Happy Wednesday, and welcome back to The Best & The Brightest, your daily dispatch on all things politics. I’m Abby Livingston, coming off of an exceptionally busy party circuit in Washington. On Monday, I attended Kim Wehle’s event for her new book, Pardon Power: How the Pardon System Works—And Why, just narrowly missing Politico’s Emily Cadei-hosted Sunday soirée for the 19th’s Amanda Becker book You Must Stand Up: The Fight for Abortion Rights in Post-Dobbs America. After a quick turnaround, I raced back to New York City just in time to fête Politico’s Meridith McGraw’s Trump in Exile at a party hosted by CNN’s Kaitlan Collins and former CNNer Lauren Pratapas. It was great to see so many of my fellow D.C. expats, including our own Tara Palmeri.

In tonight’s edition, further details on the R.F.K.-Olivia Nuzzi scandal, the salacious and ongoing and irrepressible fixation of Washington’s political-media class. (You know who you are…) My partner Dylan Byers unpacked the whole ordeal in his column last Friday, and he’s back today to sort through some of the lingering drama. Also tonight, I’ve got updates from the trenches of the House campaign ad blitz, where operatives have identified a fresh slate of TV political bogeymen.

But first…

• Trump’s Uncle Sam: Tara sat down with Sam Nunberg, the former longtime Trump advisor turned political consultant, for her excellent podcast Somebody’s Gotta Win. Nunberg, of course, has a colorful history in Trumpworld, having been hired and fired (and hired again) by Trump throughout his first campaign; getting sued by his boss for $10 million (they settled out of court); and later daring Robert Mueller to arrest him (he didn’t). Naturally, he also has a preternatural understanding of what makes Trump tick, and how he’s processing this final stretch of the campaign. Herewith, a few key moments from their candid and delectable conversation:
  • Tara Palmeri: This past weekend, Trump said he won’t run for president again in 2028; do you believe him?

    Sam Nunberg: No, I do not… The Republican Party is his franchise. [Trump] makes a lot of money from this; what he sells on the side is completely connected to it. He will freeze the field if he loses; he will make sure that he controls the money, somehow, if he loses; and Lara Trump, Don Jr., and Eric will be part of the R.N.C. in perpetuity. He would make sure the R.N.C. is still all about Trump. … Whether he runs or not, this will continue to be his new brand.

    Do you think Trump will contest this election if Harris wins?

    Yes, absolutely. Not only do I believe he will contest the election, but I also believe he will never concede the election, and he’ll have a thousand reasons why. I think that’s partly why he doesn’t want the voters to participate in mail-in voting—he wants to complain about it after the election.

    If Trump wins, who’s fucked? Who’s he gonna go after?

    This is a very wide answer. I could tell you about foreign policy; I could tell you corporate-wise. As you learned last week, when Iranians gave you illegally hacked materials—Iran is fucked. They are absolutely fucked. I could tell you, too, I would not want to be Disney. Disney is fucked after that debate; they are absolutely fucked. The way they did that debate, they should show it in every journalism school of what not to do and why Americans hate the media. That was absolutely disgusting what they did.

    Do you think there will be another debate?

    I have heard from people that he admitted that he had an off night. I believe there will be another debate. Donald needs that debate. He’s got to be able, this time, to look at her and talk about her failed record and explain what the future is, based on her failed record, and what it would be if she were elected this time. Not only is it another four years, you could be giving her another eight years. That’s why he should do the debate. At the end of the day, I believe he will do the debate. The voters want another debate, and he’s gonna do it.

So… what’s behind this recent ad fad?

• Changing of the guard: In past cycles, the most tried-and-true tactic in negative advertising was to tie the local candidate to the national villain-of-the-moment from the other party. Republican ads against Democrats often featured Nancy Pelosi, while Democrats linked G.O.P. incumbents to, say, Paul Ryan and his proposed Medicare cuts. But Ryan is long gone from Congress, and Pelosi relinquished her gavel two years ago. Similarly, Joe Biden has faded away as an ad villain since he dropped out of the presidential race, appearing in only a handful of spots this week.

  Alas, their successors haven’t yet achieved sufficient status to ascend to the villain pantheon. Hakeem Jeffries and Mike Johnson are not yet household names, and despite Kamala Harris’s national profile, Republican strategists for local races haven’t really gotten a handle on how to frame her. (It took about seven years and hundreds of millions of dollars to come up with an effective caricature of Pelosi.) For whatever reason, party leaders like Mitch McConnell, Chuck Schumer, and Kevin McCarthy have never been consequential villains on this front.

• Follow the money: But why are so many politicians who could only be classified as “famous for D.C.” appearing on TV stations across the country? There’s no way the average Wheel of Fortune viewer knows who these pols are. (I obsess over these people for a living and even I didn’t immediately recognize some of the people in these ads.) After a round of calls, a consultant told me it’s because these are “hybrid ads,” for which the national campaign committee splits an ad buy with a local candidate to secure the lower candidate rates. Since these bargains come with a legal caveat that the TV spots have to resonate on the national stage, strategists meet that threshold by including officeholders from different media markets.

  A good example: A new ad from Democrat Jahana Hayes, who’s running for reelection in Connecticut, opens with images of Hayes’s colleagues Katherine Clark (Massachusetts), Nanette Barragán (California), Lizzie Fletcher (Texas), and Sen. Tammy Duckworth (Illinois), then cuts to sinister images of Marjorie Taylor Greene (Georgia) and Johnson. The fine print in the ad indicates that it was a dual buy that Hayes made in conjunction with the D.C.C.C.

  Along the same lines, freshman G.O.P. Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer of Oregon and the N.R.C.C. are running an ad which brings back Pelosi and her frenemy, A.O.C. Meanwhile, Wisconsin Republican Derrick Van Orden is seeking to tie Democratic challenger Rebecca Cooke to Biden, Schumer, Jeffries, Pelosi, and Newsom in a joint ad with the N.R.C.C.

  Then there are the local political celebs, who can be featured in a more targeted link. New York Republican Marc Molinaro is running a negative ad against Democratic challenger Josh Riley featuring New York Gov. Kathy Hochul—logical, given that she’s the state party leader—and former Minnesota senator Al Franken, who seems to be included because he appeared in a video with Riley. Hochul pops up again, along with beleaguered New York Mayor Eric Adams (who was just indicted), in an N.R.C.C. ad against Democrat John Mannion, who is challenging Brandon Williams in New York’s 22nd District. Similarly, freshman Colorado Democrat Yadira Caraveo uses her newest ad to tie her opponent Gabe Evans to Lauren Boebert, who’s probably the Centennial State’s best-known Republican. (We’ve come a long way since the days of Cory Gardner…)

  In North Carolina’s closest House race, the D.C.C.C. is running an ad hammering away at Laurie Buckhout, who’s challenging Democrat Don Davis. The abortion-themed spot plays like it was in the can weeks ago and then at the last minute, media consultants slipped in non-sequitur-ish images of Buckhout with Mark Robinson, the better to take advantage of Robinson’s recent disgrace.

• Elephant in the room: Of course, there’s one pol who is noticeably absent in nearly every single general election down-ballot federal ad this week, and that would be Donald Trump. It may be that he’s such a known quantity that he doesn’t even have to be mentioned. A Democrat who’s working on these races told me it’s better to use Trump in targeted digital ads and in direct mail, which suggests the anti-Trump message is most effective when directed at a narrow-casted audience.

Quixotic as it may have been, Leung’s email seemed to emphasize several points. First, Vox Media was intent on containing the fallout from the scandal while a third party reviewed the matter. To their credit, they have so far done all right on this front: Nuzzi is staying mum and, despite the inevitable torrent of rumors and speculation and attempts to advance the story, the juice is not so easily squeezed from this particular apple. The New York Post, I’m told, is pursuing an unfounded tip that Lizza contacted Kennedy; the Daily Mail ran a full article about a “no comment” from Lizza’s ex-wife; and, most gratingly and pathetically, Keith Olbermann rushed to remind everyone that he once had a relationship with Nuzzi, too. (Keith, come on, grow up.) Alas, a story already devoid of heroes has now expanded its cast.

The provenance of this leak remains a preoccupation, as well. On September 15, four days before Oliver Darcy broke the news, I received an encrypted email from an anonymous source suggesting that I “poke around about olivia nuzzi and RFK. Ask NYMAG.” Semafor’s Ben Smith reported receiving a similar email the following Wednesday. Obviously, someone was trying to push media reporters to uncover the story. You could fill all the cocktail bars in Shaw with journalists who suspect that Lizza himself was behind that leak, but there’s actually zero substantive evidence yet to demonstrate as much—just accumulated animosity for a guy who has rubbed some people the wrong way during his career. Meanwhile, it’s becoming increasingly clear that Kennedy had been vocal with friends and associates about the relationship with Nuzzi. Perhaps the law of parsimony applies here, too. Anyway, this thing was destined to leak one way or another, and it’s possible that no one involved fully comprehended its media blast radius.

Meanwhile, Haskell is on the record in his note to staff saying that Nuzzi “violated our policies and potentially damaged our readers’ trust.” Vox is now waiting for the third-party review to determine whether her work contained any evidence of bias or undue influence, but, as I noted last week, her public statements on Kennedy and her reporting on Biden for the magazine already seem to present an obvious and indisputable conflict of interest. Anyway, I’ll leave questions about ethics in journalism to others. (When reached for comment, Haskell referred me to New York P.R. chief Lauren Starke, who declined to answer questions about the timeline of events or the review.) As Leung’s note suggested, this is all up to the lawyers now, and it sure seems like New York has the leverage.

Indeed, Nuzzi has a cascading set of personal and professional challenges to sift through, and plenty that are intertwined. Since 2016, she and Lizza have had a million-dollar-plus book deal with Simon & Schuster for a political tome that kept getting kicked down the road. Despite yet another pervasive rumor floating around out there, Nuzzi still has an agreement with Simon & Schuster for a book, with deal terms likely to be renegotiated now that she and Lizza obviously no longer intend to be co-authors. Presumably, that book will be about a lot more than politics.