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Good morning,

It is Knicks day in New York City. As an adoptive New Yorker and a man who has learned to adopt cities faster than he adopts winning teams, I am starting to feel the electricity in the air. The city is buzzing, people are hopeful, and it is objectively a wonderful time to have absolutely no stake in basketball.

My soccer season has been bad, though not historically or catastrophically bad, just the steady, reliable, soul-sanding kind of bad that comes from a theory I once had: that following multiple teams would increase my chances of happiness. I was wrong.

What I actually got was more teams, more losses, and a front-row seat to a full calendar year of collective disappointment. I do not place bets for a reason, and I have also considered not watching tonight's game at all, purely as a civic gesture for the good of the city.

Speaking of New Yorkers, I have news from Carlo. He has been recovering from surgery and has been keeping up with the newsletter from the sidelines. Many of you have asked how he is doing, and he wanted me to pass this note to you. 

I will pass along whatever you send, though I make no promises about his reply speed.

Now, back to the business of betting, a theme that has been on my mind and, apparently, on the President's as well.

On Tuesday, President Trump's endorsed candidate in Iowa, Randy Feenstra, running for governor of a state so red it practically bleeds, lost his primary race. The endorsement came late, which the President's allies were quick to note, and they are not entirely wrong. But it is worth observing that a man who has built an entire political identity around winning does occasionally lose, even in the states he is supposed to own. We file this one under mixed record.

Which brings us to Colombia again. On Tuesday night, the President posted a lengthy Truth Social endorsement of a Colombian presidential candidate, a criminal defense attorney-turned-politician named Abelardo De La Espriella, who he described in warm terms. His reputation is not exactly spotless, which is a remarkable thing to say about a man who has spent his career defending some of Colombia's most high-profile criminals, and still managed to earn a bad one among them. Yet he won the first round with remarkable numbers, and the President's endorsement arrived shortly after the polls made clear De La Espriella was already leading. Timing, again.

This is what I call the Late Bettor strategy, where you do not place the wager until the odds are already in your favor, you wait, you watch, and then you step up to the window with great confidence and collect what was largely someone else's work. It is not gambling so much as branding, and you cannot lose a bet you place after the race is already decided.

To be fair, the President has had genuine wins. His grip on the Republican Party remains strong and he has dispatched primary challengers across the country, mostly through a combination of fear and superior fundraising, which is its own kind of talent. But the record abroad is spottier. JD Vance traveled to Hungary to lend American credibility to Viktor Orban's reelection bid and was rewarded, days later, with a resounding defeat. The endorsement, it turned out, was not quite the asset it had been billed as.

What the President hates more than losing, I believe, is being embarrassed publicly, and his instinct to endorse only once the outcome seems likely reads less like a political strategy than a reputation management system. I just hope he stays away from the Knicks tonight, because with this man, you never really know.

P.S. The most progressive major city in the United States will send a moderate to Congress, which is either a sign of the times or a very expensive lesson for the left. State Senator Scott Wiener and city supervisor Connie Chan advanced Tuesday in the race to succeed Nancy Pelosi, after Saikat Chakrabarti, who spent nearly $10 million of his own money and had the populist energy and the national profile, finished third. If progressives cannot win San Francisco, the question worth asking is where, exactly, they can.

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Jesus Mesa is a Newsweek politics reporter based in New York. You can get in touch with Jesus by email here. 

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Former first lady Jill Biden described a tense and largely one-sided conversation with Melania Trump during the car ride to President Donald Trump's inauguration in January 2025, according to excerpts from her memoir, View From the East Wing, obtained by Newsweek.

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