MONDAY, JUNE 8, 2026
Yesterday's Meet the Press: Is the newspaper known as the New York Times still headquartered here on this planet?
We ask because of the way the paper reported the events which transpired on yesterday's Meet the Press.
The sitting president appeared on the show for an extensive interview. Only a newspaper based on an asteroid could have produced this report.
Dual headline included:
Trump Says He Never Promised No New Wars, and Defends Compensation Fund
In a lengthy interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press,” the president again vowed that gas prices would go down when the war in Iran ends.
President Trump, who campaigned on a central promise to keep the United States out of overseas wars, denied in an interview aired on Sunday that he’d ever made the pledge.
“I didn’t guarantee no war,” Mr. Trump said in a lengthy interview with Kristen Welker, the host of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” taped during his trip to Wisconsin on Friday. “Why would I have built the strongest military in the world?”
Speaking about the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran, he continued: “So when you say I promised, I didn’t promise anything. I don’t like these endless wars. This is not an endless war. We’ve been doing this for three months.”
He did promise. As a candidate in 2024, Mr. Trump repeatedly pledged not to involve the United States in war, including on the night he won the election. “They said, ‘He will start a war,’” Mr. Trump said during his victory speech. “I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars.”
On what meet doth this our Caesar feed? More precisely, in what solar system does this our one-time world-famous newspaper currently dwell?
It isn't that any of that is "wrong." It's just that the Washington Post saw what happened more clearly.
The Post saw something which much closely resembled the session which actually occurred. Here's what the Bezos broadsheet says it saw, dual headline included:
Trump walks out of ‘Meet the Press’ interview when challenged over false claims
When pressed by host Kristen Welker, the president cited no evidence for claims about Jan. 6 and elections he said were “rigged.”
President Donald Trump broke off an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” that aired Sunday after host Kristen Welker challenged his false claims about elections and the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.
“Let’s call it quits because I’ve had enough,” he said after a tense exchange lasting about four minutes. “Thank you, darling. Have a good time.”
He then stood up and walked off the set in a barn in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, taped before an event focused on farmers that Trump held there Friday.
An NBC spokesperson declined to comment. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Post saw the furious behavior of a disordered president. And not only that! The sitting president kept making false claims, those dual headline said.
Here's the main thing the WashPo somehow managed to see:
Even after all these years, the sitting president kept making (the same "false claims" he's made these many years. When his interlocutor challenged his claims—when she challenged the claims which were false—the sitting president stood up, walked off the set in the barn, and left his "darling" alone, right there on the set.
That said, it wasn't until today's Morning Joe that we saw a news org center down on what actually happened. Joe himself was absent today, but Mika centered down on the insults aimed at Kisten Welker, and at the endless stream of "lies" which kept emerging from the mouth of the man who is—tragically but dangerously—severely mentally ill.
We wouldn't use the term "lies" ourselves; we might use the term "delusions." It isn't clear to us that he doesn't believe the false and unfounded claims he never, in his apparent mania, is willing to stop making.
(Full disclosure! According to medical science, some people are "delusional.")
The New York Times wiped all that away. There are few words to capture the "companion craziness" of what this big money "newspaper" currently does in this, the most compliant of all corporate worlds.
For a hint of Mika's presentation, you can just click here. See "Mika furious over Trump's false claims and media coverage." For the record, we don't agree with much of what Tomasky and Lemire said.
We'll offer more detail tomorrow afternoon, unless something worse occurs. But the Times is huddled on a distant rock, or in a more distant locale.
In the same way that Trump performatively clings to notion that he won 2020, Somerby clings to the notion that Trump might really believe he won 2020, even though trusted Trump insiders repeatedly told Trump he lost and Trump has a history of telling lies.
ReplyDeleteDifferent sinner, similar sin.
Adam Kinzinger on Facebook:
DeleteSomething is wrong with Donald Trump, but nobody around him will say it. And this past week revealed just how serious the problem is.
On Sunday morning, the President of the United States sat down with NBC’s Kristen Welker for a Meet the Press interview and walked out of it. Not metaphorically. He got up, said “You’re a one-sided crooked network… I’ve had enough,” and left.
He is 79 years old. He is the most powerful person on Earth. And he couldn’t finish an interview.
That moment, uncomfortable as it was to watch, wasn’t really about Kristen Welker. She asked him about his $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund—money earmarked to reward people who claim government persecution, including January 6th participants. She pushed back on his claim that FBI agents had “ushered” rioters into the Capitol. She said there was no evidence. He insisted there was “tremendous evidence.” She held her ground. He couldn’t handle it.
So he left.
Let me say what a lot of people are thinking but few in his orbit will ever say out loud: this is not normal behavior for a president, and the pattern right now is alarming....
Take a step back and look at just the last few days, because the picture they paint together is striking.
Saturday, June 6th was the 82nd anniversary of D-Day. Thousands of young Americans stormed the beaches of Normandy in 1944—wading through surf, cut down in the sand, dying so that Europe might be free. It is one of the most sacred dates on the American calendar. Previous presidents, regardless of party, have treated it with reverence.
Donald Trump spent D-Day posting AI-generated videos of himself to Truth Social. Himself riding a camel. Himself skydiving with a red parachute. Himself walking through cheering crowds. He also posted an AI-generated image of the future Obama Presidential Library rendered as a giant garbage can surrounded by homeless encampments, and took shots at a federal judge blocking his White House ballroom project.
Not a word about the boys on the beaches. Not one.
The White House quietly issued a written statement—drafted by staff, not the president—that briefly acknowledged the anniversary. But from the man himself? Nothing but a digital hall of mirrors reflecting his own image back at him.
Meanwhile, the reflecting pool is blue. If you haven’t been following this particular episode of American surrealism, here’s the summary: Trump had the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool—one of the most iconic, historically resonant public spaces in the world—repainted “American flag blue.” Not the quiet gray of stone and water that has framed the Capitol skyline for over a century. A vivid, swimming-pool blue. Historians were appalled. Preservationists sued. The project ballooned to nearly $20 million. Critics noted the final product looks remarkably similar to the pool at Mar-a-Lago.
Trump has been obsessed with defending it. Multiple posts. Intense personal investment in a paint job.
And then there is Iran. One hundred days into a war that was launched without a declaration of Congress, against an enemy we were in active negotiations with when the bombs dropped. Iran’s Supreme Leader is dead. The region is on fire. The war is deeply unpopular—historically so. Four Republicans broke with the party to pass a War Powers Resolution rebuking the president. Iran has rejected his peace plan. Iran called him “deceitful” and denied that negotiations he claimed were happening were happening at all.
cont.
DeleteTrump’s response has been to insist this doesn’t contradict his campaign promise of “no new wars.”
So to recap the week: ignored D-Day, obsessed over a paint job, got embarrassed on the world stage by Iran, and then stormed off a television set when a journalist asked him a hard question.
This is the President of the United States.
The Rumble Strips
I want to offer a theory I’ve been sitting with for a while, because I think it explains a lot of what we’re watching—not just with Trump, but with a particular class of people who reach the absolute summit of wealth or power.
Think about driving on a highway at night. You get a little tired, your mind wanders, and you start drifting toward the shoulder. And then you feel it: that jarring brrrrr under your tires. The rumble strips. They exist for one purpose—to tell you that you are leaving the road and that you need to correct course. They don’t argue with you. They don’t negotiate. They just make it impossible to ignore the fact that you are about to drive off the highway.
Here’s the thing about billionaires—and about presidents who surround themselves only with loyalists: they have no rumble strips.
I know this from personal experience, from the other direction. I served in Congress for over a decade. In that world, I had rumble strips everywhere. If I said something stupid, a colleague would pull me aside. If I was about to vote the wrong way, my staff would flag it. If I showed up somewhere in a ridiculous outfit, my family would make fun of me until I went and changed. And don’t even think about doing something stupid around my military buddies! I had people around me whose job—formal or informal—was to tell me the truth. Not because they were paid to flatter me. Because they knew me, they respected me, and they understood that letting me drive off the road wasn’t kindness. It was negligence.
That’s not how it works when you have unlimited money or unchecked power.
If a billionaire walks into a board meeting wearing an orange shirt with pink pants, every single person in that room tells him it’s a genius fashion choice. Not because it is. Because their job, their bonus, their access—all of it—depends on the billionaire feeling good. Nobody laughs. Nobody says hey, maybe reconsider. The rumble strips have been paved over. The road just gets wider and smoother and more forgiving, right up until the moment it doesn’t.
I’ve seen this with tech billionaires who start believing their own mythology and make catastrophic business decisions while their inner circle applauds. I’ve seen it with Wall Street titans who surround themselves with yes-men until the whole thing collapses. And I am watching it, in real time, with the President of the United States.
Donald Trump has not had a genuine rumble strip in years—arguably in decades. The people around him now are not advisors in any meaningful sense. They are validators. Some are true believers; some are opportunists; some are simply afraid. But none of them are doing what a real advisor does, which is look the boss in the eye and say: Sir, you cannot skip D-Day to post AI videos of yourself. Sir, the reflecting pool fight is making you look unhinged. Sir, you need to get in front of the Iran situation before it becomes your Iraq.
cont.
DeleteNobody is saying it. So nobody is hearing it. And the car keeps drifting....
I want to be careful here, because I am not a psychiatrist and I’m not going to play one on Substack. But I think we are allowed—we are obligated, even—to look at the behavioral pattern and ask hard questions.
A man who cannot sit through a challenging interview. Who spends the anniversary of the greatest military sacrifice in American history posting AI videos of himself. Who is emotionally consumed by whether a reflecting pool is the right shade of blue while a war he started spirals into a quagmire. Who responds to congressional rebuke not with reflection but with defiance. Who, when Iran calls him a liar on the world stage, simply repeats the lie louder.
This is not strength. This is not confidence. This is a person who is not receiving honest information, not tolerating honest feedback, and not processing reality in a way that connects to what the rest of us can see.
History has examples of leaders who reached this point—insulated, flattered, unchallenged, and gradually untethered from the feedback loops that keep human judgment grounded. It rarely ends well. For them, or for the people they’re supposed to be leading.
The rumble strips are gone. The road feels smooth. And the car is drifting.
Someone needs to say it. So I’m saying it.
What does "centered down" mean? That isn't any kind of English used in my part of the country. Is it a sports term?
ReplyDeleteEarth to Somerby, you don't have to be mentally ill to be delusional. We all have self-serving delusions. They help us feel like good people, feel hopeful in the face of discouragement. It is part of human psychology. Somerby would know that if he had ever taken a psychology course at Harvard or read a psychology book.
ReplyDeleteIdeas like Somerby's are why we leave diagnosis of mental illness to the professionals.
It would be a better use of Somerby's time to count the number of manufactured negative stories about Democrats the NY Times has been running, then compare them to the absence of stories about Trump's corruption and malfeasance. That behavior is more important than whether the NY Times wants to call Trump crazy.
ReplyDeleteAgree.
DeleteTrump's a crazy psychopath.
DeleteHe's also nothing more than a TV prop for Russell Vought, Stephen Miller, various billionaires, his son-in-law, etc.
"For the record, we don't agree with much of what Tomasky and Lemire said."
ReplyDeleteWhere did this come from? These are not the authors of either excerpt Somerby discussed. How do we react to Somerby's statement of disagreement when we have no idea what they said? This is either lazy or careless of Somerby (or both).
Oh dear.
DeleteThese continuous displays of public laziness by Somerby are having no effect on reducing the number of TDH readers who believe he's really a Right-winger.
And then that triggers the couple of right wing trolls here to defend Somerby, which is hilarious, in a way.
DeleteI like the right wing troll that follows Somerby's lead and denies being a right winger, all while repeating right wing nonsense - he's a hoot.
As a right wing troll, I guess I have to point out that Somerby provided a link to Mika Brezinzski's discussion with both Tomasky and Lemire.
DeleteAnd he made his comment about not agreeing with much of what they said immediately following his reference to the link.
So you'd have to be pretty stup---, no, carry on. You guys are entertaining in your own way.
Tiedrich describes what actually happened:
ReplyDelete"you’re going to hear a lot about how Donny ‘stormed’ off the set of Meet the Press, but I’m sorry, there was no ‘storming’ going on. in fact, the deteriorating fool almost fell right down on his beady-eyed pig-face.
here’s a pro tip for Donny: if you’re trying to create an indelible image of defiant anger, don’t step on the mic you dropped, causing your gamey leg to buckle, requiring you to grab Kristen Welker’s shoulder so you don’t topple the fuck over."
And this from Tiedrich:
Delete"and also, I keep saying ‘the set of Meet the Press’ — but that interview quite obviously wasn’t conducted in NBC’s New York studio. they taped it Friday night, at the site of Donny’s look-how-much-I-love-farmers clusterfuck in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin.
now, I get that the location was used for expediency’s sake, but did they really have to dress the set with wooden crates, hay bales and a tractor?
it’s a legit question, because it’s pretty hard to exude gravitas when it looks like you’re broadcasting from the set of Hee Haw.
[video of Trump's interview at the Agriculture Roundtable]
it must be nice to be one of Donny’s cultists, and be forever serenely deluded into believing that whatever ass-hattery Dear Leader clowfucks himself into, he always comes away with the upper hand.
oh look, it’s Juanita Broaddrick. now there’s a blast from the past. you’ll be shocked, I’m sure, to learn that Broaddrick’s now a darling of the MAGA set — and that she’s guzzled all the Kool-Aid.
Broaddrick tweet: Holy Crap!! President Trump had enough of Welker’s lies and rips off microphone and walks out of interview. BRAVO!!! We have the best President!!
no, Juanita, that’s not what happened. what happened is that Brave Sir Donald bravely ran away, away.
[video of Monty Python's brave Sir Robin running away]
Donny bravely ran away, away because because he’s a liar and a fucking coward who turns tail and flees the second anyone challenges the torrent of bullshit spraying from his rancid anus-mouth.
if Donny had a single shred of evidence to back up any one of his lies, he wouldn’t have to throw a piss-baby tantrum and bravely run away, away.
Donny wants us all to forget that he’s already litigated the hell out of the 2020 election. he brought over sixty lawsuits and lost all of them, except for one that went his way on a technicality and didn’t change the outcome. if there were any evidence, Donny’s ace team of parking garage lawyers would have presented it to the courts, six years ago.
Donny’s only ‘evidence’ is his pig-headed belief that ‘if I didn’t win, it must have been rigged.’ that’s not how adults face unpleasant news, it’s how babies react to hearing shit they don’t like. getting up and bravely running away, away is also a childish reaction.
what a great idea it was, to hand supreme executive power to some overgrown toddler who never matured past the emotional age of four years old."
Then Tiedrich asks why Kristen Welker was sanewashing Trump's meltdown, pretending it was presidential:
Delete"My interview with President Trump on Friday afternoon was unfortunately complicated by weather issues. In spite of those challenges, we still had a substantial conversation on issues from the Iran war to the economy to the so-called “anti-weaponization” fund. Tune in for the full interview this morning on @MeetThePress.
seriously? why is Kristen Welker calling Donny’s infantile melt-down a ‘substantial conversation’? it was no such thing. yesterday’s broadcast was 46 minutes of Donny lying about every fucking thing, and then blowing up and bravely running away, away when Welker refused to take bullshit for an answer."
Tiedrich, even though he is mocking Trump and others on the right, is more of an analyst than Somerby ever was. And he manages to do it in an amusing way, not Somerby's tedious repetitive whining that doesn't even make sense half the time (or more than half).
DeleteI don’t call him King Chickenshit for nothing.
DeleteOn the "one that went his way on a technicality", that one was overturned, so he did lose every case.
Delete"why is Kristen Welker calling Donny’s infantile melt-down a ‘substantial conversation’?"
DeleteSeriously? You're asking why a journalist who is employed by a news network would, golly I dunno, actually ENCOURAGE people to have a look at her work?
“journalist”?
DeleteAt this point, there simply is no excuse for a real journalist to try to interview this maniac. What do you hope to gain? One hour of a firehose of bullshit sprayed in our faces.
Trump will run to Fox or another safe spot very soon and the maggot cult will run to praise how open he is with the press
DeleteIt seems to me that Welker was actually asking Trump for evidence about the election, and pushing back when he gave inadequate answers, resulting in his meltdown. It was a useful display of his lack of control.
DeleteIt’s been a week- not one fucking word about CBS and Scott Pelley? From the media muse!
ReplyDeleteSo was Trump lying or delusional when he claimed he hadn’t promised no more wars?
ReplyDeleteLying is part of sociopathy, which Somerby has floated as a possible diagnosis rod Trump.
What are we supposed to think about the mass of Republicans who also believe the 2020 election was rigged?
They're idiots.
DeleteThat wasn't a very hard question.
RAJU: But what evidence is there to prove the California election is rigged?
ReplyDeleteMIKE JOHNSON: Look, some of these efforts are so diabolical and so far upstream it's impossible to prove. But I think everybody knows instinctively that something is wrong here.
Ted Cruz on Talarico: "If you were making a list of 1,000 adjectives to describe this guy, 'masculine' would not be one of them. I mean, if a stiff breeze came by it would blow him over like a feather."
ReplyDeleteThey really have substantive objections to Talarico, don’t they. Identity politics you say…?
Whereas if a stiff breeze came at Cruz he would....head for Cabo.
DeleteIt wasn’t just Trump claiming a rigged election in 2020. Republican operatives all over the country were claiming it and trying to overturn it.
ReplyDeleteBari Weiss ran a massive push to support Spencer Platt and his campaign for mayor of Los Angeles, which was closely coordinated with Rupert Murdoch's media outlets in addition to CBS. Neither ever reported a word about Platt's extensive criminal record.
ReplyDelete10:01 Yeah, we’re talking the same Ted Cruz who submitted like a dog to Trump calling his father a traitor.
ReplyDelete