SATURDAY: Important Fox propaganda defeat!

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2025

Weekend Friends try to explain: The friends held off as long as they could. This morning, at 6:23 a.m., they finally confessed, if haltingly.

To its credit, Fox News Digital had reported the relevant fact yesterday. The report had appeared right around noon. 

Headline included, here's what the Fox report says:

DC pipe bomb suspect admitted to planting the devices, expressed doubts about 2020 election outcome: source

The accused D.C. pipe bomber has been speaking with investigators for hours, admitting he planted the devices and expressing doubts about the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, a source close to the investigation tells Fox News.

The explosive devices were placed near the Republican and Democratic National Committees' headquarters on Capitol Hill just hours before the Jan. 6, 2021 congressional certification that erupted into riots by demonstrators.

The suspect, Brian Cole Jr., is scheduled to make a federal court appearance later Friday for a first appearance before a magistrate as FBI interviews with him continue. He has not yet entered a plea.

And so on from there. That report appeared yesterday, right around noon0--and right there, in the highlighted material, you see a major propaganda win for Blue America's side.

With that, let's state the obvious:

As soon as this arrest was announced, a major propaganda advantage was hanging in the balance. Assuming the actual bomber had been arrested--and reportedly, Coles Jr. has confessed--an obvious, long-standing question awaited resolution:

Had the bomb maker been a MAGA man? Or was he an agent of the Biden-era FBI, as the manifest nutcase Dan Bongino had blared and bruited and bellowed and claimed over the past several years.

Today, the nutcase Bongino is the #2 man inside the Trump-era FBI. To its credit, the FBI now seems to have arrested the person who assembled and then positioned the bombs. But if you work for the Fox News Channel, a messaging problem arises:

Awkwardly, the person in question turns out to be MAGA! He's one of the many millions of people who got conned into believing Donald J. Trump's nut-ball claims about the 2020 election.

Now for a bit of reality:

We Americans are living through a dangerous era which can be characterized in the following way:

Government by the mentally ill. National discourse increasingly shaped by corporate messaging agents.

So "our democracy" now goes, in the dangerous era into which we've all been thrown.

Within that structure, the Fox News Channel has, by far, the largest viewership of our three major "cable news" channels. Every day, and then on into the night, the channel drags out panels reminiscent of The Bar Scene from Star Wars to deliver the crackpot messaging the profit-seeking corporate channel wants this nation to hear.

Yesterday afternoon at 5, there sat a group of these defectives. On the nation's most-watched "cable news" show, a trio of messaging agents--Watters, Gutfeld and Compagno--laughed and clowned and gamboled and played as they generated conspiracy theories as to why the Biden-era FBI hadn't arrested this man.

(To watch this entire slapstick-adjacent segment, you can just click here. There was plenty of outright clowning around on our flailing nation's most-watched "cable news" program.)

In a less forgiving world, the three messenger stooges we've named would be marched off into the countryside for years of re-education activities. Yesterday afternoon, on this edition of The Five, Harold Ford stammered out a minor, halting reference to the fact which had already emerged at Fox itself, roughly five hours earlier:

The suspect was a MAGA man. He's told the FBI that he believed the 2020 election had been stolen.

Yesterday afternoon, on The Five, no one was willing to say it straight out. This morning, at 6:23 a.m., the unrecognizables on Fox & Friends Weekend finally blurted it out.

To its credit, Fox News Digital had been willing to publish the report. Somewhat surprisingly, producers now let the Fox & Friends Weekend Three voice a brief acknowledgment:

The arrested pipe bomb maker was one of theirs. He was one of the millions of people who got conned into a ruinously false belief by the never-ending tsunami of bullshit they themselves spew on the air.

Full disclosure:

If there had been the slightest sign that the bombmaker came from Blue America, that would have been seized upon as a major propaganda win by tribal messengers like these three:

Fox & Friends Weekend: Saturday, 12/6/25
Charlie Hurt: co-host, Fox & Friends Weekend
Rachel Campos-Duffy: co-host, Fox & Friends Weekend
Griff Jenkins: co-host, Fox & Friends Weekend

They would have blared it to the ends of the earth--but that propaganda victory had now been taken away. Tragically, the autistic man they had managed to con turned out to be one of their own.

In truth, there's nothing especially good about what seems to have happened. We can only tell you this--with the revelation in that news report, our flailing American nation (or nations) has been lucky enough to avoid something very bad.

The message mavens at this "cable news" channel had been robbed of an extremely large win. This morning, to someone's credit, they briefly informed their viewers about what the bomb-maker has said he believes. 

After that, they began to thrash about, throwing gorilla dust all around with Charlie Hurt saying that this whole thing still seems to be "completely bonkers." (For link to tape, see below.)

Those friends! They then opened their 7 o'clock hour with a report on this same topic. By now, the news we've cited had apparently slipped their minds.

Viewers in the 7 A.M. hour didn't hear about the way this unfortunate young man had been conned. The friends didn't say that Coles was one of theirs--that he was on many millions who had been conned by a crackpot president's crackpot claims about the 2020 election.

To its credit, Fox News Digital reported what it was told. The weekend gang even told their viewers, if only fleetingly, and with several forms of misdirection quickly added.

America dodged a bullet with this. For those of us in Blue America, it's less a propaganda win than the avoidance of a big major loss.

For partial videotape: We can't yet link you to full videotape of what the three friends said. The invaluable Internet Archive hasn't done any such posting yet.

To watch part of the report which started at 6:23 a.m., you can just click here. "Completely bonkers," a chuckling Charlie Hurt says. In essence:

Please look over here!

FRIDAY: What kind of "illness" was mental illness?

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 5, 2025

Rep. Omar gets to respond: What manner of "illness" was mental illness? We place our question in a past tense because, when we consult the leading authority, it almost sounds like that familiar locution may be going away:

Mental disorder

"Mental Illness" redirects here. For the album by Aimee Mann, see Mental Illness (album).

A mental disorder, also referred to as a mental illness, a mental health condition, or a psychiatric disability, is a behavioral or mental pattern that causes significant distress or impairment of personal functioning. A mental disorder is also characterized by a clinically significant disturbance in an individual's cognition, emotional regulation, or behavior, often in a social context. Such disturbances may occur as single episodes, may be persistent, or may be relapsing–remitting. There are many different types of mental disorders, with signs and symptoms that vary widely between specific disorders. A mental disorder is one aspect of mental health.

The causes of mental disorders are often unclear. Theories incorporate findings from a range of fields. Disorders may be associated with particular regions or functions of the brain...

In 2019, common mental disorders around the globe include: depression, which affects about 264 million people; dementia, which affects about 50 million; bipolar disorder, which affects about 45 million; and schizophrenia and other psychoses, which affect about 20 million people. Neurodevelopmental disorders include attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and intellectual disability, of which onset occurs early in the developmental period. Stigma and discrimination can add to the suffering and disability associated with mental disorders, leading to various social movements attempting to increase understanding and challenge social exclusion.

Definition

The definition and classification of mental disorders are key issues for researchers as well as service providers and those who may be diagnosed. For a mental state to be classified as a disorder, it generally needs to cause dysfunction. Most international clinical documents use the term mental "disorder," while "illness" is also common. It has been noted that using the term "mental" (i.e., of the mind) is not necessarily meant to imply separateness from the brain or body.

Interesting! The leading authority presents its lengthy discussion under the heading of "mental disorder," not under "mental illness." We also call your attention to this:

Most international clinical documents use the term mental "disorder," while "illness" is also common.

It almost sounds like the more familiar, traditional term is perhaps being phased out. We note the desire to avoid "stigma" in the discussion of such life-draining disorders. Beyond that, we note the fact these disorders "may be associated with particular regions or functions of the brain."

It has been noted that using the term "mental" (i.e., of the mind) is not necessarily meant to imply separateness from the brain or body.

It sounds like a so-called "mental" disorder may be a physiological disorder. As we've noted elsewhere, it seems to be generally assumed that antisocial personality disorder (ASPD; colloquially, sociopathy) can be, at least in part, inherited from a parent.

Or something like that. We're forced to be the ones to say these things because the imitations of journalists and academics with whom we're saddled have all agreed—cowering in a corner as they do—that topics like these must never be reported or discussed, even as our failing society keeps sliding toward the sea.

According to various sources, something like 5-6 percent of adult males can be diagnosed with ASPD—can be diagnosed as (colloquial) "sociopaths." What goes on in the mind of a person who may even have entered the world predisposed to such a moral or intellectual affliction?

Why do they behave in the antisocial ways they tend to manifest? What leads them to behave in ways you yourself might more often avoid?

We don't know how to answer those questions, and the people you're told to regard as journalists aren't ever going to ask them. That said, when Rep. Ilhan Omar ran into some poisonous antisocial behavior this week, she penned a guest essay for the New York Times, chronicling her reactions. 

Headline included, here's the way her essay begins in today's print editions:

Ilhan Omar: Trump Knows He’s Failing. Cue the Bigotry.

On Tuesday, President Trump called my friends and me “garbage.”

This comment was only the latest in a series of remarks and Truth Social posts in which the president has demonized and spread conspiracy theories about the Somali community and about me personally. For years, the president has spewed hate speech in an effort to gin up contempt against me. He reaches for the same playbook of racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia and division again and again. At one 2019 rally, he egged on his crowd until it chanted “send her back” when he said my name.

Mr. Trump denigrates not only Somalis but so many other immigrants, too, particularly those who are Black and Muslim. While he has consistently tried to vilify newcomers, we will not let him silence us. He fails to realize how deeply Somali Americans love this country. We are doctors, teachers, police officers and elected leaders working to make our country better. Over 90 percent of Somalis living in my home state, Minnesota, are American citizens by birth or naturalization. Some even supported Mr. Trump at the ballot box.

“I don’t want them in our country,” the president said this week. “Let them go back to where they came from.”

Somali Americans remain resilient against the onslaught of attacks from the White House. But I am deeply worried about the ramifications of these tirades...

For reasons which should be obvious, Rep. Omar should be worried about the possible ramifications of those poisonous assaults. Over here in the emptier realms of our unimpressive Blue America, Joe and Mika and other such players were too busy getting lost in the fog of the latest chase to discuss what the president said and did, right there in the White House, on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons.

In our opinion, Rep. Omar might have better luck dealing with the disorder which came crashing down on Somali-American heads—by extension, on all American heads—if she placed less stress on our Blue American bombs—on instant assertions of bigotry, racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia and the like. 

It seems that Rep. Omar disagrees with that view, and her view may be more right. That said, our own Blue American corporate stars largely agreed this week to let this poisonous conduct go unreported and undiscussed. 

In recent months, we've suggested that we Blues should teach ourselves to "pity the child" as we try to deal with the effects of the storm of "mental illness" which almost surely helped occasion these dangerous outbursts. We've suggested that we "pity the child" as we look for the most productive ways to restrain the pathologies of the powerful, disordered adult.

There's much, much more to say about the sounds of silence which greeted the president's outbursts. For today, we compliment the New York Times for its forthright reporting about what the president did, and for the fact that it published Rep. Omar's reaction.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but we Blues have amazingly little self-awareness, even at this perilous point in time. As every sane person must know by now, our cluelessness helped send the tragically disordered person in question to the Oval Office—not once, but two separate times. 

Will we Blues ever get over ourselves? Will we ever come to see ourselves as we actually are? Will we ever come to see our behavior as it actually is?

Rep. Omar ran into an apparent "illness" once again this week. On the corporate messaging level, the children were busy getting lost in the fog of the chase. Utter incompetence looks like that—and of course, almost surely, the salaries are too damn high and the livin' is way too easy. 

There's much more to be said about (clinical) "mental disorder." For better or worse, the people who get sold to us as journalists are never going to do it.

ILLNESS: O'Donnell got lost in "the fog of the chase!"

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 5, 2025

So did quite a few others: As we've noted in recent weeks, Lawrence O'Donnell has been the must-see cable news anchor of the past month or so.

Other hosts at MSNBC have basically gone through the mandated topics, performing critiques by rote. O'Donnell has seemed to take President Trump's deteriorating conduct much more personally in these recent weeks. 

You wouldn't normally recommend that approach. In our view, the approach has worked quite well for O'Donnell of late.

Beyond that, O'Donnell has now started his annual promotional drive for his "Kid in Need of Desks" (KIND) project. The brilliant project arranges for school kids in the African nation of Malawi to have the chance, for the first time in their lives, to sit at a desk, not on the ground, as they pursue their dreams for the future in their nation's schools.

We regard Kid in Need of Desks as the most signicant use of time any cable news host has ever accomplished. The videotapes of O'Donnell's interactions with the deeply grateful young people of Malawi is a constant lesson in the astounding potential greatness of the human spirit.

That said:

LOD has long had a bit of an anger problem. Dating at least to 2004, it got him suspended from his posts at NBC cable at several times down through the years.

He also has an extreme relationship to the concept of "lying." For O'Donnell, every misstatement is a lie. We've never seen a person that smart who had so much trouble with that pair of basic concepts.

Last night, O'Donnell went off about the investigation of the events of September 2. His presentation started with this declaration, then went downhill from there:

O'DONNELL (12/4/25): First, they lie.

That's what has happened in the American military after every war crime committed by the American military.

First, they lie. Somewhere in the chain of command, they lie.

That is what Donald Trump's incompetent Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, did when first confronted with the Washington Post's breaking news report of a second missile strike on a small boat that had already been destroyed, and burst into flames, after the first missile strike.

The Washington Post reported that the second missile strike killed two people clinging to the wreckage, which would be a war crime in a war, and is murder outside of war. 

There is no war in the Caribbean. There is no "fog of war" there. So Pete Hegseth lied and said that everything in the Washington Post article was "the fake news delivering more fabricated, inflammatory and derogatory reporting."  

That was Pete Hegseth's first lie about this story, as soon as it came out.

That's the way O'Donnell started. Sadly, we have to say no.

Sadly, no! Simply put, Hegseth didn't lie and say that everything in the Washington Post article was "the fake news delivering more fabricated, inflammatory and derogatory reporting."   

Simply put, that didn't happen. Whatever you may think of Hegseth, he simply didn't say that.

Also, Hegseth's later remark about "the fog of war" was perfectly easy to parse, and it seems that what he said on that occasion is now being corroborated. 

It's possible that Hegseth committed a war crime on September 2 (or possibly not), though there will never be a consensus. But he actually didn't say what O'Donnell says he said. 

Lost in the fog of the chase, O'Donnell was grossly misdescribing what his target said about "the fog of war." A boatload of prejudgment was floating about as O'Donnell made that presentation—and as he continued, he made a series of inexcusable misstatements concerning the current investigation of this high-profile event.

In fairness, O'Donnell wasn't the only Blue American politician or journalist engaged in what we've described as "the fog of the chase." In this instance, the chase has been directed at the highly erratic Hegseth, and it's been quite widespread. 

For the record, we've seen this sort of group stampede being conducted before. As O'Donnell pursued the chase of Hegseth, he engaged in flagrant embellishment of elementary facts, but also in the practice we'd describe as "creative paraphrase." 

In truth, we humans aren't built for this line of work. We aren't built for the task of providing respectable journalism at a time of tribal war.

The explanation is this:

We humans all have a lizard brain. As everyone actually knows, that lizard brain is a basic part of our basic human wiring.

At times of tribal war, our lizard brains instruct us to believe the statements which support our tribal preconceptions. As individuals, our ability to function as the ballyhooed "rational animal" is determined by the extent to which we remain in thrall to our lizard brain.

Did Pete Hegseth commit a war crime in connection with the events of September 2? As far as we know, it's entirely possible that he did, though there will never be anything like a unanimous judgment across tribal lines on that point.

That said:

Did Hegseth lie and say that everything in the Washington Post article was "the fake news delivering more fabricated, inflammatory and derogatory reporting?" 

Was that his first lie about this story, as soon as it came out?

(For the source which Lawrence flashed on the screen, you can just click here.)

In fact, Hegseth made no such statement about that initial report. But as O'Donnell's angry presentation wound on, he lost himself in the fog of the chase, especially with respect to Hegseth's later reference to "the fog of war."

O'Donnell opened with one wild misstatement, then made several others. In one instance, he played tape of Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), appearing on last night's All In.

At least as O'Donnell framed his presentation, Rep. Smith seemed to have no idea what Hegseth was talking about when he spoke of "the fog of war." Creatures like us aren't built for this kind of work. We've proven that point many times.

Three nights have now passed since President Trump launched his two-day poisonous attack on the human "garbage" he says he's spotted in Minnesota. O'Donnell hasn't said a word about that "shocking" conduct as these nights have flown by.

This morning, the Morning Joe gang also took a third straight pass on that poisonous conduct. They piddled their way through some dog-eared topics, ran in fear from that. 

Joe Scarborough embarrassed himself the past two days as he engaged in the fog of the chase. This morning, he was nowhere to be seen. 

With Scarborough's bluster and embellishments gone, Mika Brzezinski actually staged a calmer, smarter presentation about the events of September 2. But for the third straight day, there was no mention—none at all!—of the poisonous attacks the president launched, two days in a row, about all the Somali "garbage" in the aforementioned state.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep. That said, our Blue elites don't know how to talk about the type of "illness" with which the president is quite possibly afflicted.

As for us in the rank and file, we weren't up to the task of pushing back when chases of the current type were being directed at our own tribal leaders.

Al Gore said he invented the Internet? We sucked our thumbs for two solid years as these millionaire corporate toys conducted that form of the chase.

Rep. Omar has written a guest essay in today's New York Times. As our stars have conducted their chase after Hegseth, they've taken an astonishing pass on two days of undisguised poison.

This afternoon, we'll discuss Rep. Omar's essay. But let the word go forth to the nations—we Blues aren't up to the challenge of making accurate statements at a time of tribal war. Hegseth may have committed a crime—but no, he didn't say that.

Kids in Need of Desks is a brilliant use of cable news time. Malawi's kids are clearly deeply grateful to Lawrence. We Blues should be thanking him too.

This afternoon: Rep. Omar speaks

Also this: Go ahead and take a look. This is superlative work.

THURSDAY: We're living in Alice's wonderland now!

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 4, 2025

Our press corps won't tell you about it: We correct ourselves for the second time concerning Jen Psaki's program.

Last evening, she did report and discuss what the president did—what he did for the second straight day. As you can see by clicking this link, her segment started like this at 9:47 Eastern:

PSAKI (12/3/25): Today, Donald Trump doubled down on his disgusting racist attacks against Somali immigrants. And to spare you some of the bile, I'm only going to play part of it. But I think some of this hateful rhetoric from the president of the United States is worth bearing witness to.

As you can see by clicking that link, she then played tape of the president's second-day assault. She then interviewed Rep. Omar, who the president had dismissed as "garbage" the day before, about the fellow's behavior.

As to why the president behaved in this way, it seems to us that he has perhaps been spiraling downward of late. Several medical specialists have recently advanced that thesis, though we'll set that possibility aside for another day.

We remain puzzled by the minimal way the president's disordered behavior was covered on other MS NOW programs. For today, we thought you ought to see what viewers of the nation's most-watched "cable news" show were told about this two-day event.

We take you to the set of The Five, where an all-MAGA panel had been assembled for yesterday's imitation of life. Indeed, the former VJ Kennedy sat in the "liberal" chair. On such days, this ludicrous four-on-one program become a five-to-zero parody of a panel "news" discussion.

A bit of background: The second segment of the show was built out of recent events in Minnesota, starting with the widespread fraud event reported in this lengthy front-page report in Sunday's New York Times:

How Fraud Swamped Minnesota’s Social Services System on Tim Walz’s Watch

The fraud scandal that rattled Minnesota was staggering in its scale and brazenness.

Federal prosecutors charged dozens of people with felonies, accusing them of stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from a government program meant to keep children fed during the Covid-19 pandemic.

At first, many in the state saw the case as a one-off abuse during a health emergency. But as new schemes targeting the state’s generous safety net programs came to light, state and federal officials began to grapple with a jarring reality.

Over the last five years, law enforcement officials say, fraud took root in pockets of Minnesota’s Somali diaspora as scores of individuals made small fortunes by setting up companies that billed state agencies for millions of dollars’ worth of social services that were never provided.

From the Blue political / policy perspective, it's a horrible news report. We were struck by the fact that the Times included Governor Walz right there in its headline.

It was the sudden prominence of those fraud prosecutions which led to the president's outbursts this week. But what were viewers of The Five told about those poisonous outbursts themselves?

We can't recommend that you watch the whole segment. The conversation involves the usual fact-challenged inanities performed by co-hosts Jesse Watters and Greg Gutfeld. Also, a lengthy side-trip about public corruption in Sierra Leone was conducted by co-host Dana Perino.

To watch the whole segment, start here.

Sad! That said, near the end of this imitation of life, what were Red American viewers told about the president's poisonous outbursts? Believe it or not—and with a minor surprise yet to come—this is what viewers now heard:

GUTFELD (12/3/25): Oh, one last thing! It's kind of refreshing to see Trump be able to say that stuff about Omar and not be called all these names, because that whole "identity politics" thing doesn't work any more...

According to Gutfeld, it was "kind of refreshing" to hear the things President Trump had said over the prior two days! To hear him say that Rep. Omar was "garbage." To hear him say that Rep. Omar's friends were "garbage" too!

Yes, that's what this very strange "newsman" said. But now we give you the kicker:

Viewers had never been shown the videotape of the poisonous things the president had said! As you can see if you watch the whole segment, viewers had seen the videotape of Omar's rebuttal to Trump—and Gutfeld went on to criticize her for saying that Trump's remarks were racist, without letting viewers see what he had actually said.

Gutfeld and Watters and Perino oh my! We're all in Alice's Wonderland now, and the timorous Blue American press corps still won't tell you about it!

ILLNESS: When he came for the Somalis again...

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 4, 2025

...MS NOW stars kept their traps shut: Yesterday, there he went again! Just as he'd done the previous day, the sitting president—President Sanitized—came for the Somalis again.

He came for them for the second straight day! But if you're a person who watches MS NOW, you had to go to Mediaite to learn that he'd done this again. 

At Mediaite, Sarah Rumpf has reported what the president said during yesterday's second assault. She then stated her opinion of what he had said in a separate opinion column.

First she reported, then she opined. We include the headlines atop her news report about yesterday's encore performance:

Trump Rants About Ilhan Omar: ‘Should Be Thrown the Hell Out of Our Country,’ ‘Shouldn’t Even Be Allowed’ in Congress

President Donald Trump called for Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) to be thrown out of the country and said she and other Somali immigrants should not be allowed to be in Congress.

The president was responding to a reporter’s question about his comments Tuesday that he did not want any more Somalis moving to the U.S. and specifically attacking Omar, calling her “garbage” and “a terrible person.” Trump’s comments were widely viewed as racist and sharply criticized.

On Wednesday, Trump took questions from reporters in the Oval Office, and one reporter asked about his comments about Somali immigrants.

Rumph offered a transcript (and videotape) of Trump's remarks on this second day. Among other things, he said that Rep. Omar "shouldn’t be allowed to be a congresswoman" and that she "should be thrown the hell out of our country."

Also, "the Somalians should be out of here," he said. "They have destroyed our country," he crazily said, and so on from there.

So it went, on the second day, when the president came for this group. Later, Rumph offered this opinion column:

Opinion: Trump’s Hateful Oval Office Rant About Somali Immigrants Shines a Harsh Light on the Cowardice of His Cronies

President Donald Trump launched into a rant Wednesday attacking Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and other Somali immigrants, saying they should be “thrown the hell out of our country” and not allowed to serve in Congress, an unhinged moment that revealed not just the president’s animosity towards a group of Americans, but the cowardice and complicity of the cronies gathered around him from Congress and his cabinet.

On Tuesday, Trump attacked Omar as “garbage” and “a terrible person,” and expanded his vitriol to all Somali immigrants, declaring “I don’t want them in our country” because “they contribute nothing.” His comments were—rightfully—loudly criticized as racist.

Trump aggressively defended his comments during a Q&A session with reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday.

Rumph's column continues from there. For the record, Trump didn't use the word "garbage" this day. It's possible that somebody clued him.

At any rate, Rumph's opinion column continues from there. As she ended, she went where we ourselves had gone when we watched the first day of these broadsides:

(from Rumph's opinion column)
If we don’t want this chapter of American history to be recorded as “First they came for the Somalis…” then it is incumbent upon those around the president, who have influence in this administration and in Congress, to speak up

UPDATE: Retired NY Daily News reporter Helen Kennedy posted a list on her Bluesky account of the people who attended the Oval Office presser with Trump. “I think it should be noted who stood there,” she wrote.

Rumph savaged the cronies who stood behind Trump on this second day. They said and did nothing as he "came for the Somalis" again.

That said, those cronies weren't the only people who said nothing about these two days—the two days during which, to our ear, the president has finally seemed to identify his target population of choice.

Another group has said and done nothing for two days and two nights. As best we can tell, the stars of MS NOW have also maintained their silence, presumably in response to a directive from the corporate suites.

Who has stayed silent in the past two days? We refer to Scarborough and O'Donnell and Hayes and Psaki and, as best we can tell, to everyone else on the Blue America cable news roster. 

As we noted yesterday, we were shocked on Wednesday morning when the Morning Joe gang said nothing about what the president said on Tuesday afternoon. As we noted, the New York Times was reporting the president's "shocking" conduct at the very top of its web site, but the Morning Joe gang stayed silent all through its opening hour.

What were they choosing to disregard? According to that Times report, here's what the president had said in Tuesday's diatribe:

Trump Calls Somalis ‘Garbage’ He Doesn’t Want in the Country

President Trump unleashed a xenophobic tirade against Somali immigrants on Tuesday, calling them “garbage” he does not want in the United States in an outburst that captured the raw nativism that has animated his approach to immigration.

Even for Mr. Trump—who has a long history of insulting Black people, particularly those from African countries—his outburst was shocking in its unapologetic bigotry. And it comes as he started a new ICE operation targeting Somalis in the Minneapolis-St. Paul region.

“These are people that do nothing but complain,” Mr. Trump said at the tail end of a cabinet meeting at the White House, during which he sometimes appeared to be fighting sleep. But when the subject turned to immigration, Mr. Trump made a point of lashing out.

“When they come from hell and they complain and do nothing but bitch, we don’t want them in our country. Let them go back to where they came from and fix it,” Mr. Trump added as Vice President JD Vance banged the table in encouragement.

He said Somalia “stinks and we don’t want them in our country.” He described Representative Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota, who came to the United States from Somalia as a refugee and became a citizen 25 years ago, as “garbage.”

“We could go one way or the other, and we’re going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country,” Mr. Trump said. “She’s garbage. Her friends are garbage. These aren’t people who work. These aren’t people who say, ‘Let’s go, come on, let’s make this place great.’”

Rep. Omar is garbage, and her friends are too. The president had continued from there. Yesterday morning, at the top of its website's front page, the New York Times called his behavior "shocking."

That's what the president said on Tuesday afternoon. Yesterday, he continued this onslaught, but we can find no instant sign that two straight days of this behavior has been mentioned on MS NOW programs at all.

On Morning Joe? On The Last Word? On All In? On The Briefing with Jen Psaki? We can find no sign that two days of this behavior has even been mentioned on these programs. 

CORRECTION: Last night, Psaki aired the videotape of Trump's second-day presentation fairly late in her 9 o'clock hour

Yesterday, we criticized Scarborough for his silence. He was silent again this morning, leading us to assume that the orders came from the corporate suites above.

We stand with Sarah Rumpf's flash reaction to this remarkable matter. When we happened to watch the president in real time on Tuesday afternoon, it seemed to us that he was finally naming the population he wanted to target in the ultimate irresponsible way. 

As to why he would do such a thing, we now confess to this:

We have assumed, for some time, that this president has been, all along, in the grip of a type of "illness."

As we noted yesterday, t's an "illness" of the second kind. That particular use of the word is apparently going out of favor when it comes to situations like this.

As opposed to a basic physical illness, it's the kind of illness which is conceptually complex and confusing. 

The president's niece is a doctorate-wielding clinical therapist. As we've noted many times, her assessment of her adult uncle's "psychopathologies" runs exactly like this:

Prologue

[...]

None of the Trump siblings emerged unscathed from my grandfather’s sociopathy and my grandmother’s illnesses, both physical and psychological, but my uncle Donald and my father, Freddy, suffered more than the rest. In order to get a complete picture of Donald, his psychopathologies, and the meaning of his dysfunctional behavior, we need a thorough family history.

In the last three years, I’ve watched as countless pundits, armchair psychologists, and journalists have kept missing the mark, using phrases such as “malignant narcissism” and “narcissistic personality disorder” in an attempt to make sense of Donald’s often bizarre and self-defeating behavior. I have no problem calling Donald a [clinically diagnosable] narcissist—he meets all nine criteria as outlined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5)—but the label gets us only so far.

[...]

Does Donald have other symptoms we aren’t aware of? Are there other disorders that might have as much or more explanatory power? Maybe. A case could be made that he also meets the criteria for antisocial personality disorder, which in its most severe form is generally considered sociopathy but can also refer to chronic criminality, arrogance, and disregard for the rights of others...

The fact is, Donald’s pathologies are so complex and his behaviors so often inexplicable that coming up with an accurate and comprehensive diagnosis would require a full battery of psychological and neuropsychological tests that he’ll never sit for.

So the niece assessed. We've long assumed something else:

According to the leading authorities, the condition colloquially known as "sociopathy" can be at least partly inherited. It can be passed along in the genes to the unsuspecting child. 

With that tragic fact in mind, we've long advised you to "pity the child" in the case of this particular human tragedy. Also, according to the leading authorities, something like five percent of adult men are diagnosable for this "personality disorder." 

In essence, a wire is hanging loose in some of our imperfect human brains. People so afflicted don't react to situations in the (admittedly limited) way the rest of us humans may do. 

Their physiology may limit their reactions and their moral understanding. There but for the grace of God go the rest of us limited people.

Our journalists don't have the slightest idea how to talk about this. In part for that reason, they've agreed that this president's possible or apparent mental state must never be discussed or assessed, not even by medical specialists.

Somehow, this seems to have bled over into the silence of the past two days—the silence from the millionaire "cable news" hosts we Blues have been told we should trust.

Just a guess! Somewhere up in the corporate suites, some executive seems to have made a decision about what the president did. For whatever reason, that person decided that viewers of MS NOW shouldn't be told about the onslaught the president has aimed at this "garbage" of the upper Midwest.

In this follow-up news report, the New York Times has reported the fear within Minnesota's Somali population in the wake of Tuesday's initial outburst. Quoting from the report:

A widespread sense of anxiety and foreboding was palpable in Minnesota, home to the largest diaspora of Somalis in the world, a day after President Trump in the Oval Office referred to Somalis as “garbage” amid his administration’s new crackdown on East African immigrants in the state who may be subject to deportation.

“What is happening now goes far beyond immigration enforcement,” said Abdiqani A. Jabane, a Somali American immigration lawyer in Minneapolis. “It is creating an atmosphere of xenophobia, where an entire community feels targeted and unsafe.”

Yesterday, the president did it again. He came for the Somalis again—but if you get your news from MS NOW, you haven't been told about this.

The president came for the Somalis? Was Rumph over-reacting when she framed it that way?

Was the scribe out over her skis? We can't really say that she was!

This afternoon: Good God! What viewers were told by The Five

WEDNESDAY: What did he say and when did he say it?

WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 3, 2025

Here we go again: Did Pete Hegseth commit a war crime? We suppose it's certainly possible that he actually did.

That said, the knives are out for the highly erratic, widely scorned Secretary of Defense. In some quarters, that has produced a familiar type of chase, with creative paraphrase being widely applied to the several things Hegseth has now said about the events of September 2.

Full disclosure:

The analytical skills of mainstream journalists are frequently rather poor. When they settle on a group target, the embellishments and the slippery paraphrase are rarely far behind.

In the case of Hegseth, the current uproar about the second strike on the disabled boat (and on its two survivors) began with a rather fuzzy report in the Washington Post. Headline included, this is the way the current chase after this new target started:

Hegseth order on first Caribbean boat strike, officials say: Kill them all

The longer the U.S. surveillance aircraft followed the boat, the more confident intelligence analysts watching from command centers became that the 11 people on board were ferrying drugs.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken directive, according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation. “The order was to kill everybody,” one of them said.

A missile screamed off the Trinidad coast, striking the vessel and igniting a blaze from bow to stern. For minutes, commanders watched the boat burning on a live drone feed. As the smoke cleared, they got a jolt: Two survivors were clinging to the smoldering wreck.

The Special Operations commander overseeing the Sept. 2 attack—the opening salvo in the Trump administration’s war on suspected drug traffickers in the Western Hemisphere—ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s instructions, two people familiar with the matter said. The two men were blown apart in the water.

[...]

The commander overseeing the operation from Fort Bragg in North Carolina, Adm. Frank M. “Mitch” Bradley, told people on the secure conference call that the survivors were still legitimate targets because they could theoretically call other traffickers to retrieve them and their cargo, according to two people. He ordered the second strike to fulfill Hegseth’s directive that everyone must be killed.

The chronology there is less than precise. We know of nothing Hegseth has said which is inconsistent with that first fuzzy account.

According to that account, Hegseth gave a spoken order at some unspecified time. "The order was to kill everybody," one person is said to have said.

(Would some such order be a war crime in itself? We have no idea.)

It sounds like the first strike on the boat came soon after that. (It sounds that way, but the Post's report doesn't explicitly say so.) According to Hegseth's latest statement, he then left the scene.

He says he did so before "the smoke cleared." When the smoke cleared (how long did that take?), that would have made it possible for Admiral Bradley and / or others to see there were two survivors.

Is that possible? Of course it is! But is that what actually happened? 

We have no idea.

That said, the Post account explicitly says that it was Admiral Bradley who decided to order the second strike. If Hegseth had still been present on the scene, wouldn't he have been the one to make that second decision?

(Maybe yes, maybe no. We don't know how these things work.)

The mob is now attempting to hang Hegseth high based on a comment he made about "the fog of war." All he seemed to saying was this:

The smoke from the initial strike obscured everyone's vision for a while. By the time the smoke had cleared, he had left the scene.

Has Hegseth described events as they actually happened? We have no way of knowing.

We do know that some of the semi-usual suspects are on the hunt again. (Joe Scarborough was horrendous on Morning Joe this morning.) 

Instead of waiting for audio / video recordings to establish what was said and done, the chase is on for the highly erratic man who prefers to call himself the Secretary of War. As this chase has moved through the streets, the attempts at paraphrase have been highly creative.

That said:

We know of nothing Hegseth has said which contradicts the initial Washington Post report. We know of nothing he has said which contradicts his own handful of statements.

We're simply going to have to wait if we want to establish what actually happened. In the meantime, a few of the jackals are back in the streets, advancing the versions of this story which they themselves prefer.

We've been on this beat for 27 years. Al Gore said he invented the Internet!

We've seen them do this before!

ILLNESS: Is it time to say that the president's ill?

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2025

Morning Joe takes a dive: As we've noted in the past, "illness" can be a challenging term. Not when we speak about physical illness, but when we try to speak about that other way to be "ill.".

What kind of "illness" do we mean? We've posted the relevant passages before. The leading authority declaims:

Mental disorder

A mental disorder, also referred to as a mental illness, a mental health condition, or a psychiatric disability, is a behavioral or mental pattern that causes significant distress or impairment of personal functioning. A mental disorder is also characterized by a clinically significant disturbance in an individual's cognition, emotional regulation, or behavior, often in a social context...

[...]

The definition and classification of mental disorders are key issues for researchers as well as service providers and those who may be diagnosed. For a mental state to be classified as a disorder, it generally needs to cause dysfunction. Most international clinical documents use the term mental "disorder," while "illness" is also common. It has been noted that using the term "mental" (i.e., of the mind) is not necessarily meant to imply separateness from the brain or body.

So the authority says. The fraught term "mental illness" is apparently giving way to the kinder and gentler term "mental disorder." That doesn't mean that the affliction in question isn't physiological—is  "separate from the brain or body."

Mental "illness" can be physiological too. It isn't necessarily just a bunch of lousy, immoral choices. 

With that, we move to the top of the New York Times web site. To their credit, the editors had placed a certain news report at the top of that page as of 5 o'clock this morning.

Let word go forth to the nations! With respect to yesterday's event in the Cabinet Room, the Times wasn't taking a dive.

Has the time come for journalists to say that the president is mentally ill? In their report for the Times, Kanno-Youngs and McCreesh used the alternate term "bigoted." 

We can't call their choice wrong.

The Times reporters described a "shocking" event. Headline included, their report starts like this:

Trump Calls Somalis ‘Garbage’ He Doesn’t Want in the Country

President Trump unleashed a xenophobic tirade against Somali immigrants on Tuesday, calling them “garbage” he does not want in the United States in an outburst that captured the raw nativism that has animated his approach to immigration.

Even for Mr. Trump—who has a long history of insulting Black people, particularly those from African countries—his outburst was shocking in its unapologetic bigotry. And it comes as he started a new ICE operation targeting Somalis in the Minneapolis-St. Paul region.

“These are people that do nothing but complain,” Mr. Trump said at the tail end of a cabinet meeting at the White House, during which he sometimes appeared to be fighting sleep. But when the subject turned to immigration, Mr. Trump made a point of lashing out.

“When they come from hell and they complain and do nothing but bitch, we don’t want them in our country. Let them go back to where they came from and fix it,” Mr. Trump added as Vice President JD Vance banged the table in encouragement.

The reporters spoke of bigotry, xenophobia, nativism. These are terms of morality, not of illness, disease or disorder. 

That said, as their report continued, their accurate description of what occurred only became that much worse. We would describe this behavior as "shocking" too:

(continuing directly from above)
He said Somalia “stinks and we don’t want them in our country.” He described Representative Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota, who came to the United States from Somalia as a refugee and became a citizen 25 years ago, as “garbage.”

“We could go one way or the other, and we’re going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country,” Mr. Trump said. “She’s garbage. Her friends are garbage. These aren’t people who work. These aren’t people who say, ‘Let’s go, come on, let’s make this place great.’”

Mr. Trump has used this kind of rhetoric throughout his rise in politics, including in his first term as president, when he demanded to know why the United States would accept immigrants from Haiti and African nations, which he described as “shithole countries,” rather than, say, Norway.

[...] 

Robert Pape, a professor at University of Chicago who has studied political violence for 30 years, said such language from the Trump administration was dangerous.

“They’re not just like nasty metaphors—they’re especially dehumanizing metaphors,” Mr. Pape said. “‘Garbage.’ You’re not thinking of something that is human, you’re thinking of it as something that can be easily thrown away, so that is exactly the kind of metaphor we have just found for really decades is likely to increase support for violence.” 

Is Rep. Omar (D-Minn.) "garbage?" How about her friends, none of whom the resident would likely be able to name?

Is it true that these people are "garbage?" At such times, we're forced to ask whether we're willing to say that any person is. 

("No person is uninteresting," Yevtushenko said.)

Meanwhile, sad! By 7 a.m., someone at the New York Times may have had a change of heart concerning this shocking event. By 7:10 a.m., this report had been removed from the top of the Times' front page. A reader had to scroll quite a distance down the page to find a link to this report.

This morning, also this:

From 6 a.m. until 7:02, we sat and watched, in surprise, as Morning Joe took a dive on this shocking event. The president's outburst was mentioned just once, at 6:52 a.m., and it was mentioned in thoroughly glancing fashion. 

If a viewer didn't already know what the president had said and done, that viewer wouldn't learn from Joe Scarborough, who took a serious dive today about this remarkable conduct.

The president went on and on about the Somali garbage. The C-Span videotape doesn't show Vice President Vance during these remarks, but you can see Secretary Lutnick gesturing to Vance soon thereafter, in a way which would seem to support the account of Vance's conduct the Times  reporters gave.

(To see the president's full remarks, click here for the C-Span videotape, click ahead to the very end.)

What does it mean to be "mentally ill"—in evolving medical parlance, to be afflicted with a (serious) "mental disorder?" Given the imperfection of our human capacities, that remains a difficult question to answer at this point in time.

That said, we think the time has finally come for our journalists, such as they are, to start to make an overt attempt to come to terms with that question. That would involve our front-page reporters, but it would also involve the opinion columnists and cable news stars who continue to duck this fairly obvious question, even at this late date.

It's time for them to stand and speak. As we say that, we remind you of what we've said before:

As a general matter, our high-end journalists won't have the slightest idea how to talk about this topic. 

For starters, they don't know how to talk about the obvious possibility that the president may have inherited a type of mental disorder—that it may have come to him in the genes, that it may have been bred in the bone.

Professor Brabender, the great anthropologist, once described the way we tribal humans work. This is what he was quoted saying about our human behavior here on this earth:

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

After that, we start to hit! We're inclined to unloose the verbal bombs which come from the realm of morality, ethics and insult. Traditionally, that has included the claim that someone with a serious "mental disorder" is crazy or nuts—or is "mentally ill."

The possibility that we might "pity the child"—or discuss the state of the medical science—isn't within the reach of our current journalism. But in such ways. those of us in Blue America make it less likely that we can approach this situation in a way which will let us achieve the goals we claim to seek.

Sorry, Morning Joe! At this site, we weren't about to take a dive on the "shocking" way the president behaved. By way of contrast, the dive was aggressively taken on today's Morning Joe.

Essentially, the president's conduct went unmentioned. In place of any such discussion, the Morning Joe panel continued a jihad aimed at Pete Hegseth—a jihad which is based, it must be said, by a great deal of embellishment and "creative paraphrase" concerning the several things Hegseth has now said.

(More on that in this afternoon's post.)

"Illness" is a challenging term with respect to this kind of affliction. We hope to return to General Washington when do our Saturday morning post. 

We hope to return to that topic this weekend. For today, there was no way we were going to walk away as if nothing happened yesterday in the Cabinet Room.

He doesn't want that garbage, he said. We suggest that you pity the child—and that you consider the various thing his niece said about her uncle, the adult, in her best-selling 2020 book, Too Much and Never Enough. 

Speaking as a doctorate-wielding clinical therapist, she said he was almost surely seriously disordered ("mentally ill") in the clinical sense. She also said it had quite possibly been bred in the blood—passed down biologically from his father, "a high-achieving sociopath."

(What happens in the minds of such people? Why don't you react in the ways they do? Have you ever seen any journalist ask?)

People remember the great forgivers. Nelson Mandela forgave his jailer. President Lincoln stood in public and shockingly said: 

If this war continues until we've lost every cent and until we've shed much more of our blood, who could deny that the judgments of the Lord are just and true forever?

In his first book, the young Dr. King expressed his pity for the southern whites who had been misled about racial decency "even by their pastors." These are the people whose moral greatness is remembered down through the ages. 

Faulty as all humans are, we Blues have been more strongly inclined to rail and call names and accuse. Or perhaps to take a dive on shocking presidential behavior.

It seems to us that that instinct is politically self-defeating. But as that great anthropologist once said, it's the way we humans are inclined to react:

We make a tiny effort at talk. At that point, we start to hit!

Tomorrow: Inheriting money and genes

This afternoon: The several things Hegseth has said

TUESDAY: No two people are just alike!

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 2, 2025

She'd like to see them bleed out: Did it start with five years of Donald Trump's birtherism? Was that where it started?

For us, that was the start of a remarkable era in which we learned how many people out in the world seem to be out of their minds. Today, as President Trump continues to possibly spiral downward, he provided the latest implausible account of the amazing difficulty of the "cognitive test" he still claims he aced in spectacular fashion.

Concerning that lengthy account, we can only say, Wow! Last evening, he also did this:

Trump Fires Off Over 160 Truth Social Posts in Frenetic, Late-Night Blitz

President Donald Trump unleashed a frenetic, late-night posting binge on Monday, flooding Truth Social with more than 160 posts in less than five hours, in a wild spectacle that saw him teeing off on political opponents and policies.

From 7 p.m. to nearly midnight (ET), the president reposted an endless stream of clips, some of which were duplicated in what appeared to be an automatic loop, amplifying MAGA-friendly pundits and conspiracy theories.

Among them was a clip of Alex Jones, featuring Bed, Bath and Beyond founder Patrick Byrne, whose video carried the bizarre caption: “Michelle Obama may have used Biden’s autopen in the final days of his disastrous administration to pardon key individuals.” Other posts lauded his vow to nullify all of Biden’s Autopen orders.

He also posted what appeared to be an AI-generated video of Elon Musk discussing Trump’s vow to “immediately” revoke temporary protections for Somali migrants.

It goes on from there. The New York Times and all its columnists continue to hold that this sort of thing shouldn't be reported or discussed, not even with qualified specialists.

Meanwhile, did Pete Hegseth order a second strike? We'll all have to wait, and some day we may all find out what happened. 

Along the way, it has always seemed to us that something seemed to be wrong with Hegseth—that he seemed to need (and deserve) some help. Regarding the sitting president, we have advised you to "pity the child" even as you search for ways to restrain the adult—the adult we Blues almost surely helped get elected. 

That said, our press corps has agreed that possible or probable "mental disorders" must never be discussed with medical specialists where a political person is involved. That was always a good idea until it finally wasn't—but our press corps will cling to that shibboleth until the very end as the society keeps sliding sideways.

Hegseth always seemed to be disordered, even back in the old Fox & Friends Weekend days. Yesterday, the principal friend on that morning program showed up on Outnumbered to say that we all need to maintain the United States as a Christian nation:

Fox News host urges defense of America’s 'Christian Culture' against communism

A Fox News host is urging viewers to defend America’s “western Christian culture” and to think “communism” whenever they hear about feminism or secularism.

Rachel Campos-Duffy, a “Fox & Friends Weekend” co-host, told [Outnumbered] viewers on Monday, “I think it’s really up to us to reclaim our culture.”

“We can sit and complain about it, but when we give in to those atheist groups that keep suing, we should come right back—this is our culture,” she said. “I’m not going to let, you know, pro-Palestinian or whatever they’re putting forward—these are all fronts for, you know, whenever you see any of these groups, just think feminism, secularism, just think communism. This is what they’re really about.”

“It’s always been about communism,” Campos-Duffy insisted.

“Making the state the center, removing the power of religion and family from our culture. It’s up to us to make sure that our culture remains what it is, which is a Western Christian culture with a beautiful history...

As we've often noted, Campos-Duffy is a deeply genial person, at least among her own. She's sensational morning show "talent."

Stating the obvious, there's no reason why she shouldn't hold the religious views and values she does hold. But she also seems to be such a true believer that someone who pities the regular people of suffering Gaza can only be engaged in a front for Communism, or so it apparently seems to her.

(For extra credit only: Does that make her a bad person? Or does it only make her a person person? Compare and contrast. Discuss.)

That said, we Blues have often been a tiny bit nutty too. Every time Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) manufactures another incident like this, another Trump voter decides to hang onto his or her wings. Fox has been dining out on that absurd own goal for roughly a week, and its viewership is very large.

That said, we'll leave you today with this report about Megan Kelly's desire to see the people on those apparent drug boats suffer before they drown. She spoke with Mark Halperin on her eponymous podcast. Here's part of what she said:

Megyn Kelly Complains Trump Isn’t Prolonging Deaths of Alleged Drug Traffickers: ‘I’d Really Like to See Them Suffer’

Megyn Kelly defended the Caribbean boat strikes ordered by President Donald Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, not only calling the criticism “manufactured” but also complaining that the people on the boats were being killed too quickly and she would prefer to “see them suffer.”

[...]

"So I really do kind of not only want to see them killed in the water, whether they’re on the boat or in the water, but I’d really like to see them suffer. I would like Trump and Hegseth to make it last a long time so that they lose a limb and bleed out a little. Like I’m really having a difficult time ginning up sympathy for these guys who ten seconds earlier almost got taken out by the initial bomb, but because they managed to get ejected, you know, a little too soon, had to be taken out in the water. I realize legally it may make a difference, but truly, Mark, this is a tough case to really gin up the sympathies of the American people."

She's like see them lose a limb and be forced to hang on a while as they slowly bleed out. (We'll admit we don't have that same reaction. Plus, there's an endless array of basic, unresolved facts to sort out.)

It's beginning to seem that no too people are just alike! Our overall views at this point would include these:

All these people are fellow citizens. We'll guess there are some people who could use some help.

Some such people may even be over here in the Blue camp! We assume that something is wrong with President Trump—something which may have come to him through the genes. (Under the rules of the game, no such obvious possibility can be reported or discussed.)

We feel sorry for the perpetually furious, tortured Hegseth. We leave you with a basic question:

Would you want to be him?