Rocked for days by revelations about a disfunctional Administration and developments in the Trump-Russia investigation, Donald Trump spends Saturday proclaiming that Republicans will win mid-term elections under his leadership.

With a lull in coverage of the “Quiet Resistance” within his Administration, revealed by an Op-Ed by a “senior Administration official” in The New York Times, Trump tried to fill the gap — ironically, by quoting another article in the newspaper that he derides as “failing”:

Trump did not address other substantial points in the article, such as the description of GOP lawmakers accepting a “Faustian bargain” of his tumultuous Presidency in return for “deep cuts in corporate and personal tax rates, confirmation of a wave of conservative judges for the lower courts, and soon an ideological shift in the highest court of the land”. Nor did he mention the series of quotes from those legislators, including House Speaker Paul Ryan, trying to distance “results” from controversies around Trump’s behavior.

Instead, he pressed ahead by rewriting polls to declare GOP supremacy, two months before the mid-terms:

In fact, polls show the GOP facing an uphill battle to hold its majority in the House of Representatives and a toss-up to retain the Senate.

FiveThirtyEight, the leading aggregator and analyst of polling, gives Democrats a 78% chance of taking the House. RealClear Politics projects that the GOP’s 51-49 majority will be unchanged, but shows the Republicans as vulnerable in key states such as Tennessee, Arizona, and even Texas where 2016 Presidential candidate Ted Cruz is trying to fend off the rise in popularity of Democrat Beto O’Rourke.

Trump’s personal approval rating also dipped below 40% last week for the first time since February, although it has recovered to 40.6% — still down from the steady 42% over the spring and summer.

Undeterred, Trump returned to his long-recorded obsession with the size of his Electoral College victory in 2016, promising a repeat two years from now:

And he concluded his day by retweeting a “JT Lewis”: “President Trump will win in 2020 in an even BIGGER landslide than 2016! You are the greatest President EVER, sir!”

Trump did not note that Lewis’s brother was among the 20 children — as well as six staff — killed in the Sandy Hook mass shooting of December 2012.


Administration Slashing Support for Palestine Hospitals

The Trump Administration cuts support of more than $20 million for hospitals in East Jerusalem that serve the Palestinian population.

A State Department official confirmed that the decision is part of the Administration’s reduction of Palestinian aid for “other priorities”, including last month’s halt of more than $200 million for UNRWA, the UN agency assisting Palestinian refugees.

See Trump Administration Halts More Than $200 Million in Aid to Palestine

The administration deliberated for weeks over the East Jerusalem hospitals, because some are supported by influential US Christian groups. Earlier this year, Congress excluded the hospitals from the Taylor Force Act, severely restricting US funding for Palestinians.

The budget cut could hinder five hospitals in East Jerusalem, including the St. John Eye Hospital, the main provider of eye treatments for Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Dave Harden, who head the West Bank programs of the US Agency for International Development, said the cutoff could “collapse” Augusta Victoria hospital, which treats not only Palestinians from East Jerusalem but also the West Bank and Gaza, including cancer patients and children.