THURSDAY: When Martinez told her story this week...

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 2026

...the glorious Times took a pass: It's amazing to see how little the American public has been told about Charles Exum.

As best we can tell from the paper's search engine, Exum's behavior in Chicago last year has never been the subject of a New York Times news report. On January 11, his conduct was briefly described by Michelle Goldberg, in this informative opinion column. 

What follows is the sum total of what an avid Times reader has likely read about Exum's behavior. Warning! In this short account, Goldberg seems to have misstated several points concerning what Exum did

By Killing Renee Good, ICE Sent a Message to Us All

[...]

It’s entirely possible that had [Renee] Good lived, the Trump administration might have tried to prosecute her. That’s essentially what happened to Marimar Martinez, a U.S. citizen in Chicago, in October. Martinez was in her car trying to warn people about ICE when she collided with a Border Patrol vehicle. Federal officials claimed she “rammed” a car driven by the agent Charles Exum, while her lawyers say he sideswiped her. Exum then got out of his car and shot her five times.

Martinez survived, only for the Justice Department to charge her with assaulting a federal officer. Her lawyers soon discovered that Exum had been boasting about the shooting in text messages. In one, he wrote, “I fired 5 rounds, and she had 7 holes. Put that in your book boys.” In another, he said, “Sweet. My fifteen mins of fame. Lmao.” The Justice Department ended up dropping the case before even more messages could be revealed.

Exum’s giddy sadism shouldn’t have been surprising; it reflects the culture the administration is encouraging among its immigration enforcers. In one ICE recruiting ad, an agent mans a mounted gun atop some sort of militarized vehicle, with the words, “Destroy the flood.” It was a reference to the video game Halo, where players must kill hostile space aliens. Another shows sword-wielding knights with the words, “The enemies are at the gates.”

Back in October, up in Chicago, Exum shot Marimar Martinez. In fact, he shot her five times, producing seven separate bullet holes—seven separate wounds. 

Goldberg correctly said that federal officials had initially accused Martinex of "ramming" Exum's car. Let the record also show this:

In a fleeting reference to this incident in a "Visual Investigations" piece, a team of Times reporters said that Exum later testified that no "ramming" had occurred. He said the "collision" in question had in fact been "side to side."

Also this:

Back in real time, the struggling Washington Post devoted more attention to this remarkable incident than did the more glorious Times. In this news report—"Federal judge dismisses case against Chicago woman shot by Border Patrol"—the Post reported that Martinez had also been charged with attempted murder, not just with "assaulting a federal officer."

In November, the government dropped all charges. No explanations provided!

All in all, whatever! In her column, Goldberg referred to Exum's "giddy sadism," and there seems to be no doubt—he did send those giddy text messages, in which he did in fact seem to boast about shooting Martinez five times, producing the seven bullet holes about which he seemed to be boasting.

On Tuesday, Martinez, who is 30 years old, told this story from her point of view, right there in Washington, D.C., "at a public forum held by congressional Democrats." Her astonishing story was ignored by the Times in this brief report about that forum. 

Once again, the Washington Post outperformed the Times in its own report about this Tuesday's forum.

As part of our struggling nation's lore, "Frankie she shot Albert—she shot him three or four times." In this more recent American incident, Exum shot Martinez a full five times—and the federal government then walked away from the apparently bogus charges it had initially filed.

Even after what has happened in Minneapolis, our greatest Blue American newspaper took a pass on Martinez's story in this week's news report. Lawrence O'Donnell made no such mistake. More on that tomorrow.

To our eye, O'Donnell won the Pulitzer Prize Tuesday night. Last night, sad to say, the gentleman gave it back.

Frankie she shot Albert: To hear Mike Seeger tell this story, you can just click here. His telling begins in the time-honored way:

"Frankie was a good girl—everybody knows."

SONG(S) SUNG BLUE: When Bouie pictured Trump's Waterloo...

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 2026

...French said, Not so fast: European literature is said to begin with the war poem known as the Iliad. Midway through the ancient text, Achilles is sulking in his tents, down along the shore.

Insulted by Agamemnon, Achilles is refusing to participate in the Achaeans' attempt to sack Troy. Odysseus is sent to win this mightiest warrior back.

It's a sobering assignment. In translation, we moderns are told this:

"Ajax and Odysseus made their way at once where the battle lines of breakers crash and drag, praying hard to the god who moves and shakes the earth that they might bring the proud heart of Achilles round with speed and ease." 

No one is eager to confront this mighty warrior's rage. But when they arrive at Achilles' tents, this is what they find:

Reaching the Myrmidon shelters and their ships,
they found him there, delighting his heart now,
plucking strong and clear on the fine lyre—
beautifully carved, its silver bridge set firm—
he won from the spoils when he razed Eetion's city.
Achilles was lifting his spirits with it now,
singing the famous deeds of fighting heroes.
Across from him Patroclus sat alone, in silence,
waiting for Aeacus' son to finish with his song.

As beloved Patroclus looks on, mighty Achilles is lifting his spirits by singing a tribal song! This was all happening down by the shore, "where the breakers crash and drag."

Over this past weekend, it may have been a bit like that at the New York Times. In his new column for the Times, Jamelle Bouie almost seemed to be singing a (familiar) song sung Blue:

Minneapolis May Be Trump’s Gettysburg

That was the headline on Bouie's column. A separate column by Ezra Klein seemed to suggest this same pleasing notion:

The misbehavior of federal troops in Minnesota might be this president's Gettysburg—perhaps even his Waterloo!

We Blues have sung this song again and again, dating all the way back to 2015. In June of that year, Candidate Trump's peculiar remarks about John McCain were going to bring his campaign to an end. 

Later, we heard the same claim about the crude remarks the fellow had offered on the Access Hollywood videotape.

Eleven years later, we Blues almost seem to be singing that same song all over again. But at that very same New York Times, David French had a different view.

David French is nobody's fool. His personal history isn't Blue, but he's thoroughly NeverTrump.

His new column poses a terrible warning—a warning worthy of Cassandra, daughter of Troy's King Priam. Headline included, his column starts like this:

This Is Not a Drill

It’s only February, and the November elections are already in peril.

When I think back to the days and weeks before Jan. 6, 2021, one thing that’s clear is that many of us suffered from a failure of imagination. We knew President Trump’s lies and conspiracy mongering were dangerous, but it’s hard to think of a single person who predicted that a MAGA mob would storm the Capitol.

Very few people anticipated the sheer scale and scope of the effort to overturn the election or that an incredible 147 Republicans would vote not to certify Joe Biden’s clear and unambiguous presidential victory. We did not realize that they would go along with something that plainly corrupt and dangerous.

We must not make that mistake again.

Bouie was picturing a Waterloo—but French was aggressively saying this:

Fellow scribe, not so fast!

November's elections "are already in peril," French said at the start of his column. In the handful of days since his column appeared, his warning has emerged as prophetic.

What the Hellespont was the columnist talking about? Given the president's declining approval ratings, how could the indolent forces of Blue America fail to win the day in November's elections?

How could we fail to win back the House? Based on a bit of extremely strange recent conduct, French proceeded to lay it out. Eventually, he imagined this state of play as this year's elections draw near:

[T]his is not a normal election year.

Now, in October, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which rapidly expanded throughout the year, is running large-scale operations in Democratic-controlled cities. Hundreds if not thousands more American citizens have been caught in the dragnet. So have thousands of lawful residents.

Citizens, lawful residents and undocumented immigrants alike have been shackled and transported to brutal detention facilities in Texas and Florida.

Despite repeated court orders holding that federal officials cannot stop, much less detain, anyone purely on the basis of perceived ethnicity, the stops are still happening on a daily basis in cities across the United States.

That's the way it will be, French prophesies, by the time of November's elections. In his column, he pictures a state of play in which nonwhite citizens are afraid to go the polls because the polls are under federal guard. 

He offers much more detail in his dystopian musing. Along the way, he says this:

"The horrifying thing about our current moment is that not a single aspect of the scenario above is far-fetched. In fact, some of it is already happening."

Question:

Can something like that actually happen here? When French's column appeared, he cited the recent, extremely peculiar federal raid on the Fulton County election center, with Tulsi Gabbard on the scene, heroically directing the commander's federal troops. 

Massive volumes of records were carted off in support of the president's undying claim that he actually won the 2020 election. As French notes in his column, the sitting president is so delusional that he has even revived the lunatic "Italian satellite theory," according to which "Italian military satellites hacked the 2020 election."

Yes, that's correct. Even that!

Many observers were able to see the Fulton County raid as a threat to basic American process. That said, could French's detailed prophesy actually turn out to be true? 

Sadly, this:

In the handful of days since the column appeared, the president has angrily said that we ought to "nationalize" this year's elections. And then, Steve Bannon delivered the coup de grace on his WarRoom program.

As reported by Mediaite, here's what the gentleman said:

You’re damn right we’re gonna have ICE surround the polls come November. We’re not gonna sit here and allow you to steal the country again. And you can whine and cry and throw your toys out of the pram all you want, but we will never again allow an election to be stolen.

In this subsequent report, Politico records Bannon's further statements along these lines. Yesterday, the unusual fellow said this:

President Trump has to nationalize the election. You’ve got to put—not just, I think, ICE—you’ve got to call up the 82nd and 101st Airborne [Divisions] on the Insurrection Act. You’ve got to get around every poll and make sure only people with IDs, people … actually registered to vote and people that are United States citizens vote in this election

Could this actually happen here? Sadly, of course it could!

We've offered you reports about Bannon from Mediaite and Politico. We've done so for the following reason:

As best we can tell from the Times search engine, the New York Times, to this very minute, hasn't reported what Bannon has said.

In the end, Achilles abandoned his lyre and returned to the battle. We don't expect behavior like that from singers like Bouie and Klein.

We close for today with one final point:

As these disturbing events unfold, our major journalists still refuse to report and discuss the fairly obvious state of affairs which is sitting right there before them. 

A guild rule tells them that they mustn't ever discuss such obvious possibilities. Obedient to a fault, they sleepwalk into a frightening future, singing a familiar song sung Blue and thereby lifting our spirits.

Overthrows have happened before. All in all, in the end, we would offer this:

Our species wasn't built for this line of work. That fact has been proven before.

Tomorrow: Lawrence O'Donnell returns his prize

This afternoon: Who the Sam Hill is Charles Exum? Don't ask the New York Times!

WEDNESDAY: Unrecognizable falls off the wagon!

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2026

Behar a dog, he says: We don't watch Gutfeld! every night. Watching the show is a painful activity, but someone at one of our major news orgs—New York Times, come on down!—should be monitoring this extremely strange, prime time "cable new" program on a nightly basis.

We don't watch every night. Still, we recently said it was our impression that the program's miscreant host had abandoned one of his most common practices:

We said it seemed that he had stopped comparing the female hosts of The View to cattle, horses, elephants and pigs, but also to whales and dogs and explicitly to "livestock."

On balance, Greg Gutfeld seems to possibly be some version of incel-adjacent. Without question, his routine conduct suggests a remarkably throwback loathing of women—an attitude many others would quickly describe as misogyny.

He surrounds himself with four-member panels of ideological stooges who experts sometimes describe as "Unrecognizables." Last evening, this was the lineup:

Gutfeld!: February 3, 2026
Tyrus: former professional "wrestler"
Emily Compagno: former head cheerleader, Oakland Raiders
Greg Gutfeld: host
Joe Machi: well-intentioned comedian
Katie Miller: wife of Stephen Miller

No, we aren't making that up. The previous night, the collection may have been worse:

Gutfeld!: February 2, 2026
Tyrus: former professional "wrestler"
Emily Compagno: perpetually furious fast-talker
Greg Gutfeld: 61-year old host
Michael Malice: that's the pen name he has chosen
Dave Landau: comedian

In fairness to major Blue American orgs, it would be hard to provide a critique of what occurs on this extremely peculiar program. 

On the other hand, the program's fatuous topic selection, mixed with its D-minus level of political analysis and the fury with which its panelists express their perfectly choreographed views, makes it a fascinating sample of the moral and intellectual life which seems be animate some part of the ongoing MAGA revolt.

If we were to characterize the program's content, we'd focus on its increasingly mega-BEEPed language, mixed with its undisguised apparent misogyny. We'd also offer this note:

There are plenty of fully legitimate Red American complaints concerning the recent conduct of Blue America. For example, discussions on The View are often less than ideal—but Greg Gutfeld focuses exclusively on the claim that the show's five female co-hosts are too ugly and too fat, and that they therefore make him think of cattle and dogs.

There are plenty of fully legitimate complaints about the conduct of Blue America. Gutfeld! is marked by the expletive-laden, dimwitted way its participants pretend to explore them.

Long story short:

Last night, the program's perpetually furious, poop-obsessed host finally fell off the wagon! At 10:01, one minute in—that would be 7:01 on the coast—he offered this as the third of his short collection of opening jokes:

GUTFELD (2/3/26): Pharmaceutical companies are developing an Ozempic appetite suppression drug for dogs. 

And it's testing well! Joy Behar has completely stopped eating her own poop.

AUDIENCE: [Cheers, applause]

Yes, that's what this idiot said. Of course, as soon as he said "appetite" and "dogs," everyone knew where the corporate nut-ball was going. 

The reference to poop was an extra. On major Fox News Channel programs, everyone else is paid to pretend that this nut-ball's behavior makes sense.

The program went downhill after that. Monday's program may have been even uglier and dumber, but as of 10:01 last night, there he had gone again!

This very strange person is 61 years of age! Which is stranger:

The fact that he and his followers comport themselves this way every weekday night? Or the fact that no major news org in Blue America has ever tried to publish an accurate account of the very strange behavior offered each night on this, the third most-watched "cable news" program in our rapidly failing nation?

We suspected his owner had told him to stop. Last night, the fellow broke loose.

SONG(S) SUNG BLUE: O'Donnell wins the Pulitzer Prize!

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2026

Also, the president's Waterloo: Last evening, starting at 10 o'clock, Lawrence O'Donnel spent an hour winning the Pulitzer Prize.

We refer to the Pulitzer Prize for Not Being Asleep at The Wheel While Being Powder Blue. Before we describe O'Donnell's performance, let's return to one of the columns which appeared, over the weekend, at the New York Times.

As we noted in Monday's report, we thought we heard a familiar song as we read a few of those columns. In one column, Jamelle Bouie seemed to be dreaming a pleasant dream about a certain president's recent drop in the polls.

"Minneapolis May Be Trump’s Gettysburg," the headline on the column said. The president's current decline may be his Gettysburg—perhaps even his Waterloo!

We thought we heard a familiar old song sung Blue. We thought we possibly heard that same song in the new column by Ezra Klein.

"Trump Has Overwhelmed Himself," the headline said on that column. 

At this site, we recalled the way Candidate Trump had supposedly doomed himself with what he said about John McCain! Also, we recalled the way he had doomed himself with what he said to Billy Bush on that Access Hollywood videotape!

We Blues! We've been singing that song of easy escape since at least 2015. As we read those two columns—even as we read this guest essay by Ruth Ben-Ghiat—we thought we might be hearing the newest version of that same old tribal song.

(At one point, we even flashed on On The Beach, the four major stars 1959 film about the last few months of human life after a nuclear war. That's the danger we apparently saw in the revival of that pleasing old song.)

Will reaction to the fatal shooting of Michael Pretti prove to be the downfall of the sitting president? Everything is possible! 

Without question, that decline could point the way to victory by Democrats in this year's congressional elections. But what happens after that?

Before we consider O'Donnell's performance, let's turn to several striking comments in the three columns we've mentioned. We'll start with the column by Bouie, in which he offers this portrait of MAGA defeat:

Minneapolis May Be Trump’s Gettysburg

[...]

The result was a catastrophic defeat for the Confederacy. Lee lost the initiative and would spend the rest of the war fighting on the defensive, unable to wage another strategic campaign. The Confederacy would not win foreign recognition, leaving it helpless against a Union blockade. And even with the tremendous loss of life—the Union Army suffered more than 23,000 casualties over three days of battle—the Northern public would be reinvigorated by victory, ready to continue the fight.

ICE and C.B.P. still roam the streets, and Trump’s authoritarian aspirations have not dimmed. But surveying the wreckage of Operation Metro Surge—of this reactionary administration’s crushing defeat at the hands of another band of tenacious Northerners—it does look to me like MAGA’s Gettysburg.

Everything is possible (at least until it isn't)! That said, that sounds a bit like wishful thinking. We almost thought we heard the lilt of a very old tribal song.

Full disclosure!  Assuming our scheduled elections take place this fall, MAGA may well get crushed—but President Trump will remain in the Oval Office! And in her balanced, academic presentation, Professor Ben-Ghiat makes a significant claim:

History Shows Trump’s Worst Impulses May Backfire on Him

[...]

“I follow my instincts, and I am never wrong,” said the Italian Fascist dictator Mussolini, shortly before he invaded Ethiopia in 1935. That war and Italy’s ensuing occupation initially made him popular at home, further inflating his ego, but eventually contributed to the bankruptcy of the Italian state.

[...]

It is well documented that strongmen are at their most dangerous when they feel threatened. That is why, as popular discontent with the Trump administration’s actions deepens, Americans should brace for heightened militarized domestic repression and more imperialist aggression abroad.

"I am never wrong," Mussolini said. President Trump makes similar statements pretty much every day of the week.

Could a type of (clinically diagnosable) delusion be present when he makes such grandiose claims? We can't answer that question, but Ben-Ghiat makes a claim which we ourselves have suggested in the past:

Strongmen are at their most dangerous when they feel threatened!

If MAGA does get mauled this November, how might the sitting president react? It would be a peculiar type of Gettysburg which led our struggling nation to "heightened militarized domestic repression and more imperialist aggression abroad."

It seemed to us—we could be wrong!—that Bouie wasn't recognizing the full sweep of the possibilities at this dangerous time. Meanwhile, Ezra Klein, like Bouie, is very smart—but we thought the highlighted assertion was flatly, baldly inaccurate:

Trump Has Overwhelmed Himself

[...]

This is a presidency that is, by any measure, failing. Trump is unpopular; his brutality and his tariffs have turned immigration and affordability, once among of his strongest issues, into liabilities. Trump’s opposition is increasingly united and mobilized; Democrats are besting Republicans in elections all across the country and disciplined, brave, beautiful protest movements have emerged in the cities ICE has sought to occupy.

From what planet does that assertion hail? By the apparent "measure" of the sitting president, his presidency isn't failing at all On the planet where he seems to live, his presidency continues to be a miraculous success. 

(Clinical) delusion being what it is, we ourselves don't doubt the possibility that the sitting president truly believes his claims about his astounding success. For example, we don't doubt the possibility that he really does believe that he won the 2020 election! 

Does he really believe such things? On this campus, we have no idea, in part because Klein and Bouie have joined the rest of the guild in agreeing that medical specialists must never be asked to share what they know about the workings of (diagnosable) "delusional disorder."

We Blues! When we sing our tribal songs, echoing Achilles of old, we agree that such possibilities must not impinge on our tribal pleasure. We'll suggest that you ponder this:

As you may know, "Song Sung Blue" was and is one of Neil Diamond's most popular songs. To see him perform it, click here.

(We remember our conversation, long ago, with our friend, the comedian [NAME WITHHELD], in which we savants agreed—Diamond could sing any page in the phone book and make it sound profound. It's an amazing performance skill—a skill of high persuasion.)

In his popular "Song Sung Blue," Diamond was talking about a different kind of blue song. But in his lyrics, one key phrase almost seems to ring a bell in the present day:

Song Sung Blue

[...]

Funny thing, but you can sing it with a cry in your voice
And before you know it you get to feeling good
You simply got no choice...

Before you know it, you get to feeling good! Seeking such a type of deliverance is a well-known human tendency. 

We still haven't mentioned the way O'Donnell won the Pulitzer Prize last night. Also, we haven't had time to comment on the pathetic omissions which can be ascribed to this morning's report in the New York Times:

Also, we haven't mentioned that other column from the New York Times, the column by David French. That column also appeared this weekend. Yesterday, it appeared in print editions of the Times.

Blue Americans won't get to "feelin' good" in the course of French's column. French says the signs are abundantly clear—the sitting president isn't planning to permit a normal set of congressional elections to take place this year.

French could always be wrong, of course—but he could also be right. We recently read this nostrum somewhere:

Strongmen are at their most dangerous when they feel threatened.

Attention, Blues! Our journalistic elites have failed us every step of the way. That dates all the way back to the invention of the Whitewater pseudo-scandal (now long forgotten), followed by the twenty-month war against Candidate Gore.

That said, what happens in the mainstream press corps' guild stays inside the guild—and every guild member knows he or she must abide by that rule. 

We thought we heard a song sung Blue. Is there any possible chance that we're being ill-served again?

Tomorrow: What Lawrence O'Donnell (and only O'Donnell) correctly and angrily did

This afternoon: Gutfeld, off the wagon

In our view, a brilliant self-portrait: We never were Neil Diamond fans. But has anyone ever defined himself more brilliantly, or more concisely, than he did right here?

I Am, I Said

[...]

Did you ever read about the frog
Who dreamed of being a king
And then became one?
Well except for the names
And a few other changes,
If you talk about me,
The story's the same one...

Wow! Translation, within the context of the song:

Today, I'm a giant star in L.A.—but that's not who I actually am! 

POSTPONEMENT: Subway succumbs to eight inches of snow!

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 2026

Also, goodbye Kennedy Center: True story! 

Last Friday, we never made it to the medical mission. Making a long and frigid story short, we were wrong when we assumed that it doesn't snow in the subway. 

Once they determined that no trains would be running, further chaos ensued.

As a result, we're to the mission today on a makeup assignment. We won't be posting today, not even about this essay in the Washington Post:

The grave risk of Trump’s Kennedy Center shutdown

Last fall, workers at the Kennedy Center slapped a coat of white paint over the gold-hued columns that connect its upper terrace to its plaza, apparently at the direction of the man who effectively appointed himself chair of the center’s board, President Donald Trump.

It was a seemingly small intervention from a man who fancies himself a connoisseur of architecture, but of course, it made no architectural or visual sense. Now, the all-white columns disappear against the building’s white marble cladding, and so too the lovely symbolism of the narrow, modernist metal supports, which look more like the strings of a musical instrument than the traditional, heavy stone supports of a classical structure.

Now there is grave concern from artists and patrons that the institution itself may disappear. Sunday night, Trump announced a two-year closure for renovation beginning in July, which sounds ominously like a complete rebuild of the structure. Trump added Monday that he wasn’t “ripping it down” but then went on to describe a process that could tear the structure down to its steel framing.

Given Trump’s sudden demolition of the White House’s East Wing in October, and the mix of vague promises and bombastic language in his social media post, which promises “a new and spectacular Entertainment Complex,” it certainly seems possible that the 1971 building, designed architect Edward Durrell Stone, could be partially or completely erased...

And so on from there.

The column was written by Philip Kennicott, the paper's long-time art and architecture critic. A letter expressing a similar concern—"Watch for another wrecking ball"—has been published by the New York Times. The letter comes from a former chief editor of Architecture Magazine.

Is it possible that these fears are well-founded? We don't have the slightest idea. We can tell you this:

These peculiar events will keep occurring until we're prepared to discuss what seems to be sitting there right before us. Of course, these peculiar events would almost surely continue to happen even if we did decide to have that discussion.

This is the silence we've chosen. All in all, it seems like the best we can do.

MONDAY: Morning Joe played the videotape!

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 2026

Almost surely, Fox & Friends Weekend won't: It's true! Joe Scarborough did start today's Morning Joe with what could be called "screams of rage."

He was playing the remarkable videotape of the latest bizarre behavior by ICE. As part of this report, Mediate reports the bulk of what he said and provides the Morning Joe tape:

Joe Scarborough Screams in Rage Watching ‘Idiot’ ICE ‘Thugs’ Chase, Pull Guns on Woman

Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough screamed at the camera, trashing ICE as an “undisciplined paramilitary force” as he watched back shocking footage of the moment federal agents chased and surrounded an unarmed Minneapolis woman in her vehicle with their weapons drawn.

The woman is seen in the video from St. Peter, Minnesota, calling police as she’s being pursued by the agents on January 29 after reportedly observing and recording their actions.

As the woman requests help from police and gives her location, the agents’ red vehicle cuts her off, and officers step out to demand she exit her car.

And so on, at length, from there, with no lack of furious behavior involving threats from very large guns. The fuller story of this remarkable incident is provided by Minnesota Public Radio if you simply click here.

St. Peter police chief intervened and got federal agents to release resident, sources say

MPR News has learned that the police chief in the small southern Minnesota city of St. Peter intervened Thursday to prevent federal immigration agents from taking a local resident into detention, although the city of St. Peter denied the intervention in a statement Saturday.

And so on from there. We offer one additional thought:

That seems to be the kind of behavior many Minneapolis residents have witnessed in recent weeks. Can we tell you who won't be witnessing this latest bit of videotape? 

Almost surely, viewers of Fox & Friends Weekend will never see that tape. Neither will viewers of other programs on the Fox News Channel.

Why are people protesting in Minneapolis? As we noted in Saturday's report, Hurt, Campos-Duffy and Jenkins answered that question for Red American viewers on that day's Fox & Friends Weekend. The people were out there protesting in frigid temperatures because they're paid, viewers were told, and because they're "a little bit crazy."

That is the embarrassing way those three friends behave on the air. On Sunday morning, they continued along with that Song Sung Red, but we leave you with an obvious question:

Were some people in Minneapolis protesting last week because they've seen federal agents behaving in similar ways? Or because they've heard about such bizarre behavior? Or because they've seen the videotape?

We'll guess that the answer is yes! That said, viewers of Fox & Friends Weekend aren't likely to see that videotape. That very much isn't a "song sung Red." On programs like Fox & Friends Weekend, the songs involve different events.

Newspapers like the New York Times should be reporting the way our two Americas, Red and Blue, are exposed to different information and to different ideas—and to different pieces of videotape. This is a very basic part of our failing modern politics.

It's a basic part of our crumbling society's ongoing societal meltdown. For reasons only they can explain, most news orgs don't want to go there.

SONG(S) SUNG BLUE: Are we hearing the latest "song sung Blue?"

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 2026

We may not agree with its message: With the release of additional Epstein files, the stumblebum conduct continued. 

That said, was this really stumblebum conduct? Or might it have been a gesture of contempt from within an undeclared "silent secession?" Let's hear from the Wall Street Journal:

Epstein Files Release Exposes Names of at Least 43 Victims, WSJ Review Finds

The Justice Department exposed the names of dozens of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims, including many who haven’t shared their identities publicly or were minors when they were abused by the notorious sex offender.

A review of 47 victims’ full names on Sunday found that 43 of them were left unredacted in files that were made public by the government on Friday, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. Several women’s full names appeared more than 100 times in the files.

Could they really have been that inept? Or was that just the latest gesture?

Whatever the answer to that question might be, the madness has continued unabated. With respect to Rep. Omar, the president quickly returned to the practice of calling for—well, we'll let Mediaite explain:

Trump Rages At Ilhan Omar In Early Morning Rant Days After Attack—Demands Sending Her To Jail Or ‘Back’ To Africa

President Donald Trump attacked Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) in an early morning rant suggesting she be jailed or “sent back” to Africa just days after she was attacked onstage.

And so on from there. In a somewhat similar gesture, he announced, early this morning, that he may sue celebrity host Trevor Noah because of the bad thing he said:

Trump Aims Next Lawsuit at Trevor Noah Over ‘Defamatory’ Epstein Joke at Grammys: ‘Get Ready Noah, I’m Going To Have Some Fun With You!’

President Donald Trump said he is going to sue “pathetic” Trevor Noah after he made a “false and defamatory” joke about the president hanging out with dead sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein while hosting the Grammy Awards on Sunday night.

Trump went off on Noah in a Truth Social post at 1:01 a.m. on Monday.

And so on from there. 

More accurately, the president only said that he may decide to sue Noah. For the record, he returned to his "George Slopadopolus" construct in the course of this post:

Ask Little George Slopadopolus, and others, how that all worked out. Also ask CBS! Get ready Noah, I’m going to have some fun with you!

It was actually Little George Slopadopolus to whom his post referred.

Have recent events in Minneapolis damaged the president's political standing? It seems that they actually have! But after replacing Bovino with Homan, the president continued along on his rather unusual way.

Consider this surprising announcement, to cite one example:

Trump Drops Big News About His ‘Trump Kennedy Center’—It’s Closing For 2 Years

In a lengthy Truth Social post Sunday, President Donald Trump announced that his renovation plans for the Kennedy Center For The Performing Arts will involve closing the facility for a full two years.

And so on from there. Will "Kennedy" still be part of the name by the time the renovations are done? 

Regarding those naming rights, we wouldn't bet one way or the other. Meanwhile, also this construction project, according to this report in Saturday's Washington Post:

Trump wants to build a 250-foot-tall arch, dwarfing the Lincoln Memorial

The White House stands about 70 feet tall. The Lincoln Memorial, roughly 100 feet. The triumphal arch President Donald Trump wants to build would eclipse both if he gets his wish.

Trump has grown attached to the idea of a 250-foot-tall structure overlooking the Potomac River, according to two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe his comments, a scale that has alarmed some architectural experts who initially supported the idea of an arch but expected a far smaller one.

[...]

Trump has considered smaller versions of the arch, including 165-foot-high and 123-foot-high designs he shared at a dinner last year. But he has favored the largest option, arguing that its sheer size would impress visitors to Washington, and that “250 for 250” makes the most sense, the people said.

Of course! You always design the height of a project based on how many years it has been!

The president tore down the East Wing in order to build a ballroom; the ballroom just keeps getting bigger. So too, it seems, with the triumphal arch. 

And yet, the most remarkable post-Minneapolis walk-back moment would almost surely be this:

FBI Raids Georgia Election Office in Probe Related to 2020 Voter Fraud

The FBI has raided a Georgia election hub as part of an investigation into 2020 election fraud, Fox News Digital reported on Wednesday.

Agents were seen entering the Fulton County Election Hub and Operation Center just outside of Atlanta on Wednesday in an operation related to the 2020 election, the outlet reported. A law enforcement official later confirmed to Reuters that a search warrant was executed at the facility.

President Donald Trump has claimed repeatedly—and without evidence—that the 2020 election, which he lost to Joe Biden, was stolen and rigged against him.

More than five years later, this madness hasn't stopped! Tulsi Gabbard was on the scene—and also, there was this:

Trump Revives #Italygate—The Weirdest 2020 Election Conspiracy of Them All

In the middle of a late-night online posting spree on Wednesday, President Donald Trump resurrected what may be the most bizarre conspiracy theory to emerge from the aftermath of the 2020 election: the idea that the vote was stolen in a globe-spanning covert operation involving Italian military satellites, U.S. intelligence agencies, and China.

Between posts declaring former President Barack Obama a “traitor” and inaccurate claims Walmart is shutting down in California, the president reshared a screengrab of an X post to his 11.6 million followers on Truth Social alleging that “Italian officials at [defense contractor] Leonardo SpA used military satellites to help hack U.S. voting machines, flipping votes from Trump to Biden using CIA-developed tools like Hammer and Scorecard.”

“China reportedly coordinated the whole operation,” the post claimed, while “the CIA oversaw it” and “the FBI covered it up.”\

[...]

This particularly elaborate conspiracy theory, dubbed “Italygate,” is not new and was, in fact, mainlined from QAnon channels to staffers in the first Trump administration during the months between the 2020 election and former President Joe Biden’s inauguration, while Trump was pushing claims the election was “rigged.”

And so on from there. Should that post have been front-page news in the New York Times? We'd say that the answer is yes.

More than five years later, the president has returned to that peculiar claim about the Italian military. In a new column for the New York Times, David French reacts to that news as show:

This Is Not a Drill

[...]

After the F.B.I. raided the Fulton County election center, Trump demanded Obama’s arrest on social media and threatened the prosecution of election workers. He claimed, among other things, that Italian military satellites had hacked the 2020 election and that Obama had “conspired with foreign powers, not one, not two, not three, but four times to overthrow the United States government in 2016.”

The Italian satellite theory is a jolting reminder that Trump will demand that his core supporters believe almost anything he says, no matter how wild or delusional.

As Jonathan Karl reported for ABC News, this theory “was brought to the White House by a woman who went by several aliases, including ‘The Heiress,’ and was known at the Pentagon for her claimed ties to Somali pirates.”

More than five years later, that peculiar theory is suddenly back!

French delivers a frightening warning in the course of that new column. We'll summarize that warning in the days ahead.

We mention these things because of a song we thought we may have heard in several other recent columns in the New York Times. 

We've been hearing a version of that same song on MS NOW as Blue America responds to the latest startling election win. We refer to the Democratic win in a Trump-friendly district in a race for a seat in the Texas State Senate.

The "song" to which we refer is more like a storyline—a pleasing claim, proffered by many, according to which the end may finally be drawing near for the MAGA Express.

According to that storyline, it's looking worse and worse for the GOP in this year's scheduled midterm elections. That theory may turn out to be perfectly accurate—though we toss the word "scheduled" into the stew in deference to David French's extremely dire perspective.

Where were we hearing that song sung Blue? In his new column for the Times, Jamelle Bouie worked beneath this headline:

Minneapolis May Be Trump’s Gettysburg

Ezra Klein's new column was published beneath this banner:

Trump Has Overwhelmed Himself

Also, Ruth Ben-Ghiat—she's more of a (highly insightful) academic—almost seemed to be singing the same song in the course of this nuanced guest essay:

History Shows Trump’s Worst Impulses May Backfire on Him

We thought we've heard this song before, dating at least to 2015. It's rarely worked out quite right. 

French's new column stands in extremely gloomy opposition to this possible "song sung Blue." We ourselves would suggest a different perspective, one which may be less dire his.

Have we Blues returned to that upbeat song? We'll pick up here tomorrow.

Tomorrow: A major blue note from French