THE HUNDRED DAYS: At long last, the Times pipes up!

THURSDAY, MAY 1, 2025

But here's what happened on Fox: Wanda Petronski had a hundred dresses in her closet, all lined up. 

In his second bite at the apple, President Trump has now had a hundred days to advance his agenda. With respect to job approval, he continues to hang in there at roughly 40 percent. 

If that persists, it will almost surely be enough to keep the Republican Senate in line.

Meanwhile, thirteen days later, the timorous folk at the New York Times have finally dared to speak! Believe it or not, Blue America's paper of record has finally piped up with this:

Trump Would Not Concede ‘MS-13’ Letters Were Digitally Added

During an interview with Terry Moran of ABC News on Tuesday, President Trump insisted that the man his administration had mistakenly deported to El Salvador had a gang name tattooed on his hand.

“On his knuckles,” Mr. Trump said, “he had MS-13.”

Pause the tape. Rewind it to about a week earlier, when Mr. Trump in a social post held up a photograph of the man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, showing him with four tattoos, one on each finger. There was a leaf, a smiley face, a cross and a skull. Above those symbols the alphanumeric term “MS13” had been superimposed onto the photo, essentially serving as a caption, decoding the tattoos. (Some gang experts have questioned whether they are truly MS-13 symbols.)

In the interview with Mr. Moran, the president appeared to believe that the characters that had been typed onto the photo he triumphantly held up in his social media post were in fact tattoos themselves. Mr. Moran gingerly tried to correct the record about that, but Mr. Trump was having none of it.

It had been his latest crazy claim. It was stated on April 18.

Finally, the timorous Times was telling its readers about the latest lunatic claim. For the record, we know of no way to say if the president believed what he said on April 18, even if he believes it still.

Th New York Times is a large, sprawling institution. It does a lot of highly important reporting. But in its own first hundred days, it has followed its earlier conduct:

The paper has refused to address a fairly obvious point of concern about the world's most powerful person.

To the newspaper's credit, it has now published an accurate account of what happened when the president sat with Moran:

During the interview, Moran said the letters and numbers M / S / 1 / 3 had been photoshopped onto a photograph of Abrego Garcia's hand. The president seemed to insist, again and again, that the M, the S, the 1 and the 3 were actually tattooed right onto his hand.

Back on April 18, this allegation had qualified as his latest crazy claim. When he sat with Moran, he kept insisting on the accuracy of this crazy claim.

Right up to that point, the Times had refused to report the fact that there he'd gone again. Once again, the Times was refusing to address an obvious fact:

Plainly, something seems to be wrong with the world's most powerful person.

That's a tragic loss of human potential. Now for a brief aside:

There also seems to be something wrong with the person he picked to run his assault-by-DOGE. Also, he has surrounded himself with people who are inclined to make bizarre statements like this:

AG Pam Bondi Makes Absurd Announcement in Cabinet Meeting Claiming Trump Saved Over 75% of Americans from Dying

Attorney General Pam Bondi made a mathematically questionable claim during a Cabinet meeting Wednesday, telling gathered reporters and the television audience that President Donald Trump deserved credit for saving “258 million lives.”

Trump gathered his Cabinet at the White House Wednesday afternoon for what has become a predictable round of compliments dished out from his appointees, who declare that their agencies have accomplished great things at the president’s direction...

Was Bondi's statement "mathematically questionable?"  Routinely, we human beings routinely have a hard time choosing and using our words!

People, a foreign imprisonment isn't the same thing as a "deportation." Also, a PR event isn't a "cabinet meeting." A misstatement may not be a "lie."

All too often, again and again, our journalists aren't real good with their words. Here's what Bondi actually said at yesterday's "cabinet meeting:"

BONDI (4/30/25): President, your first hundred days has far exceeded that of any other presidency in. this. country. Ever. Ever. Never seen anything like it. Thank you.

Your directive to me was very simple: Make America safe.

[...]

I was at DEA yesterday, and they said to me [that] you, Donald Trump, have taken the handcuffs off of DEA agents. And as a result of— Since you have been in office, President Trump, your DOJ agencies have seized more than 22 million fentanyl pills, 34 hundred kilos of fentanyl. 

Since you’ve been— Your last 100 days, which saved—are you ready for this, media?—258 million lives!

Are you ready for this, media? the AG defiantly said. She then proceeded to author a claim which makes no earthly sense.

You have to watch the videotape to appreciate the pre-human level of fawning. But as Mediaite noted, Bondi seems to have said that President Trump has already saved the lives of 75% of this nation's population—all in his first hundred days!

A statement like that isn't "mathematically questionable." In fairness to Mediaite, it's hard to find the appropriate language with which to describe such a claim. 

As was shown once again at this PR event, this president has surrounded himself with a stable of people like Bondi. The New York Times doesn't seem to have issued a report about Bondi's bewildering claim. Beyond that, though, a larger question looms:

When, if ever, will Blue America's paper of record address the obvious question at hand?

Let's return, at this point, to this president's claim about Abrego Garcia's tattoos. It has now been recognized, even by the Times, as the latest of his many extremely strange claims. 

By now, everyone knows that his original statement was (at best) "crazy adjacent." Also, everyone knows that the president doubled down on his original bogus claim when he spoke with Moran.

Everyone knows that his statement was crazy—everyone except the millions of people, in Red America, who watched yesterday's edition of The Five.

It's the most watched program in "cable news." Its audience dwarfs that of any program on CNN or MSNBC.

Yesterday, during its third segment, four of its co-hosts worked to establish some alternate facts. It started with the astonishing Greg Gutfeld, who now trashes Barack Obama for supposedly being gay pretty much every night of the week on his garbage can program, Gutfeld!, which at 10 p.m. nightly.

This strangely disordered man also co-hosts each day on The Five. And there he was, yesterday, turning the tables on Terry Moran, with the president going unmentioned. 

In this passage, the fellow is referring to the claim that the letters and numbers "M / S / 1 / 3" are tattooed right on Abrego Garcia's knuckles. In this passage, the simplest facts are turned on their head:

GUTFELD (4/30/25): Well, let's simplify it. The letters and the numbers are labels that translate the symbols on his knuckles. 

The reporter tried to say that the labels were the tattoo—an intentional deception to make you think he's a gang member.

[...]

Those—that label was added on as a translated [sic]. What the newscaster tried to do was make it sound like, "Oh my god, the whole thing was doctored." No, it wasn't.

Granted, that was a hopeless jumble. But clearly, Gutfeld was telling the Fox News Channel's millions of viewers that it was Moran who tried to say that the letters and numbers M / S / 1 / 3 were actually tattooed on Abrego Garcia's knuckles.

Plainly, it was Trump who had kept insisting on that claim as he spoke with Moran. But by the time the demons finished yesterday's segment, Red America's viewers had been treated to a massive jumble in which Trump's behavior had been disappeared, while Moran had somehow been involved in a deliberate deception.

Warning! If you watch that entire pseudo-discussion, you will see the Fox News Channel at its post-human worst. Along the way, you'll see liberal punching bag Jessica Tarlov try to clarify a whole set of topics, including the matter of the tattoos—and then, you'll see the post-human Jesse Watters say that everything she said was wrong. 

Needless to say, he reinvented her various statements. The gentleman started like this:

WATTERS (4/30/25): I'm sorry, Jessica. I love you, but I don't believe anything you say any more.

You're wrong about everything. Every time you come up with these things—

First, he's "a Maryland dad." Then actually, he does have tattoos that spell "MS-13!" Yeah, then there's this other tattoo expert that you have...

The apparent tool continued from there, at considerable length. To appearances, Tarlov is paid to just sit there and take it. 

(Fuller disclosure: Dana Perino is paid to convey the false impression that the four MAGA co-hosts aren't all totally nuts.)

Watters went on and on from there, thereby ending the segment. As you can see, he quickly turned the tables on reality. He pretended that Tarlov had said that Abrego Garcia really did have those tattoos! 

As with Gutfeld, so too here: Trump's insistence on this claim was totally disappeared. But so it goes on this demonic program, day after day, as the New York Times looks away.

Something plainly seems to be wrong with President Trump. Also, the Fox News Channel is a very important corporate assault on the human project.

The Times gives President Trump wide berth. It refuses to discuss the Fox News Channel at all. 

With his first hundred days now gone, the bell is tolling for President Trump. Is it also tolling for a Blue America whose tribunes keep running away, keep refusing to speak or to serve?

Tomorrow: Emily Compagno, fast and slow, plus Homan, flat and round