THE SEVERAL AMERICAS: Jesse went with a four-letter word!

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2025

It was a dangerous word: At this site, we're inclined to cut some slack for people who are fated to comment, in real time, on some shocking public event.

In the current instance, we'd extend that courtesy to the Fox News Channel's Jesse Watters. On Wednesday, he authored the most ill-advised instant reaction to the announcement of the late Charlie Kirk's death.

Perhaps because of that mishap, Watters was absent from Fox last night.  On The Five, he was replaced by Brian Kilmeade. Three hours later, he was absent from his own program, Jesse Watters Primetime, with Kayleigh McEnany sitting in as guest anchor.

Maybe he felt he needed to take some time to recover from Wednesday's shocking event. Maybe his bosses made some such decision. At any rate:

On Wednesday's edition of The Five, it fell to Watters to offer comment in the immediate aftermath of the news that Kirk had lost his life. His commentary was perhaps unwise, but we think it was also instructive.

Below, you see part of what Watters said. (We join his remarks in progress.) We'll suggest that you pay special attention to his insistent, repeated use of a dangerous four-letter word:

WATTERS (9/10/25): ...We’re sick, we’re sad, we’re angry, and we’re resolute, and we’re going to avenge Charlie’s death in the way Charlie would want it to be avenged. He was such a beautiful boy, he was an American boy, and he was incredibly positive, he was full of energy, and life, and he made politics fun.

[...]

As Greg [Gutfeld] said, this hits differently, because Charlie was one of us. And Trump gets hit in the ear; Charlie gets shot dead. 

They came after Kavanaugh with a rifle to his neighborhood. They went after Musk’s cars. They just shot two Jews outside the embassy. 

Think about it! Scalise got shot, barely survived. It’s happening. We've got trans shooters. We've got riots in LA.

They are at war with us! Whether we want to accept it or not, they are at war with us! And what are we gonna do about it? How much political violence are we going to tolerate? And that’s the question we’re just gonna have to ask ourselves...

The gentleman continued from there, in a way which might sound vaguely threatening, or then again possibly not. To see video of Watters' full presentation, you can click here for Mediaite's report.

(For today, we're omitting one of the most striking parts of what Watters said—the part where he insistently said, two separate times, that Charlie Kirk, the "beautiful American boy," wasn't controversial. Is it possible that Watters really believes that? Does he know what the key word there means?)

We expect to review what Watters said in more detail next week. We don't think that this is the time—but for today, we will report this:

Again and again, Watters turned to a dangerous four-letter word—the dangerous four-letter word "they." It's paired in his presentation with the words "we" and "us"—two other dangerous words. 

Alas, poor Macbeth! Within the annals of human history, the use of those words has "lighted [us humans] the way to dusty [societal] death." Here's the way that works:

To Watters, it wasn't one disordered person who appear in Justice Kavanaugh's neighborhood. According to Watters, some undefined "they" did that!

According to the D.C. police, it was Elias Rodriguez, a 30-year-old Chicago man, who shot and killed two innocent people outside the Capital Jewish Museum. But according to Watters, it wasn't that one person at all! "They" are the ones who did that!

They they they they they they they, he said again and again. Within the corporate logic of the Fox News Channel, this presentation was drawn from a familiar playbook. To wit:

If one liberal or progressive commits some inappropriate act, it means that every liberal did it! It means that everyone in the Democrat [sic] Party did it!  

Also, similar acts by disordered people on the political or cultural right will, as if by rule of law, go completely unmentioned. Such actions must be disappeared. 

They shot Trump, and they shot Kirk. Forced to react on the spur of the moment, Watters instantly turned to this ancient construction.  It led him to expose his foundational belief:

They are now at war with us! What are we going to do about it?

At this point, let's be fair. It fell to Watters to react on the spot to the news of Kirk's death. Given time to compose himself, he might have said something different.

Given time to compose himself, he might have said something different—but then again, he probably would have done no such thing! The resort to the all-encompassing "they" is one of the most basic tools in the Fox News Channel tool box.

In our view, Watters belongs on a "cable news" program the way a fish belongs on a bicycle. We don't mean that as an insult. He might be well suited for something else, perhaps in the comedy.

That said, he's the most watched performer at the Fox News Channel when his daily spot on The Five is joined to his own nightly program. They they they they they, he now said. Some unspecified group known as "they" is now at war with "us!"

Long ago and far away, John Edwards ran for the Democratic presidential nomination. He ran on the theme of "the two Americas." 

Even then, there were more than two. Yesterday, we watched tape of the full hour of Wednesday evening's edition of The Five. We were struck by the way the four pro-MAGA performers on that show seem to live inside their own self-contained tribal world.

By now, there are quite a few Americas out there. On Wednesday, "Kennedy" and Watters and Perino and Gutfeld seemed to be hiding in one.

In that world, the late Charlie Kirk was "a beautiful American boy" who wasn't even controversial! More on that will come next week. Today still isn't the time.

Final point:

We feel sure that Brother Jesse could do much better than this. But if he did, would the Fox News Channel still be willing to pay him?

Where did that messaging come from? In yesterday's report, we discussed the peculiar messaging which seemed to be taking hold on CNN and the Fox News Channel as of Wednesday night. 

Based on evidence which seemed quite flimsy, we quoted three different law enforcement specialists, including CNN's John Miller, saying that the murder of Charlie Kirk seemed to be the work of "a professional"—someone who wasn't an "amateur."

We had forgotten a peculiar fact—that messaging seemed to start with Greg Gutfeld himself! Without any attempt at explanation, he floated the idea two separate times on Wednesday's edition of The Five. 

First, he floated the notion at 5:44. To see him do that, click here. He went there again at 5:52. To see that instance, click this.

By now, with the suspect under arrest, it seems abundantly clear that the presumed assailant was not a professional—not even in the slightest. Where in the world—where on earth—did that strange messaging come from? 

Where did that very strange messaging come from? We'll try to tell you next week.

Tomorrow: Governor Cox

FALSE SPRING: Who committed yesterday's murder?

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2025

Are we nearing the end of a spring? This morning, we flashed on the passage from Hemingway's memoir, A Moveable Feast—his rumination about life in Paris in the face of that city's "false spring."

We'll reproduce a bit of that passage at the end of this piece. We'll start with the somewhat peculiar thing John Miller said last night.

Currently, Miller's a major figure at CNN. To his credit, there's nothing flashy about the guy, and he has an impressive resume:

John Miller (police official)

John Miller (born July 29, 1958) is an American journalist and police official. From 1983 to 1994, he was a local journalist in New York City, before serving as the NYPD's chief spokesman from 1994 to 1995.

In 1995, Miller joined ABC News, and secured an interview with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan in 1998. In 2003, he returned back to law enforcement as a senior official in the LAPD and in 2005 as Assistant Director for Public Affairs at the FBI. Miller was named a senior correspondent for CBS News in 2011.

In 2013, Miller rejoined law enforcement as the NYPD's Deputy Commissioner for Intelligence & Counterterrorism under Commissioner William Bratton. Miller left the NYPD in July 2022 and in September [2022] he was hired as CNN's chief law enforcement and intelligence analyst.

Miller isn't inclined to shoot off his mouth. He tends to be appropriately cautious.

That said, he's very experienced in law enforcement, and he's highly connected. That's why we were surprised by what we saw him say last night, which of course turn out to be totally wrong.

Speaking with Kaitlan Collins, Miller offered this during the 9 o'clock hour:

COLLINS (9/10/25): So, is it clear if anyone is in custody right now? Or is the answer still no, based on what we know so far?

MILLER: Based on what we know so far, they have somebody they're interested in, who, according to my sources, when I last spoke to them, was not in custody.

But, in a case like this, you are looking for someone who has detachment and a lack of empathy, who likes to be in control.

The offender characteristics of the—of the assassin, sniper, are something that's been studied very closely, especially by the Secret Service, and it's someone who is methodical and patient, self-reliant.

In other words, Kaitlan, this is the kind of person who would have planned to get in silently, try to be invisible, take this shot, accomplish the mission, take the gun with them, and leave little evidence behind, which is why I think they're having a very difficult time getting started on this. This is someone who was a planner...

"This is someone who was a planner?" Miller almost seemed to be saying—well, here's what he actually said

COLLINS (continuing directly): And John, also, what stood out to me, from what we heard from officials earlier, was they said it was a single shot that was fired. It wasn't multiple shots in Charlie Kirk's direction. They said it was about 200 yards away from where he was sitting under that tent.

What does that tell you about the person's familiarity with firearms?

MILLER: That tells you that the person is not new to shooting, that they understood exactly what type of long rifle to bring, what kind of optics in terms of scopes and sights to have on that, what the windage was that might affect a shot from that distance.

This is someone who knew exactly what they were doing, and is probably known to others, and this may be working to the advantage of law enforcement as someone who has a long history in shooting. This wasn't an amateur.

"This wasn't an amateur," Miller said, having referred to what he's heard from his unnamed sources.

He seemed to be saying that this probably wasn't another 20-year-old man who was deeply depressed and was therefore significantly "mentally ill." 

To us, his assessment sounded highly speculative. But one hour earlier, on Jesse Watters Primetime, another law enforcement specialist had told Watters this, as reported by Newsweek:

Charlie Kirk assassination "had professional hallmarks": Security experts

[...]

Former FBI Agent Stuart Kaplan said the shooter likely put a lot of preparation into the attack, telling Fox News' Jesse Watters: "This assassination, different to the attack [on Trump] back in Butler, Pennsylvania, was a very well planned, very well orchestrated plot that was put in motion days before.

"This individual had a plan of escape to elude detection of being out on a rooftop, and also being able to evade and elude law enforcement," added Kaplan. "This assassination of Charlie Kirk to me is indicative of a professional hit, and I'm not so sure we are quickly going to be able to apprehend this individual without some luck."

Kaplan said it had the feel of "a professional hit." 

On New York City's Fox 5, a different specialist offered a similar speculation. Here's more from the Newsweek report:

Former Republican New York State Senator and Homeland Security adviser Michael Balboni made a similar point, telling Fox News: "It's an incredibly chaotic scene on a college campus. Hundreds and hundreds of people there, right immediately afterward.

He added: "That a rifle sound...was heard, and yet nobody was able to identify an individual, which most likely means that the individual was shooting from concealment and maybe had some way to suppress or to hide the flash of the gun, and again, indicating that this is a sophisticated individual.

"One shot hitting the target from 200 meters away and then escaping without anybody seeing them—those are the hallmarks of a professional." 

It seems to us that those speculations are based on fairly limited evidence. But Miller had offered a similar assessment, and he's a thoroughly sober judge.

Is it possible that the person who committed this murder was a professional assassin? Everything is always possible, though some people—inevitably, Watters among them, on The Five—had seemed to leap to instant conclusions concerning the motive of the person who committed this murder.

It may turn out that the person in question was another disturbed young (or older) man. It may turn out that he was an amateur—that he wasn't a professional at all, that his instant escape was pure luck.

Then again, professional assassins are hired by someone, for that person's purpose, and the possibilities there would be endless. 

Like Watters, we ourselves don't know who might have committed this crime, or why he might have done that.  Unlike Watters, we'd be inclined to wait until we all (may) get to find out.

Meanwhile, no one was a bigger winner in this disaster than the peace-seeking Vladimir Putin. 

He's been staging a long gamble in which the western world's form of democracy won't be able to sustain itself under modern arrangements. Yesterday's murder undermines the ability of this flailing nation to continue a famous experiment:

That government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

At Gettysburg, that was Lincoln's prayer. Two years later he himself was shot and killed by an enraged fellow citizen.

Putin isn't an amateur. As of yesterday, he was invading Polish air space, and one of his lackeys was openly threatening Finland's existence.

He won't get tired of all the winning.! That said, yesterday's murder was his latest win as he proceeds with his gamble that our form of government won't be able to survive the information wars which have now emerged from the "democratization of media"—from the new arrangements in which, to borrow from Huey Long, it's "every flyweight a king."

We've been coming undone for a long time now. We started telling you that long ago.

We Blues insist that it's still 1898—pr 1955, or 1619. This angers the Reds you see on Fox & Friends Weekend, and they start chanting Communist Communist Communist Communist and also "lunatic left."

Was our species made for this type of work, or will we return to rule by strongman? We can't answer that question, but we'd say the signs aren't real good.

For the record:

You aren't allowed to shoot and kill someone because you don't like his politics or his way of pursuing his politics. Also, you aren't allowed to shoot and kill someone because somebody paid you to do that.

We don't know who murdered Charlie Kirk, but you aren't allowed to do that. We flashed this morning on Hemingway's passage about life in Paris in the early days, but also about what he called the "false spring:"

With so many trees in the city you could see the spring coming each day until a night of warm wind would bring it suddenly in one morning. Sometimes the heavy cold rains would beat it back so that it would seem that it would never come and that you were losing a season out of your life. This was the only truly sad time in Paris because it was unnatural. You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintry light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person had died for no reason.

It was like a young person had died for no reason. 

We don't know who committed yesterday's crime. But given the way we're going now, might our handful of centuries of fitful self-government turn out to have been a false spring?

Later in that striking memoir: Later in that striking memoir, with the stunning reversal in its last few pages:

Life had seemed so simple that morning when I had wakened and found the false spring...

 

WEDNESDAY: We heard the news today, oh boy...

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2025

It arrived in several parts: As we walked home from the subway stop subsequent to a medical event, we were thinking about what President Trump had said. 

More specifically, we were thinking about what he said in the aftermath of the Russian drone excursions into Poland. It was, indeed, a "head-scratching reply." The Truth Social post says this:

Truth Details

Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump

What’s with Russia violating Poland’s airspace with drones? Here we go!

That was the entire post.

We were also thinking about what he said to President Macron, recorded through an open mike, a few days after the Alaska summit. We think it's the most revealing thing we've ever heard an official say:

PRESIDENT TRUMP (8/18/25): I think he wants to make a deal. I think he wants to make a deal for me. 

Do you understand that? As crazy as it sounds.

By now, it seems clear that the president's assessment was wrong, possibly trending toward delusional. Everyone else in the world thought they had already known that.

Had we ever seen a public official make such a revealing remark? In person, probably not—but we thought of the passage in President Clinton's memoir where he says how much he liked and admired the Arkansas Pentecostals, even though they were disinclined to vote for him.

The ability to like (and admire!) those with whom you disagree? Formulated slightly differently, we've referred to something similar as the ability to "pity the child."

When we got home, we heard the news—that Charlie Kirk has been shot. We thought of the portrait Gene Brabender drew:

Where I come from, we only talk so long. After that, we start to hit.

And just this minute, we see the next news—the news that Kirk has now died. "They perish. They cannot be brought back." 

So Yevtusheno said.

As this latest death has been imposed on the world, Putin has seemed to surrender his pose. In the aftermath of the president's odd Truth Social post, we must wonder, with concern and with fear:

What might be coming next?

We suggest that we all learn to pity the child. "Their fate is like the chronicle of planets," Yevtushenko said. 

What the earlier president said: Part of the much longer passage from Bill Clinton's book:

PRESIDENT CLINTON (page 251): Far more important than what I saw the Pentecostals do were the friendships I made among them. I liked and admired them because they lived their faith. They are strictly anti-abortion, but unlike some others, they will make sure that any unwanted baby, regardless of race or disability, has a loving home. They disagreed with me on abortion and gay rights, but they still followed Christ’s admonition to love their neighbors.

[...]

Knowing the Pentecostals has enriched and changed my life. Whatever your religious views, or lack of them, seeing people live their faith in a spirit of love toward all people, not just your own, is beautiful to behold. If you ever get a chance to go to a Pentecostal service, don’t miss it.

Some will disagree with the logic of what Clinton said. They deserve to be heard from too. 

NORMAL AND NOT: This morning, we saw Blue America die!

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2025

It happened on Morning Joe: We apologize for briefly returning to a certain famous text. But in Book VI of the Iliad, Hector, the noble Trojan prince, gives voice to a chilling prophecy.

He's speaking to his sister, Cassandra. According to Greek mythology, it was she who was "fated by [Apollo] to utter true prophecies but never to be believed."

This time, it was her brother, Hector, who spoke:

"The day will come when sacred Troy must die."

So the noble Prince Hector said.

This morning, we ourselves had the misfortune of seeing, with something resembling a startling clarity, that our own sacred Blue America seems to be fated to die. We saw it as watched the first hour of Morning Joe, and then as we gaped at fifteen more minutes after that.

Several ironies obtain. One irony would be this:

On average, the smartest discussions in all of American cable news take place during Morning Joe's first hour. More specifically, we refer to the discussions of world affairs which routinely take place at that time.

Typically, those discussion involve Richard Haass, former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Washington Post's deeply experienced David Ignatius. 

Back in February, Admiral Stavridis "shifted his flag," leaving NBC for CNN, where he now serves as senior military analyst. Despite his unfortunate absence from Morning Joe, the program's serious conversations continue.

They're easily the smartest conversations in daily cable news. The existence of these serious discussions has created one of the several sick pleasures available to the "cable news" watcher—the chance to see a never-ending assortment of flyweights, stumblebums, dumbbells and stooges over at the Fox News Channel as they batter the Morning Joe program around for its alleged major dumbness.

Frequently, the D-minus students support their claims through the use of videotape clips which have been edited down past the point of recognition.  We've often groaned at such ludicrous conduct. 

This morning, we saw the worm turn.

We refer to the way the Morning Joe gang ignored the elephant in the room—the news event which was being  discussed when we briefly flipped over to Fox & Friends at 6:06 a.m. It's had to be dumber than the Fox & Friends show, but Morning Joe accomplished that feat today by an enormous margin.

The regular friends were on duty today. One extremely dumb thing was said as we  watched—but Ainsley quickly stepped in to correct the groaner. 

Let's say the three friends' names:

Fox & Friends: September 10, 2025
Lawrence Jones: co-host, Fox & Friends
Ainsley Earhardt: co-host, Fox & Friends
Brian Kilmeade: co-host, Fox & Friends

Steve Doocy has been dispatched, apparently for being too soft. But when we flipped over, the friends were discussing the remarkable news event which the New York Times was reporting at length in today's print editions:

A Fatal Stabbing on a Train in Charlotte Ignites a Firestorm on the Right

The video, captured by a security camera in Charlotte, N.C., shows a 23-year-old woman named Iryna Zarutska sitting on a light-rail train one night in late August, dressed in the uniform of the pizza parlor where she worked.

She is looking at her phone when suddenly, a man sitting behind her stands up, gripping a knife in his raised right hand. Moments later, the police say, he stabbed and killed Ms. Zarutska, a Ukrainian refugee, in what appeared to be a random and unprovoked attack.

The police arrested Decarlos Brown Jr. soon after and charged him with first-degree murder. But the brutal killing did not capture widespread attention until the security footage was released on Friday, at which point it became an accelerant for conservative arguments about crime, race and the perceived failings of big-city justice systems and mainstream news outlets in the Trump era.

That's the way the news report starts. It didn't appear on the Times front page. Instead, it was a lengthy report inside the paper's National section—but if you were watching Morning Joe, none of this has ever occurred.

Full disclosure! The Times is already being criticized for the framework it dropped on these events. The criticism starts with that headline. For ourselves, we can't say that the criticisms are totally wrong. 

In our view, the report in the Times had clearly gone off the rails right here, in just the fourth paragraph of the lengthy report:

The outrage over the Charlotte killing is a part of a pattern in which President Trump and his allies highlight horrific crimes to bolster their case that the country is plagued by “American carnage,” as Mr. Trump put it in his first inaugural address, despite statistics that show crime is dropping. In Charlotte, overall crime was down by 8 percent in the first half of this year compared with the same period last year, according to the police, while violent crime was down by 25 percent.

We Blues! We instantly run to that "crime was down by 8 percent" framework. In other words, our instinctive reaction is this:

It was even worse last year!

That's our tribe's scripted reaction! Except on the Morning Joe show, where they talked and talked, then talked and talked, about everything except this event.

They talked about the Red Sox and Yankees—did so two separate times. Starting at 6:27, they burned a full seven minutes away with an inane discussion, full of convivial tribal laughter, about Mika's inane appearance on Andy Cohen's inane podcast.

(That foolishness involved an inane discussion about a pointless practical joke performed by Howard Stern.)

They kept burning time in such ways. We viewers even got to learn what Mike Barnicle thinks about Pedro Martinez!

Starting at 6:56, four additional minutes were burned away in an inane discussion about the way Siri's performance has allegedly flagged of late. Then it was on to the first excerpts from Kamala Harris' forthcoming book—a perfectly serious news topic, except on a morning when the program was working extremely hard to avert its gaze from the elephant in the room.

In fairness,  let's be fair:

The program had started with one of those serious discussions. After a few minutes of Red Sox chatter, the discussion concerned yesterday's attack inside Doha by the Israeli air force.

That discussion continued until 6:17. At that point, the serious discussion continued, switching over to this startling new topic:

Poland Says It Shot Down Russian Drones That Entered Its Airspace

Those serious discussions continued until 6:24 a.m. At that point, Mika teased a discussion concerning Howard Lutnick—but after a commercial break, the gang burned a bunch of time away, chuckling and laughing about that nonsense involving Howard Sterm.

The gang was really enjoying itself by this time. On this campus, we thought we were seeing the ongoing process by which our tribunes in Blue America have been working to let our sacred nation die.

As that New York Times report continues, so does that possible impulse. It should be noted, at this point, that President Trump has already said this about the murder in Charlotte:

‘Stop This Madness’: Trump Calls For ‘Vicious’ Law And Order After Charlotte Train Murder

President Donald Trump on Tuesday called for law and order to counteract the “senseless crime” infecting Democrat-run cities like Charlotte, North Carolina, where the president said liberal policies allowed a “deranged monster” to recently slaughter Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska aboard a train.

“We cannot allow a depraved criminal element of violent repeat offenders to continue spreading destruction and death throughout our country,” Trump said. “We have to respond with force and strength. We have to be vicious, just like they are. It’s the only thing they understand.”

And so on from there. 

We have to be vicious, just like [the criminals] are? That strikes us as very unwise.

That strikes us as an example of a possible disorder—one we Blues have agreed to ignore. On Morning Joe, the reaction was to pretend that none of this has even occurred.

As for the New York Times, its lengthy report about this killing was full of information. That said, the report also slipped away to this familiar framing—to this familiar plea for Blue America's death:

The idea that mainstream news outlets downplay crimes committed by Black people has become more of a talking point in some conservative circles in recent years. The critique has emerged even as liberal critics of the news media have argued that crime coverage by American news outlets is distorted by anti-Black bias.

In North Carolina, as in other Southern states, newspapers in the Jim Crow era often egregiously exaggerated stories about Black criminality. Among other things, such stories served as a precursor to a white supremacist uprising in Wilmington, N.C., in 1898, in which at least 60 Black men were killed.

Sad. Our Blue elites insist on talking about what the deplorables did in 1898. We can't seem to quit this self-defeating practice, which seems to emerge from a desire to signal our own (non-existent) Blue American moral greatness.

We simply can't stop doing these things! Through these behaviors, we continue to light the way to Blue America's possible death.

This morning, the three friends had it right! A million very serious questions are raised by that murder in North Carolina. Could the talk about the Red Sox wait? How about all the joking around about Siri, and also about Howard Stern?

On Joe, they preferred to laugh about Stern. This was an insult to the American public interest. In our view, it displayed an instinct for the impending death of our own sacred Troy.

Some Blues will be inclined to insist that what we're saying is wrong. We'll then want to turn back to the birthday book. In fairness, that's an actual serious topic, until we Blues beat it to death.

Sadly, the impulse to fiddle while sacred Troy burns is the most normal thing in the world. In 1990, Professor Knox described the lesson Greek citizens drew from the Iliad:

No civilization, no matter how rich, no matter how refined, can long survive once it loses the power to meet force with equal or superior force.

After ten years, the Trojans succumbed to the weapons of Bronze Age war. The final line of the Fagles translation is this:

Such was the burial of Hector, breaker of horses.

Eventually, the more civilized Trojans succumbed to the weapons of Bronze Age war. We Blues seem to be looking for ways to lose an Information Age war, in which the weapons are vastly different.

Mika had a lot of laughs with Andy Cohen. So they said today, on Morning Joe, as our sacred Troy burned!

Final point:

It's no longer 1898. We need to stop hiding behind that.

Tomorrow: Whatever's next