WE BLUES: Can anyone deny the fact that something is wrong?

MONDAY, JULY 27, 2026

We Blues almost surely will: In fairness, his first remark, taken in context, was a bit self-deprecating. You could possibly call it good-natured.

The comment was actually funny. To our ear, it got an honest laugh.

The fellow had just been introduced by Weijia Jiang, the head of the White House Correspondents Association, at last Friday night's restaging of the association's annual dinner. 

As part of her introduction, she made a reference to the cancellation of the first attempt. Below, you see what the sitting president said:

JIANG (7/24/26): ...President Trump, I've covered you for a long time and so have many reporters in this room.

When we ask questions, you push back. You give us answers, and we push back. You have always been a "deal" guy. Well, that's the deal—and the First Amendment is a done deal. 

And that's what we toast tonight—the freedoms that brought us back together, even after they were threatened. So let's raise a glass to what makes ours a beautiful country.

[Jiang leads the toast]

And now, ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming the 45th and 47th president of the United States, President Donald J. Trump.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Wow! That was very beautiful, but this has not been an easy evening—all these awards.

 AUDIENCE: [Laughter]

PRESIDENT TRUMP: [Grimaces, shakes his head]

As you can hear on the videotape, he got a very good laugh. We've been in many rooms where joking comments were offered. To our ear, the laughter he got was both authentic and earned.

In the earlier part of the evening, he'd sat in his seat at the head table as awards were given to various journalists who had challenged his endlessly disordered behavior. The awards were deserved, but the comment was rueful—and his rueful comments was rewarded with laughter, as you can hear on the tape.

His first comment received a good laugh. His presentation went downhill from there, screaming as it did. 

(For Roll Call's transcript, click here.)

He started with endless, tedious recollections built from his astonishing degree of self-involvement. From there, he proceeded to long strings of inane, inappropriate insults, driven along by his standard array of absurd, long-corrected misstatements.   

Governor Pritzker was "a fat pig." Governor Newsom's name was "Newscum." Jake Tapper was really "Fake Tapper."

Senator Schiff was said to have a "big fat ugly head." ("I call him watermelon head, because he has the largest head I've ever seen with the smallest neck.") 

Rosie O'Donnell is "a sick older woman, I guess now I have to say."  

We're omitting reams of other insults, not wishing to drive certain images and certain bogus claims forward. Pathetically, though, he even went with this embarrassing mess at one point: 

PRESIDENT TRUMP: And I know Dumocrats—and the word "Dumocrat" is something that's come into fashion. I changed the E with a U. And most people don't know that "dumb" has a B. So, we don't have to worry about that.

It's very quiet [in the hall]. I thought it was quite good, but I haven't gotten much credit for that. 

We'll offer a guess—most people do know that "dumb" is spelled with a B. This seems to have been a recent revelation to the sitting president, though perhaps to no one else.  

The insults and the self-involved tedium went on and on and on. At roughly the 50-minute mark, C-Span's cameras began to pan to frozen faces in the audience, as you can see on the official tape. 

As you can see on the tape, it panned to frozen faces in a silent hall at 10:22 p.m., then again at 10:23. 

Out in that audience, there seemed to be nothing except frozen faces, many looking down. At 10:28, as the droning continued, C-Span even panned, for the first time, to frozen faces at the head table. 

At 10:29, it showed another frozen face at the head table, along with a second person who was now sitting with his back turned to the president.   

He had now been droning for 56 minutes. At the one-hour mark, he finally said it:  

"It was a rigged election." 

Roughly five minutes later, he closed with an unhappily accurate statement:  

"Our country's doing things that no one's ever seen before."  

The accuracy was unintentional as the gentleman finally stopped. With that, we pose this morning's question:

At this point, can any serious person really doubt it? Can anyone doubt that something is severely wrong with the president?

He had seemed to be sleeping about half the time as he sat through the earlier speeches and the aforementioned awards. Later, he seemed to have trouble opening his eyes even when he himself was speaking. 

Can anyone doubt or deny that something seems to be wrong? The answer we'll give you today is this:   

We Blues are going to do just that! We Blues aren't going to speak!

David French and David Brooks aren't going to say it. Nicholas Kristof isn't going to say it. Neither is Michelle Goldberg or Peter Baker or anyone else from the New York Times news division.

Rachel Maddow isn't going to speak, and neither is Nicolle Wallace. Joe and Mika aren't going to say it. Neither is Lawrence O'Donnell.

No one at The Atlantic is going to speak. Jeffrey Greenberg isn't going to give anyone that assignment.

Anderson Cooper isn't going to speak, and neither is Jake Tapper. We're sorry to say that the same is almost surely true of Kaitlan Collins, whose character we've admired since the first Covid year, when she alone was willing to challenge the endless blather being performed at the president's televised bullroar and blather events.  

Is something wrong with President Trump? At this point, what sane person could really deny it? Consider:

As you probably know, the president tried to insult Collins at Friday night's event. The insult he tried to aim at her got more attention than any of the million additional insults which froze the faces of an entire ballroom that night.  

He tried to insult her, but neither she nor CNN was bowing to his pathetic attempt. And so, inevitably, what did he do? 

Of course! Turning to Truth Social, he went ahead and did it again! Over at Mediaite, here's the start of Joe DePaolo's report:

Trump Doubles Down on His Attack Against CNN’s Kaitlan Collins By Posting a Shocking New Meme

President Donald Trump doubled down on his attack against CNN’s Kaitlan Collins by posting a shocking new meme to his Truth Social account.

In a Sunday morning Truth post, the president shared a doctored photo depicting Collins in place of trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney in a 2023 Bud Light promotional campaign.

Trump’s new meme comes on the heels of his attack on the CNN anchor Friday night at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in which he compared Collins to Mulvaney.

Joe DePaolo's report for Mediaite continues along from there. To see the president's Truth Social post, you can just click here.

Just to be clear:

The president's Truth Social post says nothing "shocking" about Collins. With great valor, she led the way in the first Covid year. 

We've been grateful ever since. The president's post says nothing "shocking" about her.

To the extent that the post is "shocking," it's shocking because of what it makes clear about the president himself. Simply put, it's no longer possible for reasonable observers to doubt the fact that something seems to be badly "wrong" with the sitting American president.

Now for the rest of the story:

No one could doubt or deny the fact that something seems to be wrong. No sane person could doubt or deny it, but We Blues almost certainly will!

Other parts of his recent conduct make this problem even more obvious. That said, We Blues are going to look away from this dangerous state of affairs.

In fairness, this is all part of the human condition. It's part of the imperfect wiring of our imperfect human species.

The Fox New News Channel is a giant slag heap, but We Blues are a piece of work too. Faces were frozen all through the hall.

We Blues aren't going to say that.

Tomorrow: "Other parts of his recent conduct make this problem even more obvious."