Watters interviews latest newsmaker!

THURSDAY, MARCH 21, 2024

Toad-smoking expert expounds: What happens on the Fox News Channel program, Jesse Watters Primetime? According to the channel itself, this is the basic thumbnail:

Weeknights at 8pm ET, Jesse Watters brings his fresh take to Primetime. Each night, he’ll speak with newsmakers from across the country and give Americans a show where straight talk is the only talk, and the obvious will never be left unsaid.

As of last night, with what newsmaker from across the country did Watters engage in straight talk, yielding the latest fresh take? If you go to the actual Primetime site today, this is the segment that's featured:

Toad smoker describes his religious experience: "A great void"
Toad-smoking expert Hector Gonzalez shares his spiritual enlightenment on "Jesse Watters Primetime."

According to the Watters site, Watters spoke with toad-smoking expert about the great void in his life. Either that, or about his spiritual enlightenment. 

We happened to watch the segment last night. In our view, it was a bit off-brand for Watters. 

More typically, Watters is drawn to human interest explorations in which he can provide smarmy, condescending pseudo-advice to young women who plainly seem to be severely mentally ill.

Last night, by way of contrast, he spoke with a (male) toad-smoking expert. A whole new level of respect suddenly seemed to be present. 

We mention this because this is the week when Watters' new book hits the shelves of bookstores nationwide. The title gives you a hint of its provenance:

Get It Together: Troubling Tales from the Liberal Fringe

Watters is exploring troubling tales in his new book, but only those which emerge from one particular fringe. By a remarkable act of will, HarperCollins managed to assemble this overview:

Get It Together: Troubling Tales from the Liberal Fringe

Can the political be way too personal? What if most radical activists are trying to change their lives by changing the whole country?

When Jesse Watters set out to interview a few dozen radical activists to find out where their wild ideas came from, he discovered two things that shocked him:

First, he liked these people.

Second, their political positions were not primarily from books, teachers, or other activists. They originated in personal drama. Most of these people didn’t need legislation. They needed a therapist.

In Get It Together, [Watters] takes on Wokeism in a way no one else has. Through a series of (sometimes very) personal interviews with some of the most radical activists in the country, Watters discovers that these activists may be overlooking the most important change they need to make—within themselves.

From activists working for climate change salvation, Black supremacy, and social justice to a professional cuddler and a transwoman who identifies as a wolf, Watters shows how many well-intentioned Americans have bought into causes invented and run by people who are illogical, emotional, and ill-informed.

Through their stories, Watters uncovers common threads—childhood traumas, broken relationships, and a lack of introspection. What if the people obsessed with the end of the world are just hurting from how this one has treated them? What if that, rather than ideological disagreements, is the deeper root of our country’s political divide?

Funny, fresh, and fascinating, Get It Together is sure to spark important conversations, and to inspire us to see one another not as political opponents, but as real and broken human beings.

Casting himself in the role of psychiatrist, Watters explores the problems caused by activists who are suffering from "a lack of introspection." There's only one rule which guides his selection of cases—the people suffering from a detailed set of afflictions all have to come from "the left."

We haven't read Watters' book. That said, we have seen way too many segments in recent weeks, on way too many TV shows, in which he attempts tries to describe the new offering.

Two weekends ago, ownership forced Mark Levin to pretend that Watters has written a fascinating book. 

Watters' attempt to describe his book on that show produced about as insipid a cable news segment as we've ever seen. We even felt sorry for the world-class loudmouth Levin as he was forced to go through it.

You're right! We still haven't forced ourselves to link you to the appalling recent segments in which Watters pretended to offer counseling to several young women who were quite plainly mentally ill. It was about as gruesome a block of work as we've seen on TV.

As one part of the overall package, Watters works from behind an unusual comic persona. We look forward to scanning his book—and on some occasion, we'll steel our courage and link you to the segments to which we've referred.

Watters and Gutfeld and Pirro and Tyrus and Kat and the others oh my! We think of the end of the Hawthorne tale, Rappaccini's Daughter, in which the daughter of the mad scientist now lies dead, from a type of poison, on the grounds of a beautiful garden:

Just at that moment Professor Pietro Baglioni looked forth from the window, and called loudly, in a tone of triumph mixed with horror, to the thunderstricken man of science, “Rappaccini! Rappaccini! and is this the upshot of your experiment?” 

Fox News is conducting a ghastly experiment. Our more refined, higher-end news orgs have agreed to avert their gaze.

SKILLS: Donald J. Trump made some strange remarks!

THURSDAY, MARCH 21, 2024

So did Ali Velshi and his erudite guest: Judged by any traditional standard, Donald J. Trump made some very strange statements during one of his endless speeches at a recent Ohio rally.

The candidate spoke in Vidalia, Ohio last Saturday afternoon. In this recent essay at Substack, Yale professor Timothy Snyder described the way the rally began:

Those present were instructed to "please rise for the horribly and unfairly treated January 6th hostages."  The reference was to convicts serving time for attempting to overturn the results of the last presidential election and thereby overthrow the American form of government.

The phrase "horribly and unfairly treated January 6th hostages," booming over the loudspeaker, was substituted here for the call to rise to the flag or the national anthem.  

That was a peculiar way for the rally to start. As Snyder notes in his essay, the candidate then began his address by making these odd remarks:

"Well, thank you very much and you see the spirit from the hostages, and that’s what they are is hostages. They’ve been treated terribly and very unfairly and you know that and everybody knows that, and we’re going to be working on that sooner.  The first day we get into office, we’re going to save our country and we’re going to work with the people to treat those unbelievable patriots, and they were unbelievable patriots and are."

The candidate praised the greatness of the "hostages" as he began his remarks. In many cases, the candidate was referring to people who had been convicted of committing violent assaults on police officers during the events of January 6. 

They'd been convicted of violent crimes, but the hopeful described them as "hostages."

By normal standards, the candidate made another series of strange remarks during his speech in Vidalia. In Professor Snyder's framing, Trump was repeating "his lies about the outcome of the last presidential election, lies that began in November 2020 and continue until the present day." 

Professor Snyder's text continues from there:  

There has been some wishful thinking about Trump and the big lie, a suggestion that he no longer depends upon it. Anyone following his rallies and his utterances knows this to be false.  The whole business of "hostages" depends on the big lie, and in this sense the big lie was constantly invoked throughout the speech.

In Vandalia, Trump also told his big lie explicitly at least nine times...

In his essay, Professor Synder then quoted the nine statements at Vidalia in which Candidate Trump claimed that the 2020 election was "crooked," "fake" or "rigged." 

According to traditional parlance, if the candidate actually believes his claims, then his claims, however false, can't be said to be "lies." 

On the other hand, more than three years have passed since the election in question took place, and the candidate has never produced some sort of "white paper" providing evidence in support of his inflammatory claims.

At any rate, so it went as Candidate Trump spoke at Vidalia last weekend. Concerning the peculiar statements we've noted so far, this should also be said.:

The candidate has made these statements many times in recent years! Despite the obvious strangeness of these statements. our blue tribe has had little success persuading Trump voters to abandon the candidate based upon his repeated promulgation of these peculiar claims.

Starting with the national anthem, Trump made a whole boatload of very strange claims during his Vidalia rally. Thirty minutes into his address, he then made a passing reference to a "bloodbath." 

Arguably, and perhaps somewhat strangely, that fleeting, somewhat fuzzy reference produced the latest case of an emerging TV show called Blue Tribe Pundits Gone Wild. 

Trump's earlier claims about the "hostages" and the "fake / rigged election" were more plainly strange than this later fleeting remark. But our tribe, for better or worse, decided to seize on the novelty of the "bloodbath" comment.

So it went in the aftermath of Trump's Vidalia rally. Acyn Tobari quickly posted an edited version of the "bloodbath" comment. For better or worse, blue tribe pundits jumped to the beat of this influencer's latest post, as they've been doing for months.

Donald J. Trump made a boatload of strange remarks at that Vidalia rally. On Tuesday night, Professor Snyder appeared on Alex Wagner Tonight, where he was interviewed by guest host Ali Velshi.

By now, battle lines had clearly been drawn concerning the candidate's "bloodbath" remarks. Pundits from Blue America were expected to say that Trump had been threatening physical violence in the streets if he loses November's election. 

By way of contrast, pundits from Red America were expected to say that Trump had been talking about an economic bloodbath, mainly involving the auto industry. According to pundits from Red America, that's what Trump meant, full stop.

That's where tribal positioning stood as Velshi went on the air Tuesday night. He started the show with a monologue about the Vidalia rally. After introducing Professor Snyder, he soon made this odd remark about Trump:

VELSHI (3/19/24): He brought up cars for one sentence, then went back to violence.

The professor didn't challenge, critique or contradict that apparently false remark. In fairness, Velshi never challenged or questioned some odd remarks the professor had made in his Substack essay, including this plainly odd remark:

SNYDER (3/19/24): Trump's defenders are the one who are taking Trump's remarks out of context.  And, in their more strident forms, the defenses of Trump are not innocent.  The apologists suggest that Trump is being unfairly attacked—that he is, once again, as always, the real victim...

The meaningful contexts make Trump's summons to violence clearer and worse.  That said, even if we knew nothing about the history of political violence, or about Trump, or about the rest of his appearance in Vandalia, the meaning of "bloodbath for the country" would still be absolutely clear to anyone who listened to him.  Even if we play the bad-faith syntactical game that his defenders want us to play, there is really no doubt that he was talking about a bloodbath when he spoke of a bloodbath.

Say what? In the absence of partisanship, the actual meaning of Trump's bloodbath remark "would be absolutely clear to anyone who listened to him?' Anyone who says anything different is acting in bad faith?

Sometimes, talk of a bloodbath js talk of a bloodbath, the professor (perhaps oddly) now said. Links to videotape of this interview will be offered below.

Candidate Trump made an array of strange remarks at his Vidalia rally. As Professor Snyder noted in his essay, the candidate made a lengthy string of baldly peculiar remarks before the word "bloodbath" was uttered.

That said, Velshi and Snyder also made a series of odd remarks as they discussed this event on Tuesday night. The quoted remark from Synder's essay strikes us as very strange.

What was strange about Velshi's remark—about the one remark we've quoted? What was strange about the quoted remark from Professor Snyder's essay?

We'll answer those questions tomorrow. As we do, we'll quickly review the history of our blue tribe's failed attempts to highlight Trump's plainly peculiar remarks. In the main, we'll be asking you this:

Can our blue tribe hope to prosper if we resign ourselves to a pundit brigade driven by high-end professors?

Spoiler alert for tomorrow:

Without any question, Professor Snyder is a highly erudite professor. In fairness, so were the three elite college presidents who crashed and burned in the face of the demagogue Stefanik at that highly instructive though grisly House hearing back in December.

Professor Snyder seems to be totally sure about what he heard at that Vidalia rally. He's a deeply erudite historian, but in this matter, has he possibly wandered out beyond the borders of his obvious expertise?

Tomorrow: "He brought up cars for one sentence," Velshi oddly said

To watch Velshi interview Snyder: To watch the Velshi/Snyder interview, you can just click here.

To watch the entire segment from Tuesday night's show, you can start by clicking this.

Why did Donald J. Trump say "bloodbath?"

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 20, 2024

MacCallum thinks she may know: Why did Donald J. Trump say "bloodbath" during last Saturday's speech?

Thanks to Acyn's early alert, the use of that word triggered a wave of blue tribe pundit reaction. Fox News veteran Martha MacCallum thinks she may know why the candidate used that word.

On Monday, MacCallum spoke with Howard Kurtz on her weekday afternoon program. According to Alex Griffing at Mediaite (headline included), here's part of what she said:

Fox Host Says Trump Knows There’s ‘No Bad Publicity’ and Drops ‘Certain Words’ to Ignite Media Firestorms

 [...]

“You know, it’s interesting, Howie, because what the former president said to you,” MacCallum noted, turning to Kurtz who spoke to Trump for an interview on Sunday.

“You know, I do believe that he’s a politician and prior to that, a businessman who believes there’s no such thing as bad publicity. And so if you drop certain words into the ether, you’re going to get talked about, you know, the great Hugh Hewitt spent three hours talking about this morning,” MacCallum added, noting that Trump often creates these news cycles deliberately with vague yet bombastic language.

According to MacCallum's theory, Trump deliberately employs "vague yet bombastic language" to generate news cycles—to generate bursts of publicity.  We suggested something similar as a possibility in our own Monday report.

Our suggestion differed somewhat from MacCallum's. To wit:

Does Donald J. Trump use fiery language as a way of "trolling" our own blue tribe? We suggested that as our own best guess, while noting that there's no way to be sure. 

There's no way to know what the candidate "meant"—what he may have "had in his mind"—when he said what he said on Saturday. That said, we'll guess that the resulting firestorm has quite possibly worked in the candidate's favor.

Why did Donald Trump say what he said? We can't answer that question, and neither can anyone else.

A wide range of liberal pundits and academics, along with quite a few red tribe pundits, don't seem to understand that last fact. Tomorrow morning, we'll review the work of one (highly regarded) Yale professor who got way out over his skis in the brouhaha which followed Donald Trump's use of The Word.

In that regard, also this, once again at Mediaite:

‘Plays Out Perfectly For Donald Trump’: Dan Abrams Slams Media’s ‘Breathless’ Coverage of ‘Bloodbath’ Comments

Dan Abrams thinks the media firestorm "played out perfectly" for Trump. 

That's also a matter of opinion / assessment / best guess. There's no way to know if that assessment is true, though we'll say it quite possibly is.

As of now, the firestorm has moved ahead to what Trump said about American Jews. Why does Donald Trump say these things?

Only The Shadow actually knows! At time of great emotional feeling, it can be extremely hard to keep that fact in mind.

SKILLS: Donald J. Trump "is smarter than we are?"

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 20, 2024

Donald J. Trump versus Yale: Donald J. Trump is smarter than we are, Michael Moore has now said.

For ourselves, we can't swear that the Oscar-winning film-maker is wrong! Headline included, here's the start of Ron Dicker's report from HuffPost concerning what Moore has now said:

Michael Moore Says You'll Think He's Crazy For What He Thinks About Trump

Michael Moore dialed up the urgency of a possible Joe Biden defeat―and he did it by offering backhanded praise to Biden’s criminally indicted GOP adversary, Donald Trump.

“We don’t want to say this out loud, but I’m going to say it, and the reason why we need to be concerned is that Trump is smarter than us,” the Oscar-winning documentarian said on the latest episode of his “Rumble” podcast, which was released Sunday. “I’ll just let that sink in for a second. I know, I know, you’re calling the people to come to find me—the guys in the white uniforms with the big net—and take me away. Are you crazy? What do you mean he’s smarter than us?”

Moore noted there are also ways where Trump “is quite dumber than us” before providing clarity on his “smarter than us” point.

“I’m talking about the way throughout his entire life he’s been able to pull shit off and get away with it,” the “Bowling for Columbine” director said. “It is an amazing record...You must marvel at how somebody that stupid is that smart when it comes to the performance of his evil and his ability to never have to pay for it.”

Donald J. Trump is smarter than we are? For Mediaite's report about what Moore has now said, you can just click here. 

(Headline: Michael Moore Issues Dire Warning to Democrats: ‘Trump Is Smarter Than Us’)

Is Donald Trump smarter than our own blue team in some definable way? Almost surely, the answer is yes—and beyond that, he has a highly skilled red tribe propaganda apparatus working on his behalf. 

Our own blue tribal apparatus may not be as highly skilled! Consider some presentations we've seen, on various red and blue cable news programs, just since last Friday afternoon.

Last Friday afternoon and evening, we saw several of the dumbest journalistic conversations ever produced on the planet. We refer to the "Snakes on The Brain" pseudo-discussions which poured forth from carefully selected panels of flyweights on the Fox News Channel primetime programs, Gutfeld! and The Five.

A brief news report on the same topic had been delivered on Laura Ingraham's program, The Ingraham Angle. The background to the propagandization was this:

Uh-oh! An analysis piece had appeared in Science Reports, an obscure but respected journal, concerning a topic which would be unfamiliar to most Americans. ABC News then published a perfectly sensible account of the analysis piece. 

Possibly to a lesser degree, so did the Washington Post.

The report in the Post appeared under a "Climate Solutions" heading. Headline included, here's the possibly somewhat kitschy way the Post report started:

Want a more sustainable meat for the grill? Try a 13-foot python steak.

They’re scaly, fork-tongued and can measure upward of 20 feet long. Pythons may also be one of the most Earth-friendly meats to farm on the planet.

A group of researchers studied two large python species over 12 months on farms in Thailand and Vietnam—where snake meat is considered a delicacy—and found that they were more efficient to raise than other livestock.

Their research, published Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports, suggests that python farming could offer a solution to rising food insecurity around the globe, exacerbated by climate change.

The researchers, who studied more than 4,600 pythons, found that both Burmese and reticulated pythons grew rapidly in their first year of life, and they required less food (in terms of what’s known as feed conversion: the amount of feed to produce a pound of meat) than other farmed products, including chicken, beef, pork, salmon—and even crickets.

They're even better than crickets! So the Post report quickly said.

From its headline on down, the Post was possibly trying a bit too hard to make its report entertaining and fun. For better or worse, the report even included a mandated sub-heading, which went exactly like this:

Tastes like chicken

So the mandated sub-heading said.

That said, no one was suggesting that we Americans should think about throwing a python steak on the grill at our next July 4 celebration. That wasn't the point of any of this, until Fox News arrived on the scene.

As the Post's report quickly noted, the original piece in Scientific Reports cited the fact that python meat is already consumed on a regular basis in certain large parts of the world. The research paper in question had suggested that increased python farming might provide a valuable source of protein in such parts of the world as climate change puts additional stress on traditional sources of protein.

There was nothing stupid about the report. There was also nothing which suggested that it should be fare for the carefully-selected assortments of flyweights who populate Fox News panels on such propaganda-based programs as Gutfeld! and The Five.

Inevitably, messaging specialists at the channel seized upon the possibilities which were latent in the scientific report. On Friday's broadcast of The Five, here's the way the hapless Judge Jeanine Pirro teased an upcoming segment on this disturbing new report:

JUDGE JEANNINE (3/15/24): Coming up! Climate change fanatics now want you to eat snakes to save the planet.

For the record, there's absolutely nothing this resident loudmouth won't say. At any rate:

After a commercial break, the panelists generated one of the dumbest pseudo-conversations ever hatched on the planet. The panelists revised the scientific report to fit a standard template on this channel:

The elites are trying to make us regular people do the various crazy things they themselves will never do. 

Sadly, lone liberal Harold Ford was assigned the task of initiating the pseudo-discussion. Acting as moderator for the new segment, he started with this bit of prepared text:

FORD: Are you rattled by climate change? Well, how about a delicious snake for dinner?

The double entendre was excellent! At any rate, the baton was handed first to Greg Gutfeld. As part of a standard diatribe, the angry fellow said this:

GUTFELD: ...They act like, "Oh yeah, raising snakes is just like raising pigs." Have you ever seen a herd of snakes? Could you imagine being a snake farmer? 

This is the dumbest thing ever. Everything they do "better for the environment"—these are the same people who say it's better for the environment if you just die. 

They want you to be miserable. and it's the same pattern over and over again. They tell you that the world is on fire and their data is junk, then they demand that you do things they would never do to remedy it. So they tell you to eat insects, eat snakes...

To watch the entire segment, you can start by clicking here.

Back to Gutfeld! No one was telling the angry fellow that he had to, or should, eat snakes. Still, he knew the data in question was junk, and he knew what the researchers secretly had in their heads.

The angry fellow continued from there, but you're getting the general drift. We see no sign that Gutfeld had any idea what he was talking about, but he was producing perfect propaganda from a standard Fox News template in which the elites are hoping that regular red tribe people will be miserable, or that they'll simply die.

Things moved along from there, with one panelist stressing how "disgusting" the whole thing was and with Pete Hegseth—a Princeton grad with a Harvard master's degree—driving the points about the motives of the elites. By the time the conversation made its way back to Judge Jeanine, the resident loudmouth offered this:

JUDGE JEANNINE: Here's the bottom line. If they want us to eat snakes and bugs, make sure all of the politicians have to eat that stuff before we have to eat it.  And why are they so worried about sustaining the environment? First of all, we're not supposed to have hamburgers—do you remember that?—because of cow flatulence. Now they want us to eat snakes.

"Why are they so worried about sustaining the environment?" Yes, that's what she said.

For the record, no one was requiring, or was even suggesting, that salt of the earth people like Judge Jeannine should be forced to eat snakes. But at this point, the reference to flatulence took the conversation down one more level of the world, as the judge and Gutfeld debated the question as to whether snakes are able to "fart."

Back to Michael Moore's general point about Candidate Trump:

On the one hand, pseudo-discussions of this type are spectacularly stupid. On the other hand, such presentations, repeated on a daily basis, almost surely qualify as highly effective propaganda.

Red tribe viewers are told, again and again, about the way the elites are trying to make them do crazy things based upon junk data. Almost surely, very few viewers will understand that they are watching pseudo-conservations conducted by corporate hirelings who are pimping propaganda points off sheets of paper prepared for them by their tribal lords.

As with Michael Moore, so too here. These conversations are amazingly stupid from one perspective, but they're quite sagacious when viewed from a different perspective. Gutfeld is almost always the angriest and the most insistent propagandist. Here's the way his initial diatribe ended:

GUTFELD: Screw you! They're saying, "Let them eat cake, and you can eat snake." I'll eat pythons, but only if they get to eat these elite jackasses first. I like my snake meat extra fatty and filed with a plump Al Gore.

That evening, on his eponymous 10 o'clock show, Gutfeld led an even dumber "snakes on the brain" pseudo-discussion. He repeated his homicidal fantasy in which the Noble prize-winning Gore, apparently being too fat, is devoured by a python along with the other jackasses.

Conversations of this type take place on a daily basis. As red tribe voters are propagandized in such manifestly braindead ways, the loftier journalists within our own blue tribe agree to avert their gaze.

No one wants to tangle with Fox! Meanwhile, is it possible that our blue tribe is in the process of being defeated by gong-show propaganda of this type?

Those conversations were about as dumb as human intercourse gets. That said, we saw another very dumb conversation as we watched MSNBC last night.

That conversation involved Ali Velshi, subbing for Alex Wagner, and a very highly regarded professor from Yale. The professor in question is loaded with erudition, but he's also plainly lacking in certain basic analytical skills. 

Sacred Troy must die, Hector famously said, just before returning to war. Can our own blue tribe survive the skill levels which are currently on display among tribunes of the reds? 

Tomorrow: "Bloodbath" deciphered by Yale

It happens every night on Fox!

TUESDAY, MARCH 19, 2024

He puts a smile on your face: Every night, at the end of the 9 o'clock hour, Sea Hannity signs off in the way he did last night:

That's all the time we have left. In the meantime, let not your heart be troubled. Greg Gutfeld is standing by to put a smile on your face.

Last night, Gutfeld opened with a string of his typical jokes. 

His third joke dealt with President Biden wetting his pants. His fourth joke pictured President Biden mispronouncing the name of the country Niger.

His fifth joke concerned the topic of how annoying women are when men try to watch TV. Soon, though, he got to the kicker:

GUTFELD (3/18/24): A woman who identifies as a dog made headlines after appearing on an Australian radio show. 

[PHOTO OF VERY YOUNG WOMAN WITH CAPTION, "I identify as a dog."]

That's nothing, though! In America, we have five dogs who identify as women on a TV show!

Up popped a picture of the five co-hosts of The View, producing [AUDIENCE APPLAUSE]. 

Get it? The five co-hosts are the dogs who identify as women! 

You can enjoy the fun here.

This is the way this 59-year-old "poor immigrant" puts a smile on viewers' faces every weekday evening. He grew up in San Mateo and attended Serra High, right down the Alameda from our own Aragon High.

We've asked our question before:

How does someone from such a sunny land end up with such a crabbed, angry soul? We're only noting a tiny portion of the way Gutfeld and Watters behave on their weeknight programs, which are marketed as part of primetime "cable news."

How does a person get that way? Dylan recommended pity for such "poor immigrants," and we second that assessment.

How did Gutfeld get that way? Also, why is he on the air?

SKILLS: "Did you [ever] see a blood bath?" Judge Jeanine actually asked!

TUESDAY, MARCH 19, 2024

Segregation by viewpoint: We lost large chunks of time yesterday afternoon and then again this morning. This will likely be our only post today. 

We did want to highlight one presentation from the war of the past few days concerning Trump's "blood bath" comment.

The battle over Donald J. Trump's "blood bath" remark has been a battle between a pair of poorly functioning tribes. Which tribe's performance has been less impressive? 

In our view, the answer isn't clear. Basic skill levels are virtually nonexistent all across the board.

That said, we thought a comment by Judge Jeanine Pirro deserved memorialization. The judge sounded off on yesterday's broadcast of The Five, as she does on a daily basis.

Videotape had just been played of a comment by Nancy Pelosi. 

"He's even predicting a blood bath," Pelosi was shown saying to Dana Bash on CNN's State of the Union. 

"What does that mean?" Pelosi said as she continued. "He's going to exact a blood bath?"

That is indeed what Pelosi had said; her presentation hadn't been doctored by Fox. Indeed, Pelosi had raised the topic on her own. As you can see in the CNN transcript, she hadn't been asked about it. 

Readers can judge Pelosi's remarks in whatever way they will. One day later, on The Five, the perpetually furious Pirro decided to answer Pelosi's question with a question of her own. 

In fairness, the judge was less ostentatiously furious than she typically is. That said, here's what she said about the alleged hoax-mongering of the rival blue tribe:

PIRRO (3/18/24): What stuns me is that they continue to do it. They know that what they're selling is not saleable, that the American people are not buying it. 

The whole idea of it. The whole idea of that last [video clip] of Pelosi saying, "Is he going to exact a blood bath?"

Nancy! He was president for four years. Did you see a blood bath?

Yes, that's what she actually said! To watch the presentation, click here. 

"Did you see a blood bath?" the judge rhetorically asked. More specifically, she was asking this:

Did Nancy Pelosi ever see a blood bath during Trump's four years in the White House?

Maybe it all depends on what the meaning of "blood bath" is! But anyone who watches MSNBC has seen videotape of something resembling a blood bath a thousand times by now.

We refer to the footage of the violent riot which occurred at the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021. For the record, the riot took place at a time when Nancy Pelosi was physically present and was in physical danger. 

A lot of blood did spill that day, none of it from Judge Pirro! Incredibly, a gallows was constructed on the lawn outside the Capitol as rioters searched for Mike Pence.

One tribe has repeatedly seen the footage of that event. One tribe has seen that violent riot—but by and large, members of the other tribe haven't. 

As we've noted in recent weeks, the footage of that violent day is never aired on Fox. People who watch that red tribe channel haven't seen that particular blood bath. 

Whatever you think of her statement to Bash, Nancy Pelosi is well aware that this violent event occurred. Over on Fox, Judge Jeanine didn't seem to know how foolish her comment might seem. 

That said, her comment probably didn't ring any bells with the typical viewer of Fox. On Fox, the violent event never happened. The violent (and bloody) attack on the Capitol has been disappeared. 

On MSNBC, viewers repeatedly see the videotape of the attack on the Capitol. On Fox, viewers repeatedly see videotape of people streaming across the southern border. 

"Segregation by viewpoint" works this way. In this way, one giant, sprawling nation is transformed into two.

Judge Jeanine can't remember seeing a blood bath when Donald J. Trump was in charge. On Fox, the bloody attack on police officers at the Capitol has long since ceased to exist.

A culture change in the red tribe world!

MONDAY, MARCH 18, 2024

The New York Times gets it right: We were struck by a front-page report in this morning's New York Times.

The report discusses a culture shift we've been struck by at the Fox News Channel. The headlines on the Times report say this:

Piety and Profanity: The Raunchy Christians Are Here
In the Trump era, a surprising number of evangelicals are rejecting modesty and turning toward the risqué.

Has "family values" red tribe culture taken a major turn? After offering a few examples, Ruth Graham, a writer on religion, offers this thumbnail account:

GRAHAM (3/18/24): As a core faction in the Republican coalition, conservative evangelicals have long influenced the party’s policy priorities, including opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage. And the influence extended to conservative culture, where evangelical norms against vulgarity were rarely challenged in public.

In some ways, they remain intact. Most pastors don’t cuss from the pulpit, or at all. Mainstream conservative churches still teach their young people to save sex for marriage and avoid pornography.

Yet a raunchy, outsider, boobs-and-booze ethos has elbowed its way into the conservative power class, accelerated by the rise of Donald J. Trump, the declining influence of traditional religious institutions and a shifting media landscape increasingly dominated by the looser standards of online culture.

For decades, "family values" conservative culture stressed evangelical norms against vulgarity. As of now, that culture is being replaced in some conservative circles by "a raunchy, boobs-and-booze ethos," Graham reports.

As we've noted in recent months, one such conservative circle is the Fox News Channel, where primetime hosts Jesse Watters and Greg Gutfeld are best described as "a little bit nutty and substantially smutty." 

For the record, the "raunch" this pair of mossbacks provide is typically laced with throwback, misogyny-adjacent behavior.

We'll offer examples as the week proceeds, but we were struck by Graham's report due to our own observations. We've been amazed by the degree to which Fox has moved in the direction of the "raunch" and the misogyny which are now prevalent in much of its primetime culture.

Just within the past week, Spring Break "coverage" has been widespread on Fox, with a heavy emphasis on teen-aged women in bathing suits. Watters is skilled at finding ways to report—in smarmy and condescending ways—on young women who are no longer in their suits.

At least two of his subjects in recent weeks have plainly been mentally ill. There seems to be nowhere this haunted fellow won't go, with help from his hidden producers. 

To our eye, these fellows strongly exhibit smarmy, throwback gender values. By the way, was 47-year-old comedian and primetime weekend host Jimmy Failla totally sh*tfaced as he cavorted with those college coeds in that Spring Break footage this past Saturday night?

Graham says this change is happening within evangelical culture. We've been surprised to see its dominance all through the world of Fox News.

Within the past month, we've criticized the upper-end press for averting its gaze from this behavior at Fox. This morning, bowing to our will, the Times has started to describe what's happening out there in the real world.

SKILLS: This time around, has Candidate Trump...

MONDAY, MARCH 18, 2024

...perhaps improved his skills? As a courtesy, we're going to show you the fuller text of what the candidate said.

Our guess would be that he knew what he was doing—that he was employing one of skills—when he used the word we highlight in this bit of transcript.

That would be our current guess, although we can't say that we know. As you can see, Candidate Trump was discussing the developing state of the American automobile industry when he employed the word:

CANDIDATE TRUMP (3/16/24): If you look at [the leadership of] the United Auto Workers, what they've done to their people is horrible,

They want to do this all-electric nonsense, where the cars don't go far, they cost too much and they're all made in China. And the head of the United Auto Workers probably never shook hands with a Republican before. They're destroying—

You know, Mexico has taken, over a period of thirty years, 34 percent of the automobile manufacturing business in our country. Think of it. Went to Mexico.

China now is building a couple of massive plants where they're going to build the cars in Mexico and think—they think they're going to sell those cars into the United States, with no tax at the border.

Let me tell you something to China. If you’re listening, President Xi—and you and I are friends—but he understands the way I deal. Those big monster car manufacturing plants that you’re building in Mexico right now—and you think you're going to get that, you’re going to not hire Americans and you’re going to sell the cars to us, no. 

We’re going to put a 100 percent tariff on every single car that comes across the line—

[APPLAUSE]

—and you’re not going to be able to sell those cars. If I get elected!

Now if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath for the whole—that’s gonna be the least of it. It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country. That will be the least of it. But they’re not going to sell those cars. They’re building massive factories.

A friend of mine—all he does is build car manufacturing plants—he's the biggest in the world...

And so on from there. 

(To watch the entire speech, click here for the C-Span videotape. You should jump ahead to minute 32 for the part of the speech in question.)

And so on from there! Meanwhile, the word in question is "bloodbath." As of yesterday afternoon, the candidate's use of that colorful term had launched a thousand ships. For the basic report from NBC News, you can just click here.

Candidate Trump made the statements in question on Saturday afternoon. We've shown you a reasonably large chunk of his actual text.

With blinding speed, a much smaller chunk of the candidate's text had been propelled into the world. It came from Acyn Torabi, a former "Internet influencer" who now seems to direct a great deal of liberal commentary through his work as "researcher and senior digital editor" for the website MeidasTouch.com. 

(Torabi tends to post as "Acyn," full stop. Does his work really shape that much liberal commentary? It's hard to be totally sure.)

At any rate, the candidate delivered his speech on Saturday. We've shown you a fairly large chunk of what he said in the passage which created the latest firestorm.

With lightning speed, Acyn posted a much shorter chunk of what he had said. As you can see, this is what Acyn quickly posted:

CANDIDATE TRUMP: Now, If I don't get elected, it's gonna be a bloodbath. It's going to be a bloodbath for the country. 

Acyn's post was stripped of context, as his posts typically are. 

He even dropped part of that short segment out! At this site, we may know what you need, but Acyn may know what you want!

Given the skill levels of American journalists and pundits, stripped-down versions of this candidate's statements will often be warmly received. Sometimes, Acyn "paraphrases" what the candidate said—reinvents his words in such a way as to make his statement even more exciting for us in the blue tribe world.

We aren't big fans of Acyn's approach; your assessment may differ. That said:

In this case, what did the candidate mean by his statement? More precisely, what did he mean by the part of his statement in which he predicted "a bloodbath" is he doesn't get elected?

The candidate's campaign quickly said that he was referring to an economic bloodbath. If President Biden gets re-elected, we'll have a general economic mess.

They said that was what he meant. That's what his campaign quickly said.

Helped along by Acyn's editing, blue tribe members more quickly announced that he meant something quite different. According to various blue tribe observers, he meant there would be rioting in the streets if his campaign failed.

We'll be discussing this question as the week proceeds, but we'll do so in a larger context—in a context which involves an array of things we saw over the weekend.

We'll refer to the (genuinely idiotic) discussions we saw on the Fox News Channel last Friday afternoon and evening—idiotic discussion which may be quite effective in driving the red tribe's messaging forward.

We'll be discussing the remarkably calm and orderly interview the candidate gave to the Fox News Channel's Howard Kurtz—an interview which, in edited form, consumed the full hour of yesterday morning's weekly program, MediaBuzz.

We'll be discussing the skill levels of our own blue tribe's high-end pundit corps—and the (possibly diminished) skill levels of our own Candidate Biden. For the record, the skill levels of the professional pundit corps have often been extremely low, dating back to the days when they insisted, for years on end, that an earlier candidate had actually claimed that he invented the Internet.

(A thousand other embellished claims followed that first embellished claim. We refer to embellished claims by the mainstream press, not by that particular candidate.)

Concerning Candidate Trump, our current guess would be this:

We'll guess that his skill levels have developed to the point where he uses language of the type in question as a way of "trolling" our own blue tribe. In the present instance, our current best guess would be this:

According to this provisional theory, we'll guess that he dropped the term "bloodbath" into his discussion to generate a reaction from our own blue tribe. Strikingly, we saw this specific possibility being explicitly discussed, last evening, on a Fox News Channel program! 

We'll also discuss a remarkable front-page report in this morning's New York Times. We think that report is so instructive that we'll discuss it this afternoon.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep—and events now move very quickly. It seems to us that Candidate Trump's skill levels as a campaigner may now be advanced over where they once stood.

The skills in question may be fiendish, but they're skills nonetheless! In other sectors of the modern American discourse, the skill levels are virtually nonexistent.

Who will end up winning in November? We can't tell you that. There is one thing we're able to tell you as we close this morning's report. We're able to tell you this:

Almost surely, you've seen none of our blue tribe's pundits discuss the substance of what the candidate said!

Is it true? Has thirty-four percent of the American automobile industry really decamped to Mexico? Are electric vehicles all being built in China?

Is it true, as the candidate went on to say, that giant plants are being built in Mexico—but new plants being built in the United States are much smaller?

The candidate's comments to that effect generated applause from his audience. Those substantive comments went undiscussed on today's Morning Joe as pundits said that major American journalists are behaving like "idiots" when they try to figure out why voters might support Candidate Trump.

We told you this a long time ago—you can't run a middle-class democracy with a multimillionaire press corps! Has this candidate developed the kinds of skills which will let him take advantage of that current group of "thought leaders?" Which will let him get elected again?

We can't answer that question. At present, though, we've begun to wonder if this candidate's array of skills is simply better than ours at this point in time.

Was the candidate trolling our tribe when he used that colorful word? 

We'll offer that as a possible theory. But as of this morning, we haven't seen that larger discussion about the American auto industry, and the chances are fairly good that we never will.

This afternoon: The red tribe's world is going raunchy, the New York Times has now said

.

SATURDAY: MSNBC aired a special program!

SATURDAY, MARCH 16, 2024

It seemed like every program: We didn't exactly hate yesterday's Daily Howler. But it did leave us disquieted.

Partly, we were dealing with fatigue, based upon the loss of an hour last Saturday night. Thanks a lot, President Biden!

We're willing to call spade a spade! Mainly, though, the problem involved this disquieting fact:

In our view, the other tribe has been more right than wrong concerning one major topic.

Say what? The other tribe has been more right than wrong about something? So it has seemed to us:

In our view, the other tribe has seemed to be more right than wrong in the degree of emphasis it has placed on issues involving the southern border.

At times like these, it hurts to voice some such assessment. But so it has seemed to us as the other tribe has stressed an array of worries concerning the southern border, and as our own tribe has largely pretended that the border doesn't even exist.

So it went in recent years among our blue tribe's journalistic "thought leaders," but also among our major elected officials:

Biden officials kept insisting that the border was "secure" and "closed," even when it plainly wasn't. Our major blue pundits focused on the various trials of Donald J. Trump, and on little else.

As our blue tribe was adopting this stance, the red tribe plainly wasn't. They kept stressing a number of concerns about the border—concerns which seem valid to us. 

The questions they've raised have gone unaddressed as our own floundering tribe has kept trying to send Trump to jail. Full disclosure:

In our view, our blue tribe's efforts reached the point of parody at 10 o'clock last night. At that time, MSNBC aired a one-hour special which carried this name:

The Trump Indictments

For the record, that's the title of a new book by Melissa Murray and Andrew Weissman, a pair of highly capable MSNBC legal analysts. Murray and Weissman served as co-hosts of last night's one-hour special. Their book is published by Norton. 

Somewhat parodically, The Trump Indictments is also the name of a different new book! That new book was edited by Ali Velshi, another major figure at MSNBC. 

At some point, it might be easier to list the names of MSNBC personnel who haven't published new books called The Trump Indictments. At any rate, Murray and Weissman served as co-hosts of last night's hourlong special. It was Velshi who brought them on, after serving as substitute host for last night's edition of Alex Wagner Tonight.

Nothing which follows is intended as a criticism of Murray, Weissman or Velshi.  That said, last night's hourlong special opened with Murray saying this:

Good evening and welcome to a special hour devoted to the Trump indictments... 

Donald Trump is charged with 88 felony counts in four different jurisdictions. In this hour, we will cover the latest developments in Donald Trump's criminal cases starting with Fulton County, Georgia today.

That's the way the program started. Our immediate question was this: 

What primetime program on MSNBC within the last year hasn't been "devoted to the Trump indictments?" Within the last year, what hour hasn't "covered the latest developments in Donald Trump's criminal cases?"

The analysts yowled and tore at their hair as Murray offered that somewhat parodic introduction to last night's "special" hour. Briefly, though, let be clear:

The various indictments of Donald J. Trump do, in fact, constitute a set of major news events. There's no reason why they shouldn't be covered by major news orgs.

That said, the border has been a major news topic too, even as MSNBC has seemingly tried to ignore it.

Putting it mildly, the Fox News Channel hasn't ignored the southern border. In turn, the Fox News Channel has done its best to ignore or erase the events of January 6 and the role the former president played in those astounding events.

So it has gone as these two news orgs have stressed one major set of events while disappearing another. Here's our sad admission:

In our view, Fox has been more right than wrong in its focus on the border. Also, Fox has been more right than MSNBC in the amount of coverage it has given to border / immigration topics.

In our view, MSNBC has badly misfired in the massive amount of emphasis it has placed on the Trump indictments. In fairness, the channel has presumably pleased its target audience with this unyielding emphasis.

There were matters we didn't get to yesterday. We'll link you to several today.

We'll start with three posts in which Kevin Drum has attempted to explain some basic provisions of the proposed (and quickly discarded) border bill. All in all, this sort of thing is pretty much never done:

Kevin Drum on the border bill:
February 4, 2024: Senate immigration bill expands detention, increases asylum judges, and allows the president to shut the border

February 5, 2024: Here’s a quick look at objections to the Senate immigration bill

March 9, 2024: Why did Republicans vote down the immigration reform bill?

That sort of thing is rarely done. On cable, here's what happens instead:

On MSNBC, personnel repeat a talking-point about how great the border bill was. On Fox, personnel have tended to mumble imprecise claims about the bill's alleged flaws and limitations while saying that President Biden could fix the border all by himself, with no legislation needed.

Those are the dueling memorized claims. Depending on which channel you watch, you hear one claim or the other, with no disputation allowed.

We were also interested in Christopher Wray's testimony last week before a Senate committee. His testimony drew little press coverage. Headline included, here the start of a poorly-proofread report by ABC News:

ABC News: FBI director warns of 'dangerous individuals' coming across southern border

Amid a bitter election-year debate over illegal immigration, FBI Director Chris Wray told a Senate panel on Monday that dangerous individuals have entered the United States illegally at the southern border.

"We have had dangerous individuals entering the United States have a variety of sources," Wray said at the annual "Worldwide Threats" congressional hearings at which the heads of U.S. intelligence agencies testify.

"We are seeing a wide array of very dangerous threats that emanate from the border, " he said, citing drug trafficking in particular. "The FBI alone seized enough fentanyl in the last two years to kill 270 million people," he said.

[...]

"There is a particular network that has—some of the overseas facilitators of the smuggling network have—ISIS ties that we're very concerned about, and we've been spending enormous amount of effort with our partners investigating," Wray said.

Overall, he said, threats from various groups have reached a "whole other level."

"Even before October 7, I would have told this committee that we were at a heightened threat level from a terrorism perspective—in the sense that it's the first time I've seen in a long, long time," he said..."[S]ince October 7, though, that threat has gone to a whole other level. And so, this is a time I think for much greater vigilance, maybe been called upon us," he said.

On Fox, they talk about such alleged threats all the time. On MSNBC, rightly or wrongly, little of this gets mentioned.

We also would have liked to direct you to something Senator Katie Britt said on last weekend's Fox News Sunday. 

Britt was doubling down on a grossly misleading anecdote she uncorked as part of the official GOP response to President Biden's State of the Union address. Here's part of The Hill's report about what Britt now said:

ROBERTSON (3/10/24): Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.) defended herself on Sunday after she used a story of sexual violence from two decades ago in Mexico as an attack on President Biden in her State of the Union response.

[...]

The senator brushed off the criticism, claiming the story [she told] is emblematic of the president’s border policy.

“I’ve said, in [Biden’s] first 100 days he had 94 executive actions, and those executive actions didn’t just create the crisis. They invited it,” Britt said in a “Fox News Sunday” interview with Shannon Bream. 

“The truth is, and the media knows that they’re not covering it, that human trafficking has gone up under President Biden,” she continued. “If you look back under 2018, it was a $500 million industry, human trafficking by the drug cartels. It is now a $13 billion dollar industry. Shannon, the drug cartels are winning under this. This is a story of what is happening now.”

Say what? Human trafficking by the drug cartels is now a $13 billion industry?

As it turns out, Britt was citing a pair of accurate dollar figures. Inevitably, she was doing so in a somewhat misleading / inaccurate way—though we tend to agree with her claim that "the media" tends not to cover this topic.

At any rate, they talk about "trafficking" all the time on the Fox News Channel! When it comes to topics like this, MSNBC tends to play Goofus to that channel's Gallant, broadcasting hourlong special programs designed to do the same thing they do during every primetime program.

Fox pleases red tribe viewers with its topic selection. MSNBC provides the same service to us blue tribe viewers.

This isn't the doing of Murray and Weissmann. It is a way to create a pair of warring populations, in much the way we read about on the wide plains outside Troy back in ancient times.

Last night, our blue channel offered a special broadcast. For better or worse, it seemed like every other broadcast—like the ones they don't call special!

Has the red channel been more right than wrong about this particular point? 

Much of their work comes straight outta clown college, astoundingly and inexcusably so. But is it conceivable that the others have maybe been more right than wrong, if only this once, just when it comes to this?

Jesse Watters breaks the news...

FRIDAY, MARCH 15, 2024

...concerning the CNN smear: Did Aaron Rodgers really say that the murders at Sandy Hook were a government hoax?

Yesterday, we discussed CNN's report to that effect. Then, shortly after 8 o'clock last night, we saw the Fox News Channel's Jesse Watters turn CNN's story to dust.

Well, not exactly! This is the way it went down:

Watters excitedly started his 8 p.m. show with the thrilling possibility that Rodgers may run for vice president under Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 

He was filled with excitement at that prospect—and he assured his viewers that CNN's report was just the latest "smear" by the liberal press in support of the Biden White House. 

Behind him, that's what the backdrop said—the backdrop said RODGERS SMEARED.

CNN's report was the real "hoax," the channel's silly child said. "This is just another dirty disinformation campaign to distract from the lifeless Democratic ticket," the smarmy Fox host declared. 

At that point, Watters dropped his purported bombshell. He played an audiotape from 2012 in which Rodgers said, on his Milwaukee radio show, that the incident was a terrible tragedy which he hoped we could learn from.

To see Watters play that audiotape from 2012, you can click right here.

Does that audiotape mean that CNN's report is itself a hoax and a SMEAR? Not really! Here's the problem:

The audiotape played by Watters seems to have been made in real time—in December 2012. According to CNN, the statement in which Rodgers claimed Sandy Hook was a government hoax was made five months later, at the Kentucky Derby in May 2013.

(In standard fashion, Watters seems to say that the reported statement by Rodgers was made at the Derby in 2012. In a thoroughly typical mangling of facts, he's off by one full year.)

In short, CNN's report isn't necessarily undermined by the fact that Rodgers made the earlier statement. It may be that Rodgers signed on to the growing conspiracy theories surrounding Sandy Hook in the months that elapsed between the two incidents.

Also, maybe Rodgers never did say that Sandy Hook was a hoax! We have no personal knowledge concerning this matter. Also, we have no desire to encourage hatred of Rodgers.

Did Rodgers really believe and say that Sandy Hook was a hoax? We can't answer that question, and we aren't looking to turn people into haters.

As we noted yesterday, so we'll note again today:

Many people do believe this least plausible of all possible claims. We regard that as an important, major new fact about the way we human beings frequently function. 

It's an anthropology lesson—anthropology all the way down:

Despite the ways we tend to describe ourselves, we human beings are inclined to believe all sorts of highly implausible, wholly unfounded claims. Unfortunately, this is a modern-day, important new fact about the way our politics functions. 

One final point about Watters: His disordered, throwback behavior concerning women is the most startling thing about his program, but also about the way the reinvented Fox News Channel now functions. Eventually, we'll force ourselves to return to this unpleasant, delicate topic, with one other prime time host thrown into the mix.

That said, we recommend pity for the stunted emotional growth of people like this. At the same time, we pose these questions:

Why in the world is the Fox News Channel constantly putting this misogyny-adjacent, broken-souled content out there on its air? Also, why does this conduct engender exactly zero comment from the profoundly aware, high-end blue tribe press?

WARS: Britt lodged some strenuous accusations!

FRIDAY, MARCH 15, 2024

As always, blue leaders ignored them: It's as we noted yesterday. Midway through his State of the Union address, President Biden described his stance regarding the southern border.

He went all the way back to Day One. This is what he said:

PRESIDENT BIDEN (3/7/24): Unlike my predecessor, on my first day in office I introduced a comprehensive plan to fix our immigration system, secure the border, and provide a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers and so much more. 

Because unlike my predecessor, I know who we are as Americans...

Actually, that was pretty much all the president said about his initial policies and proposals concerning the southern border. He went on to call for the passage of this year's proposed border bill.

Roughly an hour later, the president was met with some strenuous pushback from Senator Katie Britt. Citing his first hundred days in office, she offered this assessment:

BRITT (3/7/24): President Biden inherited the most secure border of all time. But minutes after taking office, he suspended all deportations, halted construction of the border wall, and announced a plan to give amnesty to millions.

We know that President Biden didn’t just create this border crisis. He invited it with 94 executive actions in his first 100 days.

[...]

From fentanyl poisonings to horrific murders, there are empty chairs tonight at kitchen tables just like this one because of President Biden’s senseless border policies.  

Just think about Laken Riley...She was brutally murdered by one of the millions of illegal border crossers President Biden chose to release into our homeland.

Britt was giving the official Republican response to the president's address. In her account, President Biden had issued 94 executive actions with respect to the border in his first hundred days. 

She said he created the "border crisis" through the "senseless policies" embedded in those executive actions. She said that people had lost their lives. 

Rightly or wrongly, she even named Laken Riley.

Stating the obvious, Senator Britt was lodging a deeply severe set of accusations. Along the way, she also recounted an anecdote about sexual trafficking with respect to the border—an anecdote which turned out to be grossly misleading with respect to the most basic facts.

Something else happened that night during the president's speech. As is becoming a bit of a norm, President Biden was interrupted—was heckled—midway through his address.

The interruption came from the usual suspect. According to the AP's transcript of the evening's live remarks, these are the words which were spoken:

PRESIDENT BIDEN: I’m told my predecessor called members of Congress in the Senate to demand they block the [proposed border] bill. He feels political win—he viewed it as a—it would be a political win for me and a political loser for him. 

It’s not about him. It’s not about me. I’d be a winner—not really. I—

REP. MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE: What about Laken Riley?

(Crosstalk.)

AUDIENCE: Booo—

REP. GREENE: Say her name!

PRESIDENT BIDEN: (The President holds up a pin reading “Say Her Name, Laken Riley.”) Lanken—Lanken (Laken) Riley, an innocent young woman who was killed.

REP. GREENE: By an illegal!

THE PRESIDENT: By an illegal. That’s right. But how many of thousands of people are being killed by legals?

(Crosstalk.)

To her parents, I say: My heart goes out to you. Having lost children myself, I understand.

At that point, Biden went on to describe some of the contents of the proposed border bill, moving beyond the contents of his prepared text. 

But there you see the interruption—the heckling directed at Biden. Like Senator Britt's grossly misleading anecdote, the interruption—the heckling by Greene—launched a thousand ships.

As we've noted, Senator Britt doubled down on her misleading anecdote on Fox News Sunday last weekend. Offered a chance to disown the gross misdirection she had authored, the young solon refused to relent.

According to the Washington Post, Britt's office took the same approach just last night in response to further questions. This is the way the game now tends to be played within our deeply destructive Red Nation / Blue Nation divide.

Senator Britt has now tripled down on her grossly misleading anecdote! This is the way the game is played as a political war continues to grow.

That said, there was another predictable reaction to Senator Britt's accusations concerning Biden's border policies:

Blue tribe pundits completely ignored the senator's claims concerning those border policies. Blue tribe pundits walked away from the merits, or the lack of same, inhabiting Britt's critique.

Instead, blue tribe pundits lambasted Britt for her misleading anecdote. Also, they scolded President Biden for his impromptu use of an inappropriate word.

At this point, we'll repeat what we said at the start of the week. For ourselves, we wouldn't use "illegal" as a noun, the way the president did.

We wouldn't refer to someone as "an illegal," as is the norm on Fox. We also aren't inclined to regard that point of language as more important than the actual facts concerning Britt's accusations—accusations which are made on a daily basis on Fox.

We aren't inclined to regard that point of language as more important than the actual life-and-death facts concerning the southern border. Inevitably, that is what our blue tribe punditry instantly did.

Progressive thought leaders pummeled Biden for having used that word. Did anyone address the claim that Biden's first three years of border policy had led to fentanyl poisonings and horrific murders?

Essentially, no one did. Here's what happened instead:

In the wake of his address, the president appeared on Jonathan Capehart's little-watched weekend program on MSNBC. 

During Capehart's interview, the president was instantly asked about his use of that word. The president said he should have said "undocumented" instead.

The president said he regretted using that word. Inevitably, that's where any discussion of the border ended.

A few days later, Paul Krugman's column emerged. The column appeared in Tuesday's print editions under this headline:

Sex Trafficking, De Facto Lies and Immigration

In his column, Krugman focused on Senator Brit's grossly misleading anecdote. We don't disagree with what he said about that.

With perfect justice, he pummeled Britt for her misleading anecdote. At the same time, he paid exactly zero attention to the claims Britt had made about the effects of Biden's border policies over the past three years.

Along the way, he offered an extremely weak refutation of a claim we've seen no one make. But so it has gone, within our pair of warring nations, within (let's say) the past year. 

Red tribe observers constantly talk about the crisis at the border—a crisis they say the president's policies caused.

They talk about fentanyl deaths. They talk about the dangers of letting unvetted people into the country en masse, as has become the norm. 

They talk about human sex trafficking, including the trafficking of children. They talk about the number of apprehensions which have involved people on terrorist watch lists—and they wonder how many such "got-aways" may have occurred under current arrangement.

They relate the murder of Laken Riley—and other similar violent crimes—to the alleged chaos at the border under the president's policies. Our blue tribe pundit corps has responded in the following way:

On the whole, they've responded by pretending that the border doesn't exist. So it has gone as our two nations agree to a journalistic arrangement built upon "segregation by viewpoint:"

On Fox, the border is discussed around the clock. The events of January 6 are almost completely disappeared. 

On MSNBC, the southern border barely exists. Instead, we're fed constant legal minutia, with dreams of criminal convictions dancing in our heads.

Two groups of pundits behave in such ways, and never the twain shall meet. On each channel, no one is asked to consider the possibility that the other group might actually be right about something, if only in some tiny way.

Blue tribe viewers see police being beaten on January 6. Red tribe viewers never see any such tape. Instead, they see tape of people streaming across the border. Blue viewers are shielded from that.

Eventually, northern Democratic pols began to say that the immigration situation had become unsustainable. Only then did blue pundits and pols move to address a situation which may cost us the White House this year.

We don't mean to single Krugman out. His column reflects the general way the blue world reacted to last Thursday night's events.

Blue pundits hammered Senator Britt for her act of misdirection. Progressives also challenged Biden for his use of that word.

Speaking with the reliable Capehart, he said he regretted the use of that word. Our tribe then returned to its usual fare.

Endless clowning continues on Fox from people like Gutfeld and Watters. But when they focus on the border, can anyone swear that they're wrong?

There's a great deal more which ought to be said about these red and blue tribal reactions. Most simply put, artificial segregation by viewpoint is a good way to gear up for a dangerous war.

There's a great deal more which ought to be said. We can promise you this:

If you stopped a thousand liberals on the street, no more than three could tell you what President Biden's original policies were. Only a handful could tell you what's been proposed in that new border bill. 

We certainly couldn't do those things! Instead, our blue tribe lives in splendid isolation—and they're living the same way over on Fox. This is good for ratings, profits and salaries—at their channel but also at ours. 

The woods are lovely, dark and deep. President Biden may win re-election this year—or then again, he may not!

Did Aaron Rodgers ever believe...

THURSDAY, MARCH 14, 2024

...the planet's least plausible claim? Did Aaron Rodgers ever believe the planet's least plausible claim?

In a new statement posted today, Rodgers has seemed to say that no, he never did. On the other side of the ledger, we direct you to a partially first-person report by Jake Tapper and Deborah Brown of CNN.

According to the CNN report, Rodgers once said he believed that least plausible claim. He believed that the murders at Sandy Hook were a hoax—or at least, so CNN says:

CNN knows of two people with whom Rodgers has enthusiastically shared these stories, including with Pamela Brown, one of the journalists writing this piece.

Brown was covering the Kentucky Derby for CNN in 2013 when she was introduced to Rodgers, then with the Green Bay Packers, at a post-Derby party. Hearing that she was a journalist with CNN, Rodgers immediately began attacking the news media for covering up important stories. Rodgers brought up the tragic killing of 20 children and 6 adults by a gunman at Sandy Hook Elementary School, claiming it was actually a government inside job and the media was intentionally ignoring it.

When Brown questioned him on the evidence to show this very real shooting was staged, Rodgers began sharing various theories that have been disproven numerous times. 

[...]

Brown recalls Rodgers asking her if she thought it was off [sic] that there were men in black in the woods by the school, falsely claiming those men were actually government operatives. Brown found the encounter disturbing.

Rodgers, through one of his agents, declined to comment to CNN.

CNN has spoken to another person with a similar story. This person, to whom CNN has granted anonymity so as to avoid harassment, recalled that several years ago, Rodgers claimed, “Sandy Hook never happened…All those children never existed. They were all actors.”

When asked about the grieving parents, the source recalled Rodgers saying, “They’re all making it up. They’re all actors.”

For the record:

If the murdered children never existed, we don't know what it would mean to say that they were actors. 

That part of the story is a bit hard to parse. That said, that anonymous source also claims that Rodgers said the parents of the murdered children were just "crisis actors" too.

(For the record, also this: We'll guess that the word "off" in that passage may be an unnoticed typo. If "off" should really be the word "odd," the passage would seem to make more sense.)

At any rate, can this claim about Rodgers possibly be true? In an instant rebuttal, he has seemed to say that he never believed those things about the murders at Sandy Hook.

On the other hand, the Washington Post's Azi Paybarah did some sniffing around yesterday. He came up with this second alleged example of a somewhat peculiar belief:

PAZBARAH (3/13/24): According to one former teammate, Rodgers appeared to show skepticism about the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

“The first thing that comes out of Aaron Rodgers’s mouth was ‘Do you believe in 9/11?’” former Green Bay Packers teammate DeShone Kizer said in a 2022 podcast interview, of meeting the quarterback. After Kizer said he did, Rodgers replied, “You should read up on that.”

What does, or did, Rodgers believe about 9/11? We have no idea!

Meanwhile, did Rodgers ever believe the least plausible claim on the planet—the claim that Sandy Hook was a hoax?  We can't answer that question, but we can reliably tell you this: 

A whole lot of people do!

The idea that those killings were a hoax would seem to be the least plausible claim on the planet. That said, the so-called "democratization of media" has resulted in a giant anthropology lesson, a lesson which goes like this:

We humans believe the craziest things! Aaron Rodgers to the side, there's nothing so crazy—more precisely, so implausible—that a whole lot of us human beings won't rush into line to affirm it.

This is a very important discovery, one that runs all through our politics. It's a surprising tenet of newfound anthropology—anthropology all the way down. 

It's hard to believe that Rodgers believed it! That said, how well do we understand the shape of our human world?

WARS: President Biden agreed with Britt!

THURSDAY, MARCH 14, 2024

Lives are at stake, he said: Mercifully, President Biden devoted little time, last Thursday night, to the silly "shrinkflation" "issue."

Mercifully, he barely mentioned the topic at all! According to the AP transcript of his spoken remarks, he did say this at one point:

PRESIDENT BIDEN (3/7/24): Look, too many corporations raise prices to pad their profits, charging more and more for less and less.

That’s why we’re cracking down on corporations that engage in price gouging and deceptive pricing, from food to healthcare to housing.

In fact, the snack companies think you won’t notice if they change the size of the bag and put a hell of a lot fewer—same—same size bag—put fewer chips in it. No, I’m not joking. It’s called “shrinkflation.”

Pass [Senator] Bobby Casey’s bill and stop this. I really mean it.

You probably all saw that commercial on Snickers bars. And you get—you get charged the same amount, and you got about, I don’t know, 10 percent fewer Snickers in it.

According to the address as written, the apparent quip about "ten percent fewer Snickers" seems to have been an ad lib. 

That said, has any proposal by a senator ever been sillier? If a snack company's costs have risen, they can't sell you a smaller bag of chips while keeping the price the same?

Instead, they have to sell the same number of chips while raising the price?  If they choose the prior option, the federal government will make them stop? 

In our view, the president's fondness for Casey's proposal is a tiny bit daft. Beyond that, the president may have made a few statements in his address which were perhaps false or misleading—though he also made some dead-on claims, according to the Washington Post's Glenn Kessler.

Kessler fact-checked the president's speech. It's the role he's long played at the Post. 

Some of Kessler's analyses involve so much complexity that they could never play a serious role in any imaginable public discussion. Beyond that, we reach the true and the false.

Doggone it! Kessler said that Biden's claim about inflation—his claim that our rate is the lowest in the world—was no longer accurate. On the other hand, some of Kessler's fact-checks made Biden look quite good:

KESSLER (3/8/24): Biden’s job record in his first three years certainly tops Trump’s performance. In the first three years of Trump’s term, about 6.5 million jobs were created—less than half the number created under Biden in the same time period. The number of jobs is now 5.4 million higher than the peak under Trump in February 2020, before the pandemic struck the economy.

Most of Biden's statements were accurate; some may have been wrong. Then too, and rather strikingly, we come to the point in the president's address where he agreed with the highly ambitious young Republican solon, Senator Katie Britt.

As we've noted in the past few days, Senator Britt gave the official Republican response to Biden's address. She savaged the president for the way he has dealt with the southern border—but in the following part of the president's speech. he almost seemed to agree with one part of what Britt's red tribe has been saying all along.

Biden was heckled during this part of his address. For today, we'll quote from the official White House text of the speech as prepared for delivery:

PRESIDENT BIDEN: In November, my team began serious negotiations with a bipartisan group of Senators. The result was a bipartisan bill with the toughest set of border security reforms we’ve ever seen in this country. 

That bipartisan deal would hire 1,500 more border security agents and officers.  100 more immigration judges to help tackle a backload of 2 million cases. 4,300 more asylum officers and new policies so they can resolve cases in 6 months instead of 6 years. 100 more high-tech drug detection machines to significantly increase the ability to screen and stop vehicles from smuggling fentanyl into America. 

This bill would save lives and bring order to the border. It would also give me as President new emergency authority to temporarily shut down the border when the number of migrants at the border is overwhelming.  

The Border Patrol Union endorsed the bill. The Chamber of Commerce endorsed the bill. 

I believe that given the opportunity a majority of the House and Senate would endorse it as well. But unfortunately, politics have derailed it so far. 

I’m told my predecessor called Republicans in Congress and demanded they block the bill. He feels it would be a political win for me and a political loser for him. 

It’s not about him or me. It’d be a winner for America! 

At this point, the president was interrupted. Already, though, he had agreed with some of the things the highly ambitious young Senator Britt would say in her formal response.

He had agreed that lives were at stake, in some unspecified way, by the ongoing conditions at the border. He had agreed that fentanyl was being smuggled across the border in a way which could be reduced or stopped by that bipartisan bill.

He also made the statements shown below in his formal prepared remarks. This mirrored, in a funhouse mirror sort of way, some things Britt would soon allege:

PRESIDENT BIDEN: Unlike my predecessor, on my first day in office I introduced a comprehensive plan to fix our immigration system, secure the border, and provide a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers and so much more. 

Because unlike my predecessor, I know who we are  as Americans. 

We are the only nation in the world with a heart and soul that draws from old and new. 

Home to Native Americans whose ancestors have been here for thousands of years. Home to people from every place on Earth. 

Some came freely. Some chained by force. Some when famine struck, like my ancestral family in Ireland. 

Some to flee persecution.  Some to chase dreams that are impossible anywhere but here in America. That’s America, where we all come from somewhere, but we are all Americans. 

We can fight about the border, or we can fix it. I’m ready to fix it.  Send me the border bill now! 

For the record, are we "the only nation in the world with a heart and soul that draws from old and new?" Well actually no, we aren't.

At any rate, President Biden now said that he had "introduced a comprehensive plan to fix our immigration system [and] secure the border." He said that he'd done that on his very first day on office! 

That same night, Britt gave voice to a sharply different view of the matter. As we noted yesterday, this what the young solon said concerning that very same topic:

BRITT (3/7/24): President Biden inherited the most secure border of all time. But minutes after taking office, he suspended all deportations, halted construction of the border wall, and announced a plan to give amnesty to millions.

We know that President Biden didn’t just create this border crisis. He invited it with 94 executive actions in his first 100 days.

[...]

From fentanyl poisonings to horrific murders, there are empty chairs tonight at kitchen tables just like this one because of President Biden’s senseless border policies. 

The young solon mentioned fentanyl too, though she also referred to "horrific murders." That said, she took a very different view of Biden's first day in office—of his first hundred days, in fact.

President Biden seemed to agree that lives are currently at stake at our southern border. This topic constitutes a major part of the political war in which our flailing nation is currently involved.

Long ago, the Achaeans went to war with the Trojans concerning the marital status of "Helen the radiance of women." A bit more sensibly—or possibly not!—our polarized nation, Red against Blue, has now gone to war about this. 

Red tribe members are told one thing. We blue tribe members hear something quite different, on the rare occasions when we're re asked to consider this life-and-death topic at all.

Biden and Britt almost seemed to agree, at least on that one basic point. Lives are at stake at our southern border, the president and the senator said.

Tomorrow: Hooray for interruptions!

How many black voters will Donald Trump win?

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 13, 2024

A peculiar report in the Times: How many black votes could Donald Trump win in November? 

It's a scary topic! This morning, a report on that question appears above the fold on the front page of the New York Times. In print editions, the dual headlines say this:

Trump Wooing A Voting Group He Stereotypes
Modest Gains Among African Americans

The headline speaks about modest gains—but paragraph 4 says this:

HABERMAN ET AL. (3/13/24): Mr. Trump currently receives nearly four times the support from Black voters in polling than the 6 percent who actually voted for him in 2016, according to Pew Research Center data. He is vying for wins in states with major cities that have large Black populations, including Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Georgia. The margins of victory are expected to be small in those four states, where Mr. Trump hopes to offset his potential weaknesses with independent voters and suburban women.

Say what? Trump got six percent in 2016—but he's polling at four times that amount now? 

Presumably, any such outcome would mean that Trump would win November's election. That said, here's why we thought this Times report was peculiar.

It's true! Trump did get six percent of the black vote in 2016—"according to Pew Research Center data." That said, note the source of the data the Times reports shortly thereafter, in paragraph 9:

HABERMAN ET AL.: Even as Mr. Trump lost Black voters overwhelmingly in 2020, he gained ground relative to 2016, according to exit polls. He performed stronger among Black men, winning 19 percent; it was double his share among Black women.

Now the data are sourced to "exit polls." Here why we found that peculiar:

It's true! According to the one standard set of exit polls, a strikingly large 19 percent of black men voted for Trump in 2020. According to those same exit polls, he won just nine percent of black women in 2020, and 12 percent of black voters overall.

That was the way the black vote went in 2020 according to exit polls. But after each of our recent national elections, Pew has conducted a detailed study of what it calls "validated voters."

Pew's numbers have tended to differ from those in the standard exit polls. For example:

In the case of the 2020 election, Pew found that black voters favored Biden over Trump, 92 percent to 8. Rightly or wrongly, Pew found that eight percent of blacks voted for Trump in 2020—not the 12 percent which had emerged in the exit polls.

(For Pew data from 2016 and 2020, you can just click here.)

Which numbers are more reliable—those which emerge from the exit polls, or those which result from the later, detailed studies by Pew? We can't tell you that!

We can say this—we don't know why the Times would report exit poll figures in paragraph 4, then switch over to Pew figures just a few paragraphs later.

In the case of black voters, the numbers have been substantially different:

According to the exit polls, eight percent of black voters voted for Trump in 2016. According to Pew's later study, the number was six percent.

Also this:

According to the exit polls, twelve percent of black voters voted for Trump in 2020. According to Pew's later study, the actual number was eight percent.

The only numbers which matter today will be those from November's election. Presumably, if Trump gets something like 24 percent of the black vote, he'll be on his way back to the White House.

We have no idea how black voters are going to vote. We also have no idea why the Times structured its front-page report the way it did—jumping from Pew figures in 2016 to exit poll figures in 2020, just a few paragraphs later.

Why the heck would a paper do that? We have no idea!

Also this:

How many black voters did support Donald J. Trump in 2020? We think again of the old joke known as Goldberg's Law:

The man with one watch always knows the time. The man with two watches is never quite sure.

As with watches, so too here. Hat tip to Paul Reiser!

WARS: Murders, fentanyl, the terrorist watch list?

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 13, 2024

The main things the senator said: Senator Britt got blown off the map by yesterday's Robert Hur hearings. Briefly, let us say this about that:

Did President Biden exhibit a memory problem when he was interviewed by Hur?

Almost surely, there's no real way to evaluate that claim based on the lengthy transcript. There will also be no final way to evaluate that claim if the audiotapes are released.

As with everything else, the red tribe would cherry-pick certain talking points. Our blue tribe would settle on certain others. 

Under current arrangements, such conflicts are never resolved, or even addressed. We can only hope that the audiotapes will stay wherever they are.

Once Hur's report was made public, Candidate Biden was going to take a hit from what Hur had written. It would have been best for Democrats to accept that fact, then to counter with Hur's graphic account of the fact that Donald J. Trump's behavior with classified material was much worse than Biden's.

Instead, House Democrats at yesterday's hearing managed to generate another talking-point for the rival red tribe. They did that with their hapless claim that Hur had "exonerated" Biden. 

For reasons any third grader could be made to understand, prosecutors rarely do any such thing. In this instance, Hur didn't "exonerate" Biden in his official report. 

By grilling Hur on this point, Democrats induced him to make an explicit statement to that effect. In so doing, they created another videotaped talking point for red tribe warriors to herald.

On this morning's Fox & Friends, the friends were glorying in that videotaped statement by Hur. This is the way we human being create the divisions which lead on to wars, even in these demographically complex modern times.

Back to Senator Britt! As recently as Sunday, her refusal to relent on his prior misstatement was still on the public agenda. 

In Thursday night's official GOP response to President Biden's State of the Union address, the apparently ambitious young solon had authored a grossly misleading claim. 

By Sunday, everyone knew that Britt's presentation had been grossly misleading. That included Shannon Bream, host of Fox News Sunday.

But alas! As we noted yesterday, when Bream gave Britt a chance to clarify her misleading claim, Britt doubled down on the bogus claim instead. This is the way the game is now played as our the "thought leaders" of our flailing nation proceed ahead with a very dangerous political war.

Britt doubled down on her deception—and that's how the game is now played. Yesterday, the incident was blown off the public stage by the renewed dispute concerning Hur's report. 

Every day, a new skirmish is invented as our two tribes wage their war. That said, the Hur report will go away—and Senator Britt's deliberate act of deception already has.

What won't go away are the main things Britt said last Thursday night, and then again in her appearance on Fox News Sunday.

Those statements won't be going away because they dealt with the southern border—and the southern border will almost surely be the main "issue" in this year's presidential campaign. 

Britt's allegations will be advanced again and again, by everyone within the red tribe from Donald J. Trump on down. Other disputes will come and go, but those allegations about the border won't be going away.

The mains things Britt said won't be going away. So what in the world did she say?

Let's set aside the misleading anecdote Britt offered on Thursday night. What were the main allegations she made that night? As you can see in this transcript of her remarks, her main allegations were these:

BRITT (3/7/24): The true, unvarnished state of our union begins and ends with this: Our families are hurting. Our country can do better.

And you don’t have to look any further than the crisis at our southern border to see it. President Biden inherited the most secure border of all time. But minutes after taking office, he suspended all deportations, halted construction of the border wall, and announced a plan to give amnesty to millions.

We know that President Biden didn’t just create this border crisis. He invited it with 94 executive actions in his first 100 days.

[...]

President Biden’s border crisis is a disgrace. It’s despicable. And it’s almost entirely preventable.

[...]

From fentanyl poisonings to horrific murders, there are empty chairs tonight at kitchen tables just like this one because of President Biden’s senseless border policies. 

Just think about Laken Riley. In my neighboring state of Georgia, this beautiful, 22-year-old nursing student went out on a jog one morning. But she never got the opportunity to return home. She was brutally murdered by one of the millions of illegal border crossers President Biden chose to release into our homeland.

Fentanyl poisonings? Horrific murders? All "because of President Biden’s senseless border policies?"

These allegations won't be going away—and Britt didn't even include the red tribe's persistent allegations about individuals crossing the border who are on the terrorist watch list.

Those allegations will continue right through November's election. On Fox News Sunday, the ambitious young senator went into more detail.

If you want to see what she said you can start by clicking here. Headline included, here's a summary of her allegations, as offered in The Hill: 

Katie Britt defends human trafficking story in State of the Union response amid backlash

[...]

The senator brushed off the criticism [of her grossly misleading story], claiming the story is emblematic of the president’s border policy.

“I’ve said, in [Biden’s] first 100 days he had 94 executive actions, and those executive actions didn’t just create the crisis. They invited it,” Britt said in a “Fox News Sunday” interview with Shannon Bream. 

“The truth is, and the media knows that they’re not covering it, that human trafficking has gone up under President Biden,” she continued. “If you look back under 2018, it was a $500 million industry, human trafficking by the drug cartels. It is now a $13 billion dollar industry. Shannon, the drug cartels are winning under this. This is a story of what is happening now.”

"The media" aren't covering this, the ambitious young senator said. 

"There are victims all throughout our country," Britt further said. She said the media are taking a dive, but "the drug cartels are winning" under Biden's policies.

Britt even included a very large dollar figure designed to show how bad things have become. Human trafficking is now a $13 billion industry, the ambitious young solon said.

Claims of that type about the border will continue right through November. The hubbub about Hur will subside, but those claims won't be going away.

Full disclosure! As we'll note tomorrow, Britt was still playing a bit fast and loose with the dollar figures she cited. 

In fact, though, "the media" have largely avoided this topic in recent years. O at least, our own blue tribe's most beloved stars have relentlessly disappeared the border as they've pursued the one topic they truly love:

Trump Trump Trump Trump Jail!

Full disclosure! Even after Britt appeared on Fox News Sunday, our stars continued to avoid her major claims about the border. Tomorrow, we'll return to Paul Krugman's column to see the way this works.

That said, every day it's another dispute—another point concerning which our nation's two warring populations will hear two vastly different accounts.

Our blue tribe has reacted to Britt by trashing her for the grossly misleading anecdote on which she doubled down. As for the main allegations she made, we're still largely running around with our blue heads struck in the sand.

No, Virginia! Hur didn't "exonerate" President Biden. (Prosecutors rarely do such things.)

That flap is going to fade away. We'll be left with GOP claims about the border, and with Hector's ancient warning:

The day will come when sacred Troy must die.

Tomorrow: Biden agrees with Britt!