“Why not Ken Paxton?” MSNOW’s Chris Jansing asked former Black Republican Dorthy Burton on Wednesday afternoon, a few hours before Donald Trump launched his ridiculous midterm extravaganza in Dallas, planned for Wednesday and Thursday.

“Because he’s trash,” she shot back. “He is a disgrace.”

Burton planned to cast her ballot in November’s hot Senate race for Democratic state Rep. James Talarico over the impeached (but not removed) GOP attorney general Paxton. And she promised she would stay far, far away from the spectacle of narcissism that’s become known as Trumpapalooza. 

Apparently a lot of Republican congressmembers and GOP leaders feel the same way. An NPR analysis found that fewer than half of GOP candidates in competitive House and Senate races this year are on the list of speakers for the Dallas event celebrating the uniquely unpopular Trump. (CNN reports that his approval among independents is 62 points lower on the economy than it was in the fall of 2018, just before a disastrous midterm for Republicans.) In an arena regularly packed by fans of the Dallas Mavericks, there were often visible swaths of empty seats.

Of course Ken Paxton had to show up, since he only won his primary, and beat sitting Sen. John Cornyn, because Trump endorsed him. The same was true for Georgia Rep. Mike Collins, endorsed by Trump in Georgia’s crowded GOP Senate primary to run against Sen. Jon Ossoff. I happen to consider Ossoff and Talarico excellent office holders and good people, but they also happen to be lucky this year, facing Trump’s hand-picked, scandal-plagued Republicans. I’m sure there were a lot of places in Georgia where Collins could have spent more productive time fighting to flip a Democratic Senate seat that is considered one of the most vulnerable in the nation. (Or was, before Collins won the GOP nod, and Ossoff showed himself to be particularly skilled at linking Trump and Collins’s scandals to Georgians’ declining prosperity.)

Meanwhile, Talarico held a statewide “Love Thy Neighbor” food drive as his counterprogramming to the Trump show.  “While we’re here serving our neighbors, billionaire mega-donors and their puppet politicians are clinking their champagne glasses,” Talarico told a Dallas crowd. The Texas lawmaker was also supposed to be on “The Jimmy Kimmel Show” Thursday night, but ABC reportedly relegated the segment to YouTube, fearing the show would fall afoul of the Trump FCC’s bizarre insistence that partisan equal time rules apply to TV variety shows, as happened when Stephen Colbert interviewed Talarico earlier this year (Talarico’s support surged after that). The Texas Democrat is telling reporters he still thinks there’s a chance it will run on Kimmel’s show tonight. Stay tuned!

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Paxton looked worn and tired as he tried to fire up the crowd. “Welcome to Texas, we’re so glad you’re here!” he began, exuding his trademark anti-charisma. He called Talarico a “democratic socialist”–he is not–and then he went into other lies.  “He wants to transition your kids. He wants to transition Texas off of oil and gas. How ‘bout we transition him right out of Texas?” He went on to praise Trump to the skies.

But even Trump had to remark on Paxton’s anti-charisma. “He may not dress right, he may not talk exactly perfectly, and he may not be the best-looking guy I’ve ever seen,” the president said after Paxton spoke. “But you know what he is? He’s the greatest attorney general in America, and he deserves to be your next senator.”

I have to say: I almost feel bad writing about Trump these days. Yes, he’s evil, and has been for decades. But he’s also clearly unwell. He allowed himself to become a brunette earlier in the week (after decades of odd, strawberry-blonde dyed hair), then was shown to be hugely balding in a photo on Wednesday. Most days, he seems to wear an airline tray-table over his ample behind and under his suit jacket. I can’t say. People speculate that it’s some kind of diaper contraption, but it looks too big and sharp-angled for that. 

He falls asleep in meetings, and on Tuesday he told a whopper about visiting New York’s Ground Zero soon after the World Trade Center and other buildings came down 25 years ago Friday; he claimed that two strong, manly firefighters carried him out. That didn’t happen. Then he claimed he was talking about a visit to the site later that September. I can’t accuse him of a lie when I don’t believe he knows much truth anymore.

“He is suffering from dementia,” Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker told CNN on Wednesday. “I think we can all see that.”

Trump’s almost two hour speech didn’t prove Pritzker wrong. “Pretend that I’m on the ballot,” he told the crowd. “I’m on the ballot. I’m on. Just one more time.” Trump is right, and wrong, in his belief that Republicans will come out if they indeed believe he’s running. To the surprise of many, myself included, Trump indeed proved adept at turning out infrequent voters for his wins in 2016 and 2024. On the other hand, he’s never been more unpopular, even with GOP voters. 

As conventioneers gathered in Dallas, crude oil prices topped $100, diesel prices jumped to $9.99 in many places, the list of foods that have had to be recalled, from lettuce to some beef to jalapenos, continued to climb. It’s possible Trump on the ballot would drive infrequent voters, whether on the right or left, to surge to vote for Democrats. Boarding his flight to Dallas, he told reporters he doesn’t think the Iran war will end until after the midterms. Maybe that’s why Paxton looked so green around the gills.

Occasionally sleepy and stumbling, Trump seemed so desperate that he was willing to bribe American voters to back the GOP. “Only I can make this promise to you: If the Republicans win the House and Senate, I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000.” Unbelievably, The New York Times called it a “stimulus,” a word even Trump didn’t use; the paper shamefully compared it to Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock promising $2,000 COVID relief checks during their successful 2020 races for Georgia Senate seats.

But the paper was also honest enough to tell the truth: Americans will almost certainly never see these checks, just like they never saw his promised $5,000 “DOGE bonus,” the bounty from Elon Musk’s supposed government slashing spree, or Trump’s $2,000 tariff rebate, or the $1,000 checks he said would stem from Affordable Care Act cuts.

“Now, all we have to do is win,” Trump told the crowd.

The only partisan political win the GOP can cite under second-term Trump is regularly securing votes from Democratic Sen. John Fetterman, after he had a debilitating stroke and later spent six weeks in a hospital for depression. Am I connecting Fetterman’s about-face, politically, with his brain-injury struggles? I am, people, I am. It’s nicer than believing the Bernie Sanders acolyte was a scam artist from the beginning. It’s a through-line from my compassion for Trump, if he would only get off the national stage, to my weird sympathy for Fetterman. 

In a video recorded outside the Mon Valley US Steel plant, the Pennsylvania Democrat introduced GOP Sen. Dave McCormick to the crowd. “Yes, I’m a Democrat,” Fetterman began. “Why am I here talking to you today? Because well, I’m a common-sense Democrat.” He promised to reject “socialism,” calling it an  “anti-American way of life,” before introducing McCormick as a “great American” and “a great senator.”

After his statement, Fetterman reiterated that he will remain a Democrat and hopes to be the “51st vote” giving the party a Senate majority. I think Democrats have to make sure they win a 52nd vote, given his odd behavior of late.

“This is not the jumping off point GOP leaders wanted,” Fox correspondent Jackie Hendrix told host Bret Baier about the Trump convening Wednesday night, just before the speeches began. The rest of the evening proved Hendrix right. I’ll leave it to others to recap “Trumpapalooza: Night Two.” There were no real surprises on Wednesday and I expect none on Thursday.