MONDAY: A certain bill keeps chugging along!

MONDAY, JUNE 30, 2025

But what the heck is in it? The bill was given a silly name—The One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The obvious purpose of the name is to assist in the content-free branding of this massive piece of legislation. 

That said, what's included this sprawling bill, which has yet to reach final form? As we sit here typing today, this is the overview provided by the leading authority:

One Big Beautiful Bill Act

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, also referred to as the Big Beautiful Bill, OBBBA, OBBB, BBB or OB3, is a proposed budget reconciliation bill in the 119th United States Congress. OBBBA passed the House of Representatives on May 22, 2025, in a largely party-line vote of 215–214–1.

The House-passed OBBBA would extend the major provisions of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which are set to expire at the end of 2025. It would reduce non-military government spending and would significantly cut spending on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Medicaid through stricter eligibility requirements. It would also allocate an additional $150 billion for defense spending; scale back many of the Inflation Reduction Act's clean-energy tax credits; extend the state and local tax (SALT) deduction cap, which is also scheduled to expire in 2025; and increase the SALT deduction cap from $10,000 to $40,000. It contains a number of other provisions, including a ten-year ban on all state-level AI regulations.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has estimated that OBBBA would add $2.4 trillion to the national debt of the United States by 2034 and would cause 10.9 million Americans to lose health insurance coverage. This number has been disputed by multiple GOP members, including House Speaker Mike Johnson and President Donald Trump. The CBO later raised the estimated increase in the budget deficit to $2.8 trillion.

Following the House passage of OBBBA, the bill moved to the Senate for consideration. Senate Majority Leader John Thune has set a goal of passing the Senate's version of OBBBA by July 4, 2025.

That's what the authority says at present. The bill is so big that it has four (4) acronyms, along with its silly name.

(As a point of fairness, we note the reference to the Biden administration's Inflation Reduction Act, which was given that name despite the fact that it had nothing to do with inflation reduction. So it goes as the American discourse about such matters disappears into chaos and incomprehension, possibly never to find its way back to its previous miserable state.)

The current bill is in a state of flux. Depending on where you go for your "news," you've heard vastly different things about its vast array of provisions.

On the front page of this morning's New York Times, Andrew Duehren offered a bit of an update:

Senate Bill Would Add at Least $3.3 Trillion to Debt, Budget Office Says

The sprawling tax and health care bill that Senate Republicans are trying to pass would add at least $3.3 trillion to the already-bulging national debt over a decade, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said on Sunday, putting a far higher price tag on the measure than some of the party’s fiscal hawks had indicated they could stomach.

The cost of the Senate bill, which Republicans rolled out overnight on Friday and were still shaping on Sunday, far exceeds the $2.4 trillion cost of the version passed in the House, where lawmakers had insisted that the overall price of the bill not substantially change. But Senate Republicans still moved forward with a number of costly changes to the bill, including making prized tax breaks for business a permanent feature of the tax code.

With roughly $29 trillion in debt currently held by the public, the budget office had already expected the government to borrow another $21 trillion over the next decade, meaning the Republican bill would make an already-dire fiscal forecast worse. And the initial estimate of a cost of $3.3 trillion for the Senate bill is an undercount, because it does not include additional borrowing costs which could push the bill’s overall addition to the debt closer to $4 trillion.

[...]

The main component driving the cost of the Republican legislative effort is the extension of a series of tax cuts from 2017. Many of those tax cuts are set to expire this year, and extending them into the future represents a roughly $3.8 trillion hit to the budget. Republicans have also piled some additional tax cuts on top, including versions of President Trump’s promises to not tax tips and overtime, bringing the overall size of the Senate tax cut to roughly $4.5 trillion.

(In this report, the Times returns to providing the figures concerning debt held by the public.)

That figure currently stands at roughly $29 trillion. Under current arrangements, that figures stands to rise to something like $50 trillion by the end of the next decade. That's before the GOP steps in to address the problem of national debt, concerning which its various spokespersons still express great concern.

How has the GOP decided to tackle this problem? Facing an expansion of debt which Duehren describes as "dire" (Paul Krugman has called it "unsustainable"), the GOP has decided to address the problem by creating "additional tax cuts"—by finding ways to bring in even less revenue over the next ten years.

According to the CBO, the OBBBA as it currently stands would therefore take the national debt from its current $29 trillion to something more like $54 trillion—unless you listen to Republican solons, in which case 1) you will hear that explosive economic growth will destroy this gloomy scenario, or 2) you'll will see the solon quickly start to talk about something else. 

Regarding the spending cuts on health care programs mentioned by the leading authority, Duehren offers this today as he continues directly:

...Republicans have also piled some additional tax cuts on top, including versions of President Trump’s promises to not tax tips and overtime, bringing the overall size of the Senate tax cut to roughly $4.5 trillion.

To offset some of that cost, Republicans have also proposed deep cuts to the country’s social safety net, particularly Medicaid. According to the C.B.O., the Senate version of the legislation would mean 11.8 million Americans lose their health insurance by 2034 as federal spending on Medicaid, Medicare and Obamacare is reduced by roughly $1.1 trillion over that period.

In newspapers directed at Blue America, you'll be told that spending cuts will cause many people to lose their health insurance. From citizens serviced by Red America, phone calls like this were being fielded, over the weekend, by C-Span's Washington Journal.

At 7:22 on Sunday morning, Kelly from North Carolina was on the phone, reassuring the previous caller:

MODERATOR (6/29/25): That was Jerry in Tennessee. Kelly, in Clemmons, North Carolina, on the line for Republicans. Good morning, Kelly!

KELLY IN NORTH CAROLINA: Hi, Tammy! Well, I want to tell that man right there that his prayers have already been answered because they're not cutting Social Security, they're not cutting Medicare, and they're not cutting Medicaid. 

They are reforming Medicaid, and the way the cuts would be are not real "cuts." They are no more illegals being able to use them. That's where the cuts are coming from, OK? All you people who are American citizens, you will still be getting everything you were getting...

I just want you all to know there's nothing to worry about. You are listening to propaganda, and it's all propaganda from the left. Stop listening to it, you're hurting yourselves. They are trying to make you in fear. Have faith, not fear, and God Bless you all.

MODERATOR: That was Kelly in North Carolina.

We have no doubt that the caller was sincere. Within Red America, that messaging has been widespread concerning the adjustments to the Medicaid program and the dollar savings which will result.

We're living in various countries now. There's no way to run a modern nation in such a state of peak Babel.

ARRIVALS: How should we describe the current arrival?

MONDAY, JUNE 30, 2025

PBS shatters a rule: We didn't say so last Friday afternoon. But when the Achaeans came over the walls, it was a type of arrival.

This takes us all the way back to the very dawn of the West. That arrival was described by Professor Knox in his lengthy introduction to the Robert Fagles translation of the Iliad.

The lengthy essay by Professor Knox was published in 1990. Within it, he described an arrival.

That ancient arrival was characterized by fury and extreme violence. When the Achaeans came over the walls, this is what occurred:

[T]he death of Hector seals the fate of Troy; it will fall to the Achaeans, to become the pattern for all time of the death of a city. 

The images of that night assault—the blazing palaces, the blood running in the streets, old Priam butchered at the altar, Cassandra raped in the temple, Hector's baby son thrown from the battlements, his wife Andromache dragged off to slavery—all this, foreshadowed in the Iliad, will be stamped indelibly on the consciousness of the Greeks throughout their history, immortalized in lyric poetry, in tragedy, on temple pediments and painted vases, to reinforce the stern lesson of Homer's presentation of the war: that no civilization, no matter how rich, no matter how refined, can long survive once it loses the power to meet force with equal or superior force.

If you can't defend your civilization, your civilization will fall! At any rate, when the Achaeans came over the walls, it was a type of arrival—but it was also a stunningly violent assault:

King Priam, a thoroughly dignified ruler, was butchered at the altar. His wife was dragged off into slavery. Their daughter Cassandra was raped.

His noble son's infant boy was thrown to his death from the city's high walls. Is this, in some far-fetched way, the type of arrival with which Blue America is currently struggling? Are we struggling to turn back, even to describe, an arrival of this general type?

As we noted in Friday afternoon's report, Hollywood has often portrayed other types of arrival. In 2016, Denis Villeneuve pictured a different kind of arrival in an Oscar-nominated film of that very name:

Arrival 

Denis Villeneuve’s lyrical alien film, based on a short story by Ted Chiang, is sci-fi at its most emotionally devastating. When a mysterious, looming extraterrestrial craft lands on Earth, a linguist played by Amy Adams...is recruited to try to speak to the tentacled beings known as heptapods. Less a saga about invasion than it is about communication, “Arrival” is intoxicatingly mysterious until it wallops you with its time-turning gut punch of an ending.

In this film, a linguist attempts to communicate with the newly arrived—with a group of tentacled beings! To what extent can our nation's current (and ongoing) struggle be compared to something like that?

Hollywood has offered many films in which the arrival involves a type of "alien" which differs from the "illegal [undocumented / unauthorized] aliens" who play a key role in our current societal drama. In 1997, a bit of whimsy was present:

Men in Black

Men in Black is a 1997 American alien/UFO science fiction action comedy film starring Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith as "men in black," secret agents who monitor and police extraterrestrials...In the film, Agent K (Jones) and Agent J (Smith) investigate a series of seemingly unrelated criminal incidents related to the extraterrestrials who live in secret on Earth.

[...]

Plot

In 1961, the Men in Black (MiB) organization is founded after secretly making first contact with extraterrestrials. Ever since, they established Earth as a politically neutral zone for alien refugees who live in secret among humanity...

In this, as in so many films, the arrival involved a species of extraterrestrials—beings who aren't like us. In Men in Black, they've been (secretly) living among for well over thirty years!

Back then, an alien invasion of this type could still be seen as humorous. It was different in 1956, when the arrival featured a darkly ominous tone:

Invasion of the Body Snatchers

[...] 

The film's storyline concerns an extraterrestrial invasion that begins in the fictional California town of Santa Mira. Alien plant spores have fallen from space and grown into large seed pods, each one capable of producing a visually identical copy of a human. As each pod reaches full development, it assimilates the physical traits, memories, and personalities of each sleeping person placed near it until only the replacement is left; these duplicates, however, are devoid of all human emotion. Little by little, a local doctor uncovers this "quiet" invasion and attempts to stop it.

To our ear, the portrait of "duplicates devoid of all human emotion" can almost start to ring a bell as we try to find the way to describe, and to understand, the nature of the current situation. 

Hollywood continues to offer portraits of unexpected arrivals. In 2022, Jordan Peele's Nope stuck to the concept of the extraterrestrial source of the arrival. 

On the other hand, you could almost say that Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood (2019) describes the arrival of an alien force of apparently human type. This thumbnail comes from the new survey by the New York Times, in which Once Upon a Time joins Arrival among this century's hundred best:

Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood

Like Martin Scorsese’s New York or Federico Fellini’s Rome, Quentin Tarantino’s Los Angeles is a thing to behold: The director’s fevered love letter to his hometown circa 1969 is a gonzo-maximalist dream, encompassing a fictional fading TV star (Leonardo DiCaprio), his laconic stuntman-sidekick (Brad Pitt), a passel of Manson family freaks and the very real starlet Sharon Tate (played as pure blond sunshine by Margot Robbie). From there, the script breaks with established history, building to one of the most bravura and far-out finales in film history.

A tragic arrival is underway in that film, involving "a passel of Manson family" types. (Does it also involve the fatuous Hollywood players on whom those types will feed?)

Do any of those portraits help us understand and describe the arrival which got its start when then-Candidate Donald J. Trump came down the escalator in June 2015?  Completing the record for today, PBS has now added a portrait of a deeply horrific arrival in the latest offering from its American Masters series. 

This portrait of a disastrous arrival debuted last Friday evening. Along the way, PBS broke one of the most widely-stated rules in the book. To watch the whole program, click here:

S39 Ep 5
Hannah Arendt: Facing Tyranny

Discover Hannah Arendt, one of the most fearless political thinkers of the 20th century, who transformed her time as a political prisoner and refugee during World War II into daring insights about totalitarianism which continue to resonate today.

So reads the official thumbnail from the PBS program itself. 

For what it's worth, this 83-minute PBS program explicitly compares the rapid arrival of the Third Reich to the events now gripping our own struggling American nation. Whether justified or not, the comparison is completely undisguised as of the program's 20-minute mark, as chronicled by Jackie Calmes in this overview of the PBS program for the Los Angeles Times.

When the Achaeans came over the walls, it was a violent arrival. In part for reasons of our own making, those of us in Blue America have had a hard time describing the type of arrival we ourselves currently face.

Blue America's journalistic elites have established or played by certain rules—rules which regulate the types of things which can be said about this arrival:

Our journalists have observed explicit rules forbidding medical talk—forbidding discussions of mental health and mental disorder. They seem to be playing by rules which won't let them report or discuss the astonishing conduct which takes place, all day and all night, on the powerful Fox News Channel.

We lack an established journalistic language which lets us discuss the sheer stupidity which suffuses the American public discourse. Also, we have a rule which says that we mustn't discuss what happened in Germany, and then throughout Europe, not so long ago.

Like the fictional citizens of Camus' Oran, we simply haven't been up the challenge of describing—possibly, even of recognizing—what's happening in our midst. For what it's worth, our own view would be that the current arrival has almost surely already passed the point of no return—will not now be turned back. 

For the record, also this:

As we've noted many times, it was our own Blue America's foolishness, down through the years, which set the stage for this arrival—which triggered the anger of those who arrived. And as in sacred Troy, so too here:

It's an anger which many of the newly arrived can't seem to control, regulate or contain.

In truth, arrivals like these have taken place all through the course of human history. In the current instance, many of the newly arrived are well intentioned. Presumably, quite a few others are not.

 In our view, we Blues, like the citizens of Oran, simply haven't been up to task of dealing with this arrival. In The Plague, Camus described the mindset of Oran's denizens when their challenge arrived:

Our townsfolk were like everybody else, wrapped up in themselves; in other words they were humanists: they disbelieved in pestilences. A pestilence isn't a thing made to man's measure; therefore we tell ourselves that pestilence is a mere bogy of the mind, a bad dream that will pass away. But it doesn't always pass away and, from one bad dream to another, it is men who pass away, and the humanists first of all, because they haven't taken their precautions. 

Our townsfolk were not more to blame than others; they forgot to be modest, that was all, and thought that everything still was possible for them; which presupposed that pestilences were impossible. They went on doing business, arranged for journeys, and formed views. How should they have given a thought to anything like plague, which rules out any future, cancels journeys, silences the exchange of views. They fancied themselves free, and no one will ever be free so long as there are pestilences. 

 As with American Masters, so too here! Camus was speaking about what happened in Germany too.

All week long, we'll try to develop the language with which sensible people might be able to describe the current (ongoing) arrival. Once again, we'll say, up front, that we think the battle has already been lost.

We'll try to establish ways to describe the nature of this arrival. Sadly, we'll borrow from Lincoln in making this point:

We Blues have been part of this too.

Tomorrow: The view from American Masters

SATURDAY: Trump wanted the journo "thrown out like a dog!"

SATURDAY, JUNE 28, 2025

Leavitt then swung into action: Karoline Leavitt, the scolder-in-chief, had finally just about had it with CNN's Natasha Bertrand.

The smash-and-grab crew at oppo research had handed the youngster a big stack of claims concerning Bertrand's past work. Also, the sitting president had said that he wanted to see Bertrand fired by CNN—to see her "thrown out like a dog."

It isn't like her party's philosopher king to say such things as that! On that basis, the spokesperson knew that the claims against Bertrand just plain had to be true.

On that basis, Leavitt hurried to the White House briefing room, eager to warn the public. In this report for Mediaite, Zachary Leeman cited some of the things she now said:

‘She Should Be Ashamed of Herself!’ Karoline Leavitt Unleashes on CNN Reporter Trump Wants Network to Fire

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt laid into CNN national security correspondent Natasha Bertrand on Thursday, one day after President Donald Trump demanded the reporter be “thrown out like a dog” over her reporting on the U.S.’s strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

[...]

At a Thursday White House press briefing, Leavitt called out Bertrand by name and suggested she was being “used” by Washington, D.C. insiders with an anti-Trump agenda to “push a false narrative.” She also claimed only “bits and pieces” of the initial report were leaked.

As Leavitt called out Bertrand from her podium, she listed out other reporting the administration takes issue with, including reporting in 2020 on dozens of intelligence officials chalking up Hunter Biden’s infamously abandoned laptop to Russian disinformation, as well as reports on the origins of Covid-19.

“This is a reporter who has been unfortunately used by people who dislike Donald Trump in this government to push fake and false narratives. She should be ashamed of herself,” Leavitt said.

And so on from there, with tape.

Bertrand should be ashamed of herself, the thoughtful press spokesperson said. Indeed, Bertrand had even been used in the past! As one example, Leavitt cited Bertrand's past reporting for Politico about that infamous "laptop from Hell."

How phony was Bertrand's reporting back then? By clicking here, you can start to see for yourself. 

Below, you see the start of Bertrand's report on the statement made by those intelligence officials. The report was published by Politico on October 19, 2020:

Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say

More than 50 former senior intelligence officials have signed on to a letter outlining their belief that the recent disclosure of emails allegedly belonging to Joe Biden’s son “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”

The letter, signed on Monday, centers around a batch of documents released by the New York Post last week that purport to tie the Democratic nominee to his son Hunter’s business dealings. Under the banner headline “Biden Secret E-mails,” the Post reported it was given a copy of Hunter Biden’s laptop hard drive by President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who said he got it from a Mac shop owner in Delaware who also alerted the FBI.

While the letter’s signatories presented no new evidence, they said their national security experience had made them “deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case” and cited several elements of the story that suggested the Kremlin’s hand at work.

“If we are right,” they added, “this is Russia trying to influence how Americans vote in this election, and we believe strongly that Americans need to be aware of this.”

Nick Shapiro, a former top aide under CIA director John Brennan, provided POLITICO with the letter on Monday. He noted that “the IC leaders who have signed this letter worked for the past four presidents, including Trump. The real power here however is the number of former, working-level IC officers who want the American people to know that once again the Russians are interfering.”

The former Trump administration officials who signed the letter include Russ Travers, who served as National Counterterrorism Center acting director; Glenn Gerstell, the former NSA general counsel; Rick Ledgett, the former deputy NSA director; Marc Polymeropoulos, a retired CIA senior operations officer; and Cynthia Strand, who served as the CIA’s deputy assistant director for global issues. Former CIA directors or acting directors Brennan, Leon Panetta, Gen. Michael Hayden, John McLaughlin and Michael Morell also signed the letter, along with more than three dozen other intelligence veterans. Several of the former officials on the list have endorsed Biden.

Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe said on Monday that the information on Biden’s laptop “is not part of some Russian disinformation campaign,” though the FBI is reportedly conducting an ongoing investigation into whether Russia was involved.

And so on from there.

Just this once, we'll be honest. We have no idea what's supposed to be wrong with that news report:

A group of major former officials had published a letter about a matter of public interest. Their statement had been made available to Politico, and Bertrand had been assigned to report what the former officials had said. 

The letter "presented no new evidence" about the matter at hand, Bertrand quickly noted. She also noted that several of the former officials had endorsed then-Candidate Biden.

She quoted a denial by President Trump's DNI, though she also said that the FBI was reportedly investigating the matter. This strikes us as straight-ahead, standard news reporting of the most obvious kind.

On Thursday, the scolder-in-chief burst into the briefing room and let the miscreant have it. The president wanted her "thrown out like a dog"—and as Leavitt went on and on, it sounded like she did too.

For the record, Leavitt never ventured into specifics. She never explained what was supposed to be wrong with Bertrand's past or present work. So it frequently tends to go in the wake of a recent arrival.

In yesterday afternoon's report, we wondered about the arrival on the scene of players like Leavitt and Pete Hegseth. What in the world have they come from? we asked. What explains their unusual impulses and characteristics?

In the 2016 film Arrival, a group of "mysterious tentacled beings" had suddenly appeared on the scene. All next week, we'll be trying to develop a language with which to describing the ways of this latest new group.

FRIDAY: In Arrival, it was a race of tentacled beings!

FRIDAY, JUNE 27, 2025

Today, it's Hegseth and Leavitt: How strange has American culture become in the years since their arrival?

We're speaking of the type of arrival which formed the basis for a major feature film back in 2016.

In this brand-new survey,  the New York Times has created a list of this century's hundred best films. The film in question got voted at #29—as the 29th best so far:

Arrival 

Denis Villeneuve’s lyrical alien film, based on a short story by Ted Chiang, is sci-fi at its most emotionally devastating. When a mysterious, looming extraterrestrial craft lands on Earth, a linguist played by Amy Adams, in a career-best role, is recruited to try to speak to the tentacled beings known as heptapods. Less a saga about invasion than it is about communication, “Arrival” is intoxicatingly mysterious until it wallops you with its time-turning gut punch of an ending.

We ourselves weren't blown away by the Oscar-nominated film, though we probably should have seen it in an actual movie theater. 

That said, the arrival of the present day's new group of beings has now produced a cultural result as monumentally stupid as this:

Trump Threatens to Sue The NY Times and CNN Over ‘Unpatriotic’ Reporting On U.S. Military Intel

The New York Times struck a defiant tone in a Thursday letter in response to a personal lawyer for President Donald Trump demanding the paper “retract and apologize” or be sued over a report on the state of Iranian nuclear sites following Trump’s bombings.

The Times reported on the letter sent by Alejandro Brito, which threatened to sue the paper and CNN for publishing reports on a leaked Pentagon assessment that said Trump’s bombings only set Iran’s nuclear program back a few months. The assessment was labeled as an initial intelligence finding, but contradicted Trump’s public claims that Iran’s nuclear sites had been totally “obliterated.” Trump’s lawyer called the article “false,” “defamatory,” and “unpatriotic” while demanding it be retracted.

David McCraw, the Times’s deputy general counsel, replied to Brito, saying, “No retraction is needed. No apology will be forthcoming. We told the truth to the best of our ability. We will continue to do so.”

Trump has publicly raged against both the Times and CNN in recent days. On Thursday, he took to his Truth Social platform and wrote, “FAKE NEWS REPORTERS FROM CNN & THE NEW YORK TIMES SHOULD BE FIRED, IMMEDIATELY!!! BAD PEOPLE WITH EVIL INTENTIONS!!!”

And so on from there, Mediaite reporting. The stupidity has gone on and on, and then it's gone on and on some more. Existing news orgs on the planet don't seem to know how to discuss it—or they may be too frightened to try.

How peculiar has our political culture become in the years since this arrival? The fury of yesterday's press event with Pete Hegseth would be one obvious case in point.

A few hours after that serial meltdown, Karoline Leavitt went off. Is her endless ridiculous conduct really "a cancer on the discourse?" Again, we'll let Mediaite report, and then you can decide:

‘She Should Be Ashamed of Herself!’ Karoline Leavitt Unleashes on CNN Reporter Trump Wants Network to Fire

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt laid into CNN national security correspondent Natasha Bertrand on Thursday, one day after President Donald Trump demanded the reporter be “thrown out like a dog” over her reporting on the U.S.’s strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Trump took aim at Bertrand over her reporting on a leaked intelligence assessment that concluded strikes against the Iranian sites likely only set their nuclear programs back by months, rather than years as the president and other officials claimed. Trump has called the report “fake news” and lashed out at The New York Times and others for reporting on the assessment."

[...] 

At a Thursday White House press briefing, Leavitt called out Bertrand by name and suggested she was being “used” by Washington, D.C. insiders with an anti-Trump agenda to “push a false narrative.” She also claimed only “bits and pieces” of the initial report were leaked.

As Leavitt called out Bertrand from her podium, she listed out other reporting the administration takes issue with, including reporting in 2020 on dozens of intelligence officials chalking up Hunter Biden’s infamously abandoned laptop to Russian disinformation, as well as reports on the origins of Covid-19.

How dumb was Leavitt yesterday? So dumb that her claims were foolish even by her own standards! Tomorrow, we'll show you the kinds of past reporting by Bertrand which had Leavitt, our latest very strange arrival, calling for the CNN journalist's head.

In the 29th best film of this century, a linguist played by Amy Adams is recruited to try to speak to a bunch of tentacled beings. Where are some such linguists now with respect to these latest arrivals?

Tomorrow, we'll look at Leavitt's pathetic attack on Bertrand. Next week, we'll conduct a type of search—a search for some sort of way to describe this new group of arrivals.

As for the film Arrival, it wasn't about an "invasion," the New York Times has said. We're not sure we'd say the same thing about the arrival of furious, deeply entitled beings like the aforementioned Leavitt and Hegseth.

They're deeply entitled and deeply aggrieved. We Blues set the stage for their arrival, but where did their looming craft come from?

THE PLAYERS: Reporters asked the question three times!

FRIDAY, JUNE 27, 2025

Hegseth kept failing to answer: He never did answer the question.

We refer to Secretary Hegseth. Also, to the question he avoided three separate times during yesterday morning's gonzo press event.

During the 42-minute event, General Caine conducted himself in a thoroughly professional manner. By way of contrast, Secretary Hegseth staged one of the most remarkable serial meltdowns of his short time in the cabinet.

Thanks to the invaluable Rev, you can peruse a transcript of yesterday's event simply by clicking here. The transcript is accompanied by videotape of the event, or you can access C-Span's videotape.

Rev has transcribed the full event. Remarkably, here's what happened:

Hegseth burned the first ten minutes away with a deeply silly scolding of the assembled press corps. After General Caine's introductory statement, questions were finally permitted, at roughly the 30-minute mark.

At the 37-minute mark, the following question was asked. It was a blindingly obvious question. It would be asked three times:

REPORTER (6/26/25): Just a quick question. There's public imagery available saying that highly enriched uranium was moved out of Fordow before the strikes. Is that accurate? Have you seen that?

Had uranium been squirreled away before last Saturday's attack? After General Caine spoke to a separate question, Hegseth was prompted to respond to that—and this is what he said:

REPORTER: And the highly enriched uranium?

HEGSETH: There's nothing that I've seen that suggests that we didn't hit exactly what we wanted to hit in those locations.

We'll score that as an obvious "non-answer answer." For that reason, Jennifer Griffin of Fox News quickly followed up. 

Jennifer Griffin is highly experienced. Continuing directly from above, she now posed the obvious question for the second time: 

GRIFFIN (continuing directly): That's not the question though. It's about highly enriched uranium. Do you have certainty that all the highly enriched uranium was inside the Fordow Mountain or some of it—because there were satellite photos that showed more than a dozen trucks there two days in advance. Are you certain none of that highly enriched uranium was moved?

Unacceptably, Griffin had dared to tell this high priest that he hadn't answered the question. He responded with an astonishing meltdown directed at Griffin herself. 

Hegseth responded by savaging Griffin. With respect to the actual question, he took a dive once again:

HEGSETH (continuing directly): Of course, we're watching every single aspect. But Jennifer, you've been about the worst, the one who misrepresents the most intentionally what the president says...

[Personal attack on Griffin]

We're looking at all aspects of intelligence and making sure we have a sense of what was where.

We're watching every single aspect! We're looking at all aspects of intelligence and making sure we have a sense of what was where!

Setting the personal attack to the side, that was Hegseth's second non-answer answer. That was his second attempt to dodge the question at hand.

Another reporter now stepped in to question the mighty member. After he had scolded her for her alleged obsession with DEI, she became the third reporter to raise the unanswered question.

In this exchange, in Biblical fashion, the secretary refused to answer for what was now the third time:

REPORTER: Are you certain that the uranium wasn't removed from the facility before the B2s struck?

HEGSETH: So I'm not aware of any intelligence that I've reviewed that says things were not where they were supposed to be, moved or otherwise.

We're cleaning up an imperfection in the Rev transcription. But in that string of argle-bargle, we have the secretary's third refusal to answer this obvious question. That said, this third refusal to answer the question did, in fact, serve as an answer:

No, Virginia! Despite the rantings of President Trump, the administration doesn't know, at this point in time, whether "highly enriched uranium was moved out of Fordow before the strikes." That would be the obvious conclusion we would take from Hegseth's refusals to answer.

At this point, the administration doesn't know if enriched uranium was taken away in the days before the strike. Even as he kept melting down, the secretary's three (3) refusals to answer had finally seemed to provide the answer.

For now, we've skipped past the content of Hegseth's several meltdowns, including his remarkable attack on Griffin herself. We're also skipping the ridiculous performance, later that day, by press secretary Karoline Leavitt, in which she savaged CNN's Natasha Bertrand in ways which made zero sense.

So it goes as a group of warfighters go to war on behalf of the current commander. For now, we'll offer a brief overview of Griffin's tenure at Fox News—and we'll briefly note the conceptual difficulties Blue Americans face with respect to this new breed of furious tribal warfighters.

Yesterday, at the 38-minute mark, there came his 19th nervous breakdown of the day's press event.  

Griffin dared to note that he'd failed to answer the question.  Hegseth responded with this:

GRIFFIN: That's not the question though. It's about highly enriched uranium. Do you have certainty that all the highly enriched uranium was inside the Fordow Mountain or some of it—because there were satellite photos that showed more than a dozen trucks there two days in advance. Are you certain none of that highly enriched uranium was moved?

HEGSETH: Of course, we're watching every single aspect. But Jennifer, you've been about the worst, the one who misrepresents the most intentionally what the president says...

Before his second full refusal to answer, Hegseth continued along from there, battling Griffin's objections to that characterization. After his ad hominem attacks on Griffin, he again failed to answer.

For the record, who is Jennifer Griffin?  As a general matter, we'll tell you this:

Even now, the Fox News Channel employs a certain number of people who provide high-end, nonpartisan news reporting. Griffin has been cast in that role at Fox since 1999—or maybe since 1996. The leading authority on her career starts with this overview:

Jennifer Griffin

Jennifer Griffin is an American journalist who works as Chief National Security Correspondent at the Pentagon for Fox News. She joined Fox News in October 1999 as a Jerusalem-based correspondent. Prior to the posting, she reported for three years from Moscow for Fox News.

Since 2007, Griffin has reported daily from the Pentagon where she questions senior military leaders, travels to war zones with the Joint Chiefs and Secretaries of Defense, and reports on all aspects of the military...

And so on from there. 

We'll admit that that initial chronology doesn't quite seem to parse. Did Griffin "join  Fox  News in 1999?" Or did she hire on three years prior to that?

The chronology there doesn't quite make sense. In fairness to the leading authority, its chronology was taken, live and direct, from the jumbled chronology posted by Fox News itself.

At any rate, Griffin has long been one of the Fox News Channel's handful of competent, non-partisan news reporters. By all accounts, she's highly regarded by others in the field.

For that reason, Hegseth's personal attack seemed especially odd—but also made an obvious type of sense. That said, Hegseth is a person filled with anger—a person who seems to run on a remarkable sense of grievance.  In fairness, Leavitt's later attack on Bertrand may have been even nuttier than the Hegseth's attack on Griffin.

As at Troy, so too here. A new group of tribal warfighter have been coming over the walls since President Trump was elected again last November.

Their claims and their behaviors are often very strange. (One might say, are often highly unfamiliar.) It's very hard to find the language with which to describe their attitudes and their work.

Hegseth is part of this tribal group. So is the routinely ridiculous Leavitt, this aggressive warfighting tribe's frequent scolder-in-chief.

Ages and ages hence, someone may be telling this story with a sigh—or then again, possibly not! Starting on Monday, we'll attempt to find the language with which to describe the attitudes and the behaviors of this profoundly aggrieved new group.

At Troy, the Achaeans finally came over the walls; astonishing violence followed. Today, it's fighters like Hegseth and Leavitt who proceed in their wake.

Our foolishness in Blue America helped put these players in place. That said, they almost seem to be a whole new type of aggregation. It's hard to find a recognizable way to describe their relentless conduct.

Secretary Hegseth is gripped by a sense of grievance which won't seem to leave him alone. It's hard to find the language with which to describe his furious conduct.

Having said that, we can tell you this:

No, Virgina! From President Trump on down, it seems that these players simply don't know if uranium was carted away before last Saturday's strike.

It's only one of many possible questions at this point. But their fury seems to know no bounds, and it won't permit them to simply say that they don't actually know.

Their fury has them by the throat. It won't seem to let them go.

THURSDAY: Voters hate the bill when they know what's in it!

THURSDAY, JUNE 26, 2025

Also, they don't know what's in it: The zone is flooded every day—and the day of reckoning for the budget bill continues to draw near.

As the zone keeps getting flooded, every distraction serves as a distraction. Also, every actual news event functions in much the same way.

That said, what is in that budget bill? Also, how well does the public understand what's in the ballyhooed bill?

In this morning's New York Times, Jacob Hacker and Patrick Sullivan address each of those questions. We're scoring Professor Hacker as first among equals. Here's the identity line:

Jacob S. Hacker, a political science professor at Yale, is the author, with Paul Pierson, of “Let Them Eat Tweets​: How the Right Rules in an Age of Extreme Inequality.” Patrick Sullivan is a postdoctoral fellow at Yale.

Whatever! At any rate, Hacker and Sullivan aren't fans of the bill. Headline included, here's how their guest essay starts:

How Awful Is the Republican Megabill? Here Are Four of the Worst Parts.

The Trump-era Republican Party, we’re told, is a working-class party standing up for ordinary citizens against powerful elites. One section of the Republicans’ major policy bill is even titled “Working Families Over Elites.”

But that bill—the one and only major legislative effort of Trump 2.0—is the most regressive, least populist policy package in memory. With its distinctive mix of tax cuts laser-focused on the rich and spending cuts that most hurt middle- and low-income Americans, it would shift more resources up the income ladder than any bill passed since scorekeepers started keeping track. And when voters learn what it would do—even Republican voters—they recoil from it.

We know, because we asked them. In a survey we ran after the House version of the bill passed, we showed a random selection of voters how the bill would affect the take-home income of less affluent Americans versus the top 1 percent. Opposition exploded, with only 11 percent of Americans supporting the bill—one-third the level of support seen among those not shown the distributional results. Among Republicans, the shift was even larger: Support and opposition flipped—to nearly 3 to 1 opposition from nearly 3 to 1 support.

As unpopular as the bill is, however, Americans have yet to fully understand the special alchemy of inegalitarianism that defines it. Break through the deception and misdirection, and Republicans’ signature policy bill, which President Trump and G.O.P. lawmakers call the One Big Beautiful Bill, seems more aptly named Elites Over Working Families.

The New Haven pair state two major findings:

Voters hate the bill when they know what's in it. Also, voters don't know what's in it!  

Briefly, let's state the obvious:

The validity of Hacker's findings turns on the accuracy of what he and Sullivan told their random selection of voters about the budget bill's contents. To give you a rough idea of what those voters were told, here's how today's guest essay continues along from above:

The bill is awful for most Americans in many ways. Here are four of the worst.

1. It is epically regressive

[...]

2. The hyper-regressive tax cuts you haven’t heard enough about

[...]

3. A war on the I.R.S. could make the bill even more costly.

[...]

4. It is another “skinny” attempt to repeal Obamacare.

Those are the four (4) major problems they attribute to the bill. In each case, as you can see, we've omitted their amplification of the matter in question.

Hacker and Sullivan see this bill as a disaster for middle- and low-income Americans. That said, discussion of this bill keeps getting swept aside because of the endless array of distractions which now define American political culture—but also because major orgs like the Fox News Channel will never, on pain of death, discuss provisions of the bill which may harm the bulk of their channel's viewers.

Sad! But that's the way our political / journalistic culture works in these latter days.

What's actually in the budget bill? Pete Hegseth and Karoline Leavitt insist on joining President Trump in his angry denunciations of whatever it is the president has just angrily denounced. As such angry pseudo-discussions roll on, discussion of the budget bill gets swept to the side again.

This bill is going undiscussed in many venues and for various reasons. Meanwhile, can anyone here play this game?

We've shown you the headline which tops this guest essay online. For reasons we can't quite explain, this is the headline which appeared in this morning's print editions:

Three of the Ugliest Points About the Republican Megabill

No, we aren't making that up! According to the fine print beneath the online presentation, that's what the headline said in this morning's print editions!

Did someone have trouble counting to four? Also, as the nation continues to slide toward the sea, can anyone here play this game? 

THE PLAYERS: She should be thrown out like a dog!

THURSDAY, JUNE 26, 2025

The remains of an earlier age: The Remains of the Day started out as an acclaimed 1989 novel. After that, it was turned into an acclaimed 1993 feature film. 

We'll do a quick drive-by tomorrow. For today, we'll say this:

At one time, not long ago, yesterday's report in Mediaite might have seemed like an Onion parody.

That said, a parody of what? The conduct described in the report would have been extremely hard to imagine. 

Even viewed as some sort of parody, the report would have been hard to process. Headline included, the report started off like this:

‘FIRE NATASHA!’ Trump Launches Scathing Attack on CNN Reporter, Demands She Be ‘Thrown Out Like a Dog’

President Donald Trump demanded that CNN fire Natasha Bertrand, the reporter responsible for a story about how a preliminary U.S. intelligence assessment suggested the American attack on three Iranian facilities did not destroy the country’s nuclear program, in a fiery Truth Social post demanding that she be “thrown out ‘like a dog'” on Wednesday.

There he'd gone again! The sitting president had told the world that CNN should fire one of its reporters. 

She should be "thrown out," the president had said. More precisely, he had said that Natasha Bertrand should be thrown out "like a dog:"

Truth Details

Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump

Natasha Bertrand should be FIRED from CNN! I watched her for three days doing Fake News. She should be IMMEDIATELY reprimanded, and then thrown out “like a dog.” She lied on the Laptop from Hell Story, and now she lied on the Nuclear Sites Story, attempting to destroy our Patriot Pilots by making them look bad when, in fact, they did a GREAT job and hit “pay dirt”—TOTAL OBLITERATION! She should not be allowed to work at Fake News CNN. It’s people like her who destroyed the reputation of a once great Network. Her slant was so obviously negative, besides, she doesn’t have what it takes to be an on camera correspondent, not even close. FIRE NATASHA!

Is something wrong with this freaking guy? Of one thing we can all be certain:

As we'll show you below, Blue America's major news orgs will never be willing to ask that question. CNN included, they'll never be willing to go there!

Below, we'll reinforce that point. For now, let's simply say this:

That report in Mediaite wasn't a parody by the Onion, and it was perfectly accurate. The president had actually said those things, in one of his three million recent Truth Social posts.

There was a time, not long ago, when that report in Mediaite would have been impossible to believe. There would have been no way to imagine that a sitting president would have behaved that way.

That was then, but this is now—and, for better or worse, this is now routine behavior from the sitting president. 

To his credit, he didn't say that Bertrand is "scum," or even that she's "a sick person." On at least this one occasion, he left those bombs undropped.

That said, is something wrong with President Trump? If the answer is yes, we regard that as a human tragedy, and we'll recommend that you should follow suit.

Is something wrong with President Trump? We thought it might be worth taking a look at the CNN report which had the president incensed—at the report which carried Bertrand's name, along with the names of two other reporters.

This was the report from CNN—the report which launched our failing nation's latest pseudo-discussion. The report strikes us as fair and nuanced. As you can see, this is the way it started:

Exclusive: Early US intel assessment suggests strikes on Iran did not destroy nuclear sites, sources say

By Natasha Bertrand, Katie Bo Lillis and Zachary Cohen, CNN

The US military strikes on three of Iran’s nuclear facilities last weekend did not destroy the core components of the country’s nuclear program and likely only set it back by months, according to an early US intelligence assessment that was described by seven people briefed on it.

The assessment, which has not been previously reported, was produced by the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s intelligence arm. It is based on a battle damage assessment conducted by US Central Command in the aftermath of the US strikes, one of the sources said.

The analysis of the damage to the sites and the impact of the strikes on Iran’s nuclear ambitions is ongoing, and could change as more intelligence becomes available. But the early findings are at odds with President Donald Trump’s repeated claims that the strikes “completely and totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth also said on Sunday that Iran’s nuclear ambitions “have been obliterated.”

Two of the people familiar with the assessment said Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium was not destroyed. One of the people said the centrifuges are largely “intact.” Another source said that the intelligence assessed enriched uranium was moved out of the sites prior to the US strikes.

“So the (DIA) assessment is that the US set them back maybe a few months, tops,” this person added.

The White House acknowledged the existence of the assessment but said they disagreed with it.

That's the way it started.

As you can see, Bertrand was listed as one of three (3) reporters. The president decided that she was the one who should be thrown out like a dog, though he didn't say that she's scum.

As for the report itself, we can't see what's supposed to be wrong with the work by The CNN 3.  We say that for these reasons:

As early as paragraph 3, the reporters explicitly noted that the assessment in question "could change as more intelligence becomes available." They quickly noted that the White House (said it) disagreed with the assessment offered in the DIA's report.

For the record, CNN hadn't seen the report itself. They said they were relying on the kindness of (seven) strangers as they described its contents. 

CNN could have noted that fact more explicitly. We'd call that a minor offense.

On the whole, the repot strikes us as journalistically competent but also as fundamentally fair. Along came a major official who may be a bit less balanced in his rage-filled reactions.

In his post, the president repeated the absurd claim that CNN's report constituted an attack on the American pilots who carried out last weekend's strike. At one point not long ago, it would have been hard to imagine a sitting president repeatedly making a remark so transparently dumb

Dumb as it was, the president said it again! He then moved on to his main idea—one of the three reporters should be fired "like a dog."

Is something wrong with President Trump? If so, we regard that as a human tragedy—but of one thing you can be certain:

For better or worse, Blue America's upper-end press will never be willing to center that fairly obvious question. This very morning, the New York Times has once again established that point.

We refer to the profile by Tyler Pager which appears in today's print editions. Headline included, the profile starts like this:

Online and IRL, Trump Offers a Window Into His Psyche

Over the course of three hours on Tuesday, President Trump scolded Israel and Iran with expletive-laced comments on the South Lawn of the White House. He told reporters he had just chastised the prime minister of Israel, and he shared a screenshot of a private text from the NATO secretary general on social media.

Most presidents deal with international crises in private—at most, they might release a carefully crafted statement.

That has never been Mr. Trump’s style. With this president, the entire world gets a view into his thoughts, gripes and whims in ways that are often reminiscent of a chronically online millennial. His posts come at all hours of the day and night—many self-congratulatory, some trivial, some angry—and his in-real-life appearances can sometimes echo his online persona.

All are windows into his psyche, a trove of insight into the intentions, moods and vulnerabilities of the commander in chief.

Pager started with a daring claim. The president's endless social media posts offer a window "into his psyche."

But as his report proceeds, Pager operates as sanitizer in chief, perhaps at the direction of his editors. He restricted himself to social media posts, moving beyond the furious behavior which often emerges in the president's public actions.

The president recent angry F-bomb was mentioned only in a sanitized way. The endless name-calling of the past few days went unmentioned altogether.

Is something wrong with the president—something signaled by his apparent rage and his apparently erratic behavior? Could something perhaps be wrong "with his psyche," as Pager seems to ask?

This morning, the New York Times pretends to ask even as it refuses to do so. The president's conduct is routinely normalized, but in this morning's pseudo-profile it's largely disappeared. 

There was a time when that report in Mediaite would have been hard to imagine. As Americans, we're left with the remains of an earlier day when the president keeps going off—and when Blue America's major orgs insist on averting their gaze.

Last Saturday's attack? It's all over but the shouting! The discourse has been upended again. The major players remain. 

Tomorrow: What the spokeswoman said

WEDNESDAY: An insult like "scum" isn't even worth noting...

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 25, 2025

...the second time around: Yesterday, when he dropped the bomb in question, one news site took notice.

Mediaite reported the president's rage. Tommy Christopher started like this, headline included:

‘SCUM!’ Trump Rages at CNN, MSNBC on White House Lawn Over Skeptical Coverage

President Donald Trump raged at MSNBC and CNN over their coverage of the U.S. airstrikes in Iran, claiming they “hurt” bomber pilots by questioning his claims about the damage done.

[...]

Both of those networks drew Trump’s rage when he spoke to reporters on the South Lawn of the White House Tuesday morning as he departed the White House on route to The Hague, Netherlands.

He called the outlets “scum” and accused them of trying “to demean me” with their reporting.

At that point, Mediaite's Tommy Christopher presented a transcript of the angry president's rage-filled remarks. His remarks had gone like this:

REPORTER (6/24/25): How confident are you [INAUDIBLE] has been demolished?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: I think it’s been completely demolished. I think the reason we’re here is because those pilots, those B-2 pilots, did an unbelievable job.

And, you know, the fake news, like CNN in particular, they’re trying to say, “Well, I agree that it was destroyed, but maybe not that destroyed.”

You know what they’re doing? They’re really hurting great pilots that put their lives on the line! CNN is SCUM! And so is MSDNC. They’re all—.

And frankly, the networks aren’t much better. It’s all fake news, but they should not have done that.

Those pilots hit their targets. Those targets were obliterated, and the pilots should be given credit. They’re not after the pilots. They’re after me. They want to try and demean me.

Obviously, no one has been criticizing the pilots who performed Saturday's elaborate mission. The president offered that absurd claim, that moved to the angry assertion that CNN and MSNBC are "scum."

We're willing to call that unusual language. Quite correctly, Mediaite took note of that fact, from its eye-catching headline on down.

That was the fury of the president as he started his trip to the NATO conference. This morning, during a formal presser at The Hague, there the president went again. Once again, with extreme anger, he delivered his favorite new bomb:

PRESIDENT TRUMP (6/25/25): This was an unbelievable hit by genius pilots and genius people in the military. And they're not being given credit for it because we have scum [pointing] that's in this group. 

And not all of you are. You have some great reporters, but you have scum. 

CNN is scum.  MSDNC is scum. The New York Times is scum. They're bad people. They're sick.  And what they've done is they're trying try to make this unbelievable victory into something less...

As of this morning, the New York Times is also scum. And not only that—the Times is also sick.

Love is said to be better the second time around. By way of contrast, the furious use of the insulting term "scum" seems to be less notable. 

In today's diatribe from The Hague, the president continued with the ridiculous claim in which "the genius pilots" are being demeaned by the press, along with other "genius people in the military."

After relaunching that foolish claim, he turned again to his favorite insult, even as some of the "scum" sat right there before him. For a fuller account of today's explosion, see this morning's report.

Love is better the second time—but this startling insult is being ignored today, even at Mediaite. Simply put, our sitting president is extremely erratic and very angry—and our timorous press corps seems inclined to normalize all such behavior.

They don't know what to say about this This seems to be their solution:

Nothing to look at! Move right along!

In this face of the president's strange behavior, they just say nothing at all.

THE PLAYERS: Furious president does it again!

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 25, 2025

The New York Times calmly reports: For the record, Men's Health magazine isn't a medical journal.

That said, it seems to have a significant global readership. In what seems like a dated overview, the leading authority on such magazines offers this overview:

Men's Health

Men's Health (MH), published by Hearst, is the world's largest men's magazine brand, with 35 editions in 59 countries; it is the bestselling men's magazine on American newsstands.

Started [in 1986] as a men's health magazine, the magazine currently covers various men's lifestyle topics such as fitness, nutrition, fashion and sexuality. The magazine's website, MensHealth.com, averages over 118 million page views a month.

[...]

In 2004, Men's Health began putting celebrities and athletes on the cover, and with their shirts on—a departure from the covers of the 1990s.

Those statistics all seem to be dated. For recent claims by the magazine itself, you can just click here.

Plainly, Mea's Health magazine isn't a medical journal. We cite it today because a new report in the magazine caught our eye. 

The report may even seem to flirt with a type of political relevance. To peruse it without a paywall, you can simply click this:

10 Signs You're Dealing With a Sociopath, According to Experts

WHEN YOU THINK about a sociopath, you probably envision Patrick Bateman out of American Psycho. Films and TV make these characters look outrageously cruel and manipulative. In real life, however, sociopaths may be a little harder to identify.

“Sociopaths in real life often look charming and can be quite liked as a manipulation tactic,” explains Erin Rayburn, L.M.F.T, founder of Evergreen Therapy in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

The report proceeds from there. It doesn't cite nine signs, or even eleven. It found exactly ten!

We expect to walk you through that report before the week is done. For now, we'll start with a sober, though perhaps imperfect front-page report in this morning's New York Times.

First, a bit of background:

During this morning's four o'clock hour, we saw the sitting president, Donald J. Trump, ranting again about "the scum"—about the "sick people"—who inhabit the mainstream press corps. 

He was speaking live and direct—and very angrily—from the NATO summit in The Hague. His press event was aired live on the Fox News Channel =during a special early broadcast of its daily 5 o'clock show, Fox & Friends First.

There the president went again, complaining about "the scum!" But even as he spoke, that front-page report in the New York Times started off rather soberly, exactly as seen here:

Strike Set Back Iran’s Nuclear Program by Only a Few Months, U.S. Report Says

A preliminary classified U.S. report says the American bombing of three nuclear sites in Iran set back the country’s nuclear program by only a few months, according to officials familiar with the findings.

The strikes sealed off the entrances to two of the facilities but did not collapse their underground buildings, the officials said the early findings concluded.

Before the attack, U.S. intelligence agencies had said that if Iran tried to rush to making a bomb, it would take about three months. After the U.S. bombing run and days of attacks by the Israeli Air Force, the report by the Defense Intelligence Agency estimated that the program had been delayed, but by less than six months.

The report also said that much of Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium was moved before the strikes, which destroyed little of the nuclear material. Iran may have moved some of that to secret locations.

As far as we know, the claims in those opening paragraphs are accurate. There actually is a "preliminary report," and that actually is what "officials familiar with [its] findings" say the report has said.

Needless to say, that doesn't mean that this preliminary report represents the final word on what happened this weekend.  Experienced specialists all seem to agree that the process of assessing a military attack—the process of constructing a BDA (a Bomb Damage Assessment)—is a process of many miles.

As far as we know, the headline in the Times report accurate. As far as we know, there actually is a "U.S. report" which says that this weekend's strike "set back Iran’s nuclear program by only a few months."

We don't know if that will turn out to be the final, most persuasive assessment. Under current arrangements, we do know this:

There will never be a final assessment on which our nation's warring tribes—Red and Blue—will largely agree.

As the Times report continues, it offers some sagacious background information concerning Saturday's attack. If we were to criticize the journalism, we might suggest that this passage might have appeared a bit earlier in the Times report:

Officials cautioned that the five-page classified report was only an initial assessment, and that others would follow as more information was collected and as Iran examined the three sites. One official said that the reports people in the administration had been shown were “mixed” but that more assessments were yet to be done.

But the Defense Intelligence Agency report indicates that the sites were not damaged as much as some administration officials had hoped, and that Iran retains control of almost all of its nuclear material, meaning if it decides to make a nuclear weapon it might still be able to do so relatively quickly.

Officials interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity because the findings of the report remain classified.

The White House took issue with the assessment. Karoline Leavitt, a White House spokeswoman, said its findings were “flat-out wrong.”

Those are paragraphs 15-18 in this morning's report. The passage closes with the mandatory statement by Karoline Leavitt, bringing the eternal note of sadness in, at least according to us.

According to paragraph 15, officials cautioned that the five-page report was only an initial assessment. One official has said that more (definitive) assessments were yet to be done.

The New York Times did include those cautionary notes. It seems to us that these words of caution might have been positioned earlier in this important report. 

That said, the Times report was sober and nuanced. It probably wasn't a perfect report, in part for the obvious reason:

There's no such thing as a perfect report. No such creature exists.

To our ear, the Times report stood in contrast to what we'd already seen the president say. To see him live and direct from The Hague, you can start by clicking here.

We were watching in real time. We were watching when he said this, in a room full of reporters, for the millionth time:

PRESIDENT TRUMP (6/25/25): This was an unbelievable hit by genius pilots and genius people in the military. And they're not being given credit for it because we have scum [pointing] that's in this group. 

And not all of you are. You have some great reporters, but you have scum. 

CNN is scum.  MSDNC is scum. The New York Times is scum. They're bad people. They're sick.  And what they've done is they're trying try to make this unbelievable victory into something less...

He went on from there, sticking to his original claim about total obliteration. People at the New York Times are "scum," the president said. He also said they're "sick people." 

For the record, this:

For better or worse, wisely, or not, news orgs like the New York Times refuse to engage in medical or psychological diagnoses. They won't even interview (carefully selected) medical specialists who might engage in such discussions.

Our very angry sitting president is willing to fill that breech. Karoline Leavitt will then step in to repeat whatever the president has said. The two Americas, Red and Blue, will be fed these divergent plates of porridge.

After the president finished, a pair of Fox News Channel friends threw to Dr. Rebecca Grant. Chyronned as a "military expert," she started off with this:

DR. GRANT: Wow! That was a full bomb damage assessment briefing! And first, I've got to say, NATO is thrilled with Trump's B-2 strike on Iran, thrilled. What an honor to hear the debrief there!

It had been an honor to hear him!

Fox & Friends First was on the air an hour early. That's the way the expert started. The problems facing our flailing nation's political culture continue along from there, though largely undiscussed. 

Saturday's attack is over and done. The leading players remain, on various sides of the aisle.

Men's Health is willing to tackle some major topics. For better or worse, our mainstream press corps, not in a million years!

TUESDAY: Sitting president spots the scum...

TUESDAY, JUNE 24, 2025

...then continues from there: The Daily Beast is reporting a poll. For ourselves, we probably wouldn't call its results "devastating" or a "bombshell," but the Beast's report starts like this:

Devastating Poll Shows Trump What Americans Think of His Bombings

A bombshell CNN poll found that a clear majority of Americans disapprove of President Trump’s decision to launch airstrikes in Iran.

The poll found that 56 percent of Americans disapproved of [Saturday's] military action in Iran, while only 44 percent were in favor. It also found that 58 percent of those surveyed believe Trump’s actions will make Iran a bigger threat to the U.S.

The vast majority of Democrats (88 percent) and most independents (60 percent) said they opposed the strikes, while most Republicans (82 percent) broadly approved. But just 44 percent of Republicans said they strongly approved of Trump’s actions—a much smaller cohort than the 60 percent of Democrats who strongly disapproved.

Just to be clear, the featured question was this:

What is your view of the US decision to take military action in Iran?

Plainly, the question seemed to refer to Saturday's military strike, not to possible "military action" in general.

For our money, we'd generally prefer to see polling numbers cut against President Trump by a larger margin than 56-44. This second question did produce a larger negative split:

Do you think this US military action will make Iran [more of a threat / less of a threat] to the US?

Responses there broke in favor of "more of a threat" by 58-25. Opinion on that could change, of course, depending on what does or doesn't come next.

CNN asked another question—a question we think is instructive. That question went like this:

How much do you trust Donald Trump to make the right decisions about US use of force in Iran?

We regard that as a very good question. Rightly or wrongly, for better or worse, respondents broke down like this:

How much do you trust Donald Trump to make the right decisions about US use of force in Iran?
Great deal / moderately: 45%
Not much / not at all: 55%

More simplistically, 45% basically trust his decision making; 55% basically don't. Given where the Daily Beast report went next, we'd call that a bit of a win for the selling of President Trump.

Here's the way the Daily Beast report continued:

The poll results were featured in a segment on CNN at 6:40 a.m. ET on Tuesday. Within 20 minutes, Trump furiously lashed out at the network while speaking to reporters on the White House lawn as part of an explicit tirade, slamming CNN as “scum.”

Ranting about reports from CNN and MSNBC that his airstrikes may not have completely destroyed Iran’s nuclear stockpiles, Trump fumed: “CNN is scum. And so is MSDNC ... It’s all fake news. They should not have done that. Those pilots hit their targets, those targets were obliterated, and the pilots should be given credit. They’re not after the pilots, they’re after me.”

Obviously, no one is "going after the pilots." But so said President Trump.

Over and over, again and again, everyone seems to be going after President Trump if you let him tell it. We can't help wondering what a (carefully selected) medical specialist would say about this endless pattern of behavior, but we do know this:

Given prevailing rules of the game, no news org is going to ask.

To a remarkable degree, large elements of Red America's current elites are driven by fury and rage. Of course, if western literature began with the Iliad, it began with a lengthy profile of fury and rage as expressed by a furious, rage-filled group of extremely angry men.

For ourselves, we don't have a lot of confidence in President Trump's future decision making. In what we would regard as a tragedy, his erratic behavior routinely spills with rage, as happened again today. 

We refer to this Truth Social post. It concerns three Democratic House members, with a certain "Palestinian" senator thrown in:

Truth Details

Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump

Stupid AOC, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of the "dumbest" people in Congress, is now calling for my Impeachment, despite the fact that the Crooked and Corrupt Democrats have already done that twice before. The reason for her "rantings" is all of the Victories that the U.S.A. has had under the Trump Administration. The Democrats aren’t used to WINNING, and she can’t stand the concept of our Country being successful again. When we examine her Test Scores, we will find out that she is NOT qualified for office but, nevertheless, far more qualified than Crockett, who is a seriously Low IQ individual, or Ilhan Omar, who does nothing but complain about our Country, yet the Failed Country that she comes from doesn’t have a Government, is drenched in Crime and Poverty, and is rated one of the WORST in the World, if it’s even rated at all. How dare "The Mouse" tells us how to run the United States of America! We’re just now coming back from that Radical Left experiment with Sleepy Joe, Kamala, and "THE AUTOPEN," in charge. What a disaster it was! AOC should be forced to take the Cognitive Test that I just completed at Walter Reed Medical Center, as part of my Physical. As the Doctor in charge said, "President Trump ACED it," meaning, I got every answer right. Instead of her constant complaining, Alexandria should go back home to Queens, where I was also brought up, and straighten out her filthy, disgusting, crime ridden streets, in the District she "represents," and which she never goes to anymore. She better start worrying about her own Primary, before she starts thinking about our Great Palestinian Senator, Cryin' Chuck Schumer, whose career is definitely on very thin ice! She and her Democrat friends have just hit the Lowest Poll Numbers in Congressional History, so go ahead and try impeaching me, again, MAKE MY DAY!

Yes, that's what he posted. 

At this site, we regard that apparently uncontrollable anger as a human tragedy—as a tragic loss of human potential. We also regard it as a reason to be concerned about President Trump's future decision-making.

Sadly, he keeps going back to that cognitive test, apparently not knowing how dumb the reference is. 

For ourselves, we think AOC's call for a third impeachment didn't exactly make sense. That said:

Forty-five percent of respondents told CNN that they expect that the man who keeps churning "Truths" of that type will make decent future decisions. Somewhere within that number, we almost suspect, our own tribe has failed to connect.

Our literature begins with a portrait of rage. It leads onward toward the fall of Troy—to a vicious and violent outcome.

In the present instance, our sitting president spotted the scum, then continued along from there. We regard this as a human tragedy. Many others trust this man.

THE PLAYERS: He says that he said, "Don't go in!"

TUESDAY, JUNE 24, 2025

Except he didn't say that: Last Friday, in Morristown, New Jersey, there he went again!

Almost surely, the decision to bomb Iran had apparently already been made. As a possible part of a multifaceted feint, the president was heading off for a relaxing weekend at his Bedminster country club.

After landing at Morristown Municipal Airport, the president took questions from reporters. For unknown reasons, NBC's Vaughn Hillyard tossed him a misleading softball about his position, way back in 2002, on the impending war in Iraq.

By our lights, Hillyard's presentation was grossly misleading. In his response, the president took it and ran:

HILLYARD (6/20/25): Twenty years ago, you were skeptical of a Republican administration that attacked a Middle East country on the idea of questionable intelligence of weapons of mass destruction. How is this moment different with Iran?

TRUMP: ...I was very much opposed to Iraq. I was—I said it loud and clear, but I was a civilian, but I got a lot of publicity. But I was very much opposed to the Iraq war, and I actually did say, "Don't go in. Don't go in. Don't go in."

I actually did say, "Don't go in," the president said.

Except he didn't say that. He didn't say any such thing in the run-up to the war in Iraq.

Journalistically, this matter was litigated long ago, back in the day when Candidate Trump made his first ran for the White House. At that time, it became obvious that he hadn't opposed the war in Iraq, and certainly not in the full-throated way he still likes to say he recalls.

More than twenty years later, there the president went again! The next day, the attack on Iran's nuclear sites proceeded, with the president stepping forward to claim a degree of success which may or may not have occurred.

("Iran's key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated.")

The day before the strike on Ira, he stood on the tarmac in New Jersey. 

I said it loud and clear, the president said. I actually did say, "Don't go in. Don't go in. Don't go in."

In fact, he didn't do any such thing. And he didn't actually say that.

How will history judge Saturday's attack on Iran? Assuming "history" exists in the future, the bombing attack may be judged as a major geopolitical success.

Or then again, possibly not! That will depend, at least in part, on the judgments and the decisions which are made from here. 

Were Iran's enrichment facilities completely obliterated? Everyone seems to agree that no such assessment can be made at this point. But whatever may have happened to those facilities—even if the facilities have been destroyed—the major players who got us here are going to remain.

President Trump will stay in place; so will Vice President Vance. So will the president's cabinet members and his informal advisers.

The mainstream press corps will stay in place. So will the various players seen on the Fox News Channel.

The Democratic Party will still be there, with its officials inclined to argue about tangential legalisms. And we denizens of Blue America will still be in place, perhaps failing to see, right to the end, the ways our own imperfect judgments helped create a world in which President Trump, and his associates, will be making the major decisions as this matter moves forward.

President Trump remains unchanged. So does the problem he seems to have with the task of making accurate statements.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth will, most likely, remain—and it's as we showed you in yesterday's report. In a move straight outta Orwell, he offered this, on Sunday morning, in the wake of the attacks:

SECRETARY HEGSETH (6/22/25): Thanks to President Trump's bold and visionary leadership and his commitment to peace through strength, Iran's nuclear ambitions have been obliterated.

Many presidents have dreamed of delivering the blow to Iran's nuclear program and none could until President Trump. The operation President Trump planned was bold and it was brilliant.

[...]

President Trump said, No nukes. He seeks peace, and Iran should take that path. He sent out a Truth last night saying this: "Any retaliation by Iran against the United States of America will be met with force far greater than what was witnessed tonight." Signed, "The President of the United States, Donald J. Trump."

President Trump had "sent out a Truth!" Incredibly, that's what Hegseth actually said.

Incredibly, that's what he fellow actually said. In the process, he invented a new piece of Orwellian language.

("He is such a boy," a young Bulgarian woman once said. As we noted yesterday, we kept flashing on her words in the wake of Hegseth's statement.)

At least for now—and possibly for much longer than that—the bombing mission on Iran has changed the shape of the American discourse:

We're so old that we can even remember the political murders in Minnesota! Beyond that, it's as we noted in Saturday's report. We can even remember the day when Vice President Vance engaged in this astonishing bit of ugly political conduct:

Vance Blames L.A. Violence on California Democrats and Disparages Padilla

Eight days ago, Senator Alex Padilla was forcibly removed from a news conference and handcuffed by federal agents after he interrupted Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, at the Wilshire Federal Building in Los Angeles.

At the same building on Friday, Vice President JD Vance disparaged Mr. Padilla for engaging in “political theater” and called him by the wrong name.

“Well, I was hoping Jose Padilla would be here to ask a question, but unfortunately, I guess he decided not to show up because there wasn’t the theater,” Mr. Vance said during a news conference in response to a reporter. “I think everybody realizes that’s what this is. It’s pure political theater.”

Mr. Vance’s spokeswoman later said that he misspoke when he said the senator’s name.

[...]

Later Friday, a spokeswoman for Mr. Vance said the vice president misspoke when he said Mr. Padilla’s name.

“He must have mixed up two people who have broken the law,” said Taylor Van Kirk, the spokeswoman.

Jose Padilla is the name of a man who was convicted of terrorism conspiracy in 2007 after being arrested in Chicago on suspicion of planning to set off a radioactive dirty bomb.

Astonishing! A person could always imagine that the Vice President had misspoken unintentionally when he bungled the senator's first name.

The astonishing statement by the press spokesperson lay any such thoughts to rest. It also serves to remind us of the vast cultural problem our flailing nation still faces.

Bombs have fallen in what may come to be seen as an historically significant mission. Or then again, possibly not!

The way the current situation plays out will depend, in very large part, on future decisions made by people like Hegseth and Vance—and of course, by President Trump himself.

Should those of us in our flailing nation have confidence in what will come next? It seems to us that the answer is no. In fact, imperfect judgment flows like a mighty stream from elements of the American nation—and that even include us Blues.

Some facilities in Iran are gone, but the major players remain. As we noted yesterday, the Middle East is "a story without an ending." There is still no way to know how events will unfold from here.

Some sites are gone, but the story remains. As the week continues, we'll continue to offer some thoughts about the deeply flawed American tribes who do, in fact, remain.

This afternoon: We owe you reports from last week

Tomorrow: Bluster and fury

THE PLAYERS: "It's a story without an ending!"

MONDAY, JUNE 23, 2025

The Bulgarian woman's tale: On Saturday, we closed our post with this remark:

Within two weeks, one of the people we've mentioned today has a major decision to make.

As it turned out, the person in question had already made that decision! This morning, The New York Times' David Sanger starts his report on the aftermath like this:

Officials Concede They Don’t Know the Fate of Iran’s Uranium Stockpile

A day after President Trump declared that Iran’s nuclear program had been “completely and totally obliterated” by American bunker-busting bombs and a barrage of missiles, the actual state of the program seemed far more murky, with senior officials conceding they did not know the fate of Iran’s stockpile of near-bomb-grade uranium. 

“We are going to work in the coming weeks to ensure that we do something with that fuel and that’s one of the things that we’re going to have conversations with the Iranians about,” Vice President JD Vance told ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday, referring to a batch of uranium sufficient to make nine or 10 atomic weapons. Nonetheless, he contended that the country’s potential to weaponize that fuel had been set back substantially because it no longer had the equipment to turn that fuel into operative weapons.

The situation is somewhat murky, despite what the president said. Or at least, that's the assessment Sanger offers—and Sanger is as sober, and as experienced, as our mainstream journalists ever get.

For better or worse, the president decided to go ahead with Saturday's attack. That said, the situation is somewhat murky, Sanger says—and the major players remain in place to deal with whatever comes next. 

Did President Trump perhaps overstate the situation? With a tip of the cap to the invaluable Rev, here's part of what the president said in the brief address to which Sanger refers:

PRESIDENT TRUMP (6/21/25): Tonight, I can report to the world that the strikes were a spectacular military success. Iran's key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated. Iran, the bully of the Middle East must now make peace. If they do not, future attacks will be far greater and a lot easier. 

Borrowing from Twain, reports of that complete and total obliteration may have been greatly exaggerated—or at least, so Sanger has said. In closing, the president added this:

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Tomorrow, General Caine, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth will have a press conference at 8:00 AM at the Pentagon, and I want to just thank everybody, and in particular, God. 

I want to just say we love you, God, and we love our great military...

Does anyone think that the president holds actual religious beliefs? We'd be inclined to say that, as perhaps a bit of a pretender, he doesn't seem to have mastered the talk at this point.

President Trump remains. During Sunday morning's press event, Secretary Hegseth said this:

SECRETARY HEGSETH (6/22/25): The order we received from our Commander in Chief was focused, it was powerful, and it was clear. We devastated the Iranian nuclear program. It's worth noting the operation did not target Iranian troops and Iranian people.

For the entirety of his time in office, President Trump has consistently stated, for over ten years, that Iran must not get a nuclear weapon. Full stop. Thanks to President Trump's bold and visionary leadership and his commitment to peace through strength, Iran's nuclear ambitions have been obliterated.

Many presidents have dreamed of delivering the blow to Iran's nuclear program and none could until President Trump. The operation President Trump planned was bold and it was brilliant...

When it came his turn to speak, General Caine went with "just the facts." Some have said that Secretary Hegseth may have been cheerleading a bit.

The bombs have dropped, but the principal players remain, with their strengths and their weaknesses. Along the way, the secretary even said this:

HEGSETH: President Trump said, no nukes. He seeks peace, and Iran should take that path. He sent out a Truth last night saying this: "Any retaliation by Iran against the United States of America will be met with force far greater than what was witnessed tonight." Signed, "The President of the United States, Donald J. Trump."

The president "sent out a Truth last night?" Has anyone ever fashioned some such statement? 

The secretary seems to have coined a new term, From now on, whenever the president posts on his site, his statement will be known as "a Truth!"

(The capitalization was rendered by Rev—in our view, correctly. The Iranian regime includes a Supreme Leader—but as we'll see as the week proceeds, our own White House may be tilting that way too.)

We don't mean this as a criticism of President Trump's decision. We're inclined to agree with the assessment according to which the White House was confronted with two possible choices, each of which was bad.

We don't mean what follows as a criticism of the decision. We mean it as a bit of a warning:

The decision has been made, but the major players remain. The major players remain within the White House, but within our own Blue America too.

Two weekends ago, we happened to watch Casablanca again. The famous film had briefly popped up for free through On Demand. We regard it as the greatest accidental masterwork in all of western literature.  

As always, the famous film triggered reactions it hadn't triggered before. Today, especially as we think about what Secretary Hegseth said, we keep flashing on what one of Casablanca's secondary characters says at obe point about her very young husband.

We refer to the young Bulgarian refugee, Annina Brandel, who, like almost everyone else in the film, is hoping to find a way to reach a magical destination—America. Midway through the film, she asks the Humphrey Bogart character if she should agree to do a very bad thing in order to get an exit visa for herself and for her husband—her husband of only eight weeks.

She doesn't want to do this very bad thing. But along the way, she says this:

ANNINA: But M'sieur, if he never knew, and the girl kept this bad thing locked in her heart—that would be all right, wouldn't it? 

RICK: You want my advice?

ANNINA: Oh yes—please.

RICK (bitterly): Go back to Bulgaria.

ANNINA (pleading): On, but if you knew what it means to us to leave Europe—to get to America 

(PAUSE) 

Oh, but if Jan should find out! He is such a boy. In many ways, I am so much older than he is...

You may recall how this situation plays out. But we keep thinking of the highlighted statement when we think of Hegseth's cheerleading this Sunday morning. 

He is such a boy, the young Bulgarian woman says. We keep flashing on that (loving) statement when we think of Hegseth's presentation.

In the present context, Saturday's bombing mission may, on balance, be judged to have gone extremely well. But this is a story without an ending, and the major players remain. 

That includes Secretary Hegseth along with President Trump. It also includes the major players in Blue America who are struggling to find a way to assess these events.

The young woman in that famous scene said her husband was "such a boy." She doesn't mean it as a criticism—but we've been flashing on that statement as we think about what we saw Secretary Hegseth do and say yesterday morning.

Where have all the flowers gone? As he continues, Sanger raises a similar question about Iran's uranium:

SANGER: Satellite photographs of the primary target, the Fordo uranium enrichment plant that Iran built under a mountain, showed several holes where a dozen 30,000-pound Massive Ordnance Penetrators—one of the largest conventional bombs in the U.S. arsenal—punched deep holes in the rock. The Israeli military’s initial analysis concluded that the site, the target of American and Israeli military planners for more than 26 years, sustained serious damage from the strike but had not been completely destroyed.

But there was also evidence, according to two Israeli officials with knowledge of the intelligence, that Iran had moved equipment and uranium from the site in recent days. And there was growing evidence that the Iranians, attuned to Mr. Trump’s repeated threats to take military action, had removed 400 kilograms, or roughly 880 pounds, of uranium enriched to 60 percent purity. That is just below the 90 percent that is usually used in nuclear weapons.

The site sustained serious damage, but the uranium remains? 

"This is a story without an ending." The Bogart character repeats that statement several times during the course of the Oscar-winning film.

Casablanca was an accident—colloquially, a gift from the gods. It was meant to be a front-line film, but the studio had no idea that it was crafting a masterpiece as filming struggled along.

Its spectacular ending was only devised in the days before filming ended. The film was being composed on the fly, and a miracle somehow occurred.

As of today, Iran is a story without an ending. We don't mean that as a criticism, just as a matter of fact.

A few sites are gone—but as with the uranium, the major players remain. We refer to principals like President Trump and Secretary Hegseth, but to Blue America's leading players too. Can we place our faith in their good judgment as matters unfold from here? 

President Trump "sent out a Truth." That's what one of the players said!

As this week proceeds, we'll look at the people, Red and Blue, who will be the decision-makers as the successor to a legendary nation—as the successor to Casablanca's "America"—responds to whatever comes next.

"It's a story without an ending," the Bogart character says. The screenwriters fashioned a brilliant ending. Will the world be that fortunate here?

Tomorrow: For starters, this person remains

The young wife's heartfelt tale: With apologies for the colorization—to watch the full scene from Casablanca, you can just click here.