THURSDAY: Is the sitting president "out of his mind?"

THURSDAY, JUNE 19, 2025

A reader asked Philip Bump: So now we're left with President Trump being the person who has to make a major, fateful decision.

We don't mean this as an insult, but he isn't the person we would have chosen. For those of us in Blue America, it might not be a bad time to remember some of the ways we managed to get ourselves here.

We kept insisting that nothing was wrong at the southern border. We kept insisting that nothing was wrong with President Biden.

With respect to complaints about the rise in the overall cost of living, we kept insisting, on loan from the early Dylan, that "them old dreams are only in your head." And then too, also this:

Frequently, we adopted stances concerning various social issues—various stances which came to be described as "woke." Even if we judge those stances to be ultimately correct, some of those stances took us well beyond the boundaries of conventional understanding and assessment—and you go to the polls with the electorate you currently have.

(In our view, quite a few of those stances probably weren't ultimately correct. Some of those stances weren't just wrong on the politics, they were also wrong on the merits.)

Also this:

We spent years focusing on the desire to Lock the Other Guy Up. The many hours we spent on the minutia of those legal cases were hours we didn't spend on the topics which may have been moving voters away from our own liberal / progressive / Democratic camp.

We aren't the geniuses we've claimed to be—not morally, not intellectually.  Our endless name-calling also got us here, to the place where President Trump will end up being the person who has to make the decision.

Along the way, we still refuse to improve our journalistic game. We refer you to a recent exchange involving the Washington Post's Philip Bump.

Bump is no one's idea of a slouch; he does plenty of good work. In part for that reason, we were struck by what he said in response to this question from a reader during a Washington Post "Live Chat:" 

Is Trump tactical—or out of his mind? I answered your questions.

[...]

Is Trump truly out of his mind? 
Guest

He demands "unconditional surrender" from Iran and adds that he knows where knows Iran’s supreme leader is but won’t kill him, “at least not for now.” What do you think: Finely tuned negotiating tactic or lunacy?

That was one of a bunch of questions to which Bump responded. The reader seemed to be asking if there could be some kind of a problem with the state of President Trump's mental health. 

The headline seems to have been composed by the Washington Post.

Over the past eight years, medical and psychiatric specialists have sometimes rather clearly suggested that the answer to the headlined question is yes. That said, Bump is a journalist, not a medical specialist—but instead of simply saying so, this is the "answer" he gave:

Philip Bump 
Columnist

President Trump is driven by a number of basic and at times conflicting motivations. One is that he acts on impulse. Another is his desire to look strong. Another, related one is that he is wildly insecure. Another, also related one is that he is eager not to have anyone understand just how out of his depth he is in his current position.

If you consider that Truth Social post in that light, it makes sense. He's demanding "unconditional surrender" from a foreign country that … the U.S. isn't at war with? It is an attainable toughness for Trump, suggesting that the U.S. is leaning on Iran without having to cajole Congress into sending actual troops (or just sending them, as has been the norm in the past few decades).

But it's not like Iran was about to simply surrender to … who, exactly? So the result of this (almost certainly) impulsive declaration is that Trump looks weaker, if only incrementally. OK, they didn't surrender. So now what?

He has no answer for that either. So, for the moment, he appears to be content basking in the reflected glow of Israel's bombing runs.

That's an answer which isn't an answer. It's basically standard yak.

Bump could have summarized some of the analyses which have been offered by some medical specialists, including Trump's own niece. Instead, he went with a standard issue pseudo-answer—with an imitation of life.

Is something wrong with President Trump? (Colloquially, is he "out of his mind?")

At this site, we aren't medical specialists either! That said, we continue to wonder about this assessment by the president's niece:

The fact is, his pathologies are so complex and his behaviors so often inexplicable that coming up with an accurate and comprehensive diagnosis would require a full battery of psychological and neuropsychological tests that he’ll never sit for.

That's a small part of what Mary Trump wrote about her uncle's apparent "psychopathologies" in her best-selling book from 2020. In the book, she accompanies her punishing portrait of the adult version of her uncle with a sympathetic portrait of the way he got to be the way he is, starting with a deeply unfortunate family event when he was two years old.

(Also, starting with an even earlier unfortunate fact—the fact that he was born to a sociopathic father. Or so says Mary Trump.)

For ourselves, we continue to wonder about "Delusional disorder" as described by the leading authority on the unfortunate syndrome. It seems to us that President Trump is gripped by the idea that he's one of the planet's handful of truly great men—that he's a towering figure on a plane with potentates like Putin and Xi, a person whose unmatchable greatness takes him far beyond the stature of the pitiful and stupid people who lead our traditional "allies."

Mary Trump describes the way his (sociopathic) father taught him to see the world through that disordered lens (in effect, as "The Great I-Am"). The fact that she offered these assessments doesn't mean that her assessments are right. But Philip Bump isn't a medical specialist, and when he gets a question like the one he received, he ought to start by stating that fact before he gives something resembling an answer.

(Does the president feel that he is The Great I-Am, a transcendent global figure by dint of his vast abilities? Such a belief would, it seems, be delusion-adjacent—but in this very dangerous moment, he finally stands astride the world, the transcendent figure on whom we must all rely.)

What would a (carefully selected) medical specialist think about the question Bump was asked? If we had the reach of the Washington Post, we'd be inclined to ask!

Our national discourse is quite unimpressive, even among us Blues. By and large, we Blues seem to be unaware of that unfortunate but obvious fact.

Philip Bump does a lot of good work. That said, there's a rule he isn't allowed to break—a rule he failed to acknowledge when he answered that fuzzy, somewhat flippant question in the way he did.

Strong advice for a disabled nation: Dylan was barely 21 when he wrote Talkin' World War III Blues. The song ends with an offer—with a new and transcendent dream—which could hardly be more relevant for our broken nation:

Talkin' World War III Blues

[...]

Well, time passed and now it seems
Everybody's having them dreams.
Everybody sees hisself walkin' around with no one else.
"Half of the people can be part right all of the time;
"Some of the people can be all right part of the time;
"But all of the people can't be all right all of the time."
I think Abraham Lincoln said that.
I'll let you be in my dream if I can be in yours.
I said that.

We'd call that brilliant youthful advice. We'd call it a driving dream. 

There was a bit more room for hope at that time. To hear the recording, click here.

REVOLUTION: The murderer was a Democrat!

THURSDAY, JUNE 19, 2025

So two C-Span callers now said: The murders, and the attempted murders, occurred in the middle of the night.

Technically, they took place on June 14, very early on Saturday morning. CNN's first report of this terrible event came right at the start of that morning's 9 o'clock hour, Boris Sanchez reporting:

SANCHEZ (6/14/25): We begin this hour with the breaking news out of Minnesota. A massive manhunt is underway as police are searching for the person behind the assassination of a top Democratic lawmaker and the attempted assassination of another state lawmaker.

There had been no mention of this event in that morning's 8 o'clock hour. For that transcript, you can click here.

CNN's viewers were thus apprised, for the first time, of these horrific events. For viewers of the Fox News Channel, time was possibly passing a bit more slowly up there in the mountains.

Fox & Friends Weekend had come on the air at 6 a.m. sharp, primed for its standard four-hour run. Searching on "Minnesota," we find no sign that the shootings were ever mentioned during that morning's program.

In fairness, the friends were already in D.C. that morning, broadcasting from the scene of that evening's military parade. Also, the military strikes in Israel and Iran had emerged as the day's top news event. 

The "No Kings" demonstrations would take place around the country that day. On Fox & Friends Weekend, the trio of friends focused this day on the military parade and on the events from the Middle East.

That may explain why Minnesota went unmentioned on Fox until 10:32 a.m. At that time, Bryan Llenas returned from a commercial break with a bit of a Fox News Alert:

LLENAS (6/14/25): We've got some breaking news. This morning, Minnesota residents are being ordered to shelter in place after multiple shootings today.  Here's what we know:

Democratic senator John Hoffman and Democratic House representative Melissa Hortman and their spouses have been shot by someone impersonating a police officer. Minnesota Governor Walz is calling this a targeted attack. 

Police say the suspect is a white man with brown hair wearing black body armor over a blue shirt and blue pants. He's considered armed and dangerous.

Wow! We will keep you updated on this story as we learn more.

That was part of the 10 o'clock broadcast of Fox News Live. 

As you can see, Llenas identified the victims as Democrats. As we'll eventually see, that bit of information may have tended to disappear from Fox News Channel programs last weekend as the channel kept its viewers "updated on the story." 

To his own substantial credit, Llenas actually used the term "Democratic" when he noted the party affiliation of the victims. That's a standard courtesy which is widely observed in the breach as childish employees of this "cable news" channel demonstrate their tribal loyalty by persistently referring to "the Democrat [sic] Party," in their occasional news reports but also in their constant pseudo-discussions.

Also, Llenas had somehow managed to refer to Governor Walz without calling him "Tampon Tim!" As our nation and its discourse devolve, that also marks Llenas as a bit of a standout on Fox.

Llenas behaved exactly as a broadcast journalist should have. Later in that hour, Fox News Live aired the first briefing conducted by Governor Walz other Minnesota officials. Indeed, Fox News Live aired the event in its entirety. 

During that briefing, Governor Walz referred to the Minnesota budget bill which had passed into law the previous week—a budget bill which would soon be part of the disinformation campaign which swept across substantial parts of Red America.

We aren't giant fans of Governor Walz ourselves, but his remarks that day were wholly appropriate—indeed, were quite instructive. So was the behavior of Fox News Live as it reported this emerging news event.

The shootings had occurred at 2 a.m., and then at 3:30 a.m., Central time. CNN reported the basic news first, at 9 a.m. Eastern—but the Fox News Channel soon followed.

From there, the Fox News Channel spent much of the day reporting events from the Middle East, but also from the D.C. parade route. We now skip ahead to something which happened the next day, early on Sunday morning, during the 7 o'clock hour of C-Span's Washington Journal.

If you're an American citizen, you currently live in a type of modern-day Babel. It's the type of Babel which takes form after the so-called "democratization of media"—after the explosion of broadcast capability which has made "every person a king" with respect to the spread of information, or possibly with respect to the spread of its various opposites.

We were surprised by some of what we heard as we watched Washington Journal that morning. At 7:33 on Sunday morning, a phone call from Queens went on the air as C-Span viewers listened.

Carmen from Queens was now on the air. Here's part of what she said:

MODERATOR (6/15/25): Let's hear from Carmen in Queens, New York, Republican line. Good morning!

CARMEN FROM QUEENS: Yes, good morning. Thank you for taking my call. 

I'm calling as someone who used to be a Democrat my entire life and then switched over in 2020 to Republican. I see here that people are calling because they definitely are haters of Trump, and everything they think or do is driven by that hatred.

[...]

As far as the murders in Minnesota, I can't believe no one's even mentioning this. The person who committed the murders, the alleged murderer who they're looking for, appears to have been someone appointed into position by Governor Walz, and he is someone who had "No Kings" fliers in his car. And he apparently was a Democrat supporter.

According to this caller, the murderer was apparently "a Democrat supporter!" 

This claim seemed fly in the face of widespread reporting which had emerged in the course of the previous day. That said, the caller said she couldn't believe that no one was even mentioning this state of affairs. 

The murderer has been appointed into position by Walz. Also, he had "No Kings" fliers in his car. 

On that basis, the caller had apparently concluded that the murderer was "a Democrat supporter," apparently of Governor Walz.  At 7:46, a similar call came in:

RUDY FROM OHIO: ...As far as these people getting shot up in Minnesota, I don't hear nobody saying that the guy worked for Walz—worked for Governor Walz. All these—he was a political appointee, a Democrat political appointee. 

Why doesn't these news— C-Span, NBC, they don't want to mention the fact that the guy's a Democrat, you know? It's amazing to watch this on TV unfold.

I watched TV about all say yesterday, and nobody— Once the fact got out that he's a Democrat, they don't even talk about it no more. You know, it's really sick to watch these people lie, lie, lie, you know? 

[...]

MODERATOR: That was Rudy in Ohio. Bill, also in Ohio—line for Independents. Good morning, Bill!

Bill expressed a different overall view. But in the calls from Queens and Ohio, the discourse was well on its way to the astonishing pair of posts advanced by Senator Mike Lee.

The news was first reported on CNN at 9 o'clock on Saturday morning. Less than 24 hours later, this surprising claim was being advanced, with great certainty, by a pair of C-Span callers:

The murderer was a Democrat—a supporter of Governor Walz!

That's what two callers insistently said, less than 24 hours later, as other viewers listened.

Those phone calls had come from one important region of our deeply entrenched, and deeply destructive, American Babel. That Babel has largely gone unexplored by major news orgs here in our own Blue America. 

There's nothing took at! Move right along! our major new orgs seem inclined to say.

Thoe callers had already become convinced that the murderer was a Democrat. Each caller expressed anger and shock at the way this fact was being suppressed by the lies of the mainstream press.

Tomorrow, with time running out for the week, we'll show you what was being said on Sunday's edition of Fox & Friends Weekend even as those calls were being aired on C-Span.

Then, we'll skip ahead to that evening's edition of The Big Weekend Show. on which we heard some of the dumbest presentations we've ever heard on an alleged news program. That two-hour "cable news" program also airs, each weekend night, on the Fox News Channel.

Our nation is in a world of hurt. We're plainly entrenched in a Babel.

A revolution has taken place. It's a revolution in values, but also in the promulgation of bogus claims and preferred tribal Storyline.

Various clown cars are involved in this sad situation. None of those vehicles match the size of the clown cars maintained by Fox.

Is there something to look at here? We'd say there probably is.

We'd recommend the saying of names—the discussion of ludicrous conduct.

Tomorrow: On Sunday morning, Johnny Joey Jones had some questions—or did he? On Sunday evening, we sat through two of the dumbest hours we've ever seen on TV.

Is there something to look at here? We'd say there possibly is!

WEDNESDAY: Times tries to explain the growing debt!

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 18, 2025

Also, Times tries to explain arrests: Even at the highest journalistic levels, simple explanation isn't real easy.

As a matter of fact, basic explanation often seem to be fiendishly hard.

We start with the latest attempt to explain the effect the pending Republican budget bill would have on the (growing) national debt. The national debt is already quite large.  How large could it get in the future?

The CBO has issued another estimate—another projection—concerning that budget bill. In this morning's New York Times, Tony Romm starts off like this:

House Policy Bill Would Add $3.4 Trillion to Debt, Swamping Economic Gains

House Republicans’ sprawling package to cut taxes and slash federal safety-net programs would add about $3.4 trillion to the debt, according to nonpartisan congressional analysts, who reported on Tuesday that the minor gains in economic growth under the bill would not offset its full fiscal impact.

The updated findings from the Congressional Budget Office amounted to yet another dour report card for the president’s signature legislation, which passed the House last month but now faces the prospect of significant revisions to its core components in the Senate.

In its current form, the House Republican bill would extend and expand a set of expiring tax cuts enacted by President Trump during his first term. It would pay for some of those expensive components with deep cuts to federal anti-poverty programs, including Medicaid and food stamps.

The C.B.O. report issued on Tuesday sought to project the ways the bill would interact with federal spending and the U.S. economy, building on its earlier finding that the House-passed measure carried a roughly $2.4 trillion price tag.

[...]

Even after factoring in spending cuts, the proposal would still add nearly $2.8 trillion to federal deficits over the next 9 years, according to the official tally from C.B.O. The figure grows to about $3.4 trillion if the full costs of federal borrowing are included.

We're speaking here about nine years, not the customary ten. For reasons Romm explains in his report, that early estimate—roughly $2.4 trillion "added to the debt"—has now been jumped to "[roughly] $3.4 trillion if the full costs of federal borrowing are included."

(By the way: Why wouldn't the additional costs of borrowing be included? We have no idea.)

Romm goes on to explain various things. We'll offer our standard complaint:

Romm reports the CBO's estimate: The House Republican bill, as it currently stands, would add "nearly $2.8 trillion" (or to "[roughly] $3.4 trillion") to the debt over the next nine years.

Presumably, we're supposed to think that's a lot. What goes unstated is this:

Based on CBO estimates, we're going to add well over $20 trillion to the debt over that period as matters already stand. That $3.4 trillion is a relatively small addition to that projected pile of new debt.

The $2.8 / $3.4 trillion is a pebble on the beach compared to the amount of new debt which is already projected to occur. It's amazing to us that budget reporters don't articulate this basic matter in their budget reports, using actual numbers.

There used to be time for such explanations, but our news orgs are now forced to spend their time chasing distractions around. Meanwhile, we remain puzzled by a different unexplained matter in this second news report:

Brad Lander Is Arrested by ICE Agents at Immigration Courthouse

Brad Lander, the New York City comptroller who is running for mayor, was arrested on Tuesday by federal agents at an immigration courthouse in Lower Manhattan as he tried to escort a migrant whom agents were seeking to arrest.

[...]

Tuesday was the third time that Mr. Lander had appeared at the city’s immigration courts, where ICE agents, typically wearing masks, have become a regular presence as the agency ramps up arrests of migrants showing up for routine court hearings.

Prosecutors with the Department of Homeland Security have surprised a number of migrants by dismissing their cases when they appear in court, a legal tactic that opens the door for ICE agents to arrest them in the hallways once they leave and place them in expedited deportation proceedings without hearings.

Several Democratic politicians, including members of Congress, have shown up at immigration courthouses in recent weeks to protest the Trump administration’s new tactics.

As part of the administration's "new tactics," migrants have been arrested right in the hallways after prosecutors surprise them "by dismissing their cases." 

Our question:

What kinds of "cases" are we talking about? Also, why are these people subject to arrest once these cases are suddenly dismissed?

Today's report doesn't explain those points. Neither does the earlier report to which it provides a link regarding this very topic.

Explanation has never been easy. Today, in the face of all the distractions, it may be even harder.

REVOLUTION: CNN reported the murders at 9 a.m.!

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 18, 2025

What were Fox viewers told? Under current arrangements, the zone keeps getting flooded. 

Often, the zone is flooded with events which might qualify as distractions. Consider the alternate topics which have arisen since Saturday morning, June 14, when news of the political murders in Minnesota was first reported.

By that time, the military engagement between Israel and Iran was already a major topic. Stating th obvious, that remains a major, consequential topic right on through today.

The murders were reported on Saturday morning. On that same day, the military parade in D.C. took place, as did the "No Kings" protests around the nation. 

Two days earlier—on Thursday, June 12—Senator Padilla had been forcibly removed from the room, then shoved to the ground and handcuffed, after he interrupted Kristi Noem's opening statement at a Los Angeles press event. 

At that event, Noem announced that ICE would remain in Los Angeles as the agency worked to liberate Los Angeles from the policies of its mayor and its governor. 

While those events were being discussed, up jumped Senator Mike Lee with a pair of extremely unusual social media posts about the Minnesota murders. Discussion of those posts was underway as of Monday morning, June 16. 

Other events fought for attention during this handful of days:

On Wednesday, June 11, President Trump had been booed at the Kennedy Center. On Monday, June 16, Donald Trump Jr. "announced the launch of Trump Mobile, which will utilize the nation’s three major wireless networks—AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile USA—to offer 5G service to its customers."

Elon Musk released the alleged results of an alleged drug test. The MyPillow guy was ordered to pay $2.3 million as the result of a defamation lawsuit.

The president threw Tulsi Gabbard under a bus, two times. It was reported that the president might add 36 more countries to his travel ban.

The president left the G-7 conference a day early. Also, he called Tucker Carlson a kook. 

Terry Moran managed to get himself fired from ABC News. On Monday evening, President Trump recommended the evacuation of Tehran.

Along with the usual array of colorful insults delivered by the usual suspects, those were some of the events which crowded the scene in the days which surrounded the murders in Minnesota. 

That said, nothing stopped the promulgation of the latest tribal Storyline. As of Sunday morning, callers to C-Span's Washington Journal were already telling the nation that the assailant in Minnesota had in fact been a Democrat. There the liberals had gone again!

Those phone calls aired on Washington Journal during Sunday morning's 7 o'clock hour. Last evening, the attempt to establish this tribally pleasing claim continued apace on NewsMax, as described in a new report from Mediaite.

Warning! Some of the claims which get quoted in that report are either false or are grossly misleading. Headline included, Mediaite's report begins as shown: 

Newsmax Host Asks: ‘Is Governor Walz Running a State or a Terror Organization?’

Newsmax host David Harris Jr. asked on Tuesday whether Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz was “running a state or a terror organization” after it was reported that the suspect in the shooting of State Representative Melissa Hortman and state Senator John Hoffman had ties to the governor.

Reacting to the arrest of suspect Vance Boelter—who was reappointed by Walz to the Minnesota Governor’s Workforce Development Board in 2019, after having previously been appointed by former governor Mark Dayton—Harris questioned, “What were his motives?”

He continued, “Well, just days before, state Representative Melissa Hortman, before she was killed, she voted no on Governor Tim Walz’s plan to give healthcare coverage to illegal aliens. After the vote, she seemed very noticeably afraid for her safety in a local news interview.”

And so on from there. Very important:

Already, that quoted statement by Harris seems to be multiply wrong.

It's true! Boelter had been reappointed by Walz to that minor, inconsequential state board. But that's where the accuracy seems to end.

Based on local reports, in real time, about the late Melissa Hortman's recent vote on Minnesota's new budget legislation, we'll suggest that everything else that Harris said was either false or was grossly misleading. We'll offer two links below.

To appearances, Harris was telling citizens in Red America that Hortman was shot and killed because she failed to support a proposal by Governor Walz, the possible terror kingpin. This tribally pleasing lunacy ignores the fact that another Democratic state lawmaker had been shot before Melissa Hortman was killed, and that the assailant had apparently tried to kill two other Democratic lawmakers before he, disastrously, arrived at Hortman's home.

Madness takes that murderous form. Madness also takes the form of that "news report" on NewsMax.

Now for the rest of the story:

Hortman had voted one way on the Minnesota budget bill. Joined by Republicans in the dead-even Minnesota legislature, she and Walz had worked together to produce the compromise legislation for which she voted. 

As best we can tell, those other lawmakers, Democrats all, had voted the other way. The assailant had already shot one of them, and had apparently hoped to shoot the two others, before he arrived at the home of Hortman, where he did murder two people.

Walz had (re)appointed the apparent assailant to that (inconsequential) post! Also, Melissa Hortman had voted the wrong way on some bill, or something vaguely like that.

On Sunday morning, those claims were already being bruited by the callers to C-Span, who said the assailant had been—what else?—a Democrat. 

Assassination attempts have been launched by various assailants from various sides of various aisles. But can a modern nation expect to survive a media regime in which people like Harris work hard, around the clock, to spread such perceptions around?  

Bright and early on Sunday morning, less than a day since the news hit the wires, C-Span viewers were hearing callers say that the assailant was known to be a Democrat. This claim had spread with remarkable speed. It spread even further on C-Span that day. 

That brings us to the question we want to explore in the next two days:

As of Sunday morning, how were the "cable news" stars on the Fox News Channel reporting the murders in Minnesota? What were viewers of the Fox News Channel being told about that event?

Tomorrow, we'll visit the reporting on Sunday morning's edition of Fox & Friends Weekend. On Friday, we'll show you what was said that evening on The Big Weekend Show.

Governor Walz is a terror king! As Blue news orgs avert their gaze, Red news orgs and other such types have been spreading such claims around.

All in all, a revolution is underway with respect to the spread of "information." 

That revolution is deeply entrenched. It may be hard to survive.

Tomorrow: Fox star asks nine questions 

Friday: Possibly the dumbest work we've ever seen on a news broadcast. Nothing to look at, we're told.

About that Minnesota budget legislation: For one local report, just click this. For a second report, click here.

TUESDAY: Budget bill, war with Iran poll poorly!

TUESDAY, JUNE 17, 2025

We'd call it a dangerous time: On the one hand, it could look like a piece of encouraging news. At Mediaite, Joe DePaulo reports that President Trump's budget bill seems to be polling poorly. We've edited the headline:

Trump’s Budget Bill [Performing Poorly] in Two New Polls

The “Big, Beautiful” budget bill backed by President Donald Trump is a polling loser, two new surveys show.

A poll published by the Washington Post Tuesday shows just 23 percent of Americans support the legislation, while 42 percent oppose it. The good news from the poll for Trump—if there is any—is that a large segment of the populous is still on the fence, as 34 percent say they have no opinion about the bill.

But a poll from KFF (formerly known as the Kaiser Family Foundation) shows views about the bill are more entrenched. The KFF poll shows 64 percent hold unfavorable views on the bill, while 35 percent have a favorable opinion.

[...]

Though the Post poll found some voters could be convinced, the bad news for President Trump is that the more people learn about the bill, the less they like it. Among those who say they have heard a “great deal or a good amount” about the bill, 64 percent oppose it, while 33 percent support it.

In the one survey, 34 percent of respondents said they have no opinion on the bill. In the other survey, just one percent of respondents seem to be on the fence.

So it can sometimes go with polling! Meanwhile, consider this:

 Within the internals of the Post survey, 66 percent of respondents say they have heard "a little" or "nothing at all" about the budget bill. In part, that's because of the endless stream of distractions with which the Trump administration is sometimes said to be "flooding the zone."

(Forty percent of respondents said they've heard only "a little" about the bill. An additional 26 percent said they've heard "nothing at all.")

The budget bill seems to be polling poorly. In a separate survey, the emerging Trump stance on military action against Iran also seems to be polling poorly:

Whopping Majority of Americans Oppose US Military Involvement in Conflict Between Israel and Iran

[,,,]

A new Economist/YouGov poll this week shows that Americans are not too excited about the US getting involved in Israel and Iran’s fighting.

According to the results, just 16% back US involvement while 60% say the US should not be involved. Another 24% said they were unsure.

The numbers in this pair of surveys may point to a dangerous time. We can imagine the president becoming even more erratic, possibly even more aggressive, if his basic polling profile seems to be in steep decline.

That said, his recent posts about Iran seem to have rocketed off in the direction of open military involvement.  Last evening, he posted this strange recommendation:

Everyone should immediately evacuate Tehran!

For the record, Tehran's population is roughly nine million. It would be hard to get everyone out.

Today, in a trio of subsequent posts, President Trump seems to be announcing unequivocal U.S. ownership of the military actions against Iran. That includes veiled threats about possible plans to "take out (kill!)" that nation's "so-called Supreme Leader."

"Our patience is wearing thin," one new post says. "Thank you for your attention to this matter."

Full disclosure! Some people would support overt American attacks against Iran. Other people would not.

There's also the question of the possible erratic behavior of this particular president. With that in mind, Jon Stewart has finally asked the relevant question:

What the f*ck is wrong with that guy? 

Stewart posed the question last night—except he was talking about Mike Lee! Then too, there's the basic matter of tone.

Could something be wrong with President Trump? We've been posing that question for a long time now. Something almost surely was wrong with President Biden. Is it possible that something—presumably, something different—could be wrong with President Trump?

Tragically, we regard that as a basic question. That said:

Within the realm of possible political discourse, it almost surely helps if you can ask that question with an empathetic tone, as opposed to throwing it out as an insult. (Presumably, it helps even more if you can actually mean it when you adopt that tone.)

Is something wrong with President Trump? If so, a time of declining political standing could imaginably be an increasingly dangerous time—or possibly not, of course.

Colby Hall has reported those latest aggressive posts. You can peruse them here.

REVOLUTION: The Salt Lake Tribune speaks!

TUESDAY, JUNE 17, 2025

An unseen revolution: Back in the street-fighting days, the Beatles announced that they weren't endorsing every part of the plan.

By "the plan," we mean the revolution. John Lennon had written the song. Here's part of what it said:

Revolution
Say you want a revolution, well, you know
We all wanna change the world.
You tell me that it's evolution, well, you know
We all wanna change the world.

But when you talk about destruction
Don't you know that you can count me out?

Don't you know it's gonna be—
All right, all right. All right, all right...

You say you got a real solution, well, you know
We'd all love to see the plan.
You ask me for a contribution, well, you know
We're all doin' what we can...

And so on, from there.

For the record, it wasn't "going to be all right" for a lot of people at that point in time. Meanwhile, in the present day, we aren't all doing what we can. 

Almost no one ever does—but that isn't because we're bad people. It's because we're all people people—imperfect in all major ways.

Also, it isn't clear that it's "going to be all right" in the present circumstance! When it comes to our current revolution, that's the overall point of today's report.

For better or worse, there was a backlash to that Beatles song. The leading authority on the era offers this overview:

Revolution (Beatles song)

"Revolution" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles, written by John Lennon and credited to the Lennon–McCartney partnership. Three versions of the song were recorded and released in 1968, all during sessions for the Beatles' self-titled double album, also known as the "White Album": a slow, bluesy arrangement ("Revolution 1") included on the album; an abstract sound collage (titled "Revolution 9") that originated as the latter part of "Revolution 1" and appears on the same album; and the faster, hard rock version similar to "Revolution 1," released as the B-side of "Hey Jude." Although the single version was issued first, it was recorded several weeks after "Revolution 1," intended for release as a single...

Inspired by political protests in early 1968, Lennon's lyrics expressed sympathy with the need for social change but doubt in regard to the violent tactics espoused by some members of the New Left. Despite his bandmates' reservations, he persevered with the song and insisted it be included on their next single. When released in August, the song was viewed by the political left as a betrayal of their cause and a sign that the Beatles were out of step with radical elements of the counterculture. The release of "Revolution 1" in November indicated Lennon's uncertainty about destructive change, with the phrase "count me out" recorded instead as "count me out—in."

And so on, at length, from there.

That was then, but this is now. We speak today of the current revolution. It's a revolution in values and understandings. It's also a revolution in the transmission of information and misinformation and pleasing Storyline.

It's a revolution which major elites in Blue America seem to be unable to spot. In our view, those entities seem to be unwilling to report, discuss and assess the revolution in question. 

In fairness, we'll guess that those major Blue American elites lack the intellectual and emotional intelligence with which to pursue some such objective. But however that guesswork may be judged, the refusal to report and discuss continues to move right along.

Over the weekend, Senator Lee's remarkable tweets were markers of this revolution in values and understandings. As usual, Blue America's major news orgs have largely chosen to "walk on by" the Utah senator's unusual conduct.

We refer to Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah). As we noted in yesterday's report, he launched pair of highly unusual tweets. It seems to us that Blue America's major elites have largely chosen to walk on by his highly unusual conduct.

Those orgs have taken that same approach with respect to the unusual conduct of President Trump and Elon Musk, but also with respect to the collection of "broken toys" who now surround the president. 

By the way: Will Red America's major elites even mention Senator Lee's unusual conduct? The jury is out at this time.

A revolution has already taken place within our flailing nation. On the whole, it's been met with the sounds of silence.

Senator Lee's astonishing tweets are among the fruits of that revolution. It seems to have fallen to the senator/'s hometown newspaper to offer a full report.

In fact, the report to which we refer  isn't exactly a report. The piece in question appears within "a house that is no more a house / Upon a farm that is no more a farm / And in a town that is no more a town," as Robert Frost once said.

The Washington Post and the New York Times seem to be glossing this revolution. Why did Senator Lee do what he did? The Salt Lake Tribune has now stepped up to the plate and reprinted a major attempt at a search.

There is no paywall to block you. Dual headline included, here's what the Tribune has published. The italics are theirs:

‘Have you no decency?’ Read the scathing letter a Minnesota US Senate staffer sent to Mike Lee
The deputy chief of staff for Sen. Tina Smith questioned if joking about the death of Melissa Hortman is a “successful day for Team Lee.”

After Utah Sen. Mike Lee promoted right-wing conspiracy theories about the man who shot two Minnesota legislators and their spouses, killing one couple, a senior staffer for the state’s U.S. Sen. Tina Smith wrote a blistering email to Lee’s office.

In an interview with a local TV station Sunday, Smith, also a Democrat from Minnesota, said she was on a list of the alleged shooter’s targets. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement Saturday that he asked Capitol Police to increase security for both Smith and Minnesota’s other senator, Amy Klobuchar.

The following is the text of the letter, shared with The Salt Lake Tribune, that Smith’s Deputy Chief of Staff Ed Shelleby said he sent about the killing of Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband:

I knew Melissa Hortman. Many people in this office did. She was a longtime friend of Senator Smith’s, who had seen her hours before she was murdered. So you’ll forgive my candor as I speak through enormous grief.

It is important for your office to know how much additional pain you’ve caused on an unspeakably horrific weekend. I am not sure what compelled you or your boss to say any of those things, which, in addition to being unconscionable, also may very well be untrue.

But that is not the point. Why would you use the awesome power of a United States Senate Office to compound people’s grief? Is this how your team measures success? Using the office of US Senator to post not just one but a series of jokes about an assassination— s that a successful day of work on Team Lee? Did you come into the office Monday and feel proud of the work you did over the weekend?

Let’s recap Saturday so you fully understand what Minnesota was going through. Melissa Hortman and her husband were murdered. Sen. Hoffman and his wife were shot numerous times and remain hospitalized. By the grace of God it appears they will survive. Senators are discovered to be on a hit list of an armed man on the run — Senator Lee’s colleagues. And the decision of the office of Senator Mike Lee was not to publicly condemn the violence or to express condolences to her shattered children — it was to intimate that Melissa and Mark somehow deserved this? By making jokes? Did you have any consideration for the survivors in her family? For the Hoffmans in the hospital? For their families?

You exploited the murder of a lifetime public servant and her husband to post some sick burns about Democrats. Did you see this as an excellent opportunity to get likes and retweet[s]? Have you absolutely no conscience? No decency?

I pray to God that none of you ever go through anything like this. I pray that Senator Lee and your office begin to see the people you work with in this building as colleagues and human beings. And I pray that if God forbid, you ever find yourselves having to deal with anything similar, you find yourselves on the receiving end of the kind of grace and compassion that Senator Mike Lee could not muster.

Lastly, I suggest you take a few minutes today to read about Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark. They were remarkable people. Here’s a story in the St. Paul Pioneer Press called “Melissa Hortman: Once a teenager with a job making burritos, she became a powerful MN lawmaker who trained service dogs.”

She was a force. And a human being. And I beg of you to exercise some restraint on social media as we continue to grieve.

To its credit, the Tribune seems to be willing to express its puzzlement with one of the fruits of the current revolution in understandings and values. The paper seems to be willing to ask, out loud, for an explanation of Senator Lee's highly unusual conduct.

By now, the New York Times and the Washington Post have each published fairly short reports about the senator's conduct. The Times report does not appear in this morning's print editions. It isn't being given high visibility on the Times' website.

We don't know if the Post's report on the senator's tweets has landed on D.C.'s doorsteps. That said, we'll guess that the explorations by those two papers are going to end right there. 

By way of contrast, the local paper in Salt Lake City has been willing to go all the way back to the famous question asked of Senator Joe McCarthy not that many years after the Beatles were born.

Why did Senator Lee do what he did? It's a fairly obvious question.

Will the leading newspapers of Blue America be willing to pursue that question? Or will those newspapers hurry along, implicitly suggesting that there's nothing to look at there—implicitly adopting the stance they've taken with respect to the bizarre behaviors of revolutionaries like the apparently disordered Musk?

We're going to leave it here for today, with the suggestion that we explicitly acknowledge the existence of the revolution which has already occurred. In our view, that revolution has been built upon some perfectly valid types of complaints—valid complaints which have been pursued in ways which are baldly disordered.

Tomorrow, we'll move ahead to some of what we saw on the Fox News Channel this Sunday—first on the gruesome Fox & Friends Weekend show, then on The Big Weekend Show between 6 and 8 p.m.

Some of what we saw on the latter show was as dumb as anything we've ever seen on a TV "news" program. That said, life is still good for the finer people, the ones who refuse to report or discuss the nonsense which is rolled out, each day ab each night, on that "cable news" channel.

Let's say this much for the Beatles! They were willing to acknowledge the fact that a revolution was being pursued in 1968.  They seemed to say, in that famous 1968 song, that they weren't entirely comfortable with certain aspects of what was being proposed.

In the current instance, a revolution has already taken place. It's a revolution is values and understandings, but also in the transmission of information and its opposite. 

Like denizens of a famous land whose emperor had a new suit of clothes, our self-impressed elites in Blue America seem to be unwilling to report, seem to beunable to see, what is standing right there before the.

In our view, possibly this:

Something we were withholding made us weak / Until we found out that it was ourselves / We were withholding from our land of living...

Why did Mike Lee do what he did? Is someone going to ask?

Tomorrow: In our view, stunningly dumb

MONDAY: Senator Paul seemed to stretch the truth!

MONDAY, JUNE 16, 2025

Then along came Senator Schiff: We offer a brief update concerning Mike Lee's astonishing pair of tweets, one of which went like this:

Nightmare on Waltz Street

The weirdly humorous remark was appended to photographs of Vance Boelter. For obvious reasons, it has been widely assumed that the Utah senator had simply misspelled the last name of Minnesota's Governor Tim Walz.

Given the overall nature of Lee's tweets, is it somehow possible that he was referring to former National Security Adviser Mike Waltz? We can't imagine what the reasoning would have been, but we offer that apparently far-fetched possibility as a hedge against snap judgement.

With that, we turn to the dueling presentations of two senators on yesterday's Meet the Press. At the end of a longer interview, Senator Paul (R-Ky.) told Kristen Welker this:

WELKER (6/15/25): Senator, very quickly, let me get your reaction to Senator Alex Padilla, who interrupted a press conference that was being held by DHS Secretary Kristi Noem. He was handcuffed, wrestled to the ground. The House Speaker says he should be censured. Do you agree? Should he be censured for that?

SENATOR PAUL: You know, I don't like the images of him on the ground, of being handcuffed, but I also didn't like the images of moms at school board meetings being handcuffed. I didn't like the images of peaceful January 6th protesters, or people assembled there, being taken to the ground at airports and handcuffed. So that I don't like. 

But at the same time, the other side to it is: Can you rush a stage? Can you rush into a press conference? And I think they honestly didn't recognize him. He rushed the stage. There was sort of a physical tussle. I think it could have ended without, without the handcuffs. But also, I don't think there's a complete get out of jail free that, you know, there's no repercussions for rushing the stage, and there's no criticism for rushing the stage. So I think it's a complicated story, and I think we can do a better job. But I'm not about to say it's all on one side or the other.

WELKER: So you wouldn't be for censuring him? You're a no on censuring him, Senator?

SENATOR PAUL: No, no, no. I'm not for censuring him. I think that's crazy. I'm not for that at all.

Four times, Senator Paul said that Senator Padilla had "rushed the stage" at the Noem press event. He also said that Padilla had "rushed into" the press conference itself.

From the available videotapes, we see no sign that Padilla "rushed into the press conference." More to the point, we see no sign that Senator Padilla ever "rushed the stage."

Paul batted the idea of censure aside, describing the notion as "crazy." But before doing so, he kept reinforcing the talking point in which Padilla "rushed the stage."

After that, along came Senator Adam Schiff (D-Cal.). We were disappointed, but perhaps enlightened, when we saw him say this:

WELKER: I'll pick up with you on where I ended with Senator Rand Paul—the fact that your colleague, Senator Alex Padilla, was basically tussled to the ground, handcuffed after he had approached the podium of DHS Secretary Kristi Noem. He was forcibly removed. Secretary Noem called this "political theater." 

As I just said, Speaker Johnson called for him to be censured. What say you to that argument that this was nothing more than political theater?

SENATOR SCHIFF: Well, first of all, I think it's important for people to realize that he was escorted into that press conference. The door was open. He was escorted in by law enforcement. He identified himself. He tried to ask the secretary a question, a secretary who clearly doesn't want to answer questions about the lawless acts of the Department of Homeland Security that we are seeing in Los Angeles. So he had every right to do so. That's part of his oversight responsibilities. 

And to be treated that way, and to be responded to by saying, "Oh, we didn't know who you are," when it was literally written on his shirt or his jacket, when he was proclaiming who he is, I don't buy it. And for those of us that know Alex—and you would be hard pressed to find a more beloved senator on either side of the aisle, respected by members on both sides of the aisle, you know, for his intellect, for his demeanor—this is not some rabble-rouser. 

And to see him mistreated that way, and tackled to the ground and shackled that way, and in the midst of what we're seeing more broadly in Los Angeles, is just atrocious. 

As far as we know, Senator Padilla was, in fact, "escorted into the room." We'd refer to what follows that accurate statement by Senator Schiff as misinformation-adjacent.

It's true! Senator Padilla did "identify himself," but Schiff seems to have turned the chronology around. As far as we know, Senator Padilla identified himself only after he was grabbed by security agents, not before he started "trying to ask a question."

Schiff forget to mention the fact that Padilla was actually interrupting Noem's prepared remarks when he "tried to ask a question." Along the way, did the relevant people actually "know who he was?"

His status as a United States senator actually was "literally written on his shirt." But as best we can tell from the available videotapes, the black windbreaker jacket he was wearing obscured the writing on his shirt. We know of no reason to assume that the security agents in question actually knew who he was when he started to interrupt Noem. 

Did Senator Padilla "have every right" to interrupt Noem "as part of his oversight responsibilities" when he "tried to ask a question?"  Schiff's presentation to Welker struck us as perhaps less than obsessively honest. Unfortunately, that seems to be a constant part of the tribalized world we all currently live in.

Welker followed with this question. We don't think it was an especially good one:

WELKER: Very quickly, Senator, do you think he could have been more effective if he had, for example, asked for a meeting with Secretary Noem? Do you support the way he went about this?

SENATOR SCHIFF: Oh, I think he has asked for meetings, and he has asked for briefings. And of course we don't see any kind of responsiveness of the administration.

That struck us as an imitation of a useful question. What might Senator Schiff have said if Welker instead asked this?

WELKER REVISED: Very quickly, Senator, do you think he could have been more effective if he had simply waited for the Q-and-A session that day, instead of interrupting Noem in the middle of her prepared remarks? 

What would Senator Schiff have said to that? Because the question wasn't asked, no answer was ever delivered.

Facts get sifted in our world. Those facts get sifted by the players in each of our two warring tribes—in each of our warring nations.

REVOLUTION: Say you want a revolution?

MONDAY, JUNE 16, 2025

Remarkably, it's already here: We hadn't heard about Mike Lee's tweets until this very morning!

Shortly after 6:30 Eastern, his tweets were mentioned—and were aggressively assailed—on today's Morning Joe. Amazingly but perhaps predictably, a google search seems to show that Blue America's major news orgs are largely failing to report what the solon has done.

Other Blue orgs seem to be having a hard time finding the language with which to describe what he's done. Also, with which to describe the aggressive reaction his behavior has occasioned.

Mike Lee (R-Utah) is the senior United States senator from the state in question. According to the leading authority on the basic facts of his life, he started out as a child of substantial advantage. 

He now seems to be an adult of a peculiar type of moral / intellectual ruin:

Mike Lee

Michael Shumway Lee (born 1971) is an American lawyer and politician serving as the senior United States senator from Utah, a seat he has held since 2011. A member of the Republican Party, Lee became Utah's senior senator in 2019, when Orrin Hatch retired, and the dean of Utah's congressional delegation in 2021, when Representative Rob Bishop retired.

The son of U.S. Solicitor General Rex E. Lee and brother of Utah Supreme Court justice Thomas Rex Lee, Lee began his career as a clerk for the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah before clerking for Samuel Alito, who was then a judge on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. From 2002 to 2005, Lee was an assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Utah. He joined the administration of Utah governor Jon Huntsman Jr., serving as the general counsel in the governor's office from 2005 to 2006. Lee again clerked for Alito after he was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In the 2010 U.S. Senate election in Utah, Lee defeated incumbent senator Bob Bennett in the Republican primary, and won the general election.

Although he refused to endorse Donald Trump during the 2016 Republican presidential primaries and voted for Evan McMullin in the general election, Lee eventually became a Trump ally. He endorsed Trump in the 2020 and 2024 elections and supported the Trump administration's efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, although he ultimately voted to certify the outcome.

Lee has been reelected twice, in 2016 and 2022, the latter victory over McMullin.

Early life and education

Lee was born in Mesa, Arizona on June 4, 1971, the son of Janet and Rex E. Lee, who was solicitor general under President Ronald Reagan. Lee's older brother Thomas Rex Lee is a former justice of the Utah Supreme Court.

Lee's family moved to Provo, Utah, one year later, when his father became the founding dean of Brigham Young University's J. Reuben Clark Law School. While Lee spent about half of his childhood years in Utah, he spent the other half in McLean, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, D.C. His father served first as the assistant U.S. attorney general for the civil division of the U.S. Department of Justice from 1975 to 1976, and then as the solicitor general of the United States from 1981 to 1985. 

So the background goes. Lee was once seen as a fairly moderate Republican voice, but some sort of evolution has occurred. Although, to borrow from the language of Lincoln, we're probably looking at "a result [more] fundamental and astounding" than that.

Concerning the senator's pair of tweets:

You may have heard about the recent murders and attempted murders in Minnesota, one of the fifty states. Over the weekend, as the assailant remained on the loose, Senator Lee took to X to mock the victims of these assaults, but also to mislead the public.

Concerning the flow of public information, please consider this:

Yesterday morning, we were surprised by callers to C-Span's Washington Journal who seemed to think that the apparent killer was a Democrat—who seemed to think that the "No Kings" fliers found in his car meant that the apparent killer was a supporter of that protest movement.

In Minnesota, that wasn't what state and federal authorities seemed to have deduced. But that's what several callers seemed to believe during yesterday morning's 7 o'clock hour.

Watching yesterday's Fox & Friends Weekend, we began to see how people might have gained that impression. Watching last evening's astonishing performance of The Big Weekend Show, the picture became a bit more clear.

Stating the obvious, those are two of the most fraudulent programs in the history of broadcast news. But until this very morning, we didn't know that Elon Musk seems to be part of the latest fruit of the ongoing revolution in American values and procedures.

As usual, Blue America's major orgs are currently staying away from what Senator Lee has done. That said, here's the start of a report from The Daily Beast—a report which, in our view, is searching for the appropriate language with which to describe his conduct:

MAGA Sen. Mocked for Absurdly Calling Dem Assassin ‘Marxist’

Republican Senator Mike Lee faced ridicule for calling the suspect of fatal shootings in Minnesota a “Marxist.”

“This is what happens ... When Marxists don’t get their way,” the Utah senator captioned a photo of alleged gunman Vance Boelter wearing a latex face mask.

The Utah senator also shared another post of Boelter with the caption, “Nightmare on Waltz [sic] Street.”

Other MAGA figures, including Elon Musk, have also portrayed Boelter as a violent leftist.

So read the start of this report. And so read Lee's two tweets. 

According to The Daily Beast (no paywall), Musk has been "portray[ing] Boelter as a violent leftist." That may help explain yesterday's phone calls to Washington Journal. 

Also, it may help explain what we saw on the Fox News Channel yesterday morning, then again yesterday evening, as this truly ridiculous ship of fools swabbed the decks of The Big Weekend Show:

The Big Weekend Show: Sunday, 6/15/25
Griff Jenkins: co-anchor, FOX News Live
Lydia Hu: correspondent, FOX Business Network
Taylor Riggs: co-host, The Big Money Show
Dr. Marc Siegel: senior medical analyst for Fox News

In our view, the conduct of that group was astounding—and their group recitations persisted for the entirety of their two-hour broadcast.

"Say you want a revolution?" Way back in 1968, that's what the Beatles asked.

Today, the revolution has already happened. But as we've told you again and again, Blue America's biggest news orgs seem to be working hard to avoid reporting or discussing that blindingly obvious fact.

In this instance, the orgs which have reported Lee's tweets seem to have had a difficult time finding the language with which to describe what the solon has done. They also softened their account of the way the solon has been assailed for the astonishing pair of tweets.

"Carrying pictures of Chairman Mao," Senator Lee, rather plainly, seems to have been mocking the dead and the brutally wounded. 

For ourselves, we still aren't sure that we (or the Daily Beast) correctly understand what he meant by his tweet about the Marxists. But so you'll know, these are the astonishing messages Lee somehow chose to deliver:

Mike Lee speaks:
First tweet: “This is what happens when Marxists don’t get their way.” 

As the Daily Beast reported, that comment was appended to a photograph of the apparent assailant—a photo taken by doorbell cam moments before one of his murderous assaults.

Second tweet: “Nightmare on Waltz [sic] Street.” 

That entertaining comment was appended to another photo of the apparent assailant. To Lee, it was just good solid fun!

Mike Lee seemed to think this whole thing was amusing. He also seems to think the American discourse, or what it left of same, is a very large joke.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk was involved in this, or so the Daily Beast reports. We can guarantee you of one additional fact:

The players dragged out yesterday by the Fox News Channel were deeply involved in keeping Red America's "cable news" viewers misinformed, and under-informed, about the events in question.

"Say you want a revolution?" Back in 1968, the Beatles said, No thanks.

Today, the revolution is in place. But across the sweep of Blue America, major news orgs don't seem to want to report or discuss the way this revolution in values and procedures continues to be brought on.

Dearest darlings, use your heads! As we've told you many times:

It simply isn't done!

Tomorrow: During yesterday morning's 8 o'clock hour, the Fox News Channel's Johnny Joey Jones almost seemed to pretend to conduct an interview about the murderous assaults. 

He almost seemed to pretend to ask a bunch of key questions. He asked nine (9) such questions in all. You can review them here. 

For right now, also this: Here's a second report, this time from HuffPost, about the senator's tweets.

As with the Beast, so too here. It seems to us that this report wasn't quite willing to speak directly about what Senator Lee had done, or about the online response his conduct has occasioned. We see a lot of softened language about both parts of the deal.

SATURDAY: What has been happening out in L.A.?

SATURDAY, JUNE 14, 2025

Campos-Duffy "explains:" What has been happening out in Los Angeles over the course of the past nine days?

In this June 11 report, we told you that it isn't easy to answer a question like that. In today's print editions of the New York Times, Fausset and Dwyer give it a try.

It isn't all one thing or the other! Or at least, so the two journalists claim:

In L.A., the Divide Between Peace and Violence Is in the Eye of the Beholder

[...]

In Los Angeles this week, many protesters have marched peacefully. Others have thrown objects at the police, set cars ablaze and looted stores and restaurants. Police have responded aggressively, intimidating protesters with earsplitting explosives and mounted patrols, hitting them with batons, deploying tear gas and firing foam projectiles and rubber bullets into crowds.

The question of which side is justified, and which side is not, seems to have divided the country as much as the immigration issue. And Los Angeles has been transformed into a stage for a debate over the nature and meaning of American protest.

This week, the line separating peaceful protest from violent protest differed in the eyes of the beholder. Was Los Angeles a city in chaos, when many in the sprawling metropolis went about their day untouched by drama that was confined to scattered blocks? What was the appropriate language to accurately describe nights in which many protesters...have been lawful, but others, who have often shown up after sundown, have decided to loot, smash and burn?

So went their overview. But do these jokers actually know what they're talking about? 

According to the Times, Fausset and Dwyer "spent hours in Los Angeles interviewing protesters and documenting the police response." When they penned their overview, they included this challenging passage:

Some protesters said that the recent vandalism and property damage did not bother them, because it brought attention to the crisis affecting their friends and family. “They’re terrorizing our community,” [Alfonso] Santoyo said of the immigration officers. “A couple of cars on fire means nothing to me.”

Aylan Francesco Mello, 33, a tech worker and Southern California native, watched from Gloria Molina Grand Park, a block-wide green space that extends northwest from City Hall and that had also begun to fill with protesters. He said his mother came to the U.S. illegally from Guatemala, and his father came legally from Brazil.

“This feels like a very personal thing to me,” Mr. Francesco Mello said. “I see myself in a lot of the people who are being persecuted.”

But he did not identify with the non-peaceful street crowds, which have often caused trouble after the peaceful protesters have gone home. “There’s very little overlap between the looters, the opportunists, and the protesters,” he said. “I feel like we’re almost talking about two different subjects.”

Why do we say that report is "challenging?" We say that for this reason:

It challenges us to understand that the many people in a large crowd almost surely aren't all the same person! It challenges us to stop creating simplified fairy tales which are tribally pleasing—the kinds of assault on the American discourse at which one "cable news" star excels.

Early this morning, she was at it again, as she co-hosted the gruesome Fox & Friends Weekend "cable news" TV show. 

As we've noted in the past, Rachel Campos-Duffy is remarkably genial—among her own. She's also a born propagandist, as our despondent, extremely young analysts learned for the ten millionth time today at 6:32 a.m.

It was 6:32 a.m. Emerging from a commercial break, Campos-Duffy—true to form—started things off with this:

CAMPOS-DUFFY (6/14/25): Well, immigration is in the spotlight as Democrats continue to support anti-ICE rioters in Los Angeles and other Blue cities.

Really? Have "Democrats" really been "supporting anti-ICE rioters?" 

Have all "Democrats" been doing that? Would Campos-Duffy go on to name even one?

Those questions went unaddressed as the latest gruesome segment unspooled on the propaganda channel in question. But that's what the genial cable star said as she started her program's new segment.

That's what the genial star said! Below her, on the screen, a Fox News chyron said this:

DEMS CONTINUE TO STAND BY RIOTERS AS L.A. BURNS

Instantly, it occurred to us that this program's account of recent events might not be fully nuanced.

Campos-Duffy is a genial presence—when speaking with her own. When she speaks about the others, it emerges that she's also a born propagandist.

She works for a propaganda-driven corporation on one of its "cable news" programs. As with MSNBC, so too here:

You aren't allowed to know how much she's paid for providing her services. But just like that, Campos-Duffy was speaking to Katie Zacharia, who seems to be one of her own. 

Stating the obvious, people have every right to their religious beliefs and to their religious views. That said, Campos-Duffy has long struck us as a religionist. It seems that Zacharia holds a similar (unstated) view of the world, as is her perfect right.

Zacharia got busy! She quickly said that Governor Newsom "is unwilling to put the police force, the National Guard, on the streets to help with the riots. It's really a disgrace."

"The police force, the National Guard?" Yes, that's what Zacharia said, as you can see right here.

We don't know what that conflation was supposed to mean—but Campos-Duffy knew where to go next. For what it's worth, her description of events in L.A. seems to be a bit less nuanced than that in the New York Times:

CAMPOS-DUFFY: You know, Katie, it's a disgrace, but it's also very elitist. Because the violence is happening in working-class neighborhoods. He would never allow this to happen in Brentwood or Beverly Hills. But it's OK to burn down and ruin the neighborhoods of the working class.

Really? Which neighborhoods of the working class have been "burned down and ruined?" Campos-Duffy forgot to say. In this morning's report, the New York Times isn't reporting destruction on any such scale as that.

Before the pair of messengers were done, Campos-Duffy noted a flicker of hope. This is what she said:

CAMPOS-DUFFY: So you also talked to me, off-camera, about the possibility of—because there are some normal people like you in California—about California turning red. Talk to me about that.

There are some normal people in California, the born propagandist said. Was Campos-Duffy speaking ironically? You'll have to inspect the tape yourself. We'd say it's not clear that she was.

Campos-Duffy is extremely genial—but only among the people who are normal. The others all support the riots, which have burned neighborhoods down.

This goes on all day and all night on the Fox News Channel. As it does, Blue America's elites avert their gaze. 

Nothing to look at, they seem to say. There's nothing to report or discuss!

At any rate, working-class neighborhoods have been ruined. Democrats support the riots which have produced that effect.

By the way: Mayor Bass is a Communist. Campos-Duffy told us that on last Sunday's Fox & Friends Weekend, as we noted in this report.

Can a very large modern nation expect to survive a regime like this? We'd say the answer is far from clear.

Nothing to look at—keep moving along! our Blue orgs seem to say.

FRIDAY: What viewers were told on the Fox News Channel!

FRIDAY, JUNE 13, 2025

Martha MacCallum speaks: Should Senator Padilla have interrupted Secretary Noem?

In our view, the answer is no. Luckily, the word "interrupted" was banned from use on MSNBC programs. On that cable news channel, the solon hadn't interrupted Noem. He had simply tried to ask a question in the course of doing his oversight. All in all, it was No Upbeat Claim Left Behind.

On the Fox News Channel, things tilted a different way. During yesterday's three o'clock hour, Martha MacCallum interviewed a pair of Fox News contributors—one a Democrat, one a Republican—about the incident in question. 

Later, speaking with Noem herself, this is what MacCallum said the pair had said:

MACCALLUM (6/12/25): We just had a Democrat and a Republican panelist, and both sides agreed that they felt that this was unbecoming behavior of a United States senator.

MacCallum may have thought that's what the two panelists said. If so, it seems to us that she misunderstood what the Democratic panelist said.

That panelist was the calm, mild-mannered Kevin Walling. Here's the bulk of what he said:

WALLING: Well obviously, we're seeing a response from [Senator Padilla's] colleagues in the Senate, Republicans and Democrats. You know, Lisa Murkowski I think just released a statement saying, you know, it was shocking and horrifying and not what she believes in America.

I think once you saw the senator identify himself—he's the senior senator of the most populous state, the state where this public press conference was happening—this kind of behavior should not have happened.

MacCallum apparently thought that was a criticism of Senator Padilla. On balance, we'd be inclined to say that she apparently heard Walling's statement wrong.

The Republican panelist was Marc Thiessen. After Walling spoke, MacCallum turned to Thiessen with a classic leading question. Inevitably, she was rewarded with the classic approved tribal answer:

MACCALLUM: I mean it's clear, Marc, that he wanted to make apolitical statement with this outburst, right?

THIESSEN: It's not a very smart one. Democrats are in the process of committing political suicide.

That's the way the fellow started. Continuing, he now said this:

THIESSEN (continuing directly): You've got Democratic congressmen storming an ICE facility filled with criminal aliens who have felony records and child—you know, rape and murder and all the rest, and now you've got a Democratic senator storming a press conference with the DHS secretary, getting into a scuffle with law enforcement? What's wrong with these people? You don't behave like this. This isn't how a senator is supposed to behave...

And so on, irately, from there.

For the record, we know of no reason to claim that Senator Badilla "stormed" yesterday's event. He did loudly interrupt Noem. We don't think he should have done that.

With respect to Thiessen's companion complaint, it's abundantly clear that the three Democratic congressmen to whom he refers did not "storm the ICE [detention center in Newark]" during the month-old event in question.

Sorry, that just didn't happen! But pleasing tribal claims of that type never die or grow old on Fox.

Claims like that enjoy eternal life on Fox. With respect to yesterday's event, MacCallum soon said that each of her guests had been criticizing Senator Padilla.

If that's what MacCallum thought she heard, we think she heard it wrong.

THE TROOPS: Secretary Noem does it again!

FRIDAY, JUNE 13, 2025

Blue America's troops gone wild: Yesterday, in the City of Angels, Kristi Noem did it again.

At the start of a press event, she made her latest (extremely) strange remark. Here's the transcript of what she was saying when the cameras swiveled around to a different part of the room:

NOEM (6/12/25): ...The Department of Homeland Security and the officers and the agencies and the departments and the military people that are working on this operation will continue to sustain and increase our operations in this city. We are not going away. We are staying here to liberate this city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor had placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into this city.

So I want to say thank you to every single person that has been able to do this. Also, I want to talk specifically to the rioters and to the politicians in Los Angeles.

[PAUSES]

I also want to talk specifically about how many of our agents have been doxxed for doing their duty. How they have been targeted and how their families have been put in jeopardy and that we're not going to allow that any more as well, that those individuals who are purposely endangering our ICE agents and our law enforcement officers and their families will be prosecuted for what they are doing as far as perpetuating violence on them.

As a general matter, people who purposely endanger law enforcement officers should be stopped from doing that. That said, we start with the remarkable statement we've highlighted above.

Noem has said and done a wide assortment of strange things in her current post. "Suck it," she thoughtfully wrote on May 22, commenting on a lawsuit against her department which had been dismissed. 

Los Angeles is really "a city of criminals," she pathetically stated last week.

Cricket is gone, but this person remains! Yesterday, she made this amazing remark:

We [ICE] are not going away. We are staying here to liberate this city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor had placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into this city.

Secretary Noem to the rescue! Her federal agency will stay in L.A. "to liberate it from the leadership" its mayor, and the governor of its state, have placed upon that realm.

Also, no socialists allowed! For the record, that wasn't a clumsy offhand remark. That was actually part of the secretary's prepared text.

As presented, the quoted remark doesn't quite parse, but Noem may have been distracted at that point. By the time of that remark, voices could be heard from elsewhere in the room. 

She briefly paused, at the indicated point, as a brief bit of turmoil played out. We now switch our attention to Senator Padilla (D-CA), an impressive person whose personal history reminds us of a very important point:

Talent emerges from all locales! The leading authority speaks:

Alex Padilla

Alejandro Padilla (born March 22, 1973) is an American politician serving as the senior United States senator from California, a seat he has held since 2021. A member of the Democratic Party, Padilla served as the 30th secretary of state of California from 2015 to 2021 and was a member of the California State Senate and the Los Angeles City Council.

[...]

Padilla is one of three children of Santos and Lupe Padilla, both of whom moved from Mexico, specifically Jalisco and Chihuahua, before meeting and marrying in Los Angeles, where he was born. He grew up in Pacoima, Los Angeles, and graduated from San Fernando High School in the northeast San Fernando Valley. He earned a degree in mechanical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1994. 

After graduation, Padilla moved back to Pacoima and briefly worked as an engineer for Hughes Aircraft, where he wrote software for satellite systems.

Padilla is a former member of the governing board of MIT...

His father worked as a short-order cook, his mother as a housekeeper. Their son emerged with an engineering degree from MIT, reminding us of the remarkable fact that talent can emerge from anywhere on the dial.

(In the case of President Lincoln, it emerged, in an inexplicable way, from the nation's backcountry, In the case of the Presidents Roosevelt, it emerged from the nation's highest salons.)

People swear by the character of Senator Padilla. We'd be strongly inclined to assume that those people have it right.

That said, it seems to us that he submitted to a bit of imperfect judgment yesterday. 

In this morning's news report, the New York Times offers an instant summary.  We'll highlight an important word which has been widely disappeared:

Calif. Senator Forcibly Removed and Handcuffed After Interrupting Noem

Senator Alex Padilla, Democrat of California, was forcibly removed on Thursday from a news conference being held by Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, and handcuffed after he interrupted Ms. Noem at a federal building in West Los Angeles.

“Sir! Sir! Hands off!” Mr. Padilla, 52, shouted as federal agents tried to muscle him out of the room inside a government office building about 15 miles west of downtown Los Angeles where Ms. Noem was speaking. “I am Senator Alex Padilla. I have a question for the secretary.”

[...]

In the tense hyperpartisanship of the moment, the episode quickly swelled into a cause célèbre for both parties...

The key word is "interrupted." That word appears in the first paragraph of the Times report, but also in the headline.

Yesterday, the corporate stars of Blue America disappeared that word. If you're a denizen of Blue America, you should be very unhappy about the way these less than fully impressive people, along with their less than fully impressive predecessors, have served your interests over the past (let's say) 33 years.

People swear by Senator Padilla's character; we don't doubt that assessment. But in our view, he displayed a bit of imperfect judgment during yesterday event.

In our view, so did Nicolle Wallace and the standard assortment of Blue American corporate hacks on MSNBC's succession of programs. Instantly, they started feeding us cable news viewers the kind of porridge which leaves us well-fed and glad. 

They kept forgetting to mention the fact that Senator Padilla had suddenly interrupted Secretary Noem as she tried to make her (remarkable) opening statement. No, you're not supposed to do that—and Senator Padilla, who is said to be mild-mannered, seemed remarkably exercised when security tried to make him stop. 

The senator is much larger than those agents were. He kept shoving back against them and attempting to interrupt further. 

In our view, he shouldn't have done that. Lincoln also made mistakes at points along the way.

No, Virginia! Senator Padilla wasn't simply "doing his oversight" when he tried to interrupt, as Blue America's pundits quickly agreed to say. And when Wallace came on the air at 4 p.m., she repeatedly said that Noem had lied lied lied lied lied lied lied in an earlier appearance on Fox.

She dropped the L-bomb a hundred times. Meanwhile, Senator Padilla was perhaps less than fully descriptive when he made this statement, not long after he'd been shoved out of the room and roughly handcuffed:

SENATOR PADILLA (6/12/25): I came to the press conference to see what she had to say, to see if I could learn any new information, and at one point I had a question. And let me emphasize this as we've emphasized the right for people to peacefully protest and to stand up for their First Amendment rights.

I was there peacefully, and at one point I had a question, and so I began to ask a question. I was almost immediately forcibly removed from the room. I was forced to the ground, and I was handcuffed.

I was not arrested. I was not detained. I will say this—if this is how this administration responds to a senator with a question, if this is how the Department of Homeland Security responds to a senator with a question, you can only imagine what they're doing to farmworkers, to cooks, to day laborers out in the Los Angeles community and throughout California.

"At one point, I had a question," he said, two separate times. "And so I began to ask a question." 

All that is true! He omitted the fact that Noem was delivering her opening remarks when he loudly interrupted so he could ask his question.

He failed to say that he loudly interrupted the person in question. The word "interrupted" was then widely disappeared all through the rest of the day on the corporate cable news channel which services Blue America.

No, Virgina! You aren't supposed to show up at a press event and loudly interrupt. You aren't "doing your oversight" when you do that, and you may even find yourself being removed from the room.

We don't know why Senator Padilla staged that interruption. We don't know why he seemed to be so exercised as the agents in question removed him from the room

Did those agents behave correctly? This very morning, on Morning Joe, one Blue American pundit explicitly said that they did. 

(Maria Teresa Kumar: "The Secret Service were doing their job.") 

Kumar quickly pivoted to a rather tortured criticism of Noem herself. Yesterday, on the less deceptive CNN, security correspondent Josh Campbell offered an assessment in which he largely, though not completely, agreed with Kumar's initial assessment. 

Campbell is a former special agent with the FBI—and no, he isn't pro-Trump.

Kumar quickly pivoted to a criticism of Noem.  More specifically, she pivoted to the claim that "a more talented politician" would have intervened from the podium to remedy the situation. 

As always, everything's possible! In our view, that was classic tribal novelization—novelization all the way down.

Did Noem understand what was happening during this brief event? Did she know that it was Senator Padilla who was trying to interrupt?

From the available videotapes, we see no proof that she did. 

Was she lying lying lying during her subsequent appearance on Fox? Given her recent awful record, we don't doubt that she'd be willing to do so, but we see no obvious proof that she did.

Starting at 4 o'clock Eastern, we did see a succession of pundits standing in line to toe Blue America's (corporate) line. These people have served Blue America's interests very poorly during the past many years.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep—but those of us in Blue America aren't the moral and intellectual giants we've long presumed ourselves to be. We're gifted with imperfect judgment, a bit like everyone else.

Our lizard brains will want to say that our remarks just have to be wrong. Unfortunately, our lizard brains have often served us very poorly since President Trump came down the escalator in June 2015.

So have our corporate pundits! All through the Biden years, their shaky judgment helped create the world in which President Trump made his way back to the White House.

They swore there was nothing wrong at the southern border. Until they could say it no more, they swore there was nothing wrong with President Biden himself.

They swore that inflation was all in the dumb voters' heads. They spent years trying to get Trump locked up, in the (pleasing) course of which they likely helped him get elected.

(They kept saying that we voters needed to know if Candidate Trump, on one occasion, had had sex with Stormy Daniels ten years before. No, you can't get dumber than that—but our stars were willing to try.)

In our view, Senator Padilla—a good and decent, remarkable person—submitted to a bit of imperfect judgment yesterday. 

He could have let the secretary speak, then tried to raise his question at the more appropriate time. Instead, he rose to loudly interrupt. Sometimes, if not for all the imperfect judgment, there would be no judgment at all!

Blue America's corporate pundits largely took things from there. "In the tense hyperpartisanship of the moment," they invented a whole new set of ways to put their thumbs on the scale.

Noem made her latest very strange statement. We Blues took over from there!

THURSDAY: Memorializing Leavitt's latest!

THURSDAY, JUNE 12, 2025

And yes, she said it out loud: On the one hand, the behavior was fairly typical, coming from Karoline Leavitt.

Karoline Leavitt, 27, is President Trump's press spokesperson. She's widely said to speak fluent Trump. We'll quickly make this point:

Leavitt didn't appoint herself to her current position. It isn't her doing, or her fault, that she holds her current job.

That said, one bit of behavior from Leavitt was so striking this week that it deserves to be memorialized. We refer to the way she reacted to a question from a reporter—a question which was basically sensible, given a peculiar earlier statement by the president himself.

In fairness, let's quickly be fair:

You can't really fault the sitting president for being annoyed at this time. Given ongoing events in Los Angeles, he may have to move some military assets from his birthday party out to the west coast!

Still, this led to an unusual statement by the commander in chief. On Tuesday, he made these comments in response to a question at an Oval Office event:

PRESIDENT TRUMP (6/10/25): I just think it's amazing. We’re going to have a fantastic June 14th parade, Flag Day. It’s going to be an amazing day. 

We have tanks, we have planes, we have all sorts of things, and I think it is going to be great. We're going to celebrate our country for a change.

[..]

And if there's any protestor wants to come out, they will be met with very big force, by the way. And for those people that want to protest, they’re going to be met with very big force—and I haven’t even heard about a protest.

But, you know, this is people that hate our country. But they will be met with a very heavy force.

You can see the tape of his full statement here. At any rate, no more of this "American carnage" stuff. We're going to celebrate the country for once!

The president said he hadn't heard about any plans for protests. But if anyone does show up to protest, he said that they'll be met with a very big, very heavy force. He said it three separate times!

Given the fact that non-violent protest has long been alleged to be legal, that was a slightly odd statement. You could write it off as a clumsy remark—or you could ask Leavitt about it.

On Wednesday, Jasmine Wright chose the perilous latter approach. We probably wouldn't have bothered, but this was the initial result:

WRIGHT (6/11/25): Thank you, Karoline.

The president warned that any protest at Saturday's event would be met with force. Can you clarify what kind of protest President Trump does support, or find acceptable?

LEAVITT: The president absolutely supports peaceful protests. He supports the First Amendment. He supports the right of Americans to make their voices heard. He does not support violence of any kind. He does not support assaulting law enforcement officers who are simply trying to do their job. 

It’s very clear for the president what he supports and what he does not. Unfortunately for Democrats, that line has not been made clear and they've allowed this unrest and this violence to continue. and the president has had to step in.

We almost surely would have left it right there. That said, Wright wanted to nail things down. Here's the thanks she received:

WRIGHT (continuing directly): One question. So if there were peaceful protests on Saturday for the military parade, President Trump would allow that?

LEAVITT: Of course, the president supports peaceful protests! What a stupid question.

"What a stupid question," the youngster said. And yes—she said it out loud!  (For the videotape, click here.)

We thought it should be memorialized. Memorialization done!