Dave Foley, midterm ads and a smaller Pentagon on Have I Got News For You

Political strategist Ashley Allison filled the other guest chair, and the episode's second half, on Jack Smith's Senate testimony, is not far behind the first.

Channel: Have I Got News For You USStory of October 5, 2026Trari Newsroom

Why this story? The video opened at a pace of 243,463 views a day, 60 times a normal first day on this channel (4,059).

Trump's Midterm Election? & Hegseth Shrinks The Pentagon! | HIGNFY S5 E3

Who sat in the guest chairs for the third episode of the new season? Dave Foley, a founding member of the Canadian sketch troupe The Kids in the Hall and the face of NewsRadio's beleaguered station manager, and political strategist Ashley Allison. They joined host Roy Wood Jr. and team captains Amber Ruffin and Michael Ian Black.

The channel splits each episode into long segments, and the first one drew around 275,000 views in a little over a day. A new upload here usually opens with something closer to four thousand. The second half, built around Jack Smith's appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee and an ad from Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, passed 160,000 in its first twelve hours. Between them, the two uploads pushed the whole channel to roughly six times its usual daily pace.

The chapters of the first half read like the week's front pages. They cover Trump's midterm ads, which the description says were paid for by the government, and the cool reception they got from some Republicans. They also cover polling on the House, a spat with Texas attorney general Ken Paxton, and Pete Hegseth's announcement of a 20 percent cut to the military, along with his ideal of a force with "no weirdos." The segment closes on Project Meridian and the people said to be leading it, among them Elon Musk and Newt Gingrich.

Many comments greet Foley by name and bring up The Kids in the Hall. Others single out the opening and closing, and one viewer confesses to spending each week trying to guess which headlines the panel will pick.

The channel is run by Hat Trick, the British company that has made the BBC original since 1990. Its about page carries a dry footnote: CNN wants you to know it has nothing to do with the channel, only with the show.

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The numbers

Both halves of the episode opened far above anything this channel usually sees on a first day, and the channel's daily views rose with them.

the video's first day

usual first day here

4,059

this video

243,463

subscribers

288,000

▲ 1,000 in the last 7 days

total views

55,892,697

views per day

296,003

typical day: 47,884

the video

views

274,765

likes

8,370

comments

597

days online

1

compared with similar channels (subscribers)

Would I Lie To You?

308,000

New Zealand Today

297,000

Have I Got News For You US

288,000

TODAY with Jenna & Sheine…

247,000

Saturday Night Live UK

242,000

The Smothers Brothers

237,000

As of October 5, 2026 · Data source: Trari Social News, Trari Traffic Trends and Ranking Platform, Google YouTube

Subscriber, view, like and comment counts are YouTube's. Rates, usual days, rankings, comparisons and categories are Trari's own calculations.

Where next?

A different discovery todayVideo taking off 44x its usual first dayAlan Alda, at 90, on polio, Hawkeye and living with Parkinson'sHis conversation with Dr. Jon LaPook led a busy Sunday for the program, and a longer web-only cut of the same interview ran well ahead of the usual too.Channel: CBS Sunday Morning · Story of October 5, 2026