https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/october-21-2026

Letters from an American
October 21, 2026
Heather Cox Richardson

Everything feels out of whack in the United States.

First of all, the president’s behavior is becoming more and more erratic. Earlier this week, he walked past the open door of his armored car, known as “The Beast” and wandered toward an open field before Secret Service agents redirected him.

And he is losing any filter he used to have. At campaign rallies, he has taken to commenting on how he finds Ohio Republican senator Jon Husted physically attractive. “I looked at his a‑‑, and then I looked at his legs, and my—I said, ‘His a‑‑ is like, it’s like a pile of muscle.’ Then I looked at his legs, and I said, ‘Man, his feet are big.’ Then I looked at his shoulders, and I tapped him on the shoulder, and it actually hurt my hand. It was like a piece of steel. I said, ‘This guy’s a monster.’”

Today he snarled at CNN’s Kaitlan Collins: “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re a dummy. You’re a low-IQ person, you’re a dummy, and you work for CNN.”

In the news, Trump’s abandonment of the traditional allies of the United States to embrace Vladimir Putin and Russia remains front and center. Today, videos circulated of Trump’s special envoy to Russia, Steve Witkoff, praising Putin as a “humanitarian” even as the Russian military continues to bombard Ukrainian civilians, this week killing a baby in a stroller at a public park.

Today, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton told Kara Swisher: “I continue to believe that Putin has things on Trump. I continue to believe that he is holding photos, videos, whatever it might be.” Clinton reiterated that Trump “is a willing Putin puppet to help Putin. Putin’s not going to stop with Ukraine…. I guess Trump has this idea that he wants to divide the world,” Clinton said. “He gets the Western Hemisphere, Putin gets Russia and Europe, and Xi Jinping gets the rest of the world.”

Meanwhile, Trump claims he had nothing to do with the slowing of Starlink over Ukraine, telling a reporter: “I wasn’t involved.” When asked if Elon Musk ordered it, Trump responded: “I don’t know who did it, but I was not involved.”

Congress members, including Republicans, have vowed to hold whoever was responsible for the cuts accountable. Representative Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) said on Monday that those limiting Starshield “will be fully investigated and will be held fully accountable.” He said Congress would investigate and mete out “immediate harsh and punitive budget cuts to any responsible agency or agency head.”

Musk is not taking that threat calmly. In response to a report by Calen Razor in Politico that Democrats intend to investigate Musk’s role in cutting Ukraine’s access to Starlink communications networks, leaving Ukraine vulnerable to Russian attacks, Musk posted on social media: “Live by the sword, die by the sword. Those who pick fights with me should understand that I will find out who is really pulling the strings and come for them, not just their puppets …”

His was a shocking threat against members of Congress, but the move of Europeans and Canadians to develop their own satellite communications systems given the dangers of relying on Starlink seems to be worrying Musk. If Congress also moves the United States away from his contracts, he could be in real trouble. As Douglas P. McCormick noted in Fortune last June, Musk’s trillion-dollar fortune is not real. Almost all of his net worth is unrealized equity in companies he runs. His wealth is simply the market’s estimate of the worth of his promises to deliver in the future, and those promises depend on government contracts.

Americans are beginning to see the costs of Trumpism more generally.

As Paul Krugman noted in his newsletter this morning, twelve million Americans have lost healthcare coverage under Trump, and those who still have it have seen the cost of their premiums rise sharply. The situation will get worse in the future, since when they wrote their One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Republicans put the worst of their cuts off until after the midterms.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reports that enrollment in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) fell by more than 5 million people, or nearly 13%, between July 2025, when the Republicans enacted the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, and June 2026. Nearly half of those no longer receiving benefits are children. Starting this month, more of the costs of SNAP will fall to states. The amount of their payment will be based on their error rates, causing them to err on the side of denying benefits and cut costs, leading even more to lose benefits in the future. Some states may have to withdraw from SNAP altogether.

In The Atlantic today, David Frum wrote that the bill for Trumpism is coming due. Although Trump promised in his first term to eliminate the national debt and in his second to balance the budget, maybe even financing a $2,000 check for every American taxpayer, the budget deficit for the fiscal year that ended on September 30 clocked in at about $2 trillion, about $160 billion more than it was during former president Biden’s last year as president. Next year’s deficit will likely be even greater.

How we got to this point, Frum reminds us, is that the Republicans’ 2025 extension of their 2017 tax cuts will reduce government revenues by $4.5 trillion over the next ten years. Their cuts to Medicaid and SNAP reduced spending by $1.1 trillion. That leaves a growing deficit that climbs to more than $4 trillion as the cost of servicing the debt grows.

Economist Justin Wolfers explained: “Washington has discovered a brilliant financial strategy. Cut benefits for people who need them, cut taxes for people who don’t, and borrow the difference from people who aren’t old enough to vote.”

Those numbers, Frum notes, don’t include the cost of Trump’s war on Iran. The administration acknowledges that fuel and munitions for that war have cost about $45 billion, but the real costs run far higher with the destruction, for example, of U.S. bases in the Middle East. The Department of Defense has asked for an additional $200 billion for the war, and Trump has asked for $1.5 trillion to fund the military in 2027, which Frum notes is up 44% from before the war on Iran.

In order to stay in power, Republicans are peddling what Jesse Watters of the Fox News Channel recently called “fear porn.” Matt Gertz of Media Matters quoted Watters’s explanation: to engage non-MAGA voters, he said: “You have to say, these people are going to take your healthcare, they’re going to let in the Third World, they’re going to jack up your taxes, and that’s what’s going to get people to come out to vote. You have to say, these people are scary and dangerous, you know what we’re all about. And that’s really a choice.”

In September, Watters warned that “the Democrat party and its communist base are running against America” and “want to shatter the pillars of Western civilization.” He continued his dark fantasy: “They want to abolish the Senate, police, ICE, and of course the border. Some of them are even calling for reparations and rent control. Others have a little bit of a problem with whites, and a majority of Democrats don’t prefer capitalism. It’s like we’re fighting the Cold War here in our own country.”

Host Sean Hannity told viewers: “We can vote to build on the successes of President Trump, his first two years in office, or you can shred your Constitution, allow our country to be taken hostage by this new radicalized leftist democratic socialist communist movement and their far-left extremist candidates.” He called Democrats “completely insane.”

A company formed last month in Wyoming has been circulating in Texas phony leaflets and text messages pretending to be from a trans rights group. Addressed to the “student” of the household, the flyers claim to be a resource guide for transgender and LGBTQ+ youth. The flyers are deliberately inflammatory, purporting to give a roadmap to children for how to separate from their parents and replace them with other adults or organizations.

Right-wing groups are sharing the mailers and linking them to Democrats. A Republican candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives called them “disgusting and evil” on social media and posted further: “The radical left is trying to brainwash Texan children and unravel the basic framework of our society.”

In Ohio, Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy released what the editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer called “the most vile political ad in Ohio history.” It features the biological mother of his opponent, Dr. Amy Acton, saying Acton is a liar for saying she lived in a tent as a child. In the ad, the woman tells Ohioans not to “let her become your governor.”

Acton, 60, has not seen her biological mother since she was 12, when she and her brother were removed from the woman’s home after a grand jury indicted the woman’s second husband for raping Acton. The woman helped her husband escape custody and avoid trial until he died. Charles Hilu of the National Review reported that court records confirm Acton’s history, and noted that the impoverished family did, in fact, spend a winter living in a tent.

Acton’s brother replied to the ad, saying both of them had been abused, but she had received the worst of it as she tried to protect him. “Shame on Vivek,” he said.

While Vice President J.D. Vance defended Ramaswamy’s ad, others were appalled at his attempt to use her childhood trauma against her.

The Columbus Dispatch endorsed Amy Acton and called the ad “revolting.” MK Pritzker, the wife of Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker, donated $500,000 to Acton, saying: “Bad men gain power when we refuse to stand up and fight.”

New Jersey’s Republican former governor Chris Christie told Karen Tumulty and Dan Merica of the Washington Post: “The question for all Republicans is whether this type of attitude is what we want leading our party going forward. For the last decade, our party has been infected by a corrupted moral center. Vance’s acceptance of this campaign ad only breathes life into the disease that we should be seeking to cure.”

Today Ariana Baio of the Guardian reported that Neil Bush, the brother of President George W. Bush, has voted for Democrat James Talarico rather than Texas attorney general Ken Paxton to be the next U.S. senator from Texas. Bush explained: “I have been a Republican for most of my life, and I still believe deeply in many traditional Republican principles. But character matters more than party affiliation. Our democracy depends on leaders who respect our institutions, tell the truth, accept accountability, and seek to unite rather than divide.”

—

Notes:

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/6161958-trump-on-remarks-about-gop-senators-a-this-guys-a-monster/

https://www.cnn.com/2026/10/20/politics/starshield-ukraine-elon-musk

https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2026/10/20/congress/dem-gavels-elon-musk-01127662

https://www.ft.com/content/555bbf91-4c38-43ce-94b6-90f7fc04e82c?syn-25a6b1a6=1

https://censor.net/en/news/4029237/europe-is-creating-an-alternative-to-starlink-financial-times

https://fortune.com/2026/06/23/elon-musk-trillionaire-paper-wealth-spacex-tesla-exposed-failure/
Paul Krugman
Trump is Destroying Americans’ Healthcare
On the eve of the midterm election, American families are feeling financially stressed As the chart above shows, the percentage of families who say that their financial situation is good has plunged. For the first time since the post-Covid inflation of 2022, it has fallen below the percentage who say that their financial situation is bad…
Read more
2 days ago · 2707 likes · 480 comments · Paul Krugman

https://www.cbpp.org/research/food-assistance/snap-tracker-people-are-losing-food-assistance-as-the-harmful-2025

https://www.cbpp.org/blog/snap-participation-has-dropped-to-its-lowest-point-in-17-years-even-though-economic-conditions

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/10/trump-budget-deficit-debt/689085/

https://abcnews.com/Politics/photos-show-extensive-damage-us-middle-east-bases/story?id=136507770

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-news-peddling-election-fear-porn-about-democrats-rescue-republicans

https://www.texastribune.org/2026/10/20/texas-transgender-pamphlets-tent-student-union/

https://www.cleveland.com/news/2026/10/vivek-ramaswamy-is-behind-the-most-vile-political-ad-in-ohio-history-today-in-ohio.html

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/amy-actons-mom-claims-candidate-lied-about-childhood-in-attack-ad-despite-extensive-record-of-abuse/

https://www.dispatch.com/story/opinion/endorsements/2026/10/21/amy-acton-mother-attack-ad-vivek-ramaswamy-ohio-governor-2026-columbus-dispatch-endorsement/92268822007/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/10/21/ohio-attack-ad-backfires-vivek-ramaswamy-doubles-down/

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/oct/21/neil-bush-votes-james-talarico

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