WEDNESDAY: We've been hearing statements which almost sound...

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 16, 2025

..."sociopathy adjacent:" Maybe he didn't mean the statement the way it could possibly sound.

We refer to Scott Jennings. He's a "Sensible Republican" now "Gone Wild" on the 10 p.m. weeknight program, CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip.

Phillip herself is thoroughly capable. Every night, she's forced to frame the program in the manner shown:

"Americans with different perspectives aren't talking to each other. But here, they do."

In fact, Americans with different perspectives are more often talking over each other on this particular program. That has been especially true when the seemingly reinvented Jennings sometimes might almost seem to be inviting disputes on this show.

Last night, the gang was overtalking each other about the bungled rendition of Kilmar Abrego Garcia into a Central American hellhole. More to the point, they were overtalking each other about the administration's refusal to try to get the wrongly rendered Abrego Garcia back.

Abrego Garcia has been sent to a dystopian hellhole—possibly never to be heard from again—through an admitted "administrative error." In the midst of all the wrangling, Jennings came up with this:

JENNINGS (4/15/25): What is the compelling reason to put this person back in the country?

To our ear, that was a remarkable question. Maybe he didn't intend for it to sound the way it almost does.

What would be the compelling reason to try to get Abrego Garcia back? In our view, Judge Paula Xinis taught it flat and taught it round in her initial order concerning this case.

Yesterday, Judge Xinis presided over the latest fruitless court session involving the foot-dragging Trump administration. This morning, in a front-page news report, the New York Times quoted what Judge Xinis said in her initial order about the need to retrieve Abrego Garcia:

Judge Rebukes Administration’s Efforts to Return Wrongly Deported Man

A federal judge scolded the Trump administration on Tuesday for dragging its feet in complying with a Supreme Court order that directed the White House to “facilitate” the release of a Maryland man who was wrongly deported to a prison in El Salvador last month.

“To date nothing has been done,” the judge, Paula Xinis, told a lawyer for the Justice Department. “Nothing.”

[...]

In her initial order directing the White House to bring Mr. Abrego Garcia back from El Salvador, Judge Xinis found that the Trump administration had flown him out of the country “without notice, legal justification or due process.”

Moreover, she chided government officials for having made “a grievous error” by deporting him, adding that the White House, by then refusing to retrieve him from one of the most “inhumane and dangerous prisons in the world,” had exposed him to harm that “shocks the conscience.”

In the absence of anything resembling due process, the Trump administration had sent him to a vicious "prison" from which he might never return. They've admitted that the rendition was done, in violation of a standing court order, through "administrative error."

Since then, the administration has made no attempt to bring Abrego Garcia back. This web of behavior "shocks the conscience," Judge Xinis simply said.

What's the reason to bring this person back? The degree of harm to which he's been exposed "shocks the conscience," this federal judge simply said. 

The whole thing strikes us that way too. That said, it's often said that a certain category of disordered or afflicted human being may perhaps lack a conscience.

As a matter of colloquial shorthand, it's often said that "sociopaths" don't actually have a conscience. With respect to the matter at hand, we'd say a fair number of people have been engaging in conduct on cable TV which can almost seem to be "sociopathy adjacent."

One of our favorites comes to mind. Here was Greg Gutfeld, co-host of The Five, on last evening's show:

GUTFELD (4/15/25): ...Biden opened the border, millions came in, and surely murderers and rapists were part of that. Now we’re deporting hundreds of thousands, and surely one or two might not be criminal. 

However, compare the error. In one of these errors, Americans don’t die. At worst, a guy gets sent to a country he doesn’t want to go to. You know what? I can live with that.

Already, note the way this unusual fellow has finessed the facts. In his construction, Abrego Garcia has merely been "sent to a country he doesn’t want to go to!"

He may have been sent to the south of France! Greg Gutfeld can live with that! 

At any rate, hat's "the worst" situation that Gutfeld was prepared to imagine. When Jessica Tarlov inserted a reality check, Gutfeld went all adjacent:

TARLOV (continuing directly): Into a prison camp? Not just out into the wild—

GUTFELD: Look! I’m sorry, Jessica. I understand your concern, but I refuse to care about one person who is an illegal alien when the mental shelf space I have is now reserved for victims of crime, which I’ve been talking about for years. 

The fellow went on from there. Meanwhile, alas, poor Gutfeld! He has a finite amount of "mental shelf space." He can't manage the tiny bit of space it would take to say something like this:

Actually, yes! Given their grievous error, the Trump administration should be trying to get this person back.

"One or two" people might be innocent, the TV star acknowledged—but he said he can live with that! Beyond that, he said he currently lacks the mental space to worry about this one person. He said he "refuses to care."

"I refuse to care about one person who is an illegal alien?" No one says he should actually care, or that he has to care a lot. But there he was, saying he chooses not to be concerned about the possibility that one of those people who aren't vicious criminals might have been sent, for life, into a dystopian hellhole.

He isn't even willing to say that Abrego Garcia should be brought back. In fairness, his refusal could simply reflect the fact that he's being paid to avoid such statements.

As you know, a basic question lurks behind the scene of this case. That question goes like this:

It's true that Abrego Garcia entered the country without authorization (illegally). Also, he didn't then seek asylum. 

That said:

Is it true that he was, or that he still is, a member of MS-13? To our ear, dueling observers from the two Americas have had their thumbs on the scale in dueling ways regarding that basic question. 

That brings us back to yesterday's question. Did Pam Bondi shock the world by making an accurate statement? We refer to what she said when she addressed President Trump at that recent cabinet meeting.

In yesterday afternoon's report, we laid out this basic question. Tomorrow, we'll link you to the two court sessions the attorney general cited.

For today, we'll close with this:

It "shocks the conscience," Judge Xinis said. But according to pop psychology, a certain percentage of adult males may not exactly have one—and the press corps has agreed that such questions can't be discussed. 

Does Marco Rubio have a conscience? Given what he said at that recent cabinet meeting, inquiring minds might occasionally want to see such questions discussed.

Tomorrow: Just because two judges said it, that doesn't mean it's true

LANGUAGE: Judge Jeanine made her latest stumblebum statement!

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 16, 2025

Last night, AOC pushed back: As the stumblebums keep flooding the zone, there's no real way to keep up.

That said, we somehow think that we might have seen the original stumblebum statement. Could that possibly mean what it seems to mean? we think we may have wondered.

We did see the alleged situation railed against by Judge Jeanine on The Five last Thursday night. Her complaint had gone like this:

DANA PERINO (4/10/25): Judge, one of the reasons that Elon Musk's companies are in trouble is because he was willing to help the government.

JUDGE JEANINE: Yes. We found out where all the waste, fraud and abuse was. And we found out that, you know, not only DEI, and not only the USAID sending money for the, you know, all these crazy shows. But we found out that there are people who are between the ages of one and four are getting Social Security...

That was the complaint! Thanks to the self-sacrificial Musk, "we found out that there are people who are between the ages of one and four [who] are getting Social Security!"

At this point, we're not even sure if that complaint tracks back to Musk. As we noted on Monday, the fellow has made so many stumblebum statements that it has become extremely hard to keep track.

Still and all, there was the Judge! She was speaking to the largest audience in the whole sweep of our failing nation's "cable news"—and when she voiced this latest complaint, Jessica Tarlov said this:

JUDGE JEANINE: We found out where all the waste, fraud and abuse was. And we found out that, you know, not only DEI, and not only the USAID sending money for the, you know, all these crazy shows. But we found out that there are people who are between the ages of one and four are getting Social Security...

TARLOV: That's the benefit for kids whose parents are dead.

PIRRO: Okay. But let me just finish... 

"Okay," this second stumblebum said. Without interruption, she continued her outraged oration.

(To watch all this folderol, you can just click here.)

So it goes on the stumblebum program, The Five. It's the most-watched show in "cable news"—and it's a daily tribute to our nation's frequently stumblebum "news" culture.

The sheer stupidity of the show is its defining characteristic. Five hours later, at 10 p.m., the astonishing Gutfeld! show may be even dumber.

Back to what the irate (former) judge irately said on The Five:

The former judge lodged an irate complaint in the form of a revelation. Thanks to Musk, she irately seemed to say, we've learned "that there are people who are between the ages of one and four [who] are getting Social Security."

Something popped into our heads when we saw her say it. We wondered if a certain well-known program could possibly be what the judge was talking about.

At any rate, just like that, the "lone pilgrim" on the five-member panel jumped in with a rebuttal:

Why might some very young children be receiving Social Security cash? "That's the benefit for kids whose parents are dead," the panel's lone liberal now said.

Given the rules of stumblebum culture, no attempt was ever made to clarify this point. "Okay," the irate judge how said, and then her oration rolled on.

In fact, it isn't hard to learn that children whose parent or parents have died may be eligible for survivor benefits within the Social Security program. It's been that way since the dawn of time. It isn't exactly a secret.

Could that be what Musk was talking about, if he really was the source of the judge's astonished complaint? Was that what Judge Jeanine had meant when she—possibly reading off the sheaf of papers the flyweights are handed by their producers—gave voice to her complaint about this latest finding by Musk?

To this day, we don't know if Elon Musk was really the source of that specific complaint. We don't know what Judge Jeanine had in mind that day on The Five. 

In truth, we don't know if she had anything in mind at all, or if she was simply funneling one of the bullet points found on her daily sheaf of staff-prepared papers. As you can see by viewing the tape, she does seem to be looking down at her papers as she lodged this latest complaint.

That said, this looks like an instance of "cable news" clown car conduct at its stumblebum best. Viewers heard the latest statement about something which, at first encounter, may have seemed to be the latest crazy example of waste, fraud and abuse. 

A brief rebuttal had been voiced, but it was shoved to the side. The judge continued along with the latest array of outrages, including an absurd, unsourced speculation about whether Tim Walz ever "paid taxes on money he earned when he was teaching in China."

As you can see by watching the tape, her performance ended with this:

JUDGE JEANINE: I hate it when they lie. (Slapping hands together) They just out and out lie, like it is the truth.

PERINO: You wrote a book about that too!

JUDGE JEANINE: "Liars, Leakers and Liberals." 

TARLOV: Still available wherever books are sold!

Tarlov's statement may have been intended as mockery. Mercifully, the segment then came to an end.

Citizens, please! For reasons which may not be hard to grasp, children whose parent or parents have died may be eligible for Social Security payments out of the parent's account. (Click here, then scroll down to "Children's benefits.")

This fact has been known since the dawn of time. There was no need for the stumblebum Musk to help us the people "find out."

In fairness to the judge, she may have simply been reading off a sheaf of talking points prepared for the gang by some stumblebum producer. That said, our remaining questions would be these:

Did Elon Musk really advance some such startling alleged discovery? And if so, was Tarlov's rejoinder really the (bone-simple) explanation for what he was talking about?

Here within our flailing nation, the zone is currently being flooded by the hour, if not by the minute. There's no real way to keep up. We return to this example today because last night, at a rally in Folsom, CA, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) brought this incident up.

She cited last week's stumblebum offering from The Five. In this report, Mediaite quotes what AOC said, and it provides the tape:

AOC Gives Brutal Fact Check of Fox’s Jeanine Pirro: ‘Their Parents Died’ 

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) singled out Fox News’s Jeanine Pirro for a fact-check at a rally on Tuesday night.

Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) continued their Fighting Oligarchy Tour, appearing in Folsom, California. The progressive duo has been traveling the country trying to rally the Democratic base after bruising losses in November’s elections. At one point during her speech, Ocasio-Cortez referenced some recent comments by Pirro on The Five.

The report continues from there. At any rate, AOC cited the stumblebum moment. Where it began, no one knows!

In Monday morning's report, we quoted from the lengthy New York Times report about Elon Musk's endless array of groaning misstatements. In fairness, everyone makes mistakes—but his mistakes, if that's what they actually are, seem to be bizarre and virtually endless.

We raised a basic question that day. What sort of language should journalists use when they simply try to describe a problem like Elon Musk?

Also, when they describe a problem like President Trump? When they describe a problem like the Fox News Channel?

At some point, extraordinary problems call for the use of new types of language. For ourselves, we've used one word all through this report; we'll discuss that word choice tomorrow. 

On that occasion, we'll mainly show you what happened when David Brooks apparently felt the time had come to use a new type of journalistic language. We're not sure we'd fully affirm his first attempt, but plainly, it's time for a change.

Tomorrow, we'll show you the language the columnist used as he tried to describe a type of problem we've rarely seen in the past.

Tomorrow: New language from David Brooks

TUESDAY: The attorney general said one thing!

TUESDAY, APRIL 15, 2025

Blue journalists said quite a few others: Tomorrow, we'll be back to full services.

For today, here's something we noticed. We'll start with something Pam Bondi said at yesterday's Oval Office event.

Presidents Bukele and Trump were there. Asked about the bungled rendition to El Salvador of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the attorney general said this: 

REPORTER (4/15/25): President Trump, do you plan to ask President Bukele to help return the man who your administration says was mistakenly deported?

TRUMP: Which one is it?

REPORTER: The man who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador?

TRUMP: Well, let me ask. Pam, would you answer that question?

BONDI: Sure, President. First, and foremost, he was illegally in our country. He had been illegally in our country. And in 2019, two courts—an immigration court and an appellate immigration court—ruled that he was a member of MS-13 and he was illegally in our country. 

Right now, it was a paperwork—it was additional paperwork had needed to be done. That's up to El Salvador if they want to return him, that's not up to us. The Supreme Court ruled, President, that if, as El Salvador wants to return him, this is international matters, foreign affairs. If they wanted to return him, we would facilitate it, meaning provide a plane.

For whatever reason, Bondi always seems to address President Trump as "President" (full stop). Go figure!

Also, is it possible that Trump actually didn't know who the reporter was talking about? Sadly, everything is possible!

Concerning what Bondi said:

On the whole, her statement doesn't parse extremely well. Also, she massively finessed the fact that Abrego Garcia was rendered to El Salvador through "administrative error." 

Her overall statement was flimsy. That said, we're going to focus on the part of the statement we've highlighted:

In 2019, two courts—an immigration court and an appellate immigration court—ruled that he was a member of MS-13. 

So said the attorney general, as you can see thanks to Rev. Now for a possible dirty little secret:

A person could quibble about the word "ruled." Aside from that, and based on what we've read in court documents, it seems to us that the highlighted statement by Bondi is basically accurate.

Tomorrow, we'll link you to the court documents to which we refer.  For the record, the fact that two courts (i.e., two judges) did seem to "rule" that way doesn't mean that their finding was actually accurate. 

The two judges seem to have based their assessment on limited evidence. But based on what we've read in the relevant court records, it seems to us that that specific part of Bondi's statement could be scored as basically accurate.

Elsewhere, we've seen fuzzier representations all across Blue America's dial. For example, here's the summary offered on the front page of this morning's New York Times:

El Salvador’s Leader Says He Won’t Return Wrongly Deported Maryland Man

Mr. Bukele, who has positioned himself as a key ally to Mr. Trump, in part by opening his country’s prisons to deportees, sat next to the president and a group of cabinet officials who struck a combative tone over the case, which has reached the Supreme Court.

“Of course I’m not going to do it,” Mr. Bukele said when reporters asked if he was willing to help return the man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old father of three who was deported last month. The Trump administration has acknowledged that his deportation was the result of an “administrative error.”

[...]

Mr. Trump invited some of his top officials to Monday’s meeting, much of which was held in front of news cameras. Ms. Bondi and Stephen Miller, who is the architect of Mr. Trump’s immigration agenda, accused Mr. Abrego Garcia of being a member of the MS-13 gang.

Mr. Abrego Garcia has never been charged with or convicted of being in a gang. In 2011, Mr. Abrego Garcia’s lawyers say, he fled threats and violence in El Salvador and came to the United States illegally to join his brother, a U.S. citizen, in Maryland. He later married an American citizen. In 2019, an immigration judge prohibited the United States from deporting him to El Salvador, saying he might face violence or torture there.

For starters, riddle us this: Has Abrego Garcia ever "been charged with or convicted of being in a gang?" 

To some extent, it all depends on what the meaning of "charged with or convicted" is! In our view, a sensible person might choose to quibble with that choice of words.

That said, the second highlighted statement is perfectly accurate. In 2019, a third judge did, in fact, "prohibit the United States from deporting [Abrego Garcia] to El Salvador, saying he might face violence or torture there."

That statement is perfectly accurate! By all accounts, that court order should have kept Abrego Garcia from being shipped to the hellhole in question.

That said, the New York Times, for whatever reason, omitted any specific mention of the two court proceedings Bondi cited. Elsewhere, we've seen liberal commentators seem to finesse the basic facts, in various ways, about those court proceedings.

We're speaking about some well-known people. Tomorrow, we'll show you what we mean. 

Full disclosure! We know of no particular reason to think that Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident, has been living and working as a member of MS-13, let alone as a "gang leader" or as a "terrorist." 

That said, we also don't think that Blues should play reindeer games with respect to matters like this. At times like these, the inclination to do so can be very strong. For those of us in Blue America, we don't think it's a good look or a winning play.

We think it's obvious that Abrego Garcia should be returned from the hellhole into which he was rendered. We also think that Blue Americans should build their church on the rock of clear, concise, accurate statement.

We're prepared to be wrong about this matter in some way or other. That said, tomorrow afternoon, we'll link you to the pair of "rulings" to which Bondi referred—and we'll show you some of the fuzzy statements made in our own Blue land.

Tomorrow morning: New language from David Brooks

LANGUAGE: What kind of language should journalists use...

TUESDAY, APRIL 15, 2025

...in describing a problem like this? Every four weeks, on a Tuesday, we lose the bulk of the day to a medical undertaking.

Today is that very Tuesday! We'll be elsewhere for the bulk of the day. That said, we'll leave you with this:

In yesterday morning's report, we began to attempt to summarize some of the monumental amount of strange behavior engaged in by Elon Musk.

Forget about trying to solve that remarkable, sprawling problem. How should we even describe it? What language should our journalists use? Are they taking the right approach?

We'll be asking similar question this week about the behavior of President Trump and about the kinds of behavior seen on the Fox News Channel. With respect to President Trump, we'll leave you with an overview of the possible depth of the challenge.

Yesterday, it was "muskrat love" in the Oval Office, with the role of the pair of muskrats played by a pair of strongmen. Long ago and far away, a group of nuns asked this question:

How do you solve a problem like Maria?

Forget about those nuns! This week, we're asking a different type of question. We're asking how journalists should describe a remarkable problem—a problem which takes a shape like this:

Below, you see some of yesterday's headlines from Mediaite. During the period in question, it was a form of strongman love in the Oval Office. 

Concerning Ukraine and Russia—concerning "deportations" to El Salvador—the headlines rolled out as shown below, roughly in chronological order.

How do you describe a phenomenon like this? Once again, it was Ukraine who had started the war with Russia, and the madness went downhill from there

Trump Demands FCC Punish 'CBS Fake News' for 'Out Of Control' 60 Minutes: 'They Should Pay a Big Price'

To peruse the report, click here.

Trump Fumes at ‘Crooked Joe Biden’ and Zelensky for ‘Allowing’ Russian Invasion of Ukraine

To peruse the report, click this.

You can find all these other reports at the Mediate site. Yesterday afternoon, the headlines continued as shown:

‘They Hate Our Country’: Trump Launches Stunning Attack On CNN After Being Goaded by El Salvador’s President

Trump Hammers Zelensky For Wanting More U.S. Weapons to Fight Off Russia: ‘You Don’t Start a War’ With a Bigger Country

‘Sick People!’ Trump Attacks ‘Low-Rated’ Kaitlan Collins in Oval Office Showdown Over Deported El Salvadoran Man

AP Blocked from Trump’s Oval Office Press Gaggle — Ignoring Recent Court Ruling

CNN Anchor Cuts Into Trump Oval Rant To Refute Trump Claim That CNN ‘Hates Our Country’

‘The Homegrowns Are Next’: Trump Promises to Send American Citizens to El Salvador in Harrowing Comments to Bukele

El Salvador’s President Refuses to Return Maryland Man Trump Accidentally Deported, Baselessly Calls Him ‘Terrorist’

The president of El Salvador has refused to return a Maryland man who the White House admitted was mistakenly sent to a notorious megaprison in his country.

“The question is preposterous,” President Nayib Bukele said Monday when asked if he intended to free and give back Kilmar Abrego Garcia. “I don’t have the power to return him to the United States.”

Bukele appeared alongside President Donald Trump after the two met at the White House.

So went the start of the last report on that list. These strongmen lack almost all power!

At any rate, so it went in the parade of headlines. Adding a touch of comic relief, two earlier headlines had said this:

Trump’s Doctor Issues a Glowing Report On His Physical—Touts Perfect Score on Cognitive Test and ‘Frequent Victories in Golf Events’

Trump Brags About ‘Perfect’ Score On Cognitive Exam—Asks Reporters ‘Were You Impressed?’

The golf events and the cognitive tests! The president's doctors never seem to tire of all the wins!

Meanwhile, concerning the Oval Office event, the Fox News Channel soon swung into action:

Fox’s Martha MacCallum Gripes About ‘Out of Nowhere’ Question on Imprisoning Americans in El Salvador—But Trump Has Repeatedly Floated the Idea

After that, when we watched The Five, the visit with Bukele wasn't mentioned. The spotless minds of the channel's viewers weren't asked to contemplate the conduct in question. 

Why intrude on the channel's minds? Instead, chyrons across the bottom of the screen blared such findings as these:

BIG GRETCH'S BINDER BLUNDER

MAHER PRAISES "GRACIOUS AND MEASURED" TRUMP

And, of course, also this:

TRUMP'S DOCTOR CITES "FREQUENT VICTORIES IN GOLF"

TRUMP'S PERFECT PHYSICAL!

After that, up jumped Jesse Watters Primetime at 8. The attorney general had been subjected to a Fox News Channel grilling:

Bondi Refuses To Answer Whether Trump Proposal To Send U.S. Citizens to Foreign Prisons Is ‘Legal’

How do you describe a problem like the Fox News Channel? For the most part, major news orgs have found the answer. They don't report or discuss what happens on the Fox News Channel at all!

For those of us in our struggling nation, this is the business the fates have chosen. For the record, we've also observed some strange reporting from Blue America's news orgs. 

We'll offer details later today or more likely tomorrow. For now, how do you even describe an overall problem like this? 

We expect to post again later this afternoon. Later, last evening, the news took yet another turn:

Trump Administration Arrests Palestinian Activist Who Condemned Anti-Semitism on ’60 Minutes’

A Palestinian activist who organized protests against Israel’s war in Gaza and condemned anti-Semitism was arrested in Vermont on Monday.

Mohsen Mahdawi, who has a green card, went to an appointment in Colchester that he had been told was a step toward becoming a U.S. citizen. But that was apparently a ruse. According to a statement from Vermont Sens. Bernie Sanders (I), Peter Welch (D), and Rep. Becca Balint (D), Mahdawi, who was co-president of Columbia University’s Palestinian Students Union, was arrested by immigration officers–some of whom wore masks.

“This is immoral, inhumane, and illegal,” they said in a statement. “Mr. Mahdawi, a legal resident of the United States, must be afforded due process under the law and immediately released from detention.”

Was that meeting really "a ruse?" We have no way of knowing, but he men in masks were active again. To peruse that report, you can just click this. 

So it went, on into the night. All in all, what would be the most accurate, instructive, constructive way to describe this situation?

MONDAY: ABC interviews Stephen A. Smith!

MONDAY, APRIL 14, 2025

One journalist uses her words: Broadly speaking, we'll be pondering certain aspects of journalistic language this week. 

In the simplest part of that undertaking, we think one columnist makes a nice choice of words in this morning's New York Times. That columnist is Jessica Grose, who's writing about the all-female, borderline "space shot" which set off for the stars this morning.

Grose views this event as celebrity piffle. Her column starts like this:

Lauren Sanchez, Sheryl Sandberg and the Death of Celebrity Feminism

A celebrity in 2025 looking to raise awareness about critical women’s issues has no end of worthy targets. She could talk about the millions of women losing access to contraception and other vital health care because the Trump administration has taken a hacksaw to U.S.A.I.D. or discuss the mass layoffs at the early child care program Head Start, which will affect poor moms and their kids the most.

Instead, some prominent women—the ones able to command attention in our information-saturated world—are going to space for 11 minutes, and they’re using the related publicity to raise awareness about eyelash extensions.

This is not an “eat the rich” satire, though I don’t think I could have invented a better one. Lauren Sánchez, the fiancée of one of the world’s wealthiest men, Jeff Bezos, organized an all-female flight on Blue Origin, her man’s private rocket ship company. Sánchez and the rest of her crew...appeared on the cover of Elle magazine’s digital edition to talk about their “historic” achievement.

While they discuss the importance of women in STEM and the value of representation for young girls of color, they spend a whole lot of time talking about their “glam.” The most memorable, embarrassing exchange is between Sánchez and [the pop star Katy] Perry...

"We are going to put the 'ass' in astronaut." Perry is quoted saying at that point. Later, Sanchez offers this:

“We’re going to have lash extensions flying in the capsule!”

In Grose's view, this is wealthy celebrity piffle, of a type which undermines real interest in critical women’s issues and basically eats the culture. 

We tend to share that reaction; your results may differ. Whatever your particular view might be, we thought Grose delivered an excellent choice of words as she discussed her view:

This morally vacuous space stunt should be another nail in the coffin of celebrity feminism. There was a moment, more than 10 years ago, when being a loud and proud, self-proclaimed feminist was in vogue among the rich and famous. Actresses and pop stars were constantly asked about their feminism in interviews, and books like “Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead,” by the former Facebook/Meta executive Sheryl Sandberg, were mega best sellers.

I was always skeptical that this kind of surface-level advocacy would have a major impact on the average woman...

Even with my skepticism, I held out some small glimmer of hope that celebrity feminism could rub off in some way on the larger culture.

According to Grose, that's what she was once inclined to think. She says she's stopped thinking that way now.

We tend to agree with Grose's view. We applaud her particular choice of words—her description of this celebrity shuttle as "morally vacuous."

With the invention of high-income celebrity journalism, a lot of room was carved out and reserved 1) for the morally vacuous and 2) for the intellectually fatuous. 

Fatuous and vacuous? In our view, those words don't get used enough. Live and direct from ABC News, here's part of where that takes us:

Stephen A. Smith says he has 'no choice' but to consider a run for president

Stephen A. Smith, host of ESPN's "First Take," hammered the Democratic Party and suggested he has "no choice" but to consider a run for president.

"I have no choice, because I've had elected officials, and I'm not going to give their names, elected officials coming up to me. I've had folks who are pundits come up to me. I've had folks that got a lot of money, billionaires and others that have talked to me about exploratory committees and things of that nature. I'm not a politician. I've never had a desire to be a politician," Smith told ABC News' "This Week" co-anchor Jonathan Karl.

Smith reiterated that because of the number of people asking him to consider a run, he has to leave the door open.

Pitifully, the report continues from there.

We don't offer this as a commentary on anything Smith might have said, absurd as his recent nonsense has been. We offer this as a commentary on the fatuous conduct at ABC News, where someone decided to book Smith as a guest on this once-a-week Sunday program.

In our view, fatuous conduct ruled the roost within the mainstream press during the Clinton-Gore years. The war in Iraq, and eventually the arrival of Trump, tended to sober these entities up. But the tendency to revert to type can be remarkably strong.

This Week is on the air for exactly one hour per week. This is the way someone at ABC news decided to burn up that hour.

They did so in the face of the deeply difficult disasters with which the society is now confronted. This was fatuous conduct all the way sown. This conduct was "morally vacuous."

We thought the same thing about some of what we saw on yesterday's Meet the Press. For starters:

Are you running for president, Senator Booker? No really—are you running for president?

That mandated piffle was bad enough. In our view, this heartfelt harangue was even more empty than that:

WELKER (4/13/25): Jonathan, there was this extraordinary, speaking of the Democrats, moment—

MARTIN: Yes.

WELKER: —when Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan came to Washington, delivered a speech about tariffs, said she wished there could be a more careful approach, then went to the White House to meet with President Trump. 

Her team said she was surprised when she was kind of ushered into the Oval Office while he was signing EOs [executive orders] and this happened. 

[Photo of Whitmer] 

She literally, for a moment, covered her face. It's an extraordinary, striking moment that speaks to how complicated it is for Democrats right now to figure out. They want to energize their base, but also reach out to independents, particularly those who are potentially eyeing a run in 2028.

MARTIN: And in her case, trying to run a state for two more years that voted for Trump. 

But look, that picture is instantly iconic. This is Dukakis in the tank for the 21st century. The difference being, Dukakis could blame his staff. She had nobody to blame but herself. And I think it—it was maladroit on two levels. 

First of all, the macro politics of it. Her assumption to A) give the speech she gave, talking about working with Trump, and then to go to the White House. Her party right now views Trump as akin to Erdogan or Orban, foreign autocrats. You don't cut deals with somebody who's trying to consolidate power and erode American institutions. That, number one, is her, I thought, faulty assumption. 

Then there's the micro. Why on earth is she in the White House at all, and let herself be brought into the Oval Office? That's not her staff. That's her own instincts and her own politics culminating in holding up that file folder. You just don't do that. It's an error for the ages.

Based on what we've read about this event, Whitmer could, in fact, blame it on the Trump White House, which seems to have tricked her into being caught in an awkward setting. (We were once told a story, by a high elected official, about what that official regarded as a similar bit of deception.)

If we insist on pretending that this sort of thing matters—even that it has produced "an error for the ages"we could possibly have decided to blame it on some slippery staffer at the Trump White House. Instead, the pundit in question went all "Dukakis in the tank" in reaction to this ultimately pointless event.

He couldn't imagine why this governor would have been at the White House at all! Can this really be the way these privileged pundits understand life within our devolving world?

Again and again, we think we see a certain cultural phenomenon playing out at the high end of the mainstream / legacy press. Se think we see that life can still be silly and fun at certain enjoyable ends of the income/celebrity levels.

Given the difficult circumstances of the present day, that harangue struck us as silly and dimwitted all the way down. Historically, this type of fatuous punditry started with started with Dukakis in the tank (and failing to punch Bernie Shaw). It then moved ahead to the endless inanities of the mainstream press corps' devotion to the destructive, invented Storyline known as AL GORE, LIAR.

(The liar who didn't know who he was! The liar who hired a woman to teach him how to be a man!)

They never quite seem to escape the gravity of this impulse toward the vacuous / fatuous. Especially at this dangerous time, we thought Jessica Grose engineered an insightful choice of words.

Final note:

Pablo Torre was on Morning Joe today as a general political analyst. He may well be the world's nicest guy, but what explains his elevation from the pointless but fun world of sports?

In conclusion, it never ends:

ABC interviewed Stephen A. Smith concerning his possible White House campaign! Elsewhere, Katy Perry and the others were putting the "ass" back in "astronaut!" 

LANGUAGE: How do you describe a problem...

MONDAY, APRIL 14, 2025

A problem like Elon Musk: "How do you solve a problem like Maria?"

The question is asked, in musical form, near the start of the 1965 film, The Sound of Music. According to the leading authority on the film and the original musical, the song is performed by the nuns at Nonnberg Abbey.

They're exasperated with Maria for being a "flibbertigibbet."  The nuns further allege that Maria is too "frolicsome for the decorous and austere life at the Abbey."

How do you solve a problem like that? A similar question might arise concerning Elon Musk—even concerning Donald J. Trump, the president who has designated Musk as the reigning despot of DOGE. 

Similar questions may arise! But in the case of the rather frolicsome Musk, the question might go like this:

How do you describe a problem like Elon Musk? What sort of language should American journalists decide to use?

For the record, many people say they see no problem with Musk at all. More specifically, they approve of the work he has done as the reigning satrap of supposed federal savings. 

That said, it seems to us that an obvious problem does at least seem to exist. Consider last Friday's news report from USA Today.

The report, which carries no paywall, concerns something Musk excitedly announced at last Thursday's cabinet meeting. Was some sort of "problem" lurking there? Headline included, the report begins as shown:

Elon Musk lowers DOGE's projected savings from $1 trillion to $150 billion

Elon Musk said he anticipates the Department of Government Efficiency's efforts to slash "waste and fraud" from the federal government will cut $150 billion in spending over the next fiscal year, appearing to dramatically lower much-loftier projections he previously touted.

Musk, the billionaire tech entrepreneur who oversees DOGE, provided the update during an April 10 Cabinet meeting convened by President Donald Trump.

"I'm excited to announce that we anticipate savings in FY 26 from reduction of waste and fraud by $150 billion," Musk, seated at a table with Cabinet secretaries, told Trump. "And I mean, some of it is just absurd—like people getting unemployment insurance who haven't been born yet."

The 2026 fiscal year runs from Oct. 1, 2025 to Sept. 30, 2026.

While campaigning for Trump during the 2024 presidential race, Musk talked about cutting $2 trillion from the government. He lowered the goal to $1 trillion after Trump assumed office. And as recently as a March 27 interview on Fox News, Musk said he was on pace to eliminate $1 trillion in federal spending by the end of May.

That's how the next-day report began. In our view, the factual assertions in that passage are basically fair and accurate.

Having said that, Say what? 

According to this report, Musk had seemed to say, during last year's White House race, that he could cut $2 trillion from the budget of the federal government. That claim had always seemed to be crazy, but Musk did seem to make that claim during last year's campaign. 

(Full fairness: It wasn't always entirely clear that he meant that he could produce such savings on a one-year basis—in just one fiscal year. Arguably, though, the gentleman's endless imprecision is part of the gentleman's problem.)

At any rate, the first number Musk disgorged was in fact $2 trillion! After President Trump re-entered the White House, Musk did in fact lower the goal to a mere $1 trillion in cuts.

In all honesty, that goal had also seemed to be nuts! But there's absolutely no doubt that the gentleman made it.

At that point, the richest person on earth had reduced his initial projection by half! But last Thursday, there be stood, addressing the cabinet, and he said he was "excited to announce" another downsized digit.

Last Thursday, the genius seemed to say that he was only going to produce cuts of $150 billion during this fiscal year! That constitutes a "7.5 percent solution"—savings which total a mere 7.5% of his original proffer

Having started at $2 trillion, he was now excited to say that his number had fallen that far!  And sure enough:

At this point, no one in the cabinet said, What the f**k are you talking about? It isn't done that way in (televised) cabinet meetings—or perhaps within our high-end mainstream / legacy press.

For the record, we know of no obvious reason to believe that the bros of DOGE will ever achieve even that new goal. Consider what happened when the New York Times followed up on USA Today's initial report.

To its credit, USA Today had been first out of the gate. After several days of further research, a more detailed report in this morning's New York Times starts as shown, dual headline included:

DOGE Is Far Short of Its Goal, and Still Overstating Its Progress
Elon Musk now says his group will produce only 15 percent of the savings it promised. But even that estimate is inflated with errors and guesswork.

Last week, Elon Musk indicated for the first time that his Department of Government Efficiency was falling short of its goal.

He previously said his powerful budget-cutting team could reduce the next fiscal year’s federal budget by $1 trillion, and do it by Sept. 30, the end of the current fiscal year. Instead, in a cabinet meeting on Thursday, Mr. Musk said that he anticipated the group would save about $150 billion, 85 percent less than its objective.

Even that figure may be too high, according to a New York Times analysis of DOGE’s claims.

That’s because, when Mr. Musk’s group tallies up its savings so far, it inflates its progress by including billion-dollar errors, by counting spending that will not happen in the next fiscal year—and by making guesses about spending that might not happen at all.

One of the group’s largest claims, in fact, involves canceling a contract that did not exist...

Say what? Musk's minions "canceled a contract that did not exist?" The high-flying fellows "inflate [their] progress by including billion-dollar errors?" "By making guesses about spending that might not happen at all?"

So say Fahrenthold and Singer-Vine, a pair of Times reporters. And as their lengthy report continues, the pair of reporters go on and on from there.

Musk routinely screeches about the "crazy" things he and his team say they've found within the functioning of the federal government. But when it comes to the poobah's work, here's part of what the New York Times says that it has found:

Mr. Musk’s group has provided an online ledger of its budget cuts, which it calls the “Wall of Receipts.” The site was last updated on Tuesday, to show an “estimated savings” of $150 billion.

The ledger is riddled with omissions and flaws.

While Mr. Musk said on Thursday that his group would save $150 billion in fiscal 2026 alone, the website does not say explicitly when its savings would be realized. The site also gives no identifying details about $92 billion of its claimed savings, which is more than 60 percent of the total. 

The rest of the savings are itemized, attributed to cancellations of specific federal grants, contracts or office leases. But these detailed listings have been plagued with data errors, which have inflated the group’s savings by billions.

Mr. Musk’s group has deleted some of its original errors, like entries that triple-counted the same savings, a claim that confused “billion” with “million,” and items that claimed credit for canceling contracts that ended when George W. Bush was president.

Still, some expensive mistakes remain.

The second-largest savings that the group lists on its site comes from a canceled I.R.S. contract that DOGE says saved $1.9 billion. But the contract it cites was actually canceled when Joseph R. Biden Jr. was president. The third-largest savings that the group claims comes from a canceled grant to a vaccine nonprofit. Mr. Musk’s group says that saved $1.75 billion. But the nonprofit said it had actually been paid in full, so the savings was $0.

And so on from there, at considerable length. If you can believe the Times report, the "expensive mistakes" go on and on, accompanied by an array of "errors and flaws," with a tip of the hat to the "guesswork."

Eventually, Fahrenthold and Singer-Vine mention Musk's original goal of $2 trillion in savings. To appearances, they extended a bit of deference to the imprecision concerning the time frame of Musk's original claim. 

That said, their report describes Musk's work as something from a slough of incompetence and DOGE adjacent despond—or from something even worse, from a place of simple dishonesty.

Briefly, let's be fair:

According to the Times report, the DOGE bros have deleted some of their triple-counting. So too with the original blunders in which they claimed "billions" of dollars in savings when they should have said "millions."

(In such instances, the error increased their claimed savings by a factor of a thousand. In fairness, the two words in question rhyme.)

That said, the Times reports that DOGE is still claiming that it canceled a contract which was actually canceled under President Biden. They're still claiming $1.75 billion in savings from a situation where there will be no savings at all—and yes, the mayhem continues from there in the Times' very lengthy report.

The Times report goes on and on. So have the misstatements and the excited presentations by the richest person on earth.

History teaches that a certain group of nuns were trying to solve a problem. In the current circumstance, Musk's performance has been so astoundingly awful that many major news orgs seem to be having trouble finding the language with which to describe the scope of the societal problem.

For now, let's forget about solving that problem. How should we even describe this problem? How do we use our words?

How do you describe a problem like the current version of Elon Musk? Along the way this week, we'll suggest some possible language, including the journalistic language of product placement.

(For whatever reason, the lengthy report in today's New York Times appears on page A14.)

We'll also discuss a similar problem regarding the way our major news orgs describe the work product of President Trump. Also, how do you describe a problem like the Fox News Channel?

(If, that is, you're willing to discuss the Fox News Channel at all.)

How do you describe a problem like the current version of Musk? Here on our own sprawling campus, various types of language come to mind.

The same is true with respect to President Trump, and with respect to the conduct which routinely prevails on the aforementioned "cable news" channel.

That said, our major American journalists and news orgs may sometimes tend to defer to power. They may sometimes tend to defer to the pleasures of "playing it safe." 

Full fairness! Due to long-standing journalistic traditions, certain forms of language may not even occur to our scriveners in the present circumstance. There's no history of such use of journalistic language. Creating new language may be scary and hard.

There's no history of using such language! In fairness, it isn't clear that we the people have ever encountered a problem quite like this.

USA Today got there first. Today, in astounding detail, up jumps the New York times—on page 14, no less!

Tomorrow: New language from David Brooks

SATURDAY: The sitting president "loves this [BLEEP]!"

SATURDAY, APRIL 12, 2025

What we were talking about! Yesterday, the report came in on CNN. It's what we ourselves had been talking about only one day before.

Jeff Zeleny spoke with Dana Bash. As we join their conversation in progress, this is what was said:

BASH (4/11/25): Jeff, you and our colleagues at the White House have been doing, of course, another day, another round of really great reporting. And in this new story, you talk about speaking to senior White House advisers about how Trump is feeling right now. 

One in particular said the following—said, quote: 

"He just loves this shit." 

That's a quote. "Talking deals with the most powerful people in the world, when he's got all the cards and leverage, is like air for him."

To read the CNN news report, you can just click here. 

For the videotape of that televised exchange, see Alex Griffing's report for Mediate, which appears beneath this headline:

Trump ‘Just Loves This Shit’: Senior White House Advisors Tell CNN Tariff Trade War Is Like ‘Air For Him’

The president loved the past week's turmoil? That's exactly what we had suggested in Thursday afternoon's dispatch, "The several faces of Donald."

Even as the world had seemed to be coming undone, we said we'd never seen President Trump looking and seeming happier—seem so calm, so relaxed. The next day, along came Zeleny, quoting an insider who was making the same observation. 

That said, we also described a second Trump—the one who ranted and railed, in paranoid fashion, for a full ninety minutes at Tuesday night's NRCC event. Who is—or, perhaps, who are—the current sitting president? 

Who is, or who are, the sitting president? Last night, Bill Maher went on HBO and may have submitted a third answer to that question.

Bill was describing what he saw when he dined with the president right there at the White House. According to Bill, no ketchup—and no French fries—ended up on the dining room's walls.

Amazingly, you can click here for a full transcript of Bill's extensive remarks.  The things the press corps decides to transcribe! But this is the person Bill saw:

MAHER (4/11/25): The guy I met is not the person who, the night before the dinner, tweeted a bunch of nasty crap about how he thought this dinner was a bad idea and what a deranged (expletive) I was. I read it and thought, "Oh, what a lovely way to welcome someone to your house."

But when I got there, that guy wasn't living there... Just for starters, he laughs! I've never seen him laugh in public. But he does, including at himself. And it's not fake. Believe me, as a comedian of 40 years, I know a fake laugh when I hear it. And I thank you for them.

Bill was describing a third Donald Trump. Importantly, he soon added this:

MAHER: Look, I get it. It doesn't matter who he is at a private dinner with a comedian. It matters who he is on the world stage. 

That, of course, is the ultimate fact. It doesn't matter what the commander is like at a private supper party event. 

What matters, to cite one current example, is the way he and his staff seem to be willing to leave a person in a vicious gulag, even after they've acknowledged that they sent him there, to that distant end of the earth, by "administrative error."

Medical science seems to have a term for people prepared to behave in such ways. A familiar colloquial term exists, along with the proper clinical language.

This (presumably imperfect) medical science actually does exist! That said, for better or worse, our press corps has agreed that medical science must never be cited with respect to the behavior of the president and the various people around him.

For better or worse, that's one of the ways our struggling nation's journalism currently works.

Why was one of the President Trumps so relaxed, so calm, last week? 

In our view, his niece's book sketches one plausible answer to that significant question. Needless to say, the press corps has agreed that the medical elements of her massive best-seller must never he described or discussed.

(For the record: The president's niece is very sympathetic toward the child, starting with events which occurred when he was two years old. She's also quite dismissive of the adult who may have resulted from those events, especially of what she describes as the adult's dumbness and high self-regard.)

Who is, or who are, this President Trump? Also, who is, or who are, the various people who play by these rules, for better or worse, within our high-end press corps?

For President Trump, last week's turmoil was "like air?" That's the way it had looked to us! Bill, whose skills and achievement we vastly admire, then offered a third description.

Pity the child, we've long advised. Doing so may help you take power away from the adult.

FRIDAY: If you want to know who's secretly gay...

FRIDAY, APRIL 11, 2025

...you just have to watch Fox: The anthropology lessons never stop in these latter days.

We start with the astounding Pam Bondi, fluffing her treasured Dear Leader. Here's the way the sponge bath began at yesterday's (televised) cabinet meeting:

PRESIDENT TRUMP (4/10/25): Pam?

ATTORNEY GENERAL BONDI: President, we’ve got—had some great wins in the last few days. You know, you were overwhelmingly elected by the biggest majority. 

The U.S. Americans want you to be president because of your agenda. And the courts are ruling that you have the authority to determine how the money of this country will be spent. That’s what the American citizens wanted and that’s what they’re getting.

"The U.S. Americans" want that? That's what the apparent attorney general said to the man she addressed as "President!" 

Was this some sort of Westworld-style android breakdown? We have no way of knowing that, although your question does make perfect sense.

Whatever the answer might be, Bondi insisted on telling Trump that he had been "overwhelming elected" last year. She even said that he'd been elected "by the biggest majority!"

The sheer inanity of that statement basically speaks for itself. Simply put, that statement is an anthropology lesson. It's a study in bad human wiring. 

(To watch the tape, click here. Did we mention the fact that this was a televised sponge bath event?)

Then too, we'll always have Greg Gutfeld, along with the people who put him on the air and the people who won't report or discuss the things he says and does.

Earlier this week, sad! Michelle Obama finally addressed a bunch of rumors the lesser breed has apparently been slopping around:

Michelle Obama addresses public absences that gave rise to divorce rumors

Michelle Obama has spoken out about how she is choosing what she wants to do in life—not what she has to do—in comments addressing her absence from the political spotlight and rumors of divorce.

The former first lady, 61, went on the “Work in Progress” podcast with actress Sophia Bush to discuss how after spending eight years in the White House and raising two daughters in the public eye, she finally has the freedom to do what she wants.

[...]

In the podcast, Obama addressed her absence from the spotlight and reports of marital discord, saying her life is “whatever I want” now that she has adult children and no longer has to fulfill the obligations of being first lady. Malia Obama is 26, and Sasha Obama is 23.

We're sorry to make you read that. For the record, some people will read, think and talk about virtually nothing else.

Needless to say, Gutfeld swung into action! For the record, it's Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott who puts this disordered child on the air. Last night, at 10:02 p.m., this is what he said at the end of his opening handful of jokes:

GUTFELD (4/10/25): And finally, Michelle Obama has openly admitted that she and Barack sleep in separate bedrooms. Here's how it works:

She sleeps downstairs. And he like men.

For the record, the background screen flashed no source for this broken boy's initial claim. We'll guess that means that he had none. (For the record, he's 60 years old!)

That said, the sexual sliming is incessant on this astonishing "cable news" program. 

Last week, Gutfeld and his guests from the underworld aggressively gay-bashed Corey Booker in the wake of Senator Booker's Senate speech. In recent months on this soul-draining program, Michelle Obama has been fashioned as too big and too strong and much too masculine. 

Her husband, the former president, has routinely been trashed as a girlie man. 

Last night, the former president finally turned gay! These are the wages of sexual panic and fear, with very large salaries thrown in

Scott pries open this garbage can every night of the week, with a lead-in from Sean Hannity. (Greg Gutfeld will put a smile on your face, Hannity says every night.)

 At that juncture, the disordered fellow crawls out of the can, followed by four enablers. They spread their garbage all around. Our journalists avert their gaze.

TRUST: "Trust us," different Voices have said!

FRIDAY, APRIL 11, 2025

Who do (or should) you trust? People say (and believe) the darnedest things—and people always have!

It's a basic part of our human inheritance. Way back at the dawn of the West, one person tackled this alleged problem:

Plato

Plato (born c. 428–423 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher of the Classical period who is considered a foundational thinker in Western philosophy and an innovator of the written dialogue and dialectic forms. He influenced all the major areas of theoretical philosophy and practical philosophy, and was the founder of the Platonic Academy, a philosophical school in Athens where Plato taught the doctrines that would later become known as Platonism.

Plato's most famous contribution is the theory of forms (or ideas), which aims to solve what is now known as the problem of universals. 

Concerning "the problem of universals" (click here), a sensible person might sensibly ask this:

Who is this "problem of universals" some sort of a "problem" for?

The practical answer would be "practically no one!" But with very few shoulders on which to stand, Plato also considered this:

Philosopher king

The philosopher king is a hypothetical ruler in whom political skill is combined with philosophical knowledge. The concept of a city-state ruled by philosophers is first explored in Plato's Republic, written around 375 BC. Plato argued that the ideal state—one which ensured the maximum possible happiness for all its citizens—could only be brought into being by a ruler possessed of absolute knowledge, obtained through philosophical study.

[...]

Aristotle, in his Politics...sets out his own ideas about how a perfect city should be governed. Rather than proposing, as Plato does, the establishment of a ruling class, Aristotle argues that all citizens should take an equal share in the administration of the city. However, in one passage, Aristotle does write that if one or more people happened to be found who far excelled their fellow citizens in virtue, it would be against the natural order for such people to be subject to the rule of their inferiors, and they should therefore be made "kings in their state for life."

Today, some people seem to believe that Donald J. Trump should perhaps be made king for life. At any rate, way back then, at the dawn of the West, Plato was able to picture rule by a person "possessed of absolute knowledge."

A practical problem might seem to arise. How can people of limited knowledge know how to spot this person possessed of absolute knowledge? 

Putting it a different way, how would this person of absolute knowledge come to be accepted as king?

"It's always something," a later savant once noted. But then, up jumped the men of "the technocracy movement"—people who seemed to believe, back in the 1930s, that the philosopher kings were them.

In her essay in Sunday's New York Times, Professor Lepore sketched the shape of their absolute wisdom:

The Failed Ideas That Drive Elon Musk

[...]

[M]any of [Elon Musk's] ideas about politics, governance and economics resemble those championed by his grandfather Joshua Haldeman, a cowboy, chiropractor, conspiracy theorist and amateur aviator known as the Flying Haldeman. Mr. Musk’s grandfather was also a flamboyant leader of the political movement known as technocracy.

Leading technocrats proposed replacing democratically elected officials and civil servants—indeed, all of government—with an army of scientists and engineers under what they called a technate. Some also wanted to annex Canada and Mexico. At technocracy’s height, one branch of the movement had more than a quarter of a million members.

Under the technate, humans would no longer have names; they would have numbers. One technocrat went by 1x1809x56. (Mr. Musk has a son named X Æ A-12.) Mr. Haldeman, who had lost his Saskatchewan farm during the Depression, became the movement’s leader in Canada. He was technocrat No. 10450-1.

Technocracy first gained worldwide attention in 1932 but soon splintered into rival factions....Across the continent, rival groups of technocrats issued a flurry of tracts, periodicals and pamphlets explaining, for instance, how “life in a technocracy” would be utterly different from life in a democracy: “Popular voting can be largely dispensed with.”

And so on from there. Once the technate had been established, we wouldn't have those old-fashioned names, nor would we have to vote. The brilliant men of the technate would simply take things from there.

In fairness, we'll assume that many adherents of this movement were fully sincere in their concerns and in their dreams of a better life within the new borders laid out by "the technate." That said, they had succumbed to a fairly common human notion:

They seem to have come to believe that the philosopher kings were them!

Alas! Highly skilled "scientists and engineers" may not have good judgment about much of anything else. To take one innocuous example, Albert Einstein was the greatest theoretical physicist since Newton—but as it turned out, he wasn't especially skilled as a popular writer.

Then too, there's Elon Musk, Time magazine's Person of the Year for 2021. In the magazine's fluff-filled feature, we were offered such snapshots as these:

Elon Musk: 2021 TIME Person of the Year

The richest man in the world does not own a house and has recently been selling off his fortune. He tosses satellites into orbit and harnesses the sun; he drives a car he created that uses no gas and barely needs a driver. With a flick of his finger, the stock market soars or swoons. An army of devotees hangs on his every utterance. He dreams of Mars as he bestrides Earth, square-jawed and indomitable. Lately, Elon Musk also likes to live-tweet his poops.

[...]

This is the man who aspires to save our planet and get us a new one to inhabit: clown, genius, edgelord, visionary, industrialist, showman, cad; a madcap hybrid of Thomas Edison, P.T. Barnum, Andrew Carnegie and Watchmen’s Doctor Manhattan, the brooding, blue-skinned man-god who invents electric cars and moves to Mars. His startup rocket company, SpaceX, has leapfrogged Boeing and others to own America’s spacefaring future. His car company, Tesla, controls two-thirds of the multibillion-dollar electric-vehicle market it pioneered and is valued at a cool $1 trillion. That has made Musk, with a net worth of more than $250 billion, the richest private citizen in history, at least on paper...

[...]

A few short years ago, Musk was roundly mocked as a crazy con artist on the verge of going broke. Now this shy South African with Asperger’s syndrome, who escaped a brutal childhood and overcame personal tragedy, bends governments and industry to the force of his ambition.

To Musk, his vast fortune is a mere side effect of his ability not just to see but to do things others cannot, in arenas where the stakes are existential. “He was raised in a tough environment and born with a very special brain,” says Antonio Gracias, Musk’s close friend of two decades, who has held seats on the boards of Tesla and SpaceX. “Ninety-nine-point-nine percent of people in that situation don’t come out of it. Some small percentage come out of it with the ability he has to make great decisions under extraordinary pressure and the never-ending drive to change the course of humanity.” 

[...] 

The toll his hard-driving style takes on staff is legendary. Former associates have described Musk as petty, cruel and petulant, particularly when frustrated or challenged. He recently separated from the experimental musician Grimes, the mother of his seventh son. “He is a savant when it comes to business, but his gift is not empathy with people,” says his brother and business partner Kimbal Musk. 

Musk has been a hugely successful industrialist. In that essay, his long-time friend, Antonio Gracias, described him as a person who was "born with a very special brain."

Within the past month, Gracias has arrived on the scene, helping Musk with his selfless attempt to direct something resembling a new technate. That said, the special brain to which Gracias referred was responsible for what President Donald J. Trump said last month when he addressed to a joint session of Congress. 

With apologies, we'll post his ludicrous statements again, It's important to see the fruits of that special brain—the sorts of extremely strange fruit the apparently timorous mainstream press has largely agreed to walk on by:

THE PRESIDENT (3/4/25): We’re also identifying shocking levels of incompetence and probable fraud in the Social Security program for our seniors and that our seniors and people that we love rely on.  Believe it or not, government databases list 4.7 million Social Security members from people aged 100 to 109 years old.

It lists 3.6 million people from ages 110 to 119.  I don’t know any of them.  I know some people that are rather elderly, but not quite that elderly.  

(LAUGHTER) 

3.47 million people from ages 120 to 129. 

3.9 million people from ages 130 to 139.

3.5 million people from ages 140 to 149.

And money is being paid to many of them, and we’re searching right now. 

In fact, Pam [Bondi], good luck.  Good luck.  You’re going to find it.

But a lot of money is paid out to people because it just keeps getting paid and paid, and nobody does—and it really hurts Social Security and hurts our country.

1.3 million people from ages 150 to 159.  And over 130,000 people, according to the Social Security databases, are age over 160 years old.  

We have a healthier country than I thought, Bobby [Kennedy Jr.]. 

(LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE)

Including, to finish, 1,039 people between the ages of 220 and 229; one person between the age of 240 and 249; and one person is listed at 360 years of age—

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Joe Biden!  

(LAUGHTER)

THE PRESIDENT: —more than 100 years older than our country. 

But we’re going to find out where that money is going, and it’s not going to be pretty. 

By slashing all of the fraud, waste, and theft we can find, we will defeat inflation, bring down mortgage rates, lower car payments and grocery prices, protect our seniors, and put more money in the pockets of American families. 

 (APPLAUSE)

No, you can't get dumber than that—but a certain "very special brain" was the original source of that fruit. In fact, that very special brain has spread one gong-show presentation after another across the fruited plain. 

This brain was extremely good for the task of building rockets, but perhaps not for anything else. Also, it can occasionally seem that this brain doesn't inspire its holder to be obsessively honest at all points in time.

Over the past few months, the fellow who was live-tweeting his poops has been cast in the role of the modern-day philosopher king—as the point of the spear of the modern technate, as run by his young "engineers." Within the past few weeks, his own Patroclus arrived on the scene to help him "sing the famous deeds of fighting heroes" as he "pluck[ed] strong and clear on the fine lyre" (Professor Fagles).

Gracias has helped Musk sing the songs of warriors. Also, he has helped him spread his latest alarming claims all around.

This person in question has been spectacularly accomplished in certain highly challenging (though narrow) areas. With respect to everything else, it almost seems that he arrives in an electric clowncar.

Certain types of (narrowly) accomplished people may come to see themselves as supermen. It's amazing how childish and dumb their wider thinking may turn out to be. 

Being merely human, these fellows may sometimes seem to be totally in awe of their own spectacular greatness. Lepore notes one recent example: 

Mr. Musk’s possible departure from Washington will not diminish the influence of Muskism in the United States. His superannuated futurism is Silicon Valley’s reigning ideology. In 2023 the venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, who helped staff DOGE, wrote “The Techno-Optimist Manifesto," predicting the emergence of “technological supermen.” It consists of a list of statements:

We can advance to a far superior way of living and of being.
We have the tools, the systems, the ideas.
We have the will. …
We believe this is why our descendants will live in the stars. …
We believe in greatness. …
We believe in ambition, aggression, persistence, relentlessness—strength.

In a slightly saner world, these nitwits would be frog-marched into the countryside, where they would be lovingly served by a fully staffed re-education program.

That would be in a saner world. In our world, they're widely lionized as extremely wealthy bros who surely must have an array of brilliant ideas and insights. Also, our major press organs don't seem to be able, or possibly willing, to speak with frankness about them.

The person in question has been extremely accomplished in a narrow set of pursuits. Elsewhere, he has advanced one bungled claim after another in thoroughly blunderbuss fashion. 

He seems to have a very limited sense of traditional Enlightenment values. He tends to traffic in insults.

He doesn't always seem to be obsessively honest. Also, the major organs of the mainstream press have agreed, in the main, to walk on by his endless ridiculous conduct. 

On the one hand, they seem to be timorously avoiding a fight. Also, it's almost like they lack the language for discussing such a "savant."

Can you trust the sayings of Musk? Also, can you trust the fruits of the avoidance performed by the mainstream press?

"Trust us," various Voices have said and implied.  Johnny Carson was the first to address this concern:

Who Do [or Can or Should] You Trust?

 

THURSDAY: What the heck is an "idée fixe?"

THURSDAY, APRIL 10, 2025

The several faces of Donald: We seem to recall our sainted mother telling us about the film.

She'd gone to see it the night before. We would have been nine years old at the time. We can't recall what she said:

The Three Faces of Eve

The Three Faces of Eve is a 1957 American drama film based on the book of the same name about the life of Chris Costner Sizemore, which was written by psychiatrists Corbett H. Thigpen and Hervey M. Cleckley, who also helped write the screenplay. Sizemore, referred to by Thigpen and Cleckley as Eve White, was a woman they suggested might have dissociative identity disorder (then known as multiple personality disorder). Sizemore's identity was concealed in interviews about this film and was not revealed to the public until 1977. 

Joanne Woodward won the Academy Award for Best Actress, making her the first actress to win an Oscar for portraying three personalities (Eve White, Eve Black, and Jane).

For the record, Woodward was only given one (1) statuette.

We saw the film maybe ten years ago, most likely on TCM. As for dissociative identity disorder, here's what the Bible says:

Dissociative identity disorder

Dissociative identity disorder (DID), previously known as multiple personality disorder (MPD), is characterized by the presence of at least two personality states or "alters." The diagnosis is extremely controversial, largely due to two opposing models of the disorder. 

[...]

According to the DSM-5-TR, early childhood trauma, typically starting before 5–6 years of age, places someone at risk of developing dissociative identity disorder. Across diverse geographic regions, 90% of people diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder report experiencing multiple forms of childhood abuse, such as rape, violence, neglect, or severe bullying. Other traumatic childhood experiences that have been reported include painful medical and surgical procedures, war, terrorism, attachment disturbance, natural disaster, cult and occult abuse, loss of a loved one or loved ones, human trafficking, and dysfunctional family dynamics.

The full discussion is much, much longer. But so the good book says about this particular syndrome. 

We mention this only to establish the fact that this is an actual clinical diagnosis, included in the DSM. We mention this today for one particular reason:

The invaluable website Rev has created the Rev Transcript Library—a collection of major political tapes and transcripts. The site transcribed President Trump's marathon speech at Tuesday night's National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) dinner.

As you can see by clicking this link, the president went on and on, then on and on and on. He spoke for almost exactly 90 extremely jumbled minutes. 

We decided to skim through the transcript today because we'd seen clips in which he made an array of his standard unusual statements and claims:

The 2020 election was rigged! The money the federal government accrues through the imposition of tariffs comes from the foreign countries in question!

During the Biden years, foreign countries were emptying their insane asylums to flood our nation with the worst of the worst!

In short, all the greatest hits emerged, along with repetitive name-calling directed at Sleepy Joe, Shifty Schiff, and the rest of the standard villains. ("Horseface" went unmentioned.)

The jumbled transcript had the feel of the work of a person who could almost be madman adjacent. We were struck by the crazy feel of the endless series of rants because this same president had seemed so relaxed, in recent days, as he engaged in Q-and-A sessions on Air Force One.

Watching those Q-and-A sessions, it seemed to us that we'd never seen Trump seem so calm and so relaxed. Even after last week's stock market plunge, he seemed to be enjoying every minute of his sudden assault on the world.

Liberation Day had finally come! In its aftermath, he had seemed profoundly sure of himself, preternaturally relaxed. 

Then the other person showed up at the NRCC event. Our journalists obey strict laws against ever discussing such things, but we thought about the Woodward film as we read Rev's transcript:

"Just who are these two different people," we skillfully wondered and asked.

Meanwhile, what the heck is an "idée fixe?" That term does not appear in the DSM, but it's long been a part of psychology talk.

The idées fixes seemed to be running wild at the NRCC event.  For the record, we've long suggested empathy for the afflicted. We think that approach is right on the merits and is best on the politics too.

TRUST: High achievers say the strangest things!

THURSDAY, APRIL 10, 2025

Elon Musk, come on down: With substantial regularity, highly accomplished people say the darnedest things.

They may say, and even believe, the darnedest things! Once you step outside their area of achievement, they may even turn out to have a whole bunch of crazy ideas.

Harvard history professor Jill Lepore visited this realm of being in a fascinating guest essay in Sunday's New York Times. Her essay takes us back to the early 1930s—to the start of the Great Depression—but her essay is also as current as our own day's crackpot headlines.

Professor Lepore was back in the past. But she was principally discussing a very important present-day figure. 

Her essay starts as shown below. It then takes us into the realm of badly failed human discernment and stone-cold nutty ideas:

The Failed Ideas That Drive Elon Musk

President Trump has reportedly told cabinet members that Elon Musk may soon leave the administration. If and when he goes, what will he leave behind?

Mr. Musk has long presented himself to the world as a futurist. Yet, notwithstanding the gadgets—the rockets and the robots and the Department of Government Efficiency Musketeers, carrying backpacks crammed with laptops, dreaming of replacing federal employees with large language models—few figures in public life are more shackled to the past.

In Lepore's assessment, Musk isn't simply "shackled to the past." More specifically, Musk seems to be shackled to an array of the past's "failed ideas."

Let's punch up that language. As Lepore lays out the landscape, we'd have to say that DOGEmaster Musk can almost seem to be shackled to a set of borderline crazy ideas. As happenstance would have it, those crazy ideas track back to Musk's maternal grandfather, Joshua Haldeman—to a man who died when Musk himself was just three years old.

Who the heck was Joshua Haldeman? As we noted yesterday, the leading authority on his life presents this unflattering thumbnail:

Joshua N. Haldeman

Joshua Norman Haldeman (1902-1974) was an American-born Canadian-South African chiropractor, aviator, and politician. He became involved in Canadian politics, backing the technocracy movement, before moving to South Africa in 1950. Over the course of decades, he repeatedly expressed racist, antisemitic, and antidemocratic views. In South Africa he was a supporter of apartheid and promoted a number of conspiracy theories. A pilot since 1948, he died in a plane crash in 1974. Haldeman is the maternal grandfather of businessman Elon Musk.

Haldeman was born in 1902 in Pequot Lakes, Minnesota...[H]is mother studied at E. W. Lynch's Chiropractic School in Minneapolis and earned her D.C. on January 20, 1905. The family then moved to Saskatchewan, where she became the first recorded chiropractor in Canada.

[..]

In 1950, [Haldeman] emigrated with his family to South Africa and settled in the capital Pretoria, where he opened a chiropractic clinic. He served as secretary of the South African Chiropractors Association from 1952 to 1959, after which he was its president until 1969.

He was born in Pequot Lakes, but he grew up in Canada. In that northern land, he became a backer of "the technocracy movement"—a political movement which was briefly influential, despite the highly unusual ideas which lay at the heart of its struggle. 

Haldeman wasn't an industrial giant or a massively accomplished public figure. Today, his famous grandson plainly is. 

That said, Lepore marvels at the way the modern-day Musk seems to share the peculiar ideas which lay at the heart of his grandfather's movement. He was only three when his grandfather died, but ideas can be hard to kill.

Alas! Highly accomplished public figures—massive achievers like Elon Musk—may turn out to have crazy ideas, and very poor judgment, when you take them outside their narrow lane of accomplishment.

At any rate, what the heck was the long forgotten "technocracy movement?" Below, we'll quote Lepore as she highlights some of the movement's weird proposals. To simplify, the leading authority on the movement provides this overview:

Technocracy movement

The technocracy movement was a social movement active in the United States and Canada in the 1930s which favored technocracy as a system of government over representative democracy and concomitant partisan politics...Technocracy was ultimately overshadowed by other proposals for dealing with the crisis of the Great Depression. The technocracy movement proposed replacing partisan politicians and business people with scientists and engineers who had the technical expertise to manage the economy...

At that time, plain old "representative democracy" seemed to be failing. This movement proposed handing the reins to a new set of philosopher kings—to the brilliant scientists and engineers who would be able to noodle out the best way to shape the society.

Has this started to sound a tiny bit familiar? In the present day, Dogemaster Musk and his "engineers" have been allowed to intercede in all sorts of federal agencies. They've been applying their technical brilliance—their "expertise"—to the pitifully failed undertakings of elected officials and government employees and others within the deep state.

Some of them may be 19 years old; they may have names like "Big Balls." That said, the theory seems to be that their technical brilliance will overcome any obstacles as they reorder the world in a way which at last makes sense.

Unfortunately, highly accomplished technical people will sometimes turn out to be extremely dumb in all other areas. Musk himself has paraded about with a 3-year-old pendant draped on his neck, making one clownish claim after another, as his DOGE bros have blundered ahead. 

Our journalism seems to lack an established language for reporting the sheer stupidity of this highly accomplished industrialist. That said, how dumb can people of this general type be? 

That brings us to Lepore's remarkable recollection of the highly peculiar dreams and ideas which lay at the heart of the technocracy movement, back in the day when Musk's grandfather believed that he could reinvent the basic shape of the world.

How nutty were the original technocrats? We human beings can have the darnedest ideas! In this passage, Professor Lepore starts to describe the movement which seemed to make sense to Musk's grandfather:

The Failed Ideas That Drive Elon Musk

[...]

Joshua Haldeman [was] a cowboy, chiropractor, conspiracy theorist and amateur aviator known as the Flying Haldeman. Mr. Musk’s grandfather was also a flamboyant leader of the political movement known as technocracy.

Leading technocrats proposed replacing democratically elected officials and civil servants—indeed, all of government—with an army of scientists and engineers under what they called a technate. Some also wanted to annex Canada and Mexico. At technocracy’s height, one branch of the movement had more than a quarter of a million members.

Under the technate, humans would no longer have names; they would have numbers. One technocrat went by 1x1809x56. (Mr. Musk has a son named X Æ A-12.) Mr. Haldeman, who had lost his Saskatchewan farm during the Depression, became the movement’s leader in Canada. He was technocrat No. 10450-1.

Technocracy first gained worldwide attention in 1932 but soon splintered into rival factions. Technocracy Incorporated was founded and led by a former New Yorker named Howard Scott. Across the continent, rival groups of technocrats issued a flurry of tracts, periodicals and pamphlets explaining, for instance, how “life in a technocracy” would be utterly different from life in a democracy: “Popular voting can be largely dispensed with.”

Technocrats argued that liberal democracy had failed. One Technocracy Incorporated pamphlet explained how the movement “does not subscribe to the basic tenet of the democratic ideal, namely that all men are created free and equal.”...Mr. Scott’s army of technocrats would eliminate most government services: “Even our postal system, our highways, our Coast Guard could be made much more efficient.” Overlapping agencies could be shuttered, and “90 percent of the courts could be abolished.”

They wanted to bring on "the technate!" We humans would swap our tired old names for numbers—for new names like X Æ A-12!

Canada and Mexico would be annexed by the United States. Popular voting would go. We'd turn it all over to a group of intellectual giants. They would make the trains ruin on time. They'd make the Coast Guard efficient.

This was a journey back to an ancient idea—to the ancient dream of that philosopher king. The technocrats may have been completely sincere in what they proposed—but were they also perhaps a bit nutty?

Decades ago, in the desperate, darkest moment of the Depression, technocracy seemed, briefly, poised to prevail against democracy...In the four months from November 1932 to March 1933, The New York Times published more than 100 stories about the movement. And then the bubble appeared to burst. By summer [1933], Technocrats Magazine and The Technocracy Review had gone out of print.

[...]

Nevertheless, technocracy endured. Its spectacles grew alarming: Technocrats wore identical gray suits and drove identical gray cars in parades that evoked for concerned observers nothing so much as Italian Fascists. Mr. Musk’s grandfather was a technocracy stalwart. 

So it apparently went. Occasionally, it got even stranger than that, as we'll note tomorrow.

Stating the obvious, the possible sins of the maternal grandfather should not be visited on the highly accomplished grandson. Also, many of the technocrats were almost surely fully sincere in their dreams of this new world order.

That said, we humans can have the darnedest ideas! How nutty did some of these technocrats possibly seem? For a look at the identical suits, you can just click here.

The identical cars may be even stranger. To glimpse the movement's "Grey Fleet," click this, then scroll down.

Tomorrow, we'll show you more from Lepore's essay. For today, we'd suggest this:

Accomplished people may often fail to understand one key fact about themselves: Their high achievement in one specific area doesn't mean that they are "highly stable geniuses" is any other moral or intellectual realm.

In fact, accomplished people may often have the weirdest ideas and make the dumbest possible statements! As a general matter, their powers of reasoning may not be great. Swollen by their sense of self, they may not always be obsessively honest.

So it possibly seems to be in the case of the endless ridiculous claims issued by Elon Musk. Should a sensible American citizen trust the things this rather strange person says and does?

He has said a lot of extremely strange things. Who can a citizen trust?

Tomorrow: Journalistic deference! Within that world, who can a citizen trust?