THURSDAY: Coarse and violent, Mika says!

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2025

She refuses to say who she means: Tom Nichols isn't a doctor. He isn't a medical or psychological specialist.

Neither is Lawrence O'Donnell! In our view, O'Donnell has been the go-to guy, within the past month, for reactions to the ongoing conduct of President Trump. But was he possibly over his skies in this presentation on last evening's Last Word?

MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell Lashes Out at ‘Insane’ Trump in Blistering Rant Calling for His Removal: ‘Trump Has Lost His Mind!’

MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell went off on “insane” President Donald Trump in a blistering rant calling for his removal from office under the 25th Amendment.

Trump followed Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s address to military leaders Tuesday morning with a lengthy speech that featured several bonkers moments and characteristic deviations—as well as a lot of talk about “enemies” within the United States.

On Wednesday night’s edition of MSNBC’s The Last Word, O’Donnell declared that Trump “has lost his mind” and repeatedly invoked the removal clause while suggesting Vice President JD Vance is getting ready to step in:

O'DONNELL: It sure looked like 25th Amendment day in the White House today, where Donald Trump was not publicly visible, and the vice president of the United States took to the microphone on day one of the government shutdown to basically assure the country, I guess, that he’s in charge. And very specifically and deliberately to draw attention to Donald Trump’s public insanity by actively seeking out an opportunity to talk publicly about Donald Trump’s manifestations of outright insanity.

"Outright insanity" is a rant, not a diagnosis. It involves no actual medical terms. Nor is O'Donnell qualified, in any known way, to talk about such medical issues with any kind of expertise or specialized knowledge.

To his credit, O'Donnell actually is a high-end broadcast journalist. He's also deeply experienced. As such. he's qualified to interview specialists with a greater degree of skill than the average Joe might display. 

Years back, O'Donnell did interview high-ranking medical specialists about the possibility that President Trump was experiencing serious mental health issues. O'Donnell was one of the very few mainstream figures who was willing to ignore the unspoken prohibition of such conduct within the mainstream guild.

As far as we know, he hasn't done so lately. It's always possible that such specialists will no longer speak in public, given the degree of retribution this second term White House has now put on display.

As we've noted, we think O'Donnell has let his disgust for the sitting president cloud his judgment at times. In our view, Tom Nichols was a bit too coy, in the past day or two, as to what he was actually talking about. On last night's show, it seemed to us that O'Donnell broke the other way.

In this morning's report, we spoke about the way Nichols had seemed reluctant to say what he was talking about when he said the president "didn't seem OK"—when he eventually seemed to wonder, in his column for The Atlantic, if the sitting president was "sane." 

We've often told you about a second refusal to speak. We've cited the way journalists at MSNBC refuse to say who they're talking about when they criticize inexcusable, destructive behavior by people on the Fox News Channel.

How bad are things at this point on the Fox News Channel—indeed, in the MAGA world altogether as its hidden secession proceeds? In his new column for the New York Times, David French quotes Ben Shapiro saying this to Ezra Klein:

Incompetence Isn’t an Upgrade Over D.E.I.

[...]

One of the most important distinctions in politics is the difference between people who are mainly motivated to vote against their opponents rather than for their allies. Their hatred or fear of their opponents is far more important than their embrace of any particular policy or ideology.

This concept, called “negative partisanship,” is spreading like a virus across American politics, and it’s reaching its culmination in Donald Trump’s Republican Party. Ben Shapiro, one of the most popular right-wing podcasters in America, recently spoke with my colleague Ezra Klein and described the modern G.O.P. perfectly.

“I think that on the right there is such a rage that has arisen,” he said, “at least on part of the right, that the tendency is to just rip things out by their roots, rather than trying to correct or even determining whether the thing can be corrected.”

Shapiro was describing a type of blind, nihilistic rage on the part of many on the MAGA right. It's a rage which may be built on legitimate complaints, but is characterized by its unregulated fury and sense of entitlement.

We know of no one who has been displaying that rage more promiscuously of late than the Fox News Channel's Greg Gutfeld. Pitifully, his furious conduct has suddenly been swinging in the direction of race-based insult, as opposed his more typical insults based on his fairly obvious, weirdly undisguised devotion to woman hatred.

Something is tragically wrong with that furious, 61-year-old Bay Area child—but over on MSNBC, there seems to exist a policy against the naming of names and against the quoting of poisonous remarks. As reported and transcribed by Mediaite, here was Mika Brzezinski on yesterday's Morning Joe:

‘No! No!’ Joe Scarborough Yells at Wife Mika Brzezinski During MSNBC Clash About Democrats ‘Whining’

[...]

"I also just don’t understand why we’re blaming the Democrats for Republicans lying at the highest levels of office. They have the biggest megaphone. They have TV networks that repeat the lies and say things on those networks with no consequence and the things they say are violent, okay? So they’re not only repeating the lies but adding to this coarseness and there’s no consequence to it, and we’re blaming the Democrats? We’re blaming the Democrats for this. What exactly are the Democrats supposed to do?"

We apologize for subjecting you to Mediaite's silly headlines. That said:

According to Mika, unnamed people on unnamed networks are "repeating lies." Also, they're making violent statements which contribute to the coarseness of our failing discourse. 

Especially in light of some recent incidents, we'll guess that she was talking about Gutfeld's slithery, towel-snapping partner, Jesse Watters, and possibly Brian Kilmeade. But she wasn't willing to name any names, not even of the network in question.

By way of contrast:

On Fox, the children trash Joe and Mika all the time. The dumbest people in the history of American broadcast "news" routinely trash the people whose daily discussions of foreign affairs are the smartest conversations found anywhere around the "cable news" dial.

The flyweights trash Joe and Mika all the time! Judging from appearances, Joe and Mika aren't allowed to even report what is said on Fox.

What was Nichols talking about? Who was Mika talking about? What sorts of coarse and violent things have been said at the Fox News Channel? 

Sorry, Charlie:

All across the Blue American firmament, journalists refuse to report and discuss what the flyweights are doing at Fox. To appearances, no one wants to tussle with Fox. It simply isn't done!

Still coming: The New York Times pretends to profile one of Gutfeld's willing enablers

WHAT IS MENTAL ILLNESS: What was Nichols talking about?

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2025

Wallace agreed not to ask: In Monday morning's report, we cited the old Gil Scott Heron lyric:

The revolution will not be televised.

At the time, we transitioned that lyric as shown:

The truth about the demise of the American nation will not be reported or discussed in the New York Times.

Today, we take things one step further. This very morning, as the Trump administration shuts down funding to more than a dozen Blue American states, we will go ahead and state this largely disappeared fact:

The secession has already happened.

We're speaking here of the second secession. We're speaking of the current secession, the secession which follows on the heels of the secession of 1861.

An irony prevails:

Back then, it was the southern, slavery-endorsing states which chose to secede from the northern states, who had come in control of the White House. 

(That action by those southern states reflects on no one living today.)

Today, it's the political leaders of the Red American states—the political leaders who control the White House—who have chosen to secede from their Blue American counterparts. They're seceding thanks to their political success, not in the wake of their political defeat,.

At any rate, the revolution won't be televised, and that secession won't be announced. Nor will Blue America's tribunes ever report this ongoing state of affairs as clearly as we have just done.

We think today of a striking confession from Jim Sheridan's brilliant 2003 movie, In America.  (The film received Oscar nominations in two acting categories and for best original screenplay.)

Midway through the film, a striking confession occurs. Driven mad by the death of a child, the distraught young father, an Irish immigrant to the U.S., confesses the loss of his person:

You know, I asked [God] a favor. I asked him to take me instead of him—and he took the both of us. And look what he put in my place.

I'm a f***ing ghost! I don't exist. I can't think. I can't laugh. I can't cry.

I can't feel!

We aren't in love with the way that confession was performed. But to watch that confession, click here.

That father couldn't laugh of cry. Today, those of us in Blue America are unable to speak. Our tribunes keep refusing to speak—keep refusing to give us key words.

Is something wrong with President Trump? At this site, we've asked that (fairly obvious) question for a very long time. 

If the answer is yes, that's a personal human tragedy—but it's also a danger to the nation and to the world. As part of our own presentation, we've often transcribed the claims of the president's niece, a doctorate-wielding clinical therapist, about the vast extent of what she described in her best-selling book as her uncle's many "psychopathologies."

The fact that she said it doesn't mean that it's true! But as with President Biden, so too with President Trump:

Over here in Blue America, our corporate tribunes have refused, every step of the way, to ask the obvious question about the possibility that something is seriously wrong:

In yesterday afternoon's report, we discussed the latest example. We discussed this essay in The Atlantic—an essay by Tom Nichols, an impressive and good decent person.

Who the Sam Hill is Brother Nichols? The leading authority speaks:

Tom Nichols (academic)

Thomas Michael Nichols (born 1960) is an American writer, academic specialist on international affairs, and retired professor at the U.S. Naval War College. His work dealt with issues involving Russia, nuclear weapons, and national security affairs.

Born in Holyoke, Massachusetts, Nichols grew up in Chicopee, Massachusetts, where he attended public schools in the 1960s and 1970s...He stated in a speech at the Heritage Foundation that he did not come from an educated family, noting that his parents were "both Depression era kids who dropped out of high school".

Nichols was awarded a BA degree in political science from Boston University in 1983, an MA degree in political science from Columbia University in 1984, a certificate from the Harriman Institute of Columbia University in 1985, and a PhD in government from Georgetown University in 1988. His doctoral thesis was entitled The politics of doctrine: Khrushchev, Gorbachev and the Soviet military.

[...]

Nichols registered with the Republican Party in 1979. He described himself in 2016 as a Never Trump conservative. During the 2016 presidential campaign, Nichols argued that conservatives should vote for Hillary Clinton, whom he detested, because Trump was "too mentally unstable" to serve as commander-in-chief....

And so on from there. Nichols is an impressive, experienced person. He was also refusing to speak in his essay for The Atlantic.

From his first few paragraphs (and his headline) on, Nichols said the president "isn't OK," but he kept failing to say what he specifically meant by that. Yesterday afternoon, this refusal to speak was extended to a lengthy segment of the MSNBC TV show, Deadline: White House, where Nicolle Wallace had assembled a panel of three Blue American tribunes, all of whom failed to speak.

They were refusing to speak—or possibly they simply can't! In the present circumstance, it may be that they simply they don't know how to do so. In the current circumstance, it may be that our human wiring doesn't equip us "rational animals" to engage in such conduct as that.

It may be that we humans aren't built for that line of work! But there sat Wallace, speaking with the three-member panel, and no one ever stood up and was willing—or able—to speak.

Wallace spoke with her three-person panel from shortly after 5 o'clock right on through 5:32. She started with a twenty-minute segment. After a commercial break, a shorter segment followed.

At the Deadline: White House site, you can watch the first twelve minutes of that initial segment. As you will see, the segment is summarized thusly:

Is Trump 'unwell?' New questions emerge after 'striking low-energy and rambling' military speech
Donald Trump's "low-energy and rambling" speech to military leaders on Tuesday is raising new questions about his fitness for office, MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace reports. Tom Nichols, Mark Hertling and Maya Wiley join Deadline: White House to discuss.

We'll disagree with one part of that summary. In our view, the second part of that summary should actually say this:

Donald Trump's "low-energy and rambling" speech to military leaders on Tuesday is raising new questions about his fitness for office, MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace reports. Tom Nichols, Mark Hertling and Maya Wiley join Deadline: White House to pretend to discuss.

In fact, Wallace was pretending to conduct a discussion with her trio of guests. Their own rambling statements were so disjointed—were so non-specific—that no real discussion or assertion ever emerged.

For starters, let's go with this:

Wallace's initial segment was explicitly built around the essay by Nichols. Rather than simply speak with him about what he had written and meant, she and her producers had assembled that trio of guests.

Nichols was only given one real chance to speak with specificity about what he'd meant when he said, at the start of his essay, that the president "didn't seem OK" when he delivered his rambling address. 

In his essay for The Atlantic, Nichols had eventually seemed to question whether the president is "sane." That had seemed like a very strong insinuation—but so what? In their headline, Wallace' producers had turned their segment into discussion of whether the president is "unwell." 

That's a extremely vague formulation. In its lack of specificity, it gave all the performers, most especially Wallace herself, a safe space in which they could hide.

Along the way, a type of problem had emerged:

A person can be "unwell" in a wide assortment of ways. To some extent, discussion of the president's speech to the admirals and generals had generated questions about possible physical illness. Also, the word "dementia" had been cited by Lawrence O'Donnell.

With all that in mind, what exactly was now being said about the way in which the president may not be OK—may be "unwell?" That never became clear on Deadline: White House. In truth, the segment may have been designed toward that unhelpful end.

Question:

Is dementia a "mental illness?" Using the language which may now be preferred, is dementia a "mental disorder?" 

We find contradictory answers to that question in presentations made by the leading authority. That said, the president's niece had spoken of the likelihood that the president suffers, in effect, from "sociopathy"—and sociopathy (technically, "antisocial personality disorder") is not the same thing as dementia.

So what was Nichols talking about in his Atlantic essay? In his first chance to speak on yesterday show, he sensibly and intelligently told Wallace this:

NICHOLS (10/1/25): What inspired the piece was Trump...I did hear afterwards that, you know, a lot of folks, right? He just doesn't seem well. He's not OK.

I'm not a doctor. I'm not making a diagnosis. I'm saying, as a lay person and a man of advancing years myself, that I looked at the president and I thought, "He's not OK"—and that it's not just his physical demeanor. 

I mean, this—I think for too long we haven't been willing to talk about the weird, rambling—you know, the president tries to call it "The Weave." It's not The Weave. It is some kind of emotional disordered condition where he just cannot hold a thought in his head...And it just disturbed me, and I thought I ought to say something about it.

I'm not a doctor, Nichols said. I'm not making a diagnosis. But this is precisely where the anger here in Blue America should start to flow:

No one else on yesterday's panel was a doctor either! Nichols isn't capable of bringing medical expertise to any discussion of what he saw, but neither were the other two people Wallace's bosses had directed her to pretend to conduct a discussion with.

Listening to what Nichols did say, he seems to be thinking of something like "dementia" as opposed to something like physical illness or "sociopathy." Either way, he isn't able to being specialized knowledge to any discussion of what he saw—and producers had booked two other people who were also unable to do that!

Nearing the end of the first segment, Wallace made matters considerably worse. She recalled the way serious concerns about the president's mental condition had been raised by administration insiders in Trump's first term, as early as 2017 and 2018. 

That had even included the possible removing the president from office through the 25th amendment, Wallace accurately said. Without seeming to understand the sweep of her self-indictment, Wallace was thereby telling us that she and her corporate owners have agreed, for all those years, that we must never discuss the possible shape of those serious concerns.

I can't think. I can't laugh. I can't cry. I can't feel! That's what the distraught father says in that Oscar-nominated film. 

People like Wallace keep refusing to speak. It may be that they can't speak—that they simply lack the requisite intellectual skills. 

But nothing is going to come from their failures, and nothing is going to change what they do. Nichols had suggested that the president may not be "sane." When the subsequent pseudo-discussion was staged, that word never came up.

The revolution won't be televised! Also, the president's possible mental condition will never be discussed on your favorite TV shows.

Had the admirals and generals been watching a person who's "sane?" That was the specific question with which Nichols had ended his essay.

Yesterday, no one uttered that challenging word in the course of a full half hour. Instead, they settled for the fuzzy term, "unwell." 

Everyone knows the rules of these games. Everyone except us rubes out here in Blue America as a second secession takes place.

This afternoon: Mika refuses to say who she means

Tomorrow: Pretending to profile Kat Timpf

WEDNESDAY: Tom Nichols inches towards the question!

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2025

The bill has now come due: Over here in Blue America, there exists a tremendous reluctance to come to terms with what seems to be right before us.

We refer to the fairly obvious conclusion that something seems to be wrong with President Trump—that there may be issues of mental health floating around in the mix. 

As we noted in this morning's report, Lawrence O'Donnell has been willing to go there this week, as he has done in the past. Later, over at The Atlantic, we saw an essay by Tom Nichols, found beneath this dual headline:

The Commander in Chief Is Not Okay
Trump put on a disturbing show for America’s generals and admirals.

The president isn't OK, Nichols says. And yesterday's speech was "disturbing."

At least, that's what the headlines say. Below, you see where the relevant part of Nichols' text starts up. Question—is Nichols talking about issues of mental health and mental illness at this point in his piece?

The Commander in Chief Is Not Okay
Trump put on a disturbing show for America’s generals and admirals.

[...]

The president talked at length, and his comments should have confirmed to even the most sympathetic observer that he is, as the kids say, not okay. Several of Hegseth’s people said in advance of the senior-officer conclave that its goal was to energize America’s top military leaders and get them to focus on Hegseth’s vision for a new Department of War. But the generals and admirals should be forgiven if they walked out of the auditorium and wondered: What on earth is wrong with the commander in chief?

Italics by Nichols. We'd say the suggestion is already strong, but it remains a slightly coy suggestion. We're asking you to note the cultural reluctance to raise such a question directly.

As his essay continues, Nichols directs some standard jibes at the president's speech. Soon, though, it seemed to us that he was hinting further:

And so it went, as Trump recycled old rally speeches, full of his usual grievances, lies, and misrepresentations; his obsessions with former Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama; and his sour disappointment in the Nobel Prize committee. (“They’ll give it to some guy that didn’t do a damn thing,” he said.) He congratulated himself on tariffs, noting that the money could buy a lot of battleships, “to use an old term.” And come to think of it, he said, maybe America should build battleships again, from steel, not that papier-mâché and aluminum stuff the Navy is apparently using now: “Aluminum that melts if it looks at a missile coming at it. It starts melting as the missile is about two miles away.”

Ohhhkayyyy.

We'd say the insinuation is stronger there, but it's still an insinuation.

The word "unhinged" appears in the next paragraph, though only as a description of the president's "diatribe."  Applied to the president himself, that word has long been a standard journalistic dodge—a standard way of avoiding direct language about his mental state.

A few grafs later, the criticism is possibly stronger, but Nichols seems to be describing a simple act of demagoguing, transferred yesterday to a deeply inappropriate place:

This farrago of fantasy, menace, and autocratic peacocking is the kind of thing that the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan evocatively called “boob bait for the Bubbas” and that George Orwell might have called “prolefeed.” It’s one thing to serve it up to an adoring MAGA crowd: They know that most of it is nonsense and only some of it is real. They find it entertaining, and they can take or leave as much of Trump’s rhetorical junk-food buffet as they would like. It is another thing entirely to aim this kind of sludge at military officers, who are trained and acculturated to treat every word from the president with respect, and to regard his thoughts as policy.

All in all, it's just a bunch of boob bait, Nichols now seems to be saying.

Three paragraphs remain at this point. Does Nichols turn the temperature up—speak with clear precision? The language has started to take a turn in this next paragraph:

But American officers have never had to contend with a president like Trump. Plenty of presidents behaved badly and suffered mental and emotional setbacks: John F. Kennedy cavorted with secretaries in the White House pool, Lyndon Johnson unleashed foul-mouthed tirades on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Richard Nixon fell into depression and paranoia, Ronald Reagan and Joe Biden wrestled with the indignities of age. But the officer corps knew that presidents were basically normal men surrounded by other normal men and women, and that the American constitutional system would insulate the military from any mad orders that might emerge from the Oval Office.

The specter of possible "madness" has now perhaps been raised. This president may not be "normal."

In the penultimate graf, Nichols has the generals wondering "who will shield them from the impulses of the person they just saw onstage," from "his nuttiest—and most dangerous—ideas."  But it isn't until his final paragraph that he lets his message fly:

In 1973, an Air Force nuclear-missile officer named Harold Hering asked a simple question during a training session: “How can I know that an order I receive to launch my missiles came from a sane president?” The question cost him his career. Military members are trained to execute orders, not question them. But today, both the man who can order the use of nuclear arms and the man who would likely verify such an order gave disgraceful and unnerving performances in Quantico. How many officers left the room asking themselves Major Hering’s question?

Accordingto Nichols. officers may have left the room yesterday wondering if the president is sane. Nichols took a long time to get there, and even there, the implication is stated in the form of a question.

Over here in Blue America, our major journalists are very timid when it comes to saying what they mean, and what they must think, about this grotesquely important question. Our own suggestion would be this:

We don't know how to talk about this in the way we might want to do.

We don't know how to talk about this topic! Beyond that, we've failed and we've failed, in various other ways, over the course of the past sixty years, and the bill has now come due.

Regarding this one particular topic:

(Severe) mental illness, with possible dementia included, is always a tragedy. You have to start by saying that.

You have to start by saying that. You have to say it every time. It helps if you know that it's true.

WHAT IS MENTAL ILLNESS: No discussion of mental illness...

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2025

...could ever have saved us from this: Today we have naming of mental disorder. We want to start with a basic point:

No discussion of "mental illness"—no discussion of mental health or "mental disorder"—would or could have saved us from this, or from what is likely to come.

Remember, "it's all anthropology now"—and it has been for a long time. For a long time, there has been no apparent way out of this mess, nor was there any sign that those of us in Blue America would ever know how to find such a path.

Our analytical skills and our powers of empathy simply weren't bult for the task. That said, Lawrence O'Donnell has been speaking about mental illness, quite directly, over the past two nights. 

We'll show you a bit of his language below. Last night, he discussed the speech the sitting president delivered in front of 800 admirals and generals in a crowded and silent room. 

One commentator after another has marked the inanity of the president's "rambling" address. According to CNN's transcript, the president started his address shortly after 9:25 a.m. 

According to that same transcript, this is what the president was saying as 9:50 a.m. came and went—as it came and dragged on by:

PRESIDENT TRUMP (9/30/25): ...One of the first executive orders I signed upon taking office was to restore the principle of merit. That's the most important word, other than the word "tariff."

I love tariffs. Most beautiful word. But I'm not allowed to say that any more. I said, " 'Tariff' is my favorite word. I love the word 'tariff.' " 

You know, we're becoming rich as hell. We have a big case in front of the Supreme Court, but I—I can't imagine, because this is what other nations have done to us. And we have, you know, great legal grounds and all, but you still have a case would be very bad. 

Something happened. But I said, "my favorite word in the English dictionary is the word 'tariff.' " And people thought that was strange. And the fake news came over and they really hit me hard on it.

They said, "What about love? What about religion? What about God? What about wife, family?" I got killed when I said "tariff" is my favorite word. So, I changed it. It's now my fifth favorite word. And I'm OK with that. I'm OK with that. But they hit me hard.

But it is. I mean, when you look at—we've taken in trillions of dollars. We're rich. Rich again. And they'll never be, when we finish this out, there will never be any wealth like what we have. Other countries were taking advantage of us for years and years. You know that better than anybody. And now we're treating them fairly. But the money coming in is—we've never seen anything like it.

The other day they had 31 billion that they found—$31 billion. "Sir, we found $31 billion. And we're not sure from where it came." 

A gentleman came in. A financial guy. I said, "Well, what does that mean?"

 He said, "We don't know where it came." I said, "Check the tariff shelf."

"No, sir, the tariffs haven't started in that sector yet." I said, "Yes, they have. They started seven weeks ago. Check it."

Comes back 20 minutes later. "Sir, you're right, it came from tariffs. $31 billion." 

That's enough to buy a lot of battleships, admiral, to use an old term. 

Well, I think we should maybe start thinking about battleships, by the way. You know, we have a secretary of the Navy. He came to me, because I look at the Iowa out in California, and I look at different ships in the old pictures. 

I used to watch Victory at Sea. I love Victory at Sea. Look at these admirals. It's got to be your all-time favorite. Black and white. And I look at those ships. They came with the destroyers alongside of them. And, man, nothing was going to stop. They were 20 deep and they were in a straight line, and there was nothing going to stop them.

And so on from there.

He used to watch Victory at Sea? It was an early TV show (in "black and white"), first broadcast when he was five years old. The leading authority tells us this:

Victory at Sea

Victory at Sea is a documentary television series about warfare in general during World War II, and naval warfare in particular, as well as the use of industry in warfare. It was broadcast by NBC in the United States during 1952–53....The original TV broadcasts comprised 26 half-hour segments—Sunday afternoons at 3:00 p.m. (EST) in most markets—starting on October 26, 1952 and ending on May 3, 1953.

[...]

After the first run, NBC syndicated it to local stations, where it proved successful financially through the mid-1960s.

And so on from there. The program continued to air through his high school years, which he spent at New York Military Academy, a boarding school which was mocked by his siblings as a "reform school." 

As has been widely reported, he was sent to NYMA because of his aggressive behavior toward younger children at the New York City prep school where his father had sat on the board of directors. After the seventh grade, his father had agreed that his son had to leave the school.

Back to Victory at Sea! Admirals and generals had been flown in to listen to the sitting president dodder along in this way. With respect to his widely-reported mistreatment of the younger children at his original school, we'll offer these deeply unfortunate, tragic facts from the leading authority on the topic of the colloquial term, "sociopathy:"

Antisocial personality disorder

Antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) is a personality disorder defined by a chronic pattern of behavior that disregards the rights and well-being of others. People with ASPD often exhibit behavior that conflicts with social norms, leading to issues with interpersonal relationships, employment, and legal matters. The condition generally manifests in childhood or early adolescence, with a high rate of associated conduct problems and a tendency for symptoms to peak in late adolescence and early adulthood.

[...]

In order to be diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder under the DSM-5, one must be at least 18 years old, show evidence of onset of conduct disorder before age 15, and antisocial behavior cannot be explained by schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.

At present, "sociopath" is not a technical diagnostic term. That said, to be diagnosed with the associated personality disorder, "evidence of onset of conduct disorder" must have appeared before age 15.

The gentleman's niece, a clinical therapist, said in her 2020 best-seller that her uncle could likely be diagnosed with this disorder. To her credit, she was able to pity the child as she laid out the circumstances which may have contributed to this possible state of affairs. 

To what circumstances do we refer? The niece included the fact that sociopathy is believed to be heritable. Also, the fact that president's father, her own grandfather, was, in her stated view, a "high-functioning sociopath."

We're describing here a terrible tragedy, in much the way that it's a tragedy whenever any child is born with any serious illness. That said, whatever the medical truth of this matter might be, no discussion of any such possibility could have saved us in Blue America from what will be coming next.

With that, we return to yesterday's rambling, inane address. Simply put, this president seems to be out on his feet—but very few Blue American journalists or academics, aside from MSNBC's O'Donnell, seem prepared, in any way, to take a stab at a discussion of this apparent fact.

Back to yesterday's crowded hall! The generals and admirals sat in the room, condemned to listen to more than an hour of drivel like the drivel we've posted. And no, our country isn't suddenly "rich"—and no, we haven't been "taking money in" in the way the sitting president insists on saying we have, no matter how many times his misstatement is corrected.

In the passage we have posted, the president even made use of his favorite format—the format which goes like this:

A noun + a verb + "no one has ever seen anything like it."

Also, he made use of this favorite:

A noun + a verb + someone calling him "Sir."

Admirals and general sat in the hall, condemned to well over an hour of this. With regard to those battleships, here's the start of the column by David Ignatius in today's Washington Post:

Trump and Hegseth’s backward-facing message to the generals

Here’s the scariest part about Tuesday’s military pep rally: President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth—in their focus on grooming, fitness standards and “the enemy within”—seem oblivious to the reality that 21st-century combat will be dominated by drones and artificial intelligence, plus commanders who understand these high-tech weapons.

America’s generals and admirals sat stone-faced as they listened to Trump and Hegseth. They had been summoned to Washington at a moment when they’re struggling to adapt America’s military to dizzying changes in combat systems and doctrine. What they got was a lecture from Hegseth about the threat of facial hair, “fat generals” and lax training—along with a meandering speech from Trump bashing his political enemies.

Trump’s and Hegseth’s speeches were an exercise in military nostalgia. Trump talked about bringing back battleships, a Navy fighting platform that was already outmoded during World War II...

Is Ignatius right about those battleships? At this site, we have no idea. Of one thing you can feel certain:

The admirals and generals do.

Ignatius went with "meandering" as she described this address. Many others settled for "rambling."

Was Tuesday's unusual twin-bill address scheduled as a distraction from the impending government shutdown which was destined to land on that day? We have no idea, but the generals were condemned to hear about how fat some of them are—but also about the 1950's TV show, Victory at Sea.

Also, they head about using American cities as a place to train the military, which Hegseth would make more lethal. On last evening's PBS NewsHour, the highly articulate Capt. Margaret Donovan (ret.) voiced concern about that combination. 

Other observers have sussed that out as the one new thing the president said.

Ignatius went with "meandering" as he described this address. Few observers went where O'Donnell did, giving voice to direct concern about the president's mental functioning.

As for the president himself, he proceeded from the lecture hall to his hall of mirrors. Last evening, he posted another bizarrely insulting deep fake video of his Democratic counterparts.

Is something wrong with President Trump? If so, that's a human tragedy. Once again, Mediaite was willing to report the remarkable thing he did:

Trump Doubles Down With Another Bizarre AI Attack on Hakeem Jeffries

President Donald Trump doubled down on his AI smear campaign against House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on Tuesday with a second doctored video cut over the Democrat’s MSNBC interview, during which he slammed an earlier deepfake as “disgusting.”

[...]

In the clip ripped from the MSNBC appearance by the president, posted to both X and Truth Social, Jeffries condemns the earlier video as “disgusting” before the video morphs, placing a sombrero and moustache on the Democrat’s face, while an AI-generated mariachi band—each member with Trump’s face—played in the background.

The White House has not yet commented on Trump’s latest video.

The president did that for the second straight night. You can see last night's crazy video as part of the Mediaite report. That said, even Mediaite hasn't yet been willing to report O'Donnell's discussion from last evening's Last Word. 

Over at the Last Word site, you can watch the heart of O'Donnell's opening monologue, in which he comments on the president's apparent mental and physical health. Thanks to the invaluable Internet Archive, you can also watch O'Donnell's opening monoloue, shared at first with Jen Pskai, simply by clicking here.

At the Last Word site, you can see what O'Donnell had to say after Psaki departed. You'll see him start with this:

O'DONNELL (9/30/25): ...The emergency the United States of America is facing tonight is an emergency the United States of America has created for the world. And that emergency is that the president of the United States, in his public appearance today, proved that he is mentally incapable and emotionally incapable of fulfilling his constitutional duties as president of the United States. 

In other words, there is no president of the United States as we knew it. There is no functioning intelligence, no functioning judgment mechanism within the mind of the current holder of that title, and that person is also the holder of the nuclear codes that could destroy the planet in seconds.

We can't tell you that assessment is wrong. Unfortunately (in our view), the videotape at the Last Word site is headlined and summarized like this:

Lawrence: Trump was 'on the verge of outright insanity' in deranged speech to military commanders
MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell details how military commanders who listened to Donald Trump’s “deranged” speech have to be wondering “just how much more dangerous their jobs are now that they've seen just how lost and sick their Commander-in-Chief is.”

We can't tell you that those assessments are wrong. But television is said to be "medium cool," and O'Donnell's anger and disgust have tended to outpace his empathy and intellect as he engages in his discussions of the sitting president's possible mental disorders.

In our view, there's no discussion of mental health or mental illness which could have saved us from what will be coming next. In part, that turns on a massive irony—on the way we Blues refused to acknowledge a somewhat similar fact about the previous sitting president, who had plainly lost several steps, despite Blue America's insistence that there was nothing to look at.

Over here in Blue America, there was nothing to see at the southern border. There was nothing to see about President Biden.

The cost of living? That was all in the public's heads! We joined to that a string of difficult claims about social issues which came to be described as "woke," and we had spent the past sixty years alienating last segments of the population through our insistence that they were perhaps a bit "less."

(Last night, PBS began exploring the start of this era with the debut of its American Experience program, Hard Hat Riot. Question: Does the title of the program undermine its larger point?)

Like the fictional citizens of Camus' Oran, we Blues just haven't been up to the challenge. That said, giant empires have always come undone. Our human wiring wasn't built for the task of keeping behemoths intact.

Joined by almost no one else, O'Donnell is willing to see what's sitting right there before him. But he's speaking too late, and his tone is too hot, and the die had long been cast.

No discussion of mental illness could ever have saved us from what will be coming next. That said, if you plan to discuss mental illness, it's important to recognize this:

Severe "mental disorder" / mental illness is always a human tragedy. A person needs to establish that point.

It helps if he really believes it. Within the tribal context, almost no one does.

Tomorrow: In search of human capability! The New York Times profiles Kat Timpf

Friday: Wikipedia on "Human"

TUESDAY: The New York Times reports what he said!

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2025

Except they pretty much didn't: At first, we planned to give credit where due—while also praising your incomparable Daily Holer for banging out those results.

We could barely believe our eyes! In an admittedly short report, the New York Times had reported the contents of the latest strange post on the president's Truth Social site! 

There it sits, right at the top of the paper's online front page. Headline included, the report starts out like this:

Deadlock Grows Uglier as Congress Heads Toward Shutdown

The federal government barreled toward a shutdown on Tuesday ahead of a midnight deadline, as President Trump and Republicans in Congress remained deadlocked with Democrats in a spending standoff that was growing uglier by the hour.

Democratic leaders lashed out at Mr. Trump for posting a crude, A.I.-generated video insulting and mocking them on Monday night, hours after meeting with them at the White House to discuss the impasse.

The deepfake video superimposed a cartoon mustache and sombrero over Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, who was pictured standing silently while Mariachi music played and the voice of Senator Chuck Schumer was distorted to deliver expletive-laden remarks that included the line, “Nobody likes Democrats anymore.”

Mr. Jeffries responded on Monday night by posting a photograph of Mr. Trump smiling alongside Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier who died in prison in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

Whew! The two parties were really swapping insults! Also, you can see to her credit, Catie Edmondson managed to say this about the A.I.-generated phony video posted on Truth Social:

"The voice of Senator Chuck Schumer was distorted to deliver expletive-laden remarks."

Given the spectacular weirdness of what the president had done, it's a bit unclear what that actually means.  It was apparently beneath the dignity of the Times to report the contents of the president's very strange post in a more explicit manner.

In this morning's report, we spared you the transcript of what the fake Senato Schumer is pictured saying in the president's fake Truth Social video. This is the way Mediaite reported the contents of this very strange post by the president:

Trump Posts Deranged AI Video of Chuck Schumer Calling Democrats ‘Just a Bunch of Woke Pieces of Sh*t’

President Donald Trump raised eyebrows on Monday after he posted a bizarre, AI-generated video of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) calling Democrats “a bunch of woke pieces of sh*t.”

In the video, Schumer could be seen standing next to a stereotypical Mexican version of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY)—complete with sombrero and moustache—while saying:

"Look guys, there’s no way to sugarcoat it. Nobody likes Democrats anymore. We have no voters left because of all of our woke, trans bullsh*t. Not even Black people want to vote for us anymore. Even Latinos hate us. So we need new voters, and if we give all these illegal aliens free healthcare, we might be able to get them on our side so they can vote for us. They can’t even speak English so they won’t realize we’re just a bunch of woke pieces of sh*t, you know? At least for a while, until they learn English and they realize they hate us too."

The president posted the video on his Truth Social and X accounts.

And so on from there.

In fairness, it's hard to comprehend how bizarre this Truth Social video is without actually watching the video. That said, the Times report skips the part of the fake statement by Schumer which struck observers all over CNN and MSNBC last night as being most transgressive:

[Latinos] can’t even speak English so they won’t realize we’re just a bunch of woke pieces of sh*t.

That's cute, in several ways. On cable, the insult to Latinos was overshadowed by the image of Schumer describing himself and his Democratic colleagues as "just a bunch of woke pieces of shit." At no point did Edmondson's report capture the ugly, startling, transgressive quality of that part of the Truth Social post.

Meanwhile, sad! As presented by the Times, this bizarre incident comes very close to being transitioned into a piece of both-sides-adjacent "he said / they said" reporting. 

Briefly, let's be fair! In the end, there is never as objective way to assess how transgressive a post may be—how far, and how bizarrely far, the post in question may stray from traditional norms. 

It will always be a matter of judgment as to how transgressive—and how gratuitously insulting—a given presentation may be. It will always be a matter of judgment concerning the extent to which a presentation has entered the realm of extremely strange racial insult. 

In the end, those will always be matters of judgment. It's also true that this latest Truth Social post followed the other bizarre recent post in which the sitting president offered the crazy pledges about the magical "med beds."

As best we can tell, the New York Times has never reported that other extremely bizarre recent incident, and roughly a million more.

Is something "wrong" with President Trump? If so, that's a personal and a family tragedy, but it's also a danger for this nation. In our view, the New York Times is still doing its best to whistle along in the dark. 

In fairness, that approach has been general over Blue America and its "highly educated" journalistic and academic elites. In our view, they don't know how to talk about possible "mental illness" (or "mental disorder"), and so they don't want to try.

Borrowing from the early Dylan, the journalists "went to the finest schools." This seems to be all that's left.

WHAT IS MENTAL ILLNESS: The shooter suffered from mental health issues!

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2025

Except in the New York Times: Is cognitive impairment a type of "mental illness?"

Also, is "cognitive impairment" a technical (diagnostic) term? How about "mental illness?"

Regarding "mental illness," the term may (or perhaps may not) be slipping out of favor. As we noted several months ago, Wikipedia redirects searched on that term redirects to a lengthy post which appears beneath a different name—a post which starts like this:

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. 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...

[...]

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.

And so on, at great length, from there. For the record, Wikipedia uses the term "mental illness" with substantial frequency in its lengthy discussion of "mental disorder(s)." 

That said, why might that term be losing favor on an international basis? Midway through its lengthy report, Wikipedia suggests a possible reason:

Stigma

The social stigma associated with mental disorders is a widespread problem. The US Surgeon General stated in 1999 that: "Powerful and pervasive, stigma prevents people from acknowledging their own mental health problems, much less disclosing them to others." Additionally, researcher Wulf Rössler in 2016, in his article, "The Stigma of Mental Disorders" stated:

"For millennia, society did not treat persons suffering from depression, autism, schizophrenia and other mental illnesses much better than slaves or criminals: they were imprisoned, tortured or killed."

That's the way we were back then! Later, we're told this: 

"Efforts are being undertaken worldwide to eliminate the stigma of mental illness, although the methods and outcomes used have sometimes been criticized."

A stigma may be associated with the familiar term "mental illness." Our own discussion today continues along from there.

We offer this discussion today because of ongoing behavior by the sitting president. In yesterday's report, we noted the strange Truth Social post last weekend involving so-called magic beds.

Yesterday afternoon, more strange behavior occurred. Such behavior is typically ignored by the New York Times, which seems to prefer to whistle past the graveyard while proceeding along in the dark.

By way of contrast, here's Mediaite's report:

Trump Posts Deranged AI Video of Chuck Schumer Calling Democrats ‘Just a Bunch of Woke Pieces of Sh*t’

President Donald Trump raised eyebrows on Monday after he posted a bizarre, AI-generated video of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) calling Democrats “a bunch of woke pieces of sh*t.”

In the video, Schumer could be seen standing next to a stereotypical Mexican version of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY)—complete with sombrero and moustache—while saying:

We won't post what the fake version of Senator Schumer is shown to be saying. You can read the transcript—much more significantly, you can watch the actual tape—at the Mediaite report. 

In all likelihood, the New York Times won't be reporting this latest bit of bizarre behavior by the sitting president. This is one of the many ways the people we Blue Americans are taught to trust refuse to perform their basic duties within the failing American system.

Nothing to look at! Just move along! So our major Blue American stars have persistently said, on our major cable and network news shows but also within our newspapers.

Last night, though, that latest post at the Truth Social site did produce instant pushback. 

The post appeared during the 9 o'clock hour. During that hour, CNN's Kaitlan Collins asked Senator Marshall (R-KS) what he thought of the post:

Kaitlan Collins Confronts Republican Senator With Wild AI Video From Trump: ‘Is That Appropriate?’

As is his persistent wont, Senator Marshall dodged and avoided. As is her admirable wont, Collins persisted, giving the timid solon three chances to state a view. 

During the 10 o'clock hour, Lawrence O'Donnell built much of his program around the new Trust Social post, using terms like "madness' and (something in the ballpark of) "cognitive decline" as he considered what the post might indicate or suggest about the sitting president.

Is something "wrong" with President Trump? Weve persistently asked that obvious question, even as the New York Times (and other Blue American individuals and orgs) have insisted on looking away.

(Persistently, we've also done this: We'vesuggested you should "pity the child." And we've said that some such state of affairs would be a tragic loss of human potential and should be regarded that way.)

For today, we'll mention one basic point which we've mentioned before:

 The finer people in Blue America's exalted elites are comfortable with the term "mental illness"—but only when such a possibility is involved in the occurrence of certain types of "street crimes." 

When certain types of crimes occur, there is no general journalistic reluctance to consider questions of mental health, mental disorder, or even mental illness. Here for example is part of the report by NBC News about last weekend's mass shooting at that North Carolina waterfront bar. The apparent shooters was Nigel Max Edge, age 40:

'Highly premeditated' attack at North Carolina waterfront bar leaves 3 dead and 5 wounded

[...]

[Southport Police Chief Todd] Coring told reporters that Edge is a “self-described” combat veteran who was injured in the line of duty and has post-traumatic stress disorder.

Edge served in the Marines from September 2003 through June 2009, according to military records. He attained the rank of sergeant and was deployed twice as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Military records show he received numerous awards, including a Purple Heart, a Marine Corps Good Conduct Medal, a Combat Action Ribbon for Iraq and an Iraq Campaign Medal with two bronze stars.

District Attorney John David said Monday that Edge is a former Marine Corps scout sniper who was injured in the line of duty and has significant mental health issues, including a possible traumatic brain injury.

There is "nothing about his criminal background which suggests he could perpetrate such horrendous crimes," David said.

Edge’s ex-wife, Rachel Crowl, told NBC News that she has not spoken to her ex-husband in about a decade. Court records show their divorce was finalized in 2009.

Crowl said he had been “crying out for help for a long time” regarding his behavior and mental health. Referring to Edge by his previous name, she added that “what Sean did was very wrong.”

“I’m sad for these families. I’m sad nobody helped him and this could have maybe been prevented,” Crowl said.

To its credit, NBC News was willing to publish the public statements about the assailant's possible "mental health" issues. As we type, the corresponding report by the New York Times does refer to PTSD, but it omits explicit statements about "mental health," even the statement which was made by the local district attorney.

Given the nature of the crime and the apparent assailant, the omission of those statements strikes us as an outlier.  We offer this fuller disclosure:

Most news orgs, including the Times, will freely discuss issues of "mental health" and "mental illness" when certain type of crimes are committed by certain types of "everyday / regular people." 

For better or worse, a different standard has long obtained with respect to behavior by major political figures.

In a spin-off from the old "Goldwater Rule," major news orgs have long avoided any such discussion with respect to political figures. As with many rules, that strikes us as an extremely good rule—until such time as it isn't.

Have we entered such a time today? As O'Donnell directly noted last night, it seems to us that the conduct of the sitting president has moved us past that point. That said, our major journalists are unlikely to have the intellectual and emotional skills which would allow them to discuss the possibility in a constructive way.

We return to the concept of stigma:

Sad! The stigma which has long accompanied the notion of "mental illness" still lurks in our world today. Even within the minds of our Blue American greats, any talk of mental illness with respect to a major pol would almost surely come in the form of an insult, rather than what it more intelligently should be seen to be:

Any report on (severe) mental illness is a report on a tragic loss of human capability—a tragic loss which may also involve a very dangerous situation in the world.

PTSD is nobody's fault. As a general matter, neither is "mental illness," including severe mental illness. 

Severe mental illness is a human tragedy, and it should be seen as such. That said, it can also become a dangerous matter—sometimes in a tragically afflicted military veteran, sometimes in a tragically affected major political figure.

Meanwhile, is "cognitive impairment" a mental illness / disorder? How about "dementia?" Is dementia a mental disorder?

The conceptual landscape is quite complex in this realm. It lies well beyond the analytical skills and range of empathy possessed by our major political journalists.

We close today with a reference to that profile in Sunday's New York Times. We refer to this profile of Kat Timpf, one of Greg Gutfeld's major enablers at the Fox News Channel.

Not unlike the sitting president, Gutfeld behaves in a highly unusual way on his nightly pair of Fox News Channel programs. It's hard to miss the possibility that a virulent form of woman hatred ("misogyny") is somehow eating the innards of this furious 61-year-old man.

Timpf is one of the players who enable this apparent "misogyny," in her case on a nightly basis. Unless you're reading the New York Times, which has now transitioned Timpf into an admirable feminist who is fighting off the various madmen within Gutfeld's right-wing audience.

That profile comes from a hall of mirrors. Of one thing we can assure you:

That cannot have been the original copy which was presented by Amanda Hess, the journalist of record. Hess has long been a writer on women's issues. There's no way that she produced the copy which appeared in Sunday's New York Times.

Plainly, some unnamed editor doctored her copy, creating the piece which appeared in the Times. In such ways, we run up against the intellectual shortcomings of our vastly imperfect species.

Before the week is done, we want to walk you through that hall of mirrors profile. Also, we want to share the unintentional humor found all through this presentation by the leading authority on our human powers of discernment:

Human

Humans, scientifically known as Homo sapiens, are primates that belong to the biological family of great apes and are characterized by hairlessness, bipedality, and high intelligence. Humans have large brains, enabling more advanced cognitive skills that facilitate successful adaptation to varied environments, development of sophisticated tools, and formation of complex social structures and civilizations.

That's the way the profile starts. The humor continues from there!

Too funny! That said, we humans have always loved to say such things about our highly intelligent selves.

"Man [sic] is the rational animal," Aristotle is said to have said. He'd never watched the Fox News Channel. We can assure you of that!

Tomorrow:  What have they done with the real Amanda Hess? Inquiring minds want to know!

MONDAY: We want to create an historical record!

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 202

The cable star smells wet garbage: With apologies, and just for the sake of history, we thought we'd establish a brief historical record concerning what happened last Thursday on the Fox News Channel—first on The Five, then on the Gutfeld! show.

The Five is the most watched show in all of American "cable news!" Also, it's a "news" show in much the same way that The Real Housewives of Catfight City belongs on a cable channel named Bravo—a cable channel which was originally designed to be about the fine arts.

As we've noted in the past, one "basic cable" channel after another dumbed its intended product way, way down once it came face to face with the preferences of the American cable news consumer. The Fox News Channel is a massively dumbed down version of whatever it was that a 24-hour "cable news" channel might originally have been intended to be.

The sheer stupidity on the channel, delivered in groups, is simply astounding. Then, along came Gutfeld, the man the channel groomed for his current role, originally starting with a show at 3 in the morning, to fold a stunningly coarse and apparently misogynistic sensibility into the stew.

That said:

Last Wednesday, Hillary Clinton appeared on MSNBC's Morning Joe. Starting at 8 a.m. sharp, she did a pair of interview segments, lasting just over a total of 37 minutes. Here's one of the ways the appearance is summarized at the Morning Joe site:

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton joins Morning Joe to discuss President Trump saying he now thinks Ukraine can win back all territory taken by Russia, the 20th anniversary of the Clinton Global Initiative, HHS Secretary RFK Jr. and vaccine access and the current fight over free speech.

For the record, the first segment ran some 20 minutes and 41 seconds. You can watch the whole thing here. The second segment ran 16 minutes and 44 seconds. This link will take you here.

Also this: Thanks to the invaluable Internet Archive, you can watch the whole interview simply by starting here.

We're not giant fans of Hillary Clinton as a political figure. Watching each segment in full, we were struck by how healing it can be for a person like Clinton to be removed from the hurly-burly of the daily political wars.

We thought Clinton was extremely articulate and notably relaxed throughout. For the record, she started out with words of support for President Trump, affirming the way he had just adjusted his rhetoric concerning Ukraine, suggesting that Ukraine could end up driving the Russians back out of its land.

(Now she'd like to see appropriate action, she added.)

Her lengthy appearance was calm and sane—until the corporate messenger children at the Fox News Channel went to work in the standard Fox News Channel fashion. 

In short, producers found a tiny clip they could edit out of the 37 minutes. The various Stepfords on the various Fox News Channel shows then took turns explaining what the tiny bit of tape actually meant about the demonic former secretary of state.

Of one thing you can be certain—none of these flyweights had actually watched the 37 minutes. They knew what they were being paid to say, and they happily proceeded to say it.

We've already shown you Gutfeld's broken-headed assessment during the 5 o'clock hour. Here it is again, with the reliably horrible Kennedy chiming in: 

GUTFELD (9/24/25):  You know, I don't know if you know this, Kennedy. That's the first time that Hillary has been on Morning Joe since the mysterious death of that intern.

OTHER PANELISTS: [Audible chuckling]

GUTFELD: I'm not saying anything, but I have to wonder—why is this old, ugly bag still around?

KENNEDY: Don't talk about Mika that way.

GUTFELD: I mean, that is so petty. That is so petty when I call her those things. But I'm not calling her a bigot, and I'm not calling her a Nazi. I'm just saying she's old and smelly and ugly. 

Please don't ask us to explain the reference to "the mysterious death of that intern." The tragic death of the intern in question isn't mysterious in any way, and all the panelists know it. But Gutfeld never tires of keeping such ugly messaging floating around inside his viewers' heads, as Kennedy chuckles along.

For whatever reason, it's the way his head currently works. We wish corporate owners would get him some help, because we feel entirely sure that he could be doing much better.

At any rate, there you see the way the concept of "cable news" has been reinvented—has been turned into a type of "Real D-Minus Flyweight Students of the Fox News Channel."

Every afternoon and then every night, Suzanne Scott pries the lid off the garbage can and the current version of Greg Gutfeld is part of what slithers out. Last Thursday night, at 10:07 p.m., he started again on his eponymous prime time propaganda program:

GUTFELD (9/25/25): And of course, if you smell wet garbage, you know Hillary's in town.

[Tiny snippet of tape]

So it went at 10:07. Hillary Clinton, 77 years old, was no longer an ugly old bag. The former first lady was now wet garbage, as you could tell from her smell.

This is the dystopian fugue the corporate bosses have created as they've dumbed the concept of "cable news" down down down down down. The sheer stupidity never ends on these utterly dimwitted "cable news" programs—and Gutfeld, more than any other figure, had added this ugly, coarse sensibility to the soul-crushing mix.

You can watch what followed that night, if you choose, by clicking here and then clicking ahead to the 7-minute mark. We'll add this odd observation:

As of last Thursday, had someone or something gotten inside this furious person's head? On each of these shows last Thursday, he offered bizarre attempts to justify the way he name-calls and slimes those with whom he disagrees in the manner we've shown you.

In Saturday's report, we showed you part of his extremely hapless apologia from that day's The Five. By clicking the link to that evening's Gutfeld! show, you can see him offer the same self-justification, five hours later.

Had someone been getting inside his head? Is that why he was suddenly trying to explain and justify, in a ludicrous way, his amazingly peculiar conduct?

We don't know who that could have been, but we ourselves went to junior high, and then to high school, just about a mile down the Alameda de las Pulgas from Gutfeld's own Serra High. We're saddened by the thought that someone from such a sunny land could have ended up the way this guy did.

That said, there's still time to get better.

His bosses, of course, are cheering him on. A segment of the public wanted Real Housewives more than fine arts. They also wanted Ancient Aliens more than they wanted actual history on the so-called History Channel. 

And so on, down the road to perdition from there.

A certain segment of the public enjoys seeing Gutfeld call Clinton smelly and old. (Trust us—it gets more pathetic and worse.) He's been paid to so those things, and he plainly seems to enjoy the laughter and cheers which follow

Instead of that, we wish his corporate owners would get this "poor immigrant" some help.

Something is badly wrong with this man—or it is just an overwrought form of Sexual Politics Throwback Syndrome? We'll be discussing that potent cultural and political force as the week proceeds—but Clinton spoke for 37 minutes on Morning Joe, and the only thing this lost soul had to say was his claim about the smell of wet garbage.

The larger question is this:

Fox behaves this way to rake in the cash. Why do Blue American orgs agree on this key point:

What Greg Gutfeld says and does must never be reported or discussed! 

This 61-year-old California man is badly in need of help, but so is the failing American nation. Why won't the stars at the New York Times—Brooks and French and Stephens and Douthat and Bruni and Dowd and Michelle Goldberg—do their jobs as American journalists and report, for all to hear, his astonishing change in the culture of the American "news" system?

The same thing goes for Mika and Joe! Why won't these people simply report what happens on Fox? Why won't they simply say the names of the people who do this?

Why won't someone say Suzanne Scott's name? It's Suzanne Scott, an American woman from New Jersey, who puts this trash on the air.

Is it possible that Suzanne Scott is wet garbage? Have Blue America's timorous stars ever thought about that?

WHAT IS MENTAL ILLNESS: Did the president post that crazy videotape?

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 2025

Is the New York Times willing to ask? "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised!"

Way back in the 1970s, it was the title of a song, then of an album, by the late Gil Scott-Heron. We'll let the leading authority on the matter offer the basic background:

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

"The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" is a satirical poem and Black Liberation song by Gil Scott-Heron. Scott-Heron first recorded it for his 1970 album Small Talk at 125th and Lenox, on which he recited the lyrics, accompanied by congas and bongo drums. A re-recorded version, with a three-piece band, was the B-side to Scott-Heron's first single, "Home Is Where the Hatred Is", from his album Pieces of a Man (1971)...

It was also included on his compilation album, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (1974).

And so on, at length, from there. To hear the original recording, you can just click here.

That was more than fifty years ago. In the course of the deeply shocking last few days, we flashed on the Scott-Heron lyric. 

The times they have a-changed. Our contemporary adaptation of Scott-Heron's lyric would so something like this:

The truth about the demise of the American nation—imperfect though it always has been—will not be reported or discussed in the New York Times.

We single out the New York Times because of its dominant status within our own Blue America. In reality, the truth about the ongoing demise won't be reported in other key venues—on the corporate cable news channel MSNBC, to cite just one example.

Over the weekend and late last week, a great deal of shocking material clattered across our screen. Large chunks of "sane washing" occurred at the New York Times, where we've still seen no mention of the astounding event described in this report by Mediaite:

Trump Deletes Wild AI Video He Shared In Which He Promoted a Magic ‘Med Bed’ That Cures Diseases and Regrows Limbs

President Donald Trump has deleted a bizarre AI-generated video he shared in which he was seen promoting a magic bed which purportedly could cure all diseases.

The president, late Saturday night, shared the phony video on Truth Social, which shows him—on a fake Fox News broadcast of My View with Lara Trump—touting a “med bed” which has mythical healing powers.

“Every American will soon receive their own medbed card,” AI Trump said. “With it, you’ll have guaranteed access to our new hospitals led by the top doctors in the nation, equipped with the most advanced technology in the world. These facilities are safe, modern, and designed to restore every citizen to full health and strength. This is the beginning of a new era in American healthcare.”

[...]

A Fox News spokesperson quickly distanced the network from the phony video, telling Mediaite, “The video did not air on My View with Lara Trump on Fox News Channel or any other Fox News Media platforms.”

Say what? The most powerful man on the planet posted (then later deleted) "a bizarre AI-generated video in which he was seen promoting a magic bed which purportedly could cure all diseases?"

We first saw that astounding event reported at Mediaite. With apologies for the frequent childishness of that org's headlines, the original report had started like this:

Trump Posts an Absolutely Bonkers AI Video in Which He Promotes a Magic ‘Med Bed’ That Can Cure Any Disease

President Donald Trump shared a bizarre AI video to social media in which he’s seen promoting “med beds”—a far-right conspiracy involving a magical bed that can supposedly heal any sickness.

In a post to his Truth Social platform late Saturday night, Trump shared a phony, AI-generated Fox News clip—purportedly from Fox’s My View with Lara Trump—in which he’s seen rolling out this magic technology to hospitals nationwide.

“Every American will soon receive their own medbed card,” AI Trump said. “With it, you’ll have guaranteed access to our new hospitals led by the top doctors in the nation, equipped with the most advanced technology in the world.”

AI Trump went on to specifically tout the magic healing power of these fictional med beds.

We apologize for the childish headline. In our view, Mediaite would be a more credible news org if it abandoned that practice. 

At any rate, there it was—the start of the site's initial report about the bizarre Truth Social post. Videotape of the bizarre post can be seen as part of those two reports, though the bizarre post has now been deleted from the Truth Social site.

Full disclosure:

At this site, we weren't familiar with the term "med bed." We were only dimly aware of the existence of "a far-right conspiracy [theory] involving a magical bed that can supposedly heal any sickness."

Even fuller disclosure! These two reports at Mediaite seemed so bizarre that, for the first time we can recall, we wondered if we ourselves might be on the verge of reporting a major news event which would, in fact, turn out to have been based on some sort of a scam.

Had Mediaite been taken in? Plainly, the answer seems to be no! The Truth Social post has been removed, but as you can see in those reports from Mediaite, major medical specialists responded to the crazy post when it was still online. 

Also, to see CNN's report of this astounding event, you can just click here. A similar report by Forbes appears beneath this headline:

Trump Deletes Post Referencing Bizarre ‘Medbed’ Conspiracy Theory

For this morning's follow-up report by Newsweek, you can just click this. For a cogent summary by Heather Cox Richardson, you can just click here. 

And yes, it seems there was a pre-existing, lunatic clam of this type floating around within the realm of the various QAnon types. For Wikipedia's pre-existing report about this fantasy belief, we will direct you here.

In such ways, we've become convinced that this bizarre bit of videotape really did appear on the sitting president's Truth Social site. Also, though, we must tell you this:

We'll be surprised if any report of this bizarre event ever appears in the New York Times.

For whatever reason, the New York Times has exhibited a clear reluctance to come to terms with the sitting president's crazier bits of behavior. That said, what did appear in the New York Times in the past few days? 

What has appeared in the Times? Let us start to count:

This strange profile of the Fox News Channel's absurdly slippery Kat Timpf has now appeared in the Times. The profile of Timpf extends the frequent "sane washing" which major news orgs tend to provide to Greg Gutfeld, one of that channel's top ratings stars.

Also, the Times published this front-page report in Sunday's print editions about the way the Fox News Channel helps its employees sell their largely worthless books. This report may give readers the (false) impression that the Times is willing to report the most significant activities of that dominant "cable news" channel.

That impression would be false. 

In yesterday's print editions, the Times also published this report about recent conditions in Portland, Oregon—a city the president has now weirdly described as "War ravaged." 

Assuming basic accuracy, that report is quite informative. What you almost surely won't be seeing in the Times is any account of what Red America was instantly being told about this matter on Sunday morning's Fox & Friends Weekend—a scary account which flew in the face of what the Times was reporting.

Dearest darlings, use your heads! What happens on Fox stays on Fox! News orgs like the New York Times do in fact stay far away from such highly important reporting.

The revolution won't be televised? Whatever Scott-Herron meant by that iconic statement, the current demise of the American enterprise almost surely won't be reported in the New York Times. In our view, this leads to our basic question for this week:

What is mental illness?

What is mental illness? We've tried to stay away from that fraught term, in large part because of the unfortunate role the term tends to play within the American discourse. According to the leading authority, many medical specialists now prefer the less fraught term "mental disorder," perhaps for some of those very same reasons.

That said, plain speech is sometimes required. Judged by any traditional norm, the posting of that crazy Truth Social video about "med beds" would raise obvious questions about the mental health—about the fundamental "sanity"—of the person who chose to post it.

In a similar way, traditional norms would make us wonder about the mental health of the cable news star who made the remarks shown below. He made these remarks last Thursday on The Five, the American nation's most watched "cable news" show. 

As we noted on Saturday, this very strange man was speaking about Hillary Clinton:

GUTFELD (9/25/25):  You know, I don't know if you know this, Kennedy. That's the first time that Hillary has been on Morning Joe since the mysterious death of that intern.

OTHER PANELISTS: [Audible chuckling]

GUTFELD: I'm not saying anything, but I have to wonder—why is this old, ugly bag still around?

KENNEDY: Don't talk about Mika that way.

Speaking of Hillary Clinton's extremely cogent appearance on the previous day's Morning Joe, the cable star offered his latest "intern murder" jab. He then added this bit of analysis to the American discourse:

I have to wonder—why is this old, ugly bag still around?

So this person said. The reliably unfortunate Kennedy responded with an insult aimed at Mika Brzezinski. 

At that point, her 61-year-old male colleague went with this:

GUTFELD (continuing directly): I mean, that is so petty. That is so petty when I call her those things. But I'm not calling her a bigot, and I'm not calling her a Nazi. I'm just saying she's old and smelly and ugly. 

The fellow added this further bit of analysis:

I'm just saying [that Hillary Clinton] is old and smelly. 

She isn't just an ugly old bag, she's also old and smelly! At some point, it seems to us that basic questions of mental health must start to emerge about this person. But also, should questions start to emerge, at some point, about the mental functioning—not about the mental illness—of the people in Blue America who insist on pretending that this sort of thing isn't happening with this person, on a daily and nightly bass?

(Note: As we've told you again and again, you should remember to pity the child.)

We'll talk a bit more about what Gutfeld said in this afternoon's report. For today, we'll leave you with this:

We still don't know how that crazy "med bed" video found its way onto the Truth Social site. But by any normal modern standard, this obvious question arises:

Is the sitting American president in the grip of some form of mental illness? 

Blue orgs like the New York Times have agreed that such a question must never be asked. With such lunatic posts appearing on an increasingly regular basis, what can you say about the moral and intellectual functioning of the "highly educated" finer people who won't move beyond their initial stance even as they, and their failing nation, go hurtling over a cliff?

We'll talk about mental illness this week. We'll talk about what it is, and we'll talk about the unfortunate role the term and the topic often play in our unimpressive discoiurse.

For now, one additional point:

We had dreamed of writing this week under the following heading:

HUMAN

This very morning, we decided to switch to this:

WHAT IS MENTAL ILLNESS

We had dreamed of going with HUMAN because of this unintentionally humorous bit of reporting from the BBC (and from other major news orgs):

Million-year-old skull rewrites human evolution, scientists claim

A million-year-old human skull found in China suggests that our species, Homo sapiens, began to emerge at least half a million years earlier than we thought, researchers are claiming in a new study.

It also shows that we co-existed with other sister species, including Neanderthals, for much longer than we've come to believe, they say.

The scientists claim their analysis "totally changes" our understanding of human evolution and, if correct, it would certainly rewrite a key early chapter in our history.

But other experts in a field where disagreement over our emergence on the planet is rife, say that the new study's conclusions are plausible but far from certain.

We exalted members of Homo sapiens! We've had an extra half million years to attain the level of mental functioning our tribunes display, at the present time, as our nation slides down toward the sea. 

It turns out we've had a million years to get our mental functioning together! From the Fox News Channel to the New York Times, we'd call that a deeply sobering bit of anthropological news.

That Truth Social post would seem to have been flatly insane. The profile of Timpf in the New York times strikes us as the latest act of avoidance—as the latest bit of aggressive sane washing of the Fox News Channel.

Our president may be profoundly disordered. But our greatest newspaper, the New York Times, just keeps averting its gaze from him and from his most aggressive propagandists.

We've had a million years to do better! Is it what we first told you long ago? Is it too late to expect a good outcome here? Is it "all anthropology now?"

Tomorrow: In a bit of unintentional humor, the leading authority explains a key term—"Human"

This afternoon: A bit more on what Greg Gutfeld most recently said. 

We've long advised you to "pity the child." We think the time has come for his employers to get this guy some help.

SATURDAY: [NAME WITHHELD] is "a smelly old bag!"

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2025

So the Fox messenger said: It would be interesting to conduct a type of word check. The question would be this:

How often are the words "Hitler" or "Nazi" spoken in the course of a day on MSNBC or CNN? Also, how often are those words spoken in the course of a day on the Fox News Channel?

We ask for the following reason:

It seems to us that we see and hear those words much more often on Fox! We hear those words as the channel's messenger children keep spreading this message around:

Current Fox News Channel message:
"The left" has inspired at least two recent deadly shootings (Charlie Kirk; the ICE facility in Dallas) because of its use of those words.

On programs of the Fox News Channel, that corporate message is currently being promulgated on a round the clock basis. 

Thursday's edition of The Five started with a segment dedicated to that general message. It led to one of the dumbest statements we've ever seen on cable.

Dana Perino, the program's "den mother," was moderator for the segment. At 5:02, she played tape of President Trump saying that "the radical left is causing the problem." 

At that point, Perino said this:

PERINO (9/25/25): And I just want to play this montage our team put together of anti-ICE rhetoric.

So the program's resident "den mother" said—the one who's supposed to be sane. 

You can watch the montage from Perino's team simply by clicking this. Included were very short clips of longer statements by six Democratic pols.

Four of the clips took us a long way back in time. There was no way to establish a context for what was being complained about—for what was actually being said at the given point in time:

Short clips from the montage:
Gov. Tim Walz, May 17: "Donald Trump's modern-day Gestapo"
Rep. Eric Swalwell, July 16: "Running around our communities like masked bank robbers? Terrorizing women?" 
Mayor Brandon Johnson, June 11: "What terrorism looks like. This is it."
Rep. Jasmine Crockett, September 14: "When I see ICE, I see slave patrols."
Rep. Eric Larson, August 17: "This is not Germany. That's the SS and the Gestapo. This is the United States. Unmask yourselves!"
Gov. Gavin Newsom. September 23: "Masked men jumping out of unmarked cars. People disappearing. No due process."

Should Democrats be talking that way? For what it's worth, we regard Rep. Crockett as the gift that won't stop giving to MAGA's mid-term hopes. We're inclined to think that Governor Walz—he's known as "Tampon" on the Fox News Channel—isn't real far behind.

That said, we'll ask again: Should Democratic office holders be using language like that? 

There's no ultimate answer to that question. But we will say this:

We couldn't help noting that these clips went back a good long way in time. The montage included only two (2) statements which were made in the past month. 

What specific behaviors were being discussed when these statements were made? We have no idea. There is no way to tell.

That could mean that such statements are actually fairly rare. Or it could mean that Perino's team simply grabbed the first things they could find—that they don't especially care, given the way this channel's messaging actually works.

At any rate, so the clips went. We'll note this:

"Gestapo" and "the SS" are obvious references to the disaster which swept across Europe starting in the 1930s. That said, Perino's team included no Democratic pol using the words "Nazi" or "Hitler"—but the ensuing pseudo-discussion spilled with complaints about the way "the left" won't stop throwing those terms around.

In the course of the day's pseudo-discussions, the messenger children said "Hitler" at least nine times, part of their claim that "the left" calls people that all the time. They also said "Nazi" at least four times. 

In truth, you hear those words on Fox all the time. Elsewhere, perhaps not so much!

At any rate, should Democrats be more careful in the language they use? A reasonable person could say yes—but when Jessica Tarlov tried two times, within the past week, to note that President Trump speaks in similar heated ways about the Communists and fascists of the lunatic left, she was interrupted and overtalked by the corporate nitwits for whom she serves as a punching bag on these messaging panels.

Do Democrat politicians speak unwisely at times? We'd say that the answer is yes! Eventually, though, Perino's montage led to one of the dumbest things we've ever seen on cable TV, or pretty much anywhere else.

It was Perino who made the statement in question. The background goes like this:

As Gutfeld and Watters kept saying "Nazi Nazi Hitler Hitler," it fell to Tarlov to suggest that overheated rhetoric can perhaps be found in Red American locales as well. 

The day before, she had been savaged by the furious Gutfeld as she attempted make such a claim. On this day, it fell to Perino to rebut Tarlov's absurd suggestion. 

Breaking in on Tarlov's presentation, Perino threw to Jesse Watters, who brought the messaging back into line. Amazingly, Perino said this about her team's montage:

PERINO: [INDECPHERABLE DUE TO OVERTALKING] ...when we played the montage earlier, Jesse, there was not nobody, aside from Democrats, who were talking about anti-ICE rhetoric in that way.

What a shock! When Perino's team assembled a montage of people using aggressive rhetoric, the montage included no one other than Democrats! No Republicans were included in the montage, not even the sitting president!

Dana Perino is cast on The Five as the one who isn't nuts. That statement struck us as one of the dumbest things we've ever seen on TV—but during the program's second segment, Greg Gutfeld offered a statement which struck us as one of the most sadly typical. 

The segment began with a very short excerpt from a long appearance by Hillary Clinton on Wednesday's Morning Joe. Inane messaging quickly followed. 

Inevitably, Gutfeld was soon saying this:

GUTFELD:  You know, I don't know if you know this, Kennedy. That's the first time that Hillary has been on Morning Joe since the mysterious death of that intern.

OTHER PANELISTS: [Audible chuckling]

GUTFELD: I'm not saying anything, but I have to wonder—why is this old, ugly bag still around?

KENNEDY: Don't talk about Mika that way.

GUTFELD: I mean, that is so petty. That is so petty when I call her those things. But I'm not calling her a bigot, and I'm not calling her a Nazi. I'm just saying she's old and smelly and ugly. 

Hillary Clinton isn't a Nazi. She's just an ugly, smelly old bag. Why is she still around?

This was part of an absurd apologia Gutfeld launched this day—first on The Five, then on his own Gutfeld! program five hours later. He kept offering an absurd justification for his endlessly repellent behavior.  

Has someone managed to get inside this very strange person's head? 

We truly wish that his corporate owners would insist that he get some help. We feel sure that he could do better than this. 

That said, ugly messaging of this type is part of this channel's stock in trade. The most reprehensible people of all are the finer people at the major Blue orgs who refuse to report this ceaseless "night assault" on the very possibility of the American project.

Watters may have made the most striking statement of all this day. What he said was flatly false. He was falsely responding to Tarlov. His statement was clownishly false.

We'll have more on this chaos next week—but as we told you long ago, it's all anthropology now. There is no obvious way to extract ourselves from this mess.