WEDNESDAY, APRIL 30, 2025
The madness of Blue America: Not long ago, we discussed the phenomenon which is commonly described as "the madness of King George."
Back in 1994, it was the name of a major film. It's also a colloquial description of an apparent medical condition—the kind of medical condition our immature culture lets you discuss, but only after several centuries have passed in the case of public figures.
Back in 1788, King George III was a public figure. In 2023, Dr. Howard Markel offered this assessment of his medical condition near the end of a long essay for PBS:
What illness did King George III have?
[...]
So what caused the erratic behavior of mad King George III? I honestly cannot say. But the porphyria-bipolar arguments demonstrate one of the greatest problems when diagnosing those who died 200 years ago and without the physical evidence to back up such claims.
Blame it on the bossa nova? Actually, modern medical specialists think it may have been porphyria! But by the rules of the ongoing game, we're allowed to discuss it now because it no longer matters.
Yesterday, President Donald J. Trump conducted a rally just outside Detroit. He spoke for his usual ninety minutes.
The Washington Post has published a lengthy, astoundingly whitewashed "news report" about what the president said. We'll run through that astounding non-report report in a post this afternoon.
Elsewhere, a certain "madness' may have seemed to perhaps be floating about. Here's the start of the New York Times' account of this public figure's address
Trump Marks 100 Days by Vilifying Migrants and Attacking Opponents
President Trump marked the first 100 days of his second term on Tuesday at a rally in Michigan in which he celebrated his border crackdown and boasted of the retribution he has carried out against his perceived enemies and his opponents’ inability to thwart his agenda.
The president addressed about 3,000 of his supporters at Macomb Community College, in an area near Detroit seen as key to his electoral victory in the state and emblematic of union workers’ shift from the Democratic to the Republican Party.
Mr. Trump was in campaign mode, peppering his sentences with false statements—such as the lie that the 2020 election had been stolen—exaggerations, jokes and insults. He mocked the way his predecessor, Joseph R. Biden Jr., looked in a bathing suit and encouraged the crowd to cheer to indicate which demeaning nickname for him they preferred: “Sleepy Joe” or “Crooked Joe.”
“I miss the campaign,” Mr. Trump said at one point.
As an editor, we wouldn't use the term "lie" there ourselves. We'd look for language which was (arguably) just a bit tougher—and perhaps a bit more searching.
Still, that short passage in the Times describes conduct which, judged by conventional norms, seems to be highly unusual. We refer to the crazily unfounded claims, but also to the endless crude insults.
The president simply won't stop with his inflammatory, unfounded claims. Later, the Times report also mentions this:
Outside the venue, however, protesters gathered with signs saying, “I dissent.” Two protesters who made it into the rally were removed by security, and the president laughed after calling one by the wrong gender.
[...]
At the rally, Mr. Trump showed little concern about his falling poll numbers, dismissing them as rigged.
The election was stolen; the new polls have been rigged. Boys are boys and girls are girls and never the twain shall meet.
As we type, no one has yet published a transcript of yesterday's endless speech. At least one transcript does exist of the president's interview with Terry Moran of ABC News.
ABC broadcast large chunks of the interview last night. Mediaite discusses one part of that interview in a report which appears beneath this headline:
Trump Argues With ABC’s Terry Moran About Photoshopped Image: ‘He Had MS-13 On His Knuckles Tattooed!’
We discussed the president's largely unexplored claim about those knuckles all last week. In its report, Mediaite provides videotape of the exchange and a substantial chunk of transcript. Here's a slightly longer bit of transcript:
PRESIDENT TRUMP (4/29/25): He said he wasn't a member of a gang. And then they looked, and on his knuckles, he had MS-13—
MORAN: All right. There's a dispute over that—
TRUMP: Wait a minute! He had “MS-13” on his knuckles tattooed!
MORAN: He had some tattoos that are interpreted that way, but let’s move on.
TRUMP: Wait a minute! Hey, Terry, Terry, Terry! Don’t do that!
MORAN: He did not have the letter “MS-13.”
TRUMP: It says “MS-13.”
MORAN: That was photoshopped.
TRUMP: That was photoshopped? Terry, you can’t do that. They’ve given you the big break of a lifetime. You know, you’re doing the interview. I picked you because, frankly, I had never heard of you, but that’s okay. But I picked you, Terry, but you’re not being very nice. He had “MS-13” tattooed. Terry. Terry. Do you want me to show you the picture?
MORAN: I saw the picture.
TRUMP: And you think it was photoshopped? Well, don’t photoshop it, go look at his hand. He had “MS-13.”
MORAN: He did have tattoos that can be interpreted that way. I’m not an expert on them.
The journalist wasn't being nice, the sitting president said. Actually, in keeping with "journalistic" practice, Moran had tried to move on—but the president insisted on repeating a baldly implausible claim:
He insisted on saying, again and again, that Abrego Garcia has "MS-13" tattooed on his knuckles.
So it goes with the madness of King George. But so too, a person might argue, with the madness of the upper-end mainstream press corps here in Blue America.
In an imperfect search this morning, we could find no sign that ABC News ever fact-checked this initial claim when the sitting president made it. As we noted last week, the brilliant children who people our highest "news orgs" walked away from this high-profile claim when the president made it back on April 18.
To appearances, the children simply turned tail and ran. Arguably, this is the (colloquial) madness of the children who went to the finest schools. As these hundred days reach their end, should the bell perhaps be tolling for these players too?
Is something wrong with President Trump as he hits one hundred days? If so, that's a tragic loss of human potential—but also, given his station, it's a dangerous situation.
That said:
Under prevailing rules of their game, the children refuse to discuss that possibly. That said, on Monday night's Last Word, Lawrence O'Donnell did make a jumbled pass at this forbidden topic.
O'Donnell went to the finest school. He's way out past where the lifeguards let you go with respect to this topic, but these opening remarks on Tuesday night were jumbled and borderline incoherent:
O'DONNELL (4/28/25): Well, imagine a 78-year-old man who often speaks incoherently and lies to you in ways that leave you wondering whether he is a pathological liar or delusional or both.
That's the way he started. Already, what he said may not have made clear sense:
If someone is "delusional," we wouldn't normally say that his strange statements were "lies." We'd more likely say that some such "delusional" person was mentally ill—unless he was a public figure, in which case we'd find ways to work around that possibility.
As O'Donnell continued, he described some other recent strange behavior by this sitting president. Soon he was saying this:
O'DONNELL: Imagine that same 78-year-old man is angrily braying at the world at 5:24 a.m., claiming people have committed crimes—crimes that do not exist, and coming up with a name for those people committing those crimes that don't exist, using words that have never been joined together and make absolutely no sense, calling them "negative criminals."
Of course, you would be concerned about the mental health of such a person...
With respect to prevailing rules of the game, O'Donnell was way out over his skis at that point. That said, is he "concerned about the mental health" of the person he was discussing?
If he was, he would presumably speak to a (carefully selected) medical specialist about his perfectly reasonable point of concern. Instead, O'Donnell simply rambled on himself, perhaps conflating delusions with lies, then later conflating mental illness with "cognitive decline."
O'Donnell isn't a medical specialist. Was he playing one on TV?
Robert Frost saw this day coming. He fashioned this lament:
The Road Not Taken
[...]
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence...
Is there a road Blue America's stars haven't taken? Will someone be allowed to tell the story of this era "ages and ages hence," when it no longer matters?
Borrowing from that formulation, we'll tell you this:
Somewhere ages and ages hence, someone may be telling our current story with a sigh. Under prevailing rules of the game, they'll have to wait several centuries to address the perfectly reasonable question O'Donnell fleetingly drove by:
Is something with President Trump? If so, that's a terrible human tragedy—but is something actually wrong, some matter of "mental health?"
Terry Moran tried to "move on." He wanted to sidestep the recent strange claim concerning Abrego Garcia's knuckles.
With almost complete uniformity, Blue America's news orgs chose to ignore that latest odd claim when it was made back on April 18. The highly educated children of the mainstream press have normalized the president's peculiar conduct in these ongoing ways.
The bell is tolling for President Trump as his first hundred days reach their end. That said, our question is this:
Should the bell be tolling for Moran and O'Donnell and for their many colleagues?
It was porphyria, the experts have said. What's happening now?
Don't ask!
Tomorrow: Back to Homan, flat and round. Or at least, so we hope
