SATURDAY: Concerning a very bad Week That Was!

SATURDAY, JANUARY 10, 2026

Instructive new videotape: A deeply instructive "Week That Was" started on Wednesday morning.

Check that! So far, it's only been an instructive half week that was. It started with a fatal shooting, and then, as surely as night follows day, we were instantly saddled with this:

Truth Details

Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump

I have just viewed the clip of the event which took place in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It is a horrible thing to watch. The woman screaming was, obviously, a professional agitator, and the woman driving the car was very disorderly, obstructing and resisting, who then violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer, who seems to have shot her in self defense...

PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP

We're sorry, Virginia, but no. In reality, that ICE officer--Jonathan Ross--did not get "run over" in the course of this incident. Whatever else may have happened that day, no one was viciously run over.

As an obvious matter of fact, no one got "run over" that day at all. Whatever different people might think about the various events of that morning, we can surely all agree on that! 

Or can we all agree on that? Has the power of Storyline become so great that we the people can't all agree, not even on that basic fact?

Storyline is a powerful god. Also, the current sitting president seems to be badly disordered. At this site, we're inclined to assume that he's (significantly) "mentally ill" (to use an outmoded term).

That would be our assumption. But as part of the culture in which we all live, the academics and journalists of Blue America have agreed that that obvious possibility must never be discussed by competent medical specialists. That's part of the culture we've chosen.

At any rate, the aftermath of the fatal shooting began with that instant misstatement. From that point on, it has largely been Storyline all the way down as this event is discussed. 

More specifically, we refer to the works of Tribal Storyline, the ubiquitous deity who currently serves as our greatest, most powerful god.

Yesterday, the latest video of this fatal shooting emerged--and it has turned out to be the most instructive such video yet. Headline included, the New York Times report about this new videotape starts exactly like this:

New Cellphone Video Shows ICE Agent’s Perspective Before Minneapolis Shooting

A cellphone video made public on Friday appears to show the moments leading up to the fatal shooting of a woman in Minneapolis from the perspective of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who killed her.

The footage, published by Alpha News, a conservative news outlet, appears to come from a cellphone held by the agent who fatally shot Renee Nicole Good on a snowy residential street on Wednesday morning. The Department of Homeland Security confirmed that the video was taken by the agent and posted the clip from Alpha News on X.

The 47-second video shows the agent getting out of a vehicle and approaching the S.U.V. that Ms. Good is driving, which is partly blocking the street. A black dog sits in the rear seat of Ms. Good’s Honda, its head sticking out of the window.

The agent walks around the hood of Ms. Good’s vehicle, and the car begins to move slowly in reverse. Ms. Good, wearing a knit cap and a plaid jacket over a sweatshirt, is heard saying, “That’s fine, dude. I’m not mad,” though it is not clear from the footage whom she is addressing or to what she might be responding. She continues talking, but her words become less clear as the agent moves toward the vehicle’s rear.

That's how the Times report starts. A bit mater, as it continues, it describes some conduct which strikes us as profoundly unfortunate:

A person standing near the car, believed to be Becca Good, Renee Good’s wife, begins talking when the agent reaches the rear of the vehicle and films the license plate. “That’s OK, we don’t change our plates every morning, just so you know,” that woman says. “It’ll be the same plate when you come talk to us later.”

That woman, wearing sunglasses and an orange whistle around her neck, is then shown on camera holding up a phone, apparently filming the agent.

“That’s fine,” the woman adds. “U.S. citizen. Former fucking veteran.”

The agent then walks toward the front of the vehicle, as the woman stands between him and Renee Good’s S.U.V.

“You want to come at us?” she asks. “I say go get yourself some lunch, big boy. Go ahead.”

To our eye and to our ear, Becca Good almost seems to be "taunting" the agent at that point. Seconds after that somewhat combative exchange, Renee Good has been fatally shot.

We regard that tape as highly instructive--as a painful marker of the shape our failing nation is in. We'll also now mention this:

For reasons which go unexplained, the final statement heard on that tape goes unmentioned by the Times. In the corresponding report by the Washington Post, that instructive final statement does get reported.

Headline included, that news report by the Washington Post starts and ends like this:

The ICE agent’s cellphone video: Five key moments

Cellphone video recorded by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent as he fatally shot a woman in Minneapolis surfaced online Friday, revealing new details about the hotly disputed incident from a perspective rarely seen.

The 47-second recording, published by the Minnesota website Alpha News, shows for the first time that Renee Nicole Good spoke to the ICE agent, Jonathan Ross, before he shot her. It reveals that, a split second before the gunfire, Good’s wife urged her to drive away from the scene.

[...]

5. An insult after the shooting

As the vehicle moves forward, Ross is standing near the front driver’s side corner of the vehicle. Someone yells, “Whoa.”

Ross’s camera pans skyward but does not fall to the ground.

One shot can be heard, then two more can be heard in rapid succession. Ross appears to refocus his camera on the SUV almost immediately, before it crashes nearby.

A male voice—it is not clear whose—can be heard uttering two expletives: “Fucking bitch.”

The full video, uninterrupted, can be seen here:

The Post reports what the Times omits. Even as the stricken Good's car rolls down the street, a male voice--possibly the voice of Ross, possibly not--utters those words:

"Fucking bitch."

We're inclined to regard those words as instructive. We don't know why the New York Times didn't report that statement.

Summation:

We know of no good reason why Renee Good should have been shot. That said:

In our view, the conduct of the Goods is instructive. So is the conduct of agent Ross. So is that final comment, which the New York Times chose to omit.

Let's say it again. We know of no good reason why Renee Good should have been shot. That said, we find that 47 seconds of videotape deeply instructive.

In our view, the great god Tribe is now in the saddle and is driving our "nation" down. The president made his required misstatement. Generally speaking, the great god known as Storyline has taken over from there.

For the record, no one got "run over" that day. Someone was fatally shot.

FRIDAY: Was Renee Good monitoring ICE that day?

FRIDAY, JANUARY 9, 2026

Did the New York Post get it right? What was actually happening in Minneapolis when Renee Good was shot and killed? More specifically, is it possible that Good was monitoring ICE activities in some way when the fatal shooting occurred?

Last evening on Anderson Cooper 360, law enforcement analyst John Miller suggested that the answer was yes, then rearranged one part of the timeline which those of us in Blue America had been receiving through our major news outlets.

According to Miller, CNN had learned that Good had dropped her child off at school at roughly 8 a.m. that morning. The shooting had occurred at 10:37—two and a half hours later.

Miller's report contradicted the earlier suggestion that Good had just finished dropping her child off when she stumbled upon the situation involving ICE. Through a series of slippery reports and claims, that impression had been widely circulated.

Was Good monitoring ICE? There's no reason why she shouldn't have been! That said, Blue orgs produced a lot of slippery content in the past few days—fuzzy content which suggested that Good had come upon the ICE activity in a terrible bit of bad luck.

We Blues were being fed those suggestions. At the same time, denizens of Red America were being exposed to reporting like this from the New York Post:

Renee Nicole Good was Minneapolis ‘ICE Watch’ ‘warrior’ who trained to resist feds before shooting

Renee Nicole Good, the mom who was killed by a federal agent after veering her car toward him, was an anti-ICE “warrior” and was part of a group of activists who worked to “document and resist” the federal immigration crackdown in Minnesota, The Post can reveal.

Good, who moved to the city last year, linked up with the anti-ICE activists through her 6-year-old son’s woke charter school, which boasts that it puts “social justice first” and prioritizes “involving kids in political and social activism,” multiple local sources said.

“She was a warrior. She died doing what was right,” a mother named Leesa, whose child attends the same school, told The Post at a growing vigil where Good was killed Wednesday.

“I know she was doing the right thing. I watched the video plenty of times but I also know in my heart the woman she was, she was doing everything right.”

Good and her wife, Rebecca, 40, were raising the boy together in the mostly working-class, activist-heavy neighborhood of south Minneapolis, which features tree-lined streets and a large number of homes with windows decked out in LGBTQ+ flags or signs depicting George Floyd.

And so on, at length, from there. As it continues, the report describes the progressive values of the charter school Good's child attends, including the opposition of the school community to current ICE activities.

The report was published on Thursday afternoon. How accurate is the report?

We'll guess the report was basically accurate, but we can't say with certainty. Our possible point might be this:

As we noted this morning, we saw three major figures on CNN and MS NOW last night saying or assuming that Good had been involved in some form of anti-ICE activism on the day she was fatally shot.

At this site, we'd been wondering about that possibility ever since we became aware of this fatal shooting on Wednesday afternoon. That said, we were struck by the way major cable players in Blue America were ignoring this possibility through the bulk of Wednesday and Thursday.

On Thursday morning, Morning Joe devoted its first 24 minutes to a discussion of this fatal shooting. Everyone completely avoided two fairly obvious question:

How did Good happen to be at that particular location? Also, why was her car parked in such an unusual way, seeming perhaps to block traffic?

In our view, those of us in Blue America need to stop playing these games. We played these "see nothing but blue sky" games all through Campaign 2024, and our insistence on playing such games helped send President Trump back to the White House.

There was absolutely no reason why Good shouldn't have been monitoring ICE, if that's what she was doing. If she was intentionally blocking traffic, that could be a different story, at least in terms of the law.

We don't know if the Post report was accurate, (We'll guess that it probably was.) The moral of the story may be this:

Sometimes, Red Americans receive more accurate reporting than we Blue Americans do! 

We Blues! We disappeared an array of significant topics all through the last presidential campaign.

We helped put Trump in the White House that way. History teaches that this sort of self-delusion can be a very hard habit to break.

Final point:

It's perfectly legal to monitor ICE! On a simple legal basis, obstruction of ICE activities might be something else.

(Warning! Your tribal brain will insist that you find something wrong with this content! It happens on the Fox News Channel all day and all night. We Blues are susceptible too.)

UNDISGUISED: Truly, an American Babel!

FRIDAY, JANUARY 9, 2026

The president's excuse: Truly, we're all living is a wholly undisguised Babel. Let's recall the basics of the ancient, instructive tale:

Tower of Babel

The Tower of Babel is an origin myth and parable in the Book of Genesis (chapter 11) meant to explain the existence of different languages and cultures.

According to the story, a united human race speaking a single language migrates to Shinar (Lower Mesopotamia), where they agree to build a great city with a tower that would reach the sky. Yahweh, observing these efforts and remarking on humanity's power in unity, confounds their speech so that they can no longer understand each other and scatters them around the world, leaving the city unfinished.

And so on from there. At any rate, we Americans are now living in a modern Babel, with competing storylines taking the place of the original profusion of tongues.

One set of those storylines originates with President Trump. As we will recall below, he at least has an excuse for the bewildering stories and the ludicrous claims on which he crazily insists.

The rest of us may not be so lucky—and that even includes us Blues! Let's run through a few basic parts of the Babel we Americans have chosen.

Footprints in the snow:

Yesterday afternoon, Director Noem was in New York City, where she held a press conference. As you can see by playing this short video clip, she was still stuck in the snow as he tried to describe Wednesday's fatal shooting.

("What happened is, our officers were out trying to get a car stuck out of the snow when they were surrounded and assaulted and blocked in by protestors...")

That's what the secretary inexplicably said yesterday in New York. Please don't make us transcribe the full exchange, but that's what the secretary inexplicably said yesterday in New York. Her capsule account of Wednesday's fatal shooting still involved a set of events which had no apparent connection to anything visible on videotape.

More than a full day later, the director was still describing the fatal shooting in a way which was hard to explain. That said, Secretary Noem has long been an active part of our current Babel.

Fuller disclosure! In this lengthy report from The Independent, a local resident named Caitlin Callenson is quoted making reference to some ICE officers trying to “zoom their car out of the snowbank," apparently at some location near the fatal shooting. That said, the account is still as clear as mud, and Callenson is quoted saying that the "ICE vehicle stuck in snow had been freed" by the time Good arrived on the scene.

(That report is sourced to this report from Minnesota Public Radio.)

More than a full day later, Noem was still stuck in the snow. That said, confusion and incoherence typify the discourse found within our modern Babel.

President Trump has an excuse. What explains the blanket of fog with which Noem is still obscuring Wednesday's key events?

Why was Renee Good present?

For the first time, we've started to see Blue American sources saying that Renee Good was, in fact, at the scene of the fatal shooting as an anti-ICE activist.

For the record, there's no reason why Good shouldn't have been functioning as an ant-ICE activist, if that's actually why she was present that day. But Blue American outlets were avoiding questions about her presence at the scene from mid-day Wednesday right through Thursday's Morning Joe and on into mid-day. 

Other outlets, The Independent included, were presenting factually misleading accounts which suggested that Good had only stumbled upon the scene of the fatal shooting in some sort of coincidence. This slippery avoidance was general over Blue America as yesterday wound on.

Again, there's nothing wrong with being an anti-ICE activist, if that's what Good actually was. That said, Blue orgs kept trying to disappear that possibility. As of last night and this morning, MS NOW seems to be letting people say that she was present on the scene as part of an anti-ICE activity. 

(We refer to Professor Tribe on last evening's The Last Word, and to Jeh Johnson on today's Morning Joe.)

Lessons possibly lost:

Was Renee Good an anti-ICE activist? There's no reason why she shouldn't have been! That said, we'll suggest that some basic lessons have possibly been lost within our own (self-impressed) Blue America, where—if you let us Blues tell the story—"all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the [adults] are all above average."

(That's drawn from Garrison Keillor's satirical portrait of Lake Wobegon, a fictional Minnesota hamlet.)

Question! Even among people as brilliant as we Blues are known to be, have some lessons been lost? We'll offer two possibilities:

Nonviolent resistance / civil disobedience:

As far as we know, it's perfectly legal to monitor, record and report the activities of ICE agents. ICE personnel don't like such activities, but as far as we know, such conduct is perfectly legal.

Other conduct isn't legal—for example, blocking roads with your vehicle to obstruct operations by ICE. Was Good involved in some such conduct during events on Wednesday morning? We don't yet know, but if she was, civil disobedience during the civil rights era involved a willingness to accept arrest for deliberate illegal conduct.

Elections have consequences:

As everyone knows and everyone says, it's also true that "elections have consequences." 

For better or worse, ICE is currently involved in operations which are perfectly legal, at least in their broader outline. We Blues don't approve of those operations, but when we managed to lose the last election, we managed to get a man elected who had openly campaigned on the goal of MASS DEPORTATION.

We Blues don't favor MASS DEPORTATION, and there's no reason why we have to. But as we stumbled and bumbled all during the Biden years—as we stumbled and bumbled in many ways in the years and decades before that—we managed to help create a world in which President Trump's priorities now define the federal landscape.

Like most tribal groups, we Blues tend to have a very hard time seeing the various ways in which our lack of perfect brilliance helped return President Trum to the White House. Our tribe is still locked in deep denial about the bungles of our past. We Blues will continue to stumble and fail until we create deeper insight.

President Trump is the most important architect of our modern American Babel. Kristi Noem id a key player too, as is the endlessly astonishing JD Vance.

That said, President Trump has an excuse for his endless astonishing conduct. We've cited that excuse many times. It looks exactly like this:

MARY L. TRUMP (pages 12-13): I have no problem calling Donald a narcissist—he meets all nine criteria as outlined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5)—but the label only gets us so far.

[...]

A case could be made that he also meets the criteria for antisocial personality disorder, which in its most severe forms is generally considered sociopathy but can also refer to chronic criminality, arrogance, and disregard for the rights of others...

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

Elsewhere, she calls them psychopathologies. It seems likely to us that President Trump is significantly "mentally ill," to use a (somewhat) outmoded term.

That would be his excuse for his astonishing behavior. Fellow citizens of Blue America, what the [frump] is ours?

President Trump nay be medically afflicted. He's the most significant part of our deeply destructive Babel.

That said, we Blues have been part of the madness too. Our bungles have been undisguised. They're invisible only to us!

That madness has been growing like Topsy this week. Noem and Vance and Miller oh my, but through our own relentless flawed judgment, we Blues have been part of this deeply dangerous societal meltdown too.

(Every empire falls apert. "The center cannot hold!")

THURSDAY: "This is not a normal world!"

THURSDAY, JANUARY 8, 2026

Life in our American Babel: This morning, in the first few minutes of Morning Joe, producers played a memorable bit of videotape.

Minnesota governor Tim Walz had described the way yesterday's fatal shooting was being characterized in certain quarters.

"This is not a normal world," Walz had memorably said. 

In certain ways, that statement is true—but in other ways it isn't. We'll start to explain that below. 

Videotape was also played of another memorable statement. Here's the way an exchange went down at the scene of the fatal shooting:

The shooting of Renee Good had just occurred. A physician was present on the scene.

In the moments after the shooting occurred, he tried to go to Good's car to see if he could help. An ICE official told him to stay where he was:

"We have our own medics," the ICE official said.

(Reportedly, it took something like fifteen minutes for those medics to arrive on the scene.)

"We have our own medics," the ICE official said. In making the physician stay where he was, he may have been following some sort of strange protocol. We have no idea.

We do know this:

ICE officials (and almost everyone else) don't just have their own medics at this point in time. Like almost everyone else, they probably tend to have their own storylines, insults and claims—and members of our various tribes are inclined stick to their standard tribal realities like drowning men cling to a raft.

This is not a normal world, Governor Walz said. The lunacy which now pervades our failing world is highly abnormal in basic ways—but it typifies what tends to happen when large population split into groups and begin to wage war on each other.

The lunacy is general at this time over our failing society. Much more remains to be said about the instant reactions to yesterday's shooting. But is there any way to win a war of this type?

We don't think the answer is obvious—and despite the lunacy from other sources, we Blues are a part of this too.

More on this topic to come. We want to show you some of the things which were said yesterday afternoon on The Five, but the story moves on even from there. 

We're living inside an American Babel. Is there some way to turn back?

UNDISGUISED: When Noem made several ridiculous claims...

THURSDAY, JANUARY 8, 2026

...the president followed suit: Yesterday morning, all too clearly, it started with Kristi Noem.

The story-shaping has continued from there, including a ludicrous performance on yesterday's edition of The Five. In fairness, the story-shaping—the sifting of elementary facts—extended into the opening segment of today's Morning Joe.

In the aftermath of yesterday's fatal shooting, it was Rashomon on steroids--Rashomon all the way down! 

Indeed, the Rashomon was general over what's left of the American discourse. Just to make that reference clear, the leading authority on Rashomon clumsily says that the famous film famously teaches this:

Rashomon 

Rashomon is a 1950 Japanese film directed by Akira Kurosawa... It follows various people who describe how a samurai was murdered in a forest. Every element is largely identical, from the murdered samurai speaking through a Shinto psychic to the bandit in the forest, the monk, the assault of the wife, and the dishonest retelling of the events in which everyone shows their ideal self by [offering a different version of the events in question].

That's a clumsily stated overview, but it might start to convey the film's well-known basic idea. We've replaced the word "lying" at the end of that thumbnail account.

Rashomon is often said to preach the view that there is so obvious way to agree on a single, simple account of a set of events. Yesterday, the problem started with the latest ludicrous performance by Noem, but it certainly didn't end there.

It extended into Morning Joe, but also into weirdly sanitized reporting in today's New York Times. All in all, we'd say that this varied set of performances says that we the humans simply weren't built for this line of work. 

The anthropology here is quite clear. But let's start at the beginning:

Yesterday morning, Noem staged her latest fashion show down in Brownsville, Texas. We'll assume that someone had misinformed her, but she rushed out to offer this absurd account of the Minneapolis shooting:

NOEM (1/7/25): It was an act of domestic terrorism. What happened was our ICE officers were out in enforcement action. They got stuck in the snow because of the adverse weather that is in Minneapolis.

They were attempting to push out their vehicle and a woman attacked them and those surrounding them and attempted to run them over and rammed them with her vehicle. An officer of ours acted quickly and defensively shot to protect himself and the people around him. And my understanding is that she was hit and is deceased.

So said the routinely ludicrous Noem, from beneath her giant hat. 

We'll assume that Noem herself had been misinformed by someone. That said, no one had been "stuck in the snow" in connection with the fatal shooting, and the ICE officers in question hadn't been "attempting to push out their vehicle" at any point in the course of what occurred.

Noem looked fetching in her hat, but those statements were absurdly inaccurate. Debate could imaginably surround her additional claims--her claims that the late Renee Good had "attempted to run [the ICE officers] over" and had "rammed them with her vehicle."

In our view, those claims are extremely far-fetched, but we could imagine a different assessment. The other claims which emerged from Noem—the claims about being stuck in the snow—were baldly, absurdly inaccurate.

That said, Noem is no stranger to inaccurate claims, even to claims which seem to be utterly crazy. You may recall the lunatic story she told Jesse Watters in late June of last year—and yes, she actually told this crazy story about one ICE detainee:

NOEM (6/27/25): Listen, Jesse, you calling these guys "bad hombres"—they really are. I was talking to a U.S. Marshall just yesterday, and he was talking about the fact that they were deporting a planeload of illegals and one of them was a cannibal.

And he kind of said it off-handed, and I said to him, 'What do you—what do you mean, it was a cannibal?" And he said, "Well we put him on the plane, put him in his seat, and he started to eat his own arms, he was such a deranged individual."

This is the kind of people that President Trump is getting off of our streets—people who are murderers and rapists and, and are deranged individuals, that we are working to get out of the country as fast as possible.

Noem went on, at some length, about the story she said she'd been told. To show the challenges faced by ICE, she told Watters this:

ICE had been deporting a planeload of detainees. In an attempt to free himself from the handcuffs which restrained him, one of them, a cannibal, had attempted to eat his own arm!

Incredibly, Noem actually said that—and she seemed to think it made sense. Three days later, at Florida's new Alligator Alcatraz, she told this same crazy story, in substantial detail, once again!

(For our real-time report about this crazy pair of recitations, you can just click here.)

What could be going through the mind of someone who tells, then repeats, such a ridiculous story? What could be going through the mind of someone who seems to believe such a ridiculous tale? 

We don't have the slightest idea. But yesterday morning, vamping in Texas, there Noem went again.

In fairness, we'll assume that someone had misinformed Noem about yesterday's fatal shooting. But having failed to fact-check what she'd been told, she rushed out to start a chain of inaccurate and/or selective presentations about that shooting.

As part of that, she even made the dramatic claim that Renee Good had been involved in "an act of domestic terrorism." She didn't know what the weather had been. But true to the demands of storyline, Noem was prepared to rush right out and offer the world that story.

Yesterday morning, Noem went first. Plainly, she didn't have the slightest idea concerning what had actually happened, but she rushed out and spoke anyway. 

Soon, it was the president's turn.

The president's account was offered in a Truth Social post. Pathetically but inevitably, the most powerful person in the world was now saying this:

Truth Details

Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump

I have just viewed the clip of the event which took place in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It is a horrible thing to watch. The woman screaming was, obviously, a professional agitator, and the woman driving the car was very disorderly, obstructing and resisting, who then violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer, who seems to have shot her in self defense. Based on the attached clip, it is hard to believe he is alive, but is now recovering in the hospital. The situation is being studied, in its entirety, but the reason these incidents are happening is because the Radical Left is threatening, assaulting, and targeting our Law Enforcement Officers and ICE Agents on a daily basis. They are just trying to do the job of MAKING AMERICA SAFE. We need to stand by and protect our Law Enforcement Officers from this Radical Left Movement of Violence and Hate!

PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP

Yes, that's actually what he said. Now for some clarification:

In the videotape of the fatal shooting, a woman is heard screaming at the ICE officers—first as they attempt to force Renee Good out of her car, then after one of them has fatally shot her. In his account of what he saw, the president starts with a ludicrous assumption about that woman, then proceeds to the crazily inaccurate claim that Good "viciously ran over the ICE Officer."

A person might say this:

Only a badly disordered person could fail to imagine an innocent reason for that woman's (horrified) screaming. Beyond that, and obviously:

Good did not "run over" any ICE officer in the course of yesterday's events. In fact, no one got "run over" by anyone's car in the course of this fatal shooting.

That said, crazily inaccurate, poisonous claims are nothing new to this president. As we noted last week, he has also made these claims:

In July 2019, on the very day that Jeffrey Epstein died, he took to Twitter to say or suggest that Bill and Hillary Clinton had somehow been involved in Epstein's death. There was absolutely zero basis for that poisonous presentation, but the sitting president rushed out to make it all the same.

Also this:

This past summer, the sitting president returned to a somewhat similar claim—to the poisonous claim that Bill Clinton had made more than two dozen trips to Jeffrey Epstein's island! There's zero basis for that poisonous claim, but the president returned to it anyway, even after it had been repeatedly refuted by major fact check organizations.

Yesterday's fatal shooting vastly complicated the story we were trying to tell this week. For today, we'll merely offer this:

When Kristi Noem told her ludicrous story about the fellow who tried to eat his own arm—when she told that story two separate times—major orgs in Blue America agreed to let the craziness go. So too with the poisonous and crazy claims the poisonous president has been making for the past fifteen years.

Something is badly wrong with this president. That basic fact has always been right there for all to see. 

That basic fact has never been hidden or disguised. That said, no one has dared to say the obvious:

t's time for this nutcase, or perhaps for this liar, to go.

Timorous journalists have all looked away! Tomorrow, we'll continue from here.

Tomorrow: Is it a matter of "mental illness?" Or is it a question of "character?"

WEDNESDAY: "Insane" and "crazy," two others said!

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 7, 2026

Everybody's talkin': In the past few days, the colloquial language has been general over Blue America's public discourse.

It wasn't just Michael McFaul—although, as we noted this morning, he offered this assessment of the possible Battle of Nuuk, off in the frozen north:

RUHLE (1/6/26): If the United States takes Greenland by force, would that not be one NATO country going after another? And if that takes place, wouldn’t that be the end of the NATO alliance? That feels monumental to me.

MCFAUL: I can’t stress enough how completely insane this idea is, on so many levels.

[...]

I just think this is so insane, and we need to call it out as insane. Sorry if I [unintelligible]—but it's the craziest idea I ever heard of.

He said the idea was insane, but he also said it was crazy.

(Could the heat from the bombs detach the Greenland ice sheet? Probably not, and that wasn't what he meant.)

That was in last evening's 11 o'clock hour. Earlier, Jen Psaki had said this, on the same cable news channel, about the transparent lunacy of that crazy new White House web site:

MS NOW’s Jen Psaki Destroys Trump’s ‘Insane and Offensive’ January 6 Propaganda Site in Blistering Commentary

MS NOW host and former Biden White House press secretary Jen Psaki tore into President Donald Trump’s rollout of an “insane and offensive” January 6 propaganda website, featuring a “completely fabricated” account of the riot.

The Trump administration chose Tuesday—the 5th anniversary of the January 6 attack on the Capitol—to unveil the site. It sparked immediate and widespread outrage over the stunning falsehoods, omissions, and concoctions. Those included the claim that “it was the Democrats who staged the real insurrection” and that police escalated the violence.

On Tuesday’s edition of MS NOW’s The Briefing with Jen Psaki, the host blasted Trump for inspiring the riot and torched the site in a blistering show-opening commentary...

In Psaki's view, the web site's "stunning falsehoods, omissions, and concoctions" weren't simply offensive. They qualified as "insane."

This morning, it was Joe Scarborough's turn—and right there in Morning Joe's first hour, he did in fact say this:

Joe Scarborough Warns Invading Greenland Is ‘Madness’: ‘Stupid Sh*t’ Pushed by Billionaires

Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough warned that the notion of “invading” Greenland was “absolutely insane” on Wednesday and slammed “billionaires” saying “stupid sh*t” to push the idea as he argued such a move would “shatter the international order that has benefited America” for a century.

The show’s crew was reading back a new article from the Wall Street Journal editorial board condemning the rhetoric from senior Trump officials about military intervention or buying the island, remarks that prompted a unified statement from European nations on Tuesday and concern from Denmark, which owns the territory.

And so on from there. As you can see if you click that link, Scarborough started by calling the proposal "insanity." He then said the idea was "absolutely insane," but also that it was "madness."

"Insane" and "crazy" aren't medical terms; this was all colloquial speech. Also, it isn't clear that anyone can say anything at this late date that will actually make any difference.

Not long ago, polling seemed to be moving against President Trump. We'll start right there tomorrow morning—but for now, we'll merely say that everybody's speaking colloquially and no one's moving past that.

It may be too late for a good outcome here. But as we've noted in the past, Frost offered this famous thought about an earlier juncture in American history:

The Gift Outright

[,,,]

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

You can read the entire poem here. Then again, there's the famous lyric from the Harry Nilsson song as heard in Midnight Cowboy:

Everybody's talkin' at me
I don't hear a word they're sayin'

 

UNDISGUISED: Madness is as madness does!

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 7, 2026

Is this what madness looks like? No one has ever said that former ambassador Michael McFaul isn't thoroughly sharp. The leading authority on his career offers this pithy thumbnail:

Michael McFaul

Michael Anthony McFaul (born October 1, 1963) is an American academic and diplomat who served as the United States ambassador to Russia from 2012 to 2014. McFaul became the Ken Olivier and Angela Nomellini Professor in International Studies in the Department of Political Science at Stanford University in 1995, where he is the Director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies...Prior to his nomination to the ambassadorial position, McFaul worked for the U.S. National Security Council as Special Assistant to the President and senior director of Russian and Eurasian affairs...

McFaul is a high-ranking academic with several years of service as ambassador to Putin.

No one has ever said that he isn't perfectly sharp. Last night, he appeared on The Eleventh Hour and employed some colloquial language when discussing President Trump. 

Again, we're speaking of colloquial language. That said, his initial exchange with Stephanie Ruhle started exactly like this:

RUHLE (1/6/26): If the United States takes Greenland by force, would that not be one NATO country going after another? And if that takes place, wouldn’t that be the end of the NATO alliance? That feels monumental to me.

MCFAUL: I can’t stress enough how completely insane this idea is, on so many levels. 

McFaul continued from there, citing several major objections to the idea of taking Greenland by force. 

To see the video of this first exchange, you can click here. He ended this initial presentation with more colloquial language:

MCFAUL: I just think this is so insane, and we need to call it out as insane. Sorry if I [unintelligible]—but it's the craziest idea I ever heard of.

The proposal wasn't simply insane. It was also crazy.

No, Virginia! McFaul did not go on to cite a formal medical diagnosis of President Trump's mental health. Aside from that, "insane" and "crazy" aren't formal medical terms. 

McFaul was using colloquial language. That said, he was using the type of colloquial language which now pops up, with great regularity, when the behaviors and proposals of the sitting president come under journalistic review.

McFaul is not a medical specialist. That said, the president's niece is a doctorate-wielding medical specialist, and in her best-selling 2020 book, she referred to a vast sweep of "psychopathologies" as she discussed her "dangerous" uncle.

She was using clinical language. As we've noted again and again, she offered such clinical assessments as these:

MARY L. TRUMP (pages 12-13): I have no problem calling Donald a narcissist—he meets all nine criteria as outlined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5)—but the label only gets us so far.

[...]

A case could be made that he also meets the criteria for antisocial personality disorder, which in its most severe forms is generally considered sociopathy but can also refer to chronic criminality, arrogance, and disregard for the rights of others...

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

Her uncle may be afflicted by "sociopathy," she said, matching that colloquial language to "antisocial personality disorder," the technical diagnostic term. She said her uncle's behavior suggests the possible presence of quite a few other pathologies. 

As we've frequently noted, the fact that she said it doesn't mean that it's true. But her presentation raises an obvious question:

Do the "crazy ideas" McFaul derided stem from some such "personality disorder," whatever some such clinical diagnosis might actually mean? Are the crazy ideas of the sitting president the fruit of some (serious) mental health disorder?

Putting it another way, could the president be mentally ill?

Is President Trump, the sitting president, afflicted by some unknown array of clinical "psychopathologies?" The press corps has agreed that we must never ask such questions, but the (colloquial) madness of this president's conduct has never seemed much more apparent than it did yesterday.

McFaul was reacting to the idea that Greenland might be taken by force. Yesterday, the president's spokesperson explicitly said that this "craziest idea [McFaul] ever heard of" does remain fully viable.

That's what McFaul was talking about. But an array of extremely unusual conduct had been unloosed by the end of the day on behalf of the sitting president.

Below, we'll cite what Stephen Miller said about the right to take Greenland by force—but Greenland was only one part of yesterday's stew. 

There was also the (colloquially) crazy new White House website. It triggered a front-page report in the extremely cautious New York Times, while triggering this array of reports at the more plain-spoken Mediaite:

Trump White House Launches Stunning January 6 Website Trashing ‘Violent’ Capitol Police

The 5 Most Unhinged Claims Made on Trump’s Jaw-Dropping New January 6 Website

‘Orwellian Doublespeak on Steroids’: Trump WH’s Jan. 6 Propaganda Website Sparks Outrage

Opinion: Trump White House Publishes Government-Sanctioned Lies About January 6

According to that opinion piece by Colby Hall, "The Trump White House has published a government-sanctioned series of bonkers lies about the January 6 attack..."

Speaking colloquially, that new web site about January 6 is crazy all the way down. Then too, you had this strange belated disclosure about the Epstein files:

DOJ Admits It’s Still Reviewing ‘More Than 2 Million Documents’ in Epstein Files—‘Less Than 1 Percent’ Have Been Released

Say what? Two weeks after a deadline passed, the DOJ decided to report that less than one percent of the Epstein documents have been released to date?

To our ear, that constitutes an admission that the DOJ never had any intention of complying with the congressional mandate in question. There too, the Trump administration seemed to be saying "good-bye to all that" with respect to the traditional norms and procedures of the American government.

That new website is patently crazy. As a colloquial matter, it's crazy all the way down.

Beyond that, the threat to Greenland was insane, or so McFaul heatedly said. And as military threats aimed at other countries continued to fly around, the sitting president now told the world about the personal tribute he'd be receiving from the conquered Venezuelan regime.

Mediaite reports:

Trump Says He’s Selling Venezuela’s Oil and That the ‘Money Will Be Controlled by Me’

President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that he would be selling Venezuela’s oil after invading the country, with the money to be personally controlled by him. 

“I am pleased to announce that the Interim Authorities in Venezuela will be turning over between 30 and 50 MILLION Barrels of High Quality, Sanctioned Oil, to the United States of America,” announced Trump in a Truth Social post. “This Oil will be sold at its Market Price, and that money will be controlled by me, as President of the United States of America, to ensure it is used to benefit the people of Venezuela and the United States!”

He concluded, “I have asked Energy Secretary Chris Wright to execute this plan, immediately. It will be taken by storage ships, and brought directly to unloading docks in the United States. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

So the potentate said on his Truth Social site. Barrels of oil would be coming to him, and he'd be controlling the loot.

That new website about January is utterly stone-cold nuts. Meanwhile, the president was presenting himself as an ancient conqueror receiving a very large tribute.

Meanwhile, on what basis might we decide to take Greenland by force? In a New York Times news report, Stephen Miller explained:

Stephen Miller Asserts U.S. Has Right to Take Greenland

Stephen Miller, a top aide to President Trump, asserted on Monday that Greenland rightfully belonged to the United States and that the Trump administration could seize the semiautonomous Danish territory if it wanted.

“Nobody’s going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland,” Mr. Miller told Jake Tapper, the CNN host, after being asked repeatedly whether he would rule out using military force.

The remarks were part of a vocal push by Mr. Miller, long a powerful behind-the-scenes player in Trump administration policy, to justify American imperialism and a vision for a new world order in which the United States could freely overthrow national governments and take foreign territory and resources so long as it was in the national interest.

“We live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,” he said. “These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”

And so on from there. According to Miller, there would no longer by any pretense of protecting the weaker from the stronger.  Even as the Trump White House presented crazy claims about January 6, it was returning to the iron laws which have ruled the world since the beginning of time.

Plainly, we're no longer in Kansas! But have we possibly entered a realm driven by "mental illness?"

As the nation enters uncharted waters, that basic question will never be asked. That said, the sitting president's strange behavior has been sitting right there, in plain sight, all along.

The behavior has been extremely strange—and the strangeness has never been disguised. Our question moving forward will be this:

Has any major Blue American org ever come to terms with that obvious fact—with that undisguised state of affairs?

Tomorrow: Bill Clinton went to the island dozens of times, the disordered man repeatedly said

TUESDAY: Scribe gives voice to a gloomy thought!

TUESDAY, JANUARY 6, 2026

Charlie Pierce gets it right: The president continues to rant and yell about how the 2020 election was stolen. Or at least, so says Mediaite in this new report:

‘Crooked as Hell!’ Trump Goes on Rigged Election Rant on January 6 Anniversary

President Donald Trump spoke Tuesday at the House Republican retreat in Washington, D.C. and reiterated his long-held and widely debunked claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. Trump made the remarks on the fifth anniversary of the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol, which was fueled by his claims of voter fraud as rioters tried to stop the certification of the election.

And so on from there. You can see videotape of Trump's remarks at that link.

Scarily, we probably tilt something like 60-40 toward a disturbing thought, Scarily, we tilt a bit toward the view that the sitting president actually believes the claims he makes during those unchanging rants.

At any rate, through a succession of errors and weaknesses, this is the sitting president we the people have chosen. For the next three years, his judgment on the global stage will be serving as our judgment, which brings us to the closing remark in yesterday's blog post for Esquire by Charlie Pierce.

We chatted with Charlie long ago about our contention that player disqualification on personal fouls is the worst rule in team sports. Those were simpler times back then. The days even seemed longer then, as Harper Lee observed.

Today, we're not sure that we agree with the basic premise of Pierce's blog post. Headline included, his piece started like this—but in the beginning, right there in his headline, Pierce prefigured its gloomy end:

Jack Smith Found Plenty of Damning Evidence Against Trump. If Only That Mattered Now.

This was going to lead the blog on Monday until the president decided to grab the president of Venezuela, his wife, and the country’s oil. (And no, it’s not “our” oil if it’s underneath Venezuela. Dinosaurs did not choose where to die.) On New Year’s Eve, the Republicans decided to release the video—and a transcript—of Jack Smith’s deposition before the House Judiciary Committee that took place in December. In it, Smith demonstrated the kind of implacability that would have made a formidable prosecution if Merrick Garland had been able to get off the dime...

There are a number of highlights....[Smith] ably defended his investigation, including the subpoenas for the toll records on the telephones of certain members of Congress, including Jordan’s. Ultimately, though, Smith was quite clear about what his investigators actually found. In reply to a question about whether there was a political agenda behind his investigation, Smith made it quite plain why he did what he did and how he determined its course...

Many others have said that Smith found plenty of evidence in support of his indictments of Trump. With respect to the January 6 indictment, we're still not sure we agree.

Unless the reporting has been crazily wrong, it seems clear that the former president mishandled classified material at Mar-a-Lago in ways which went well beyond the kinds of misbehavior for which other people have been convicted of crimes. But with respect to the claim that Trump engaged in criminal conduct with respect to his ludicrous behavior between Election Day and January 6, we remain unsure--unsure that he actually committed a crime in the course of his ludicrous conduct.

More on that ages and ages hence! For today, we turn to the gloomy final rumination Charlie prefigured tin his headline. As his blog post ended, Brother Pierce said this:

Jack Smith Found Plenty of Damning Evidence Against Trump. If Only That Mattered Now.

[...]

And almost five years [after January 6], Trump launched an invasion and occupation of another country. This poisonous tree bears considerable fruit. The entire extent of the American government has been repurposed into a private instrument of vengeance and a vehicle for private enrichment. And it may already be too far gone.

If you hit a paywall at that link, you can also click here.

The American government [imperfect as it always has been] "may already be too far gone?" We agree with that provisional sense of gloom and despair. 

A baldly disordered man is in charge of that government. For better or worse, our mainstream press corps still hasn't found a way to describe what's right there before them. 

(In fairness, it isn't clear that some such declaration would have helped at any point in the past ten years. Some such accurate declaration may even have made matters worse!)

The president's judgment will serve as our judgment over the course of the next three years. "It may already be too [late]?"

In our view, Pierce gets it right with that closing remark.

UNDISGUISED: "We're going to keep the oil," he says!

TUESDAY, JANUARY 6, 2026

None of this has ever been hidden: We've long complimented the role played by David Ignatius in what's left of the national discourse. But in his new column for the Washington Post, he directs a blow right at this site! 

 As always, his column offers good, sound advice. Except when he lashes out with this:

Trump is riding high on Venezuela. It might not last.

[...]

The presidency is seductive. It leads even cautious politicians to overreach, and Trump is the opposite of cautious. He is seeking to reorder the world, at home and abroad, top to bottom. It’s easy to say that this kind of thinking is delusional, or narcissistic, or dictatorial. But Trump seems convinced that he’s on a roll, and most other countries—China and Russia are the notable exceptions—haven’t figured out a strategy for containing him.

It's easy to say that Trump is "delusional" (etc.)? To the sagacious Ignatius, we'd only say this:

Go ahead! Just give it a try!

Is the sitting president's recent conduct the product of what was once described as "mental illness?" (According to the leading authority, such terminology is falling out of favor.) 

Putting it a different way, is there any chance that the president's niece was right in the assessment she delivered in her 2020 best-seller, Too Much and Never Enough?

She's a doctorate-wielding clinical therapist. This is what she said:

MARY L. TRUMP (pages 12-13): I have no problem calling Donald a narcissist—he meets all nine criteria as outlined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5)—but the label only gets us so far.

[...]

Does Donald have other symptoms we aren't aware of? Are there other disorders that might have as much or more explanatory power? Maybe. A case could be made that he also meets the criteria for antisocial personality disorder, which in its most severe forms is generally considered sociopathy but can also refer to chronic criminality, arrogance, and disregard for the rights of others...

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

As she continued, she offered other possible clinical assessments.

Was it easy for her to say such things? (She wasn't speaking colloquially.) 

We'll guess that it probably wasn't. But even after her book became a major best-seller, she couldn't get anyone else to repeat, and then to discuss, the various assessments she'd offered. The scriveners of Blue America's high journalistic caste all agreed:

Such assessments must be disappeared within the American political discourse. 

According to current rules of the culture, "mental illness" can be discussed with respect to various types of violent street crime. But (clinical) mental health issues must never, ever be discussed with respect to major political figures. 

You aren't allowed to say such things! So it goes as Ignatius bats this kind of medical assessment away once again.

Do our journalists even believe in the existence of "mental illness?" If they do, they have almost uniformly agreed to pretend that they don't.

In the case pf President Trump, the apparent manifestations of what was once known as "mental illness" have never been disguised. That explains the topic selection we made yesterday, even after the sitting president had launched his war on Venezuela.

He had won the Battle of Caracas, with subsequent threats being directed at Cuba, Colombia and Denmark. But in yesterday's report at this site, we focused, not on the assault on Caracas, but on the president's latest crazy behavior, in which he suggested that Governor Walz had somehow arranged to have Melissa Hortman killed. 

Judged by any conventional metric, that Truth Social post by President Trump seemed to be manifestly insane. For that reason, major journalists in Blue America agreed that it had to be disappeared—that the lunatic Truth Social post mustn't be reported or discussed. 

The conduct was manifestly disordered; for that reason, it had to be disappeared. From there, we come to today's Morning Joe, with Joe Scarborough reporting what the president said to him, yesterday, during a telephone call.

What did the sitting president say? At Mediaite, David Gilmour provides the videotape from Morning Joe, and he transcribes Scarborough's report about what the president said.

To read Gilmour's report, you can click here. We strongly suggest that you read his report and that you watch all the tape he provides.

For ourselves, it went like this. 

As we listened to Scarborough's account of the president's comments, visions of psychopathologies (whatever they are) instantly danced in our heads:

SCARBOROUGH (1/6/26): When I pressed comparisons with America’s failed occupation of Iraq, the president’s response was very different. I asked him, I said, "Mr. President, when you say, quote, we’re going to run everything, that obviously causes deep concerns because of the disaster in Iraq."

The president’s response? "Joe, the difference between Iraq and this is that Bush didn’t keep the oil. We’re going to keep the oil."

And to underline his point, Trump said his comments were no longer on background, and he said: 

"In 2016, I said we should have kept the oil. It caused a lot of controversy. Well, we should have kept the oil," the president said, "and we’re going to rebuild their broken-down oil facilities, and this time we’re going to keep the oil."

It sounds like we're going to keep the oil! And sure enough:

Back then, that is what Trump said Bush did wrong after he conquered Iraq. He said Bush should have kept the oil.

Yesterday, he apparently told Scarborough, again and again, that we'll be keeping the oil this time.

At this site, we've outlined various (clinical) pathologies which have come to mind, within the past year, as we've listened to the peculiar claims emerging from President Trump. We've also offered this general overview:

As a general matter, "mental illness" is conceptually complex in a way which "physical illness" isn't. Presumably, there are medical specialists who could help explain some of the points of puzzlement we've attempted to lay out.

It's also true that serious "mental illness" (like serious cognitive decline) is always a human tragedy which robs the afflicted of his or her human capability. That said, do our journalists even believe that such "mental disorders" exist?

Soon, the commander will be moving on Greenland or maybe Colombia, plus Cuba is ready to fall. He clearly plans to "keep the oil" as the spoils of last weekend's conquest.

Different people have different ideas about last weekend's action. That said, very few people will fail to see the madness of the sitting president's post about Governor Walz.

Yesterday, we focused on that Truth Social post because it rips the curtain away from the sitting president's apparent mental state. The person who posted that lunatic suggestion about Tim Walz is the same person who will guide our nation's coming adventures.

Easy to be hard, Ignatius now says. In effect, it's the latest effort to disappear the state of affairs which has been sitting right there before us over a number of years.

The Clintons killed Jefrey Epstein, this madman instantly suggester or said back in 2019. Governor Walz assassinated his ally, Hortman, this same man has now suggested or said.

The madness there is undisguised, and this is the person who will be leading us forward. Please look over here instead, the upper end "press corps" implores.

It's too late to do anything about this—about this astonishing state of affairs. In truth, it was too late all along!

Remember:

Serious (clinical) "mental disorder" is always a human tragedy. When it afflicts a sitting president, it's also a source of great danger.

Tomorrow: He went to the island 28 times, the sitting president said

MONDAY: The madness of the king advances!

MONDAY, JANUARY 5, 2026

But mainly, Walz drops out: With the Battle of Caracas won, the madness over Air Force One has been general, with warnings issued to Denmark and Cuba, and tariff claims out of control.

We'll set that aside until tomorrow. For today, we'll focus on this news report in the New York Times:

Gov. Tim Walz Drops Re-election Bid, and Amy Klobuchar May Run Instead

Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota said on Monday that he was abandoning his bid for re-election to a third term. And Senator Amy Klobuchar, a fellow Democrat, is considering seeking the office, two people briefed on conversations between the two politicians said.

Mr. Walz and Ms. Klobuchar met on Sunday in Minnesota, where he informed her of his plans and she confirmed her interest in running to succeed him. For Mr. Walz, the Democratic nominee for vice president in the 2024 election, the departure caps a brief rise in national politics.

Mr. Walz said a widening scandal over fraud in social services programs in Minnesota had persuaded him to drop out of the race. He had been criticized for his administration’s oversight of the programs and its failure to prevent widespread fraud.

“I came to the conclusion that I can’t give a political campaign my all,” Mr. Walz said in a statement he read aloud during a news conference on Monday. “Every minute I spend defending my own political interests would be a minute I can’t spend defending the people of Minnesota against the criminals who prey on our generosity and the cynics who prey on our differences.”

So reports the New York Times. For Mediaite's initial report, you can just click here.

Should Governor Walz be leaving the race? On balance, we'd be inclined to say that it's time for a change. 

Over at Fox, there has been a fair amount of the usual crackpot reporting and commentary about the Minnesota fraud prosecutions since the topic went viral. Also, the sudden emergence of this topic in late November produced two days of astonishing conduct n which the sitting president said that Minnesota's Somali-American population is just a bunch of "garbage."

That said, this is not an invented scandal. The New York Times has published two major reports on the topic in the past six weeks. For better or worse, the first report—a sprawling front-page report on Sunday, November 30—fingered Governor Walz right in its headline:

How Fraud Swamped Minnesota’s Social Services System on Tim Walz’s Watch

The fraud scandal that rattled Minnesota was staggering in its scale and brazenness.

Federal prosecutors charged dozens of people with felonies, accusing them of stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from a government program meant to keep children fed during the Covid-19 pandemic.

At first, many in the state saw the case as a one-off abuse during a health emergency. But as new schemes targeting the state’s generous safety net programs came to light, state and federal officials began to grapple with a jarring reality.

Over the last five years, law enforcement officials say, fraud took root in pockets of Minnesota’s Somali diaspora as scores of individuals made small fortunes by setting up companies that billed state agencies for millions of dollars’ worth of social services that were never provided.

That's the way the lengthy report began. On December 20, the Times followed up with this:

Prosecutors Say Minnesota’s Fraud Scandal Goes Further Than Previously Known

An investigation into fraud in Minnesota’s social services programs has broadened significantly, federal prosecutors said on Thursday.

The prosecutors told reporters that they were investigating suspicious billing practices in 14 Medicaid-funded programs. Until now, the investigation had focused on only three safety net programs run by state agencies.

“What we see in Minnesota is not a handful of bad actors committing crimes,” Joseph H. Thompson, the federal prosecutor overseeing the investigation said at a news conference. “It is staggering industrial-scale fraud.”

A preliminary assessment suggests that more than half of the $18 billion in taxpayer funds spent on the 14 programs and intended to help low-income, vulnerable people since 2018 was most likely stolen, the federal prosecutors said.

And so on from there. By the way:

On Fox, that "more than half of $18 billion" tends to be referred toas $18 billion in fraud full stop, just plain completely straight up!

The Times has been reporting on this topic since 2022. At that time, the prosecutions started under the Biden Justice Department.

Fox News has enjoyed every moment of this. But what about us Blues?

We Blues! Almost surely, we helped send President Trump back to the White House by our refusal to come to terms with some of the peculiar behaviors which transpired, unexplained, during the Biden years.

Will we do better this next time around? We know of no reason to assume that we will, but the attention which will get paid to this giant mess will give us a chance to find out.

Final point:

On Fox, this scandal is presented as the inevitable result of Blue America's surrender to DEI and to the kinds of behaviors which get ridiculed as "woke." It's routinely said that the votes of the Somali community were in effect being bought off, and that no one wanted to complain about what was happening for fear of being called racist.

In our view, this:

Sadly, this interpretive framework makes too much sense to be rejected straight out. By the way, do you ever see this giant mess reported and discussed on our own Blue American "cable news" channel?

Fox News suppresses embarrassing facts. Does our channel ever do that?