, spoke to the urgency factor: “While it’s money we shouldn’t have needed to spend, it needs to be spent now,” said a national GOP operative, describing the state as more winnable than North Carolina, Georgia and potentially Ohio.

Even with a massive war chest, Texas is turning into a huge money sink for the GOP that senators worry could hurt them in other tight races as they work to defend deep-red states and try to flip blue seats in Michigan and New Hampshire.

Trump himself nodded to some of the concerns at a rally just across the Texas border in Oklahoma Thursday night, saying those voters aren’t the ones he’s concerned about.

“We’re worried about Michigan. We’re worried about Texas,” he told the crowd. “We’re worried about a few states.”The president is scheduled to visit Texas again next week for a rally in San Antonio next Wednesday.

SLF poured another $60 million into Texas on Wednesday, bringing its total expenditure there to a record-breaking $131 million. With the MAGA Inc. money and additional GOP ad reservations, the race is already on track to top $200 million from outside Republican groups hoping to save Paxton. Paxton’s own campaign recently announced a $20 million ad buy — one of the largest single media investments in a Texas Senate race.

Some Republicans want MAGA Inc. to take over spending for Paxton in Texas in the final few weeks, so SLF can focus its resources elsewhere. MAGA Inc. could also funnel money into SLF’s recently established Texas PAC. But, according to two people with direct knowledge of that matter, that hasn’t happened.

“At some point I think the people spending that money are going to have to make hard choices and figure out where the money can have the biggest impact, and certainly Texas is the most expensive,” Sen. John Cornyn, who lost to Trump-backed Paxton in the primary, recently told POLITICO.

SLF Executive Director Alex Latcham indicated to Blue Light News the group will keep spending in Texas: “Senate Leadership Fund’s investment through Texas PAC affirms our commitment to maintaining the Republican majority and defeating Far-Left liberals like James Talarico.”

But Republicans’ money concerns have been complicated by Paxton himself. A growing number of GOP senators and top operatives have been stunned by what they described as unforced errors by the Texas Senate nominee. For example, he crossed one of the brightest red lines with Trump, telling a group of donors that “everybody’s numbers dropped” after the president’s GOP convention in Dallas last month, according to the audio leak reported by The New York Times.

“There seems to be very little strategy there,” said another Republican senator, granted anonymity to candidly discuss the race. “Sometimes, I think [Paxton] wants to lose.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Trump, while on his way to Texas to tour a motor facility on Thursday, told reporters he hadn’t talked to Paxton about his convention comments. Later, he told a crowd in Texas that “Ken Paxton was at my side more than anybody, and I have to always remember that because he can be a pain in the ass sometimes. I’ll be honest.”

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) told reporters this week that he hadn’t seen the audio of Paxton trashing Trump’s convention. He acknowledged the stakes in his home state were high — and that the influx of cash is key.

“The reason that it is a serious race and a close race right now is that for several months the Democrats were massively outspending us,” he said, “and I am glad now that we are seeing money invested in communicating with the voters.”

The White House has attempted to reassure concerned senators, with chief of staff Susie Wiles telling Senate Republicans this week that there will be enough money available for competitive races in the final stretch, according to two people with knowledge of the meeting.

GOP operatives in both Michigan and New Hampshire said they feel that some of the cash being shoveled toward Texas should be going to their states instead. Most polls show Republicans running narrowly behind or neck and neck in both states, even though they hold a spending advantage on the airwaves there.

“We’re focusing so much on ‘we’ve got to put this money into Texas.’ Why? We’ve never had a problem in Texas. Let’s focus on taking back a seat we haven’t had in years,” said an ally of former Sen. John E. Sununu, who’s in a tight race against Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas. “There are real chances in Michigan and New Hampshire,” said the person, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about the dynamics.

Sununu’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Latcham, who heads SLF, said that “Texas PAC is a dedicated effort that will not take resources from our other ongoing investments across the Senate map.”

Recent polling still shows the Texas Senate race with a razor-thin margin. Most public polling over the past two months shows Talarico with an edge, though Paxton’s campaign released an internal poll Tuesday that shows Paxton leading by three points among likely voters, 48% to 45%.

“I don’t think the needle has moved in the last month,” said one Texas Republican elected official, granted anonymity to speak frankly. “Unless it’s the worst polling that’s ever been done in political history, all this spend hasn’t changed anything, and I think people have made their mind up.”

Lisa Kashinsky, Samuel Benson, Alex Gangitano and Kelsey Brugger contributed to this report.