Justin Verlander's greeted by his daughter Genevieve for his final mound visit. 😭

Blink and you'll miss it 👀 An outstanding catch by the Red Sox ball girl!

30Y mortgage hits 7.5%

Maybe Susan Collins, Roger Marshall, Ashley Hinson, Mike Rogers, Dan Sullivan, John Sununu, Jon Husted, Michelle Tafoya, and even Ken Paxton will all win. I know serious people who think each of those outcomes is possible. Maybe Republican House losses will be at a minimum. Maybe James Blair & Co. will cleverly deploy the president in the closing days of the campaign to rally the base and attract independents to the Republican side using wedge issues. Maybe there are opposition research and get-out-the-vote programs that are about to swamp Democratic candidates from coast to coast. Maybe the Democratic Party’s views on socialism and trans rights are a ticking time bomb for the opposition. Maybe some or all of those things are true and, once again, the political magic and stylings of Donald John Trump are being underestimated by the estimators. Maybe. But as I sift through my inboxes and social media feeds over the most recent extended news cycle, what I see instead is the possibilities that the wheels are coming off for a political figure who is swimming against the tide of a Blue tsunami as big as Connecticut, not because Ken Martin is suddenly a genius, but because an unpopular war and high consumer prices is no way to win a midterm election. And, remember, I write this as someone who has been a leading proponent for over a decade of the view that Donald Trump is second only to Bill Clinton over the last forty years as a political athlete. So, if you are looking for support for the theory that those wheels are coming off the Trump White House bus in the context of the midterms, consider: * This new taxpayer-funded and blatantly political TV ad featuring the president is as obviously illegal as it is appalling (including to many Republicans I have heard from). * The president is considering spending one of his days on the road between now and Election Day in….Alabama???!! * Florida and Kansas are among the many Red places that have sprung a lot of electoral leaks that are going to need to be plugged and fast. * The media ban is considered stupid, ill advised, doomed, and counterproductive but way more people than just Peter Baker (including, again, by many of my pro-Trump Republican sources). * The diesel export ban morass is an own-goal failure on at least three levels, and there is now both no easy answer or route out of the political expectations and policy messes. * The rumors have started back up that MAGA Inc. will not spend down its cash pile to help Republican candidates, causing all sorts of finger pointing and teeth gnashing. * The efforts of GOP candidates to distance themselves from the president to save themselves are only just getting underway -- and while the White House is (mostly) fine with it ("they gotta do what they gotta do to win"), the defections produce a lot of negative news stories and no one thinks the president will actually be fine with it. * Mr. Trump’s approval rating are in the toilet, fueled by lost support from key groups like young men, women, Hispanics, and independents. * On the Warsh watch, there are swirling interactions between interest rates, the bond market, the size of the debt and deficit, and AI spending dangers that could lead to an economic calamity. * Efforts to get an October Surprise deal with Tehran are almost certainly an illusion and a trap for a dozen reasons, including the inconsistencies of U.S. “allies” in the region about what they want. * Unless there is some big surprise today, the Xi summit looks like a bunch of pageantry with no prospect of helping Republicans in the midterms (and maybe to the contrary). * Peggy Noonan speaks for many when she suggests the president is completely bolloxing up AI for the long term, but/and/also being so pro-AI and data center could go down in history as one of the factors that cost his party majority control of both chambers. To be continued…. This is an excerpt from today's edition of my premium daily newsletter "WWoN Concierge Coverage." To get the newsletter and become a member, go to walkingduck.com/mark