FALLING APART: Stumblebums of the world, unite!

WEDNESDAY, MAY 21, 2025 

What's wrong with President Trump? At this site, we wish that Senator Hassan (D-NH) had let the witness continue.

In our view, Senator Hassan broke in too soon. That said, for better or worse, here's how the exchange began:

HASSAN (5/20/25): Secretary Noem, the White House deputy chief of staff recently said that the Trump administration is actively looking at suspending habeas corpus. Last week you were asked about this, and I want to clarify your position, because it's obviously really important to get this right.

So Secretary Noem, what is habeas corpus?

NOEM: Well, habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country—

At that point, Hassan broke in. We wish she'd let Noem continue.

Where in the world was Noem's response going to go after that? In our view, it would have been more instructive to let her finish her presentation.

That said, at the point where Hassan interrupted, Noem seemed to be wildly off track. Below, you see our best attempt to record, overtalking be damned, where the exchange went from there.

Instant disclosure! In large part, this is the way the world starts to look when things have fallen apart:

NOEM (as shown above): Well, habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country and suspend their right to—

HASSAN: No, let me stop you, ma'am==

NOEM: —and suspend their right to—

HASSAN: Habeas corpus— Excuse me. That's incorrect.

NOEM: President Lincoln used it—

HASSAN: Ah—excuse me...

At that point, Senator Hassan offered a fairly lengthy disquisition in which she answered her own original question. Eventually, Noem offered this:

"I support habeas corpus. I also recognize that the president of the United States has the authority under the Constitution to decide if it should be suspended or not."

"It has never been done without approval from Congress," Senator Hassan then said. She was thinking back to the day when this country still had a Congress!

(To watch the tape of this sad event, you can just click here.)

Personally, we wish Hassan had let Noem answer the original question without interruption. At the point where Hassan broke in, the secretary's presentation seemed to be crazily wrong. It would have been instructive to see where Noem's fuller answer would have gone. 

Today, Noem's answer is being mocked all over Blue America. We think it would have been better if she'd been allowed to finish her statement, which, as it started out, seemed to be crazily wrong.

That said, we smarter people have a tendency to break in on the stumblebums. And uh-oh:

As of today, we've rather plainly reached the point where the stumblebums have decided that the time has come to fight back.

Some are genuine stumblebums; others are merely pretending. We'd assume that Secretary Rubio was representing the latter camp when he went on in the ridiculous manner shown below at a different Senate hearing.

Senator Van Hollen (D-MD) kept asking Rubio about the detention of Rumeyza Ozturk, the graduate student at Tufts who was snatched off the street and shipped to Louisiana for the offense of having co-authored an opinion column in a student newspaper. 

Van Hollen kept asking about Ozturk. In a type of silent secession, Rubio kept refusing to answer:

RUBIO (5/20/25): If you tell me that you’re coming to the United States to lead campus crusades, to take over libraries and burn down buildings and commit acts of violence, we’re not going to let that happen.

VAN HOLLEN: Is that what Ms. Ozturk did? Is that what she did?

RUBIO: We’re not going to allow that—

VAN HOLLEN: Come on, Mr. Secretary, you’re just blowing smoke here now.

RUBIO: —and every single one of these [UNINTELLIGIBLE]— The bottom line is, if you’re coming here to stir up trouble on our campuses, we will deny you a visa. And if you have a visa, we’ll revoke it.

VAN HOLLEN: Does the First Amendment not apply in the United States?

RUBIO: And we’re going to do more! There are more coming. We’re going to continue to revoke the visas of people who are here as guests and are disrupting our higher education facilities. People are paying money—these kids pay money to go to school, and they have to walk through a bunch of lunatics who are here on—

VAN HOLLEN: Writing an op-ed for the student newspapers is disrupting the foreign policy of the United States? 

RUBIO: I want to do more. I hope we can find more of these people.

VAN HOLLEN: That’s pathetic, Mr. Secretary!

RUBIO: In fact, the other day—the other day, some guys led a riot. I forgot what university it was. And I asked, "Please, can you find the arrest records of all the people that were arrested at that riot, at that campus?" Because if any of them have a visa, we’re going to revoke them.

Van Hollen was right; Rubio's relentless evasion truly was pathetic. But that's the way the world starts to look when things have fallen apart.

(To watch the videotape, click here.)

Van Hollen kept asking about the seizure of Ozturk. Rubio simply chose to rant about a different set of possible circumstances.

In a type of silent secession, he was refusing to submit to questioning from an agent of the former ruling tribe. That too is the way the world looks when things have fallen apart.

We would assume that Rubio was merely pretending to be a stumblebum during that non-exchange. To see how horrible a secession of that type can look, you should just take a look at the tape.

Hoe else can it look when things fall apart?  It's as we noted in yesterday's report:

Over the weekend, the sitting president of the United States crazily returned to the ancient story in which Bill and Hillary Clinton were involved in a long string of murders.

On its face, that post was a manifestation of madness. So was what the gentleman told a joint session of Congress in this year's version of the State of the Union Address.

It's been a while since we posted the text. Here's the crazy presentation the president made in March, when the whole world was watching:

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

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

(LAUGHTER) 

3.47 million people from ages 120 to 129.  3.9 million people from ages 130 to 139.

3.5 million people from ages 140 to 149. And money is being paid to many of them, and we’re searching right now. 

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

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

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

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

(LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE)

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

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Joe Biden!  

(LAUGHTER)

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

Did the president really believe what he seemed to be saying, or was he just pretending that night? How about the various stumblebums who sat in the chamber and laughed?

On its face, what he said that night was a manifestation of madness. Arguably, his post about the Clintons' large number of murders was even crazier still.

Question: 

Ten weeks later, have you ever seen a major news org pursue what the president said back in March? Have you seen a serious inquiry from any journalist or any news org as to why he said what he said?

Similarly, have you seen a major news org ask why he offered last weekend's post about the Clintons' many murders? Such conduct seems to be a form of madness. Have you seen anyone ask what such bizarre conduct might mean?

The silence of those major orgs could also be seen as madness. The silence those orgs agree to maintain is one more way the world can look when things have fallen apart.

We offer this to raise a question— a question which is still going unasked. We referred to the question yesterday. That question would be this:

Is something wrong with President Trump? What explains the apparent madness of this powerful person?

By now, that's a fairly obvious question. When our news orgs keep refusing to ask it, that suggests that things have already fallen apart.

Yesterday, we offered this comparison:

As a general matter, our major news orgs failed to ask if something was wrong with President Biden. They're now adopting the same stance with respect to President Trump! 

For today, we want to establish one point:

Almost surely, whatever is wrong with President Trump differs from what was apparently wrong with President Biden.

President Biden seems to have suffered a substantial cognitive decline. Whatever is wrong with President Trump—whatever may explain his peculiar behavior— we'll guess that it's something different.

That said, something seems to be wrong with President Trump—but so what? Our big news orgs are avoiding the topic, as they did in the case of President Biden.

Meanwhile, the sitting president's apparent madness is leading a revolt from below. The stumblebums are on the march. Some of them are genuine stumblebums, some are merely pretending. 

A type of silent secession is underway. Rubio's refusal to answer—his version of that silent secession—could hardly have been more clear.

The current president's behavior seems to be characterized by strong elements of madness. Of course, it's always possible that he's just faking. Arguably, that would be a type of madness too.

Something seems to be wrong with the president. That post about the Clintons was madness. So too when our major news orgs agree to avert their gaze.

For the record, nothing is going to change this. These are the ways the world starts to look when a society loses its secret sauce—when things have fallen apart.

Tomorrow: "Wrestler" locks Comey up