Leon Botstein has denied the allegations that he was involved in criminal acts associated with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein

Leon Botstein, former president of Bard College.

In spring, Leon Botstein announced that he was stepping down after half a century as president of Bard College following scrutiny over his relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Despite the revelations, the former president remained on campus and continued to teach at the liberal arts college — holding prominent positions at the institution and living at the official college home for the president, while the college reportedly completed renovations for an off-campus residency for Botstein.

On Wednesday, Botstein abruptly resigned from all roles he held at Bard following the announcement that the House Judiciary Committee sent a letter to the school’s Board Chair Brandon Weber and Acting President Jonathan Becker and alleged that “Botstein likely enabled and possibly even participated in Epstein’s abuse while serving as Bard’s President.”

In the letter, Representative Jamie Raskin, top Democrat on the House judiciary committee who is leading the investigation alongside Representative Madeleine Dean, pointed to a “startling” May 2014 email from Bard president’s email address that asks if a Jane Doe Epstein was purportedly grooming was “for me, or are you keeping her for yourself.”

Raskin writes, “It is hard to construct any kind of innocent explanation for Botstein’s question and the surrounding events,” adding that the question was sent to “the most famous sexual predator of our time about a woman Epstein was trafficking.”

Weber said in a statement to Rolling Stone that Bard was doing “a full review” of the allegations outlined in the House Judiciary Committee’s letter, and was cooperating with the committee’s probe.

In another statement to The Guardian, Botstein said “any assertion that I knew of or was involved in Epstein’s criminal behavior is wrong.” He said that he submitted his resignation to protect Bard from any distraction and did “not want to see even false allegations about me put the institution I have served for more than half a century put at any risk.”

The House Judiciary Committee letter also claims that Botstein’s alleged misconduct festered for several decades across campus and that the committee received multiple reports that Botstein “personally engaged in sexual misconduct and abused his power, from groping women to asking sexualized questions in tenure interviews.” It alleges that Botstein also protected other offenders and in a “highly irregular fashion,” he personally oversaw Title IX cases, which prohibits sex-based discrimination in education programs.

In his statement, Weber said that Bard “maintains a fair, impartial, and accessible Title IX process” and that the “college president has not had unilateral decision-making authority over Title IX investigations or adjudications since the 2015-2016 school year.” Botstein was president of Bard College from 1975 to 2026.

Raskin and Dean also sent a letter to Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel, detailing their allegations against Botstein and urging them to “undertake a serious investigation, rather than a cover-up, of the countless potential crimes suggested in evidence in the Epstein files.”

Québec has a new government, and the province was decidedly fed up with its previous regime.

The Parti Québécois won Monday’s provincial election with 59 seats, bringing the party back to power for the first time since 2014. But Paul St-Pierre Plamondon’s party fell five seats short of the 64 needed for a majority, leaving Québec with a minority government.

The result was also a stunning collapse for the Coalition Avenir Québec. The party had governed Québec since 2018, but was shut out of the National Assembly altogether in Monday’s vote. The CAQ’s defeat came after a campaign in which the cost of living, healthcare, housing and immigration were among the major issues facing voters.

The Parti Québécois won 27.9 per cent of the popular vote, while the Québec Liberal Party, Parti conservateur du Québec and Québec solidaire also captured seats. The fragmented vote allowed the PQ to form government without coming close to winning a majority of ballots cast.

The immediate challenge for PSPP, as he is known in the province, is governing with an opposition-controlled legislature. The PQ will need cooperation from at least one other party on legislation and confidence matters.

St-Pierre Plamondon also campaigned on holding another referendum on Québec independence. He has however said he would not hold one while U.S. President Donald Trump remains in office, citing the economic uncertainty surrounding the current Canada-U.S. relationship. Besides, support for sovereignty remains well below a majority, according to recent polling.

Prime Minister Mark Carney congratulated the new premier following the result and said Ottawa would work with the incoming Québec government. The relationship between the two who, coincidentally, both served as goaltenders for Oxford University's hockey team, will be interesting to follow, as PSPP pushes policies around French-language protection, immigration and Québec’s place within Canada.

Vladimir Putin addressing the audience during the Valdai Discussion Club meeting on Oct. 1

The war in Ukraine is becoming increasingly dangerous, with the risk of escalation spilling further into Europe. As Russia and European governments trade explicit warnings that the conflict is spreading, the United States is pursuing diplomacy aimed less at stopping the carnage than restoring ties with Moscow.

With the Russian military making little progress on the ground in eastern Ukraine despite nearly five years of war and more than a million casualties, the Kremlin is intensifying aerial attacks. Ukraine, which has been the target of Russian missiles and drones since the war began in February 2022, is now experiencing a sharp uptick in attacks on infrastructure and populated areas that threaten to plunge parts of the country into cold and darkness over the winter.

The aerial blitzkrieg is intended to destroy Ukraine’s morale, infrastructure, and economy, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy recently told the Financial Times, citing intelligence intercepted by his country’s security services.

Zelenskyy told the paper that Russian President Vladimir Putin, in discussions with top Kremlin officials, had removed constraints on the bombardment campaign: “He said there are no rules now.”

U.S. disengagement from the conflict during Trump’s second term, coupled with the American president’s animosity toward Zelenskyy and Ukraine more generally, has only emboldened Putin. After promising he would stop the war “within 24 hours” after reelection, Trump’s tepid support for Ukraine and its European allies has increasingly convinced the Kremlin it has a chance to permanently rupture the NATO alliance.

At the Valdai Discussion Club on Thursday — an annual high-profile international summit in St. Petersburg — Putin said that continued European support for Ukraine was pushing the conflict toward a “fatal point of no return.”

The Kremlin has long described the war as an extension of a confrontation with the collective West. With more than 1.5 million active service members in the Russian military, about 44 percent of Moscow’s budget for 2027 is dedicated to defense and security spending. Around 700,000 Russian soldiers are serving on the front lines in Ukraine, where casualties remain staggeringly high.

Meanwhile, Moscow is conducting a campaign of so-called “hybrid warfare” — with officials in multiple countries alleging that a series of drone attacks, arsons, and sabotage originated with Russian intelligence services. The Kremlin also continues to carry out targeted killings on European soil — and has even attempted to assassinate political dissidents in the United States, according to the FBI.

Russia’s belligerent activity has set alarm bells ringing across Europe.

Speaking at a NATO event on Thursday, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said that the continent must brace for “severe hybrid attacks,” as Russia targets production facilities and logistics hubs by which Ukraine’s allies supply the beleaguered country with arms. Europe must be prepared to “respond quickly and very clearly” to Russian provocations, Merz said.

For its part, Moscow asserts that NATO is provoking conflict, citing recent unannounced military exercises near Kaliningrad — a Russian exclave on the Baltic coast. In a communiqué to NATO this week, Russian officials warned that action against Kaliningrad would initiate a serious response, “including nuclear weapons” in order to defend its territory, and “Russian strikes against decision-making centers in the alliance’s member states.”

“This is a war that Europe is waging against us,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told reporters at the Valdai forum. When asked about hybrid attacks outside Ukraine that European leaders have attributed to Russia, he said his country was only targeting support for what it dubs the “Nazi regime” in Kyiv.

As the sabers rattle louder, American engagement with Moscow and Kyiv comes in fits and starts, with no apparent overarching strategy.

Critics of the White House’s approach point to a recent trip by Trump’s friend and special envoy to the Middle East, real estate attorney Steve Witkoff, and son-in-law Jared Kushner, to Moscow and Kyiv. Their tour yielded headlines, but little progress toward negotiations between the warring parties — let alone toward ending the conflict.

“I hope they had a great discussion about opening a hotel or something,” one European official told Rolling Stone. “Because it was useless otherwise.”

Diplomacy via haphazard tête-à-têtes with the president’s personal envoys is almost certainly viewed as a sign of weakness by Putin, who is well aware that Trump hopes to claim normalized ties between the United States and Russia as a crowning foreign policy achievement.

The White House is considering a range of unprecedented diplomatic deals that would help keep Russia’s economy functioning while doing little to benefit Ukraine.

These proposals reportedly include an easing of economic sanctions if Putin agrees to release some political prisoners, and a potential multibillion-dollar oil deal ostensibly aimed at stabilizing energy markets and reducing gas prices.

With gas prices rising amid the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran and midterm elections around the corner, Trump has made energy central to his Russia policy. Washington has called for an “energy ceasefire” — while Trump has blamed Kyiv for rising diesel prices in the United States.

While high oil prices are the result of a concatenation of crises, Ukraine has been targeting Russian oil refineries, producing fuel shortages and long queues for gasoline — in one of the world’s largest oil producers — over the summer.

Ukraine is also developing its own domestically produced tactical ballistic missiles. Ukrainian officials said Friday that one type of missile, the FP-7, had been successfully used in combat for the first time. But whether Kyiv can produce enough of them to create a meaningful deterrent is unclear.

As winter nears, the outlook for Ukraine is bleak. A recent attack on Kyiv consisted of nearly a dozen ballistic missiles and hundreds of drones in a single night. That many munitions slip through highlights the dire situation faced by Ukrainian defenders, who are running out of advanced missile interceptors. They also struggle to shoot down drones that are becoming increasingly numerous, sophisticated, and effective as the war drags on.

In recent months, Russia has adopted widespread use of an advanced drone, the Geran-5 — a jet-powered drone that bears an uncanny resemblance to the V-1 “buzz bombs” used by the Nazis to bombard London toward the end of World War II.

As with the German V-1 campaign against London 80 years ago, the targets are often indiscriminate. Even before the ramping-up of attacks this fall, 2026 was on track to be the deadliest year for Ukrainian civilians since the early months of the full-scale war in 2022.

The proliferation of Russian attack drones and ballistic missiles means that cities like Kyiv now spend much of each day under air alert. Even aside from the human toll and physical damage that the weapons inflict, officials estimate that the disruptions to daily life are costing the country as much as $45 million per hour in lost economic activity.

Since Friday, a series of drone attacks has targeted two of Kyiv’s major bridges spanning the Dnieper River. The damage has disrupted traffic between the capital’s “Right Bank” — with its historic core and city center — and its “Left Bank,” with its sprawling Soviet-era industrial and residential developments.

Ukraine is already experiencing a severe financial squeeze. Prime Minister Sergii Koretskyi says the country is facing a $27 billion “funding gap” before the end of the year.

Ukrainian lawmakers warn the government could even run out of funds to pay soldiers. One serving member of the Ukrainian military, who spoke to Rolling Stone on background, said by the end of the summer, members of his unit had already begun experiencing “delays” in receiving their pay.

The Ministry of Defense disputes that soldier’s salaries could go unpaid, but acknowledges that “technical issues” had caused some delays.

Meanwhile, Zelenskyy is under pressure from corruption scandals and resignations involving members of his inner circle. Polls show him potentially losing hypothetical match-ups against rivals, including former Ukrainian Armed Forces commander Valerii Zaluzhny. The country’s “long-admired cohesion” has begun to crack — an outcome that aligns with Russia’s strategic objectives.

But after nearly five years of war, both combatants are showing signs of political and economic strain.

Russia’s regular military conscription process — 120,000 new recruits are expected over the next three months — barely offsets the grievous casualties its military is experiencing at the Ukrainian front, with high estimates exceeding 1,000 casualties per day.

Some analysts believe the Kremlin is considering a massive mobilization in the wake of parliamentary elections. But Putin so far has merely called for an increase in the total number of active-duty military members by a little more than 15,000. Russia’s president remains wary of generating a meaningful anti-war movement inside Russia, while also facing pressure from hard-line nationalists expecting him to deliver victory.

Across Europe, governments are no longer treating a direct confrontation with Russia as a remote possibility. They are preparing for worst-case scenarios, particularly in the Baltic states and other countries that experienced Russian rule under the Soviets. Meanwhile, NATO insists that all members — including the United States — have an “ironclad commitment” to collective defense.

In 1914, at the outset of the First World War, few leaders understood how faulty strategic assumptions, entangling alliances, and lethal technologies were pushing the continent toward cataclysm.

But some did. On the eve of war, U.K. Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey famously wrote that “The lamps are going out all over Europe.”

Across Ukraine, darkness will again become a feature of daily wartime life amid rolling blackouts as a hard winter looms. And the shadows are lengthening, far beyond its borders.

But in America, the White House dithers as the president has his attention elsewhere. Perhaps Trump’s new ballroom, at least, should be well lit.

Pete Hegseth gestures after giving a State of the Force address at Marine Corps Base Quantico on Sept. 30, 2026 in Quantico, Va.

Pete Hegseth, to his credit, understands one truth about the world: the military’s job is to kill people.

Hegseth, the newly rebranded “Secretary of War,” is obsessed with showcasing clean-cut troops trained to do just that. He refers to it as “lethality,” a word that he used twice in his roughly hour-long State of the Force speech on Wednesday, which laid out his vision for this new, more-violent military: a force of fit, unified “warfighters,” unburdened by the bureaucracy and norms of the past.

“No more diversity quotas, no more gender pronouns, no more identity months,” Hegseth said, pacing back and forth on stage. “Only the warrior ethos.”

If that wasn’t enough, he doubled down moments later.

“We are no longer the woke department or the weak department,” Hegseth said, stumbling over his words slightly. “No fanny, no fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radicals. Just warriors. Just tough, ready, committed troops.”

To do this, Hegseth thinks, the military needs to work out. He wants every soldier doing physical training every day. He leads group workouts at the Pentagon, hops in on PT, does pullups and pushups and flexes his muscles. This is all, broadly, fine for a Defense Secretary to do. Go ahead, engage with your troops. (Less normal, perhaps, is his obsession with monitoring troops’ testosterone levels.) But Hegseth’s CrossFit crusade isn’t really about killing.

By any objective measurement, the U.S. military is plenty good at killing. We have more bombs and more planes and more ships and better-trained and equipped troops than any country in the world. The “warrior ethos” Hegseth is so obsessed with is the relic of recruitment videos from the peak of the War on Terror, the years of bearded operators with ropy muscle covered in Kevlar fabric, who kicked in doors and sniped off heads and got their hands dirty. Those guys still exist, of course. They haven’t gone away. If they’re needed again, they will be there.

But combat doesn’t look like that anymore.

On the same day that Hegseth delivered his speech, the U.S. formally withdrew from Iraq, one of America’s last active presences in the wars of occupation that defined the military for the past two decades. War is different now. It is fought with drones and cruise missiles from the decks of ships in the Persian Gulf and dusty air-bases outside of the glittering megacities of America’s Middle Eastern oil merchants. Does every soldier involved in this need a perfect waist-to-shoulder ratio? Does it physically impede America’s interests abroad to have diversity, equity, and inclusion policies? Has the existence of trans servicemembers ever stopped the U.S. military from killing even a single person that it wanted to kill, anywhere in the world, at any time?

Hegseth, I think, would say yes. He has a personal chip on his shoulder. The “woke” elements of Army bureaucracy once removed him from service at Joe Biden’s inauguration because he has a tattoo on his arm that reads “DEUS VULT,” a common rallying cry for a very particular kind of extremist Christian nationalism. But most rational observers, people who are clear-eyed about America’s unparalleled ability to Blow Shit Up, can recognize that all of these arguments are battles of cultural semantics that have basically nothing to do with the military’s ability to kill. With respect to “lethality,” the U.S. military is pretty much fine. If you doubt this, ask an Iraqi.

Hegseth’s relentless focus on violent language and imagery is largely a marketing tactic for what is a more holistic cultural and political shift. Hegseth does not want a military that is indicative of America’s cumbersome, bureaucratic state apparatus in the same way that Trump is relentlessly focused on cutting red tape and federal “waste.” There are certainly inefficiencies in the federal system, but much of that bureaucracy exists for precisely the reason that Hegseth and Trump want it gone: it is a check on unitary power. Hegseth wants a united, homogenous military of soldiers who share his cultural prejudices, who share his bloodthirsty ethos, and who share his religion. In the State of the Force speech and many other recent public appearances, Hegseth has quoted scripture and explicitly referenced his Christian faith, a tacit assumption that he expects the men and women in uniform below him to be Christian. He wants a force that, in his own words, does not buy into the “fake news” media’s “disingenuous headlines about deployment lengths, patently false claims of low troop morale or flat-out propaganda.”

A more malleable military is also a better business opportunity. The Trump administration has been terribly effective at streamlining the process by which they can redistribute money to the oligarchs they choose. The so-called Department of War is no different. In his speech, Hegseth announced an initiative called “Project Meridian,” a sort of tech incubator for military contractors that will be run by Elon Musk, Palmer Luckey, and, bizarrely, Newt Gingrich, who Hegseth said would be joined by “hand-picked private sector leaders.”

“Their work will be focused on discovering, developing and fielding the weapons and systems that our children and our grandchildren will need in their lifetimes without any creative limitations or restrictions,” Hegseth said. “On any future battlefield, from under the earth to beyond the moon, our American warriors will be armed with absolute technological superiority because we will have the foresight to prepare today for tomorrow.”

That’s the window dressing. There’s truth there, of course: the military does have a lot of work to do to adapt to the new forms of warfare playing out in Ukraine. Battle has shifted. But what Project Meridian represents is a shift to a faster, less regulated version of the military industrial complex. There will be less oversight. The money will move where Trump and Hegseth want it to, delivered to the tech barons and traditional defense contractors who best curry favor with the administration. This is for the good of the soldier, regardless of what Hegseth says. It does not make us more deadly. It just makes a select few — some of whom aren’t even American — that much more rich.

After all, that’s the goal, right? A prosperous, united, Christian nation, led by titans of industry who bow only to a single leader who can reshape the world on a whim. No fatties, no weirdos, no radicals. No dissent, crucially. Dissent is traitorous. As soldiers, as civilians, even, all we should think about is how to kill. Hegseth and his hand-picked private sector will handle the rest.

First Lady Melania Trump waves after ringing the opening bell of the New York Stock Exchange on Sept. 23, 2026.

Roughly 70 percent of the country disapproves of President Donald Trump and his first two years of governance, but like an overindulgent mother, First Lady Melania Trump would like everyone to remember that her husband is trying his hardest.

“I think he’s doing the best he can,” Trump told the hosts of Fox & Friends on Wednesday morning when she was asked how she felt her husband was doing in comparison to his first term.

“He’s very focused, he has a lot on his plate,” she said. “It’s very different, what’s going on around the world now. But I think he’s doing the best that he can. He works nonstop, he has the most energy than anybody. He’s from morning until evening nonstop working.”

Add that to the pile of Republican statements — many from the heart of the administration — insisting to voters that while gas might be expensive, groceries might cost more, and about one million more people are about to get kicked off their health care, they shouldn’t punish them at the ballot box.

Last week, Vice President JD Vance — sounding like the guy who forgot your birthday and your anniversary — pleaded with voters in an interview to “give us another chance.”

“Even if you don’t agree with us on every issue, the other party is consumed by craziness,” he added.

The vice president made similar statements during his speech before the emergency midterm Republican National Convention, begging conservatives to “give us another chance, or give us another couple of years, to continue to work on the amazing things that we’ve been doing for the past two years.”

Nevertheless, an increasing number of independents and conservatives seem ready to boot Republicans from power in Congress, regardless of their rosy promises.

Donald Trump is joined by opera singer Christopher Macchio to conclude the Republican midterm convention, on Sept. 10, 2026 in Dallas.

It’s 3:42 in the hot heart of Texas, and the floor of the American Airlines Center in Dallas is a blood-red miasma of dancing elephants. Under the moody crimson lights washing over the crowd at the first ever Republican (Midterm) National Convention, middle-aged peroxide blondes in sparkly American flag cowboy hats sway to the raspy belt of Bonnie Tyler’s “Holding Out for a Hero.” Men in suits and silver belt buckles and leather boots sheepishly bop the “KEEP THE MAJORITY” signs distributed by organizers. The stage is empty right now. Large, menacing images of Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, and Kamala Harris loom over the crowd. None of them are running this cycle.

If I look directly across the floor, toward the entrances to the still mostly empty box seats and nosebleeds, the bright white doorways catching the daylight of downtown Dallas are harsh and blinding. Outside the air-conditioned arena, there’s a fight raging. The GOP is at war with itself and its voters. The casualties of this political cycle — spiraling around Donald Trump’s war-ravaged, economically disastrous two years back in office — will likely touch every Republican state delegation.

But the president wants a party, and you can’t dance with the lights on.

Eighteen months ago Dallas would have been an auspicious location for this event. Trump, the keynote speaker for the first night of the two-day conference, made generational gains among Hispanics in 2024. Governor Greg Abbott promised to carve out five shiny new Republican House seats into the state’s electoral map. The Lone Star State had become the southern Mecca of the techno-conservative revolution looking to find roots outside of Silicon Valley. But the right’s gains among Hispanics have been erased, a Democrat is well-positioned to win a Texas Senate seat for the first time in decades, and one can’t help but notice the sense of panic permeating the GOP’s biggest party of the year.

It’s obvious what the president had in mind in pulling this party together. The scene feels like a pantomime of the 2024 nomination conference, held as Democrats scrambled to find their footing amid ever-intensifying concerns regarding Biden’s ability to govern, much less campaign, and just days after Trump narrowly survived an assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania. This week, a large photo of the now-president and the bandage he was sporting over his ear during his nominating convention hangs conspicuously on one of the arena’s concourses. The one-year anniversary of the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk — which coincided with the second day of the convention — supplanted Trump’s close call with death as the avatar for leftist violence against persecuted conservatives. Republican after Republican trotted out the same lines of attack that propelled them to victory two years ago:

Killer migrants that rape and murder angelic young women. Leftist radicals looking to inflict police-free anarchy on American cities. The mutilation of children being subjected to horrific sex change surgeries. The threat of Sharia Law from Arab and Muslim Americans — like Zohran Mamdani, Abdul El-Sayed, and Hasan Piker — and the looming scourge of a communist, democratic-socialist takeover. Bread lines and authoritarianism are certain under Democratic rule, Donald Trump Jr. insisted. You may not be happy with us right now, but it could be so much worse.

“I’m not asking anybody to agree on every single policy of the administration; what I am asking you to do is to recognize the contrast with the radicals and recognize the achievements of the last 18 months,” Vice President JD Vance pleaded with the audience during his Thursday night keynote.

The president self soothes via adulation. Yet even in his own Wednesday night speech, Trump reluctantly acknowledged “it’s going to take a little bit longer than the midterms” to normalize the spike in energy prices caused by his ongoing war in Iran. He attempted to blame the ongoing affordability crisis on his predecessor and the Democratic Party. To his and the GOP’s frustration, voters — particularly independents — are not blaming it all on the opposition. They have handed Trump a historically low approval rating, and are tossing MAGA aligned Republicans out of Congress in primaries. The convention was nowhere near at capacity, despite local offers of free tickets and a lineup of MAGA favorites. In the absence of a clear argument for why voters should continue to trust the mercurial, impulsive, self-serving men dictating the direction of the party, Trump is turning to outright bribery.

“If the Republicans win, you win with us and you get $5,000. It will be called the Trump dividend. Congratulations,” Trump told the audience on Wednesday night. Vote Republican, you might get $5,000. It screams confidence in your prospects, does it not? Never mind that Republicans currently control both chambers of Congress, and that if this was about anything other than attempting to buy votes they could pass — or make a show of attempting to pass — the payments before the midterms. Never mind that Trump has repeatedly promised no-strings-attatched government checks that never materialize. Never mind that the tariffs that would supposedly fund the payments haven’t generated even a fifth of the revenue that would be required. Never mind that — as Senate candidate Ken Paxton was reminded in a live interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier — these people are supposed to be fiscal conservatives.

Even among the Trump-friendly crowd, there was a degree of skepticism. “I don’t think that a political promise should be made like that,” one woman told me. “The votes don’t come from being bought, so yeah, I’m a little disappointed.”

Two young men — locals who said they attended the conference mostly out of curiosity — said the promise was the “stupidest thing” they’d heard from a politician.

The promise crystallized the rot at the core of the convention: the party’s total inability to respond to the concerns of the voters they need to retain from 2024, and insistence on filling the void with culture war dog whistles and cult-like devotion to Trump. Several high-profile candidates seem to realize this isn’t a recipe for success this November. Maine Senator Susan Collins — facing a tight reelection battle in Maine — was conspicuously absent, as was Alaska Senator Dan Sullivan. Several candidates in critical House races considered potential tossups also ditched the president’s festivities, including Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), Maria Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.), Rep. Zach Nunn (R-Iowa), and David Valadao (R-Calif.)..

Those who did make their way to Dallas played second fiddle to the president, vice president, and members of the administration. Paxton, a host candidate caught in an incredibly tight race to preserve the last three decades of Republican dominance in Texas, became a punchline in Trump’s monologuing.

“I don’t like the way Ken Paxton dresses. I don’t really like the way Ken talks. I don’t really like the way he looks. I don’t like it,” Trump said of the attorney general, who has been nothing but subservient and loyal to his agenda. Paxton, perpetually putty faced and on the spot, made a halfheated attempt at a forced smile. It was not reassuring. The party honored him and his service to the MAGA movement by putting him in a forgettable time slot where he delivered a forgettable speech in which he highlighted Trump’s record over his own and warned that his opponent James Talarico “wants to transition your kids.”

Trump made fun of Paxton again while speaking on Thursday. “I said something yesterday, and I don’t know if he’ll ever talk to me again,” the president said before repeating the same insults.

Greg Abbott, who has governed the state for over a decade, promised to “fully ban Sharia Law in Texas,” a state with less than 500,000 Muslim residents within a population of 32 million. He promised to ban China, Iran, and Russia from buying land in the state — as if they were readily able to do so in the first place. “The Democrats running on the ticket in Texas, they’re gaslighting the public about affordability,” as if economic concerns and inflation aren’t the issues of top concern to Texas voters this cycle.

Republicans begged voters to preserve the Republican trifecta for just two more years. Just until 2028, then we can fight about who was at fault for the collapse of the economy, and the war in Iran, or the unraveling of our alliances. “Can we please, we’ve got to take care of business this November, then we’ll worry about what comes next,” Vance asked the audience at one point. His speech felt like the sort of address one would give once they won the nomination, the soft launch of ambitions beyond the vice presidency. But this is, and always has been, and for the foreseeable future will be, Trump’s party. No second in command will be permitted to outshine him.

Whatever glow Vance was basking in was quickly dimmed under the radioactive sun of the president. Who wrote himself into the second night of programming and — just to drive the point home — reiterated his first night demand that voters imagine that it’s him that’s on the ballot.

As Trump closed out the night, American tenor Christopher Macchio belted “Nessun Dorma” as a rain of red, white, blue, and gold balloons fell from the ceiling. The aria, performed in the third act of Giacomo Puccini’s opera Turandot, is a favorite of the president.

Trump smirked into the audience alongside Macchio as his voice arced towards its final crescendo. “Vincero, vincero, vincero.”

“I will win, I will win, I will win.” A declaration by the prince Calaf that he will secure the hand of the princess Turandot, whether she wants it or not. The chorus surrounding his avowal is that of Turandot’s subjects, lamenting fate.

Trump was totally alone onstage as he listened.