Let's begin this week with a stunner of a statement -- one that you might not have noticed in the news: Donald Trump apparently now wants to sell weapons to China.

The mainstream media has been doing a pathetically bad job of covering Trump for over a decade now, but you would think that news of this magnitude would have broken through. You'd be wrong about that, for the most part. The fact that the president of the United States is even contemplating selling weapons to China, at any other point in modern history, would have been a blockbuster of a story. All the other politicians would be weighing in on the subject (hopefully, to denounce it as a monumentally stupid idea). Pundits would be talking about it for weeks. But it was such a minor story that it appeared as a tiny blip and then sank like a stone beneath all the other idiocy emanating from the White House.

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Donald Trump is being forced to face a rather brutal political reality. His popularity and approval ratings are reaching new lows, even among his fellow Republicans. This is evidenced by his first big foray into the midterm campaign season. What is pretty obvious from the announced stops on his campaign tour is that few Republicans in close races want their own president to campaign for them. This is actually a common thing to happen to a president whose approval ratings have headed south. Instead of boosting the chances of a candidate from your own party, all of a sudden a presidential appearance at a rally tends to do the opposite. Which seems to be what Trump is now having to cope with.

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Since we're now only five weeks away from the midterm congressional elections, it's time once again to take a quick look at all the competitive Senate races. The map has been expanding, as more and more states that used to be considered solidly in the Republican column have moved to being close races. This is obviously good news for Democrats, since it provides them with multiple ways to win back control of the chamber.

Democrats need a net gain of four seats to reclaim the Senate. They are playing defense in four states -- states that have been in Democratic hands up until now. They are playing offense in ten states now (although a few of them admittedly have to be considered the longest of longshots).

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Donald Trump just hosted the leader of China on a state visit, and in the end it turned out to be a total flop. No big announcements happened, no big deals were cut, in fact nothing much of anything took place, other than Trump trying desperately to impress Xi Jinping with his new heliport and all the other laughable modifications he's done to the White House. Xi wasn't notably impressed (of course), but he did promise two more giant pandas would be heading to America soon, so that's something, at the very least.

The truly epic part of this failure at summitry was that none of it was caught on the television cameras. Which must have thoroughly cheesed off Trump, for whom an event that doesn't appear on television simply does not exist.

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That headline, while meant to be amusing, is contemplating a rather broad definition of the historical political metaphor. The term "lame duck" actually predates its use in politics (according to Wikipedia), and was first used in a political sense in America in 1863. Political cartoons depicting lame ducks date back over a century. Used in the traditional sense, the term refers to the period between when politicians lose their bid for re-election and when the new Congress and/or president is sworn into office. The congressional session after the November elections but before the new Congress is sworn in has long been known as the "lame-duck Congress."

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This week, Donald Trump addressed the fears many are having over artificial intelligence by sending out a message: "The only control or 'guardrails' that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!"

Many people's reaction to this was simple: "OK, so it's official then... we're screwed." Plenty of other scathing comments appeared online, with our favorite being: "You didn't know there was a 'b' in the word dumb."

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If anyone needed any further proof that everything that Donald Trump touches turns to schlock (or worse), this week's opening of the Great American State Fair certainly provided some. The initial idea wasn't too bad a concept -- have all 50 states send an exhibit to the National Mall, and it would capture the spirit of state fairs held every year across America. Sounds kind of fun, actually.

But, of course, with Trump in charge of it, things didn't turn out as well as they could have. And that's putting it mildly. The whole thing was supposed to kick off with a big concert, but when the musical artists realized it was a pro-Trump event (rather than a nonpartisan celebration of patriotism), almost all of them immediately pulled out. So Trump, in a hissy fit, said that he'd give a speech instead, with the handful of the few musical artists still willing to perform for him also featured.

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It is with a very heavy heart that I sit down to write this column today. This is going to be about my personal experiences and emotions, not about anything happening in the headlines right now, just to warn everyone in advance.

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It's pretty easy to see who won Donald Trump's war of choice with Iran -- and who lost. All you have to do is look at the deal both sides just signed, which is obviously heavily tilted in Iran's favor. In fact, it is pretty much impossible to claim otherwise -- to claim that somehow the U.S. won a resounding victory and forced a defeated foe to the bargaining table, where the U.S. would dictate terms of the surrender. In fact, it looks a lot more like exactly the opposite happened.

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The reviews are starting to come in, and they're... not good. Not good at all. Donald Trump's "Memorandum Of Understanding" with Iran is not exactly a big hit with anyone, it seems. The emerging consensus is that Trump pretty much threw away any advantage we had gained over the course of his war of choice, while giving the Iranians pretty much everything they had been asking for.

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