MONDAY: When is a "deportation" something else?

MONDAY, MARCH 31, 2025

Uninquiring minds may not want to know: According to a new report in Mediaite, there she went again.

"Shame on you," the youngster said—though we wouldn't say that she "shouted." The report begins in the manner shown, and it provides the videotape:

‘Shame on You!’ Karoline Leavitt Scolds Reporter Over Question About White House’s Own Deportation Guidance

Andrew Feinberg, the White House correspondent for The Independent, went back and forth with White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt Monday about criteria DHS uses to classify illegal migrants as foreign combatants.

Leavitt shouted, “Shame on you!” at Feinberg at one point after he noted some migrants can be classified as members of the Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua and become eligible for deportation to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act over symbols in their tattoos and their clothing.

The White House press secretary disagreed with Feinberg, who cited the federal government’s own documents on the matter.

Feinberg said, “You can get classified [as Tren de Aragua] by simply having certain symbols in your tattoos and wearing certain streetwear brands. That alone is enough to get someone classified as TDA and sent to El Salvador.”

Leavitt fired back, “That’s not true, actually, Andrew.”

The report continues from there. It includes a document which described what we would regard as the mind-boggling way a foreign national can acquire the eight "points" which get him classified as a Tren de Aragua gang member.

We'd never seen the criteria for "deportation to El Salvador" laid out that way. The criteria strike us as something out of a dystopian cartoon—but that's not this point of this post.

Once again, our basic question today would be this:

Why is this shipping of people to El Salvador being referred to as a "deportation?"

In a normal use of that term, this is what would typically happen, at least in the modern context:

A foreign national would be returned to his country of origin—to his country of citizenship.  What happens after he arrives there (in most cases, nothing) would be up to the local authorities.

That isn't what's happening with the people who are being shipped to El Salvador. In this case, they're being shipped to a nation which isn't their country of origin—and they're being shipped there for immediate imprisonment.

Should this act of rendition by referred to as a "deportation?" In the interest of accurate description, we'd be inclined to look for a different word. 

Along the way, we'd wonder on what legal authority the federal government is rendering people into a brutal foreign prison system without any attempt at establishing that the person in question has committed some sort of crime. 

What's the legal authority on which this somewhat peculiar practice is being conducted? We've seen no one ask.

Meanwhile, what's in a word? On last Thursday night's All In, Chris Hayes eschewed the word "prison" in discussing these renditions. He opted for "gulag" instead. 

(To see him do so, click here.)

That's the word we'd been using! At the end of the segment, Hayes was praised by a guest for his choice of words. That guest was Noah Lanard of Mother Jones, co-author of this report:

“You’re Here Because of Your Tattoos”
The Trump administration sent Venezuelans to El Salvador’s most infamous prison. Their families are looking for answers.

What's in a word? "It's closer to a factory farm than to a prison," Lenard then said. Almost surely, some of the people shipped to that "infamous prison" weren't gang members at all. 

They were shipped away to a brutal place, possibly never to return. However we might think of this, this isn't some simple, recognizable act of "deportation."

Almost surely, some of those people weren't gang members at all! Plainly, Karoline Leavitt doesn't seem to be up to the task of caring about such possibilities. 

To her, they're all "vicious" gang members, no further questions asked. In fairness, that may be the best she can do at this point in her life.

The recent "arrest" of the student at Tufts made us think of the arrest of Anne Frank. It sent us back to Francine Prose's remarkable book about that world-famous, cosmic breakdown in human behavior.

(Francine Prose: Anne Frank: The Book, the Life, the Afterlife. 2009.)

We thought of the person(s) who arrested Anne Frank as we saw the Tufts student taken away. In every population, there are people who are willing to do such things, possibly even eager. 

That's simply the way our species is built. In our morning reports, we'll arrive at that topic by the end of the week.

PERSONS: Hotep Jesus, Professor Quine, Musk?

MONDAY, MARCH 31, 2025

These are the persons we've chosen: We'll start with a callback to Hotep Jesus. As we noted on Saturday, he's someone the Fox News Channel pays to people one of its "cable news" programs.

To our eye, Hotep Jesus is a smiling, genial presence when he appears on the primetime Gutfeld! "cable news" program. 

On the other hand, he apparently believes that Africans built boats and sailed to the Americas long before Columbus. He apparently believes that the people we think of as "native Americans" were actually the descendants of those early African sailors.

As we noted on Saturday, the apparent beliefs continue along from there. But so it goes on the Gutfeld! show, where undisguised misogyny rules the roost and group propaganda is constant. 

(This happens each night on the Fox News Channel without a word from Blue America's major news organs. The New York Times has a "comedy critic," but he will never be asked to report the way D-list comedians and other flyweights are used on this primetime "news" program.)

When he appears on the Gutfeld! show, Hotep Jesus becomes one of the principals within our prevailing news culture. For today, let's quickly consider a few other persons who have helped shape the perilous journalistic / academic / intellectual state we Americans find ourselves in. 

We'll try to touch an array of bases. We'll end with Elon Musk.

Willard Van Orman Quine

At this point, we'll journey to the mountaintop of high academia. The leading authority on Professor Quine—a good, decent person—starts its lengthy profile as shown:

Willard Van Orman Quine 

Willard Van Orman Quine (1908–2000) was an American philosopher and logician in the analytic tradition, recognized as "one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century." He was the Edgar Pierce Chair of Philosophy at Harvard University from 1956 to 1978.

Quine was a teacher of logic and set theory. He was famous for his position that first-order logic is the only kind worthy of the name, and developed his own system of mathematics and set theory, known as New Foundations. In the philosophy of mathematics, he and his Harvard colleague Hilary Putnam developed the Quine–Putnam indispensability argument, an argument for the reality of mathematical entities....[Professor Quine] developed an influential naturalized epistemology that tried to provide "an improved scientific explanation of how we have developed elaborate scientific theories on the basis of meager sensory input."

And so on, at length, from there. 

Friend, how about it? Do you believe in "the reality of mathematical entities?" Possibly more to the point, do you have any idea what some such claim might even mean?

Full disclosure! Long ago and far away, we took Deductive Logic from Professor Quine. In that same street-fighting year, we also took Philosophy of Science from Professor Putnam.

Each of these men was a good, decent person. Each was considered an academic giant.

As the leading authority notes, Professor Quine's most famous book was, and is, Word and Object. Once again, the leading authority speaks:

Word and Object

Word and Object is a 1960 work by the philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine, in which the author expands upon the line of thought of his earlier writings in From a Logical Point of View (1953), and reformulates some of his earlier arguments, such as his attack in "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" on the analytic–synthetic distinction. The thought experiment of radical translation and the accompanying notion of indeterminacy of translation are original to Word and Object, which is Quine's most famous book.

Quine emphasizes his naturalism, the doctrine that philosophy should be pursued as part of natural science. He argues in favor of naturalizing epistemology, physicalism as against phenomenalism and mind-body dualism, and extensionality as against intensionality. 

The thumbnail continues from there. You may not know what the bulk of that overview means. Perhaps to help you understand why, here are the first two paragraphs of this famous book's Preface:

Preface

Language is a social art. In acquiring it we have to depend entirely on intersubjectively acquired cues as to what to say and when. Hence there is no justification for collating linguistic meanings, unless in terms of men's dispositions to respond overtly to socially observable stimulations. An effect of recognizing this limitation is that the enterprise of translation is found to be involved in a certain systematic indeterminacy; and his is the main theme of Chapter II.

The indeterminacy of translation invests even the question what object to construe a term as true of. Studies of the semantics of reference consequently turn out to mke sense only when directed upon substantially our language, from within. But we do remain free to reflect, thus parochially, on the development and structure of our own referential apparatus, and this I do in ensuing chapters. In so doing one encounters various anomalies and conflicts that are  implicit in this apparatus (Chapter IV), and is moved to adopt remedies in the spirit of modern logic (Chapters V and VI). Clarity also is perhaps gained on what we do when we impute existence, and what considerations may best guide such decisions; thus Chapter VII.

According to that passage, Professor Quine believed "there is no justification for collating linguistic meanings, unless in terms of men's dispositions to respond overtly to socially observable stimulations," and other things besides.

The fact that he is said to have believed such things may help explain why you've never heard of Professor Quine, or of any influence his work ever had on our now-broken national discourse.

Professor Quine was one of the past century's most celebrated logicians. Unlike Hotep Jesus, he worked at the highest end of mainstream academic authority.

Having said that, we'll ask you this, if only for today:

We'll ask you if any of his somewhat abstruse formulations represent an actual improvement on the work of Hotep Jesus.

For today, we'll leave this section with this: If this is the kind of help the society gets from its greatest logicians, is it really surprising that this flailing nation's ship of state seems to be running aground?

Books about the Biden years:

We've cited the work of a leading hotep, and the work of a leading logician. Now, we move to a pair of forthcoming books by mainstream journalists—books about certain events of the past four years.

These books make certain allegations about persons in the political realm. The books also seem to imply certain things about the work of persons in the field of mainstream journalism.

What happened in the past four years—in the years which led to the election of Candidate Trump last fall? Tapper and Thompson were first out of the gate concerning one possible answer. From CNN, here's a quick overview of their forthcoming book:

New book on Biden by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson reports a ‘cover-up’ about his decline

The day after Donald Trump won the 2024 election, CNN anchor Jake Tapper and Axios correspondent Alex Thompson decided to co-author a book about what had led the Democratic party to defeat, with a focus on former President Joe Biden.

The deeply sourced reporters found what they call a “cover-up” of the former president’s “serious decline.”

The resulting book, titled “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again,” is coming out on May 20. The book’s publisher, Penguin Press, announced the project on Wednesday.

“What you will learn makes President Biden’s decision to run for reelection seem shockingly narcissistic, self-delusional, and reckless—a desperate bet that went bust—and part of a larger act of extended public deception that has few precedents,” Penguin said in a press release.

Biden, “his family, and his senior aides were so convinced that only he could beat Trump again, they lied to themselves, allies, and the public about his condition and limitations,” the press release stated.

CNN's thumbnail continues from there. Is it possible that this welter of claims made in this book are actually true? Below, you see the start of a report from The Guardian about a second forthcoming book, this one by Allen and Parnas:

Democrats staged ‘hush-hush talks’ in 2023 for Biden to withdraw from race, says book
New book Fight also reports Harris aides ‘strategized around the possibility that Biden might die in office’

Democratic officials staged “hush-hush talks” to plan for Joe Biden’s withdrawal as the party’s presidential nominee as early as 2023, says a new book.

Citing two unnamed sources, authors Jonathan Allen’s and Amie Parnes’s account adds another twist to the torturous saga over the then president’s age and fitness that was not resolved until a disastrous debate against Donald Trump precipitated his exit in July 2024.

More startlingly still, the book also reports that aides to Kamala Harris, the vice-president who assumed the nomination then lost to Trump, “strategized around the possibility that Biden might die in office”.

Such planning was led by Jamal Simmons, Harris’s White House communications director, Parnes and Allen report, and went as far as the drawing up of a “death-pool roster” of federal judges who might swear Harris in.

Could such claims be true? Yes, they certainly could be.

At any rate, there are now two books which advance such claims. These claims ask us to ponder the work of many important persons within the Democratic Party. Inevitably, the claims might also suggest that we might ponder the working of persons within the mainstream press. 

Is it possible that some such persons were involved in "a cover-up" of President Biden's alleged condition? That accusation is constantly made on the Fox News Channel. Could it possibly be that this accusation has merit? 

We've now mentioned the work of a person from the hotep subculture—a person who plays a role in "cable news."  We've cited the work of a very major academic—a professor of logic, no less.

We've asked about various persons within the Democratic Party and within the mainstream press. Quickly, let's cite another person who is now playing a major role in shaping the current American discourse, such as that swamp creature is.

Elon Musk

For today, we'll refer to last Friday's edition of the Fox News Channel's Special Report, in which Elon Musk (and seven associates) were subjected to something resembling an interview by Bret Baier.

(To watch the full program, click here.)

Full disclosure! Elon Musk is widely described as the world's richest person. As for Baier, was he once the owner of the Washington area's most expensive estate?

To this day, we can't explain this (wholly undiscussed) report in The Washingtonian. It appeared in October 2023:

Fox News’s Bret Baier Lists DC Home for $32 Million—a Potential Record
If it goes for the listing price, it'll be the most expensive DC sale of all time.

A potentially record-setting DC home has just gone on the market: Fox News’s Bret Baier and his wife, Amy, are listing their French chateau-style Berkley home for $31.9 million, reports The Wall Street Journal. If it goes for asking price, it’ll be the most expensive residential sale in DC history. The listing agent is Daniel Heider of TTR Sotheby’s International Realty.

The 16,250-square-foot estate was completed last year and sits on 1.47 acres, with five bedrooms, seven bathrooms, and two half-baths. Other touches include a custom bar in the living room with a floor-to-ceiling wine display; a primary suite with two primary baths and heated floors; a home gym; a cinema; a spa; a two-story, indoor sports court; and a golf simulator. Throughout the gated property, you’ll also find a paved motor court with a fountain, tiered gardens, a 56-foot-long heated pool, a chipping and putting green, and two three-car garages.

There's nothing automatically wrong with owning DC's most expensive estate—and as The Washingtonian reported last December, when Baier finally unloaded the place, it sold for only $25 million.

For the record, look who bought it:

Bret Baier’s DC House Sells for Record $25 Million—in Cash
Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary pick, buys the Foxhall estate as team Trump rolls into town.

The Trump bump has begun, at least when it comes to the area real-estate market. Howard Lutnick, the Cantor Fitzgerald CEO and President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for commerce secretary, has purchased the Foxhall house formerly owned by Fox News anchor Bret Baier and his wife, Amy, for $25 million, in an all-cash transaction. Which makes it the most expensive residential sale in DC history, topping the $24 million Robert Allbritton paid for the Bowie-Sevier house in Georgetown in 2007. The listing agent for the Foxhall house, Daniel Heider of TTR Sotheby’s International Realty, told Washingtonian that he couldn’t comment on the purchase.

As members of the new administration start descending on DC, the ultra-luxury real estate market is poised for a surge in activity. Trump’s cabinet picks have a total net worth in excess of $14 billion—a number that rises to $450 billion if you include government efficiency co-czar Elon Musk and other advisers who will not require Senate confirmation.

Baier let the property go for a reduced purchase price.  By common agreement among all parties, reports like these in The Washingtonian generate zero discussion or comment.

Why in the world would Bret Baier have been living in the Washington area's most palatial crib? We have no idea; and nothing is automatically wrong with some such circumstance.

That said, on last Friday's Special Report, Baier devoted the entire program to a series of exchanges with Elon Musk and seven of his associates. Baier's second question, and Musk's answer, went exactly like this:

BAIER (3/28/25): For you, what's the most astonishing thing you've found out in this process?

MUSK: The sheer amount of waste and fraud in the government. It is astonishing. It’s mind-blowing. Just—we routinely encounter waste of a billion dollars or more. Casually.

You know, for example, like the simple survey that was—literally, a ten-question survey. You could do it with SurveyMonkey—it would cost about $10,000. The government was being charged almost a billion dollars for that.

BAIER: For just a survey?

MUSK: A billion dollars for a simple online survey, "Do you like the National Park?" And then, there appeared to be no feedback loop for what would be done with that survey. So the survey would just go into nothing. It was like insane.

Let's understand what Musk said.

Baier tossed a lazy softball at Musk. Musk then claimed that the federal government had paid "a billion dollars for a simple online survey" that should have cost something like $10,000.

Initially, Musk said that the government was being charged "almost a billion dollars" for the simple survey. Moments later, one of his aides said the precise figure was $830 million. 

Over the weekend, persons all over the Fox News Channel treated these representations as gospel.  That said, how much confidence do you have in the various things Musk says?

What kinds of persons simply assume that statements like these are accurate? Whatever the answer might be, persons like that crawl all over the Fox News Channel, echoing each other's statements morning, noon and night. The widespread absence of fact-checking suggests their presence elsewhere.

These are the persons who shape our badly failing discourse. We leave you today with a question:

Were we humans—persons like us—actually built for this work?

Tomorrow: CBS News and its fact check

Later this week: Eventually, we'll even mention the type of person who arrested Anne Frank, just 15 years old. 

Such persons are found in every human population. At long last, is it time for us to start reporting basic facts about who we actually are?

SATURDAY: Who the heck is Hotep Jesus?

SATURDAY, MARCH 29, 2025

We finally decided to check: Last night, it was the same old thing on the primetime "cable news" propaganda show, Gutfeld!.

The misogyny was undisguised; liberal women were too fat. As for Governor Walz, he was gay gay gay gay gay gay, as is routinely the case on this program.

We're not big fans of Walz ourselves, but on this show, he's gay gay gay.

This is the garbage can our own Blue elites have chosen to ignore. This was last night's lineup:

Gutfeld! lineup: March 28, 2025
Vince August: comedian
Kennedy: former MTV VJ
Greg Gutfeld: "former print journalist proudly fired from three magazines in the ’90s and early aughts" (Variety)
Tom Shillue: comedian, Fox News contributor
Hotep Jesus: introduced as "host of The Grift Report"

To see the intros, click here.

That was the lineup for last evening, an evening during which Walz was gay gay gay gay gay  At long last, after all this time, a question finally popped into our heads:

Who the heck is Hotep Jesus? We finally decided to check!

Let it be said that Hotep Jesus is an occasional guest on this overtly misogynistic, but also gay bashing, "news" program. Let it also be said that he's a genial presence on the show, though he also never challenges its disordered drift.

He smiles a lot—a good thing to do—but who the Sam Hill is he? Your answer starts with a brief explanation of a certain term:

Hoteps

Hoteps espouse a mixture of black radicalism and social conservatism, often through generating social media content on sites such as Twitter and Instagram. Members of the subculture promote conspiracy theories, often through internet memes, as well as inaccurate historical claims. Hoteps often denounce homosexuality and interracial marriage, promote the view that Black women should be subordinate to Black men, and oppose LGBT rights and feminism, which they view as inimical to Black liberation. A substantial number of hoteps promote antisemitic conspiracy theories. Commentator Matthew Sheffield wrote in 2018 that "a significant portion of self-identified hoteps have so much in common with far-right white nationalism" that the subculture "has been dubbed the 'ankh right' by some of its black critics" (a play on the term "alt-right").

[...]

In the 1930s, hotep ideology originated in the Islam-inspired teachings of Wallace Fard Muhammad, a door-to-door salesman and founder of the American black nationalist organization Nation of Islam. Claiming he was the incarnation of Noble Drew Ali, Muhammad "borrowed from traditional Islamic behavioral practices" to create "a myth designed especially to appeal to African Americans." Prominent members included Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad.

[...]

Critics have argued that hotep beliefs are too narrow-minded (they only focus on Ancient Egypt, as opposed to Sub-Saharan Africa and other aspects of African history). Black feminists argue that hoteps perpetuate patriarchy and rape culture by policing women's sexuality and tolerating predatory black men.

That's what the leading authority on this topic says. We can't necessarily say that every word is 100 percent completely and totally right.

If that's the background on the hotep "subculture," who is Hotep Jesus? Here's what the Historica Wiki site says. This seems to be basically accurate:

Hotep Jesus

Hotep Jesus, born Bryan Sharpe, is an African-American media personality and a leader of the Hotep movement. He was [sic] known for his fringe conspiracy theories (which he claimed came mostly from his own "common sense") that the Atlantic slave trade was a myth and was financially unfeasible, that the vast majority of African-Americans were the original Native Americans, that the famed Carthaginian general Hannibal was a black African, that the Roman Empire was a rudimentary civilization which depended on Africa for food, and other controversial views.

Bryan Sharpe was born in Brooklyn, New York City, New York on 1 October 1980, and he became a marketer, performance artist and author. He began his career on Twitter, where he aimed to publish viral tweets; he went on to work as a marketer for 50 Cent's energy drink, and it was during his involvement in the hip-hop industry that he experienced his "spiritual awakening." When a heckler on Twitter asked him if he was "some kind of Hotep Jesus," Sharpe adopted this as his new name. In 2019, he appeared on Joe Rogan's podcast to share his views on black history.

On his interview with Joe Rogan, he claimed that African-Americans were raised to have a "fetus [or possibly "defeatist"] mentality" of seeing white people as oppressors and having a "slave mentality," and he believed that the way to uplift the community would be to educate them on pre-slavery black history such as "Queen Angola," the Songhai Empire, the Mali Empire, Mansa Musa, and other older topics. He also...said that identifying the black community with past kings was better than identifying them with slaves such as Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass. Hotep Jesus also claimed that the Carthaginian general Hannibal was black, and that black children in America should study his victories over Rome.

He also claimed that black people were natives of America and were not brought over on slave ships, claiming that Africans from the Malian Empire had migrated along the ocean current to South America and North America during the 13th and 14th centuries.....He also claimed that saying that white people brought African slaves to America connoted that Africans could not have discovered America themselves and built their own boats; he believed that accepting the Atlantic slave trade meant erasing black achievement. While Rogan accepted that the Olmecs had African physical features, he questioned Hotep Jesus's logic in claiming that Africans made up the vast majority of native peoples.

[...]

Hotep Jesus claimed to have contacted the coronavirus after attending the Consumer Electronics Show conference in Las Vegas from 7 to 10 January 2020, blaming it on the presence of "masses" of thousands of Chinese people. He also went to Starbucks stores to share information on stores he believed were racist, and he bullied the store into giving him free coffee so that they would not come off as racist. This viral confrontation earned him an appearance on Fox News, and he started his own online movement, Hotep Nation, which was supportive of Donald Trump and critical of liberalism and progressivism.

As far as we know, the bulk of that clumsily written material is basically accurate. Here's a news report on the Starbucks matter, which comes across as a bit of a prank.

For Hotep's own initial account of his interaction with the "MASSES" of Chinese people in Las Vegas, you can just click this. 

("I must have shaken hands with them at least 100 times," he says. Along the way, he seems to say that the early response to the Covid pandemic was an example of "globalists tightening the communist leash around their subjects’ necks.")

You can watch the tape of his 2019 Rogan appearance simply by clicking here. If you watch the first five minutes, you'll get the basic drift.

(You'll note that the genius Rogan does in fact seem to question the claim that Africans discovered and peopled North America long before Columbus arrived. Never let it be said that questionable claims escape analysis on this most-watched podcast in this failing nation, or on a primetime "cable news" program like the astonishing Gutfeld! gong-show.)

For one more look at Hotep Jesus, you can click here to watch an appearance with Tyrus, the former "wrestler," on the official dimwit site, Outkick. Here's the official synopsis of what the fellows discussed:

Should Conservatives Hold Off on Going After Michelle Obama’s Looks? Tyrus and Hotep Jesus Weigh In

Today on the Guy Benson Show, guest host Tyrus and Hotep Jesus weighed in on a number of topics as Trump’s second term kicks off. Hotep Jesus and Tyrus weighed in on COVID mandates and the mRNA vaccine controversy following the pardoning of Anthony Fauci, and then the pair dove into the political movement that led to Trump’s big victory last November. Tyrus also got Hotep Jesus’ take on conservatives bashing Michelle Obama on her looks.

Pitiful, pathetic; sad. For the record:

On the Fox News Channel's Gutfeld! show, Michelle Obama is increasingly revealed to secretly be a man. This is the garbage can whose lid is pried off each weekday night, with a Saturday evening rerun, by CEO Suzanne Scott.

Also, this is the primetime garbage can from which Blue America's journalistic elites have agreed to avert their gaze. Judging from appearances, no one wants to get in a tussle with Fox. 

Plus, it's a comedy show!

The manosphere is running wild, as this new guest essay in the New York Times posits. The essay will appear in print in Sunday's editions. This is the headline it carries:

We Underestimate the Manosphere at Our Peril

We don't agree with every word. But we finally watched Eyes Wide Shut again last Saturday night. There was the longing for sexual subjugation all over again, laid out for all to ponder back in 1999

In our view, Hotep Jeus is a smiling presence when he appears on the Gutfeld! show. But the show itself is an undisguised attack on the world, as run by a bunch of disordered boys and the Fox News girls who support them.

(The New York Times won't tell you this. We'll pursue this sprawling theme in the upcoming week.)

By the way, was Hannibal black? As you can see by clicking this link, the Communists and the globalists aren't willing to tell you that. You have to turn to the Fox News Channel for TV "news" shows swarming with people who are willing to share such truths.

You'll learn from the former "wrestler" there. Former VJ's may also show up.

FRIDAY: There is no discourse except faux discourse!

FRIDAY, MARCH 28, 2025

When Cain met Peter Navarro: We tried, and we failed, in this week's reports, to do real justice to what we saw last Sunday morning on the Fox News Channel.

We refer to what we saw on that morning's Fox & Friends Weekend program. We mentioned the instant "Tampon Tim" play by co-host Rachel Campos Duffy. 

We mentioned Lisa Boothe's astonishing comments about who is, and who isn't, "pure evil."

We mentioned what happened late in the 6 o'clock hour when Campos-Duffy invited us to bow our heads and join her in a prayer from Hallow, an explicitly Catholic prayer app.

It was part of the continuing "Fox & Friends Prayer Series," we were told. Based on certain clues and hints, it may be that this highly unusual prayer series takes place during Lent each year. For access to a daily prayer at the Hallow app, it's $69.99 per year. 

Also this: 

Today, we tried to tell you about the way the friends kept returning to the political well—to the ongoing debate about transgender sports, a political "gift that just keeps giving" to the incumbent president. 

The friends chuckled about the political fruits of this amazing gift. In that assessment, the friends were completely right.

Looking back over our notes, we see that we failed to get to several other aspects of that day's first hour. We specifically think of the friends' ruminations on the (criminal) arson attacks on several Tesla dealerships.

Included was rank, unfounded speculation about who must be paying the arsonists to engage in these attacks, or just to stage protest events outside other Tesla dealerships.

Co-host Charlie Hurt ruminated about these imagined "Rent-a-Protestrors"—about the way they "contribute nothing," and are just a bunch of "wackos." This started at 6:07 a.m., even before the "Tampon Tim" jibe at 6:11 a.m.

After that, we were invited to join these employees in prayer.

This program is pure propaganda, all the way down. On a channel like the Fox News Channel, there's really no discourse except faux discourse. The group propaganda runs all day long, and then on into the night.

Especially at the current time, the agitprop is coming from a firehose. There is no possible way to keep up. For one example of this endless stream, consider the foolishness which went on the air yesterday afternoon at 4 o'clock sharp.

Right through last November's election, Will Cain was one of the three co-hosts of the Fox & Friends Weekend show. Then, the Fox News Channel joined President Trump in breaking that gang of mine up:

Co-host Pete Hegseth was plucked from the cast—was airlifted off to his current assignment. Co-host  Cain was also removed. He now hosts the hourlong Will Cain Show at 4 p.m. Eastern each weekday afternoon

Cain has plenty of IQ points. Unlike Campos-Duffy and Hegseth, he isn't some sort of religionist.

Yesterday, there was Peter Navarro, booked as Cain's first guest. At 4:04 p.m., the chyron said this:

TRUMP ANNOUNCES 25% TARIFF ON CAR IMPORTS

That was the topic, and there stood Navarro, right on the White House lawn. 

Navarro had been booked to engage in car talk—and as the conversation started, Cain was basically playing it straight. Navarro's first statement was this:

CAIN (3/27/25): Peter, great to see you here today. Let's put you straight to some of those voters' concerns—some of those concerns of Americans—about the rising price of, potentially. of cars under these tariffs.

NAVARRO: Well, tariffs are tax cuts. And what's going to happen here is, we're going to raise over a hundred billion dollars in tariffing auto imports, including the parts...

Tariffs are tax cuts! Yes, that was the first thing he said!  Also, the tariffs are going to raise a hundred billion dollars, though he didn't say from whom.

From there, Navarro engaged in a lengthy oration about all the economic benefits which will accompany or flow from the president's tariffs.

You may have noticed what we said above—Cain has no shortage of IQ points. When Navarro stopped talking at 4:07, he made what you could almost call a half-way decent attempt:

CAIN: OK. Hold on real quick, Peter, because I want to make sure— You always lay it out well, and I mean that, not gratuitously, but I mean that sincerely. You lay it out well.

When you say tariffs, though, are a tax cut—not on their face, not in and of themselves. They are a tax. But what I hear you saying is, it's going to correspond with the tax cut for those that buy American cars...

You always lay it out well, Cain said. But the tariffs are a tax.

He went on a bit from there. We'd describe the overall effort this way—Cain was trying to correct or contradict Navarro without maybe seeming to do so.

Navarro then began talking again. He ended up back on "the tax cut thing," having made another jumbled and grossly misleading presentation.

At that point, Cain gave up. "Important to hear the big picture," he now said. In our assessment, he then continued to semi-contradict Navarro without quite seeming to do so. 

All in all, we'd limn it this way:

Cain knew what Navarro was supposed to say. When Navarro never quite managed to say it, Cain went ahead and praised him for letting us "hear the big picture."

In short, there is no discourse except faux discourse. This discourse comes from two major firehoses, only one of them down at the White House.

The firehoses are running all day. There is no way to keep up with the effort to flood the zone, and very few news orgs try.

(To watch the entire segment, click here. After that, continue to click.)

SHALL LONG ENDURE? Can Blue America long endure?

FRIDAY, MARCH 28, 2025

Michelle Goldberg's daring advice: Can a nation like ours long endure? In November 1863, Abraham Lincoln asked. 

Lincoln emerged from a distant locale. The same is true of a teenage girl who lives in Presque Isle, Maine.

Presque Isle is way up there. Despite what you might think from its name, it isn't found along the Maine coast. As you can see from a map of the state, Presque Isle is roughly 160 miles due north of the northernmost point along that rocky coast.

Presque Isle is part of Aroostook County. Here's the dope on that part of the vast American nation:

Aroostook County, Maine

Aroostook County is the northernmost county in the U.S. state of Maine. It is located along the Canada–United States border. As of the 2020 census, the population was 67,105. The county seat is Houlton, with offices in Caribou and Fort Kent.

[It's] the largest county in Maine by total area, the second largest in the United States east of the Mississippi River...With over 6,800 square miles of land; it is larger than three of the smaller U.S. states. The state's northernmost village, Estcourt Station, is also the northernmost community in the New England region and in the contiguous United States east of the Great Lakes.

Aroostook County is way up north! By area, it's substantially larger than the state of Connecticut. Its population is somewhat smaller:

Population, 2020 census
Aroostook County: 67,105
State of Connecticut: 3.60 million

It's a very large, lightly populated county. Presque Isle—population, just under 9,000—is its largest city. 

The United States—our flailing nation—is an extremely varied place. This brings us back to that nagging question:

Can a nation like ours long endure?

Last Sunday, we were appalled by what we saw during the first hour of the Fox News Channel "news" program, Fox & Friends Weekend. Let's review the carnage:

During that 6 o'clock hour, co-host Rachel Campos-Duffy was instantly mocking "Tampon Tim." Betraying a stunning lack of wisdom, the seemingly reinvented Lisa Boothe then let us know who is, and who isn't, "pure evil."

Charlie Hurt was dumb as a rock. Nearing the end of the hour, we were invited to bow our heads to join these players in prayer.

Upon what meat doth our Red America feed? Sadly, it feeds upon this! That said, midway through the 6 o'clock hour, then early in the 7 o'clock hour, we saw discussions of a topic which almost surely hurt Blue America at the polls last year.

In effect, the hosts were discussing a teenage girl from Presque Isle, Maine. This young person was interviewed on Fox & Friends the next day—during Monday morning's 6 o'clock hour. 

In our view, this young person was very composed—quite impressive. When we googled the story behind the story, we quickly found this news report at the Fox News site.

The news report starts as shown. We'll offer this initial bit of advice—try to set aside any impulse toward instant moral judgment:

Maine girl involved in trans athlete battle reveals how state's policies hurt her childhood and sports career

Cassidy Carlisle was in seventh grade when she had to change in the same locker room as a transgender student, she said. 

During a gym class at Presque Isle Middle School in northern Maine six years ago, she said she walked into the locker room to find a biological male who would change with her and other girls. She alleges she was told by administrators that if she tried to avoid changing with the trans student, she would risk being late to class. 

"That was really my first experience in just knowing that something isn't right, but not knowing what to do with that," Carlisle told Fox News Digital in an exclusive interview. Fox News Digital has reached out to Presque Isle Middle School for comment.

Gender identity was first included in the Maine Human Rights Act as part of the definition of sexual orientation in 2005. In 2021, the law was amended to add gender identity as its own protected class...

You may not approve of the term, "biological male." It may be that you do approve of the policies described in that passage.

There's nothing "wrong" with holding such views. That said, this young person was 13 years old at the time, and it seemed to her that something was wrong with the practice at her school as it's described.

We found ourselves flashing on President Lincoln as we watched the interview unfold. Impressive people emerge from distant locales, though that doesn't mean that you have to agree with every assessment they make.

In this case, here's what happened:

Back when she was 13 years old, she didn't want to change her clothes in the same room with a transgender person she may have regarded as "a biological male." (The news report doesn't quote her using that term.)

You don't have to agree with that view, but at the age of 13, she didn't want to do that. And now, we show you how this relates to our basic question—to the question whether our struggling nation, such as it is, can hope to long endure

What does the one thing have to do with the other? As the news report continues. it jumps ahead in time:

The memory especially stuck with her in her junior year of high school, when she found out she would be competing with a trans athlete on the state Nordic skiing team. 

It was an athlete with whom she was familiar. She had already lost to the trans athlete in cross-country competitions in previous years.

When her father told her she would have to face the athlete again in skiing, Carlisle didn't believe it was happening. 

"I was like, ‘Oh, that’s only something I kind of hear about on the news. … It’s not going to happen to me," Cassidy recalled.

What she could do was vote in last November's election. As a first-time voter, she cast her ballot with the issue of trans athletes in girls sports at the forefront.

In this way, the issue of trans athletes in girls' and women's sports had apparently created another vote for Red America's candidates. That may have included Red America's candidate for president, who won last year's election by less than 1.5% of the nationwide vote.

We ourselves didn't vote for Candidate Trump, but many people did. How many people cast their votes on the basis of this one issue? We don't have the slightest idea, but the Fox News report says this:

A national exit poll conducted by the Concerned Women for America legislative action committee found that 70% of moderate voters saw the issue of "Donald Trump’s opposition to transgender boys and men playing girls and women’s sports and of transgender boys and men using girls and women’s bathrooms" as important to them. 

And 6% said it was the most important issue of all, while 44% said it was "very important."

You may not approve of the wording in that survey question. That said, a New York Times/Ipsos survey phrased the question a different way—and this report in the New York Post accurately describes the results which appear in the survey's official data:

NYT poll finds majority of Democrats oppose transgender athletes in women’s sports

A recent New York Times/Ipsos survey found the vast majority of Americans, including a majority of Democrats, don’t think transgender athletes should be permitted to compete in women’s sports.

“Thinking about transgender female athletes—meaning athletes who were male at birth but who currently identify as female—do you think they should or should not be allowed to compete in women’s sports?” the survey asked.

Of the 2,128 people who participated, 79% said biological males who identify as women should not be allowed to participate in women’s sports.

Of the 1,025 people who identified as Democrats or leaning Democrat, 67% said transgender athletes should not be allowed to compete with women. 

This survey asked about "transgender female athletes," not about "biological males." That said, the survey results were overwhelming, even among Dems.

No one has to agree with that widely held view, but a question arises. Is it possible that this topic, all by itself, may have swung last November's election?

We can't tell you that it did, but we also can't say that it didn't. That brings us to something Michelle Goldberg recently wrote in the New York Times.

We'd score Goldberg as center left / liberal / progressive / Democratic. Like us, she didn't vote for Candidate Trump, but in a recent column about the disaster confronting Blue America, she offered the highlighted view:

What on Earth Is Gavin Newsom Doing?

[...]

Outlets like Air America and ThinkProgress that helped start the careers of important figures in the liberal firmament—Rachel Maddow among them—have been allowed to wither and die, and then Democrats wonder where all their young voices are. Rather than try to ingratiate himself with [Charlie] Kirk, Newsom might try to elevate the progressives who could someday compete with him.

It was especially ill advised for Newsom to roll out his pivot on trans women in sports in a conversation with Kirk, a man who once described trans people as “disgusting, mentally ill, neurotic, predatory freaks.” As a matter of both political expediency and simple honesty, Democrats should be able to acknowledge that it’s unfair to expect elite female athletes to compete against trans women who’ve gone through male puberty. But at a time when the Trump administration has singled trans people out for persecution, Democrats need to couple their recognition of physical difference with a broader defense of trans rights.

In her column, Goldberg excoriated Governor Newsom for the way he recently seemed to shift his position concerning trans women and trans girls in sports. But she also said this:

Democrats should be able to acknowledge that it’s unfair to expect elite female athletes to compete against trans women who’ve gone through male puberty. 

Democrats should continue to offer "a broader defense of trans rights," Goldberg said. But she said Dems should also "acknowledge that it’s unfair to expect elite female athletes to compete against trans women who’ve gone through male puberty."

So said columnist Goldberg! You may not agree with that view.

You may not agree with that view! But here's what happened last Sunday morning as we watched three Fox employees spreading the approved corporate messaging about Tampon Tim and about who is "pure evil" on the Fox & Friends Weekend program:

During the 6 o'clock hour, then again during the 7 o'clock hour, we saw the co-hosts chuckle about the easy gains President Trump makes from what they correctly described as "this 80/20 issue."

They chuckled about it again and again. In our view, the bulk of their conduct that day was appalling. But with respect to that topic, they were unmistakably right.

The survey results on this topic are overwhelming. No one has to share those views, but all in all, we think Goldberg is basically in the ballpark:

Blue Americans should at least be able to understand why so many people, all across the nation, assess this issue in the way they do.

Last Sunday morning, we thought Campos-Duffy, Boothe and Hurt behaved extremely poorly. The next day, Fox & Friends traveled to Presque Isle, Maine and Campos-Duffy spoke with a high school student.

We thought that student was very impressive. We flashed on Lincoln's question several times as these programs unfurled.

Lincoln came from a distant locale. So does this impressive young woman.

Meanwhile, we Blues keep finding ways to lose. We endlessly did so in the past few years, and Candidate Trump squeaked by.

We Blues keep finding ways to lose! We very badly need to discuss this unfortunate tribal impulse. We ourselves are inclined to a certain explanation, but at some point, the discussion should begin.

In the meantime, Blue America lies in a world of hurt. Lincoln wondered if our nation could long endure. In large part due to our need to heal ourselves, we'd say the answer is no longer real clear.

Go ahead—watch the interview with that kid from Presque Isle, Maine! She comes from a small, very distant place, but talent comes from everywhere, and her reactions, which are widely shared, deserve our consideration and even our grudging respect.

Also, what the heck is wrong with us? What makes us behave as we do?

THURSDAY: A graduate student, then MS-13!

THURSDAY, MARCH 27, 2025

A tale of two arrests: On its face, the first arrest—the first arrest of the two arrests—had an ugly, sinister feel.

In its news report on that first arrest, the New York Times seemed to downplay that part of the event. You had to read all the way to paragraph 16 to encounter this description:

Federal Government Detains International Student at Tufts

[...]

A video circulating on social media on Wednesday showed a woman in a hijab and white coat being surrounded on a sidewalk, handcuffed and led away by masked plainclothes officers driving unmarked cars.

The Massachusetts attorney general, Andrea Joy Campbell, said her office was “closely monitoring this matter as it develops.”

She added: “The footage of Rumeysa Ozturk’s arrest—a student here legally—is disturbing. Based on what we now know, it is alarming that the federal administration chose to ambush and detain her, apparently targeting a law-abiding individual because of her political views...”

The graduate student was taken away by men in masks—by six such men with no visible ID. In more of the police state-adjacent culture now surfacing across the landscape, this young woman has been flown—where else?—to Louisiana, far from the site of her largely unexplained Massachusetts arrest.

Was she really arrested "because of her political views," as the Massachusetts attorney general said? More specifically, was she arrested for co-writing an opinion column in the Tufts student newspaper—a column which failed to agree with current U.S. foreign policy concerning events in Gaza? 

(The column referred to a "genocide." You aren't supposed to think that!)

So far, no other reason for the arrest has been revealed. For the record, the student hardy seems like a hardened terrorist:

While studying psychology as an undergraduate at Istanbul Sehir University, Ms. Ozturk worked closely with one of her professors, Fatima Tuba Yaylaci, in the psychology lab and as a student assistant. Ms. Ozturk was interested in child development and how children understand concepts like death and life, the professor said.

“She is a person who wouldn’t hurt a soul,” Ms. Yaylaci said in an interview on Wednesday. “She is extremely sensitive about human rights, about not hurting people, about diversity. She is a person who wants to include everyone.”

The professor said they had never discussed Palestinians during their time together, before Ms. Ozturk received a Fulbright scholarship and enrolled in a master’s program at Columbia University’s Teachers College, where she received a degree in 2020. “Her relations with people were really good, but she was not an organizational, activist-type leader in terms of politics,” Ms. Yaylaci said.

A couple of weeks ago, the professor said, she received a message from Ms. Ozturk, asking her to remove pictures of her with friends from the social media account of the lab. Ms. Ozturk told her she was being doxxed, meaning that personal information about her was being posted maliciously online.

“This is a very hard day for me too, I am very sad,” Ms. Yaylaci said. “I hope this issue will be resolved. She is such a valuable researcher for children in Turkey and in the U.S. too.”

In the end, will it turn out that there is something more behind this "police state"-style arrest? Or is this arrest a companion to Secretary Noem's visit yesterday to that now-famous Central American gulag? That is, was this first arrest designed to strike fear in the hearts of foreign nationals in the U.S., even including those who are in this country legally and are breaking no laws?

Will there be more to this ugly arrest? Only time will tell. That said, a brutal mentality has perhaps seemed to surface all through the penumbra of emanations from the current administration in Washington. 

Yesterday, that mentality was signaled as a half dozen men, faces hidden by masks, took a young woman off the street, then drove her away in unmarked cars and shipped her way down south. Even as this arrest was occurring, Secretary Noem was parading around inside the gulag, creating bizarre video for domestic consumption straight out of Apocalypse Now.

In the end, we find it hard to believe that images of this first arrest are really going to sell. But then again, there's that second arrest—the arrest which was announced in a live event at 9 o'clock this morning.

We watched the live event on the Fox News Channel. Then we read this news report, dual headline included:

Top MS-13 leader arrested in Virginia
Authorities made the arrest just south of Washington, DC

U.S. authorities have captured the MS-13 top leader for the U.S. East Coast, the FBI announced on Thursday.

Officials captured the 24-year-old suspect in Woodbridge, Virginia, just south of Washington, D.C. Authorities have yet to release the suspect's name, but they say he is one of the top three leaders of the MS-13 gang in the U.S.

Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel watched the arrest unfold from a nearby tactical operations center. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and senior DOJ official Emil Bove were also present.

"They executed a clean, safe operation and the bad guys in custody. And thanks to the FBI, we got one of the worst of the worst of the MS-13 off the streets this morning. Virginia and the country is a lot safer today," Bondi told Fox News following the arrest.

As with the first of these two arrests, so too with the second. The full story of this arrest hasn't yet been told.

That said, the event we watched at 9 o'clock involved a lot of powerful messaging from Bondi and Patel, and from Virginia Governor Youngkin. The bragging and boasting were strong. 

So were the accusations of lethargy directed at the Biden administration, which had allegedly let this suspect, and many other such individuals, cross the border with little resistance during the past four years.

As time passes, how will the facts of these two arrests play out? We can't tell you that. We can say that Blue America has a fair amount of explaining to do and a whole lot to figure out. Unfortunately, we sometimes seem to remain locked in a bit of denial concerning our recent ways.

An international student got frog-marched away by masked men in unmarked cars. Allegedly, a top leader of what everyone describes as a vicious gang was arrested the very next day.

In the gulag, it was Apocalypse Now. By the way:

Were the alleged gang members we shipped to that place actual gang members? Were they actual killers and rapists and terrorist monsters?

Karoline Leavitt swears they all were. But then, of course, she would!

Also this question lingers—on what authority can we render people into that Central American gulag? This isn't your father's "deportation." What gives us the legal right to ship people away like that—not to their actual countries of origin, but instead to a third country with a brutal third world feel?

On Fox & Friends, the friends were highly enthusiastic after the Bondi presser. They also discussed the footage generated by Kristi Noem Down Under.

Were the alleged gang members correctly accused? The accused had been afforded no due process, and on Fox, the friends didn't ask!

SHALL LONG ENDURE? When did the prayer series begin!

THURSDAY, MARCH 27, 2025

It's very Fox News, Hegseth said: Way back then, Pete Hegseth was still in place at his previous post. 

We're inclined to regard Hegseth as someone who lost his way at some place along the road. He tends to be angry and highly adamant. There's never the slightest chance that he could imaginably be even slightly wrong.

Back then, he was still serving as one of three co-hosts of the early morning "cable news" program, Fox & Friends Weekend. 

The day before, a disturbed young man had tried to shoot a presidential candidate. We were struck by what we saw Hegseth say on the next day's "cable news" show.

It was Sunday morning, July 14, 2024.  It started with Lawrence Jones, co-host of the weekday Fox & Friends program, on the scene in Butler, Pa. 

The candidate's life had been spared. Here's what Jones now said:

JONES (7/14/24): There is no Donald Trump today without Jesus Christ this morning. I mean, we could be having a very different conversation this morning—

CAMPOS-DUFFY: That's right.

JONES: —going over the obituary of the 45th president this morning. And if it wasn't for the grace of God, things could have been different. So I give honor and glory to our lord and savior, Jesus Christ, for protecting the former president. 

So said Jones. But soon, so said them all, co-host Will Cain excepted. 

Later that week, we recorded the bulk of what had been said. Along the way, Hegseth said the failure of the attack had been "providential," and he'd also said this:

HEGSETH: We're right, first and foremost, to thank Jesus Christ, the lord almighty, that Donald Trump is safe—

CAMPOS-DUFFY: Yeah.

HEGSETH: —and those prayers went out, and to reflect on the historic nature of this. 

So said Hegseth. Eventually, a second weekday co-host, Ainsley Earhardt, also joined in.

EARHARDT: You know, y'all brought up the fact that so many people have prayed for Donald Trump. God has really revealed a lot to us over the past few weeks, with what's really happening behind closed doors at the White House...

Thankfully, the president turned his head at the right moment. God was protecting him and God was with him.

Earhardt didn't specifically say that it had been Jesus Christ.

As we've noted all week, there's nothing "wrong" with believing such things. Many millions of people share such beliefs, and there's no way to prove that they're wrong. 

Also, we would say that it may not be charitable to have a desire to do so.

That said, we thought such statements were very unusual—and were possibly highly instructive—as part of a major "news" program. We also thought they point to what is deeply bred in the bone—to a major part of the human inheritance.

By now, Hegseth has moved to a different job—but we were struck anew by what we saw during the first hour of last Sunday's Fox & Friends Weekend program.

"Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans?" Yes, he did—but for the record, he had similar providential views. Long ago, this greatest of American moral visionaries actually stood up in public and actually offered this:

Second Inaugural Address

[...]

The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses for it must needs be that offenses come but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." 

If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which in the providence of God must needs come, but which having continued through His appointed time He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? 

Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said: "The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

Lincoln saw the universe that way—engaged in such suppositions. He spoke about providence too.

At this site, we don't share such views—but we regard Lincoln as an unimaginable moral giant. We didn't pick up a similar vibe from last Sunday's Fox & Friends Weekend, in which the friends trashed "Tampon Tim" as quite possibly "evil," then bowed their heads in prayer.

The prayer came from the Hallow prayer app, an explicitly Catholic site ($69.99 per year). It was part of an ongoing "Fox & Friends Prayer Series," co-host Rachel Campos-Duffy—she of the crowd-pleasing "Tampon Tim" jibe—said before reading the prayer.

In the smutty mockery of Governor Walz, but also in the search for evil, we thought the 6 o'clock hour was a tribute to the moral and intellectual squalor which pervades so many Fox News Channel programs. That said:

Early in Sunday's 7 o'clock hour, we saw one of the major ways those of us in Blue America seem to insist on losing to opponents like Candidate Trump. By now, we Blues have invented a thousand ways of losing, or it seems to us. 

We've invented a thousand ways to lose. We'll visit that problem tomorrow. 

For today, we thought we'd share the fruits of a search. We refer to the brief search in which we tried to discover when that surprising "cable news" prayer series began. 

As of last Sunday, we'd been sampling Fox & Friends Weekend for several years. We'd watched the first hour of the program each Saturday and Sunday morning, but we'd never heard of any such ongoing prayer event. 

When did the series begin? When we googled around, we landed on a news report from the ChurchLeaders site. The report appeared on March 22, 2024, when Hegseth was in his old post:

‘Close Your Eyes and Bow Your Head’—Fox News Host Leads Prayer on Live Television

Fox News host Pete Hegseth recited a prayer from the Hallow app for Lent this past Sunday on “Fox & Friends.”

The prayer was part of the “Fox & Friends” Sunday Prayer Series. Hallow, a Catholic meditation and prayer app, is a sponsor of the series.

“This is a transition for transitions,” the 43-year-old Hegseth, who sat alongside cohosts Rachel Campos-Duffy and Will Cain, told viewers. “It is very ‘Fox & Friends,’ so ready your heart.”

Is that where the series began? We can't tell you that.

Still, it was very Fox & Friends, Hegseth was quoted saying. Here's another report from that same week, in this case from CBN:

News Anchor Pete Hegseth Prays and Proclaims the Name of Jesus on National TV

Fox News host Pete Hegseth recently asked “Fox & Friends” viewers—and his cohosts—to bow their heads in prayer for a Bible-app-sponsored segment.

Before turning to prayer, Hegseth said, “You know what, this is a transition for transitions if you’ve ever had one.”

At that point, his cohost Rachel Campos-Duffy interjected, saying it’s “so ‘Fox & Friends'” to pray on live television. He replied, “This is very ‘Fox & Friends,’ so ready your heart."

“It’s the fifth Sunday of Lent, and our prayer series continues with the reading of prayer from the Hallow app,” Hegseth said on the secular news network, noting the network’s partnership with the Catholic prayer app. “We all need it; let’s do it this morning. Close your eyes. If you would, bow your head.”

There again, the series was said to be "continuing," with a suggestion that it only takes place during Lent. We don't know when the series started, but the Fox News Channel may not be quite as "secular" as CBN seemed to think

Perhaps we're being snarky today, but we also give you Lincoln and his beliefs. We'd also direct you to Dr. King—to his endless praise for "the love ethic of Jesus."

We aren't religious believers ourselves, but tens of millions of our friends and neighbors—tens of millions of our fellow citizens—quite plainly are. That said, such belief is like everything else. Religious belief can be accompanied by various forms of judgment.

This past Sunday morning, we thought the judgment displayed on Fox & Friends Weekend was relentlessly poor during the 6 o'clock hour. We described some of that imperfect judgment in Monday morning's report.

Tomorrow, we'll describe imperfect political and moral judgment on the part of our own Blue America. In our view, this imperfect judgment helped get Candidate Trump elected, thereby elevating the struggling Hegseth to his current post.

We'd like to see Pete Hegseth do better. We'd also like to see our own Blue America find a way to heal itself.

Last Sunday, the potential instruction came from Presque Isle, Maine—from way, way up in the north. During the 7 o'clock hour, we thought of President Lincoln himself when we saw the teenage girl who hails from that distant locale.

Lincoln's genius emerged from a distant locale. So has this teenage girl.

Can a nation like ours "long endure?" A few weeks before he himself was killed, a moral giant asked!

Tomorrow: The teenager's tale. Also, what Michelle Goldberg said.

WEDNESDAY: Michael Waltz has to be better than this!

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 26, 2025

A lowlife performance on Fox: Richard Haass used an interesting word on today's Morning Joe.

The word he used was "pathology." In essence, he was referring to the pathology of headlong tribal assault. 

European literature began with a portrait of that sort of pathology from the Iliad's first verses forward. Last night, a similar pathology was on display in the astonishing lowlife performance authored by national security adviser Michael Waltz on The Ingraham Angle.

 Waltz has to be better than this! His interview started at 7:03 p.m. Eastern, with a prompt from Ingraham herself.  The pathology was visible from the start. The onslaught started with this:

INGRAHAM (3/25/25):  The president expressed complete confidence in you today and his entire cabinet. But how did a Trump-hating editor of The Atlantic end up on your Signal chat?

WALTZ: I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but of all the people out there, somehow this guy. who has lied about the president, who has lied to Gold Star families, lied to their attorneys, and gone to Russia hoax, gone to just all kinds of lengths to lie and smear the president of the United States, and he’s the one that somehow gets on somebody’s contact and then get sucked into this group. So—

Ingraham interrupted at that point. That said:

Is there some reason to refer to Jeffrey Goldberg as "a Trump-hating editor?" We know of no obvious reason to describe him that way. Nor did Ingraham ever ask Waltz to justify the claim that Goldberg has lied and lied and lied and lied about the sitting president.

That said, the rule of the game has become clear—any statement which doesn't flatter the tribal potentate will be denounced as a lie. It was Waltz who screwed up the Signal chat, but by the rule of the pathological game, the pig now had to be killed.

Waltz couldn't just say that he himself had erred; he had to kill the pig. He kept it up for the next 15 minutes in a cowardly, lowlife performance.

He just kept pouring it on. By 7:06, he was now offering this:

WALTZ: We’re going to get to the bottom of it. I just talked to Elon on the way here. We’ve got the best technical minds looking at how this happened. But I can tell you, I can tell you, for 100 percent I don’t know this guy. 

I know him by his horrible reputation, and he really is the bottom scum of journalists. And I know him in the sense that he wasn't on my phone. We will figure it out.

By now, Goldberg was scum—"the bottom scum of journalists." Meanwhile, in a remarkably slimy performance, Waltz kept suggesting that Goldberg had somehow finagled his way into the Signal discussion.

Also, on what basis did Waltz say that Goldberg has a horrible reputation—is the bottom scum of journalists? In a stunning display of cowardice, he never attempted to say. One minute later, this:

INGRAHAM: But how did the number—I don't mean to be pedantic here, but how did the number get into—

WALTZ: Have you ever had somebody's contact that shows their name, and then you had somebody else's number there?...You've got somebody else's number on someone else's contact. So of course I didn’t see this loser in the group. It looked like someone else. 

Waltz never saw the loser! Moments later, at 7:08, there he went again:

INGRAHAM: [People at the Atlantic] are saying, "Don't blame the messenger." Any response?

WALTZ: Lied about Russia. Lied about Gold Star families. Lied about even as—last, what, year, in terms of the president paying for the family of a Gold Star family that he absolutely did. I mean, lie after lie after lie.

By now, Waltz's accusations didn't even parse—but what "lies" was he talking about? We'll offer you a link below, but Waltz never had the decency to even pretend to explain, and Ingraham never made any such request.

After spilling with Trump Administration self-praise for a while, that old clock on the wall now said 7:13. So Waltz returned to this:

INGRAHAM: [You've] never met Goldberg? He's put there saying you've met in the past. But you've never met him?

WALTZ: No idea. I wouldn't know him if I bumped into him. Wouldn't know him in a police lineup. I do now. 

I knew about his reputation for lying about the president over and over and over again. What I can tell you for certain, I certainly wasn't reaching out or talking to him at all. Why would I?

INGRAHAM: He's been one of the most vociferous, vituperative so-called journalists out there. in The Atlantic.

WALTZ: Vile. Near and dear to my heart, as a veteran, is lying about Gold Star families who love this president, veterans who love this president and are thanking God he is commander in chief once again.

He wouldn't know Goldberg in a police lineup! Also, there was the alleged "lying about Gold Star families" again. We'll offer a quick word below.

Soon, it was almost time to call it a night. Deeply sunk in a tribal pathology, the warfighter ended with this:

WALTZ: Lesson learned, number one, is you have journalists out there who have made fame and fortune trying to trash this president. So we have got to tighten up.

Waltz almost has to be better than that. It was a stunning lowlife performance from its beginning right through to its miserable end.

Pathology can be powerful, especially when prestigious jobs are at stake. Waltz never tried to explain his endless claim that the bottom scum in question has been lying about his dear leader. 

With respect to the Gold Star families, he seemed to be referring to this extremely lengthy report in The Atlantic last October. It's a deeply sourced report in which Goldberg offered endless direct quotations from major figures who had seen and heard various things Trump had done and said during his first term in the White House.

People like Waltz keep accepting denials about Trump's behavior—denials from press spokespersons who had no direct knowledge of the events under review. People like Waltz accept the statements by the spokespersons who weren't present, thereby rejecting the statements of people like Kelly, Milley and Esper—people who were actually there.

The lengthy, heavily sourced report carried this dual headline:

Trump: ‘I Need the Kind of Generals That Hitler Had’
The Republican nominee’s preoccupation with dictators, and his disdain for the American military, is deepening.

Did Trump ever make that actual statement? We can't say for sure. Goldberg did extensive reporting on many topics, and he let us the people decide.  The incident involving the (one) Gold Star family is reported in great detail.

As for Waltz, he told us about a "bottom scum." He told us about a "loser."

He said Lie lie lie lie lie lie lie. The performance was lowlife all the way down, by Waltz and Ingraham both.

In our view, the pathology of assault is all around us as these end days draw on. It was there at the dawn of the West. It was astounding and stupid last night.

At some point, Waltz was surely better than this. He probably will be again.

We wanted you to see what he said. The pathology of conquest is strong.

SHALL LONG ENDURE? Fox News hosts assist President Trump!

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 26, 2025

But then, so does everyone else: We start with a report in today's print editions of the New York Times.

It isn't on the paper's front page. We offer this question:

Why not?

In fairness, the report is found on the front page of this morning's Business section. It shares space there with two other reports. In our view, that product placement is a form of journalistic deference. 

It's a form of journalistic deference to undisguised tyrannical power. Principal headline included, today's report starts like this:

In His Second Term, Trump Fuels a ‘Machinery’ of Misinformation

In her first briefing as White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt said she was “committed to telling the truth from this podium every single day.” Moments later she announced that the new administration had blocked a $50 million contract for condoms in Gaza.

“That is a preposterous waste of taxpayer money,” she said.

It was also a preposterous claim, improbable on its face and quickly debunked. There were millions in federal grants awarded to prevent sexually transmitted diseases in Gaza, but in the province in Mozambique, not the Palestinian territory.

The condoms claim went viral anyway, seeping into the political discourse that President Trump has used to justify his sweeping push to slash the federal government.

Myers and Thompson penned the report. Already, in those first four paragraphs, they've politely stepped aside and made way for a bit of a logical lapse. In our view, here's the way the evidence scans:

Given the fact that the claim "went viral," the claim was not "debunked!" 

Sadly, the preposterous claim was not debunked in any way that actually matters. Needless to say, the silly child Leavitt—she's 27—was eager to spread the preposterous claim.

Preposterous claims of exactly this type now rule vast parts of the realm. On weekend mornings, before Fox & Friends Weekend co-host Rachel Campos-Duffy bows her pious head to pray, she eagerly repeats such claims for her viewers in Red America.

Those viewers don't know that the claims are preposterous, nor will the Fox & Friends Weekend tools tell them. Also, they won't be told how many millions of dollars these tools are paid to repeat these preposterous claims.

The silly child Leavitt is always prepared to perform in the cult-approved manner. So too, in almost every case, with the pious Fox News Channel host. 

For the record, we're using simple descriptive language here—language the Times will avoid.

In fairness to Myers and Thompson, they didn't decide the placement of their news report. To their credit, they made a presentation which was strikingly accurate as they continued directly from the passage we've posted above:

Mr. Trump’s first four years in the White House were filled with false or misleading statements—30,573 of them, or 21 a day on average, according to one tally. Back then, though, aides often tried to play down or contain the damage of egregious falsehoods.

This time, Mr. Trump is joined by a coterie of cabinet officials and advisers who have amplified them and even spread their own. Together, they are effectively institutionalizing disinformation.

While it is still early in his term, and many of his executive orders face legal challenges that could blunt the impact of any falsehoods driving them, Mr. Trump and his advisers have ushered the country into a new era of post-truth politics, where facts are contested and fictions used to pursue policy goals.

All of that is perfectly accurate. For that reason, we pose our basic question again:

Why in the world—why on earth—isn't this report on the New York Times' front page? 

(Also this: Why aren't reports on this theme on the front page every morning?)

Full credit to Myers and Thompson! It's true—the sitting president is, in fact, assisted "by a coterie of cabinet officials and advisers who have amplified [his preposterous claims] and even spread their own."

"Together, they are effectively institutionalizing disinformation?" Stating the obvious, that also seems to be true.

(This afternoon, we'll look at the ugly claims one such official broadcast last night. Have we ever seen such a lowlife performance? He peddled his repetitive claims on The Ingraham Angle. Laura averted her gaze.)

That said, the problem doesn't end with the behavior of such officials. While the sitting president may be assisted "by [that] coterie," he's also joined in that mission by a never-ending assortment of Fox News Channel players.

One of them in Campos-Duffy, the very pious Catholic woman who slurred it up about "Tampon Tim" before piously offering this:

Fox News co-host prays:
All right. Well, with help from the Hallow app, we're going to continue our Sunday prayer series with a prayer from the Hallow app. 

If you'd like to join me, you can just bow your head, and we'll start:

"Lord, thank you for the gift of life. You are a faithful father. You never abandon us in our time of need..."

As we've noted in the past two days, the text of the prayer appeared on the screen as Campos-Duffy read it.  It appeared on the screen beneath this heading

PRAY EVERY DAY THIS LENT
               on Hallow

No Jews need apply! The "cable news" program then cut to a commercial for the fee-for-service Hallow prayer app. (Subscribers can access the daily prayer for $69.99 per year,)

At 6:50, the prayer cut to a commercial for the Hallow app. Before the commercial ran, a moderator's voice said this:

Fox & Friends Prayer Series is brought to you by Hallow, the number 1 prayer app in the world. 

For the record, it's an explicitly Catholic app. As we've noted, there's nothing innately "wrong" with any of that. But it's very unusual to see an American "news" broadcast engaging in such religious practices, especially in religious practices which are explicitly sectarian.

(Try to follow: We aren't saying it's necessarily wrong. We're saying it's very unusual, and therefore perhaps newsworthy—a window on one channel's soul.)

Shortly before she began to pray, Campos-Duffy surprised us by saying that she was "continuing" the Fox & Friends Prayer Series. Here's why we were surprised:

We've been sampling Fox & Friends Weekend every Saturday and Sunday morning for the past year or so. But we'd never heard of this highly unusual "cable news" series until last Sunday's program.

When did the prayer series begin? before returning to that question, let's look at another way the president's "preposterous claims" keep "going viral" despite having been "debunked."

Yesterday afternoon, the president sat in the Oval Office taking questions from people presenting as journalists. As recorded in this CNN transcript, at one point he offered this:

REPORTER (3/25/25): The secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, and JD Vance, the vice president, said that the Europeans were freeloading. Do you agree with that assessment?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Do you really want me to answer that? Yeah, I think they've been freeloading. The European Union has been absolutely terrible to us on trade. Terrible.

And as you know, NATO—I got them to pay hundreds of billions of dollars. They were way behind. And if you look, even—

If you look at Ukraine—so, we're in for $350 billion because of Biden. Should have never happened, this war shouldn't. All these dead people should not be dead... 

Biden Biden Biden Biden! In our view, his presidency was a disaster, but his name rarely leaves the current president's lips. Regarding that (alleged) $350 billion, that figure was quickly cited again, with a second (alleged) figure thrown in:

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Look, NATO—and I don't blame NATO for this. I don't blame Europe for this. I blame Biden for the fact that he didn't make them equalize.

And to this day, I said to them, "You got to catch up, you got to equalize." But why are they in for 100 billion and we're in for possibly $350 billion? It shouldn't be. It shouldn't be...

The commander rattled on from there. But there you saw the claim again:

According to President Trump, we've provided $350 billion to Ukraine. The freeloaders in Europe have provided a mere $100 billion. Also, it's all Biden's fault!

Sad! Concerning those dollar amounts, he's made that (alleged) comparison a million times by now. Rigjhtly or wrongly, the clam has been debunked by fact-checkers again and again and again.

It's been "debunked" again and again—but he just continues to say it! In this way, the claim "goes viral." Inevitably, here's what happened yesterday after he said it again:

PRESIDENT TRUMP: ...But you'll be seeing tariffs. And I think I've been very fair. I've had—I have them set. But I think I've been very fair to countries that have really abused us economically for many, many decades.

(CROSSTALK)

REPORTER: Mr. President, (what part of) that information was not classified?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Another question, please? Go ahead.

REPORTER: Just following up on your comments on the economy, there is reporting that consumer confidence fell for the fourth straight month. What is your message to Americans who are concerned about tariffs?

Sad! None of the journalists asked him why he keeps making those claims. No one dared say this:

THE QUESTION WHICH WASN'T ASKED: Mr. President, your claim about the amounts of spending in Ukraine has been challenged again and again. Where do you get the figures you cite, in which we have spent more than three times as much as the Europeans? 

Also, is it possible that your staff could prepare a white paper explaining the source of those claims? When could we see that material?

None of the reporters said that. None of them ever will. Nor will you ever see a report about what happened when some such request was made in written form.

Quite routinely, Campos-Duffy repeats the preposterous claims. She may make smutty, insulting remarks about one of the others—possibly one of the pagans.

Lisa Boothe will then jump in to tell us who qualifies as "pure evil" in the Blue American camp. Within the same hour, these employees will bow their heads and they'll piously pray.

When did the prayer series begin on this "cable news" program? We still aren't sure that we can tell you—but would you be surprised to see Pete Hegseth in the mix?

Tomorrow, we'll return to that question. Pete Hegseth will be mentioned first.

On Friday, we'll show you what happened on Fox & Friends Weekend during Sunday's 7 o'clock hour. For now, we'll offer this spoiler alert:

Politically speaking, those of us in Blue America seem to insist on defeat. 

Tomorrow: When the prayer series began

Friday: She hails from Presque Isle, Maine

Also, where in the world is Lawrence O'Donnell?

TUESDAY, MARCH 25, 2025

This is the best we can tell you: Where in the world is Lawrence O'Donnell?

Live and direct from Yahoo Entertainment, this is the best we can do. Don't let that headline scare you:

Fans Think The Last Word With Lawrence O’Donnell Is Getting Canceled

[...]

Is The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell being canceled?

No, The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell hasn’t been canceled.

Speculation about The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell being canceled began when O’Donnell missed Monday’s broadcast. Several viewers took to social media to inquire about the host’s whereabouts and his expected return. Many assumed that he would be back this week after his scheduled week off. But his absence now appears to have been extended. O’Donnell has yet to address his absence on Monday.

For the record, many people "assumed that he would be back this week" because he said he'd be back this week. We aren't going to look it up, but it's our impression that he said that he'd be back on Monday night.

At this site, we hope he's back tonight. For our money, he'd been doing an excellent job describing the recent American carnage. 

That said, we've lost any sense that those of us in Blue America will ever know how to extricate ourselves from the political holes we've managed to dig. In our view, we've been digging those holes over the course of a great many years.

There's no obvious, easy way out of this mess. Confusion is widely observed.