SATURDAY: What has been happening out in L.A.?

SATURDAY, JUNE 14, 2025

Campos-Duffy "explains:" What has been happening out in Los Angeles over the course of the past nine days?

In this June 11 report, we told you that it isn't easy to answer a question like that. In today's print editions of the New York Times, Fausset and Dwyer give it a try.

It isn't all one thing or the other! Or at least, so the two journalists claim:

In L.A., the Divide Between Peace and Violence Is in the Eye of the Beholder

[...]

In Los Angeles this week, many protesters have marched peacefully. Others have thrown objects at the police, set cars ablaze and looted stores and restaurants. Police have responded aggressively, intimidating protesters with earsplitting explosives and mounted patrols, hitting them with batons, deploying tear gas and firing foam projectiles and rubber bullets into crowds.

The question of which side is justified, and which side is not, seems to have divided the country as much as the immigration issue. And Los Angeles has been transformed into a stage for a debate over the nature and meaning of American protest.

This week, the line separating peaceful protest from violent protest differed in the eyes of the beholder. Was Los Angeles a city in chaos, when many in the sprawling metropolis went about their day untouched by drama that was confined to scattered blocks? What was the appropriate language to accurately describe nights in which many protesters...have been lawful, but others, who have often shown up after sundown, have decided to loot, smash and burn?

So went their overview. But do these jokers actually know what they're talking about? 

According to the Times, Fausset and Dwyer "spent hours in Los Angeles interviewing protesters and documenting the police response." When they penned their overview, they included this challenging passage:

Some protesters said that the recent vandalism and property damage did not bother them, because it brought attention to the crisis affecting their friends and family. “They’re terrorizing our community,” [Alfonso] Santoyo said of the immigration officers. “A couple of cars on fire means nothing to me.”

Aylan Francesco Mello, 33, a tech worker and Southern California native, watched from Gloria Molina Grand Park, a block-wide green space that extends northwest from City Hall and that had also begun to fill with protesters. He said his mother came to the U.S. illegally from Guatemala, and his father came legally from Brazil.

“This feels like a very personal thing to me,” Mr. Francesco Mello said. “I see myself in a lot of the people who are being persecuted.”

But he did not identify with the non-peaceful street crowds, which have often caused trouble after the peaceful protesters have gone home. “There’s very little overlap between the looters, the opportunists, and the protesters,” he said. “I feel like we’re almost talking about two different subjects.”

Why do we say that report is "challenging?" We say that for this reason:

It challenges us to understand that the many people in a large crowd almost surely aren't all the same person! It challenges us to stop creating simplified fairy tales which are tribally pleasing—the kinds of assault on the American discourse at which one "cable news" star excels.

Early this morning, she was at it again, as she co-hosted the gruesome Fox & Friends Weekend "cable news" TV show. 

As we've noted in the past, Rachel Campos-Duffy is remarkably genial—among her own. She's also a born propagandist, as our despondent, extremely young analysts learned for the ten millionth time today at 6:32 a.m.

It was 6:32 a.m. Emerging from a commercial break, Campos-Duffy—true to form—started things off with this:

CAMPOS-DUFFY (6/14/25): Well, immigration is in the spotlight as Democrats continue to support anti-ICE rioters in Los Angeles and other Blue cities.

Really? Have "Democrats" really been "supporting anti-ICE rioters?" 

Have all "Democrats" been doing that? Would Campos-Duffy go on to name even one?

Those questions went unaddressed as the latest gruesome segment unspooled on the propaganda channel in question. But that's what the genial cable star said as she started her program's new segment.

That's what the genial star said! Below her, on the screen, a Fox News chyron said this:

DEMS CONTINUE TO STAND BY RIOTERS AS L.A. BURNS

Instantly, it occurred to us that this program's account of recent events might not be fully nuanced.

Campos-Duffy is a genial presence—when speaking with her own. When she speaks about the others, it emerges that she's also a born propagandist.

She works for a propaganda-driven corporation on one of its "cable news" programs. As with MSNBC, so too here:

You aren't allowed to know how much she's paid for providing her services. But just like that, Campos-Duffy was speaking to Katie Zacharia, who seems to be one of her own. 

Stating the obvious, people have every right to their religious beliefs and to their religious views. That said, Campos-Duffy has long struck us as a religionist. It seems that Zacharia holds a similar (unstated) view of the world, as is her perfect right.

Zacharia got busy! She quickly said that Governor Newsom "is unwilling to put the police force, the National Guard, on the streets to help with the riots. It's really a disgrace."

"The police force, the National Guard?" Yes, that's what Zacharia said, as you can see right here.

We don't know what that conflation was supposed to mean—but Campos-Duffy knew where to go next. For what it's worth, her description of events in L.A. seems to be a bit less nuanced than that in the New York Times:

CAMPOS-DUFFY: You know, Katie, it's a disgrace, but it's also very elitist. Because the violence is happening in working-class neighborhoods. He would never allow this to happen in Brentwood or Beverly Hills. But it's OK to burn down and ruin the neighborhoods of the working class.

Really? Which neighborhoods of the working class have been "burned down and ruined?" Campos-Duffy forgot to say. In this morning's report, the New York Times isn't reporting destruction on any such scale as that.

Before the pair of messengers were done, Campos-Duffy noted a flicker of hope. This is what she said:

CAMPOS-DUFFY: So you also talked to me, off-camera, about the possibility of—because there are some normal people like you in California—about California turning red. Talk to me about that.

There are some normal people in California, the born propagandist said. Was Campos-Duffy speaking ironically? You'll have to inspect the tape yourself. We'd say it's not clear that she was.

Campos-Duffy is extremely genial—but only among the people who are normal. The others all support the riots, which have burned neighborhoods down.

This goes on all day and all night on the Fox News Channel. As it does, Blue America's elites avert their gaze. 

Nothing to look at, they seem to say. There's nothing to report or discuss!

At any rate, working-class neighborhoods have been ruined. Democrats support the riots which have produced that effect.

By the way: Mayor Bass is a Communist. Campos-Duffy told us that on last Sunday's Fox & Friends Weekend, as we noted in this report.

Can a very large modern nation expect to survive a regime like this? We'd say the answer is far from clear.

Nothing to look at—keep moving along! our Blue orgs seem to say.

FRIDAY: What viewers were told on the Fox News Channel!

FRIDAY, JUNE 13, 2025

Martha MacCallum speaks: Should Senator Padilla have interrupted Secretary Noem?

In our view, the answer is no. Luckily, the word "interrupted" was banned from use on MSNBC programs. On that cable news channel, the solon hadn't interrupted Noem. He had simply tried to ask a question in the course of doing his oversight. All in all, it was No Upbeat Claim Left Behind.

On the Fox News Channel, things tilted a different way. During yesterday's three o'clock hour, Martha MacCallum interviewed a pair of Fox News contributors—one a Democrat, one a Republican—about the incident in question. 

Later, speaking with Noem herself, this is what MacCallum said the pair had said:

MACCALLUM (6/12/25): We just had a Democrat and a Republican panelist, and both sides agreed that they felt that this was unbecoming behavior of a United States senator.

MacCallum may have thought that's what the two panelists said. If so, it seems to us that she misunderstood what the Democratic panelist said.

That panelist was the calm, mild-mannered Kevin Walling. Here's the bulk of what he said:

WALLING: Well obviously, we're seeing a response from [Senator Padilla's] colleagues in the Senate, Republicans and Democrats. You know, Lisa Murkowski I think just released a statement saying, you know, it was shocking and horrifying and not what she believes in America.

I think once you saw the senator identify himself—he's the senior senator of the most populous state, the state where this public press conference was happening—this kind of behavior should not have happened.

MacCallum apparently thought that was a criticism of Senator Padilla. On balance, we'd be inclined to say that she apparently heard Walling's statement wrong.

The Republican panelist was Marc Thiessen. After Walling spoke, MacCallum turned to Thiessen with a classic leading question. Inevitably, she was rewarded with the classic approved tribal answer:

MACCALLUM: I mean it's clear, Marc, that he wanted to make apolitical statement with this outburst, right?

THIESSEN: It's not a very smart one. Democrats are in the process of committing political suicide.

That's the way the fellow started. Continuing, he now said this:

THIESSEN (continuing directly): You've got Democratic congressmen storming an ICE facility filled with criminal aliens who have felony records and child—you know, rape and murder and all the rest, and now you've got a Democratic senator storming a press conference with the DHS secretary, getting into a scuffle with law enforcement? What's wrong with these people? You don't behave like this. This isn't how a senator is supposed to behave...

And so on, irately, from there.

For the record, we know of no reason to claim that Senator Badilla "stormed" yesterday's event. He did loudly interrupt Noem. We don't think he should have done that.

With respect to Thiessen's companion complaint, it's abundantly clear that the three Democratic congressmen to whom he refers did not "storm the ICE [detention center in Newark]" during the month-old event in question.

Sorry, that just didn't happen! But pleasing tribal claims of that type never die or grow old on Fox.

Claims like that enjoy eternal life on Fox. With respect to yesterday's event, MacCallum soon said that each of her guests had been criticizing Senator Padilla.

If that's what MacCallum thought she heard, we think she heard it wrong.

THE TROOPS: Secretary Noem does it again!

FRIDAY, JUNE 13, 2025

Blue America's troops gone wild: Yesterday, in the City of Angels, Kristi Noem did it again.

At the start of a press event, she made her latest (extremely) strange remark. Here's the transcript of what she was saying when the cameras swiveled around to a different part of the room:

NOEM (6/12/25): ...The Department of Homeland Security and the officers and the agencies and the departments and the military people that are working on this operation will continue to sustain and increase our operations in this city. We are not going away. We are staying here to liberate this city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor had placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into this city.

So I want to say thank you to every single person that has been able to do this. Also, I want to talk specifically to the rioters and to the politicians in Los Angeles.

[PAUSES]

I also want to talk specifically about how many of our agents have been doxxed for doing their duty. How they have been targeted and how their families have been put in jeopardy and that we're not going to allow that any more as well, that those individuals who are purposely endangering our ICE agents and our law enforcement officers and their families will be prosecuted for what they are doing as far as perpetuating violence on them.

As a general matter, people who purposely endanger law enforcement officers should be stopped from doing that. That said, we start with the remarkable statement we've highlighted above.

Noem has said and done a wide assortment of strange things in her current post. "Suck it," she thoughtfully wrote on May 22, commenting on a lawsuit against her department which had been dismissed. 

Los Angeles is really "a city of criminals," she pathetically stated last week.

Cricket is gone, but this person remains! Yesterday, she made this amazing remark:

We [ICE] are not going away. We are staying here to liberate this city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor had placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into this city.

Secretary Noem to the rescue! Her federal agency will stay in L.A. "to liberate it from the leadership" its mayor, and the governor of its state, have placed upon that realm.

Also, no socialists allowed! For the record, that wasn't a clumsy offhand remark. That was actually part of the secretary's prepared text.

As presented, the quoted remark doesn't quite parse, but Noem may have been distracted at that point. By the time of that remark, voices could be heard from elsewhere in the room. 

She briefly paused, at the indicated point, as a brief bit of turmoil played out. We now switch our attention to Senator Padilla (D-CA), an impressive person whose personal history reminds us of a very important point:

Talent emerges from all locales! The leading authority speaks:

Alex Padilla

Alejandro Padilla (born March 22, 1973) is an American politician serving as the senior United States senator from California, a seat he has held since 2021. A member of the Democratic Party, Padilla served as the 30th secretary of state of California from 2015 to 2021 and was a member of the California State Senate and the Los Angeles City Council.

[...]

Padilla is one of three children of Santos and Lupe Padilla, both of whom moved from Mexico, specifically Jalisco and Chihuahua, before meeting and marrying in Los Angeles, where he was born. He grew up in Pacoima, Los Angeles, and graduated from San Fernando High School in the northeast San Fernando Valley. He earned a degree in mechanical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1994. 

After graduation, Padilla moved back to Pacoima and briefly worked as an engineer for Hughes Aircraft, where he wrote software for satellite systems.

Padilla is a former member of the governing board of MIT...

His father worked as a short-order cook, his mother as a housekeeper. Their son emerged with an engineering degree from MIT, reminding us of the remarkable fact that talent can emerge from anywhere on the dial.

(In the case of President Lincoln, it emerged, in an inexplicable way, from the nation's backcountry, In the case of the Presidents Roosevelt, it emerged from the nation's highest salons.)

People swear by the character of Senator Padilla. We'd be strongly inclined to assume that those people have it right.

That said, it seems to us that he submitted to a bit of imperfect judgment yesterday. 

In this morning's news report, the New York Times offers an instant summary.  We'll highlight an important word which has been widely disappeared:

Calif. Senator Forcibly Removed and Handcuffed After Interrupting Noem

Senator Alex Padilla, Democrat of California, was forcibly removed on Thursday from a news conference being held by Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, and handcuffed after he interrupted Ms. Noem at a federal building in West Los Angeles.

“Sir! Sir! Hands off!” Mr. Padilla, 52, shouted as federal agents tried to muscle him out of the room inside a government office building about 15 miles west of downtown Los Angeles where Ms. Noem was speaking. “I am Senator Alex Padilla. I have a question for the secretary.”

[...]

In the tense hyperpartisanship of the moment, the episode quickly swelled into a cause célèbre for both parties...

The key word is "interrupted." That word appears in the first paragraph of the Times report, but also in the headline.

Yesterday, the corporate stars of Blue America disappeared that word. If you're a denizen of Blue America, you should be very unhappy about the way these less than fully impressive people, along with their less than fully impressive predecessors, have served your interests over the past (let's say) 33 years.

People swear by Senator Padilla's character; we don't doubt that assessment. But in our view, he displayed a bit of imperfect judgment during yesterday event.

In our view, so did Nicolle Wallace and the standard assortment of Blue American corporate hacks on MSNBC's succession of programs. Instantly, they started feeding us cable news viewers the kind of porridge which leaves us well-fed and glad. 

They kept forgetting to mention the fact that Senator Padilla had suddenly interrupted Secretary Noem as she tried to make her (remarkable) opening statement. No, you're not supposed to do that—and Senator Padilla, who is said to be mild-mannered, seemed remarkably exercised when security tried to make him stop. 

The senator is much larger than those agents were. He kept shoving back against them and attempting to interrupt further. 

In our view, he shouldn't have done that. Lincoln also made mistakes at points along the way.

No, Virginia! Senator Padilla wasn't simply "doing his oversight" when he tried to interrupt, as Blue America's pundits quickly agreed to say. And when Wallace came on the air at 4 p.m., she repeatedly said that Noem had lied lied lied lied lied lied lied in an earlier appearance on Fox.

She dropped the L-bomb a hundred times. Meanwhile, Senator Padilla was perhaps less than fully descriptive when he made this statement, not long after he'd been shoved out of the room and roughly handcuffed:

SENATOR PADILLA (6/12/25): I came to the press conference to see what she had to say, to see if I could learn any new information, and at one point I had a question. And let me emphasize this as we've emphasized the right for people to peacefully protest and to stand up for their First Amendment rights.

I was there peacefully, and at one point I had a question, and so I began to ask a question. I was almost immediately forcibly removed from the room. I was forced to the ground, and I was handcuffed.

I was not arrested. I was not detained. I will say this—if this is how this administration responds to a senator with a question, if this is how the Department of Homeland Security responds to a senator with a question, you can only imagine what they're doing to farmworkers, to cooks, to day laborers out in the Los Angeles community and throughout California.

"At one point, I had a question," he said, two separate times. "And so I began to ask a question." 

All that is true! He omitted the fact that Noem was delivering her opening remarks when he loudly interrupted so he could ask his question.

He failed to say that he loudly interrupted the person in question. The word "interrupted" was then widely disappeared all through the rest of the day on the corporate cable news channel which services Blue America.

No, Virgina! You aren't supposed to show up at a press event and loudly interrupt. You aren't "doing your oversight" when you do that, and you may even find yourself being removed from the room.

We don't know why Senator Padilla staged that interruption. We don't know why he seemed to be so exercised as the agents in question removed him from the room

Did those agents behave correctly? This very morning, on Morning Joe, one Blue American pundit explicitly said that they did. 

(Maria Teresa Kumar: "The Secret Service were doing their job.") 

Kumar quickly pivoted to a rather tortured criticism of Noem herself. Yesterday, on the less deceptive CNN, security correspondent Josh Campbell offered an assessment in which he largely, though not completely, agreed with Kumar's initial assessment. 

Campbell is a former special agent with the FBI—and no, he isn't pro-Trump.

Kumar quickly pivoted to a criticism of Noem.  More specifically, she pivoted to the claim that "a more talented politician" would have intervened from the podium to remedy the situation. 

As always, everything's possible! In our view, that was classic tribal novelization—novelization all the way down.

Did Noem understand what was happening during this brief event? Did she know that it was Senator Padilla who was trying to interrupt?

From the available videotapes, we see no proof that she did. 

Was she lying lying lying during her subsequent appearance on Fox? Given her recent awful record, we don't doubt that she'd be willing to do so, but we see no obvious proof that she did.

Starting at 4 o'clock Eastern, we did see a succession of pundits standing in line to toe Blue America's (corporate) line. These people have served Blue America's interests very poorly during the past many years.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep—but those of us in Blue America aren't the moral and intellectual giants we've long presumed ourselves to be. We're gifted with imperfect judgment, a bit like everyone else.

Our lizard brains will want to say that our remarks just have to be wrong. Unfortunately, our lizard brains have often served us very poorly since President Trump came down the escalator in June 2015.

So have our corporate pundits! All through the Biden years, their shaky judgment helped create the world in which President Trump made his way back to the White House.

They swore there was nothing wrong at the southern border. Until they could say it no more, they swore there was nothing wrong with President Biden himself.

They swore that inflation was all in the dumb voters' heads. They spent years trying to get Trump locked up, in the (pleasing) course of which they likely helped him get elected.

(They kept saying that we voters needed to know if Candidate Trump, on one occasion, had had sex with Stormy Daniels ten years before. No, you can't get dumber than that—but our stars were willing to try.)

In our view, Senator Padilla—a good and decent, remarkable person—submitted to a bit of imperfect judgment yesterday. 

He could have let the secretary speak, then tried to raise his question at the more appropriate time. Instead, he rose to loudly interrupt. Sometimes, if not for all the imperfect judgment, there would be no judgment at all!

Blue America's corporate pundits largely took things from there. "In the tense hyperpartisanship of the moment," they invented a whole new set of ways to put their thumbs on the scale.

Noem made her latest very strange statement. We Blues took over from there!

THURSDAY: Memorializing Leavitt's latest!

THURSDAY, JUNE 12, 2025

And yes, she said it out loud: On the one hand, the behavior was fairly typical, coming from Karoline Leavitt.

Karoline Leavitt, 27, is President Trump's press spokesperson. She's widely said to speak fluent Trump. We'll quickly make this point:

Leavitt didn't appoint herself to her current position. It isn't her doing, or her fault, that she holds her current job.

That said, one bit of behavior from Leavitt was so striking this week that it deserves to be memorialized. We refer to the way she reacted to a question from a reporter—a question which was basically sensible, given a peculiar earlier statement by the president himself.

In fairness, let's quickly be fair:

You can't really fault the sitting president for being annoyed at this time. Given ongoing events in Los Angeles, he may have to move some military assets from his birthday party out to the west coast!

Still, this led to an unusual statement by the commander in chief. On Tuesday, he made these comments in response to a question at an Oval Office event:

PRESIDENT TRUMP (6/10/25): I just think it's amazing. We’re going to have a fantastic June 14th parade, Flag Day. It’s going to be an amazing day. 

We have tanks, we have planes, we have all sorts of things, and I think it is going to be great. We're going to celebrate our country for a change.

[..]

And if there's any protestor wants to come out, they will be met with very big force, by the way. And for those people that want to protest, they’re going to be met with very big force—and I haven’t even heard about a protest.

But, you know, this is people that hate our country. But they will be met with a very heavy force.

You can see the tape of his full statement here. At any rate, no more of this "American carnage" stuff. We're going to celebrate the country for once!

The president said he hadn't heard about any plans for protests. But if anyone does show up to protest, he said that they'll be met with a very big, very heavy force. He said it three separate times!

Given the fact that non-violent protest has long been alleged to be legal, that was a slightly odd statement. You could write it off as a clumsy remark—or you could ask Leavitt about it.

On Wednesday, Jasmine Wright chose the perilous latter approach. We probably wouldn't have bothered, but this was the initial result:

WRIGHT (6/11/25): Thank you, Karoline.

The president warned that any protest at Saturday's event would be met with force. Can you clarify what kind of protest President Trump does support, or find acceptable?

LEAVITT: The president absolutely supports peaceful protests. He supports the First Amendment. He supports the right of Americans to make their voices heard. He does not support violence of any kind. He does not support assaulting law enforcement officers who are simply trying to do their job. 

It’s very clear for the president what he supports and what he does not. Unfortunately for Democrats, that line has not been made clear and they've allowed this unrest and this violence to continue. and the president has had to step in.

We almost surely would have left it right there. That said, Wright wanted to nail things down. Here's the thanks she received:

WRIGHT (continuing directly): One question. So if there were peaceful protests on Saturday for the military parade, President Trump would allow that?

LEAVITT: Of course, the president supports peaceful protests! What a stupid question.

"What a stupid question," the youngster said. And yes—she said it out loud!  (For the videotape, click here.)

We thought it should be memorialized. Memorialization done!

THE TROOPS: President Trump addresses the troops!

THURSDAY, JUNE 12, 2025

On Fox, the troops can't be wrong: President Trump was in his element, standing before the troops.

He was addressing the troops at Fort Bragg—rather, at what was once Fort Bragg. In fact, it's now Fort Bragg again, though it isn't that Fort Bragg.

More on that ride in the clown car tomorrow. For now, we turn to the insights of the commander in chief, given voice this Tuesday afternoon as he addresses the troops.

He was explaining current events in L.A. For current purposes, we'll suggest that you ignore the partisanship of his oration, in what would previously would have viewed as non-political terrain.

We'll suggest that you look past that. We'll suggest that you focus on this.

Apparently unable to help himself, there he went again:

PRESIDENT TRUMP (6/10/25): The agitators are throwing firebombs, Molotov cocktails, lighting vehicles ablaze, you saw all the cars that were burning, mobbing police officers and ICE officers, who are the toughest people you'll ever meet and they love our country and they're getting really—they want to stomp on them, but they're too tough, they don't allow it, and attempting to infiltrate and occupy federal buildings wearing armor and face shields—the best money can buy. Somebody's financing it. We're going to find out through Pam Bondi and Department of Justice who it is.

They're already on it. Who's financing all this equipment? Very professional! 

Under the Trump administration, this anarchy will not stand. We will not allow federal agents to be attacked, and we will not allow an American city to be invaded and conquered by a foreign enemy, and that's what they are. 

A lot of those people were let in here by the Biden administration. They just poured right in. They came from prisons, they came from jails from all over the world, they came from mental institutions, they were the leaders of gangs, they were drug lords. Allowed to come into our country. Their countries threw them out.

Their countries would bus them or drive them right to our border and say, "Go in there. You ever come back, we're going to kill you." And we got them, and we're getting them out of here. 

I want to applaud the courage and the strength of the incredible troops who are right now standing guard to protect federal property and personnel and uphold the supremacy of federal law. That's what they're doing, they're protecting our ICE agents, they're protecting the police in Los Angeles. 

The head of the police in Los Angeles, a good man, I hear a good man, but he was actually saying, "We really did need this help." It had gotten away from them. It had long gotten away, and we gave it to them.

Thanks to the invaluable Rev, you can peruse a transcript and watch the tape simply by clicking here. If only there were other such sites!

At any rate, as the president addressed one set of troops. he praised a second set. None of this is a commentary on either set of troops. It's a commentary on the commander himself—possibly on his delusions, on his fixed ideas.

Thee the gentleman went again, with his familiar claims! From all around the world, foreign countries had loaded their prisoners into vehicles, along with those who were mentally ill. They'd then proceeded to bus those people right to our southern border! 

To his credit, he didn't mention Congo this time—until, moments later, the commander actually did:

PRESIDENT TRUMP: In other words, they came in here illegally. Many of them came out of prisons and jails, the most heinous people, they came from all over the world. 

They came from the Congo in Africa, they came from Asia, they came from the prisons of these places. They were put into the United States and allowed to stay here because we had a grossly, grossly unfit president who listened to whoever was operating the autopen, and they allowed these people to stay. 

And by the way, I've known this guy for a long time, he was never the sharpest bulb. But you know what he was? He wasn't a radical left lunatic, he never dreamt about open borders, he never said that when he was of sound mind, which actually was a very long time ago. So sad, what they've done to our country.

For whatever reason, he can't stop talking about President Biden, even in this former nation's most plainly non-partisan setting. Also, he can't stop saying that nations like "the Congo"—formally, The Democratic Republic of the Congo—loaded their criminals and their mental patients into buses and drove them to San Diego, or possibly straight to L.A., and then proceeded to make them get out, threatening to kill them if they dared to refuse.

is it possible that something is actually wrong with this man? The commander can't seem to stop making these ludicrous claims—and Blue America's useless elites can't stop ignoring his conduct. Elsewhere, the creepy crawlers on the Fox news Channel are even willing to play the margarita card—but then again, so did the astonishing Secretary Noem, the one who shot Cricket, her puppy.

(After that, she proceeded to shoot a goat, if only to further establish her point. According to Secretary Noem's recent book, the goat had "a wretched smell.")

Back to the buses and limousines which kept pulling up to the southern border under the previous president. Today, we ask the question which will never be asked under current tribal arrangements:

Why does this very powerful person insist on making such ludicrous statements? What drives him to say such things, even as he addresses the troops at the base which is now Fort Bragg again, though it's no longer that Fort Bragg.

Why does he keep saying these things? Blue America's timorous elites have long since agreed that they must never ask. If they ever dared to ask, they'd have to take such questions to medical specialists—and conduct like that just isn't allowed inside their unhelpful guild.

That was the commander in chief, instructing the actual troops. Last night, a different set of troops crawled out when the CEO of the Fox News Channel pried the lid off the can.

The Gutfeld! program was now underway! As always, it started with two or three minutes of jokes, then moved to a full hour of ludicrous pseudo-discussions.

Those pseudo-discussions cannot be discussed! Our Blue elites agree.

The program's host delivers the opening handful of jokes. Last evening, he ended in a familiar place at 10:03 p.m. Eastern. 

It was 7:03 p.m. out on the west coast:

GUTFELD (6/11/25): And finally, according to scientists, humpback whales are trying to send messages to humans. 

Yeah! And it turns out they even have their own TV show.

[PHOTO: The five women of The View]

AUDIENCE: Cheers and applause

GUTFELD: Oh, you saw it coming! You saw it coming!

In fact, everyone who has ever watched this brain-damaged TV show had seen it coming as soon as he said the word "whales." The misogyny is undisguised on this braindead propaganda program. 

The pseudo-discussions came next. 

All in all, new winds of freedom are blowing through the land. They could be felt as the commander-in-chief repeated his crazy fixed ideas, but also as the host of that primetime "cable news" show pimped his favorite themes.

As that breeze blows through the land, the cherished elites of Blue America politely maintain their silence:

No one asks if something might perhaps be wrong, perhaps in some significant way, with a person who goes to Fort Bragg and repeats those claims about those bus rides from the Congo. Also, everyone agrees that the garbage spewed on the Fox News Channel must never be reported and therefore can't be discussed.

As a former nation splits into a pair of nations, a mighty wind is met by a mighty silence. We're so old that we can remember when of Blue America's troops assailed George W. Bush for an alleged lack of curiosity. 

Which segment of the two Americas is displaying that lack today?

The president was addressing one set of troops. The remarkably peculiar Greg Gutfeld is a key member of a second set of troops—the corporate troops who crawl on the land from morning till night on the Fox News Channel. 

Last night, this battalion had been assembled:

Gutfeld!: Wednesday, June 11, 2025
Tom Shillue: current D-list comedian
Chris Craighead: former special service soldier, British army
Emily Compagno: former head cheerleader, Oakland Raiders
Tyrus: former professional "wrestler"

Craighead (not his real name) was making his first appearance. At 10:14, he was hailed by one and all when he dropped his first F-bomb on national TV!

(Craighead: There's a whole generation of scumbags out there who don't understand, "[BLEEP] around and find out." Audience: Cheers and applause.)

It was a magical moment. To see the intros, just click here. So it goes with this set of troops.

Alas, the Fox News Channel! The channel has been losing some of its top performers of late. Pete Hegseth, Judge Jeanine, even Tammy Bruce? All three have been called away to a higher form of service.

The channel is struggling forward, trying to replace this talent. In the meantime, the pseudo-discussions continue apace—broadcast to Red America around the clock, unknown to everyone else.

We Blues! Our elites won't inquire about President Trump. They won't report what happens on the Fox News Channel—and no matter how inane that channel's pseudo-discussions get, its troops can never be totally wrong.

It can never be a long time ago, Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote as she ended the first of her famous nine books. 

On Fox, The troops can never be totally wrong. Tomorrow, we'll show you why.

Tomorrow: These troops can never be wrong