Nets Use Trump’s Alaska Trip as Proof of GOP DOOM; NBC Hits Zacharia (But Not Abdul)

On Wednesday, the “Big Three” of ABC, CBS, and NBC spent time on their lead morning shows kicking dirt on President Trump going to Alaska as little more than a sign of impending GOP doom come November 3, continuing to show their political ignorance of how non-presidential elections work.

NBC’s Today stood apart as, along with a doom-and-gloom report, it also took a swipe at White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia’s biography, which was more than they have done with Michigan Democrat Abdul el-Sayed and his ties to Islamists (such as this new revelation the Free Beacon covered).

But first, on the midterms, chief White House correspondent Garrett Haake recapped the Tuesday night rally in Alaska by saying he went to support “embattled Republican Senator Dan Sullivan, locked in a tight re-election race with Democrat Mary Peltola.”

“Trump won Alaska by 14 points just two years ago. His appearance in a battleground contest NBC News now rates as a toss-up, an indication of the strong headwinds facing Republicans heading into November,” he added.

Haake curiously ignored a major act of political hijinks with another Dan Sullivan seemingly emerging out of nowhere to advance to the general election, who could help Democrats steal the election. During primary season, NBC loved it, having found the chicanery hilarious.

The rest of Haake’s report focused on footnoting debates the night prior in Iowa (where “both candidates focused on rising costs”) and Maine (“it was the war in Iran taking center stage”).

“The President’s travel schedule gives us more clues about Republican concern about that midterm math. The President going to Montana today to defend a Republican House seat there. And we’re learning that he’s planning to travel to Kansas next week, a late-developing battleground that hasn’t sent a Democrat to the Senate in nearly a century,” he later concluded, conveniently ignoring that Kansas has had three Democrat governors this century.

As for going after Zacharia’s credentials, senior White House correspondent Gabe Gutierrez mentioned it in the back end of his report about the resignation of U.S. Ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle (click “expand”):

GUTIERREZ: Guilfoyle’s dismissal announced by new White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia during her inaugural briefing.

ZACHARIA: I want to thank President Trump for his trust that he has placed in me. I have wanted to work for him for a very long time.

GUTIERREZ: Zacharia, a former conservative commentator, holding an unusually short session with reporters, later departing for Alaska with the President —

TRUMP: I thought she was very good.

GUTIERREZ: But facing questions about her background.

UNIDENTIFIED WHITE HOUSE REPORTER [TO ZACHARIA]: Where did you pass the bar exam? Which state?

TRUMP [TO ZACHARIA]: Which state?

UNIDENTIFIED WHITE HOUSE REPORTER [TO ZACHARIA]: Can you tell us?

ZACHARIA: When I moved to China. 

GUTIERREZ: The President has called her an attorney, though there is no record of her passing the California bar exam. The White House says Zacharia moved to China years ago because of her husband’s job with an American private equity firm, and that she practiced international transactional law with all of the appropriate credentials.

ABC’s Good Morning America had predictable negativity. Chief White House correspondent Mary Bruce argued Trump rallies are a GOP millstone because the President has been “amping up his campaign blitz” and “pump up enthusiasm with his base,” but “some Republican candidates” are “increasingly trying to distance themselves from” him.

Bruce asserted as fact that Sullivan could be cooked: “The President trying to boost Alaska Senator Dan Sullivan, who’s trailing former Democratic Congresswoman Mary Peltola, in a state the President won the times by double digits.”

Like Haake, she also mentioned the Maine debate, but also added in ones in Georgia and New Hampshire (click “expand”):

BRUCE: After rallies in Ohio and Alaska already this week, Trump barnstorming the country with stops in Arizona, Montana, Georgia, Kansas, Florida and North Carolina. In the coming days, eight states that he won in 2024. With the war with Iran deeply unpopular and oil and gas prices soaring, Republican candidates are now trying to distance themselves from the President on the war. From Maine —

SENATOR SUSAN COLLINS (R-ME): I agree that the President did not have a good plan.

BRUCE: — to New Hampshire —

FORMER SENATOR JOHN SUNUNU (R-NH): In Iran, it was a mistake to go in when we didn’t have a plan for keeping the strait open.

BRUCE: — in Georgia overnight, Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff and Republican challenger — Representative Mike Collins — sparring over diesel prices.

After she huffed about Elon Musk’s campaign spending, she cheered former President Barack Obama’s all-too-predictable campaigning, cutting “more than a dozen videos backing Democrats across the country” ahead of visits to Michigan and Ohio.

Bruce teamed up with supposed political expert Michael Strahan to whine about a standard barrage of Trump posts on Truth Social (click “expand”):

BRUCE: Trump is staying active on the trail and on social media, overnight posting more than 20 videos, including ones showing animals, mauling people and an AI video that shows the President wrestling what appears to be the tiger that recently killed a man in the U.K., Michael.

STRAHAN: Yeah, I think that make you shake your head there, Mary, because the President — he’s on the trail, but there are two wars that are escalating.

Going last to CBS Mornings, featured co-host Vladimir Duthiers boasted Trump “traveled more than 3,000 miles to visit Alaska to rally voters” even though “[i]t’s usually a reliably red state.”

As an aside, one of the takeaways from liberal, elitist coverage of the 2026 midterms has to be their absurdist and purposeful ignorance of what it looks like for a political party to work to turn out its base.

Senior White House correspondent Weijia Jiang doubled down on Duthiers’s framing (click “expand”):

JIANG: [I]t was a long journey for President Trump to campaign here in Alaska, a state that he easily won in the last three presidential elections, which really shows how close this Senate race has become. On his way here, the President said Republicans are at a disadvantage.

TRUMP: Dan Sullivan, the real — the real Dan Sullivan!

JIANG: In Alaska, President Trump made the case for incumbent Republican Senator Dan Sullivan to keep his job.

TRUMP: The Democrats are running radical left Mary Peltola for the Senate. If she gets in, you’re — you’re screwed.

JIANG: Sullivan, who has served since 2015, is in a tight race against former Congresswoman Mary Peltola, who became the first Democrat to represent Alaska in Congress in 50 years when she was elected to the House in 2022. The state has not sent a Democrat to the Senate since 2008, but recent polls show Sullivan and Peltola are neck and neck. As the war with Iran keeps energy costs high, the President once again promised to give $5,000 to every adult if Republicans keep control of Congress.

TRUMP: The Trump dividend that you get must be spent in the United States of America.

JIANG: And, in an unusual display of presidential power —

TRUMP: Bring me the pardons.

JIANG: — Trump called two Alaskan auto shop owners on-stage to pardon them after they had pleaded guilty to violating the Clean Air Act.

TRUMP: That means you’re as clean as a newborn baby’s ass.

Once she briefly alluded to the Georgia senatorial debate, Jiang wrapped up by reiterating her mention from Tuesday’s CBS Evening News of a Wall Street Journal story about Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) partying in Dubai “with two American fugitives” and invoking Paxton’s Democratic senatorial opponent James Talarico without mentioning he spent nearly two weeks in hiding battling what he insisted was the flu.

To see the relevant transcripts from October 14, click here (for ABC), here (for CBS), and here (for NBC).