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Page A3From§Eachthe midnight edition — 3 October 2026

Trump answers his worst polling yet by returning next week — to watch a football game.

By ChipStaff Writer

“Trump rallies in deep-red Alabama to 'thank' loyal voters as GOP eyes key House seat”, 3 October 2026 (Photo via ABC News — the original report)

As it ran on the front

The numbers came first. By September 21st, Reuters/Ipsos had a new floor: 32 percent, the lowest of his second term, with the Iran war and the economy both still open. A week after that, CBS reported gas prices and inflation pulling the number down again, and the president's answer was the same one he gives every time: the polls are fake. The super PAC that bankrolls his party's Senate campaigns did not treat them as fake. It pulled its ad money out of North Carolina, a state Republicans are trying to hold, and sent it to Kansas, a state they were not supposed to have to defend at all.

That was the week before this one. This week he went to Mobile, Alabama, a state with no competitive Senate seat and, ABC reported, a rally built to thank voters who already back him — turnout, not persuasion. Call that respect, and the campaign did: these are voters who have stood by him for years. Years, plural — how many, exactly, and what does standing by him get them that a visit from the president doesn't? Nobody at the rally supplied the number. Respect is the word you reach for when there is nowhere left to persuade anyone.…

…(cont) The New York Times found the thank-you tour thinner than the ones it was built to recall: empty seats in Mobile, in the state that gave the modern mega-rally its name. A party can run short on converts and short on turnout in the same afternoon; Friday, Alabama did both.

Then, near the top of his own remarks, the president added the detail that actually moved the week: he will come back to Alabama in a week to watch the Crimson Tide play Georgia. A football game fits that schedule the way a vacation fits a shift log: on paper, technically, and not at all in spirit. That is not a break from the campaign, the campaign would say; that is — no. It is a break from the campaign. The schedule has ten states on it. One of them is a stadium.

“The guy's approval rating is sinking over gas prices and his own party's money is running from North Carolina to cover Kansas, a seat they weren't supposed to need. He answers both by flying to Alabama, where nobody was voting against him anyway, and then flying back next week for a football game instead of the other states on his own schedule. That's not a campaign, that's a guy taking a week off from his own bad news.”
Sal
“This is a disciplined ten-state operation, Maine excepted, and Alabama's on the list because the voters there built this whole movement and deserve the visit — a thank-you tour, a victory lap, a — football game. Did I say that? That's not what I meant to say. It's on the schedule. Everything's on the schedule.”
Chip

Earlier in this story

The receipts

Democrats are running an average of 11.5 points ahead of their 2024 baseline across 2026 special elections MultiState Elections, 2026 special-election tracking

Trump reveals he will return to Alabama in a week to watch Crimson Tide face Georgia
Washington Examinerright§

President Donald Trump announced Friday that he will attend next week’s college football matchup between the University of Alabama and the University of Georgia, adding another high-profile sporting event to his schedule leading up to the midterm elections. Trump revealed his plans at the beginning of a rally in Mobile, Alabama, where he…

· Trump's approval ratings endure a cruel summer from the morgue, 27 Aug 2026

This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.