Amber Phillips

When President Trump derides the media as the enemy of the people — as he's doing more frequently — he's not just spouting off his momentary frustration. He's stating official White House policy. Four times in two days, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was offered the opportunity by reporters to clarify whether the president really thinks journalists are the enemy of Americans, or that it's wrong for people to harass journalists doing their job. It wouldn't be the first time an official White House statement contraindicated something the president said or tweeted.

In his first public appearance since leaving the White House in January, former president Barack Obama told young leaders that "special interests dominate the debates in Washington" and that he had failed to realize his "aspirational" goal of uniting Americans in red and blue states. "That was an aspirational comment," the former president said of his famous 2004 Democratic National Convention speech, prompting laughter from the audience at the University of Chicago.

He added that when talking to individual Americans from different political backgrounds, you learn that "there’s a lot more that people have in common" than it would appear. "But, obviously, it’s not true when it comes to our politics and our civic life." Obama, who has kept a relatively low public profile since the end of his second term, did not mention President Trump once during the 90-minute event. But he said he was determined to galvanize younger Americans to do more politically because they were the ones best positioned to bridge the current political divide.

On October 8, Sen John Thune (R-SD), the Senate Commerce Committee Chairman, was the highest-ranking Republican to call for Donald Trump to quit the presidential race. On Oct 11, Sen Thune said he'll probably vote for him.

A reasonable reading of this situation is that Trump has managed to stop the bleeding among Republicans tempted to ditch him — whether by a stronger-than-expected debate performance, or by making life hard for Republicans who did bail. There could be a few reasons high-profile Republicans such as Sen Thune have reversed their decision to jump ship. The first is obvious: the ticking clock. Sen Thune still thinks Trump should go, he told Steva, but said it may be too late.