FRIDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2026
In search of a citizen's duty: We saw it this morning on Morning Joe, in the program's first half hour. We want to compliment David Gilmour of Mediaite for presenting tape and a transcript so quickly.
Joe Scarborough went right at it! He assailed the way the sitting president has now decided to play a role in "the killing of grandmothers"—but also in the killing of children and the killing of innocents in general.
He made reference to a Reuters report which appears beneath this headline:
Order to limit Starshield for Ukraine came from inside White House, sources say
Are the sources right this time? Scarborough assumes that they are. Meanwhile, back at Mediaite, Gilmour's summary of the Reuters report can be perused by clicking here.
In this follow-up report, Gilmour posts the videotape from today's Morning Joe. Headline included, Gilmour's report starts like this:
Scarborough Shreds Trump’s ‘Absolute Betrayal’ of Ukraine: ‘In Bed with Vladimir Putin’
Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough tore into President Donald Trump over what he called the “absolute betrayal” of Ukraine, accusing the president of siding with Russian President Vladimir Putin as Washington eases pressure on Moscow and restricts satellite capabilities used by Ukrainian forces.
The host launched into the blistering monologue on [Friday] amid rapidly deteriorating relations between Washington and Kyiv, declaring: “I just can’t get Ukraine off my mind and the absolute betrayal of Ukraine.”
Gilmour's report continues from there. On the accompanying videotape, Scarborough is shown saying this on this morning's program as he speaks with Ed Luce of the Financial Times:
SCARBOROUGH (10/16/26): I just can’t get Ukraine off my mind and the absolute betrayal of Ukraine.
The whole world is rising up against Donald Trump’s just outrageous embrace of Vladimir Putin’s killing machine. The fact that he’s doing diesel deals to pump billions of dollars into Vladimir Putin’s killing machine. The fact that we have reports from Reuters, last night, that it was the White House that ordered the Pentagon to slow down the Starlink satellites, to make sure that Russia’s fastest, deadliest missiles could get into Kyiv and kill grandmothers, kill children, kill grandfathers, kill innocents.
That’s all in Donald Trump’s hands. He’s the one in charge of this, and you see leaders from across the world speaking out against Donald Trump, I would say, getting in bed with Vladimir Putin, but he never really got out, did he?
[...]
These events are shocking even by Trumpian standards. He's doing everything he can to help Vladimir Putin win this war. Why?
On the videotape, Luce tries to answer Scarborough's question. As before, so too today—we compliment Scarborough for creating the most intelligent discussions in all of daily cable news, largely through the participation of an array of highly informed guests like Luce.
(Richard Haass was also involved in this morning's discussion.)
On this morning's program, Scarborough was discussing a hugely important, if puzzling, policy choice by the sitting president. Increasingly, there's also the endless array of gratuitous insults delivered by Trump, along with his weird (if inconsequential) public statements and Truth Social posts.
Last night, Lawrence O'Donnell was walking that second beat. As he frequently does, he derided the president for "the utterly insane, breathtakingly stupid things he says every day." He attributed this undeniable state of affairs to the sitting president's "declining cognitive ability," his "cognitive decline."
Is it true? Is the most powerful person in the world experiencing a cognitive decline—even a significant cognitive decline? As we've noted many times, here's what his niece, the doctorate-holding clinical therapist, said on CNN earlier this year.
For the record, the key words here is "untreated:"
ERIN 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.
The key word there is "untreated." Mary Trump was describing a serious set of medical conditions which have gone untreated.
As for O'Donnell, he now refuses (or isn't allowed) to bring medical specialists onto his show to offer an informed assessment. Instead, he is inclined to offer his own home brew of diagnosis, larded with personal insults.
That leaves us with Bill Maher's claim, which we've discussed in the past few days. "What, me honor my citizen's duty?" he almost seems to have said.
Fellow citizens, why does our sitting president behave so strangely, even reaching to the point described this morning by Scarborough? This is what Bill said:
"I don’t know and I can’t answer and it’s not my place to answer.”
We'd call that a very strange statement. We'd say it's his place to try. We'd say it's his duty as an American citizen, as a citizen of the world.
Bill interviews guests with a wide array of specialties. In our view, it's his duty as a citizen to interview medical specialists about the president's odd behaviors—odd behaviors which may spill over into the killing of children.
We vastly admire Bill's achievements, and Bill is hardly alone in the stance he's adopted here. There is no major Blue American journalist or media figure who hasn't run away from the question Bill seemed to regard as none of his freaking business.
The president's behavior has become stranger and stranger. Every journalist has taken a dive concerning what's right there before them.
What does this have to do with happiness. you might ask at this point. Also, how about the state of mind Thoreau described at the start of his chapter called Solitude?
With that, you're asking an excellent question. We'll address that question in the weeks ahead as we thrash about at this site, looking for amended ways which may let our nation survive.
