MONDAY: We're so old that we can remember...

MONDAY, DECEMBER 22, 2025

...when Paul Krugman wrote about this: On December 13, the New York Times ran a guest essay concerning the cost of health insurance. Headline included, the essay started like this:

$27,000 a Year for Health Insurance. How Can We Afford That?

The debate over whether to extend the expanded Affordable Care Act subsidies has consumed lawmakers over the past two months, precipitated a government shutdown and sparked Republican infighting. Unfortunately, it’s the wrong debate.

While I believe we should extend the subsidies, which expire at the end of the month, to help families pay their insurance premiums, doing so wouldn’t fix the underlying problem: surging health care spending. That’s the reason we need the subsidies in the first place, and it’s bankrupting families and shredding jobs for low- and middle-income workers across the economy.

And so on from there. The essay was written by Zack Cooper, an associate professor of public health and economics at Yale.

Topics like that have largely slid beneath the waves in this modern era, in large part due to the flooding of the zone. Distractions come thick and fast these days. Who has time for a discussion of a topic like that?

It occurred to us that it's been a while since we reviewed a basic type of health care spending data. Why does our nation's "surging health care spending" seem to exceed that of other comparable nations? 

Nostalgically, we started to click. Soon, we came upon these data, courtesy of Peterson KFF:

Health expenditures per capita, U.S. dollars, 2023 (current prices and PPP adjusted)
United States: $13,432
Germany: $8,441
France: $7,136
Canada: $7,013
Australia: $6,931
United Kingdom: $6,023
Japan: $5,640

Peterson KFF includes a "Comparable Country Average." It includes the spending figures from some smaller Euro nations. That average is said to be this:

Comparable Country Average: $7,393

People, we're just saying!

We've been puzzling over numbers like that ever since Paul Krugman did a series of columns on this topic back in 2005 or 2006, also for the New York Times. From that day to this, we don't think we've ever seen a major news org tackle the challenge of attempting to tackle this question:

Why do we Americans spend so much more, on a per capita basis, than other nations do? 

Why do we Americans spend so much more? The daily flooding of the zone makes it even less likely that you'll ever see a serious effort to tackle a question like that.

Meanwhile, if someone did develop such information, the findings would be sifted in different ways within Silo Red and Silo Blue. We've become a spectacularly unintelligent nation, which, just to be perfectly honest, doesn't differ all that much from The Way It Always Was.

We've shown you the start of Professor Cooper's essay. Before long, he's also saying this:

...Rising health care spending is killing the American dream.

Despite devastating out-of-pocket costs, Americans are generally insulated from the true cost of health care premiums. However, the expiring subsidies on the Affordable Care Act marketplaces, where more than 20 million Americans get their insurance, show just how exorbitant premiums have become. Consider a 60-year-old couple earning $85,000 a year. Without subsidies, their health insurance premiums next year will approach $32,000 (akin to buying a new Toyota Camry).

Those of us who get health care insurance from our employers—some 160 million Americans—may be breathing a sigh of relief. But our health care premiums are also staggering (an average of $27,000 a year for a family of four), and the fact that our employers pay part of the tab isn’t much of a reprieve.

That’s because decades’ worth of research shows that, even though employers pay most of workers’ premiums, those costs are passed on to workers in the form of lower wages and fewer jobs.

There's a lot more to Cooper's essay than that. But such essays lead nowhere within our flailing American discourse. Thanks to the incessant flooding of the zone, that discourse is almost surely dumber now than it's ever been before.

At one point, we Americans occasionally pretended to discuss such topics. Those discussions rarely went anywhere, but today we pretty much don't even bother.

The zone gets flooded all day long. Inevitably, our attention is drawn to the endless string of inanities which rush through as part of the flood.

Way back when, Paul Krugman tried to make this a topic. Through zero fault of his own, Paul Krugman tried and he failed.

EMPATHY AND ILLNESS: The whiteness of the whale gives way...

MONDAY, DECEMBER 22, 2025

...to the flooding of the zone: Long ago and oceans away, sacred Melville famously pondered "the whiteness of the whale."

In fact, that was the title of Chapter 42 of his most famous novel. If Project Gutenberg can be trusted, the chapter starts like this:

CHAPTER 42. The Whiteness of the Whale.

What the white whale was to Ahab, has been hinted; what, at times, he was to me, as yet remains unsaid.

Aside from those more obvious considerations touching Moby Dick, which could not but occasionally awaken in any man’s soul some alarm, there was another thought, or rather vague, nameless horror concerning him, which at times by its intensity completely overpowered all the rest; and yet so mystical and well nigh ineffable was it, that I almost despair of putting it in a comprehensible form. It was the whiteness of the whale that above all things appalled me. But how can I hope to explain myself here; and yet, in some dim, random way, explain myself I must, else all these chapters might be naught.

"It was the whiteness of the whale that above all things appalled me," Melville admitted. Today, what's actually bringing the American project down is the "the flooding of the zone."

In the main, that flooding tracks to one famous man. In last Saturday's news analysis piece, Peter Baker starts to list the ways. His essay starts like this:

NEWS ANALYSIS
Shouting, Ranting, Insulting: Trump’s Uninhibited Second Term

It all might make more sense if he actually were drinking. By all accounts, President Trump doesn’t touch the stuff. So when his own chief of staff said that he has “an alcoholic’s personality,” she was talking about his larger-than-life nature rather than his consumption.

Yet in some ways, it may be an apt description for a president who seems even less inhibited than ever in a way that has many in Washington and beyond shaking their heads or even wondering if the leader of the free world has lost it. The word often whispered by Republicans and shouted by Democrats and Never Trumpers is “unhinged.”

Is it possible that President Trump has "lost it?" In Washington, some observers are "even wondering" about that possibility, Baker says as he starts. Some are whispering, or even shouting, that the president is "unhinged."

"Unhinged" is one of the euphemism-adjacent terms on which the guild has settled. According to Baker--and Baker is plenty sharp--the word is "often whispered by Republicans," but it's "shouted by Democrats."

With that, Baker began listing the recent episodes which have been part of the flood:

(continuing directly from above)
It was one thing when Mr. Trump called a reporter “piggy.” Or casually threatened to put a half-dozen members of Congress to death for accurately stating the laws of war. Or labeled all Somali immigrants “garbage.” Or declared that daring to question his physical energy level at age 79 was “seditious, perhaps even treasonous.” But when Mr. Trump cavalierly attacked the Hollywood icon Rob Reiner just hours after his body was found in a grisly murder scene, it sickened even some of his own political allies.

He followed that no-he-didn’t-just-say-that-did-he performance this week by adding a series of plaques underneath portraits of past presidents on the wall of the Colonnade at the White House that brazenly denigrated some of his predecessors. In effect, he bronzed some of his cartoonish social media juvenilia and bolted it to the taxpayer-owned building where two Roosevelts, John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan once lived.

“He’s just lost it,” Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, wrote on social media after the president lashed out at Mr. Reiner. After seeing pictures of the new White House plaques, Mr. Murphy added, “He is such a sad, damaged person.”

Baker listed several recent iterations of the relentless flood:

The insults aimed at female reporters. The suggestion that execution might be appropriate in the wake of a somewhat odd though accurate video statement concerning the laws of war.

The astonishing claim, stated in the Oval Office on two successive days, that Rep. Omar (and all Somali immigrants) are just a pile of "garbage." And then, the astounding attack on the late Rob Reiner--on a widely popular public figure who had just been murdered by his troubled son.

On and on the incidents went, nor did the flood stop there. Colloquially, there is only one word for "a series of plaques underneath portraits of past presidents [in] the White House that brazenly denigrated some of his predecessors." In the realm of colloquial speech, that one word is this:

Insane.

That would, of course, be a colloquial assessment. "Insane" is not a diagnostic term within the current realm of what gets described as "medical science." With respect to Senator Murphy, he may have started losing us when he grew that JD Vance look alike beard in the aftermath of last November's election.

Alas! Within the groves of Blue America, our own tribal leaders began reshaping their public profiles in the aftermath of that stunningly bungled election. In the reports to which we link you below, Newsweek reported one part of the makeovers. 

This still gets laughed about in Silo Red, got disappeared in Silo Blue;

AOC Removes Pronouns From X Bio: What We Know
The right-wing media sphere flew into a frenzy on Thursday when several users on social media pointed out that U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York had removed her pronouns from her bio on X, formerly Twitter.

The overarching sentiment was that Ocasio-Cortez's decision to remove her pronouns from her bio underscored President-elect Donald Trump's decisive victory in the 2024 election, and was an inflection point in "woke" ideology—a derisive term that many conservatives use to describe identity politics and progressive values.

Has Pete Buttigieg Removed Pronouns From His Bio? What We Know
Former transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg has removed his pronouns from his biography on X, formerly Twitter, according to a prominent account on the social media platform.

Screenshots from the Libs of TikTok account, which is run by conservative activist Chaya Raichik and has over 4 million followers, appear to show that Buttigieg deleted his "he/him" pronouns from the account.

Newsweek has contacted Buttigieg for comment via Facebook and Instagram direct messages.

Uh-oh! Politically speaking, had we Blues possibly moved a bit beyond our skis when it came to some of the stuff which got assailed as "woke?" 

Our answer to that question would be yes. For others, mileage may differ.

But in the face of all that, it's President Trump who is the most powerful player of all. And the sheer (colloquial) insanity of those plaques, right there in what's left of the White House complex, helps us see the basic question from which Blue journalists continue to flee:

Is something "wrong" with President Trump? More to the point, is it possible that hie niece was right when she published this (tragic)assessment in the prologue to her best-selling book?

Prologue

[...]

None of the Trump siblings emerged unscathed from my grandfather’s sociopathy and my grandmother’s illnesses, both physical and psychological, but my uncle Donald and my father, Freddy, suffered more than the rest. In order to get a complete picture of Donald, his psychopathologies, and the meaning of his dysfunctional behavior, we need a thorough family history.

In the last three years, I’ve watched as countless pundits, armchair psychologists, and journalists have kept missing the mark, using phrases such as “malignant narcissism” and “narcissistic personality disorder” in an attempt to make sense of Donald’s often bizarre and self-defeating behavior. I have no problem calling Donald a narcissist—he meets all nine criteria as outlined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5)—but the label gets us only so far.

[...]

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

The niece, a Ph.D. holding clinical therapist, was speaking about "psychopathologies" which qualify as examples of diagnosable "mental illness." 

The fact that she wrote what she wrote doesn't mean that she was right. But this remains a part of contemporary medical science which our journalists refuse to discuss, except through the use of euphemisms:

The guy has "lost it," some might say. Some might even say he's "unhinged!"

Major questions remain about this possible source of the flood. Example:

Is a mental illness really a form of an actual illness? Should we regard the behaviors which result as we typically do--as a straightforward expression of a lack of "character?" Or should we regard those behaviors as the (perhaps unavoidable) results of a (physical, bodily) illness?

Also this:

Under current rules of the game, it's reasonably safe to attribute the president's flood of behaviors to a "cognitive decline." Under current rules of the game, that's a more acceptable speculation. 

But is it possible that his recent behaviors could be the result of some sort of cognitive decline piggy-backed onto a pre-existing "mental illness"--a pre-existing "mental illness which may have been bred in the bones, passed on at birth through the genes?

Here on this campus, we continue to explore these questions for the benefit of someone ages and ages hence. At our present stage of intellectual evolution, we Americans aren't ready to discuss such questions.

For the record, sacred Melville ended his chapter in a typically thoughtful way:

[P]ondering all this, the palsied universe lies before us a leper; and like willful travelers in Lapland, who refuse to wear colored and coloring glasses upon their eyes, so the wretched infidel gazes himself blind at the monumental white shroud that wraps all the prospect around him.

And of all these things the Albino whale was the symbol. Wonder ye then at the fiery hunt?

Wonder ye then at the fiery hunt? That's what Melville asked! 

At any rate, we Blues (correctly) note the president's apparent lack of empathy. He seems to display the absence of empathy, but what is the state of our own?

Tomorrow: The possible road not taken

Has Pete Buttigieg Removed Pronouns From His Bio? What We Know
Former transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg has removed his pronouns from his biography on X, formerly Twitter, according to a prominent account on the social media platform.

Screenshots from the Libs of TikTok account, which is run by conservative activist Chaya Raichik and has over 4 million followers, appear to show that Buttigieg deleted his "he/him" pronouns from the account.

Newsweek has contacted Buttigieg for comment via Facebook and Instagram direct messages.

SATURDAY: It's a disease, top newspaper says!

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 20, 2025

Ever so slowly they turn: Peter Baker, he of the New York Times, is an extremely clear-minded journalist. 

For that reason, it's odd to see him make this apparent minor mistake in a lengthy "news analysis" piece in today's print editions:

NEWS ANALYSIS
Shouting, Ranting, Insulting: Trump’s Uninhibited Second Term

[...]

Mr. Trump’s older brother, Fred Trump Jr., was an alcoholic and died in 1981 at the age of 43, a tragedy that deeply affected the future president. He has often ascribed his aversion to drinking to his brother’s decline. And he has used it as one of the only self-deprecating lines he typically offers. “Can you imagine if I had” been a drinker, he asked at one point in 2018. “What a mess I would be. I would be the world’s worst.”

It doesn't exactly matter. But according to the leading authority—and also according to his own daughter—Fred Trump Jr., the president's older brother, actually died in 1981 at the age of 42.

Fred Trump's daughter, Mary L. Trump, complains about this error by the New York Times at several points in her 2020 best-seller, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man. She seems to find the mistake emblematic of the slipshod way the nation's major mainstream news orgs have reported on the Trump family, and especially on her famous uncle, down through the many long years.

Her father died at age 42, not at age 43, she writes at several points. Five years after her book appeared, there is the highly competent Baker, repeating the same apparent mistake.

A person could see this as emblematic of the way our major news orgs disappeared key parts of Mary Trump's best-selling book. We refer to the parts of the book in which Mary Trump, a doctorate-wielding clinical therapist, lists the vast array of (potentially dangerous) "psychopathologies" which, she says, seem to be on display in her famous uncle's behavior.

Bowing to the rules of their guild, our mainstream journalists disappeared that part of Mary Trump's book. That brings us to this morning's "news analysis" piece, in which Baker—an exceptionally clear writer and thinker—lists the many peculiar behaviors in which President Trump has engaged in the last few months.

Next week, we expect to visit Baker's long list of recent strange behaviors by President Trump. For today, we want to direct your attention to an unusual statement which lurks inside Baker's piece.

Baker is a very clear writer. So why did he author the claim we highlight in the passage we've posted below?

At this point in his lengthy piece, Baker is writing about the recent statement in which Susie Wiles said that President Trump has "an alcoholic's personality." Baker notes that the president doesn't drink alcohol—but along the way, he says this:

Mr. Trump’s older brother, Fred Trump Jr., was an alcoholic and died in 1981 at the age of 43, a tragedy that deeply affected the future president. He has often ascribed his aversion to drinking to his brother’s decline. And he has used it as one of the only self-deprecating lines he typically offers. “Can you imagine if I had” been a drinker, he asked at one point in 2018. “What a mess I would be. I would be the world’s worst.”

But in recent weeks, Mr. Trump has adamantly denied any cognitive issues, saying that he had taken three exams measuring his mental acuity, including one recently. “I ACED all three of them in front of large numbers of doctors and experts, most of whom I do not know,” he wrote online. “I have been told that few people have been able to ‘ace’ this Examination.”

But in recent weeks, Mr. Trump has adamantly denied any cognitive issues, saying that he had taken three exams measuring his mental acuity, including one recently. “I ACED all three of them in front of large numbers of doctors and experts, most of whom I do not know,” he wrote online. “I have been told that few people have been able to ‘ace’ this Examination.”

Alcoholism is a disease, of course. So is narcissism, which Mr. Trump has in the past admitted to. “Narcissism can be a useful quality if you’re trying to start a business,” he wrote in one of his books. “A narcissist does not hear the naysayers.”

Narcissism "is a disease?" When did that become a fact? And why on earth—why in the world—did Peter Baker write that?

Let's start with the basic question: Is narcissism a disease? If it is, the leading authority on the condition doesn't seem to have heard:

Narcissism

Narcissism is a self-centered personality style characterized as having an excessive preoccupation with oneself and one's own needs, often at the expense of others. Named after the Greek mythological figure Narcissus who fell in love with his own reflection, narcissism has evolved into a psychological concept studied extensively since the early 20th century, and it has been deemed highly relevant in various societal domains.

Narcissism exists on a continuum that ranges from normal to abnormal personality expression. While many psychologists believe that a moderate degree of narcissism is normal and healthy in humans, there are also more extreme forms, observable particularly in people who have a personality condition like narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), where one's narcissistic qualities become pathological, leading to functional impairment and psychosocial disability.

According to the leading authority, a moderate degree of narcissism seems to be normal and healthy—though something else is true:

On the extremes, narcissism can produce "a personality condition like narcissistic personality disorder"—and that condition has long been listed as a serious "mental illness."

In short, narcissism can be a "mental illness" (presumably, a "disease"), but it typically isn't. Double-checking, this is what Psychology Today has to say, in Q-and-A form, about the condition in question:

Narcissism

[...]

What’s the difference between narcissism and pathological narcissism?

Pathological narcissism, or narcissistic personality disorder, is rare: It affects an estimated 1 percent of the population, a prevalence that hasn't changed since clinicians started measuring it. The disorder is suspected when narcissistic traits impair a person’s daily functioning. That dysfunction typically causes friction in relationships due to the pathological narcissist's lack of empathy. It may also manifest as antagonism, fueled by grandiosity and attention-seeking. In seeing themselves as superior, the pathological narcissist naturally views everyone else as inferior and may be intolerant of disagreement or questioning.

Psychology Today seems to be in agreement with the leading authority. Plain old "narcissism" isn't a personality disorder (traditionally, a type of "mental illness"). It only rises to that (tragic / unfortunate) level in something like one percent of the population.

By definition, narcissistic personality disorder has traditionally been listed as a "mental illness" (and therefore, one supposes, as a "disease"). Narcissism all by itself isn't any such thing—and President Trump has certainly never copped to any such "disease."

 Why, then, did someone as sharp as Peter Baker present this matter the way he did? Let us offer a suggestion:

Our high-end journalists have floundered throughout, looking for ways to suggest that President Trump is "mentally ill" without coming right out and saying so. Right at the start of his analysis piece, Baker plays that euphemistic game in two (2) separate ways:

Shouting, Ranting, Insulting: Trump’s Uninhibited Second Term

It all might make more sense if he actually were drinking. By all accounts, President Trump doesn’t touch the stuff. So when his own chief of staff said that he has “an alcoholic’s personality,” she was talking about his larger-than-life nature rather than his consumption.

Yet in some ways, it may be an apt description for a president who seems even less inhibited than ever in a way that has many in Washington and beyond shaking their heads or even wondering if the leader of the free world has lost it. The word often whispered by Republicans and shouted by Democrats and Never Trumpers is “unhinged.”

According to Baker, many in Washington are wondering if President Trump has "lost it." Those people often whisper or shout the word "unhinged," he accurately reports.

"Unhinged" and "unfit" are two of the words our journalists have used to suggest an issue with mental health without coming right out and making that assertion. Now, very late in a lengthy essay, Baker seems to have President Trump copping to a "disease."

Is Baker inching toward a less euphemistic appraisal of President Trump's possible condition? If so, ever so slowly our journalists turn! This is the culture we're stuck with.

Concerning Wiles and Bill Clinton: At long last, have they no sense of decency? Also, could they possibly be that inept?

This morning, during the 6 o'clock hour, Fox & Friends Weekend staged a discussion about the Epstein files which, at least for us, recalled Joseph Welch's famous rebuke of Senator Joseph McCarthy.

Hugh Hewitt, appearing as a guest, made the most astounding remark of the interview segment. True to form, co-host Charlie Hurt happily played along.

Next week, we'll show you what these floozies said. In a more righteous world, the various stars of this "cable news" channel would be frog-marched into the countryside for a long re-education regime from which they would, in the end, obtain their Ph.D.'s.

FRIDAY: It's right there in the DSM-5!

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2025

Is there any way this could be dangerous? It was once believed that an earlier potentate had named his horse to a seat in the Senate.

The Senate in question was that of Rome. According to the leading authority, this naming may never have happened:

Caligula

Gaius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, also called Gaius and Caligula, was Roman emperor from AD 37 until his assassination in 41. He was the son of the Roman general Germanicus and Augustus' granddaughter Agrippina the Elder, members of the first ruling family of the Roman Empire. He was born two years before Tiberius became emperor. Gaius accompanied his father, mother and siblings on campaign in Germania, at little more than four or five years old. He had been named after Gaius Julius Caesar, but his father's soldiers affectionately nicknamed him "Caligula" ('little boot').

...Tiberius died in 37, and Caligula succeeded him as emperor, at the age of 24.

Of the few surviving sources about Caligula and his four-year reign, most were written by members of the nobility and senate, long after the events they purport to describe. For the early part of his reign, he is said to have been "good, generous, fair and community-spirited" but increasingly self-indulgent, cruel, sadistic, extravagant and sexually perverted thereafter, an insane, murderous tyrant who demanded and received worship as a living god, humiliated the Senate, and planned to make his horse a consul. Most modern commentaries instead seek to explain Caligula's position, personality and historical context. Some historians dismiss many of the allegations against him as misunderstandings, exaggeration, mockery or malicious fantasy.

[...]

Caligula shared many of the popular passions and enthusiasms of the lower classes and young aristocrats: public spectacles, particularly gladiator contests, chariot and horse racing, the theatre and gambling, but all on a scale which the nobility could not match. He trained with professional gladiators and staged exceptionally lavish gladiator games, being granted exemption by the senate from the sumptuary laws that limited the number of gladiators to be kept in Rome. He was openly and vocally partisan in his uninhibited support or disapproval of particular charioteers, racing teams, gladiators and actors, shouting encouragement or scorn, sometimes singing along with paid performers or declaiming the actors' lines, and generally behaving as "one of the crowd." In gladiator contests, he supported the parmularius type, who fought using small, round shields. In chariot races, he supported the Greens, and personally drove his favorite racehorse, Incitatus ("Speedy") as a member of the Green faction. Most of Rome's aristocracy would have found this an unprecedented, unacceptable indignity for any of their number, let alone their emperor.

[...]

Suetonius and Dio outline Caligula's supposed proposal to promote his favorite racehorse, Incitatus ("Swift"), to consul, and later, a priest of his own cult. This could have been an extended joke, created by Caligula himself in mockery of the senate. A persistent, popular belief that Caligula actually promoted his horse to consul has become "a byword for the promotion of incompetents," especially in political life. It may have been one of Caligula's many oblique, malicious or darkly humorous insults, mostly directed at the senatorial class, but also against himself and his family. Winterling sees it as an insult to the consulars themselves...David Woods believes it unlikely that Caligula meant to insult the post of consul, as he had held it himself. Suetonius, possibly failing to get the joke, presents it as further proof of Caligula's insanity, adding circumstantial details more usually expected of the senatorial nobility, including palaces, servants and golden goblets, and invitations to banquets.

Did Caligula really name "Speedy" as a consul? We have no idea. As for the claim that the emperor was "insane," we note again that the preferred language seems to be changing with respect to what is still widely known as "mental illness."

Stating the obvious, serious forms of what was once called "mental illness" are always a human tragedy. Indeed, if we regard some such "mental illness" as an actual illness, we may be disinclined to react to the behaviors which result as if they represented ethical choices made by the afflicted party.

(That doesn't mean that concerned parties may not work to make such behaviors stop, or to remove power from the afflicted party.)

We'll continue with this rumination on Monday, even as Christmas approaches. For today, we merely take note of today's key renaming—a high-profile renaming which took place right in our own nation's capital. 

This renaming is that of the Kennedy Center. In this morning's print editions, the New York Times reports:

WHITE HOUSE MEMO
As Trump Puts His Brand on Washington, the Kennedy Center Gets a New Name

President Trump’s takeover of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts reached its inevitable apogee on Thursday afternoon when it was announced that the center’s board of trustees had voted to rename it the Trump-Kennedy Center.

Even though Mr. Trump had already been calling it that for months in trollish posts online, he acted shocked that his handpicked board had thought to do this for him.

“I was honored by it,” he told reporters at the White House. “The board is a very distinguished board, most distinguished people in the country, and I was surprised by it. I was honored by it.”

Earlier that day, he had called into a meeting of the board, which is now made up almost entirely of people who are loyal to him. (By law, there are a handful of members of Congress from both parties who sit on the board, as well.)

[...]

The performing arts center is, by law, designated the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts—it was built to be a living memorial to the slain 35th president—and it has been generally understood that the power to change the name lies with Congress.

"By law," that has always been the name. Today we had renaming, or at least an attempt at same.

At any rate, the president's name is now up on the wall of the Trump-Kennedy. Also, the East Wing is on the ground, and the ballroom just keeps getting bigger.

The proposed Arc de Trumpth has recently been discussed right there in the Oval Office. We've conquered the Gulf of America.

We return to our basic point:

Every (serious) "mental illness" is a human tragedy—a loss of human capability and potential. Because our culture tends instead to stigmatize such conditions, we lack the ability to talk about mental health and mental illness, except with respect to people who hear voices and engage in street crime.

Somewhere ages and ages hence, future journalists may have the ability to conduct fuller discussions of such conditions. For today, we ask you if this outline of characteristics sounds like anyone you know:

Grandiosity

In psychology, grandiosity is a sense of superiority, uniqueness, or invulnerability that is unrealistic and not based on personal capability. It may be expressed by exaggerated beliefs regarding one's abilities, the belief that few other people have anything in common with oneself, and that one can only be understood by a few, very special people. Grandiosity is a core diagnostic criterion for hypomania/mania in bipolar disorder and narcissistic personality disorder 

Measurement

Few scales exist for the sole purpose of measuring grandiosity, though one recent attempt is the Narcissistic Grandiosity Scale (NGS), an adjective rating scale where one indicates the applicability of a word to oneself (e.g. superior, glorious).

Grandiosity is also measured as part of other tests, including the Specific Psychotic Experiences Questionnaire (SPEQ), Personality Assessment for DSM-5 (PID-5), Psychopathy Checklist-Revised, and diagnostic interviews for bipolar disorders and NPD. The Grandiosity section of the Diagnostic Interview for Narcissism (DIN), for instance, describes:

1. The person exaggerates talents, capacity, and achievements in an unrealistic way.
2. The person believes in their invulnerability or does not recognize their limitations.
3. The person has grandiose fantasies.
4. The person believes that they do not need other people.
5. The person over-examines and downgrades other people's projects, statements, or dreams in an unrealistic manner.
6. The person regards themself as unique or special when compared to other people.
7. The person regards themself as generally superior to other people.
8. The person behaves self-centeredly and/or self-referentially.
9. The person behaves in a boastful or pretentious way.

Specific manifestations

In narcissism

Grandiose narcissism is a subtype of narcissism with grandiosity as its central feature, in addition to other agentic and antagonistic traits (e.g., dominance, attention-seeking, entitlement, manipulation). The term "narcissistic grandiosity" is sometimes used as a synonym for grandiose narcissism.

In bipolar disorder

Grandiosity is a core diagnostic feature of the manic and hypomanic episodes of bipolar disorder type 1 and 2, respectively. The presentation varies across disorder type, but generally manifests as extreme self-confidence associated with a bold, proactive pursuit of certain (often unrealistic) goals, including writing a book, publicity-seeking over ideas or inventions devised without appropriate knowledge, experience or expertise, or taking major risks (e.g., in business or with finances) on the assumption that one cannot fail.

And so on from there, at some length. As you can see:

According to the leading authority, grandiosity is a clinical diagnosis. It's found right there in the DSM-5. We add to our earlier question, creating a list of two:

Our questions:

1. Does that sound a bit like someone you know?
2. Is there any chance that this sort of thing could possibly be dangerous?

Tomorrow: Susie Wiles on President Clinton

Starting Monday: Empathy and illness

BREAKING: He's finally starting to get his due!

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2025

Frogs in pot, slowly they boil: From this morning's New York Times:

"The rename was just the latest maneuver in the overall Trumpification of the capital."

From the capital on to South America, possibly on to the world? 

Meanwhile, is there any chance this could perhaps be dangerous?

The "rename" is that of the Kennedy Center, finally linked to true greatness. Meanwhile, the frog known as the mainstream press corps continues to (ever so slowly) boil, right there in the pot it has chosen. 

The president is finally starting to get his due! Meanwhile, will our journalists ever be willing to report, and discuss, what is plainly right there before them? 

We're off to the medical mission this morning, but we'll be posting about what was formerly known as "mental illness" in mid to late afternoon.

For those inclined to read ahead: According to the leading authority, this is the way (clinical) grandiosity presents.

Does it sound like anyone you know? Meanwhile, is there any chance that this could maybe be dangerous?

THURSDAY: Wiles says Trump was wrong about that!

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2025

But first, the world's poorest children: Susie Wiles said many things in her eleven (11) interviews with Chris Whipple for Vanity Fair.

Given the number of deaths involved, her most significant rumination may involve the apparent "sociopath"—no, it's not a clinical term—known as Elon Musk. Here's the start of Whipple's text concerning this disaster:

The White House Chief of Staff on Trump’s Second Term (Part 1 of 2)

[...] 

From day one, Wiles had to grapple with another power center: Elon Musk.

“He is a complete solo actor,” said Wiles of Trump’s billionaire pal who led the scorched-earth blitz known as the Department of Government Efficiency. Wiles described Musk as something akin to a jacked-up Nosferatu. “The challenge with Elon is keeping up with him,” she told me. “He’s an avowed ketamine [user]. And he sleeps in a sleeping bag in the EOB in the daytime. And he’s an odd, odd duck, as I think geniuses are. You know, it’s not helpful, but he is his own person.”

Musk triggered the first true crisis of the Trump presidency and an early test for Wiles. Trump’s chief was shocked when the SpaceX founder eviscerated USAID, the United States Agency for International Development. “I was initially aghast,” Wiles told me. “Because I think anybody that pays attention to government and has ever paid attention to USAID believed, as I did, that they do very good work.”

In his executive order freezing foreign aid, Trump had decreed that lifesaving programs should be spared. Instead, they were shuttered. “When Elon said, ‘We’re doing this,’ he was already into it,” said Wiles. “And that’s probably because he knew it would be horrifying to others. But he decided that it was a better approach to shut it down, fire everybody, shut them out, and then go rebuild. Not the way I would do it.”

The passage about Musk's destruction of USAID continues at some length. Along the way, Whipple recalls what Bill Gates said about Musk's conduct:

In an interview with The Financial Times, Bill Gates remarked: “The picture of the world’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children is not a pretty one.”

With that, we return to Wiles. As it turns out, shuttering USAID's lifesaving programs isn't the way Wiles says she would have done it! Also this, according to Wiles:

"I think anybody that pays attention to government and has ever paid attention to USAID believed, as I did, that they do very good work.”

Anyone who'd paid attention thought USAID did good work? 

It may be that Wiles believes that. But we'll guess that there are plenty of people within her orbit inside the White House who did know about the lives which were at stake, but thought the minimal expense involved in those lifesaving programs made the whole thing a perfect example of wasteful government work.

We were also struck by Wiles' remarks concerning Bill Clinton. Here's the account by NBC News of what Wiles said:

Top takeaways from White House chief of staff Susie Wiles' interviews with Vanity Fair

[...] 

Wiles said she has read what she calls "the Epstein file" and said while Trump is in it, he's "not doing anything awful." She said Trump and the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein were "young, single playboys together."

Wiles disputed Trump’s statements about former President Bill Clinton and Epstein, saying, "There is no evidence” that Clinton visited one of Epstein’s islands as many as 28 times, as Trump has claimed. She also said Trump's claim that there is anything incriminating about Clinton in the files was inaccurate.

"The president was wrong about that,” Wiles said.

"The president was wrong about that?" More on this topic tomorrow—but thanks for telling us now! 

WHAT WAS "MENTAL ILLNESS?" The revulsion was universal, Rove said!

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2025

Except on MS NOW: Last evening, what's left of the sitting American president continued his lifelong flight from the realm of accurate statement.

What makes this a "lifelong" flight? From way back in December 2016, we'll let The Guardian tell the tale about Trump Tower's extra floors:

White House North–is Trump Tower the new West Wing?

[...]

The 202-metre tower opened in 1983 and took four years to build, with the help of 200 undocumented Polish construction workers (Trump denied knowledge of their employment in a 1990 court case).

Trump’s penthouse lift goes up to floor 68, but the building only has 58 stories. Trump justifies the maths on the basis of the large atrium on the ground floor, but he has a habit of exaggerating the size of his constructions. The nearby Trump World Tower has 90 advertised floors, and 70 real ones.

The misstatements have always been the norm. At the New York Times, David Sanger visits (a few of) the crazy claims from last night's shouted address:

A Bellicose Trump Points Fingers in Defending His Record on the Economy

[...]

Mr. Trump argued he cut drug prices by 400, 500 or 600 percent, all mathematical impossibilities. He claimed that inflation had dropped significantly since he became president, without mentioning that in September, the last month for which the government has numbers, it had returned to 3 percent, exactly where it was on Mr. Biden’s last weeks in office. He argued that gasoline was now under $2.50 a gallon in much of the country; his own department of energy reports it was $2.90. And he claimed there were states where gas was $1.99; in fact, no state average gas price was that low, AAA reports.

He failed to mention that the latest unemployment numbers—which were boosted by government layoffs executed by his administration—showed the unemployment rate at 4.6 percent, the highest in four years...

And so on from there. Has no one tried to tell the president that you can't reduce some stated amount by more than 100 percent? Meanwhile, a respected cardiologist, Dr. Jonathan Reitman, tweeted that he was concerned by what he saw last night:

Doctor sounds alarm after Trump, 79, gives 'manic' address

So reported The Daily Beast, as you can see here (or here). 

Dr. Reitman is a long-time, highly coherent CNN medical analyst. "No one should be happy to see the president like this," he said in one of his tweets last night, and we agree with that. 

We agree with that! That said, our current set of reports concern the astonishing way the sitting president reacted to the murder of Rob Reiner and Michele Reiner at the start of the week—first in a bizarre Truth Social post, then in a live Q-and-A.

In this morning's Wall Street Journal, long-time Republican guru Karl Rove is looking ahead to possible political disaster for the GOP. Along the way, he mentions the president's reaction to that double murder—and he himself makes a statement which he surely thought was accurate.

Sleigh bells are standard at this time of year. Rove says he's hearing a different kind:

Alarm Bells Ring, Are You Listening?

[...]

On Monday Mr. Trump grabbed the national spotlight when he decided to make a self-absorbed Truth Social post trashing Rob Reiner after he and his wife were gruesomely murdered.

This was a Hollywood couple with typical liberal Hollywood political sentiments. So what? He was a beloved television star and gifted movie director. She was a talented photographer. Friends describe them as warm, big-hearted, caring and generous.

Mr. Trump’s comments were met with universal horror and revulsion. What the president said about the Reiners didn’t diminish them. It diminished him. The adage, “if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all” is especially true when the subjects are a treasured elderly couple stabbed to death (allegedly) by their son.

Rove says the president's (astonishing) comments "were met with universal horror and revulsion." Plainly, he wasn't watching MS NOW this Monday night, where no such reaction occurred.

Fellow citizens, can we talk? Those of us in Blue America are plainly too dumb to notice, but an odd set of reactions has emanated from Blue America's cable news channel in the past several weeks.

First, MS NOW took a dive last week. The channel's performers took that dive when the sitting president, for two consecutive days, announced that Minnesota's roughly 100,000 Somali-Americans are just a bunch of "garbage" who need to be deported.

The president made those statements for two consecutive days. The "beloved colleagues" of MS NOW maintained a near-uniform silence about those poisonous sweeping assessments.

A person could imagine reason for that surprising group silence. This week, the president's astonishing reaction to the murder of the Reiners was indeed met with "universal revulsion"—everywhere except on MS NOW, where the employees uniformly looked away, saying nothing, all through Monday night.

Basically, only Rachel Maddow spoke about the president's astonishing conduct—and as we noted yesterday, this is the entirety of what our Blue nation's top genius said:

MADDOW (2/15/25): And thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. Really happy to have you here.

If things look a little bit different tonight, if the lighting seems different, if the background looks a little different, that's because I'm joining you from somewhere I almost never am. I'm in Los Angeles right now. I was here in L.A. last night—we had a big event at the Orpheum Theater in downtown L.A. with some of the people that helped us make my new podcast, Burn Order, which is about the decision to incarcerate Japanese-Americans during World War II, and the people who fought that decision, and the thriller, the investigative thriller, at the heart of that.

All six episodes of Burn Order are now out, the whole thing is out, everything's posted, free to listen to the whole series on any podcast app.

Here in L. A., there's a lot going on. There is honestly a lot of shock and anger from all sorts of different people—from people connected to show business and not—shock and anger about the murder of beloved actor and director Rob Reiner and his wife.

I will say also, a lot of just visceral revulsion about President Trump's ghoulish, really ugly, disgusting comments, sneering at Mr. Reiner's death, almost seeming to celebrate his murder.

In L.A., today is also the day that Donald Trump's deployment of National Guard troops to this city fell apart. The federalized National Guard troops were forced to leave L.A. today because of a federal court order, because what Trump did in deploying them here, according to a judge, was illegal. 

We're going to have more to come on both of those stories, and much more, tonight. But I want to start somewhere tonight that is much colder than it is here. Let's start in Minnesota, specifically about fifteen miles southwest of Minneapolis...

Maddow (possibly) seemed to say that there would be "more to come" about the president's "disgusting comments." But she never reported what the president had actually said, and she never returned to that topic at all—and from 6 o'clock right through to midnight, neither did anyone else. 

Weirdly, it was the silence about Minnesota's "garbage" pretty much all over again!

Full disclosure:

We don't expect the people who star on Blue America's corporate channel to discuss the possibility that the sitting president is in the grip of (what used to be known as) a serious "mental illness."

We don't expect the stars to do something like that. In our view, they aren't smart enough, or curious or independent enough, to be exploring such possibilities on their own. 

Also, there's a long-standing prohibition, within the mainstream press corps guild, about discussing public figures in terms of possible mental health issues or possible "mental illness." We don't expect the stars of MS NOW to bump up against basic guild dictates.

As we've noted, international medical entities seem to be moving away from the use of those terms—from the use of such terms as "mentally ill" or "mental illness." Long ago, the poobahs of the MSM agreed to a rule which forbids such discussions--and like many other rules, that rule was a very good rule until the time came when it wasn't.

We've long since reached the point where that time-honored rule is a hindrance to sane debate. We don't expect the stars of MS NOW to sacrifice their "good jobs at good [seven- or eight figure] pay" to light out for the territories and abandon that rule on their own.  

We don't expect them to endanger their "good jobs at good [seven- or eight-figure] pay" by dumping that rule on their own.

We don't expect them to do that! Also, we'd be shocked if the new president, Rebecca Kutler, decided that the time had come to discuss the possibility that the sitting president is battling a serious condition involving his (clinical) "mental health."

We'd be surprised if the boss was willing to dump the "don't talk about someone's mental health" rule. But when we see Blue America's beloved stars refusing to discuss the president's conduct at all, we find ourselves asking this:

But oh, what kind of journalism is this, which goes from bad to worse?

Has Kutler instructed the troops to avoid discussions of the president's endless astonishing conduct? We don't have the slightest idea—and as we close for today, let's be fair:

On Tuesday morning, Joe & Mika did discuss the president's astonishing comments, the day before, regarding last weekend's murders. In fact, they did so at great length. 

It seems there is no blanket prohibition against discussions like that. That said, also this:

At 4 o'clock on Monday afternoon, Nicolle Wallace and a group of four guests discussed what the president had said about the Reiner murders. 

At 4:05 p.m., at the start of her two-hour show, Wallace read the text of "the deranged [Truth Social] post" in which the president assailed the memory of the murdered Rob Reiner. A lengthy discussion followed.

We were struck by the approach taken by Wallace and her guests as they discussed the president's conduct.

On Deadline: White House, it went just as Rove has now said. The sitting president's astounding comments were indeed "met with horror and revulsion" on that MS NOW show.

From that point on, all through the night, MS NOW's stars averted their gaze from the president's conduct. What can possibly explain their own astounding behavior—their remarkable group silence?

Karl Rove described "universal revulsion" in the face of the president's comments. Plainly, he wasn't watching Blue America's "cable news" channel this past Monday night. 

Also, what did Wallace and her guests say about the president's conduct? To our eye, and to our ear, they seemed to take an unhelpful approach concerning a possible illness.

Tomorrow or Saturday: What exactly are we talking about if we're talking about an "illness?"

WEDNESDAY: We're keeping our eyes on more than one prize!

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 17, 2025

Fox News rules the cosmos: As we near the end of the year, we're keeping our eyes on the prize--more accurately, on a pair of such measures.

Morally and intellectually, the opening of last night's Gutfeld! show was deeply ugly fare. In part for that very reason, Mediaite has now filed this end-of-year report:

EXCLUSIVE: Fox News Scores Record Ratings in 2025—Rivaling Broadcast Primetime

Christmas came a little bit early for Fox News this year, with new data from Nielsen Media Research on Monday showing the cable news juggernaut enjoyed its best ratings ever for a non-election year.

Fox News averaged 2.72 million primetime viewers in 2025—up 14% year-over-year—spearheaded by Jesse Watters Primetime and Greg Gutfeld’s eponymous show, as well as network staple Sean Hannity’s long-running program. That primetime average was 80% higher than both CNN (580,000 viewers) and MS NOW (923,000) combined.

Jesse Watters had the most-watched show on cable in primetime this year, averaging 3.6 million viewers...

You can certainly do the math! In prime time, The Channel almost doubled the viewership of MS and CNN combined!

"Wait a minute," you may be saying. If Watters Primetime and Gutfeld! are tops, what happened to The Five?

Technically, The Five doesn't air in traditional "prime time." As the report by Sean James continues, the story only gets worse:

(continuing from above)
Jesse Watters had the most-watched show on cable in primetime this year, averaging 3.6 million viewers.

The Five had its best year ever, averaging 4.1 million viewers...Gutfeld! had its best year as well, averaging 3.1 million viewers at 10:00 p.m.

Beyond beating up its cable competition, Fox News also topped NBC when it came to primetime between Monday and Friday, averaging 3.2 million viewers, compared to 3.1 million viewers for The Peacock Network.

There you have it! There are the numbers for the three horsemen of this propaganda-based imitation of broadcast news, but also for the assault on the possibility of an American nation.

On the brighter side, those of us in Blue America will never be asked to think about any of this. Our imitation journalists and ersatz news orgs will know to avoid reporting statistics like these in places where we might see them!

Those are straight-ahead, objective statistics from the Neilsen people. What comes next is basically subjective—a matter of judgment.

At Mediaite, the staffers have selected the 75 "most influential" people in the news media for the past year. For reasons they explain as they go, this is the way their expanded Rushmore looks, top ten performers only:

Mediaite’s Most Influential in News Media 2025

[...]

1. The Five
2. Joe Scarborough & Mika Brzezinski
3. Megyn Kelly
4. Suzanne Scott
5. David Muir
6. Kaitlan Collins
7. Matt Drudge
8. Sean Hannity
9. Bret Baier
10. Jake Tapper

We hadn't heard Drudge's name in years! That doesn't necessarily mean that his ranking is wrong.

As you can see, Mediaite has Joe & Mika right in the second spot. They don't base that on the numbers alone. Their reasoning goes like this:

Even with Donald Trump back in the White House, America’s political power players in Washington, DC, New York City and yes, even Palm Beach and beyond, start their mornings with Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski. Whether it’s members of Congress catching the show at the gym, lobbyists watching it while grabbing coffee, or Hill staffers boning up on the news they know their bosses will be asking about, Morning Joe’s influence in political circles remains enormous and likely unparalleled.

Joe and Mika set the daily agenda for a political class scrambling to keep up with the breakneck speed of the Trump administration and a media ecosystem drowning in content and takes...

And so on from there. It isn't always how many people are watching—it's who those people are.

 (For the record, Hardball played that insider role back in the much more limited "cable news" day when Chris Matthews was helping to script the crackpot, and ultimately successful, War Against Candidate Gore.)

Back to that top ten list:

Suzanne Scott is the CEO of the Fox News Channel. For reasons which go unexplored and undiscussed, she cracks the lid on the garbage can and sends Gutfeld out there every night. Ultimately, the fault doesn't lie in the "cable news" stars. It lies in the souls of the "Unrecognizables" who put them on the air.

Blue Americans might be wondering where other Blue superstars rank. As we venture down the list, Rebecca Kutler appears at #23. Podcast historian Rachel Maddow is listed at #34.

Kutler is the new network president of the new MS NOW. We'd like to know how she's calling the shots, but what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, and the same time-honored omerta rule is honored within these guilds.

WHAT WAS "MENTAL ILLNESS?" Is President Trump "mentally ill?"

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 17, 2025

Our Blue stars didn't ask: Is the sitting president, Donald J. Trump, afflicted with some (serious) version of (what used to be referred to as) "mental illness?"

You'd almost think that we the people would actually want to know! At present, the children who pose as Blue America's journalists are happily noting the aforementioned gentleman's descent in several polls.

To appearances, the gentleman's behavior has become so disordered that some of his voters are starting to notice! But uh-oh! As our journalists gambol and play, this question goes unasked:

What might such a ("mentally ill") person decide to do if the bottom completely falls out?

Along the way in this vale of tears, two (2) best-selling books have used a certain word in discussing the person in question. One book appeared in 2017. The other appeared three years later:

The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President
Bandy Lee, M.D., M.Div. (ed.). MacMillan, 2017.

Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man
Mary L. Trump, Ph.D. Simon & Schuster, 2020.

The word in question was "dangerous." If the bottom falls out on President Trump, could he place the nation, even the world, in a state of real danger?

You'd almost think we'd want to know that! But if you thought some such thing, you were misjudging the capabilities of the species in question.

At any rate, this very Monday, there he went again! 

Last week, the gentleman ranted, for two consecutive days, about all the human "garbage" he'd spotted in Minnesota. Over the weekend, at a White House Christmas reception, he spent ten (10) minutes inventing wild claims about a terrible bite from a terrible snake in Peru. 

What was the point of that extremely strange story? The president ended up pretending that a book about this terrible bite had become the nation's number one best seller—all because he, President Donald J. Trump, had mentioned the book on Truth Social. 

All self-praise to the glorious Trump! That was the obvious point of the fantasized snake bite story.

That said, the president burned ten minutes away in that lunatic way—at a Christmas reception, no less! And on Monday, there he went again, with a pair of lunatic declarations in which he savaged the memory of a widely admired public figure who had been murdered, over the weekend, by his own disordered son.

It was the "garbage," followed by the snake, then on to the crackpot double denigration of the murdered Rob Reiner and his wife. This followed a steady succession of lunatic behaviors over the past few months, most of which have been disappeared by Blue American "journalists."

In previous weeks, the person in question had dropped tons of poop from an airplane down onto his subjects' heads. He had told the world that the Democratic Party was actually "the party of Satan."

He kept making lunatic claims about a succession of policy matters—lunatic claims he kept repeating after endless public corrections of his ludicrous assertions. Within the past few weeks, he had taken to insulting a stream of female journalists when they asked obvious questions at official press events.

Could there perhaps be room for concern about these strange behaviors? A respected physician, Dr. Vin Gupta, had now offered a public statement alleging "age-related cognitive decline."

Also, a respected psychologist, Dr. John Gartner, had recently cited a second point of concern. Headline included, a report by The Daily Beast started off like this:

We Can See Trump Is in Gross Decline: Psychologist

A top psychologist has warned that 79-year-old Donald Trump’s increasingly erratic behavior likely points toward a personality disorder being rapidly worsened by dementia.

“When people develop dementia, they become the worst versions of themselves,” Dr. John Gartner—a therapist, activist, author, and former professor at Johns Hopkins—told Joanna Coles Sunday on the latest episode of The Daily Beast Podcast.

Gartner has previously shared with the show how he sees the aging president’s verbal gaffes, growing confusion, and frequent memory lapses as “clinical signs of dementia,” which have in turn exacerbated what he believes to be Trump’s underlying “malignant narcissism.”

“Whatever personality issues or problems [people with dementia] have, [those issues] begin to deteriorate and they become even more crude, disorganized, aggressive, confused versions of that personality disorder,” Gartner added. 

So the pair of respected medical specialists had now said.

On Monday, the president's pair of statements were so bizarre that a stream of members of MAGA world had rushed to object to his behavior. On this campus, we turned to the giants of MS NOW, waiting to see their analysis of what had now occurred. 

We might as well have tried to catch the wind! At 9 p.m. on Monday night, Rachel Maddow appeared on our giant screen.

Rightly or wrongly, Maddow has long been accepted as Blue America's resident genius. After accepting the throw from The Weeknight's three co-hosts, she started her weekly program in the familiar way:

MADDOW (2/15/25): And thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. Really happy to have you here.

If things look a little bit different tonight, if the lighting seems different, if the background looks a little different, that's because I'm joining you from somewhere I almost never am. I'm in Los Angeles right now. I was here in L.A. last night, we had a big event at the Orpheum Theater in downtown L.A. with some of the people that helped us make my new podcast, Burn Order, which is about the decision to incarcerate Japanese-Americans during World War II, and the people who fought that decision, and the thriller, the investigative thriller, at the heart of that.

"I I I I I I I," our young analysts instantly cried. Skillfully, we calmed them down. The full open went like this:

MADDOW (2/15/25): And thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. Really happy to have you here.

If things look a little bit different tonight, if the lighting seems different, if the background looks a little different, that's because I'm joining you from somewhere I almost never am. I'm in Los Angeles right now. I was here in L.A. last night, we had a big event at the Orpheum Theater in downtown L.A. with some of the people that helped us make my new podcast, Burn Order, which is about the decision to incarcerate Japanese-Americans during World War II, and the people who fought that decision, and the thriller, the investigative thriller, at the heart of that.

All six episodes of Burn Order are now out, the whole thing is out, everything's posted, free to listen to the whole series on any podcast app.

Here in L. A., there's a lot going on. There is honestly a lot of shock and anger from all sorts of different people—from people connected to show business and not—shock and anger about the murder of beloved actor and director Rob Reiner and his wife.

I will say also, a lot of just visceral revulsion about President Trump's ghoulish, really ugly, disgusting comments, sneering at Mr. Reiner's death, almost seeming to celebrate his murder.

In L.A., today is also the day that Donald Trump's deployment of National Guard troops to this city fell apart. The federalized National Guard troops were forced to leave L.A. today because of a federal court order, because what Trump did in deploying them here,  according to a judge, was illegal. We're going to have more to come on both of those stories, and much more, tonight.

But I want to start somewhere tonight that is much colder than it is here. Let's start in Minnesota, specifically about fifteen miles southwest of Minneapolis...

By now, the timestamp said 9:02 p.m. For better or worse, we'd now heard everything Maddow was going to say about that day's stunningly strange behavior by the sitting president.

But wait, the true believer will say. As anyone can see, Maddow had seemed to say that we "were going to have more" about the story in question!

And yes, we agree-—that is what she'd seemed to say. But the bizarre new behavior by President Trump was never mentioned again during the rest of the hour.

Maddow never came back to the president's latest disordered behavior—but she had already said more about that disordered behavior than other hosts on MS NOW were going to say that night.

All across the fruited plain, that latest bizarre behavior was being discussed this day. This latest behavior had been so weird that one MAGA stalwart after another had stepped forward to voice concern and disgust about the president's conduct.

Our question:

Is the sitting president "mentally ill" in some potentially dangerous way? Over the weekend, part of the answer had seemed clear to us as we watched him rattle on about that dreadful snake. But Blue America's journalists and academics have made one thing abundantly clear:

Given the limitations of our species, they seem to be unable to see what is right there before them. Or they're simply unwilling to report what they see, given their blind obedience to tribal Storyline and to corporate dicta.

On this campus, we're inclined to pity the man who is (severely) mentally ill. But why on earth would we do that? Also, what happened at 4 p.m. that day, when Nicolle Wallace and three guests did attempt to discuss the president's bizarre behavior in the wake of that double murder?

Is President Trump a public danger? At 4 p.m. that day, Wallace and her guests attempted to tackle a version of that question.

After that, silence prevailed on MS NOW, right on through to midnight. Last week, they disappeared his remarks about "garbage." Now, as the rest of the nation condemned his remarks, they weirdly all disappeared this!

Is President Trump a public danger? Perhaps by decree from the channel's new suits, the obedient children of MS NOW don't seem to be willing to ask!

Tomorrow: The politics of mercy