Welcome back to The Best & The Brightest. I’m Tara Palmeri.

Last week began with campaign season circus acts—dog-and-cat-eating memes, Laura Loomer affair speculations, Don Jr.’s extracurricular canoodling—and ended on a more serious note with another assassination attempt, this time in West Palm Beach, ramping up the fear inside the Trump campaign over ongoing threats and foreign meddling. I, too, got tossed into the upheaval when Iranian hackers tried to plant a new tranche of documents on me…

🚨Programming alert: I had two standout guests this week on my pod, Somebody’s Gotta Win. First, G.O.P. consultant and lobbyist Liam Donovan joined me to break down the state of the race, odds of House and Senate control come January, and how Kamala’s team is doing her a disservice. And then Meghan McCain and I dipped into some goss and political strategy, befitting the high drama and low comedy of this very weird election cycle. Listen here and here.

Before tonight’s main event, some news and notes from across the MAGAverse…

• Trump’s crypto gamble: Donald Trump’s recent interest in cryptocurrencies, which he previously called a “scam,” extends beyond the obvious political upside. Like Trump wine, $400 gold sneakers, and Trump Media stock, the Trump clan sensed financial opportunity. Earlier this week, the former president unveiled a new crypto business called World Liberty Financial, with Don Jr., Eric Trump, and two little-known crypto entrepreneurs riding shotgun for the livestream announcement. (Eighteen-year-old Barron Trump is described as the venture’s “DeFi visionary.”) Last night, Trump dropped in to Pubkey, a cryptocurrency-themed bar in Greenwich Village, where he used bitcoin to buy burgers for the patrons.

  There are scant details about World Liberty Financial, which is expected to focus on “stablecoins” and perhaps offer its own digital token. Mark Cuban—a proponent of decentralized finance, but no fan of Trump—suggested that this opacity is intentional. “They didn’t say anything of substance,” Cuban told me. “The devil is in the details. But the interesting comment in the broadcast was they’re delaying any release of their token until after the election. They obviously, and smartly, are delaying the release of their token until there can be a change at the S.E.C.” (A Trump spokesperson declined to comment.)

• Assassination politics: The investigation into the second attempt on Trump’s life is already devolving into political bickering. Ron DeSantis, perhaps in an effort to improve his standing at Mar-a-Lago, announced the launch of his own state investigation into what transpired last Sunday on Trump’s golf course in West Palm Beach, despite the fact that federal authorities are already on the case. Parallel investigations between state and federal officials are common, but they often cause friction. Palm Beach State Attorney Dave Aronberg, who stood down from the case when the Feds took over, told me that DeSantis’s announcement was “unfortunate,” and warned it could undermine the federal investigation. “What if they give out immunity in exchange for testimony?” he said. “And what if a witness tells state investigators one thing and federal investigators something else? That’s a defendant’s dream.” (The DeSantis team didn’t respond to a request for comment.)
• California dreaming: Nicole Shanahan, the famous Google ex and drive-by billionaire vice presidential candidate, has no plans to exit politics following the demise of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s quixotic campaign. On the contrary, I’m told she’s been telling friends and advisors that she hopes to run for governor of California after Gavin Newsom’s term ends in 2026. Shanahan hasn’t yet made clear which party she would join—a former Democratic fundraiser, she became an independent as part of the R.F.K. ticket and has since endorsed Donald Trump. More recently, she headlined Tucker Carlson’s LIVE Tour in Texas with Jesse Kelly.

  Of course, it’s all but impossible to win statewide office in California as a Republican, but there are opportunities for independents within the state’s “jungle primary” system. Either way, said a source close to Shanahan, “She loves to open-source things, talk out loud, and throw out ideas. There’s no doubt that she has the money to do it.” Stay tuned.

Indeed, these revelations could not have emerged at a more consequential moment. North Carolina is quickly becoming Pennsylvania’s main rival as the election’s most crucial battleground state. Now, the Trump campaign is reportedly refusing to campaign with Robinson, and G.O.P. leaders are pressuring him to withdraw to prevent up-ballot Republican-on-Republican violence. Every strategist I spoke with this afternoon described North Carolina as a nail-biter, pointing out that even before this scandal, most thought the race would come down to a few thousand votes.

This saga also underscores an emerging pattern in which statewide candidates increasingly serve as either fortifying or deeply destabilizing forces when it comes to winning a state at the presidential level. Just yesterday, a Republican strategist suggested to me that Trump remains strong in Pennsylvania partly because of David McCormick’s Republican Senate campaign, which is far superior to last cycle’s lineup of Doug Mastriano for governor and Dr. Oz for Senate.

It’s unclear whether these were oppo dumps. But either way, oppo season is upon us. It takes a disciplined campaign to hold on to the most explosive material and deploy it at just the right moment. Typically, this biennial autumn phenomenon begins in late September and lasts through early October—when it’s too late to pull a candidate off the ballot, but before many early voters have made it to the polls. Past examples include the Mark Foley page scandal (September 28, 2006), North Carolina Senate candidate Cal Cunningham’s affair (October 3, 2020), and, of course, the Access Hollywood video (October 7, 2016).

Is this a Reverse Podesta situation? Who knows. The reality is that the media has become more responsible with hacked information, and frankly, it’s hard to imagine anything about Trump that would move the needle post January 6, post-bankruptcies, post-Access Hollywood, post-E. Jean Carroll, post-indictments, post-Arlington, and even after the dog-eating and baby-executing bit.

Nevertheless, with less than seven weeks until the election, the mood within Mar-a-Lago is decidedly grim. The recent, second assassination attempt on the former president triggered a campaign headquarters lockdown, which contributed to the level of free-floating anxiety among Trump staffers. “The whole summer of violent shit has people on edge,” said one campaign source. “Almost everyone on this campaign has been getting death threats, every single day,” said another. “My parents have gotten death threats.”

Alas, the gravity of the moment hasn’t slowed the Mar-a-Lago gossip mill. I was reassured by multiple sources that Drudge’s cheeky insinuation that the relationship between Trump and Laura Loomer went beyond hero worship was nonsense. “Not his type, not a chance,” said one Trump advisor. “She’s mesmerized by him, and Trump appreciates her role in vanquishing Ron DeSantis.”

Meanwhile, there seems to be little doubt inside Trumpworld that the engagement between Don Jr. and Kimberly Guilfoyle will survive recent photographic evidence of the former canoodling with West Palm Beach “socialite” Bettina Anderson. On a more pressing matter, I’m hearing that Trump will only agree to another debate with Kamala Harris if he believes he can extract a significant concession, such as selecting the network. He’s still stewing over what he perceives as being ganged up on by ABC News moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis. Some around Trump have surmised that he may go after ABC parentco Disney if he wins a second term, even though he attacked DeSantis over the same tactics. Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung told me, “It seems like someone is talking out of turn or just projecting.”

Regardless, an uneasy feeling is settling in for some veterans of past Trump campaigns: In short, they can’t quite assess whether they are winning or losing this late in the game. The latest Times-Siena poll has the two candidates tied nationally, but Harris leading by four points in the potentially decisive battleground of Pennsylvania. Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio has been touting internal numbers showing Trump up a few points nationally and in the key swing states, albeit within the margin of error. Meanwhile, the campaign is encouraged by polling that shows Harris is having trouble winning over Black male voters in Pennsylvania, a concern that some close to Harris have also privately raised with me.

Within the campaign, there seems to be wide agreement that with the race this tight, Trump can’t afford to lose another news cycle, and that it’s best to limit the fuck-ups—and therefore, they should prevent him from doing another debate. Trump has lost debates before—including in 2016, which obviously didn’t prevent him from winning—and many in the campaign believe that the electorate will forget about his pummeling in Philly in a matter of time. “Why do another debate? So she can get another bounce?” one Mar-a-Lago denizen told me. “Once he put out a definitive Truth [Social post] and said No more, the discussion was over.”

As I’ve reported, the Trump campaign took a big gamble when they dismantled the R.N.C.’s ground operation and chose to outsource to super PACs, including Elon Musk’s America PAC. Now, in the final sprint to Election Day, there are mounting fears about Mar-a-Lago being in business with Phil Cox and Generra Peck, who were intimately involved in DeSantis’s failed PAC-campaign choreography and are now quarterbacking Musk’s operation. As I noted two weeks ago, there have been concerns inside Trumpworld ever since Cox and Peck fired the original canvassing vendors late in the game in July and replaced them with their own. Now The New York Times is reporting that Cox and Peck have fired another canvassing group, this time in the battleground states of Arizona and Nevada, leaving new vendors less than two months to knock on doors, collect data, and do digital advertising. (A source familiar with the PAC’s efforts countered that the change will help them to scale.)

The stakes and consequences couldn’t be higher in this last stretch of the campaign. Earlier today, at the Atlantic Fest, Kellyanne Conway noted that this would be a “tactical, trench-warfare, technical election.” In other words, she continued, “Who has the better ground game, who has the better get-out-the-vote program.” There was no ignoring the warning implicit in her words.