HEALTH: We're launching a search for the president's health!

MONDAY, MARCH 30, 2026

And for what that familiar term means: Last Thursday afternoon, the sitting president convened one of his televised "cabinet meetings."  

We employ scare quotes there because these televised events are unlike the classic cabinet meetings of the American past. That evening, on CNN's Erin Burnett Outfront, Burnett asked S. E. Cupp to comment on this latest event.

Meanwhile, who is S. E. Supp? Burnett introduced her on this occasion as "former Republican strategist, now podcast and television host S. E. Cupp." 

The leading authority on Cupp's career as a political commentator offers this somewhat dated overview:  

S. E. Cupp 

Sarah Elizabeth Cupp (born February 23, 1979) is an American television host, political commentator, and writer. In August 2017, she began hosting S. E. Cupp: Unfiltered, a political panel show, co-hosted by Andrew Levy, on HLN and later CNN.

She is a former panelist on the CNN political debate show Crossfire, author of Losing Our Religion: The Liberal Media's Attack on Christianity and co-author of Why You're Wrong About the Right. She was a co-host of the MSNBC talk show The Cycle...

[...]  

Throughout her career, Cupp has described herself as a "mainstream conservative" and a supporter of "limited government, self-reliance, self-empowerment, lower taxes." ... 

Cupp was strongly critical of Donald Trump's [first term] presidency, saying "I don't know these Republicans [that support Trump]. This isn't what drew me to this party." She voted for Joe Biden in the 2020 United States presidential election. 

So it had gone with Cupp as of 2020. Now she was discussing the president's latest "cabinet meeting." In part, she offered this:

CUPP (3/26/26): Listen, the truth is, most voters are not watching these insane cabinet meetings. We have the pleasure of having to do that, and they are insane. 

And if you watch them, that's one, one of several moments that are just kind of nutso. If you watch them, you have to seriously question Trump's stability.

She described the televised events as "kind of nutso," insane. Most strikingly, she said the televised events raise serious questions about the sitting president's "stability."

That was one observer's instant assessment of the day's event. Later, Cupp added this commentary on the cabinet members, but also concerning the president himself:

CUPP: This is the cost of being in Trump's orbit. Pam Bondi unfurled a banner at DOJ with Trump's face on it to suck up to him. Rick Grenell put Trump's name on the Kennedy Center to suck up to him. He's now gone.

I mean, it's really humiliating. The groveling, the flattery, the North Korea coded kind of attitude you have to have in this White House and news breaking today, he's going to put his name on our money. I mean, this is just humiliating for a great nation like ours.

I just think we are looking increasingly like a North Korea, you know, like a hermit nation where you just have to tell the president what he wants to hear. I hear they're showing him videos of things blowing up in Iran. Like that's his security briefing. 

It's insane. It's insane. It could get people killed. But just at the basic level, this is not America as we know.

[...]

He hasn't even told the American public why were in Iran, when we're going to get out, what to expect. He hasn't conditioned us to know what's about to happen. And he's rambling for four minutes about Sharpies. It's embarrassing. 

BURNETT: Four minutes and 56 seconds, to be exact.

That was one (1) observer's assessment. For whatever it may be worth, the word "insane" kept sliding in as Cupp assessed that day's "North Korea coded" event. 

That said, also this:

That was Cupp's first mention of the Sharpies. Right at the start of the show, Burnett had beaten her to it.

Burnett had explicitly teased the president's discussion of the Sharpies in the CNN program's first minute. Later, she mentioned the Sharpies again as she teased the upcoming segment with Cupp:

("Why did President Trump spend nearly five minutes today talking about Sharpies while America is at war?")

Say what? Had the president really spent five minutes discussing Sharpies at the "cabinet meeting?" As shown above, Burnett timed the president's rambling discussion at "four minutes and 56 seconds, to be exact." 

Plainly, Burnett thought this discussion had been strange. Cupp seemed to think it was part of what made her question the president's "stability."

So it went inside much of Silo Blue in the wake of the "cabinet meeting." Cupp made liberal use od the word "insane." Earlier, a headline in Mediaite had used that same word, except a bit more so. 

The opinion piece at Mediate had been written by Colby Hall, one of the site's founding editors. The headline atop Hall's opinion piece said this:  

OPINION
We’ve Stopped Noticing That Trump’s Cabinet Meetings Are Completely Insane 

In the headline, the president's cabinet meetings were said to be completely insane. In the body of his piece, Hall quickly mentioned the Sharpies, along with a few other somewhat peculiar "subjects covered by the President of the United States at Thursday’s cabinet meeting."

The headline called the meeting insane—completely insane at that. Somewhat oddly, the word "insane" doesn't appear in the body of Hall's essay. 

Still, an obvious question might have seemed to arise in Hall's piece. It seems like a very important question:

Was Hall suggesting that something may be wrong, in a serious, significant or dangerous way, with the president's "mental health?"

Was Hall suggesting something like that? We'll examine his essay tomorrow. For today, we'll close with this:

On a conceptual basis, physical illness is easy. On a conceptual basis, so-called "mental illness" is hard. 

Our struggling society, such as it is, operates with a very limited set of understandings about the nature of "mental illness." Also, our news orgs have long agreed that questions of mental health must never arise in discussions of major political figures.

That was always a very good rule—until the time came when it wasn't.

Is it possible that our sitting president is struggling with (serious) mental health issues? How well do we understand what that claim might even mean?

Today, we start down a long and winding road in pursuit of those plainly important questions. Is something wrong with the president's "stability"—with the president's health? As a nation, shouldn't we possibly be trying to puzzle that out?

As a society, we're looking at this question through a glass extremely darkly. Like all people, the president deserves to be in good health—but what is the actual situation on this very day?

Tomorrow: Hall seemed to voice a major complaint—a complaint about the press

SATURDAY: She had a question for President Trump!

SATURDAY, MARCH 28, 2026

We have a question for you: You'll have to forgive us for our minor activity today. 

We're looking ahead, starting Monday, to (as Lincoln had it) "a task greater than that which rested upon Washington." Also, how can a person hope to keep pace with the moral and intellectual squalor which now stirs the drink of this failing nation's imitation of a public discourse?

We speak as someone who watched the angry, fantastically bungled first segment of last night's Gutfeld! show. But also, as someone who watched the children pretend to question President Trump on Thursday's edition of The Five, in an imitation of an interview which lasted 46 minutes.

As we noted yesterday morning, the children's attention spans were notably short that day. As we noted, it fell to Jesse Watters to ask the session's fourth question. 

By now, attention spans were almost spent. This was the best he could do:

WATTERS (3/26/26): But let me ask you about Iran. You've kind of suggested that we'd knocked out Ayatollah Junior. Have we—and did the CIA tell you that Ayatollah Junior is gay? 

Is "Ayatollah Junior" gay? It seemed to be the only question the famous fellow could conjure. 

Question 6 came from Greg Gutfeld. Inevitably, it concerned himself: 

GUTFELD: Mr. President, let's shift onto some other topics. I'm debating whether to be serious or not serious. 

I'm gonna be not serious! 

[...] 

You know, you're doing the White House Correspondents Dinner for the first time, and you're gonna get a 10. Why wasn't I asked to do the roast? 

It was the best he could manage. (We think we've correctly transcribed the part about the president getting a 10.)

(We've edited out an interruption, in which the president asked if "Sleepy Joe" could have handled an interview session like this one. The children chuckled and agreed that he never could have done it!)

Lincoln headed off from Springfield, hoping to save the nation. As in The Sixth Sense, so too today:

Has the death of the nation already occurred, but we just don't know it yet? 

Special bonus question: Question 9 came from Dana Perino. By now, the charade was splayed out for all to see. This is what she asked: 

PERINO: Hi, it's Dana again, and I have a kind of pop culture question for you. 

So I'm new to New York, relatively speaking—so, fifteen years—and there's all these young people across America are watching Love Story, which is the story of JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette. And I'm curious: 

Did you know JFK Jr.? And do you have any nostalgia for the 90s? 

Other questions were even more pointless. Are these the death throes we've chosen?

FRIDAY: We took two books to the medical place!

FRIDAY, MARCH 27, 2026

We've advised you to pity the child: With trepidation, we'll admit that we took two books today to the medical mission. It occurred to us, only today and down in that place, that each of these books tells the story of the upbringing of a child:

Mary L. Trump
Too Much and Never Enough 
Simon & Schuster, 2020

Francine Prose
Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife
HarperCollins, 2009

As a courtesy, we're omitting the subtitle to Mary Trump's book. We plan to return to her general subject matter at the start of the week. 

That said:

Prose's book always consumes us. The fuller story of Anne Frank's famous book—of the way the book was written; of the way the book was saved—does include magical elements. 

Prose's book is also the story of a child who was lucky enough to be loved within her family and within her Amsterdam neighborhood, until the madness fully arrived. 

Prose says she was a "challenging" child. One anecdote goes like this:  

A demanding and often sickly baby, Anne grew into a challenging child—mercurial, moody, humorous, alternately outgoing and shy. A natural performer, she liked to pop her elbow out of its socket to get her friends’ attention. She was bossy, theatrical, and outspoken. She was only four when she and her beloved grandmother Oma Hollander boarded a crowded Aachen streetcar, and Anne demanded, “Won’t someone offer a seat to this old lady?”

In Amsterdam, she grew close to Hanneli Goslar, the “Lies” about whom Anne would later have the waking nightmare she describes in the diary. (“I saw her in front of me, clothed in rags, her face thin and worn.”) A German refugee who had arrived in Holland around the same time as Anne, Hanneli met Anne in a grocery store; their mothers were glad to find someone with whom they could speak German. The Franks called on Hanneli Goslar’s parents every Friday evening, and the two families celebrated Passover together. Eventually, Hanneli’s mother, Ruth, would say about Anne, “God knows everything, but Anne knows everything better.”  

A beloved grandmother too! 

Meanwhile, Anne knew everything better? For that, we'll give thanks to the gods! In our view, that was her job, as a young developing human person. She was encouraged by her parents—by her neighbors and by her various neighborhood friends.  

Prose holds that Anne Frank, who died at age 15, has never received her due as a precocious developing writer—as someone who was determined to become a writer. She rewrote what had started out as her personal diary, turning it into "a memoir in the form of diary entries," in the final year of her life. 

She hoped that the (famous) book thus produced would be read by people around the world. We'll reproduce one other anecdote: 

Interviewed by Ernst Schnabel, a novelist and dramatist who served in the German navy during World War II and who wrote the 1958 book Anne Frank: A Portrait in Courage, the mother of Anne’s friend Jopie van der Waal...also remembered making dresses for Anne. But what she mostly recalled is Anne’s forceful personality, her desire to be a writer, and her precocious sense of self. The phrase, “She knew who she was,” recurs, like a refrain, throughout the conversation, during which Mme. Van der Waal described the ceremony and the theater with which Anne arrived to spend the weekend:

“When Anne came to stay with us, she always brought a suitcase. A suitcase, mind you, when it wasn’t a stone’s throw between us. The suitcase was empty of course, but Anne insisted on it, because only with the suitcase did she feel as if she were really traveling.”

She wanted to feel she was really traveling! Six million others (and many more) were lost to the world in the astonishing madness which followed. 

We'll return to Mary Trump's general subject matter next week—to her uncle's possible medical situation. In our view, no other topic is more important at this particular time. That strikes us as fairly obvious.

In our view, obvious danger is present there. Also, we've advised you to pity the child.

BREAKING: We recommend Hall's opinion piece!

FRIDAY, MARCH 27, 2026

Also, the fourth question POTUS was asked: We're back to the medical mission today! There's a whole lot of sitting around involved in such an excursion.

We may post later this afternoon. In the meantime, we recommend Colby Hall's opinion piece over at Mediaite. More precisely, we recommend the important question he raises:

OPINION
We’ve Stopped Noticing That Trump’s Cabinet Meetings Are Completely Insane

Here is a partial list of subjects covered by the President of the United States at Thursday’s cabinet meeting:

The obliteration of Iran’s navy. The TSA shutdown. A woman killed in Chicago. The Federal Reserve building renovation. The cost of Sharpie pens. Venezuelan oil revenue. King Charles’s cancer. Gavin Newsom’s self-reported learning disability. Cognitive tests. SCOTUS. The Kennedy Center. California high-speed rail. NATO’s failure to send ships. A thousand-dollar pen that didn’t write. The prime minister of the United Kingdom. Caravans. Sanctuary cities.  The 25th Amendment. A joint venture with Venezuela. Drug smugglers who don’t watch television.

That was one meeting. Ninety-eight minutes. A wartime cabinet briefing...

That's the way the column starts. As Hall continues, he raises a very good question about ongoing press corps behavior—a question we think we've been answering over the past many months.

(And yes, we've noticed the rather strong language found at the end of that headline.)

Hall is asking a very important question; he's raising important concerns. Next week, we plan to return to what we regard as the central question now facing this failing nation:

We refer to the basic questions which seem to be obvious concerning the sitting president's health.

As we rush out the door today, we also offer you this:

After yesterday's "cabinet meeting," the president proceeded to spend the bulk of the 5 o'clock hour on the phone—on the phone with The Five!

He came on the line at 5:14. Presumably, the children could have asked any question they pleased.

That said, attention spans are remarkably short on this dimwitted "cable news" program. Believe it or not, after a bit of towel-snapping and some joking around, this was the fourth question asked:

WATTERS (3/26/26): But let me ask you about Iran. You've kind of suggested that we'd knocked out Ayatollah Junior. Have we—and did the CIA tell you that Ayatollah Junior is gay?

Is the new Ayatollah gay? He wanted to know about Iran, so that was the fourth question asked. 

(For the record, no one ever asked the president to explain the overall purpose of the ongoing war. We aren't assuming that he couldn't have explained the purpose. We're just saying that nobody asked.)

All in all, it was an instructive 46 minutes. A nation which tolerates this imitation of life without a word of comment is a nation which finds itself in a very large volume of hurt.

There's more to be said about yesterday's show. But that was one star's first ask.

Go ahead—peruse Hall's piece! We disagree with him on one point, but he's raising important concerns.