(Mature) life doesn't begin at 60!

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2024

Aging Fox star proves the point: It's been a while since we looked in on the moral progress of the aging star who sits at the helm of the Fox News Channel's primetime Gutfeld! program.

That star grew up in a sunny land. Last week, he turned 60.

Having reached the age of majority, would he begin to show moral growth? Inquiring minds wanted to know!

Last night, he was accompanied by a standard type of panel—one former professional wrestler, a pair of flyweight D-List comedians, plus consultant Erin Perrine, who ought to know much better. 

The first two panel discussions achieved unparalleled levels of intellectual cluelessness—but we thought you might want to check in on the cable star's sexual politics.

Simply put, this pilgrim is showing no progress. As he typically does, he opened his "cable news" program with a few minutes of jokes. 

He started with an evergreen sally about President Biden's state of near-death, but by 10:01 he had moved on to this world-class throwback groaner:

GUTFELD (9/17/24): An investigation into the immigrant crisis in Springfield, Ohio reveals that auto accidents have increased fourfold. 

I didn't know the Haitians were all women.

ANNOUNCER: A sexist would saaaaaayyy.

For now, try to ignore the factual claim, which we'll fact-check below. Just try to believe that a cable star is still so braindead that he goes on TV offering jokes which turn on the theme that women simply can't drive their cars as well as we strong muscled men.

He turned to that joke at 10:01. That announcer's hook—A sexist would saaaaaayyy!—is part of the pitiful infrastructure of this braindead "cable news" program.

The Incel emitted that joke at 10:01. His next joke went like this:

GUTFELD: RFK Junior is being investigated for allegedly cutting off the head of a whale carcass twenty years ago.

But it appears Joy Behar is doing fine.

[LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE]

(Scoldingly) You people!

Comparisons of Behar to cows or elephants or whales are a constant theme with the undergrown child. At 10:02, he moved ahead to this:

GUTFELD: Hillary Clinton's fourth memoir is coming out today. There are as many accounts of her life as there are of Christ's.

The similarities end there. Jesus brought a dead man back to life, and Hillary brought a live man to a prison and had him hung. 

[PHOTOS OF CLINTON, JEFFREY EPSTEIN]

[APPLAUSE]

(That was part of the ongoing campaign in which the aging star advances the notion that Jeffrey Epstein was actually murdered by Hillary Clinton.)

Right after that, at 10:02, the cable star offered his final joke. His final joke went like this:

GUTFELD: And on MSNBC, Hillary Clinton called Donald Trump a danger to our country. 

Meanwhile, men are calling Hillary a danger to their boners.

Believe it or not, the sheer stupidity of the ensuing discussions exceeded the stupidity—and the astonishing tastelessness—of this little guy's humor selection. Even so, he had again displayed the "Incel chic" for which his program has become famous.

So you'll know, he quickly threw in an additional comment establishing the eternal claim that all the women of The View are just way too fat. That crowd-pleasing theme goes on and on, night after night after night.

At 10:21, he kicked off a pseudo-discussion of Hillary Clinton's recent comments about Candidate Trump. As he did, he referred to Clinton as "that broad with the kankles."

(That was a reference to a long-standing Limbaugh claim according to which the former senator's ankles were way too fat.) 

That pseudo-discussion turned on a bogus impression produced by some bogus editing. Thanks to the bogus edit, the aging star conveyed the impression that Clinton has proposed imprisoning people (implicitly, political opponents) for acts of misinformation. 

Having established that phony premise, the aging star threw this in:

GUTFELD: Being jailed for misinformation! Well, I guess that means that Bill Clinton will never call you pretty!

As you can see, it routinely goes well beyond pitiful with this 60-year-old man. For the record, four flyweights—two of whom identify as women—sat around watching this pathetic yet standard display.

Concerning the claims about auto accidents in Springfield, it's based on a news report in the New York Post. That news report actually says that injuries in auto accidents for the entire county have increased by fourteen percent. 

The "fourfold" figure involves a jump in deaths in auto accidents (countywide) from two in 2022 to a total of eight last year. You can, of course, refer to that a fourfold increase, but it's built on an N which is basically meaningless. 

(The Post report specifically notes that it isn't known if Haitian drivers were involved in these accidents. Translation: The aging star is even slipperier than reports in the New York Post!)

How did this famously motherless child ever get this way? As we often note, he grew up in a bright, sunny land.

This can is opened, in primetime, on the Fox News Channel each night. It's an endless cancer on the society, and nobody says a word.

OUR DEMOCRACY'S NEW CLOTHES: A good, decent person made a mistake!

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2024

Dozens of bomb threats have followed: Was our flailing nation's public discourse once a different critter?

In 1960, the Kennedy-Nicon TV debates marked the start of the modern political era. Our national discourse was perhaps different then. Consider what Teddy White said.

Theodore White, age 46, was smart and highly experienced. Writing in a famous old book, he offered this observation about the candidates' second debate:

WHITE (page 292): Kennedy’s response to the first question on Quemoy and Matsu was probably one of the sharpest and clearest responses to any question of the debates; in that response, actually, Kennedy was tentatively fingering at one of the supreme problems of American statecraft, our relation with the revolution in Asia. 

In yesterday's report, we showed you the full text of Candidate Kennedy's statement. Also, we linked you the videotape of that sharpest and clearest response.

Do presidential candidates speak that way in debates of the present day? As a general manner, no—but White was unhappy, way back when, even with that response.

According to White, the fact that Kennedy had only two-and-a-half minutes to speak meant that he'd been "out too far with such a thought" to fully explain his view. 

Indeed, White offered that very response as an example of how limited our discourse had become that year. In a footnote, he added this:

WHITE: For a full development of this two-minute answer, one had to wait for days, until Kennedy’s extraordinarily lucid half-hour speech on Quemoy and Matsu in New York on Columbus Day, October 12th. That speech was heard only by a local audience, and its full text was reprinted, so far as I know, in only three newspapers in the country. It was as fine a campaign discussion of an issue of national importance as this correspondent can remember—yet its impact on the nation was nil.

So it went, according to White, in that dumbest of all presidential campaigns—a campaign in which only three (3) newspapers bothered to publish the full text of an "extraordinarily lucid half-hour speech."

Only three newspapers published the text! In White's view, that was one marker of our nation's badly failing discourse.

Today, no imaginable candidate would actually give such a speech. No newspaper would even dream of publishing some such text.

Today, our discourse is draped in a new suit of clothes, in a way which calls to mind the foibles of a famous old emperor. Our discourse is draped in a new type of raiment—in a wardrobe which has changed in fundamental ways, yet may be hard for us to see. 

Where does today's discourse come from? In the wake of the so-called "democratization of media," our discourse may flow downhill from the type of stream described in today's New York Times.

Way back then, Theodore White was a summa cum laude Harvard grad. Candidates Kennedy and Nixon were both remarkably well informed, as judged by modern standards.

Where are the headwaters found today? Thanks to the democratization of media, the news report to which we refer starts exactly like this:

Ohio Woman Says She Regrets Sharing False Rumor About Haitians on Facebook

When Erika Lee wrote the Facebook post, it was just another summer day in Springfield, Ohio.

It was before the city got dragged into the presidential race, before former President Donald J. Trump stoked debunked rumors that Haitian immigrants were abducting and eating household pets, and before an ensuing wave of bomb threats upended life in the town of about 60,000.

Ms. Lee had heard that a neighbor’s cat had disappeared and that one of their Haitian neighbors might have taken the animal, so she posted the rumor on Facebook...

Erika Lee, age 35, is plainly a good, decent person. As the news report continues, she is quoted voicing her deep regret at her decision to "post the rumor on Facebook."

That said, the news report describes what happened after she posted the rumor. The report continues as shown:

Ms. Lee had heard that a neighbor’s cat had disappeared and that one of their Haitian neighbors might have taken the animal, so she posted the rumor on Facebook. But then she decided to go back to her neighbor.

It turned out the cat that had supposedly gone missing wasn’t the cat of a neighbor’s daughter, as Ms. Lee had posted. And if there were such a cat, it belonged to a friend of a friend of the neighbor’s daughter, Ms. Lee learned.

“And at that point, we are playing the game of telephone,” said Ms. Lee, who said she had no information herself about any abducted cats.

She has since deleted the post, but it had taken on a life of its own—eventually finding its way into the right-wing echo chamber, where it was picked up by Mr. Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, who grew up in Middletown, about 40 miles from Springfield.

[...]

Ms. Lee, 35, says she now regrets writing the Facebook post and feels bad about the racially charged fallout that has consumed the city for days.

“I was not raised with hate,” Ms. Lee said, speaking through sobs. “My whole family is biracial. I never wanted to cause problems for anyone.”

Erika Lee made a rookie mistake. Like almost every good, decent person, she isn't a highly trained journalist. 

That said, an astonishing person came along and decided to run with her rookie mistake. Last Tuesday, the man who sits at the top of that person's ticket angrily wailed about this confection during a presidential debate.

Yesterday, we showed you what happened when he did. Because what happened is highly instructive, we'll show you the text once again:

DAVID MUIR (9/10/24): I just want to clarify here. You bring up Springfield, Ohio. And ABC News did reach out to the city manager there. He told us there have been no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community—

TRUMP: Well, I've seen people on television—

MUIR: Let me just say here, this is—

TRUMP: The people on television say, "My dog was taken and used for food." So maybe he said that, and maybe that's a good thing to say for a city manager.

MUIR: I'm not taking this from television. I'm taking it from the city manager.

TRUMP: But the people on television say their dog was eaten by the people that went there.

MUIR: Again, the Springfield city manager says there's no evidence of that—

TRUMP: We'll find out.

Should David Muir of ABC News have sought to "clarify" what that particular candidate said? 

The candidate had angrily repeated a ser of claims which had already been widely debunked. Should the moderator have simply "moved on?" Or should he have done what he did?

From that day to this, Muir has been savaged all over the Fox News Channel for daring to call attention to that angry candidate's apparently bogus statement. Having made a set of inflammatory statements to 67.1 million people, the candidate merely said that "we'll find out" if what he said was true.

We've come a very long way, baby, from the dueling statements by Candidates Kennedy and Nixon concerning Quemoy and Matsu. As White reported, their dueling statements about those islands continued into their third debate. 

Those candidates were well-informed and highly articulate, although they held differing views. 

The candidate from whom Muir sought clarification made other statements last Tuesday night which may have emerged from the twilight zone on the border of mental disorder. In our view, major news orgs like the New York Times still haven't found the way—or perhaps haven't found the journalistic courage—to come to terms with the new raiment that particular candidate has draped on our public discussion.

Tomorrow, we'll show you some of other statements that particular candidate made that night—statements which seemed to arrive on the scene from a zone near Lala Land. On Friday, we'll try to think about the way the New York Times has chosen to deal with that particular candidate's long list of baldly disordered statements.

For today, we'll direct your attention to the point of origin of this current blight on what's left of the national discourse.

 According to the Times report, the point of origin was a bit of bad judgment by a good, decent person with connections to Facebook—a good, decent person who posted a rumor before she went back to check facts.

"Every man [sic] a king," a famous politician once said. The leading authority on his career offers this initial thumbnail:

Huey Long

Huey Pierce Long Jr. (August 30, 1893 – September 10, 1935), nicknamed "The Kingfish," was an American politician who served as the 40th governor of Louisiana from 1928 to 1932 and as a United States senator from 1932 until his assassination in 1935. He was a left-wing populist member of the Democratic Party and rose to national prominence during the Great Depression for his vocal criticism of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal, which Long deemed insufficiently radical. 

As the political leader of Louisiana, he commanded wide networks of supporters and often took forceful action. A controversial figure, Long is celebrated as a populist champion of the poor or, conversely, denounced as a fascist demagogue.

Some saw Long as "a populist champion of the poor." Some saw him as a demagogue. 

His famous cry—Every man a king!—was aspirational at that point in time. In the wake of the democratization of media, his famous cry has instead become descriptive.

Today, everyone with an Internet link can end up driving the American public discourse, whether for good or for ill. 

Inevitably, "democratization" sounds like a very good thing. But in the instance under review, this particular type of democratization empowered a good, decent person who made a mistake to set in motion a chain of events which has led to dozens of bomb threats and to the evacuations of public schools.

A good, decent person made a mistake. For whatever reason or reasons, a pair of candidates for higher office stepped in and took things from there.

Last Tuesday night, David Muir of ABC News sought "clarification" of a statement one of those candidates made during a presidential debate. Muir has been widely criticized for that outrageous decision.

Moderators in 1960 were faced with no such decisions. Neither candidate in those debates alleged the eating of cats and dogs. Neither candidate in those debates made equivalent statements. 

Our discourse has come a long way since then—and it's wearing a new suit of clothes. 

Tomorrow, we'll take a look at the Fox News Channel and the New York Post—at the outrage which has emerged from those particular orgs in the wake of Muir's decision. From there, it will be on to Blue America's leading newspaper—on to the New York Times! 

In our view, our discourse is draped in a new suit of clothes—and we don't mean that as a compliment. In our view, news orgs like the Times are politely averting their gaze from this fact—from the new arrangements which are driving our vastly changed discourse, and from its disordered participants.

At the dawn of this failing era, Theodore White was upset. One candidate delivered a lucid address—and only three American newspapers had published that hopeful's full text!

Tomorrow: "Who ordered tax?"

Milbank blasts the Fox News Channel!

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2024

Scribe doesn't get it right: Can anyone here play this game?

Over at the Washington Post, Dana Milbank was doing the highly unusual. He was describing the eternal spotlessness of the Fox News viewer's mind.

Hic column appeared last Friday, three days post-debate. Its dual headline said this:

Fox News cleans up another Trump mess
After the debate, the network worked to keep the MAGA faithful in a state of blissful ignorance.

Unheard of! Milbank was describing an important component of the Fox News Channel playbook. Its viewers are routinely kept from hearing the truth when the truth doesn't go the preferred way.

For whatever reason, journalists rarely talk about Fox. The column started like this:

Fox News cleans up another Trump mess

The reviews were almost universally savage after Donald Trump’s debate debacle, in which the former president ranted about migrants eating pets while getting his clock cleaned by an opponent he had insisted was “stupid.” Even the Wall Street Journal’s right-wing editorialists thought that Vice President Kamala Harris “won the debate because she came in with a strategy to taunt and goad Mr. Trump into diving down rabbit holes of personal grievance and vanity,” while Karl Rove added in a column that the night “was a train wreck for him, far worse than anything Team Trump could have imagined.”

And then, in a universe all its own, there was Fox News.

“All the memorable lines were from Donald Trump,” host Jesse Watters proclaimed after the debate ended. (He specifically cited Trump’s “eating the pets” line.) “He just had some great knockouts,” Watters added. “And so this race just got tighter.”

“That’s probably true,” anchor Bret Baier agreed.

Briefly, let's be fair! Some commentators on Fox voiced a different point of view about the debate. 

The channel's post-debate program was hosted by Baier and Martha MacCallum. They quickly threw to Brit Hume.

Hume briefly criticized the ABC moderators. Then, however he offered this as the bulk of his analysis:

HUME (9/10/24): Now, look, make no mistake about it, Trump had a bad night. He rose to the bait repeatedly when she baited him, something I’m sure his advisers had begged him not to do.

You know, in the first debate, when Biden attacked him, he just kept his cool and kept going. In this debate he rose to the baiting—and we heard so many of the old grievances that we’d long thought Trump had learned were not winners politically. And there they all were, you know, talking about how he didn’t lose the election and all that.

So my sense is that she came out of this in pretty good shape. Now, how long this will last is anybody’s guess. But for tonight, at least, this was pretty much her night.

BAIER: You’re saying she had a good night?

HUME: I’m saying she certainly did.

Hume was the first analyst brought on the air that night. As you can see by clicking this link, that critique was offered to Fox News viewers roughly two minutes after the end of the debate.

Shortly thereafter, former Rep. Harold Ford (D-Tenn.) was brought on the air. "I agree with Brit," he said. "This has to be seen by supporters of Donald Trump and people in that campaign as a disappointment."

The gentleman continued from there. Sean Hannity had been allowed to take a turn between the two nay-sayers.

Eventually, the anchors got to Watters. The channel's resident "Silly Boy" made the remarks Milbank quoted. It's surprising to us to see that Baier did seem to voice agreement.

Milbank may have picked and chosen his examples just a tad. More awkwardly, he eventually said this in Friday's column:

Fox News cleans up another Trump mess

[...]

It was a case study in how the dominant “news” organ of the right cleans up Trump’s messes. When President Joe Biden had his disastrous debate, liberal outlets and commentators panned the performance and ultimately helped to force him out of the race. But when Trump had what was, objectively, a bad night, Fox News led a movement to claim it didn’t happen.

Sixty-seven million viewers saw an out-of-control Trump claim he won the 2020 election, complain that those who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, were “treated so badly,” argue about his crowd size, assert that he had read that Harris “was not Black” and that Biden “hates her,” admit that he still only has “concepts of a plan” on health care, make odd statements such as “I got involved with the Taliban” and “she wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison,” and utter this ludicrous slander about Haitian migrants: “They’re eating the dogs, the people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating—they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”

Oof! In our view, Candidate Trump did make a lot of "odd statements" that night. But even three days post-debate, Milbank apparently still didn't know the source of the quoted statement about transgender operations. 

For ABC's fact check from September 11, you can just click here.

Trump was referring to a pledge Harris made to the ACLU in 2019 during her presidential campaign. Unfortunately in our view, several positions she adopted back then represent potential problems for her current effort.

That said, our focus today is on Milbank's column. Our advice to the consumer is this:

Be careful when reading the types of things you've been longing to hear!

OUR DEMOCRACY'S NEW CLOTHES: Is our culture draped in a new suit of clothes?

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2024

Pepperidge Farm remembers: Long ago and far away, Hans Christian Andersen blew the whistle on an emperor who was wearing a new suit of clothes.

There was an obvious problem with the ruler's new ensemble. But as Andersen capably reported, citizens of the empire in question seemed unable to spot the problem with their emperor's new suit of clothes.

(Something we were withholding made us weak, Robert Frost once alleged.)

Is it possible that we the people, right here in this country, are having a similar problem today? Is our public discourse—"our democracy," our political culture—possibly draped in a new suit of clothes? 

Is it possible that we the people have been unable to identify the major societal problem encased in this new suit of clothes? If Pepperidge Farm is allowed to remember, it seems that the answer is yes.

To what extent is our public discourse—including our political journalism—now draped in a new suit of clothes? Let's start by considering something Bret Stephens has said.

He makes the statement in this morning's New York Times, in this week's version of The Conversation. As always, his interlocutor is Gail Collins. Thinking back, and squinting a little, the gentleman posits this:

We Cannot Go On Like This

[...]

Bret: Thanks to YouTube, you can now go back and watch politicians from two or three generations ago discuss the issues of the day: For instance, Ronald Reagan debating George H.W. Bush on the subject of immigration—which they both favored—during the 1980 G.O.P. primary campaign, or Richard Nixon debating John F. Kennedy on foreign policy, or listening to Robert F. Kennedy reciting Aeschylus from memory in his heartbreaking eulogy for Martin Luther King Jr. They’re all Gullivers compared to today’s Lilliputians.

He says the pols were smarter then. Is this simply an angry dream? Or could this distant memory possibly be true?

He mentions the Kennedy-Nixon debates from the dawn of the modern era. Bringing Pepperidge Farm center stage, let's take a look at the record.

In The Making of The President 1960, Theodore White describes those famous debates. At one point, he describes the way the second debate ended, and the way the third began.

The issue he cites is now lost to the world. Below, we'll call your attention to the way the issue was discussed by the pair of hopefuls:

WHITE (page 290): ...The second |debate concerned itself with foreign policy and ranged from Cuba’s Castro through the U-2 and espionage to the matter of America’s declining prestige, and closed on the first sharp clash of the series—the defense of Quemoy and Matsu. 

The third debate resumed, like a needle stuck in a phonograph groove, with the subject of Quemoy and Matsu, hung there almost indefinitely, then broke away with Nixon’s stern disapproval of President Truman’s bad language, and went on to other matters such as bigotry, labor unions and gold outflow. This, according to all sample surveys, was Nixon’s best performance in terms of its impact on the audience... 

The third debate was Nixon's best. But on and on the hopefuls had gone, debating Quemoy and Matsu!

Those tiny islands are rarely mentioned today. At issue was this nation's willingness to defend "Formosa" (today's Taiwan) against the menace of China. 

As we've noted, White claimed that television's role in this campaign had dumbed the political discourse way, way down from where it had been in the past:

"Rarely in American history has there been a political campaign that discussed issues less or clarified them less."

That's what the gentleman said. In White's view, the candidates could offer "only a snatch of naked thought and a spatter of raw facts" in the measly two-and-a-half minutes allotted to them when they answered the moderators' questions at their four televised debates.

With that in mind, we thought we'd show you what Candidate Kennedy said about Quemoy and Matsu during the second debate. 

Warning! We're going to show you his full statement, as recorded in this transcript of that second debate. To watch the candidate making this statement, you can click right here.

Full disclosure:

Theodore White was very bright. In his opinion at that time, these debates were part of the dumbest public discussion to which we the people had ever been exposed in one of our White House campaigns. 

Edward Morgan of ABC News presented the question that night. The less experienced Candidate Kennedy pretty much took it from there:

MORGAN (10/7/60): Senator, Saturday on television you said that you had always thought that Quemoy and Matsu were unwise places to draw our defense line in the Far East. Would you comment further on that, and also address to this question: 

Couldn’t a pullback from those islands be interpreted as appeasement?

CANDIDATE KENNEDY: Well, the United States has on occasion attempted, mostly in the middle fifties, to persuade Chiang Kai-shek to pull his troops back to Formosa. I believe strongly in the defense of Formosa. 

These islands are a few miles—five or six miles—off the coast of Red China, within a general harbor area and more than a hundred miles from Formosa. We have never said flatly that we will defend Quemoy and Matsu if it’s attacked. We say we will defend it if it’s part of a general attack on Formosa. But it’s extremely difficult to make that judgment. 

Now Mr. Herter, in 1958, when he was Under Secretary of State, said they were strategically undefensible. Admirals Spruance and Callins in 1955 said that we should not attempt to defend these islands, in their conference in the Far East. General Ridgway has said the same thing. 

I believe that when you get into a war—if you’re going to get into war for the defense of Formosa, it ought to be on a clearly defined line. One of the problems, I think, at the time of South Korea was the question of whether the United States would defend it if it were attacked. I believe that we should defend Formosa. We should come to its defense. To leave this rather in the air, that we will defend it under some conditions but not under other, I think is a mistake. 

Secondly, I would not suggest the withdrawal at the point of the Communist gun. It is a decision finally that the Nationalists should make and I believe that we should consult with them and attempt to work out a plan by which the line is drawn at the island of Formosa. It leaves a hundred miles between the sea. But with General Ridgway, Mr. Herter, General Collins, Admiral Spruance and many others, I think it’s unwise to take the chance of being dragged into a war which may lead to a world war over two islands which are not strategically defensible, which are not, according to their testimony, essential to the defense of Formosa. 

I think that we should protect our commitments. I believe strongly we should do so in Berlin. I believe strongly we should do so in Formosa, and I believe we should meet our commitments to every country whose security we’ve guaranteed. But I do not believe that that line, in case of a war, should be drawn on those islands, but instead on the island of Formosa. And as long as they are not essential to the defense of Formosa, it’s been my judgment ever since 1954, at the time of the Eisenhower Doctrine for the Far East, that our line should be drawn in the sea around the island itself.

That was "the snatch of naked thought" Candidate Kennedy managed to cram into his meager few minutes of time. 

Candidate Nixon's response was equally littered with facts and with what seems to have been a perfectly logical analysis.

"I disagree completely with Senator Kennedy on this point," the candidate quickly said. On this special occasion, we're going to go ahead and show you what Nixon said:

CANDIDATE NIXON: I disagree completely with Senator Kennedy on this point. I remember in the period immediately before the Korean War, South Korea was supposed to be indefensible as well. Generals testified to that. And Secretary Acheson made a very famous speech at the Press Club, early in the year that the Korean War started, indicating in effect that South Korea was beyond the defense zone of the United States. 

I suppose it was hoped when he made that speech that we wouldn’t get into a war. But it didn’t mean that. We had to go in when they came in. 

Now I think as far as Quemoy and Matsu are concerned, that the question is not these two little pieces of real estate—they are unimportant. It isn’t the few people who live on them—they are not too important. It’s the principle involved. These two islands are in the area of freedom. The Nationalists have these two islands. We should not force our Nationalist allies to get off of them and give them to the Communists. If we do that we start a chain reaction; because the Communists aren’t after Quemoy and Matsu, they’re—they’re after Formosa. 

In my opinion, this is the same kind of woolly thinking that led to disaster for America in Korea. I am against it. I would never tolerate it as president of the United States, and I will hope that Senator Kennedy will change his mind if he should be elected.

So it went in that second debate. As White notes, the discussion of Quemoy and Matsu spilled over into the third.

At the time, Theodore White thought that these statements were part of the dumbest public discussion to which we the people had ever been exposed in a presidential campaign. 

It wasn't the candidates' fault, he said. He said they couldn't present the full sweep of their thinking in the tiny few minutes they had.

As a point of courtesy, we aren't going to post those presentations side-by-side the wide array of mumble-mouthed foofaw on display at last Tuesday's debate. 

In our view, one candidate embarrassed himself, again and again, with a wide array of baldly ridiculous statements. When his statements were questioned on four occasions by the debate's moderators, Red America's pundit class rose in fury to denounce what the obvious hacks from ABC News had done.

Full disclosure! The other candidate seemed to avoid several direct questions at that same debate. We'd score her first post-debate interview as a bit underwhelming too, though we're inclined to cut her some slack because of the "accidental" nature of her late-starting campaign.

For such reasons, Pepperidge Farm offers dark, mordant chuckles as it remembers that exchange about Quemoy and Matsu—and as it lets its thoughts drift back to what Theodore White said, in a famous book, about the dumbness of that year's political discussion.

Staring the obvious, our modern discourse is a clown show compared to what happened back then. Incredibly, each of those four debates attracted a viewership of 65 to 70 million people—at a time when the nation's entire population stood at just under 180 million.

Time was slower then, Harper Lee suggested in her own famous book. There was much less to do. The American public was even willing to sit through the long, stupendously dull ballet which ends An American in Paris.

We the people—even the men!—sat through that endless ballet. In Tinseltown, An American in Paris was awarded the Oscar for Best Picture in 1952!

Today, our discourse is decked in a new suit of clothes. The clownishness has crept in slowly, on little cats' feet, during a time when the cats and the dogs were still feeling safe.

The clownishness of our public discourse—of our gong-show political culture—has crept in on little cats' feet. This has possibly made our predicament perhaps a bit hard to see. 

It was less Lilliputian then, Stephens has said. Could it be that the Timesman is right?

Tomorrow: Fact-checks and clarifications

COMING THIS AFTERNOON: Is our society draped in a new suit of clothes?

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2024

Pepperidge Farm remembers: We're losing a chunk of time this morning. We won't be posting until this afternoon.

At that time, we'll continue with this week's discussion—with a discussion of our flailing society's unmistakable new suit of clothes.

It was Hans Christian Andersen who recorded the history of the emperor who was mal-adorned in that famous manner. As Andersen noted, it was hard for citizens of his empire to see or acknowledge the problem with his suit of clothes.

To what extent are we the people failing to see the suit of clothes currently being paraded about in ours? How many individuals and organizations might be involved in this process?

Is our flailing national discourse currently draped in a new suit of clothes? This afternoon, Pepperidge Farm has agreed to remember the raiment we the people were willing to wear at the time of Quemoy and Matsu!

Stephens will never vote for Trump!

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2024

Possibly not for Harris either, but also possibly yes: In our view about who to vote for this year, we differ from the New York Times' Bret Stephens.

We're going to vote for Candidate Harris. Here's what Stephens tells Gail Collins in this week's episode of The Conversation:

We Cannot Go One Like This

[...]

Bret: Can I vote for Trump? Never. Will I vote for Harris? Maybe, but she hasn’t sealed the deal with me yet.

Gail: Hey, at least you’re moving in the right direction. 

What hasn't Harris sealed the deal? Earlier in their conversation, Stephens offers a list of the ways he sees the dueling nominees. 

In our view, some of this doesn't quite make sense—but also, some of it does: 

Bret: If Trump wins the election, I’ll feel sick. If Harris wins, I’ll feel scared. 

A Trump victory is going to complete the G.O.P.’s transition to a full-blown MAGA party that trades conservative convictions for illiberal ones. A Harris victory puts an untested leader in the White House at a moment of real menace from ambitious autocrats in Moscow, Beijing, Pyongyang and Tehran. 

A Trump victory means the country is again going to go crazy with all the cultural furies he unleashes, both for and against him. A Harris victory means four more years of misbegotten economic policies, like the threat to put controls on prices some federal bureaucrat deems to be too high. 

A Trump victory is dreadful for Ukraine. A Harris victory could be terrible for Israel. 

A Trump victory empowers people who don’t accept the results of an election. A Harris victory empowers a candidate who has never won a primary and whose supporters want to jail their political opponent.

If Trump wins, he says he’ll feel sick. If Harris wins, he'll feel scared. 

In our view, that list of ruminations gets weaker as it proceeds. That said:

As someone who will be voting for Harris, we'd say it's true that she's "untested" in certain ways. It's true that there's no clear way to know how she'd proceed in the White House. 

In our view, that isn't exactly her fault. We think of what President-elect Lincoln was reported to have told a crowd of well-wishers as he left that other Springfield on his way to the White House:

My friends:

No one, not in my situation, can appreciate my feeling of sadness at this parting. To this place, and the kindness of these people, I owe everything. Here I have lived a quarter of a century and have passed from a young to an old man. Here my children have been born, and one is buried. 

I now leave, not knowing when, or whether ever, I may return, with a task before me greater than that which rested upon General Washington. 

Without the assistance of the Divine Being who ever attended him, I cannot succeed. With that assistance I cannot fail. Trusting in Him who can go with me, and remain with you and be everywhere for good, let us confidently hope that all will yet be well. 

To His care commending you, as I hope in your prayers you will commend me, I bid you an affectionate farewell.

It was February 11, 1861. It's called the "Farewell Address." Lincoln said he was leaving the friends among whom he had grown to be an old man "to assume a task more difficult than that which devolved upon General Washington."

It's a bit like that with Candidate Harris. With President Biden's withdrawal from the campaign, she suddenly faced a highly unusual task. No one before her has had to assemble a presidential campaign on such remarkably short notice, presumably with almost no planning at all.

It's stunning to us, but not surprising, that we've seen so few analysts say that.

Harris has been asked to do something which few people have done before. In many ways, she's done an amazing job at this task. It's still the case that she's a bit of an "accidental" nominee—a nominee whose instincts, views and capabilities aren't extremely well-known.

For ourselves, we'd limn it like this:

If Trump wins, we hope we get to live long enough to see, and to attempt to record, the essence of what he does. On balance, we assume he's some version of (clinically) "mentally ill"—and for that reason, we regard this as a dangerous time.

People like Stephens and Collins aren't allowed to discuss that fairly obvious possibility. The guild has chosen to cling to its hoary rule in the face of approaching disaster.

In our view, Stephens is possibly being just a bit fastidious in the way he scores the race between the candidate who's mentally ill and the candidate who isn't. In fairness, he may not see it that way. Tens of millions of neighbors and friends don't see this the same way we do.

At any rate:

If Trump wins, we hope we live long enough to see the history unfold. If Harris wins, we agree with Stephens to a certain extent:

It's hard to know what she will be like as an American president. In our view, she delivers a truly sensational speech, but it's even less clear than it typically is where things go from there.

We'll close with something else Stephens said. The fuller exchange went like this:

Bret: Can I vote for Trump? Never. Will I vote for Harris? Maybe, but she hasn’t sealed the deal with me yet.

Gail: Hey, at least you’re moving in the right direction. Maybe you could create a I-Hate-Harris-But-At-Least-She’s-Sane movement.

Bret: Just so you know: I absolutely do not hate Harris. She exudes warmth. And disagreement isn’t hatred.

Gail: I reserve the right to go back to harping on your voting plans...

We agree with Collins. Candidate Harris does seem to be sane! The warmth and the strength she's exuded so far have been a bit of a joy to the world. 

That said, General Washington faced a daunting task. If elected, she'll face a daunting task too.

Let us hope that all will be well, Lincoln said that day. With respect to his friends in Springfield, he did find a way to "save the Union," but he wasn't allowed to return.

OUR DEMOCRACY'S NEW CLOTHES: Theodore White was very bright!

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2024

Could he have imagined these clothes? Could "our democracy" possibly die in disorder? 

As we float that question today, forgive us if we ask you to think about Theodore White again.

Quite literally, White wrote the book about the presidential campaign which inaugurated the modern political era. Even today, his famous book bears a famous title:

The Making of The President 1960

White was 46 years old when he wrote his famous book. That said, who was Theodore White? The leading authority on his life offers this instant thumbnail:

Theodore H. White 

Theodore Harold White (May 6, 1915 – May 15, 1986) was an American political journalist and historian, known for his reporting from China during World War II and the Making of the President series.

White started his career reporting for Time magazine from wartime China in the 1940s. He was the first foreigner to report on the Chinese famine of 1942–43 and helped to draw international attention to the shortcomings of the Nationalist government.

After leaving Time, he reported on post-war Europe for popular magazines in the early 1950s, but lost these assignments because of his association with the "Loss of China." He regained national recognition with The Making of the President 1960...

So goes the initial thumbnail. As the profile continues, additional background appears. We apologize for offering all this info. But this is part of "the way it was" at the dawn of this failing era:

White was born May 6, 1915, in Dorchester, [a part of] Boston. His parents were David White (born David Vladefsky, a Russian immigrant) and Mary Winkeller White. His father was a lawyer. He was raised Jewish, and as a teenager was a member of the socialist-Zionist Hashomer Hatzair youth movement. 

He was a student at Boston Latin School, from which he graduated in 1932; from there, he went on to Harvard College, from which he graduated [summa cum laude] with a B.A. in history as a student of John K. Fairbank, who went on to become a leading China scholar and White's longtime friend...

Awarded a Harvard traveling fellowship for a round-the-world journey, White ended up in Chungking, China's wartime capital. The only job he could find was with China's Ministry of Information. When Henry R. Luce, the China-born founder and publisher of Time magazine, came to China, he learned of White's expertise, the two bonded, and White became the China correspondent for Time during the war. He was the first foreign journalist to report the widespread Henan Famine and he filed stories on the strength of the Chinese Communists.

White chafed at the restrictions put on his reporting by the Chinese government censorship, but he also chafed at the spiking or rewriting of his stories by the editors at Time...

Although he maintained respect for Luce, White resigned and returned home to write freely, along with Annalee Jacoby, widow of fellow China reporter, Mel Jacoby. Their book about China at war and in crisis was the best-selling Thunder Out of China.

And so on from there, including a couple of best-selling novels in the 1950s.

White was 46 years old when he wrote the book which described the start of the modern political era. Some of his claims in the book strike us as perhaps a bit eccentric. That said, he was a summa cum laude Harvard grad who had seen large chunks of the world.

At the dawn of the modern era, White complained about the shriveled political discourse of the 1960 presidential campaign. Our question today will be this:

Smart and experienced though he may have been, could White have imagined what happened at last week's debate between Candidate Harris and Candidate Trump? Even at 46 years of age, could Theodore White have imagined the shape of our society's new suit of clothes?

More specifically, could White have imagined a major party nominee like one of the two in last week's debate? Could he have imagined a nominee who advanced the sorts of claims one candidate chose to advance during last Tuesday's event?

In our view, Candidate Harris was less than perfect during last Tuesday's debate. So were David Muir and Linsey Davis (ABC News), the moderators of that debate. Perfection is rarely achieved.

That said, our floundering nation's flailing discourse groans under the weight of the ongoing behaviors of the other candidate at the debate. We refer to behaviors our major news orgs don't seem to know how to describe—or may not want to confront.

We'll take a guess! The candidate made an array of claims which White could not have imagined. According to the ABC transcript, one of the most disordered of those claims started off like this:

TRUMP (9/10/24): Our country is being lost. We're a failing nation. And it happened three and a half years ago. And what, what's going on here, you're going to end up in World War III, just to go into another subject. 

What they have done to our country by allowing these millions and millions of people to come into our country—and look at what's happening to the towns all over the United States! And a lot of towns don't want to talk—not going to be Aurora or Springfield. A lot of towns don't want to talk about it because they're so embarrassed by it. 

In Springfield, they're eating the dogs! The people that came in, they're eating the cats. They're eating—they're eating the pets of the people that live there! And this is what's happening in our country. And it's a shame...

In Springfield—he seemed to mean in Springfield, Ohio—"the people that came in" are eating the cats and the dogs! According to the candidate, "the people that came in" are "eating the pets" of the people who live there! 

Within the context of "our democracy," the candidate almost seemed to be wearing a new suit of clothes. But so the candidate angrily said—and a large amount of public disorder has followed along from there.

Could Theodore White have imagined a major party nominee making such a presentation—it was only one of many—during a presidential debate?  We're willing to guess that the answer is no. We'll guess that he couldn't have done that.

Now for the rest of the story:

In a judgment for which he's been aggressively trashed, one of the moderators decided to "fact-check" what the candidate said about the eating of the dogs and the cats.

Rightly or wrongly—we have a mixed view—he didn't just let it go. This is what happened when David Muir, wisely or otherwise, decided to "clarify" the strange thing the hopeful had said:

MUIR: I just want to clarify here. You bring up Springfield, Ohio. And ABC News did reach out to the city manager there. He told us there have been no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community—

TRUMP: Well, I've seen people on television—

MUIR: Let me just say here, this is—

TRUMP: The people on television say, "My dog was taken and used for food." So maybe he said that, and maybe that's a good thing to say for a city manager.

MUIR: I'm not taking this from television. I'm taking it from the city manager.

TRUMP: But the people on television say their dog was eaten by the people that went there.

MUIR: Again, the Springfield city manager says there's no evidence of that—

TRUMP: We'll find out.

MUIR: Vice President Harris, I'll let you respond to the rest of what you heard.

"We'll find out," the candidate said. In the meantime, he was willing to broadcast the claim, which had already been widely disputed, to 67.1 million American citizens.

He was willing to broadcast the claim to the 67 million. Also, to the additional tens of millions of people who would see his claim amplified all across the programs of the Fox News Channel.

Should Muir have stepped in to "clarify" this point? By now, he and Davis have been savaged all through the halls of Red America for having engaged in such conduct during last Tuesday's debate.

As the week proceeds, we'll show you text from the several other times they fact-checked or sought to clarify statements by Candidate Trump. 

In our view, their approach to such matters wasn't always perfect. But in fairness, they were struggling with highly unusual statements.

Putting it a different way: 

They were trying to deal with this candidate's peculiar new suit of clothes.

To be clear, it wasn't just the eating of Springfield's pets. The candidate made other highly unusual claims in the course of the evening.

Candidate Harris also made statements which we would regard as inaccurate. In our view, it's hard to say that she made statements as disordered and "new" as those which emerged, with some regularity, from the other candidate in this year's White House campaign.

Candidate Trump was willing to say that some unspecified group of people have been eating the cats and dogs of some under-identified town. 

He said he'd seen someone say that on TV.  "We'll find out," he eventually said.

Starting with the Kennedy-Nixon debates, have moderators ever been forced to deal with such behavior? In support of Muir and Davis, we're prepared to suggest the possibility that this was a new suit of clothes.

The candidate emitted his statement about the eating of pets on Tuesday night. Yesterday morning, the New York Times was reporting on some of the effects of his behavior.

In Springfield—and yes, that would be Springfield, Ohio—there have been bomb threats since last Tuesday night. The FBI has been forced to step in. More than once, children have been evacuated from some of the city's public schools. 

In yesterday's print editions, the Times pushed its report about this state of affairs all the way back to page A21. Rightly or wrongly, they didn't think this remarkable state of affairs deserved a spot on the famous newspaper's front page.

It seems to us that the highly educated players at that famous newspaper didn't exercise perfect judgment about this matter. About the way to respond to behaviors like these—to this candidate's new suit of clothes.

We're prepared to cut the moderators some slack concerning the way they responded, in real time, to some of this candidate's statements. We'll even cut the New York Times some slack—for that newspaper's ongoing failure to come to terms with our society's new suit of clothes.

In fact, very few people have had to deal with this sort of disorder before. We'll guess that Theodore White—he of the summa cum laude degree—couldn't have imagined such disordered conduct during a presidential debate.

Long ago and far away, a famous emperor was striding about in a new suit of clothes. Citizens of the empire in question had a famously difficult time seeing the truth of the matter—had a hard time coming to terms with what was right there before them.

The New York Times has refused and refused, and refused and refused, to come to terms with our own society's new suit of clothes. People wear that raiment on the Fox News Channel, and that raiment was recently worn by one of the candidates in a presidential debate.

Final question for today:

Could "our democracy" die in this way? Imperfect though it always has been, could our democracy die in disorder as a gaggle of under-performing journalists insist on averting their gaze?

Could Teddy White have pictured this? Despite his summa cum laude degree, we'll guess that the answer is no!

Tomorrow: And on and on from there

SUNDAY: As the Times adopts a jocular tone...

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2024

...it's Pacific-10 greatness again: We could imagine a different tone shaping the New York Times news report.

We could imagine placing the news report on the Times' front page. (In this morning's print editions, the report in question appears on page A21.)

To our ear, the report starts with a somewhat jocular tone. Print edition headline included, the news report starts like this:

Threats Unnerve Ohio City After Trump’s False Claims

The dogs and cats of Springfield, Ohio, appear to be perfectly safe, but many of its people are finding their lives upended this week by political rumormongering that has resulted in multiple bomb threats, school closures and a decision to dispatch the F.B.I.

Ever since former President Donald J. Trump claimed on national television that undocumented migrants were stealing and devouring the household pets of Springfield—“they’re eating the dogs,” he practically shouted, “they’re eating the cats”—the rhythms and routines in the city have not been the same.

Never mind that city authorities have refuted the story and that many residents called it ridiculous. The furor created by Mr. Trump during Tuesday night’s presidential debate has put Springfield in the cross-hairs of the nation’s political wars. For the past two days, bomb threats have proliferated, closing City Hall, schools and a motor vehicles office. F.B.I. agents have descended on the community to guard against danger not to animals but to humans.

The unexpected and unwanted attention generated by Mr. Trump’s false stories led to real-life confusion and anxiety for some residents. Schools have been evacuated, children sheltered at home and parents forced to make other plans during the workday. Gethro Jean, a Haitian pastor, said that he had been fielding questions from congregants who were concerned about attending church on Sunday.

Let's be fair! By paragraph 4, readers have been told, more than once, that there have been bomb threats and evacuations of schools. 

On the other hand, the 33-paragraph news report begins with a somewhat jocular tone. The dogs and cats of the city appear to be safe, readers are told in a somewhat whimsical manner.

Stating the obvious, there's no perfect way to report a news event. That said:

At least as a theoretical manner, we could imagine seeing a report about these events on the front page of this major newspaper, not on page A21. Also, we could imagine a different tone, and a somewhat different focus, as this lengthy report begins.

We plan to start with this topic tomorrow. We'll spend the week examining some of the problems facing the Democratic Party's nominee as the fall campaign, post-debate, finally goes full bore. 

That nominee says she's the underdog in the race. To the extent that we could even make a guess, we'd be inclined to agree with that assessment. 

Also, we don't know. At any rate:

Starting tomorrow, we plan to explore some of the problems confronting that nominee. For today, though, it's more of the same:

It's enduring Pacific-10 greatness.

Yesterday, it happened again! One of our dominant Pacific-10 teams vanquished a higher-rated team from the Midwest:

College football / September 14, 2024
Washington State: 24
Washington: 19

The outcome evoked a thousand Rose Bowl wins. Big-10 football went down once again. Regional greatness prevailed.

"There is never any ending to Paris," Hemingway wrote at the end of A Moveable Feast (original 1964 edition). Let's present the start of his final paragraph at slightly greater length:

There is never any ending to Paris and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs from that of any other. We always returned to it no matter who we were or how it was changed or with what difficulties, or ease, it could be reached. Paris was always worth it and you received return for whatever you brought to it...

There's one more sentence after that. At that point, the memoir ends.

There's never an ending to Paris, Hemingway said, no matter how it has changed. Very frankly, it's a bit like that with the ongoing greatness of the Pacific-10. 

DEBATES: Brzezinski lacks the words to speak about Trump!

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2024

From Harris, a hint of "the dark encroachment:" According to Theodore White, televised debates arrived on the scene as part of "a revolution in American Presidential politics.". 

This revolution was technological in nature. "It was a revolution born of the ceaseless American genius in technology," he wrote in The Making of The President 1960, a very famous book.

A "political revolution" had occurred. It involved the arrival, in American homes, of the TV set.

Plainly enough, you couldn't have four TV debates without those TV sets! Between 1950 and 1960, Americans had purchased roughly 40 million such devices, White noted in his book.

In White's somewhat eccentric view, the invention of the TV debates contributed to a massive dumbing down of American discourse. In part because of the demands of the new medium, "rarely in America history has there been a campaign which discussed issues less or clarified them less."

As of 1961, that's how it looked to Theodore White. All in all, we find it hard to believe that his gloomy assessment was accurate. 

That said, television did burst on the scene during the 1960 campaign. This year's campaign has also unfolded in the wake of a technological revolution. 

On yesterday morning's Morning Joe, Mika Brzezinski tried to describe her view of Candidate Donald J. Trump. When she did, she was discussing a political campaign which has come to us in the aftermath of the technological revolution known as "the democratization of media."

The TV set was on the scene as of 1960. As of the year 2024, so was a wide array of additional powerful media:

"Talk radio" had long since gone national. "Cable news" had long since arrived on the scene as a major player.

The Internet had come into being, with its many partisan sites. That had led on to "social media"—to a world in which every citizen is a king, as long as he or she can attract millions of eyeballs to whatever proclamation, however crazy, he or she may choose to emit.

It was within that context that Mika Brzezinski tried to state her view of Candidate Trump. 

Her view of the candidate might be right, or it might be wrong. But as she spoke, that candidate's latest claims were rocketing around the meme-o-sphere, including his proclamations about the eating of cats and dogs.

She tried to speak on Morning Joe. All in all, the mandates of an older order deprived her of her words.

Brzezinski had seen people asking if "Americans are ready for a woman" or for "a woman of color." She was gobsmacked by the question—and she was soon saying this:

BRZEZINSKI (9/13/24): I immediately think [sarcastically],"Are they ready?"

Well, what? Are they ready for a psychopath? Are they ready for someone who wants to use the government to commit retribution against all of his opponents for no reason at all? Who wants to destroy our democracy?

That's not an exaggeration. That's not rhetoric. That's what he said. That's what he has been doing....

Had she just called Candidate Trump "a psychopath?" Plainly, that's the way it seemed. 

She seemed to have voiced that assessment. Moments later, though, she faltered, then apologized, then turned to fuzzier words:

BRZEZINSKI: Are we ready for a woman? That's not the question, I think, we should be asking, Gene Robinson. It's like, are we ready to have a psy— 

I'm sorry. I— I'm just—

Having spoken to experts, someone who seems to have psychotic tendencies running our government, who has plans to do things that are very counter to our democracy and has already hurt women terribly, monstrously—already, happening now, in this country.

ROBINSON: Absolutely.

BRZEZINSKI: Are we ready for that? That's the question! I don't want to hear. "Are we ready for a woman?" That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard.

First, she stopped herself from using a certain term again. Then, she apologized. Then she dialed her language back. 

Rightly or wrongly, she now seemed to say that Candidate Trump is "someone who seems to have psychotic tendencies." Also, she seemed to say that she has spoken to "experts" about this matter. 

She didn't identify the types of experts with whom she has consulted. Robinson agreed with her, "absolutely," but he made no attempt to examine what she seemed to have said.

Our question today is this:

Absent the "democratization of media"—before the age in which every man and every woman could boot the Cronkites to the curb and exercise the rights of kings—before that latest technological revolution, could Candidate Trump have emerged as the three-time nominee of one of our two major parties?

Could he have maintained his sway to such an extent that 74 million people voted to give him a second term in the last presidential election? To such an extent that he plainly might reach the Oval again?

In 2016, "cable news" broadcast his every word, some of which did make sense. In recent years, his statements have rocketed around the world through the revolutionary auspices of "social media." 

Most recently, that has included his thoughtful remarks about the eating of cats and dogs. Those remarks get discussed on CNN and MSNBC, get disappeared over on Fox. 

Could this candidate have become the Republican nominee three times in the absence of this latest "political revolution"—in the absence of this "democratization of media?"

We'll guess that the answer is no. That said, he has tens of millions of strong supporters. Also, he has opponents like Brzezinski and Robinson—fervent opponents who seem to lack permission to use their words.

Is Donald J. Trump a "psychopath?" Plainly, that seems to be what Brzezinski believes, though we're not entirely sure what that claim is supposed to means.

Clearly, that's what Brzezinski wanted to say. Presumably the "experts" with whom she says she has consulted were drawn from the world of medical science. But there exists a powerful rule—a rule which comes from an earlier era—which won't let Brzezinski say the things she believes and wants to say.

Trump can say that Haitians are eating our dogs—but under prevailing rules of her guild, Brzezinski can't say the things she believes. Kathleen Kingsbury won't say those things. In Bue America, the leading careerists have all surrendered their words.

Brzezinski can't name the experts with whom she has spoken. She can't bring such experts on the air and interview them about this candidate's behaviors and claims.

This is the world in which we all live, in the wake of this latest technological burst. 

According to White, the TV set produced a political revolution. Plainly, the rise of cable news and social media has produced another.

Is there some sort of merit to the view Brzezinski knew she mustn't express? Under prevailing rules of the game, we aren't allowed to hear such thoughts—not even within the frequently disordered realm referred to as "cable news!"

Trump can discuss the eating of pets. Brzezinski can't discuss the nature of (clinically diagnosable) "personality disorders." 

A revolution opened a lane for Candidate Trump. The route to an entire class of "experts" is still almost wholly closed off. 

The New York Times won't discuss this matter. Neither will Mika Brzezinski, except in tiny bursts.

We've long stated our own impressions regarding such questions about Candidate Trump. Today, we only note the echo we hear—the echo from Theodore White's assessments of that earlier revolution.

For good or for ill, Candidate Trump has caught a wave—a powerful wave created by a wide array of new media. 

We'll be voting for Candidate Harris. Yesterday, her interview with Brian Taff sent out a very bad sign.

You can watch the eleven minutes here. For people hoping that Harris will win, it was a troubling performance.

Candidate Trump can talk all day. He's able to speak with great fluency about the eating of cats and dogs, with goldfish perhaps thrown in.

The one candidate can talk all day!  It begins to look, once again, like his opponent perhaps cannot.

"These are the days of miracle and wonder," the observer Paul Simon once said. The year was 1986. The name of the album was Graceland. 

Those were the days of miracle and wonder! Technology was opening a wider world, the gentleman hopefully said.

DEBATES: As CNN tries to figure it out...

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2024

...a cancer grows on the world:  Did somebody "win" last Tuesday's debate? If so, by how much?

Let's make our question a bit more precise:

Will one of the candidates end up receiving additional votes based on what happened on Tuesday night?

Especially in the short run, there's no real way to answer that question. Even in the longer run, there will likely never be any real way to do so.

Still, our nation's various "news orgs" are inclined to pretend to try. Before we review an attempt by CNN, let's review a sacred event on the Fox News Channel last night.

Last night, one of the channel's biggest stars had reached his sixtieth birthday.

(Full disclosure! We each attended high schools along the Alameda. He's a graduate of Catholic Serra High. We went to public school Aragon.)

At any rate, the birthday boy celebrated this latest accomplishment in some of the standard ways:

His owners had cherry-picked a handful of incidents—incidents in which a handful of undecided voters said the debate had led them to favor Candidate Trump. 

His owners had carefully picked and chosen the examples he would offer. Also, and inevitably, the fellow was soon saying this about the undecideds who say they've now broken for Trump:

GUTFELD (9/12/24): They're worried about affording gas and groceries, and she said nothing to allay those fears. 

And you'd think she'd be good at a laying, at least according to Willie Brown.

[PHOTO OF BROWN APPEARS. MIXED REACTION FROM AUDIENCE]

I know! That was in bad taste.

Candidate Harris would be good at "a laying!" Ha ha ha ha ha!

For the record, this was part of the birthday boy's imitation of an issues discussion. It wasn't part of his nightly handful of opening jokes. 

Inevitably, the fellow had gone straight to the sexual insult. When he did, Dana Perino sat there and took it, just like nothing has happened. 

This is standard fare on this "cable news" program. Thirty seconds earlier, the birthday boy had offered this bit of analysis:

GUTFELD: When the [New York] Times says voters are not so sure, it means we're [BLEEP]ing our pants like Biden after judging a chili cookoff.

[AUDIENCE LAUGHTER]

That statement didn't even exactly seem to make sense. But in the end, this is (almost) all this fellow actually has. 

In fairness, he had seemed a bit unsure in the wake of Tuesday evening's debate when his primetime "cable news" program went back on the air Wednesday night.

For once, the fellow almost seemed to have it on mute. But even then, two of his D-list comedian guests had offered these thoughtful analyses:

LOFTUS (9/11/24): I thought Trump had an amazing night. I mean, he signed up for a debate and got fight club—and did that, against like three different people. I would have left the room.

Because you look at the moderators, who look like they just came off the set of Dick Tracy, right?...And then Kamala-La-La-Ding-Dong strolls in, looking like Count Chocula.

According to this cable news analyst, "Kamala-La-La-Ding-Dong" had strolled onto the set of the debate, "looking like Count Chocula!" 

Was this manifest flyweight inserting some racial plays here? You'll have to judge that for yourself. One minute later, D-List Comedian 2 was thoughtfully offering this:

TIMPF: I also think—look I think Republicans might have done a disservice by setting the bar so low for Kamala that she formed complete sentences and people were like, "Wow!" right?

GUTFELD: Yeah.

According to D-List Comedian 2, Kamala-La-La-Ding-Dong had somehow managed to form complete sentences at Tuesday night's debate.

All in all, this seems to be (almost) the best these people can do. For the record, at 10:05 that night, the host of the program, still just 59 years old, had offered this bit of analysis:

GUTFELD: It was clear that Linsey Davis and David Muir gave Kamala the easiest night she's had since Willie Brown ran out of Viagra.

[PHOTO OF BROWN. LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE]

Terrible! I apologize.

In the end, it's (almost) all this idiot has. But for the record, this can is opened every night, in prime time, in the guise of "cable news."

In our view, a cancer is growing on the society as this garbage can spills every night. Also, a cancer is growing on the society as high-order beings at our finer news orgs pretend that there's nothing to see here.

Kathleen Kingsbury is chair of the New York Times editorial board. In our view, a cancer is growing on the society as she refuses to comment on Donald J. Trump's disordered behavior, or on the nightly performances which are presented on the garbage can currently under review.

Back to our original question! Who may end up gaining votes because of Tuesday's debate?

Last evening, in a parody of journalism, the birthday boy pretended to examine that question. Consider the way he handled CNN's post-debate interviews with 13 "undecided" voters in Erie County, Pa.

For the record, some of these undecided voters may not have been fully undecided as Tuesday's debate began:

Phil Mattingly handled the session for CNN. Here's what happened when he spoke with one of the undecideds—with an undecided voter who has now decided in favor of Candidate Trump, as is her perfect right:

MATTINGLY (9/10/24): Were you leaning towards the former president coming in tonight?

UNDECIDED VOTER #1: Probably.

MATTINGLY: And did you vote for him in 2016 or 2020?

UNDECIDED VOTER #1: I did.

MATTINGLY: So, a decision made there. 

She has decided that she'll be voting for Candidate Trump. That said, is it possible that CNN could have found someone in Erie County who was perhaps more undecided coming in?

Surely, someone had been more undecided! At any rate, here's what the thirteen Undecideds said during the CNN session:

Of the thirteen Undecideds in Erie County, nine said that Harris had won the debate. Four said Trump had won. 

During a pair of segments, Mattingly interviewed five of the voters. Of those five, three said they had now decided for to vote Harris, two said they'd be voting for Trump.

Stating the obvious, those voters can vote any way they like! That said, the birthday boy played the tape from Undecided Voter #1 and from nobody else. He didn't mention the larger breakdown in the reactions of the Erie County 13.

This is the way the news gets sifted, all through the bulk of the day, at this particular "news channel." The sifting starts at 5 a.m. and continues all through the night. 

Undecided voters are deciding for Trump, viewers were told last night. The birthday boy picked and chose the footage he showed to his laughing, applauding audience.

Also, the fellow engaged in his standard sexual insults. As he did, Perino acted like nothing had happened. Kingsbury plays it the same.

For better or worse, this is us the American people as we actually are. Rather, this is some of us the people, perhaps as we are at our worst.

The people who own the birthday boy are paying him millions of dollars to do this. You aren't allowed to know how many millions he's getting paid, and the New York Times isn't going to ask.

Last night, a Californian who's now 60 years old served his usual platter of sexual insults. Inevitably, he also talked about President Biden [BLEEP]ing his pants. 

From our former perch, one mile up the Alameda, we can't tell you how this furious fellow ever got to be this way.

(So you'll know: The birthday boy's owners BLEEP the word "sh*t." They allow the word "poop" to sail through.)

That's what happened in last evening's sacking of journalism. Saturday night, Brian Kilmeade even brought Judge Joe Brown out on the air.

Brown had called Harris "a piece of shit." He'd also called her a "humping hyena."

This made him perfect for a fellow like Kilmeade and also for the Fox News Channel. At the Times, Kingsbury (and others) know that they must never report or discuss such facts.

Final note:

There's little we can reliably learn from thirteen Undecideds. 

As Ed McMahon might have said, How undecided were they? Also, their statements were anecdotal all the way down, even as nine of the thirteen said that Harris had won.

That's what nine of the thirteen said! On Fox, the birthday boy emitted his standard slime, after which he wagged his tail and completely forgot to say that.

A cancer is growing on the world as these gong-show behaviors continue. Next week, we're going to call attention to an attendant point:

Candidate Harris may win in November! (She's going to get our vote.) But in a thousand different ways, we denizens of Blue America have conspired to earn our way out.

Links to the Mattingly files: In the aftermath of the debate, Mattingly spoke with the Erie County 13 in two different segments—first at the end of Tuesday's 11 p.m. hour, then again after midnight.

For the transcript of the first segment, you can just click here. CNN failed to create a transcript of the following hour.

For videotape of that first segment, you can just click this. To see what was said in the second segment, you can start by clicking here.

Nine of the 13 said Harris had won! As long as you're watching the Fox News Channel, you won't be permitted to hear that.

It was 67 million all over again!

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2024

In a much larger nation: Viewership figures are in for Tuesday night's debate. 

How many people watched the event? According to NBC News (and everyone else), the very fine people at Nielsen have announced a familiar figure:

Harris-Trump debate nabs more than 67 million viewers, Nielsen says

The debate stage clash between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump drew an estimated 67.1 million viewers, according to the media analytics company Nielsen.

The estimated viewership improved on the ratings for the match-up between Trump and President Joe Biden in late June, which attracted roughly 51.3 million viewers—and effectively derailed Biden's re-election bid.

ABC hosted and aired the Harris-Trump faceoff, which was simulcast on 17 networks, including NBC and MSNBC, according to Nielsen.

[...]

Nielsen earlier reported that 57.5 million people watched Harris and Trump, adding that final numbers would be released later. The data did not include the number of people who followed the debate via social media, news websites or streaming platforms.

Sure enough! Once they included the streamers, the figure came to 67.1 million people. 

As we noted yesterday, this wasn't exactly a first. Way back at the dawn of time, Theodore White reported these viewership numbers for the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon debates:

WHITE (page 283): By mid-September all had been arranged. There would be four debates—on September 26th, October 7th, October 13th and October 21st. The first would be produced by CBS out of Chicago, the second by NBC out of Washington, the third by ABC out of New York and Los Angeles and the fourth, again by ABC, out of New York.

In the event, when all was over, the audience exceeded the wildest fancies and claims of the television networks. Each individual broadcast averaged an audience set at a low of 65,000,000 and a high of 70,000,000. The greatest previous audience in television history had been for the climactic game of the 1959 World Series, when an estimated 90,000,000 Americans had tuned in to watch...

It looks like each of those debates was viewed by roughly 67 million people, even way back then! You can begin to spot a fairly large difference here:

United States population:
1960 census: 179.3 million
2024 estimate: 345.4 million 

Say what? With almost twice as many people, the same old number tuned in?

In fairness, there was nothing else you could watch back then. There was no History Channel, tempting eggheads with such scholarly fare as Ice Road Truckers and Swamp People. 

There was no fine arts channel like Bravo, prying eyeballs away from the hopefuls with The Real Housewives of Wherever We're Able to Find Them.

On Tuesday, we quoted Harper Lee in a second well-known book from that same era, a book in which she looked back to an even earlier period:

People moved slowly then. They ambled across the square, shuffled in and out of the stores around it, took their time about everything. A day was twenty-four hours long but seemed longer. There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with.

Even as late as 1960, is that why so many people tuned in? Was there just nowhere else to go? Were we just less distracted back then?

At any rate, 67.1 million people may have seen Candidate Trump say this at a key point in Tuesday night's debate:

TRUMP (9/10/24): People don't go to her rallies. There's no reason to go. And the people that do go, she's busing them in and paying them to be there. 

Apparently, that statement made a lot of sense to a whole lot of people. According to one widely ballyhooed survey, viewers believed that Candidate Trump outperformed his hapless opponent by a Putin-adjacent margin—by 86 percent to just 3!

No one ever saw anything like it! On that we call all agree!

DEBATES: Harris prevailed, CNN survey said!

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2024

Donald Trump's numbers were different: It's never completely clear what we mean when we ask who "won" a presidential debate. 

It's never quite clear what that means! But by most assessments, Candidate Harris prevailed this past Tuesday night. 

What was the candidate's victory margin? Overnight, at 2:37 on Wednesday morning, CNN offered this report about its instant survey of people who watched the debate:

CNN Flash Poll: Majority of debate watchers say Harris outperformed Trump onstage

Registered voters who watched Tuesday’s presidential debate broadly agree that Kamala Harris outperformed Donald Trump, according to a CNN poll of debate watchers conducted by SSRS. The vice president also outpaced both debate watchers’ expectations for her and Joe Biden’s onstage performance against the former president earlier this year, the poll found.

Debate watchers said, 63% to 37%, that Harris turned in a better performance onstage in Philadelphia. Prior to the debate, the same voters were evenly split on which candidate would perform more strongly, with 50% saying Harris would do so and 50% that Trump would. 

For better or worse, that's what the survey said. 

That said, a citizen can never be sure! Within an hour of the debate, Candidate Trump was in the "spin room"—and he was reporting a vastly different set of numbers about who had won the debate.

Below, you see some of the survey results the candidate reported. To see him do so, click here:

HANNITY (late Tuesday night): What made you come to the spin room?

TRUMP: I just felt I wanted to. I was very happy with the result. 

So the candidate said to Hannity, right there in the spin room. A bit earlier, also in the spin room, he had made this array of claims:

TRUMP (9/10/24): When you're looking at polls, the worst—the worst poll that we've had was 71 that I see...

We had a 92% rating in one poll...

We had an 86% rating in another. We had 77%...

One poll is 92% to 6...

92 to 7. 92 to 6; 88 to 11...

REPORTER: Mr. President, speak louder.

TRUMP: All of the polls are 60, 70 and 80. 86 to 3!

 The polls are indicating that we got 90%, 60%, 72%, 71% and 89%.

REPORTER: Where are you getting those numbers from?

SECOND REPORTER: Yes, where are you getting those numbers from?

"Where are you getting those numbers from?" Someone had asked a good question!

For the record, it was obvious where the candidate was "getting those numbers from." The candidate was pulling those numbers right straight out of his asp.

Plainly, this was a form of public madness—something resembling insanity. 

The candidate's conduct in the spin room recalls the scene from The Manchurian Candidate (1962) in which Senator Iselin—a Joe McCarthy doppelganger—keeps changing his account of the number of card-carrying Communists within the Defense Department.

As presented in that iconic film, Senator Iselin is a simple-minded buffoon with a diabolical wife. You can watch the scene in question simply by clicking here:

SENATOR ISELIN (pompously): I am United States Senator John Yerkes Iselin, and I have here a list of the names of 207 persons who are known by the Secretary of Defense as being members of the Communist Party who are still nevertheless working at shaping the policy of the Defense Department.

[...]

MAJOR MARCO: I'd like to verify that number, sir. How many Communists did you say?

ISELIN: Oh, uh— I said there are exactly—I have absolutely proof there are 104 card-carrying Communists in the Defense Department at this time.

MAJOR MARCO (puzzled): How many, sir?

ISELIN: Uh—275, and that's absolutely all I have to say on that subject at this time.

REPORTER: Major, how many did he say?

The senator had been pulling his numbers out of his keister too. Later, he begs his wife to let him settle on just one number of card-carrying Communists—on a number he'll find it easy to remember.

In that scene, director John Frankenheimer took his film to the level of high parody. A living, breathing nominee was loudly performing a similar scene this past Tuesday night.

That said, this was not some form of crazy parody. We'd be inclined to call it what it is—a form of public madness.

When a nominee behaves that way, we'd call it front-page news. Instead, a card-carrying careerist at the New York Times—the head of the editorial board—sucked her thumb in the wake of Tuesday's debate, in the way we described yesterday afternoon:

The Question Kamala Harris Couldn’t Answer

[...]

Over the weekend, a survey by The New York Times and Siena College found that 60 percent of likely voters said they believed America was headed in the wrong direction, and many reported that they didn’t know enough about where Harris stands on several key issues. Any poll is just a snapshot in time, and it is admittedly hard to interpret exactly what those respondents are looking for from her. Do they want a better understanding of how she plans to govern from the Oval Office in terms of policy? Or are they more interested in her character and what type of leader she would be?

For those voters looking for answers on policy, the debate is unlikely to have left them feeling better informed. According to the Times tracker, the vice president spent nearly half of her speaking time attacking Trump. She rightfully called out his lies and his dangerous embrace of dictators. She was also strong in defending reproductive rights, as well as President Biden’s record on foreign and domestic policy. And she mentioned a handful of plans she’d pursue if she won the White House.

Yet we learned very few new details about those plans...

That was the chairperson's takeaway. Trump was briefly mentioned in passing, and so on, then on and on.

As far as we know, Kathleen Kingsbury is a thoroughly good, decent person. Also, plenty of questions should still be asked of the Democratic nominee, who was in fact a bit evasive at various times Tuesday night. 

That said, Kingsbury's newspaper keeps normalizing the transparent madness of the other nominee. Some are now describing this sort of thing as "sane-washing." 

In our view, this behavior by our major news orgs is its own form of public madness. It represents a type of dumbness which seems to know no bounds.

Many questions remain to be asked of the two nominees. That said, one of the nominees routinely engages in acts of transparent madness. The people who sit at the top of the press corps refuse to address this fact.

The New York Times continues to normalize the apparent madness of Candidate Trump. As it does, the Fox News Channel continues along in its own brand of public misconduct.

Tuesday's presidential debate took place in the shadow of those influential orgs. Our pledge to you today will be this:

Tomorrow morning, we're going to show you what former "TV judge" Joe Brown said on the Fox News Channel this past Saturday night. As we've noted, he had recently referred to Candidate Harris as "a piece of sh*t" and a "humping hyena"—and that made him perfect for Fox.

It's depressing and painful to transcribe such garbage-can behavior. Tomorrow, we'll force ourselves to do it.

That said, you won't read about any of this in the New York Times. The Times is normalizing the madness of Candidate Trump, but it's also normalizing the (highly influential) moral squalor of Fox.

Survey said 86-3! At the cowardly lion known as the Times, this sort of thing seems to make perfect sense!

Tomorrow: We promise we're going to do it

Undecided voters try to decide!

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2024

Plus, the latest cognitive shortfall: What did the nation's Undecideds think about last night's debate?

Frankly, it's hard to decide! According to this report, the Washington Post assembled a panel of 25 "uncommitted, swing-state voters," then asked them "in real time about their reactions to Tuesday’s debate."

According to the Post's report, twenty-three said that Harris "performed better" last night; two said the same thing about Trump. By the end of the evening, fifteen were definitely or probably voting for Candidate Harris. According to the Post's report, Candidate Trump had the support of six.

That's what occurred in the realm of the Post. Over at the New York Times, Undecideds seemed to remain vastly more pre-decided:

Pundits Said Harris Won the Debate. Undecided Voters Weren’t So Sure.

For weeks, undecided voters have been asking for more substance.

So it was perhaps no accident that Vice President Kamala Harris’s first words during the presidential debate on Tuesday were, “I am actually the only person on this stage who has a plan.”

Some Americans might need more convincing.

Bob and Sharon Reed, both 77-year-old retired teachers who live on a farm in central Pennsylvania, had high hopes for the debate between Ms. Harris and former President Donald Trump. They thought that they would come away with a candidate to support in November.

But, Ms. Reed said, “It was all disappointing.”

The couple ended the night wondering how the costly programs each candidate supported—Mr. Trump’s tariffs and Ms. Harris’s aid to young families and small businesses—would help a couple like them, living on a fixed income that has not kept pace with inflation. They said they didn’t hear detailed answers on immigration or foreign policy, either.

Fairly often, Undecideds are inclined to find it all disappointing. In this case, Candidate Harris's late entry into the race may tend to make this year's contest especially hard to parse. In our view, that suggests, among other things, the desirability of saddling the hopefuls up for another debate.

Meanwhile, the all-knowing Kathleen Kingsbury is the all-knowing "Opinion editor of The New York Times, overseeing the editorial board and the Opinion section." She focused on what Harris failed to do, tended to brush past Trump's corresponding failures:

The Question Kamala Harris Couldn’t Answer

[...]

Over the weekend, a survey by The New York Times and Siena College found that 60 percent of likely voters said they believed America was headed in the wrong direction, and many reported that they didn’t know enough about where Harris stands on several key issues. Any poll is just a snapshot in time, and it is admittedly hard to interpret exactly what those respondents are looking for from her. Do they want a better understanding of how she plans to govern from the Oval Office in terms of policy? Or are they more interested in her character and what type of leader she would be?

For those voters looking for answers on policy, the debate is unlikely to have left them feeling better informed. According to the Times tracker, the vice president spent nearly half of her speaking time attacking Trump. She rightfully called out his lies and his dangerous embrace of dictators. She was also strong in defending reproductive rights, as well as President Biden’s record on foreign and domestic policy. And she mentioned a handful of plans she’d pursue if she won the White House.

Yet we learned very few new details about those plans. On the economy, which voters often rank as the issue of most importance to them, she only scratched the surface in discussing how she’d enact tax cuts, build more affordable housing and help parents of young children. On foreign policy, she committed herself to a two-state solution in the Middle East and to supporting Ukraine in victory over Russia, but she didn’t expand on how she’d seek to achieve either goal. She pledged not to ban fracking but said little on how she would plan to invest in climate solutions. She also continued to dodge questions about why she recently distanced herself from positions that she took in her quest to be the Democratic nominee in 2020.

Most important, she did very little to distinguish her plans from Biden’s in an election in which the electorate seems hungry for change.

Bad Harris! Bad Harris—no!

It isn't that any of this is "wrong"—and Harris did avoid giving direct answers to several direct questions. That said, does anyone have the slightest idea how Candidate Trump is going to accomplish the various goals he laid out as he meandered through last evening's event?

For example, does anyone know how Candidate Trump plans to accomplish the world-saving miracle described in the passage below? On the stump, he makes this promise all the time. But is he even describing behavior which would be legal?

TRUMP (9/10/24): ...She hates Israel. At the same time, in her own way, she hates the Arab population because the whole place is going to get blown up, Arabs, Jewish people, Israel. Israel will be gone. It would have never happened. Iran was broke under Donald Trump. Now Iran has $300 billion because they took off all the sanctions that I had. Iran had no money for Hamas or Hezbollah or any of the 28 different spheres of terror. And they are spheres of terror. Horrible terror. They had no money. It was a big story, and you know it. You covered it. Very well, actually. They had no money for terror. They were broke. Now they're a rich nation. And now what they're doing is spreading that money around. Look at what's happening with the Houthis and Yemen. Look at what's going on in the Middle East. This would have never happened. 

I will get that settled and fast. And I'll get the war with Ukraine and Russia ended. If I'm President-Elect, I'll get it done before even becoming president.

He'll get that settled before taking office? Is he even describing something that's legal? 

We don't know the answer to that question. But what ever happened to the old bromide according to which "we only have no president at a time?"

No one seems to ask. That said, it was interesting to learn about Harris's consistency! Candidate Harris hates Israel, but she hates the Arab population too, though only in her own way.

We can think of a lot of questions which could be directed to each of these candidates. Some Undecideds just never decide, but judged by traditional norms, it would make a lot of sense to have two more debates.

That said, some statements pretty much speak for themselves. From last night's event, we'd probably start with this:

TRUMP: First, let me respond as to the rallies. She said people start leaving. People don't go to her rallies. There's no reason to go. And the people that do go, she's busing them in and paying them to be there. And then showing them in a different light. 

So she can't talk about that. People don't leave my rallies. We have the biggest rallies, the most incredible rallies in the history of politics...

Harris is busing people into her rallies and paying them to be there! At least as a matter of theory, this may be an improvement over Trump's previous claim that no people were actually present at one of Harris's crowded events.

As far back as 2017, something on the order of three dozen medical specialists were willing to say that this particular candidate had a clinical "personality disorder" which creates an element of danger. For better or worse, our high-end journalists have always agreed that we must never report or discuss that apparent possibility.

On balance, we aren't even saying that journalistic decision is wrong. It does say something about the immaturity of our public discourse.

At any rate, this:

First, the rally attendees weren't there. Now the attendees are being bused in and they're being paid for their services.

People like Kingbury normalize this! According to experts, cognitive shortfalls will sometimes pop up in the place where you least expect them.

Remarkably full disclosure: With respect to the possible clinical affliction of the one candidate, we've always counseled empathy / sympathy for anyone so afflicted.

"I pity the poor immigrant," Bob Dylan (metaphorically) said.