THE DISAPPEARED: Communist Communist Communist Communist!

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2025

So goes the Fox News Channel: Who the Sam Hill is Zohran Mamdani? Because he's now mayor-elect of New York City, inquiring minds may want to know.

One day after he was elected, NPR's Rachel Treisman attempted to puzzle it out. Headline included, her "explainer" piece started like this:

EXPLAINER
NYC's next mayor is a democratic socialist. What does that mean?

New York City has elected a democratic socialist as its next mayor.

Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani won with a progressive platform focused on making the city more affordable, through free bus service, frozen rents, universal childcare and a higher minimum wage, among other ideas.

The state assemblymember represented both the Democratic Party and the Working Families Party on the ballot. He quoted prominent late-19th and early-20th century socialist Eugene Debs in his victory speech Tuesday night. And he is a longtime member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

[...]

As Mamdani's campaign pushed democratic socialism further into the mainstream, it has also raised questions about what the political ideology is—and isn't.

Most notably, President Trump has frequently and falsely criticized Mamdani as a communist in the lead-up to the election. Mamdani refuted that characterization in a June appearance on NBC's Meet the Press, to which he responded, "I am not."

Mamdani went on to describe his brand of democratic socialism, a term that is largely up to interpretation.

In our view, Treisman went on to make a valiant attempt to describe Mamdani's stated version of "democratic socialism." Four days later, the trio of friends on the Fox News Channel's Fox & Friends Weekend authored an alternate portrait of who and what Mamdani, and the rest of the Democratic Party, actually is and are. 

If we were to paraphrase what was said, we'd paraphrase it like this:

Communist Communist Communist Communist! Obama Obama Obama!

That account of what was said might be oversimplified. But if so, it isn't over-simplified by much.

The portrait in question was painted by this program's three regular co-hosts. Pete Hegseth and Will Cain are now long gone from the mix. The line-up now looks like this:

Co-hosts, Fox & Friends Weekend
Charlie Hurt
Rachel Campos-Duffy
Griff Jenkins

Campos-Duffy remains the straw which stirs this program's drink. As we've often noted, she's an exceptionally genial morning show performer—but only with respect to her friends.

The conversation we're about to describe took place near the start of the program's 7 a.m. hour. A person could spend a week examining the various things which were said, but we're going to move along a bit more quickly. As a general matter, we'll say this:

The conversation these lunkheads created helps illustrate the way our failing nation is being turned into a pair of dueling tribes. It illustrates the problem which arises when a major entity like the Fox News Channel adopts the practice known as "segregation by viewpoint"—when it hires people who will agree with each other on every possible point while giving voice to every aspect of their channel's corporate messaging.

Our guess this morning will be this:

Very few people in Blue America will be aware of how far off the rails these conversations have gone. That's because no major news org or journalist in Blue America reports and discusses the ridiculous fare which is routinely presented on the Fox News Channel. 

For whatever reason, these conversations are disappeared by Blue America's academics and journalists.

The conversation to which we refer starts right here, at 7:03 a.m. It continues along for the next ten minutes. This its principal theme:

Communist Communist Communist Communist! Obama Obama Obama!

As a bit of a saving grace, Campos-Dufy and Hurt didn't perform the vaudeville act they'd been performing in the previous several months. As part of this presentation, Campos-Duffy describes Mamdani as a Communist, and Hurt jumps in with this:

"A full-blown Communist."

At least that wasn't said this day. But as Campos-Duffy motored along, saying Communist Communist Obama Obama, very few other cries of alarm were actually left unsaid.

We won't transcribe the bulk of this segment. It started with videotape of former president Biden speaking at a fund-raider the previous night, with Campos-Duffy offering this:

HURT (11/8/25): Holy cow! It's like, he's not all there

CAMPOS-DUFFY (11/8/25): Again, shame on Jill Biden. She should be taking care of him. She should be enjoying him now that he's back home. Instead, she's like, "Get back out there!" There's no reason for Joe Biden to be out there now because he's not the leader of the party.

No one asked Campos-Duffy how she knew the role Jill Biden had played in this matter. She was simply advancing a familiar bit of demonization aimed at the former first lady.

So far, no Communists had been spotted. Inevitably, that small mercy would soon reach its end. At 7:06, the time-honored term of political panic was heard for the very first time:

CAMPOS-DUFFY: So there is a battle inside of the party. And it's sort of like— 

People say it's, like, the establishment Democrats versus the Communist/socialist wing, and I don't think that's quite what it is. I think it's those who are out and proud as socialists and those who think they still have to hide it, the way Obama did back in 2008.

Within this world, is a Communist the same thing as a socialist? At this juncture, that point still wasn't clear. Nor was it clear what this corporate TV star meant by either of these famous terms.

At the very least, it now seemed to be clear that everyone in the Democratic Party was at least a socialist. Also, that Candidate Obama hid that fact about himself during Campaign 2008.

Obama had always been at least a socialist—but what did that claim even mean? Neither of Campos-Duffy's friends asked, and the colloquy continued from there.

Are the Democrats a bunch of Communists, or are they merely socialists? Campos-Duffy was soon telling her friends this

CAMPOS-DUFFY: The debate isn't, "Are we socialist or Communists or not?" The debate is, "Should we tell everyone or not?"

It's a great point, Jenkins said. Soon we were on to this:

CAMPOS-DUFFY: [Obama] had to lie to us in 2008. But some of us were on to him. [Group laughter] I was!

Obama had lied about being a socialist, or maybe about being a Communist, way back in 2008! But Campos-Duffy had known all along.

With that, the friends began discussing the subpoenas which the DOJ had reportedly been sent to several former officials as part of the latest investigation of "the origins of the Trump-Russia probe." After a series of shaky claims, Campos-Duffy said this about that original probe:

CAMPOS-DUFFY: This weaponization of government—this very Communist idea of "I'm going to use intel agencies that are meant to capture terrorists to go after my own political opponents, and I'm going to use the government to take down a president who was duly elected and concoct this whole Russia collusion thing...—this whole thing was so toxic and it all starts with Obama. 

When you look at Mamdani winning here in New York City as a Communist, don't think about Mamdani—think about Obama. Everything that's bad that's happened, go back to Obama.

Mamdani won New York City as a Communist, we were now told. But it all goes back to Barack Obama, this Obama-loather now said.

Indeed, that original probe had been very Communist, Campos-Duffy said. The other friends nodded along.

People watching this segregated show are routinely handed a novel—a novelized story about recent American history. A different form of moral and intellectual disorder prevails at 10 p.m. each weekday night on the aggressively stupid Gutfeld! show.

Gutfeld! is the third most-watched TV program in our nation's "cable news" industry. The New York Times has finally begun to write about this extremely unusual program—but the Times still seems reluctant to report what happens on this show.

Our guess this morning will be this:

Very few people in Blue America will be aware of how far off the rails the Fox News Channel's major programs have gone. That's because no major journalist or news org in Blue America reports and discusses the contents of this channel's actual fare. 

For whatever reason, the contents of this channel's programs have been disappeared by Blue America's academics and journalists. Campos-Duffy goes unreported and undiscussed. So does the very strange Gutfeld.

Who the heck is Zohran Mamdani? He's a Communist, Fox News viewers were told. 

Also, it all goes back to Barack Obama! It sounds like President Obama was a Communist all along. His conduct was very Communist.

This is very low-end stuff. It's also the soul of the Fox News Channel, and it's worth reporting.

On Gutfeld!, the disorder takes a different form. For whatever reason, the New York Times still refuses to report what actually happens on that extremely strange "cable news" show.

Tomorrow: Blatantly false from the start

MONDAY: Democrats still lack any significant power!

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2025

And so, the end of the shutdown came: Should ten Democrats have decided to vote to stop the shutdown? We'll link you to a pair of possible answers.

In this column for the New York Times, Ezra Klein says he wouldn't have voted to end the shutdown, but by the end of his piece, he takes a nuanced view of the matter:

What Were Democrats Thinking?

[...]

More than anything else, this is what led some Senate Democrats to cut a deal: Trump’s willingness to hurt people exceeds their willingness to see people get hurt. I want to give them their due on this: They are hearing from their constituents and seeing the mounting problems, and they are trying to do what they see as the responsible, moral thing. They do not believe that holding out will lead to Trump restoring the subsidies. They fear that their Republican colleagues would, under mounting pressure, do as Trump had demanded and abolish the filibuster...They don’t think a longer shutdown will cause Trump to cave. They just think it will cause more damage.

If I were in the Senate, I wouldn’t vote for this compromise. Shutdowns are an opportunity to make an argument, and the country was just starting to pay attention. If Trump wanted to cancel flights over Thanksgiving rather than keep health care costs down, I don’t see why Democrats should save him from making his priorities so exquisitely clear. And I worry that Democrats have just taught Trump that they will fold under pressure. That’s the kind of lesson he remembers.

But it’s worth keeping this in perspective: The shutdown was a skirmish, not the real battle. Both sides were fighting for position, and Democrats, if you look at the polls, are ending up in a better one than they were when they started. They elevated their best issue—health care—and set the stage for voters to connect higher premiums with Republican rule. It’s not a win, but given how badly shutdowns often go for the opposition party, it’s better than a loss.

Ezra would have continued the shutdown even as people suffered. On the other hand:

What happened isn't a win, he said, but it's better than a loss. That's the way the column ended. 

On Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough said there was nothing more Democrats could hope to get out of an extended shutdown. He said they had already won the standoff by giving the electorate a chance to see President Trump behaving an undisguised ogre with respect to nutrition assistance and to subsidies for health insurance.

We're inclined to agree with that view. Thanks to Mediaite, here's part of Scarborough's discussion this morning with Senator King (I-Maine).

Some people are responding to the "cave" by the ten Democrats with a great deal of fury. We would offer this:

Those of us in Bue America bought this deal when we did the various things that made Election 2024 turn out the way it did. When we kept pretending that the southern border was closed. When we kept failing to explain what was occurring at the border. When we kept pretending that something seemed to be wrong with President Biden.

When we kept pretending that complaints about inflation and the cost of living were delusions on the part of the voters. When we kept pushing for some of the social justice issues which, rightly or wrongly, went well beyond anything that made sense to a large percentage of American voters.

When we kept pushing and pushing and looking for ways to get Candidate Trump locked up. We kept ignoring the interests of regular people as we invested ourselves in that project.

Under the circumstances, it's a miracle that Candidate Harris came as close as she did. It's a marker of how unpopular Candidate Trump actually was—but we still managed to get him elected to the White House again, and he even emerged with narrow majorities in the Senate and the House.

No, the border wasn't secure—and everyone knew that but us. In the process of pretending otherwise, we created the narrow but absolute power imbalance we're still stuck with today.

Democrats still have no particular power to stop the ogre-adjacent behavior being displayed by President Trump. Also this:

To this day, no one has tried to explain the policy at the southern border during the Biden years. No one has tried to explain, and no one has tried to apologize for all the arrogant dissembling in which we Blues were involved.

At this point, Blue America needs to find a voice the public will trust to explain the current situation involving the way the president is throwing lower-income people under the bus and into the cold. (We've advised you to pity the child with respect to the behavior of the current president.)

It will have to be a voice the American public will be inclined to trust. It might even help if it's a voice which can explain, and perhaps apologize for, our own tribe's unwise behavior during the past however many years.

The border was open and everyone knew it. We Blues were saying that it was secure. Everyone knew it wasn't secure—everyone except us!

Ezra's willing to let the suffering continue. Ezra is clearly a good, decent person. Is it possible that he's imaginably being a tiny bit cavalier, or that it might almost look that way to other good, decent people?

The woods are lovely, dark and deep. In our view, this isn't the easiest call.

THE DISAPPEARED: The New York Times has discovered Greg Gutfeld!

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2025

His conduct still gets disappeared: The battle over the government shutdown—the battle over food assistance; the battle over affordable health care—is taking place within a larger context.

We refer to the nation's political discourse, or perhaps to its imitation of same. We've often told you this:

It's relatively easy to be aware of the various things which get reported and said. It can be extremely hard to be aware of the many things which get disappeared.

Many things do get disappeared within the American discourse. Having offered that tantalizing suggestion, we start our week with this:

Viewership numbers for cable news programs are now available for the month of October. Below, you see the way the Nielsen numbers looked last month for the fifteen most watched "cable news" programs.

The numbers represent the average audience for the particular program. For the full report from Adweek, you can just click here:

Here Are the Cable News Ratings for October 2025 / Total viewers
1. The Five, Fox News: 3.7 million
2. Jesse Watters Primetime, Fox News: 3.1 million
3. Gutfeld!, Fox News: 2.8 million
4. Special Report with Bret Baier, Fox News: 2.8 million
5. Hannity, Fox News: 2.6 million
6. The Ingraham Angle, Fox News: 2.6 million
7. The Will Cain Show, Fox News: 2.2 million
8. Outnumbered, Fox News: 2.0 million
9. America’s Newsroom, Fox News: 2.0 million
10. The Faulkner Focus, Fox News: 1.9 million
11. The Story with Martha MacCallum, Fox News: 1.9 million
12. America Reports, Fox News: 1.9 million
13. The Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC: 1.6 million
14. Fox News @Night, Fox News: 1.5 million
15. Fox & Friends, Fox News: 1.3 million

You are correct, sir! Among October's most-watched "cable news" programs, fourteen of the top fifteen aired on the Fox News Channel.

(Just so you'll know, CNN's most-watched program was The Arena with Kasie Hunt. Airing at 4 p.m. Eastern, it averaged 611,000 viewers.)

To what extent do these three channels shape the American discourse? That would be hard to determine. But for better or worse, there is no doubt that the Fox News Channel dominates this competition. Across the sweep of the full day, it had three times as many viewers as MSNBC during the month just passed, almost four times as many as CNN.

The Fox News Channel rules the seas and has done so for years! For better or worse, the New York Times has started reacting to that fact, with special attention being paid to that channel's Greg Gutfeld and his band of merry men and women.

To its credit, the New York Times didn't pull Gutfeld's name out of a hat. Along with his towel-snapping pal Jesse Watters, Gutfeld dominates the pseudo-discussions on The Five, where the two lads serve as regular co-hosts. 

On that most-watched program of them all, this pair of potentates tend to split the "interruption of Tarlov" duties, a key part of the program's tribally pleasing frisson. Gutfeld tends to dominate the attempt at conducting something resembling real discussion with the long filibusters in which he delivers his attempts at constructing coherent political theories.

That horseplay plus disquisition performance occurs each day at 5 p.m. Eastern. Three hours later, Watters hosts his own nightly show—the second most-watched TV show in all of cable news.

Gutfeld's eponymous program follows two hours later. 

Due to this double-dipping, Watters is seen by more people, on a nightly basis, than anyone else in cable news. Gutfeld runs a close second. 

Presumably, this helps explain why the New York Times has now featured Gutfeld and his eponymous Gutfeld! show in two large recent profiles. The latest such profile, written by David Marchese, starts off exactly like this, headline included:

The Interview: Fox News Wanted Greg Gutfeld to Do This Interview. He Wasn’t So Sure.

Why can’t conservatives break through on late-night TV? For years, that was an open cultural question. The left, of course, had “The Daily Show” and “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver,” among others. Once the Trump era began, progressives could also point to hosts like Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel and Seth Meyers as being politically simpatico. The right had, well, no one.

That is, until Greg Gutfeld. Formerly a health and men’s magazine editor, Gutfeld joined Fox News in 2007 to helm the later-than-late-night chat free-for-all “Red Eye.” He worked his way up the network’s schedule, and in 2021 his new show, “Gutfeld!” started airing on weekday nights at 11 p.m. on the East Coast. (It’s now on at 10 p.m.) Its format is different from traditional host-driven late-night shows: Rather than interview celebrity guests, Gutfeld presides over a round table of regular panelists, among them the former professional wrestler Tyrus and the commentator Kat Timpf, the designated (occasional) contrarian. The overall vibe is insult-heavy, aggressively anti-woke and relentlessly pro-conservative. It’s a successful formula. The show averages over three million viewers a night—numbers that dwarf its competitors’.

That's the way the profile starts. In certain fairly obvious ways, it goes downhill from there.

In other ways, this profile, which takes the form of an interview, can be seen as extremely revealing. The piece appeared online this weekend. It's scheduled to appear next Sunday in the New York Times magazine.

Gutfeld and Watters play prominent roles within the "cable news" industry. Arguably, they've now become the two biggest stars at the dominant Fox News Channel. 

That said:

As we've noted again and again, publications like the New York Times rarely report or discuss what happens on that channel's programs. In that way, the highly unusual content of those TV programs tends to get disappeared.

What does happen on the programs of the Fox News Channel? Last Saturday morning, on Fox & Friends Weekend, we saw a conversation between Rachel, Charlie and Griff which we thought should be reported. We'll start with that three-way exchange tomorrow morning, after which we'll move along to the way Marchese chose to interview Gutfeld—to the basic facts Marchese reported, but also to the basic facts he apparently chose to suppress.

We'll also look at the ludicrous ways Gutfeld answered Marchese's interview questions. At the age of 61, and with Tucker Carlson excepted, Gutfeld may be the strangest person who has ever played a major role on American "cable news."

That said, his disordered behavior has shot this man to the top of the "cable news" pile. Then too, there's the disorder displayed by Marchese himself—or perhaps by his editors—in the things he chose to report about Gutfeld's behavior, but also in the things he chose to suppress.

Stating the obvious, the New York Times is a very important newspaper. We readers are told many things about this world by the New York Times. Other important parts of our struggling nation tend to get disappeared.

For whatever reason, the New York Times has started to talk about Gutfeld. In comments to the Marchese interview / profile, many readers say they'd never heard of Gutfeld until this profile appeared.

Gutfeld and his eponymous program have now been the subject of two lengthy pieces in the Times in the past few months. For whatever reason, the paper still refuses to report what his strange man says and does.

The Fox News Channel rules the waves at the present time. For reasons we can't explain, Blue American orgs like the New York Times still aren't willing to take their customers on that particular sea cruise.

Tomorrow: Fox & Friends Weekend goes off

SATURDAY: We watched an array of Unrecognizables!

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2025

Telling this story is hard: At one point, the Harvard Law School graduate said it, though only perhaps in a dream:

I was never a D-minus student, but I play one on cable TV.

At one point, she may have said it. Last night, we were stunned by the manifest dumbness of the first twenty minutes of the Jesse Watters Primetime show. Then, this very morning, Fox & Friends Weekend offered a bit of self-revelation of an extraordinary sort.

As we told you long ago, it's all anthropology now. And as we've told you again and again, the major news orgs of Blue America refuse to report, discuss or critique the very strange behavior which occurs on Fox News Channel programs. 

Also this:

Even after he demolished one part of the White House, those heralded news orgs refused to ask this obvious question:

Is something wrong with this man? Why does he do these things?

If something is wrong with the person in question, that is, of course, a personal tragedy—a loss of human capability. And the evidence suggests that there isn't quite as much of that capability floating around as a person might once have thought.

We're going to stop to ponder now. Telling this story is very hard. Come Monday, where should we start?  

  

FRIDAY: The political landscape seems to have changed!

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2025

We revisit that Times editorial: Online, the editorial appeared last Friday, along with goblins and ghosts. Today, with the political landscape changed, it seems like a high-minded visit from those who may now be numbered among the honored dead.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/10/31/opinion/trump-autocracy-democracy-report.html

Over here in Blue America, we thought the focus on "our democracy" was always a bit of a semantical non-starter. The endless complexification of our governmental processes is one of the unavoidable factors which have helped lend fuel to the Tea Party and MAGA movements.

We Blues have responded in the best ways we knew. Last Friday's lengthy editorial began in the following fashion:

ARE WE LOSING OUR DEMOCRACY?

Countries that slide from democracy toward autocracy tend to follow similar patterns. To measure what is happening in the United States, the Times editorial board has compiled a list of 12 markers of democratic erosion, with help from scholars who have studied this phenomenon. The sobering reality is that the United States has regressed, to different degrees, on all 12.

Our country is still not close to being a true autocracy, in the mold of Russia or China. But once countries begin taking steps away from democracy, the march often continues. We offer these 12 markers as a warning of how much Americans have already lost and how much more we still could lose.

We don't disagree with the basic thrust. That said, we'll guess that most citizens think of a "democracy" as a nation which holds elections—pretty much total full stop. It will be hard to convince such people that "our democracy" is being undone as long as candidates are out on the hustings and votes are being cast.

That said:

It seems to us that the votes which were cast this past Tuesday night have changed the basic shape of the political landscape. You can call it "our democracy," or you can call it "the basic American way of life"—but whatever it is you want to call it, it looks like citizens have come to believe that some sort of change is underway which they don't much seem to like.

MAGA leadership has thereby been put on notice. It remains to be seen what they will do to push back against this tide.

That said, the Times offered twelve "signs"—twelve signs that a fundamental, undesirable change seems to be underway. It now seems that the public has noticed some such phenomenon and is willing to turn out at the polls in hopes of defeating that process. This was the list of twelve signs the editors discussed in their piece:

The 12 signs

NO. 1
An authoritarian stifles dissent and speech. Trump has started to.

NO. 2
An authoritarian persecutes political opponents. Trump has.

NO. 3
An authoritarian bypasses the legislature. Trump has started to.

NO. 4
An authoritarian uses the military for domestic control. Trump has started to.

NO. 5
An authoritarian defies the courts. Trump has started to.

NO. 6
An authoritarian declares national emergencies on false pretenses. Trump has.  

NO. 7
An authoritarian vilifies marginalized groups. Trump has.

NO. 8
An authoritarian controls information and the news media. Trump has started to.

NO. 9
An authoritarian tries to take over universities. Trump has started to.

NO. 10
An authoritarian creates a cult of personality. Trump has.

NO. 11
An authoritarian uses power for personal profit. Trump has.

NO. 12
An authoritarian manipulates the law to stay in power. Trump has started to.

The editors discuss each of those points in the course of their long editorial. Personally, we don't think that angry accusation is the best or the only possible way to approach this rolling situation. But that's what the editors said.

For the record, there are citizens who will applaud President Trump for some of those behaviors. For example, it seems that there are plenty of people who feel, rightly or wrongly, that American universities have moved way off the rails.

That said:

The victory margins on Tuesday night suggest that we the voters have noticed some ch-ch-ch-changes of which we don't approve. That represents a major change in the weather, in the political landscape.

President Trump has, in fact, displayed a bit of an authoritarian instinct over the course of the years. Given that fact, how will he and his leadership cadre respond to this apparent change in the weather?

Fellow citizens, buckle up! With mid-term elections a year away, that very much remains to be seen.

CHAOS: Those gerrymanders may backfire next year!

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2025

If next year actually happens: It isn't the fact that the Democratic candidates won. As we noted yesterday, it's the fact that they won by these margins:

New Jersey gubernatorial election, 2025
Mikie Sherrill (D): 1,805,244 (56.3%)
Jack Ciattarelli (R): 1,384,601 (43.1%)

Virginia gubernatorial election, 2025
Abigail Spanberger (D): 1,921,472 (57.2%)
Winsome Earle-Sears (R): 1,433,562 (42.6%)

Assuming that next year's elections proceed in a normal way—assuming that next year's midterms take place at all—those victory margins suggest that President Trump's low approval ratings may show up as bad vote totals for Republican candidates. 

Tuesday's election results suggest that there's a change in the air. We even direct you to the possibility voiced by Russell Berman in a new essay at The Atlantic, dual headline included:

‘None of This Is Good for Republicans’
Gerrymandering efforts look different after Election Day.

President Donald Trump’s gerrymandering war has never looked riskier for his party.

Prodded by Trump, Republicans earlier this year launched an audacious plan to entrench their congressional majority by redrawing House-district maps to squeeze out Democrats—anywhere and everywhere they could. The gambit was an exercise in political power and, coming outside of the traditional decennial redistricting process, without precedent in modern history.

Yet if Democrats feared not long ago that they would be locked out of a House majority, their decisive victories across the country [Tuesday] night have made them, arguably, the favorites heading into next year’s midterm elections.

[...]

“None of this is good for Republicans. It’s all their own doing, though,” [Mike] Madrid said. Latinos in Texas border towns may vote differently in 2026 than Latinos in New Jersey did this year. But the anti-GOP shift in this week’s elections could boost the Democrats’ chances of winning two and possibly three of the five Texas seats that Republicans redrew in their favor, Madrid told me. It could also open up even more opportunities for Democrats, because to create the additional red-leaning seats, Republicans had to cut into previously safe GOP districts. “The problem is they’re spreading their other districts thin as they’re getting greedy,” Madrid said.

Berman had spoken with Mike Madrid, "the longtime GOP strategist." As the leading authority notes, Madrid was once press secretary for the Republican leader of the California Assembly, though he later became a bit of a NeverTrumper.

In that passage, Berman is describing one of the ways the current redistricting efforts may backfire for the GOP in next year's House elections.

This potential problem was occasionally cited back when the redistricting war began. On Tuesday evening, the possibility of some such backfire occurring became more clear. 

Could Republican gerrymandering backfire? This is the way the backfire would happen, using the reconfigured House districts in Texas as a case in point:

The Texas legislature has created a bunch of new House districts. They were designed to create five additional districts which seemed to favor Republican candidates.

Having said that, sad! Those new Republican-friendly seats will only be Republican-friendly if Texas voters continue to turn out and vote the way they've done in the recent past. If sentiment among Texas voters begins to turn in the way which seemed to drive Tuesday evening's victory margins, it may turn out that some of those newly Republican-friendly districts won't turn to be Republican-friendly at all.

Given the possible change in voter sentiment, Madrid is suggesting that two or three of those five House districts in Texas may end up voting for the Democratic candidate next year. It's also true that, in order to create those newly Republican-friendly districts, some Republican voters were stolen away from other districts which were already Republican-friendly.

This creates the possibility that those other districts, which elected Republicans in the past, might slip out of the Republican camp as well. In other words:

In order to create five additional "red-leaning seats," Texas Republicans had to create some other districts which are now less red-leaning. If over voter sentiment changes, the GOP could imaginably lose some of those districts too.

So it could go in next year's elections, assuming those elections take place and if voter sentiment continues to turn against President Trump. 

So it could go next year! That said, it remains to be seen how the sitting president and his staff will react to the warning signs which appeared in Tuesday's elections. Things could get extremely hairy as we move through the coming year.

It isn't the fact the Democratic candidates won in Virginia and in New Jersey. It's the fact that those candidates won by such large margins.

How will the MAGA leadership cadre react to Tuesday night's results? We don't have the slightest idea, but that's a key part of the larger question.

Also, the Fox News Channel continues to do what it can to freeze its viewers in the pro-MAGA camp. Intellectual chaos spreads across the fruited plane as these efforts continue.

This afternoon: The New York Times lists "12 signs"

Tomorrow: As recently heard, though perhaps in a dream:

"I was never a D-minus student, but I play one on cable TV!"

THURSDAY: Candidate Mamdani also won!

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2025

Warfare concerning his speech: Candidate Mamdani also won on Tuesday night, in this case by just under nine points.

Warning! On a political basis, New York City isn't like anywhere else. Unique situations will always call for unique approaches and new ideas—but what about that victory speech?

What was up with his victory speech? On the front page of this morning's New York Times, Emma Fitzsimmons asks or maybe just wonders:

An Emboldened Mamdani Sheds Conciliatory Tone

A newly empowered Zohran Mamdani on Wednesday vowed to use his convincing victory in the New York City mayor’s race as a mandate to push an ambitious progressive agenda past potential obstacles, from billionaire antagonists to Albany bureaucracy.

In a shift from the mollifying tone he had used for months, Mr. Mamdani made clear that while he would govern for all New Yorkers, he was determined to deliver for those who had been agitating for structural change.

“I’m also looking to be clear about the mandate that we won over the course of this election, and it is a mandate to deliver on the agenda that we ran on,” he said in a phone interview on Wednesday afternoon...

[...]

The interview on Wednesday echoed Mr. Mamdani’s fiery victory speech on Tuesday evening, which took a more confrontational and at times boastful tone. The address was criticized by some observers as a “character switch” from his more congenial attitude during the campaign.

Forget yesterday's interview with the Times. We're here to discuss that "fiery victory speech" on Tuesday night, in which, according to Fitzsimmons, Mamdani "took a more confrontational and at times boastful tone."

The address was criticized by some observers as a “character switch” from his more congenial attitude during the campaign? In support of that statement, Fitzsimmons links to this report about CNN's Van Jones, who was trashed for what he said about Mamdani's speech by Charlamagne Tha God:

In reaction to what Jones said, Charlamagne urged him to "shut the F up"—more specifically, to do for forever:

...Charlamagne Torches CNN’s Van Jones for Calling Mamdani Victory Speech ‘Divisive’

Charlamagne Tha God blasted CNN political commentator Van Jones and told him to “shut the f up forever” after Jones called Zohran Mamdani’s New York City mayoral victory speech “divisive.”

On Wednesday’s The Breakfast Club, Charlamagne crowned Jones the “donkey of the day” over his Mamdani take. Mamdani came out victorious on Tuesday night—one of a number of big wins for Democrats—against former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and Republican Curtis Sliwa.

And so on from there. Full disclosure:

Like Jones, we too were struck by the tone of the mayor-elect's speech. We aren't mainly talking about what Mamdani said. We're talking about the tone with which he said it.

Mamdani faces a difficult challenge—and mountains of inane criticism from the usual suspects. Before we're done, we'll return to Jones' critique of Mamdani's speech, and to Joe Scarborough's reaction to Governor-elect Spanberger's victory speech.

Charlamagne told Jones to shut the F up? Our question would be this:

Is it possible that Jones' critique was based on some form of sound judgment?

CHAOS: Those were impressive victory margins!

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2025

Except on the Fox News Channel: Secretary of Trade War Howard Lutnick says the president is going to win the current case in the Supreme Court.

Most observers seem to think that's unlikely. But last evening, sure enough! That's what Hannity viewers were told:

Lutnick Predicts ‘Trump Is Gonna Win This Case’ After Administration’s Rough Day at the Supreme Court

[...]

“The justices were on the president’s side,” Lutnick said, while wagging his finger. “You are hearing it here from me—President Trump is gonna win this case!”

As always, everything's possible! That said, we think it's worth getting clear on the size of the victory margins in Tuesday's gubernatorial races. As votes continue to trickle in, the numbers look this this:

New Jersey gubernatorial election, 2025
Mikie Sherrill (D): 1,805,244 (56.3%)
Jack Ciattarelli (R): 1,384,601 (43.1%)

Virginia gubernatorial election, 2025
Abigail Spanberger (D): 1,921,472 (57.2%)
Winsome Earle-Sears (R): 1,433,562 (42.6%)

Those were very large victory margins—unless you were watching yesterday's edition of The Five, in which case you saw Dana Perino say this:

PERINO (11/5/25): One thing I would say is that Fox polling—they didn't poll Virginia, they polled New Jersey, and they polled it exactly right—seven points for Mikie Sherrill, which a lot of people didn't want to hear at the time, but they nailed that one.

Presumably, Perino—she's cast as the sane one on this show—was referring to the late October poll reported here by Fox News Digital. That said, if people didn't want to hear that polling result, they would hate Sherrill's actual victory margin, which was a bit more than thirteen points.

Thanks to Perino's weird statement, viewers in Red America weren't asked to hear about the actual victory margin in the Garden State. But that's the way the chaos unfolds on this struggling nation's most-watched "cable news" program.

In just the last few days, viewers of the Fox News Channel were subjected to some analyses right out of the stumblebum playbook:

With respect to the Virginia race, they saw analysts puzzled by the fact that Barack Obama endorsed "the white woman with whom he agreed," rather than the black woman with whom he didn't agree.

(Yes, that's what was actually said, on at least two major programs.)

They saw Emily Compagno hotly insist that Rep. Eric Swalwell—he isn't a major favorite of ours—shouldn't be able to represent a California district because he lived with his family in Iowa until he was 11 years old.

They saw a visible nutcase say that people who attended the No Kings rallies did so because they aren't happy in their own lives and seem to be mentally ill.  Also, they saw the same peculiar fellow cover for the sitting president:

When the president tore the East Wing down, having said he would do no such thing, viewers were told that complaints made no sense. You see, President Obama had installed a basketball backboard on the White House tennis court! You just have to Google it, the Fox News superstar said.

Maddeningly, it's impossible for a lone observer to keep up with the tsunami of absurdities churned on this "cable news" channel. Can a very large nation hope to prosper with such nonsense going on?

We think the answer seems to be obvious. That said: there are quite a few things viewers of the Fox News Channel will never be asked to ponder. As this shaping of spotless minds proceeds, major organs of Blue America refuse to report or discuss the shape of this journalistic / cultural chaos.

What sorts of topics won't be discussed on the programs of the Fox News Channel? Last Friday, the editorial board of the New York offered the start of a list.

The editorial seems to have appeared in Sunday's print editions. (It appeared online last Friday.) 

At this site, we think the term "our democracy" is too fuzzy to serve as a potent framework for the discussion in question. That said, the editorial appears online under the heading shown below. It offers a list of the sorts of behaviors to which viewers of the Fox News Channel will never be exposed:

Donald Trump has wielded power as no previous president has, often in open defiance of the law. His actions have raised a chilling question.
ARE WE LOSING OUR DEMOCRACY?

The lengthy editorial proceeds from there. On the New York Times website, it's been summarized in this fashion:

12 signs we're losing our democracy

"Our democracy" strikes us as a fuzzy concept. But based on victory margins in Tuesday's gubernatorial elections, it looks like the electorate has started to absorb the messaging lodged in that lengthy editorial. 

Viewers of the Fox News Channel are shielded from such unhappy thoughts.

Tomorrow, we'll post the list of that editorial's "12 signs." The stars will still be clowning around on our nation's most-watched "cable news" channel, and the news division at the Times will still be averting its gaze.

Tomorrow: Twelve theses nailed to the wall

WEDNESDAY: As election day drew near, it turned into 5-on-none!

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2025

Charlie Hurt gets it wrong: Those were solid Democratic victories in the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races. 

What will those outcomes signal to the president, but also to his team? That remains to be seen. 

With respect to the Fox News Channel, this brings us back to Charlie Hurt's recent performances, including his guest hosting spot on Monday afternoon's The Five.

Over the weekend, President Obama had appeared at a Norfolk rally in support of Candidate Spanberger. The piffle about it was general over The Five's Monday panel.

Producers even had Piers Morgan sitting in the one "Democratic Party / liberal" seat! Kennedy had sat in that seat on the previous Friday. As election day neared, the channel may have been pouring the agitprop on.

In the opening segment of Monday's show, the five like-minded panelists spilled with praise for the president's interview on 60 Minutes. "I give it an A-plus," Emily Compagno said.

In the second segment, the five reliables turned to criticizing Obama's speech in Norfolk. Young Master Gutfeld mentioned "poop" for the second time of the day, and Obama was criticized for the weirdness he displayed by his failure to endorse Spanberger's opponent.

All in all, it was vintage dumbness as practiced on The Five. When his turn came, Hurt said this:

HURT (11/3/25): Now he's pulling for the lady that he agrees with as opposed to the black woman who is extraordinarily successful. He also, at that same event that he did in Norfolk, he campaigned for Jay Jones and lectured to the rest of us about how politics has turned so dark and divisive, and we need to stop our dark, divisive politics, as he's campaigning for a guy who advocated assassinating his political opponents!

"Now he's pulling for the lady he agrees with!" Yes, that's what he said.

Here on campus, we had watched Obama's Norfolk speech. On balance, we thought it was very strong. We didn't remember any reference to Jones, the candidate for attorney general who had run into something resembling an October Surprise.

The past comments by Jones to which Hurt alluded were extremely odd. When the invaluable Rev published this transcript of that speech, we decided to give it a look.

We find no reference to Candidate Jones in Obama's remarks. On the most-watched of our flailing nation's "cable news" shows, piffle of this sort takes place all the time.

Rev has also transcribed Governor-elect Spanberger's victory speech. This morning, Joe Scarborough mentioned one part of what the winning candidate said.

We agree with Scarborough's reaction. A significant bit of electoral theory lies behind her remarks.

How do people win elections? We expect to return to what Spanberger said.

CHAOS: One C-Span caller was sure he was right!

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2025

Various sources of chaos: Even before election results rolled in, there he went again.

We've suggested that you pity the child. Be that as it may, and for whatever reason, the president posted this yesterday, as reported by the New York Times:

Republicans Reprise Unfounded Claims of Widespread Election Interference

As voters went to the polls, prominent conservatives latched onto glitches and other problems at polling stations to claim—without presenting evidence—that the results were being rigged.

[...]

The reflex to declare interference shows how much the conduct of elections continues to animate Republican politics—at least in races where the party’s candidates could be headed to defeat.

Before the polls even opened on Tuesday, Mr. Trump called a vote in California to redraw congressional districts ahead of next year’s midterm elections, as Texas and other Republican-controlled states have done, “a GIANT SCAM.”

“The entire process, in particular the Voting itself, is RIGGED,” Mr. Trump declared without citing anything to support the claim. He suggested that Republicans were somehow “shut out” of mail-in voting, warning that a “serious legal and criminal review” was on the way. Mr. Trump has long railed against mail-in voting, but it was not clear what he meant by a review.

For whatever reason, there he went again! We offer this as the key locution in that Times report:

"Without presenting evidence," the Times report now said. But so went one of the "prominent conservatives" cited in the Times report.

For whatever reason, there the president had gone again! That said, when it comes to claims of RIGGING and GIANT SCAMS, the official watchword in Red America has become well established:

No Losing Campaign Left Behind

The president offered no evidence in support of his angry claim—but so it went, in the absence of evidence, as Tuesday's elections took place. On that same day, we had read this news report in that same New York Times:

Nigeria, in Trump’s Cross Hairs, Rejects Christian Genocide Claims

President Trump has joined a chorus of alarm about an “existential threat” to Christianity in Nigeria, warning this weekend that the United States would deploy troops or carry out airstrikes in the country if its leaders didn’t “move fast” to stop the violence against Christians.

The accusations have been fueled in part by a wave of indiscriminate attacks by armed groups and Islamist insurgents over decades. More than 8,000 civilians in Nigeria—Christian and Muslim alike—have been killed so far in this year alone, according to recent data compiled by independent monitoring groups.

[...]

There is no clear evidence to show that Christians are attacked more frequently than any other religious group in Nigeria, much less an attempt at “genocide,” analysts say. But violence and land disputes have deep roots in the country. In one region where many Christians have been killed, the Middle Belt, territorial conflicts between mostly Christian farmers and mostly Muslim herders have devolved into bloody land grabs.

And so on from there.

Are those analysts right in their assessment of this situation? We can't tell you that. In this report, CNN suggested that the president's first post on this matter came in reaction to a report on the Fox News Channel—a report the president saw as he was flying to Florida for his Great Gatsby Halloween party.

The soiree took place last Friday night. As of Saturday afternoon, the president seemed to be ready to act:

Truth Details

Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump

If the Nigerian Government continues to allow the killing of Christians, the U.S.A. will immediately stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria, and may very well go into that now disgraced country, “guns-a-blazing,” to completely wipe out the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities. I am hereby instructing our Department of War to prepare for possible action. If we attack, it will be fast, vicious, and sweet, just like the terrorist thugs attack our CHERISHED Christians! WARNING: THE NIGERIAN GOVERNMENT BETTER MOVE FAST!

Nov 01, 2025, 4:43 PM

Was this president clear on his facts? We have no idea. But in the chao created by the so-called "democratization of media," inaccurate or unfounded claims come at the American public from a wide array of directions.

"Every man a king," Huey Long famously said. Today, it's every person a propagandist in support of some policy thrust or in support of some political tribe. 

Claims come at American voters from all directions and sides. Last Sunday morning, one caller to C-Span's Washington Journal showed where this new arrangement can take us:

MODERATOR (11/2/25): George, Republican line, in Ohio. Hello.

GEORGE IN OHIO: Yeah, good morning...Maybe no one has died because of this yet. But, you know, 53% of the SNAP benefits go to non-citizens. I don't know if you know that. And you speak of Obama. My wife—I'm going to tell you a true story, and I've got all the facts, and I've got paperwork...

Callers had been asked to discuss the suspension in federal food assistance through the SNAP program. We were struck by the caller's certainty that he did, in fact, have all the facts, joined to his claim that 53% of SNAP benefits currently go to non-citizens.

We were never able to find a source for that highly specific claim. That said, several news orgs had just prepared reports about this general question.

Let Newsweek serve as our first example. Within a complex and convoluted report, Newsweek eventually reported this:

How Many Migrants Use Food Stamps in America? SNAP Benefits Data Analyzed

[...]

While headlines often spotlight immigrant use of government benefits, data shows non-citizens account for a small fraction of SNAP recipients...

USDA defines a non-citizen as any individual residing in the United States who is not a natural-born or naturalized citizen. This includes lawful permanent residents, refugees, asylees and individuals granted a stay of deportation. Those with legal status may be eligible for SNAP, while individuals without legal status are generally ineligible, though U.S.-born children or other eligible household members in their households may still receive assistance.

The total cost of SNAP benefits in FY 2023 was $119.6 billion, according to a 2023 report by the USDA across the program. The 1.764 million non-citizen participants accounted for roughly 4.8 percent of total spending.

That was substantially less than 53 percent! A report by Wired started like this, though at that point we hit a paywall:

No, SNAP Benefits Aren’t Mostly Used by Immigrants

As roughly 42 million Americans face the loss of food stamps this weekend, far-right influencers, extremists, and conspiracy theorists are using the crisis to push racist disinformation about who receives these benefits.

Wired tossed an R-bomb into the mix as it claimed that misinformation was being churned by various players. PolitiFact cited a clownishly bungled chart, a chart which gone viral:

Who gets food stamps? Viral chart misleads about SNAP recipients' race, ethnicity

With millions of people at risk of losing access to the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program starting Nov. 1, a viral chart claimed to show the majority of the nation’s food stamp recipients are non-white and noncitizens.

The chart, titled "Food Stamps by Ethnicity," listed 36 groups of people and said it showed the "percentage of U.S. households receiving SNAP benefits." 

And so on from there. You can read the rest of PolitiFact's report for yourself. It offers links to various social media posts which were spreading misinformation about the matter at hand. 

George in Ohio was quite sure that he had the facts, but it seems quite clear that he didn't. C-Span's moderator made no attempt to fact-check what he had said.

Under current arrangements, the chaos comes at American voters from all directions. Sometimes, the chaos comes from social media posts, including the occasional Truth Social post penned by the sitting president.

Tomorrow: The New York Times cites twelve points

TUESDAY: A busy day at the medical mission!

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2025

More chaos here tomorrow: "Dramatically better," Dr. [NAME WITHHELD] said. We had headed out this morning expecting an alternate reading.

That said:

We didn't return to campus until close to 4 p.m. We'll step aside till tomorrow.

CHAOS: These may be the world's dumbest people!

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 202

And yes, they actually said this: Doggone it! We're off on a medical mission today. We're not sure how long we'll be off campus.

Before we depart, we'll offer you the latest from the Fox News Channel's Charlie Hurt.

Hurt was recently named the third and final friend on the egregious program, Fox & Friends Weekend. Last night, he guest hosted for Laura Ingraham on the 7 p.m. program, The Ingraham Angle.

At one point, he interviewed Winsome Earle-Sears, the Republican candidate for governor of Virginia. There's no reason why he shouldn't have interviewed Earle-Sears—but good God! 

Believe it or not, this is what soon happened:

Fox News Host Says He Doesn’t Understand Why Obama Didn’t Endorse Black Republican: ‘I Can’t Square This’

Fox News’s Charlie Hurt said he “can’t square” why former Democratic President Barack Obama did not endorse the Black Republican nominee for governor of Virginia in Tuesday’s election.

Obama has been campaigning for former U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D) in her race against Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears (R) to succeed Governor Glenn Youngkin (R), who is term-limited.

[...]

The former president routinely endorses candidates who are fellow Democrats. But while appearing on Monday’s edition of The Ingraham Angle, Earle-Sears and guest host Hurt expressed puzzlement at why Obama would not endorse her, a Republican who is the first Black woman to be elected to statewide office in Virginia.

And so on from there. And yes, they actually went on at some length with this absurd bit of pre-human puzzlement.

If you click to the Mediaite report, you can see the videotape of this ridiculous pseudo-discussion. Here's what isn't mentioned by Michael Luciano in his gob-smacking report:

Two hours earlier, while guest co-hosting on The Five, Hurt had engaged in this same bit of "reasoning" with the terminally broken Young Master Gutfeld—with charges of racism on Obama's part being tossed around!

To watch that part of the pseudo-discussion, you can start by clicking here. Let's make sure you understand the nature of this reasoning:

President Obama is black—but the Democratic candidate, Abigail Spanberger, is white.

Meanwhile, the Republican candidate is black. So why didn't Obama endorse her?

Human life can't get dumber. But this sort of nonsense is reliably churned on the Fox News Channel all day and all night, with Blue America's mightiest organs refusing to report or discuss that remarkable fact.

For the record, The Five is the most-watched "cable news" show in our flailing nation. Can a sprawling modern nation survive a reign of inanity of this type?

We think the answer is somewhat clear. At some later point this week, we intend to show you more of what was said on yesterday's gong-show, The Five.

MONDAY: The latest non-denial denial!

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 20

Kash Patel pretends: Back in September, it was reported that Tom Homan had once accepted a bag of $50,000 in cash from undercover FBI agents.

Homan went on he Ingraham Angle and issued a non-denial denial, saying only that he had done nothing illegal or criminal. But had he actually accepted the big bag of cash?

Homan failed to say. Inevitably, Ingraham failed to follow up.

Weeks later, on October 16, Homan issued a real denial, saying that he never took the money in question at all. For Politico's review of this strange episode, you can just click here. 

Headline included, Politico's report started like this:

Border czar Tom Homan denies he took $50K from undercover agents

Border czar Tom Homan rejected reports that he took a $50,000 bribe from federal agents, his most forceful denial yet of his alleged involvement in an FBI corruption investigation.

“I didn’t take $50,000 from anybody,” Homan said in a Wednesday night appearance on NewsNation’s “Cuomo” town hall.

And so on from there. Homan had started with a non-denial denial, then switched to a real denial, insisting that the kerfuffle about his original faux denial had been a partisan "hit piece." These events have largely disappeared from the public discourse since he made the switch.

Over the weekend, the latest non-denial denial was issued, this time in hopelessly clumsy fashion by FBI head Kash Patel. The background goes like this:

In this original report, The Bulwark had reported that Patel had used his official FBI jet to travel to Penn State to watch his girlfriend, a singer, perform. According to the Bulwark report, he had then used the FBI jet to give her a lift back to Nashville.

You can read the original Bulwark report simply by clicking here. A few days later, Patel issued the latest non-denial denial, pretending that The Bulwark had been sliming his girlfriend in some way when it had actually been criticizing him.

By clicking this link, you can see the recent report by Mediaite about Patel's non-denial denial. You'll note that Patel never denies the accuracy of The Bulwark's original claims. He merely pretends that The Bulwark had been attacking her, not him.

Our public discourse is quite comfortable with ridiculous conduct like this—with conduct which takes us well beyond the boundaries of Insultingly Stupid.

We've never gotten back to the clownish way Pete Hegseth let Fort Bragg, whose name had been changed to Fort Liberty, be renamed "Fort Bragg" all over again. That second name change took us even beyond the transparent inanity of Patel's pseudo-denial. 

How desperate (and nutty) must a person be to engage in a non-name change name change like the one Hegseth engineered? Man [sic] is the rational animal, Aristotle once falsely declared.