The Daily Herold: 10/19/26 - Putin’s Summit Pitch, California Voter Arrests & Toobin on Congress

Jon Herold opens the week with a Wall Street Journal report that Vladimir Putin floated a summit with Donald Trump and Xi Jinping at next month's APEC meeting in Shenzhen to talk about ending the war in Ukraine, with Zelensky left out of the room. He ties it to Trump holding off on new Russia sanctions and the deal to buy Russian diesel, and asks whether the meeting will actually happen. From there he turns to Operation Protect the Vote, the federal probe into foreign nationals accused of registering and voting illegally in California, including the arrest of Alexander Munoz in Commerce. Jon's take: the arrests are great news, but they don't fix an election system built on machines and mail-in ballots, and you can't vote your way out of it. He also reacts to Matthew McConaughey's pitch to vote for independents, which he says misses how the uniparty works, and weighs Patrick Byrne's claim that Todd Blanche shut down the grand conspiracy investigation, which remains unconfirmed. He closes with Jeffrey Toobin conceding that even a Democrat Congress may not be able to stop Trump, and why Jon thinks that shows how little Congress matters now.