TUESDAY: Scott Galloway is a very good person!

TUESDAY, AUGUST 25, 2026

Except when it comes to this:  Bill Maher and Scott Galloway recently hooked up at a club. Luckily, we're speaking here of Club Random, Bill's online extended chat room.  

As we noted yesterday, we hugely admire what Bill has done in his many years of blending humor with commentary. That's an extremely challenging task. 

Also, Galloway is an obvious high-IQ type. Despite that, when we watched the tape accompanying this report, we saw the gents say this: 

GALLOWAY: I think Gavin Newsom is going to be our president. I think we’re a looks-ist, sexist, racist country and the only thing I’m fairly confident about is that the Democratic nominee will be a straight white man over 6 feet tall.

MAHER: You think in general the country is racist and sexist. In 2026.

GALLOWAY: Yeah. Yeah.

MAHER: That characterizes us in a general way? 

To gauge the fellows' tone of voice, you have to watch the videotape. That said, Galloway's sweeping generalization is the sort of "lefty" thing Bill is typically inclined to challenge.   

To our ear, Bill sounds quite skeptical about Galloway's characterization, but he lets the assertion pass. Had we actually seen Bill defer to a major, high-end guest?   

We could picture it flat or round. But then, the lads—good God!—went on to agree about this:   

GALLOWAY (continuing directly): Well, OK, I don’t see any reason why Secretary [Hillary] Clinton lost to Donald Trump other than sexism. I think if she’d had a d*ck, she’d be our president.

MAHER: I mean, I’m a fan. You know, I always thought Hillary would be good. She’s one of the most sort of common-sensical people I’ve ever seen in politics.

GALLOWAY: Confident, smart, centrist.

MAHER: Smart. Yes. Centrist. Yeah. But I also see why she lost? Why she rubs people the wrong way?   

We're punctuating to tone, but those comments struck us as remarkably clueless. Let's start with this:  

Employing the rude language of rough men, Galloway seems to say that we the people are (probably?) too sexist to elect a woman president. As an example of what he means, he cites a woman (Hillary Clinton) who actually won the popular vote by just under three million votes!  

He can imagine no other reason why Candidate Clinton lost. 

Fellow citizens, please!  Hillary Clinton was the Democratic Party nominee in 2016. By then, she had been savaged on the national stage for 24 years, by figures in the hard right and by waves of major figures within the mainstream press.  

(She's still slimed three or four nights a week on the grisly Gutfeld! show—sometimes for (allegedly) not being sufficiently attractive, more often for (allegedly) being a murderer. She was hounded by "Emailgate" all through that election, with the New York Times widely blamed for the endless emphasis. 

She was mugged by James Comey twice in 2016—once in early July, once in late October. Rachel Maddow and the others on that channel were careful not to defend her, as we detailed at the time.  

Some of the long- and short-term pounding she took in those years could definitely be attributed to sexism. But another fact is also true:

Her husband was a giant political talent. She, like almost everyone else on the face of the earth, basically wasn't and isn't. 

We don't mean that as a personal criticism, simply as a matter of fact. Meanwhile, the lads seemed to think that being "smart" is qualification enough. 

Obviously, no—it isn't! How do these guys not know that?   

Back to the sweeping claim about the sexism / racism of them the American people:

It's amazing, but the Galloway types and the Hollywood types never stop alienating voters with presentations like this. Galloway is very smart and he's very well intentioned, but these people never stop getting themselves videotaped making sardonic remarks about how offensive the American people are.   

Bill seemed unimpressed with that part of what Galloway said, but these guys never stop doing this. They come on stage, win votes for Trump, then go name-calling away.  It's a form of caroling for the finer class of people.

You could almost call them "deplorables!" Except that condemnation is already taken. The condemnation came from Candidate Clinton, and it may have cost her the race.   

Everybody makes mistakes. Despite our admitted brilliance over here in Blue America, the academics and the Hollywood types basically never stop making this mistake. As Moses says to the Holy Trinity in the old Paul Reiser joke:

Are we here to play some golf? Or are we just gonna f*ck around?

(We believe you can figure it out.)

REFUSAL TO ASK: Senator Whitehouse became the latest...

TUESDAY, AUGUST 25, 2026

...who wasn't willing to ask:  Is something wrong with President Trump? We've called it the one remaining question.

Last night, we'd have to say it was Senator Whitehouse (D-RI) who was refusing to ask.  

We'll detail his refusal below. It came during his appearance with Lawrence O'Donnell, whose work this year we've often admired and praised.

Down below, we'll detail the senator's refusal to ask. First, though, we'll take a look at O'Donnell's monologue concerning the new Supreme Court decision—a decision which may (or may not) turn out to be disastrous.

The monologue started exactly as shown below.  It started at 10:02 p.m., after two minutes of chuckling and laughing with Rachel Maddow, who continues to prove—or so it sometimes seems to us—that life can still be very good if a major corporate group is paying you $20 million per year.

(Given the ongoing state of play, we do find all that laughing and chuckling highly unattractive at times.)

The monologue started at 10:02. There's no correct answer to this next question:

Does anything in this opening passage possibly seem slightly odd? 

O'DONNELL (8/24/26): If Natalie Harp went to law school, she could have written the Supreme Court opinion today about Donald Trump's attempt to seize control of voting by mail in the United States.  

It's one of those opinions issued on the so-called emergency docket, which means the case was not fully argued to the Supreme Court, but all of the Republican appointees to the Supreme Court decided that the case was so urgent that it needed to be ruled on immediately, with none of them willing to actually sign this thing today, which leaves it very likely to have been written by Chief Justice John Roberts, whose first sentence could only be written by a Natalie Harp-type Trump groupie, someone who believes in the Trump fairy tale of a Never Never Land where Donald Trump was never. ever. ever indicted and charged with conspiracy against the United States of America for trying to illegally overturn the 2020 presidential election.  

Donald Trump is the biggest and most famous election criminal in American history—the only president of the United States in history to call the secretary of state of Georgia and ask him to commit an election crime. [Audiotape]: "All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have."  

The Supreme Court and Natalie Harp are just totally cool with that—the Republican Supreme Court. 

What you just heard is one of the crimes that Donald Trump was charged with in both a federal indictment and a criminal indictment for violating Georgia state law. And so it took Natalie Harp-like delusion for the Supreme Court decision today to begin with this first sentence...

At this point, Lawrence quoted the decision's first sentence. But does anything in that opening passage possibly seem a bit odd? 

As we watched O'Donnell last night, that opening did strike us as odd. He had started at 10:02. It was now just 10:04, and he had already flagged "Natalie Harp" on four separate occasions! 

He had assailed the Chief Justice as a "Natalie Harp-type groupie." He'd also accused the Chief Justice of engaging in "Natalie Harp-like delusion."   

He'd pictured her as a law school grad. He'd pictured Natalie and the Court pretty much joined at the hip. 

She, of course, had nothing to do with the decision in question, which might turn out to be disastrously important. But it almost seemed that a "Natalie Harp-style obsession" had taken hold of this good person's head!

At this point, O'Donnell gave his analysis of the new Supreme Court decision. Soon, though, he was back to describing the six Republican-appointed Justices as "the Natalie Harps of the Supreme Court," and he later referred to John Roberts as "Chief Justice Natalie Harp!"

We've frequently admired O'Donnell's work this year. To our eye, he often seems like the only MS NOW anchor who actually takes it personally as the United States of America continues to slide down the slope, becoming a type of failed state, due to the conduct of the sitting president.   

The president's current move to seize control of voting by mail may end up hastening that descent. (Or not.) In large part, it will depend on what the Court decides to do when it assesses this matter on the merits.

But it seemed to us that O'Donnel was well out over his skis during last night's monologue. Eventually, he almost made it sound like Natalie Harp is the real cancer on the presidency—that poor unknowing President Trump is being unknowingly taken in by her Natalie Harp like behaviors. 

Harp was cited more than twenty times in the opening monologue—a monologue about a Supreme Court decision in which she played no part.

Is something wrong with Natalie Harp? We can't exactly tell you. We can, however, tell you this:

It seems quite likely that something's wrong with the sitting president. His niece, the doctorate-holding clinical therapist, has assessed it like this:   

BURNETT (2/26/26): You've known him your whole life. Do you actually see a decline?

MARY TRUMP: I do, but I think it's important to remember that Donald has never been fit in any capacity. Obviously, what we're dealing with now are age-related cognitive declines. We're dealing with physical issues that the White House tries to cover over.

But this is somebody who for decades now has had serious, undiagnosed and untreated psychiatric disorders, which are only going to worsen, especially given the pressure he's under and given the cognitive and physical declines.  

His untreated disorders will only get worse. They're "only going to worsen"

Presumably, everyone can see that this is happening before our eyes, as he declares that he's good with flagpoles and very good with trees. 

He also seems to think he's good with the design of aircraft carriers, as Maddow noted last night. He's trying to affix his name to every available surface.

If this is the "cognitive decline" his niece described as "obvious," we'll only say that these declines happen to some people, not to all, and we'll note that the afflicted don't choose to go into decline.

He says he's good at everything now, and he's putting his name on every known surface. Still, men like Lawrence may want to talk about "the girl." 

Meanwhile, Senator Whitehouse! Last night, he spoke with Lawrence about the Court's ruling. He then discussed the president's latest (trade) war, which seems to make zero sense.

Even the Wall Street Journal has called it his dumbest trade war, the senator correctly said. And then, at least to our ear, he became the latest to take a dive:

SENATOR WHITEHOUSE (8/24/26): He's making a huge mess. And I can't help but think there's something in the back of his strange mind that knows he's failing as president and that wishes to tear down the whole Republican Party with him so that he does not fail alone. 

There's almost no other reason why a president with control over all the chamber of Congress and the White House, would, on the issue most important to the American people, do something so stupid and so counterproductive and so chaotic...

Question! Does the sitting president have "a strange mind?" Or could it be that he's mentally ill, and that it's going to worsen? Because that's what his niece told Erin Burnett before being hustled away, leading to the next bout of media silence.  

("There's no other reason" for what he keeps doing? Could it be that he's mentally ill, or in "obvious" cognitive decline?)

Will he gain control of voting by mail? That remains to be seen. 

What night he do after November 3? Having taken down the GOP, could he decide to take down the whole country?

Could he even decide to do that? Everyone is in agreement! They agree not to wonder or ask!

Tomorrow: We leave this framework behind

MONDAY: Scarborough asks existential question!

MONDAY, AUGUST 24, 2026

Lightly stoned, Bill defers: We're glad to see DePaolo and Gilmour covering the things that get said on Morning Joe. 

In the segment reported here, Joe Scarborough asks the relevant question—the question the other kids aren't sharp enough to conjure:

Scarborough Warns Trump is Tearing Down Institutions ‘Brick By Brick’: ‘Are We Going to Survive?’   

Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough warned that the Trump administration is tearing down federal institutions “brick by brick” as he questioned aloud whether Americans will “be able to rebuild” in two years. 

[...]

“Years ago, Steve Bannon said he was a Leninist, and he and Trump were going to go in and they were going to tear down the state, take it to the ground,” he began. “You look at what Gillian [Tett] said they’re doing with the census, one of the most basic, should be noncontroversial things ever, they’re trying to rig that, it seems.” 

He continued: “What they’re doing with the post office, using the post office to do unconstitutional things with the midterm elections, taking it from the states’ power and giving it to the executive branch, which is not in the Constitution. It’s unconstitutional. You see what’s happened at the DOD, you see what’s happened at the Justice Department, you see what’s happened at the National Institutes of Health, all of these institutions that have been built up to protect Americans and to extend American power and safety across the globe, are being torn down brick-by-brick, piece-by-piece, by this Trump administration. 

“And the question people have is, are we going to survive? Are we going to be able to rebuild this two years from now?”

Will we be able to survive? The other children are too slow to come up with that formulation as they offer the standard complaints about the sitting president and about the people around him.

Let us add this observation, an observation we've made before:  

Election Day this year is Tuesday, November 3. No one knows what's going to happen starting on Wednesday, November 4.  

On that day, the sitting president will have two years and more than two months left on his current term. Over here in Blue America, no one knows what he may be planning to do during that long, slow drive toward the cliff.

Might this be the week when we Blues start to see the many ways we've failed? The many ways we self-impressed Blues have helped this crisis develop?

In search of that type of self-awareness, we expect to turn tomorrow to this cluelessness on the part of Maher and Galloway, and then we'll move on from there.   

We've always (more than) admired what Bill Maher has achieved. Unless you've been inside the business, it's hard to understand the amount of skill and insight involved in what he has done.

That said, good God! As he defers to Galloway, will someone please riddle us this:

 How in the world is it possible? How do we Blues manage to persist in arrogance and dumbness so vast?

ONLY ONE QUESTION REMAINS: It all comes down to this one question!

MONDAY, AUGUST 24, 2026

But is anyone willing to ask? We'll admit it! At the time when this question appeared, we don't think we ever heard about it:

Did Trump's motorcade drive through the newly painted reflecting pool?   

We admit it! Within the endless tsunami of crazy behaviors characteristic of the Trump era, we don't remember being aware of that question at all!  

Having said that, you're right! The bungling of the reflecting pool seems very "June 2026" at this much later point in time. He wanted it done for the Fourth of July. The bungling was a big deal in June.

That said, we're quoting the headline of a report from the Snopes site—a report delivered by Anna Rascouët-Paz, all the way back on June 23.   

Snopes was trying to determine whether a particular crazy behavior had actually occurred back on May 7. Given the nature of the era, the answer turned out to be yes.

Here's how her report began:    

Fact Check
Did Trump's motorcade drive through newly painted reflecting pool?   

In June 2026, a claim spread online that President Donald Trump's motorcade had driven through the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool after it was painted and sealed as part of a more than $14 million renovation project.

The rumor circulated as the U.S. National Park Service struggled to maintain the appearance of the Washington, D.C., landmark after Trump ordered it to be repainted to "American flag blue" for the country's 250th anniversary. 

Examples of the claim spread on X and Instagram, while the self-described progressive Facebook page Occupy Democrats posted it on Facebook. That post featured an image of five black SUVs driving through the empty pool, and overlaid text suggesting the motorcade may have damaged the paint and sealant before it had fully set, thus later causing the paint to peel off.   

Several Snopes readers also emailed us and searched our website to verify the veracity of the story.

Back in June, a claim—a rumor—was circulating about a possible bit of crazy behavior. Snopes exists to examine such claims—and when Rascouët-Paz fact-checked this claim, it turned out that the claim was perfectly accurate!

Her report continues as shown:

[Continuing directly]
In short, the claim is true and the images are authentic. In early May 2026, after the pool was repainted dark blue and before the NPS began to refill it with water, a White House official posted a video showing Trump's motorcade driving though the landmark. 

[...]

[VIDEO INCLUDED]

Various X posts credited the above video to White House Communications Director Steven Cheung, who posted it earlier that day.

"They see me rolling," Cheung's post reads, referencing rapper Chamillionaire's 2005 song "Ridin'." Cheung added, "President Trump rides in the Reflecting Pool at the Lincoln Memorial!"

In real time, the highly volatile Steven Cheung had posted video of the event. You can see Cheung's video by clicking to the Snopes report.   

Did this bizarre behavior play a role in the subsequent failure of the Reflecting Pool project? Rascouët-Paz said she didn't know.  

That said, we don't remember ever hearing about this nutcase behavior at the time it occurred. In part, the reason for that is right there in the Snopes report.   

When this strange event occurred, did major news orgs report the event? The answer seems to be basically no. 

Though she does cite three local D.C. TV stations, Rascouët-Paz lists only CNN, the New York Post and Forbes as national orgs which reported this event. And none of the six links she provides go to classic news reports about this peculiar event. All six links go to brief videos posted on YouTube.

In fact, the AP did report this event, in real time, on June 8. The report includes several photos of Cheung's gonzo act of ridin' and rolling on the surface of the Pool, with the president himself aboard.   

That said, and as best we can tell, this behavior didn't receive a whole lot of coverage. There's been so much weird behavior in this unraveling second term—and there's so little interest in coming to terms with the meaning of this state of affairs—that relatively minor acts of inanity have tended to slide between the cracks—have tended to be disappeared.   

We'll now admit to a terrible fact. Video of these nutballs rollin' the length of the Reflecting Pool instantly reminded us of video of you-know-who, rolling into various capitals during his seizure of Europe 

For you, flash reactions may differ. Setting our mental flash to the side, Cheung did manage to generate substantial coverage last week with his furious and ugly reaction to What Jon Ossoff Said. 

Should Senator Ossoff have said what he said? Opinions on that will differ. But Cheung responded as he routinely does, with the ugly fury and the ugly rage which have become his trademark.   

That furious conduct is also the trademark of Cheung's more powerful boss. In our view, only one political question remains, and that question is this:   

Is something wrong with President Trump? No, really—is it possible that something is actually wrong with the world's most powerful person?   

In our view, that's the only political question which remains—except for this companion question:

Is there even one journalist in Blue America's Potemkin brigade who's willing to stand, in full public view, and ask that obvious question?

Tomorrow: Goldberg gets it right

SATURDAY: Did Ossoff float an insinuation?

SATURDAY, AUGUST 22, 2026

Citizen Heilemann, please! Should Natalie Harp be subject to ridicule?  On balance, we'd say no. 

That said, we told you the ridicule was going to come. Starting yesterday afternoon, here's a sample, from Mediaite alone:   

Natalie Harp Seen Running Behind Trump’s Golf Cart in Newly Unearthed Photo 
(For full report, click here.)

Natalie Harp Once Claimed Trump Saved Her Life in Bizarre Resurfaced Clip 
(For full report, click here.)

FLASHBACK: Natalie Harp’s Election-Denial Interview With Karoline Leavitt Resurfaces 
(For full report, click here.)

Maggie Haberman Describes Natalie Harp as Trump’s ‘Binkie’  
(For full report, click here.)

All of a sudden, a lot of material is being resurfaced (unearthed). Harp's conduct is framed as "bizarre," and she's described as a "binkie."   

In that FLASHBACK report, readers learned that Harp told Leavitt that the 2020 election was fixed. Our questions:

Is there anyone in MAGA World who hasn't advanced such unfounded claims? 

Also, when did major orgs like the New York Times ever devote appropriate focus and space to the widespread existence of crazy claims made by the president himself? 

We Blues! Our stars are afraid of the sitting president (and of the Fox News Channel). On the other hand, we do enjoy mocking "the girl," just as it ever was.

Is some such gender politics involved in the ridicule being directed at Harp? Consider what Maggie Haberman said on CNN, as reported within that "Trump's binkie" dispatch.  

Haberman has done tons of outstanding work during the endless Trump years. With respect to that "binkie" remark, this is what she said:

I described her the other day as, you know, a binkie, for lack of a better way of putting it—a comfort blanket. There are men who have played that role for him too. One of them would be Boris Epstein, about whom—you know, he is legal adviser—of whom the president describes him as his psychiatrist and says sometimes you just want somebody to tell you everything is going to be okay. That is a lot of what the president values.    

For lack of a better way of putting it? To our ear, Haberman—she's done tons of good work—was possibly trying to slide away from an earlier unfortunate comment. (Everyone makes mistakes.)   

Possibly trying to slide away from an earlier gendered remark, she offered Boris Epstein as a male example of what she was talking about. We'll assume that she has never referred to him as a binkie—and you can be sure that, if someone ever did, no one would notice or care. 

(Epstein remains almost wholly unknown. Harp is becoming quite famous.)

With respect to going after "the girl," the most remarkable statement of all came early on, from a journalist who has been widely and correctly praised for her work on the Jeffrey Epstein matter. Good grief! Senator Ossoff delivered a speech, and Julie K. Brown said this:

Award-Winning Epstein Reporter Brands Natalie Harp the ‘Side Piece’ of Trump   

Celebrated journalist Julie K. Brown joined the gang of critics bashing President Donald Trump’s aide Natalie Harp on Wednesday by branding her the president’s “side piece.”

Brown—who won a series of awards for her reporting on dead sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein in The Miami Herald—made the accusation on X.  

[...]

“None of these people defending Trump’s side piece seemed to have any issue with Trump calling female reporters ‘piggy’ and ‘hag,'” Brown posted.   

Her accusation stands out, considering Brown is one of the more acclaimed journalists in America.

And so on from there. Brown—a fully justified feminist / humanist hero—described Harp as Trump's "side piece." Dear friends, riddle us this:

His side piece of what?  

(Everyone makes mistakes.)

Yesterday morning, John Heilemann swore, on Morning Joe, that Senator Ossoff wasn't making this same insinuation when he spoke in Atlanta last Sunday.  He misquoted Ossoff's words as a way of proving his point.

Please don't make us waste our time reviewing what Heilemann unwisely said. For the record, though, Ossoff has established himself as a genuine master of stinging rhetoric. In our view, his brilliantly crafted insinuation was blindingly obvious that day.   

Based on a mountain of reported evidence, Natalie Harp seems to have extremely limited judgment. We'll admit that we sympathize with the person who lost her father the way she did, after her trial by bone cancer.

She seems to have extremely limited judgment. That's grotesquely true of the president himself, but our Blue American tribunes are unwilling to say what they surely must know about him—and we do enjoy mocking "the girl."   

European literature began with a story of subjugation. The impulse has never left, and we Blues aren't always sharp enough to understand who we sometimes are. 

Monday: The rage of Steven Cheung

What the senator said: As many people have noted, Senator Ossoff has established himself as a genuine master of stinging rhetoric. It's a remarkably powerful tool. This is what he said:  

He doesn’t want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the emir of Qatar.   

That's astoundingly skillful rhetoric. For the record, we aren't even saying it's morally wrong.

That said, Walt Nauta snuck away on the catering truck too. Do the lovebirds share "their palace" with him?   

Within the boundaries of that rhetoric, we think you can see that they don't!