THURSDAY: Voters hate the bill when they know what's in it!

THURSDAY, JUNE 26, 2025

Also, they don't know what's in it: The zone is flooded every day—and the day of reckoning for the budget bill continues to draw near.

As the zone keeps getting flooded, every distraction serves as a distraction. Also, every actual news event functions in much the same way.

That said, what is in that budget bill? Also, how well does the public understand what's in the ballyhooed bill?

In this morning's New York Times, Jacob Hacker and Patrick Sullivan address each of those questions. We're scoring Professor Hacker as first among equals. Here's the identity line:

Jacob S. Hacker, a political science professor at Yale, is the author, with Paul Pierson, of “Let Them Eat Tweets​: How the Right Rules in an Age of Extreme Inequality.” Patrick Sullivan is a postdoctoral fellow at Yale.

Whatever! At any rate, Hacker and Sullivan aren't fans of the bill. Headline included, here's how their guest essay starts:

How Awful Is the Republican Megabill? Here Are Four of the Worst Parts.

The Trump-era Republican Party, we’re told, is a working-class party standing up for ordinary citizens against powerful elites. One section of the Republicans’ major policy bill is even titled “Working Families Over Elites.”

But that bill—the one and only major legislative effort of Trump 2.0—is the most regressive, least populist policy package in memory. With its distinctive mix of tax cuts laser-focused on the rich and spending cuts that most hurt middle- and low-income Americans, it would shift more resources up the income ladder than any bill passed since scorekeepers started keeping track. And when voters learn what it would do—even Republican voters—they recoil from it.

We know, because we asked them. In a survey we ran after the House version of the bill passed, we showed a random selection of voters how the bill would affect the take-home income of less affluent Americans versus the top 1 percent. Opposition exploded, with only 11 percent of Americans supporting the bill—one-third the level of support seen among those not shown the distributional results. Among Republicans, the shift was even larger: Support and opposition flipped—to nearly 3 to 1 opposition from nearly 3 to 1 support.

As unpopular as the bill is, however, Americans have yet to fully understand the special alchemy of inegalitarianism that defines it. Break through the deception and misdirection, and Republicans’ signature policy bill, which President Trump and G.O.P. lawmakers call the One Big Beautiful Bill, seems more aptly named Elites Over Working Families.

The New Haven pair state two major findings:

Voters hate the bill when they know what's in it. Also, voters don't know what's in it!  

Briefly, let's state the obvious:

The validity of Hacker's findings turns on the accuracy of what he and Sullivan told their random selection of voters about the budget bill's contents. To give you a rough idea of what those voters were told, here's how today's guest essay continues along from above:

The bill is awful for most Americans in many ways. Here are four of the worst.

1. It is epically regressive

[...]

2. The hyper-regressive tax cuts you haven’t heard enough about

[...]

3. A war on the I.R.S. could make the bill even more costly.

[...]

4. It is another “skinny” attempt to repeal Obamacare.

Those are the four (4) major problems they attribute to the bill. In each case, as you can see, we've omitted their amplification of the matter in question.

Hacker and Sullivan see this bill as a disaster for middle- and low-income Americans. That said, discussion of this bill keeps getting swept aside because of the endless array of distractions which now define American political culture—but also because major orgs like the Fox News Channel will never, on pain of death, discuss provisions of the bill which may harm the bulk of their channel's viewers.

Sad! But that's the way our political / journalistic culture works in these latter days.

What's actually in the budget bill? Pete Hegseth and Karoline Leavitt insist on joining President Trump in his angry denunciations of whatever it is the president has just angrily denounced. As such angry pseudo-discussions roll on, discussion of the budget bill gets swept to the side again.

This bill is going undiscussed in many venues and for various reasons. Meanwhile, can anyone here play this game?

We've shown you the headline which tops this guest essay online. For reasons we can't quite explain, this is the headline which appeared in this morning's print editions:

Three of the Ugliest Points About the Republican Megabill

No, we aren't making that up! According to the fine print beneath the online presentation, that's what the headline said in this morning's print editions!

Did someone have trouble counting to four? Also, as the nation continues to slide toward the sea, can anyone here play this game? 

THE PLAYERS: She should be thrown out like a dog!

THURSDAY, JUNE 26, 2025

The remains of an earlier age: The Remains of the Day started out as an acclaimed 1989 novel. After that, it was turned into an acclaimed 1993 feature film. 

We'll do a quick drive-by tomorrow. For today, we'll say this:

At one time, not long ago, yesterday's report in Mediaite might have seemed like an Onion parody.

That said, a parody of what? The conduct described in the report would have been extremely hard to imagine. 

Even viewed as some sort of parody, the report would have been hard to process. Headline included, the report started off like this:

‘FIRE NATASHA!’ Trump Launches Scathing Attack on CNN Reporter, Demands She Be ‘Thrown Out Like a Dog’

President Donald Trump demanded that CNN fire Natasha Bertrand, the reporter responsible for a story about how a preliminary U.S. intelligence assessment suggested the American attack on three Iranian facilities did not destroy the country’s nuclear program, in a fiery Truth Social post demanding that she be “thrown out ‘like a dog'” on Wednesday.

There he'd gone again! The sitting president had told the world that CNN should fire one of its reporters. 

She should be "thrown out," the president had said. More precisely, he had said that Natasha Bertrand should be thrown out "like a dog:"

Truth Details

Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump

Natasha Bertrand should be FIRED from CNN! I watched her for three days doing Fake News. She should be IMMEDIATELY reprimanded, and then thrown out “like a dog.” She lied on the Laptop from Hell Story, and now she lied on the Nuclear Sites Story, attempting to destroy our Patriot Pilots by making them look bad when, in fact, they did a GREAT job and hit “pay dirt”—TOTAL OBLITERATION! She should not be allowed to work at Fake News CNN. It’s people like her who destroyed the reputation of a once great Network. Her slant was so obviously negative, besides, she doesn’t have what it takes to be an on camera correspondent, not even close. FIRE NATASHA!

Is something wrong with this freaking guy? Of one thing we can all be certain:

As we'll show you below, Blue America's major news orgs will never be willing to ask that question. CNN included, they'll never be willing to go there!

Below, we'll reinforce that point. For now, let's simply say this:

That report in Mediaite wasn't a parody by the Onion, and it was perfectly accurate. The president had actually said those things, in one of his three million recent Truth Social posts.

There was a time, not long ago, when that report in Mediaite would have been impossible to believe. There would have been no way to imagine that a sitting president would have behaved that way.

That was then, but this is now—and, for better or worse, this is now routine behavior from the sitting president. 

To his credit, he didn't say that Bertrand is "scum," or even that she's "a sick person." On at least this one occasion, he left those bombs undropped.

That said, is something wrong with President Trump? If the answer is yes, we regard that as a human tragedy, and we'll recommend that you should follow suit.

Is something wrong with President Trump? We thought it might be worth taking a look at the CNN report which had the president incensed—at the report which carried Bertrand's name, along with the names of two other reporters.

This was the report from CNN—the report which launched our failing nation's latest pseudo-discussion. The report strikes us as fair and nuanced. As you can see, this is the way it started:

Exclusive: Early US intel assessment suggests strikes on Iran did not destroy nuclear sites, sources say

By Natasha Bertrand, Katie Bo Lillis and Zachary Cohen, CNN

The US military strikes on three of Iran’s nuclear facilities last weekend did not destroy the core components of the country’s nuclear program and likely only set it back by months, according to an early US intelligence assessment that was described by seven people briefed on it.

The assessment, which has not been previously reported, was produced by the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s intelligence arm. It is based on a battle damage assessment conducted by US Central Command in the aftermath of the US strikes, one of the sources said.

The analysis of the damage to the sites and the impact of the strikes on Iran’s nuclear ambitions is ongoing, and could change as more intelligence becomes available. But the early findings are at odds with President Donald Trump’s repeated claims that the strikes “completely and totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth also said on Sunday that Iran’s nuclear ambitions “have been obliterated.”

Two of the people familiar with the assessment said Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium was not destroyed. One of the people said the centrifuges are largely “intact.” Another source said that the intelligence assessed enriched uranium was moved out of the sites prior to the US strikes.

“So the (DIA) assessment is that the US set them back maybe a few months, tops,” this person added.

The White House acknowledged the existence of the assessment but said they disagreed with it.

That's the way it started.

As you can see, Bertrand was listed as one of three (3) reporters. The president decided that she was the one who should be thrown out like a dog, though he didn't say that she's scum.

As for the report itself, we can't see what's supposed to be wrong with the work by The CNN 3.  We say that for these reasons:

As early as paragraph 3, the reporters explicitly noted that the assessment in question "could change as more intelligence becomes available." They quickly noted that the White House (said it) disagreed with the assessment offered in the DIA's report.

For the record, CNN hadn't seen the report itself. They said they were relying on the kindness of (seven) strangers as they described its contents. 

CNN could have noted that fact more explicitly. We'd call that a minor offense.

On the whole, the repot strikes us as journalistically competent but also as fundamentally fair. Along came a major official who may be a bit less balanced in his rage-filled reactions.

In his post, the president repeated the absurd claim that CNN's report constituted an attack on the American pilots who carried out last weekend's strike. At one point not long ago, it would have been hard to imagine a sitting president repeatedly making a remark so transparently dumb

Dumb as it was, the president said it again! He then moved on to his main idea—one of the three reporters should be fired "like a dog."

Is something wrong with President Trump? If so, we regard that as a human tragedy—but of one thing you can be certain:

For better or worse, Blue America's upper-end press will never be willing to center that fairly obvious question. This very morning, the New York Times has once again established that point.

We refer to the profile by Tyler Pager which appears in today's print editions. Headline included, the profile starts like this:

Online and IRL, Trump Offers a Window Into His Psyche

Over the course of three hours on Tuesday, President Trump scolded Israel and Iran with expletive-laced comments on the South Lawn of the White House. He told reporters he had just chastised the prime minister of Israel, and he shared a screenshot of a private text from the NATO secretary general on social media.

Most presidents deal with international crises in private—at most, they might release a carefully crafted statement.

That has never been Mr. Trump’s style. With this president, the entire world gets a view into his thoughts, gripes and whims in ways that are often reminiscent of a chronically online millennial. His posts come at all hours of the day and night—many self-congratulatory, some trivial, some angry—and his in-real-life appearances can sometimes echo his online persona.

All are windows into his psyche, a trove of insight into the intentions, moods and vulnerabilities of the commander in chief.

Pager started with a daring claim. The president's endless social media posts offer a window "into his psyche."

But as his report proceeds, Pager operates as sanitizer in chief, perhaps at the direction of his editors. He restricted himself to social media posts, moving beyond the furious behavior which often emerges in the president's public actions.

The president recent angry F-bomb was mentioned only in a sanitized way. The endless name-calling of the past few days went unmentioned altogether.

Is something wrong with the president—something signaled by his apparent rage and his apparently erratic behavior? Could something perhaps be wrong "with his psyche," as Pager seems to ask?

This morning, the New York Times pretends to ask even as it refuses to do so. The president's conduct is routinely normalized, but in this morning's pseudo-profile it's largely disappeared. 

There was a time when that report in Mediaite would have been hard to imagine. As Americans, we're left with the remains of an earlier day when the president keeps going off—and when Blue America's major orgs insist on averting their gaze.

Last Saturday's attack? It's all over but the shouting! The discourse has been upended again. The major players remain. 

Tomorrow: What the spokeswoman said

WEDNESDAY: An insult like "scum" isn't even worth noting...

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 25, 2025

...the second time around: Yesterday, when he dropped the bomb in question, one news site took notice.

Mediaite reported the president's rage. Tommy Christopher started like this, headline included:

‘SCUM!’ Trump Rages at CNN, MSNBC on White House Lawn Over Skeptical Coverage

President Donald Trump raged at MSNBC and CNN over their coverage of the U.S. airstrikes in Iran, claiming they “hurt” bomber pilots by questioning his claims about the damage done.

[...]

Both of those networks drew Trump’s rage when he spoke to reporters on the South Lawn of the White House Tuesday morning as he departed the White House on route to The Hague, Netherlands.

He called the outlets “scum” and accused them of trying “to demean me” with their reporting.

At that point, Mediaite's Tommy Christopher presented a transcript of the angry president's rage-filled remarks. His remarks had gone like this:

REPORTER (6/24/25): How confident are you [INAUDIBLE] has been demolished?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: I think it’s been completely demolished. I think the reason we’re here is because those pilots, those B-2 pilots, did an unbelievable job.

And, you know, the fake news, like CNN in particular, they’re trying to say, “Well, I agree that it was destroyed, but maybe not that destroyed.”

You know what they’re doing? They’re really hurting great pilots that put their lives on the line! CNN is SCUM! And so is MSDNC. They’re all—.

And frankly, the networks aren’t much better. It’s all fake news, but they should not have done that.

Those pilots hit their targets. Those targets were obliterated, and the pilots should be given credit. They’re not after the pilots. They’re after me. They want to try and demean me.

Obviously, no one has been criticizing the pilots who performed Saturday's elaborate mission. The president offered that absurd claim, that moved to the angry assertion that CNN and MSNBC are "scum."

We're willing to call that unusual language. Quite correctly, Mediaite took note of that fact, from its eye-catching headline on down.

That was the fury of the president as he started his trip to the NATO conference. This morning, during a formal presser at The Hague, there the president went again. Once again, with extreme anger, he delivered his favorite new bomb:

PRESIDENT TRUMP (6/25/25): This was an unbelievable hit by genius pilots and genius people in the military. And they're not being given credit for it because we have scum [pointing] that's in this group. 

And not all of you are. You have some great reporters, but you have scum. 

CNN is scum.  MSDNC is scum. The New York Times is scum. They're bad people. They're sick.  And what they've done is they're trying try to make this unbelievable victory into something less...

As of this morning, the New York Times is also scum. And not only that—the Times is also sick.

Love is said to be better the second time around. By way of contrast, the furious use of the insulting term "scum" seems to be less notable. 

In today's diatribe from The Hague, the president continued with the ridiculous claim in which "the genius pilots" are being demeaned by the press, along with other "genius people in the military."

After relaunching that foolish claim, he turned again to his favorite insult, even as some of the "scum" sat right there before him. For a fuller account of today's explosion, see this morning's report.

Love is better the second time—but this startling insult is being ignored today, even at Mediaite. Simply put, our sitting president is extremely erratic and very angry—and our timorous press corps seems inclined to normalize all such behavior.

They don't know what to say about this This seems to be their solution:

Nothing to look at! Move right along!

In this face of the president's strange behavior, they just say nothing at all.

THE PLAYERS: Furious president does it again!

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 25, 2025

The New York Times calmly reports: For the record, Men's Health magazine isn't a medical journal.

That said, it seems to have a significant global readership. In what seems like a dated overview, the leading authority on such magazines offers this overview:

Men's Health

Men's Health (MH), published by Hearst, is the world's largest men's magazine brand, with 35 editions in 59 countries; it is the bestselling men's magazine on American newsstands.

Started [in 1986] as a men's health magazine, the magazine currently covers various men's lifestyle topics such as fitness, nutrition, fashion and sexuality. The magazine's website, MensHealth.com, averages over 118 million page views a month.

[...]

In 2004, Men's Health began putting celebrities and athletes on the cover, and with their shirts on—a departure from the covers of the 1990s.

Those statistics all seem to be dated. For recent claims by the magazine itself, you can just click here.

Plainly, Mea's Health magazine isn't a medical journal. We cite it today because a new report in the magazine caught our eye. 

The report may even seem to flirt with a type of political relevance. To peruse it without a paywall, you can simply click this:

10 Signs You're Dealing With a Sociopath, According to Experts

WHEN YOU THINK about a sociopath, you probably envision Patrick Bateman out of American Psycho. Films and TV make these characters look outrageously cruel and manipulative. In real life, however, sociopaths may be a little harder to identify.

“Sociopaths in real life often look charming and can be quite liked as a manipulation tactic,” explains Erin Rayburn, L.M.F.T, founder of Evergreen Therapy in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

The report proceeds from there. It doesn't cite nine signs, or even eleven. It found exactly ten!

We expect to walk you through that report before the week is done. For now, we'll start with a sober, though perhaps imperfect front-page report in this morning's New York Times.

First, a bit of background:

During this morning's four o'clock hour, we saw the sitting president, Donald J. Trump, ranting again about "the scum"—about the "sick people"—who inhabit the mainstream press corps. 

He was speaking live and direct—and very angrily—from the NATO summit in The Hague. His press event was aired live on the Fox News Channel =during a special early broadcast of its daily 5 o'clock show, Fox & Friends First.

There the president went again, complaining about "the scum!" But even as he spoke, that front-page report in the New York Times started off rather soberly, exactly as seen here:

Strike Set Back Iran’s Nuclear Program by Only a Few Months, U.S. Report Says

A preliminary classified U.S. report says the American bombing of three nuclear sites in Iran set back the country’s nuclear program by only a few months, according to officials familiar with the findings.

The strikes sealed off the entrances to two of the facilities but did not collapse their underground buildings, the officials said the early findings concluded.

Before the attack, U.S. intelligence agencies had said that if Iran tried to rush to making a bomb, it would take about three months. After the U.S. bombing run and days of attacks by the Israeli Air Force, the report by the Defense Intelligence Agency estimated that the program had been delayed, but by less than six months.

The report also said that much of Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium was moved before the strikes, which destroyed little of the nuclear material. Iran may have moved some of that to secret locations.

As far as we know, the claims in those opening paragraphs are accurate. There actually is a "preliminary report," and that actually is what "officials familiar with [its] findings" say the report has said.

Needless to say, that doesn't mean that this preliminary report represents the final word on what happened this weekend.  Experienced specialists all seem to agree that the process of assessing a military attack—the process of constructing a BDA (a Bomb Damage Assessment)—is a process of many miles.

As far as we know, the headline in the Times report accurate. As far as we know, there actually is a "U.S. report" which says that this weekend's strike "set back Iran’s nuclear program by only a few months."

We don't know if that will turn out to be the final, most persuasive assessment. Under current arrangements, we do know this:

There will never be a final assessment on which our nation's warring tribes—Red and Blue—will largely agree.

As the Times report continues, it offers some sagacious background information concerning Saturday's attack. If we were to criticize the journalism, we might suggest that this passage might have appeared a bit earlier in the Times report:

Officials cautioned that the five-page classified report was only an initial assessment, and that others would follow as more information was collected and as Iran examined the three sites. One official said that the reports people in the administration had been shown were “mixed” but that more assessments were yet to be done.

But the Defense Intelligence Agency report indicates that the sites were not damaged as much as some administration officials had hoped, and that Iran retains control of almost all of its nuclear material, meaning if it decides to make a nuclear weapon it might still be able to do so relatively quickly.

Officials interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity because the findings of the report remain classified.

The White House took issue with the assessment. Karoline Leavitt, a White House spokeswoman, said its findings were “flat-out wrong.”

Those are paragraphs 15-18 in this morning's report. The passage closes with the mandatory statement by Karoline Leavitt, bringing the eternal note of sadness in, at least according to us.

According to paragraph 15, officials cautioned that the five-page report was only an initial assessment. One official has said that more (definitive) assessments were yet to be done.

The New York Times did include those cautionary notes. It seems to us that these words of caution might have been positioned earlier in this important report. 

That said, the Times report was sober and nuanced. It probably wasn't a perfect report, in part for the obvious reason:

There's no such thing as a perfect report. No such creature exists.

To our ear, the Times report stood in contrast to what we'd already seen the president say. To see him live and direct from The Hague, you can start by clicking here.

We were watching in real time. We were watching when he said this, in a room full of reporters, for the millionth time:

PRESIDENT TRUMP (6/25/25): This was an unbelievable hit by genius pilots and genius people in the military. And they're not being given credit for it because we have scum [pointing] that's in this group. 

And not all of you are. You have some great reporters, but you have scum. 

CNN is scum.  MSDNC is scum. The New York Times is scum. They're bad people. They're sick.  And what they've done is they're trying try to make this unbelievable victory into something less...

He went on from there, sticking to his original claim about total obliteration. People at the New York Times are "scum," the president said. He also said they're "sick people." 

For the record, this:

For better or worse, wisely, or not, news orgs like the New York Times refuse to engage in medical or psychological diagnoses. They won't even interview (carefully selected) medical specialists who might engage in such discussions.

Our very angry sitting president is willing to fill that breech. Karoline Leavitt will then step in to repeat whatever the president has said. The two Americas, Red and Blue, will be fed these divergent plates of porridge.

After the president finished, a pair of Fox News Channel friends threw to Dr. Rebecca Grant. Chyronned as a "military expert," she started off with this:

DR. GRANT: Wow! That was a full bomb damage assessment briefing! And first, I've got to say, NATO is thrilled with Trump's B-2 strike on Iran, thrilled. What an honor to hear the debrief there!

It had been an honor to hear him!

Fox & Friends First was on the air an hour early. That's the way the expert started. The problems facing our flailing nation's political culture continue along from there, though largely undiscussed. 

Saturday's attack is over and done. The leading players remain, on various sides of the aisle.

Men's Health is willing to tackle some major topics. For better or worse, our mainstream press corps, not in a million years!

TUESDAY: Sitting president spots the scum...

TUESDAY, JUNE 24, 2025

...then continues from there: The Daily Beast is reporting a poll. For ourselves, we probably wouldn't call its results "devastating" or a "bombshell," but the Beast's report starts like this:

Devastating Poll Shows Trump What Americans Think of His Bombings

A bombshell CNN poll found that a clear majority of Americans disapprove of President Trump’s decision to launch airstrikes in Iran.

The poll found that 56 percent of Americans disapproved of [Saturday's] military action in Iran, while only 44 percent were in favor. It also found that 58 percent of those surveyed believe Trump’s actions will make Iran a bigger threat to the U.S.

The vast majority of Democrats (88 percent) and most independents (60 percent) said they opposed the strikes, while most Republicans (82 percent) broadly approved. But just 44 percent of Republicans said they strongly approved of Trump’s actions—a much smaller cohort than the 60 percent of Democrats who strongly disapproved.

Just to be clear, the featured question was this:

What is your view of the US decision to take military action in Iran?

Plainly, the question seemed to refer to Saturday's military strike, not to possible "military action" in general.

For our money, we'd generally prefer to see polling numbers cut against President Trump by a larger margin than 56-44. This second question did produce a larger negative split:

Do you think this US military action will make Iran [more of a threat / less of a threat] to the US?

Responses there broke in favor of "more of a threat" by 58-25. Opinion on that could change, of course, depending on what does or doesn't come next.

CNN asked another question—a question we think is instructive. That question went like this:

How much do you trust Donald Trump to make the right decisions about US use of force in Iran?

We regard that as a very good question. Rightly or wrongly, for better or worse, respondents broke down like this:

How much do you trust Donald Trump to make the right decisions about US use of force in Iran?
Great deal / moderately: 45%
Not much / not at all: 55%

More simplistically, 45% basically trust his decision making; 55% basically don't. Given where the Daily Beast report went next, we'd call that a bit of a win for the selling of President Trump.

Here's the way the Daily Beast report continued:

The poll results were featured in a segment on CNN at 6:40 a.m. ET on Tuesday. Within 20 minutes, Trump furiously lashed out at the network while speaking to reporters on the White House lawn as part of an explicit tirade, slamming CNN as “scum.”

Ranting about reports from CNN and MSNBC that his airstrikes may not have completely destroyed Iran’s nuclear stockpiles, Trump fumed: “CNN is scum. And so is MSDNC ... It’s all fake news. They should not have done that. Those pilots hit their targets, those targets were obliterated, and the pilots should be given credit. They’re not after the pilots, they’re after me.”

Obviously, no one is "going after the pilots." But so said President Trump.

Over and over, again and again, everyone seems to be going after President Trump if you let him tell it. We can't help wondering what a (carefully selected) medical specialist would say about this endless pattern of behavior, but we do know this:

Given prevailing rules of the game, no news org is going to ask.

To a remarkable degree, large elements of Red America's current elites are driven by fury and rage. Of course, if western literature began with the Iliad, it began with a lengthy profile of fury and rage as expressed by a furious, rage-filled group of extremely angry men.

For ourselves, we don't have a lot of confidence in President Trump's future decision making. In what we would regard as a tragedy, his erratic behavior routinely spills with rage, as happened again today. 

We refer to this Truth Social post. It concerns three Democratic House members, with a certain "Palestinian" senator thrown in:

Truth Details

Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump

Stupid AOC, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of the "dumbest" people in Congress, is now calling for my Impeachment, despite the fact that the Crooked and Corrupt Democrats have already done that twice before. The reason for her "rantings" is all of the Victories that the U.S.A. has had under the Trump Administration. The Democrats aren’t used to WINNING, and she can’t stand the concept of our Country being successful again. When we examine her Test Scores, we will find out that she is NOT qualified for office but, nevertheless, far more qualified than Crockett, who is a seriously Low IQ individual, or Ilhan Omar, who does nothing but complain about our Country, yet the Failed Country that she comes from doesn’t have a Government, is drenched in Crime and Poverty, and is rated one of the WORST in the World, if it’s even rated at all. How dare "The Mouse" tells us how to run the United States of America! We’re just now coming back from that Radical Left experiment with Sleepy Joe, Kamala, and "THE AUTOPEN," in charge. What a disaster it was! AOC should be forced to take the Cognitive Test that I just completed at Walter Reed Medical Center, as part of my Physical. As the Doctor in charge said, "President Trump ACED it," meaning, I got every answer right. Instead of her constant complaining, Alexandria should go back home to Queens, where I was also brought up, and straighten out her filthy, disgusting, crime ridden streets, in the District she "represents," and which she never goes to anymore. She better start worrying about her own Primary, before she starts thinking about our Great Palestinian Senator, Cryin' Chuck Schumer, whose career is definitely on very thin ice! She and her Democrat friends have just hit the Lowest Poll Numbers in Congressional History, so go ahead and try impeaching me, again, MAKE MY DAY!

Yes, that's what he posted. 

At this site, we regard that apparently uncontrollable anger as a human tragedy—as a tragic loss of human potential. We also regard it as a reason to be concerned about President Trump's future decision-making.

Sadly, he keeps going back to that cognitive test, apparently not knowing how dumb the reference is. 

For ourselves, we think AOC's call for a third impeachment didn't exactly make sense. That said:

Forty-five percent of respondents told CNN that they expect that the man who keeps churning "Truths" of that type will make decent future decisions. Somewhere within that number, we almost suspect, our own tribe has failed to connect.

Our literature begins with a portrait of rage. It leads onward toward the fall of Troy—to a vicious and violent outcome.

In the present instance, our sitting president spotted the scum, then continued along from there. We regard this as a human tragedy. Many others trust this man.

THE PLAYERS: He says that he said, "Don't go in!"

TUESDAY, JUNE 24, 2025

Except he didn't say that: Last Friday, in Morristown, New Jersey, there he went again!

Almost surely, the decision to bomb Iran had apparently already been made. As a possible part of a multifaceted feint, the president was heading off for a relaxing weekend at his Bedminster country club.

After landing at Morristown Municipal Airport, the president took questions from reporters. For unknown reasons, NBC's Vaughn Hillyard tossed him a misleading softball about his position, way back in 2002, on the impending war in Iraq.

By our lights, Hillyard's presentation was grossly misleading. In his response, the president took it and ran:

HILLYARD (6/20/25): Twenty years ago, you were skeptical of a Republican administration that attacked a Middle East country on the idea of questionable intelligence of weapons of mass destruction. How is this moment different with Iran?

TRUMP: ...I was very much opposed to Iraq. I was—I said it loud and clear, but I was a civilian, but I got a lot of publicity. But I was very much opposed to the Iraq war, and I actually did say, "Don't go in. Don't go in. Don't go in."

I actually did say, "Don't go in," the president said.

Except he didn't say that. He didn't say any such thing in the run-up to the war in Iraq.

Journalistically, this matter was litigated long ago, back in the day when Candidate Trump made his first ran for the White House. At that time, it became obvious that he hadn't opposed the war in Iraq, and certainly not in the full-throated way he still likes to say he recalls.

More than twenty years later, there the president went again! The next day, the attack on Iran's nuclear sites proceeded, with the president stepping forward to claim a degree of success which may or may not have occurred.

("Iran's key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated.")

The day before the strike on Ira, he stood on the tarmac in New Jersey. 

I said it loud and clear, the president said. I actually did say, "Don't go in. Don't go in. Don't go in."

In fact, he didn't do any such thing. And he didn't actually say that.

How will history judge Saturday's attack on Iran? Assuming "history" exists in the future, the bombing attack may be judged as a major geopolitical success.

Or then again, possibly not! That will depend, at least in part, on the judgments and the decisions which are made from here. 

Were Iran's enrichment facilities completely obliterated? Everyone seems to agree that no such assessment can be made at this point. But whatever may have happened to those facilities—even if the facilities have been destroyed—the major players who got us here are going to remain.

President Trump will stay in place; so will Vice President Vance. So will the president's cabinet members and his informal advisers.

The mainstream press corps will stay in place. So will the various players seen on the Fox News Channel.

The Democratic Party will still be there, with its officials inclined to argue about tangential legalisms. And we denizens of Blue America will still be in place, perhaps failing to see, right to the end, the ways our own imperfect judgments helped create a world in which President Trump, and his associates, will be making the major decisions as this matter moves forward.

President Trump remains unchanged. So does the problem he seems to have with the task of making accurate statements.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth will, most likely, remain—and it's as we showed you in yesterday's report. In a move straight outta Orwell, he offered this, on Sunday morning, in the wake of the attacks:

SECRETARY HEGSETH (6/22/25): Thanks to President Trump's bold and visionary leadership and his commitment to peace through strength, Iran's nuclear ambitions have been obliterated.

Many presidents have dreamed of delivering the blow to Iran's nuclear program and none could until President Trump. The operation President Trump planned was bold and it was brilliant.

[...]

President Trump said, No nukes. He seeks peace, and Iran should take that path. He sent out a Truth last night saying this: "Any retaliation by Iran against the United States of America will be met with force far greater than what was witnessed tonight." Signed, "The President of the United States, Donald J. Trump."

President Trump had "sent out a Truth!" Incredibly, that's what Hegseth actually said.

Incredibly, that's what he fellow actually said. In the process, he invented a new piece of Orwellian language.

("He is such a boy," a young Bulgarian woman once said. As we noted yesterday, we kept flashing on her words in the wake of Hegseth's statement.)

At least for now—and possibly for much longer than that—the bombing mission on Iran has changed the shape of the American discourse:

We're so old that we can even remember the political murders in Minnesota! Beyond that, it's as we noted in Saturday's report. We can even remember the day when Vice President Vance engaged in this astonishing bit of ugly political conduct:

Vance Blames L.A. Violence on California Democrats and Disparages Padilla

Eight days ago, Senator Alex Padilla was forcibly removed from a news conference and handcuffed by federal agents after he interrupted Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, at the Wilshire Federal Building in Los Angeles.

At the same building on Friday, Vice President JD Vance disparaged Mr. Padilla for engaging in “political theater” and called him by the wrong name.

“Well, I was hoping Jose Padilla would be here to ask a question, but unfortunately, I guess he decided not to show up because there wasn’t the theater,” Mr. Vance said during a news conference in response to a reporter. “I think everybody realizes that’s what this is. It’s pure political theater.”

Mr. Vance’s spokeswoman later said that he misspoke when he said the senator’s name.

[...]

Later Friday, a spokeswoman for Mr. Vance said the vice president misspoke when he said Mr. Padilla’s name.

“He must have mixed up two people who have broken the law,” said Taylor Van Kirk, the spokeswoman.

Jose Padilla is the name of a man who was convicted of terrorism conspiracy in 2007 after being arrested in Chicago on suspicion of planning to set off a radioactive dirty bomb.

Astonishing! A person could always imagine that the Vice President had misspoken unintentionally when he bungled the senator's first name.

The astonishing statement by the press spokesperson lay any such thoughts to rest. It also serves to remind us of the vast cultural problem our flailing nation still faces.

Bombs have fallen in what may come to be seen as an historically significant mission. Or then again, possibly not!

The way the current situation plays out will depend, in very large part, on future decisions made by people like Hegseth and Vance—and of course, by President Trump himself.

Should those of us in our flailing nation have confidence in what will come next? It seems to us that the answer is no. In fact, imperfect judgment flows like a mighty stream from elements of the American nation—and that even include us Blues.

Some facilities in Iran are gone, but the major players remain. As we noted yesterday, the Middle East is "a story without an ending." There is still no way to know how events will unfold from here.

Some sites are gone, but the story remains. As the week continues, we'll continue to offer some thoughts about the deeply flawed American tribes who do, in fact, remain.

This afternoon: We owe you reports from last week

Tomorrow: Bluster and fury

THE PLAYERS: "It's a story without an ending!"

MONDAY, JUNE 23, 2025

The Bulgarian woman's tale: On Saturday, we closed our post with this remark:

Within two weeks, one of the people we've mentioned today has a major decision to make.

As it turned out, the person in question had already made that decision! This morning, The New York Times' David Sanger starts his report on the aftermath like this:

Officials Concede They Don’t Know the Fate of Iran’s Uranium Stockpile

A day after President Trump declared that Iran’s nuclear program had been “completely and totally obliterated” by American bunker-busting bombs and a barrage of missiles, the actual state of the program seemed far more murky, with senior officials conceding they did not know the fate of Iran’s stockpile of near-bomb-grade uranium. 

“We are going to work in the coming weeks to ensure that we do something with that fuel and that’s one of the things that we’re going to have conversations with the Iranians about,” Vice President JD Vance told ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday, referring to a batch of uranium sufficient to make nine or 10 atomic weapons. Nonetheless, he contended that the country’s potential to weaponize that fuel had been set back substantially because it no longer had the equipment to turn that fuel into operative weapons.

The situation is somewhat murky, despite what the president said. Or at least, that's the assessment Sanger offers—and Sanger is as sober, and as experienced, as our mainstream journalists ever get.

For better or worse, the president decided to go ahead with Saturday's attack. That said, the situation is somewhat murky, Sanger says—and the major players remain in place to deal with whatever comes next. 

Did President Trump perhaps overstate the situation? With a tip of the cap to the invaluable Rev, here's part of what the president said in the brief address to which Sanger refers:

PRESIDENT TRUMP (6/21/25): Tonight, I can report to the world that the strikes were a spectacular military success. Iran's key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated. Iran, the bully of the Middle East must now make peace. If they do not, future attacks will be far greater and a lot easier. 

Borrowing from Twain, reports of that complete and total obliteration may have been greatly exaggerated—or at least, so Sanger has said. In closing, the president added this:

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Tomorrow, General Caine, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth will have a press conference at 8:00 AM at the Pentagon, and I want to just thank everybody, and in particular, God. 

I want to just say we love you, God, and we love our great military...

Does anyone think that the president holds actual religious beliefs? We'd be inclined to say that, as perhaps a bit of a pretender, he doesn't seem to have mastered the talk at this point.

President Trump remains. During Sunday morning's press event, Secretary Hegseth said this:

SECRETARY HEGSETH (6/22/25): The order we received from our Commander in Chief was focused, it was powerful, and it was clear. We devastated the Iranian nuclear program. It's worth noting the operation did not target Iranian troops and Iranian people.

For the entirety of his time in office, President Trump has consistently stated, for over ten years, that Iran must not get a nuclear weapon. Full stop. Thanks to President Trump's bold and visionary leadership and his commitment to peace through strength, Iran's nuclear ambitions have been obliterated.

Many presidents have dreamed of delivering the blow to Iran's nuclear program and none could until President Trump. The operation President Trump planned was bold and it was brilliant...

When it came his turn to speak, General Caine went with "just the facts." Some have said that Secretary Hegseth may have been cheerleading a bit.

The bombs have dropped, but the principal players remain, with their strengths and their weaknesses. Along the way, the secretary even said this:

HEGSETH: President Trump said, no nukes. He seeks peace, and Iran should take that path. He sent out a Truth last night saying this: "Any retaliation by Iran against the United States of America will be met with force far greater than what was witnessed tonight." Signed, "The President of the United States, Donald J. Trump."

The president "sent out a Truth last night?" Has anyone ever fashioned some such statement? 

The secretary seems to have coined a new term, From now on, whenever the president posts on his site, his statement will be known as "a Truth!"

(The capitalization was rendered by Rev—in our view, correctly. The Iranian regime includes a Supreme Leader—but as we'll see as the week proceeds, our own White House may be tilting that way too.)

We don't mean this as a criticism of President Trump's decision. We're inclined to agree with the assessment according to which the White House was confronted with two possible choices, each of which was bad.

We don't mean what follows as a criticism of the decision. We mean it as a bit of a warning:

The decision has been made, but the major players remain. The major players remain within the White House, but within our own Blue America too.

Two weekends ago, we happened to watch Casablanca again. The famous film had briefly popped up for free through On Demand. We regard it as the greatest accidental masterwork in all of western literature.  

As always, the famous film triggered reactions it hadn't triggered before. Today, especially as we think about what Secretary Hegseth said, we keep flashing on what one of Casablanca's secondary characters says at obe point about her very young husband.

We refer to the young Bulgarian refugee, Annina Brandel, who, like almost everyone else in the film, is hoping to find a way to reach a magical destination—America. Midway through the film, she asks the Humphrey Bogart character if she should agree to do a very bad thing in order to get an exit visa for herself and for her husband—her husband of only eight weeks.

She doesn't want to do this very bad thing. But along the way, she says this:

ANNINA: But M'sieur, if he never knew, and the girl kept this bad thing locked in her heart—that would be all right, wouldn't it? 

RICK: You want my advice?

ANNINA: Oh yes—please.

RICK (bitterly): Go back to Bulgaria.

ANNINA (pleading): On, but if you knew what it means to us to leave Europe—to get to America 

(PAUSE) 

Oh, but if Jan should find out! He is such a boy. In many ways, I am so much older than he is...

You may recall how this situation plays out. But we keep thinking of the highlighted statement when we think of Hegseth's cheerleading this Sunday morning. 

He is such a boy, the young Bulgarian woman says. We keep flashing on that (loving) statement when we think of Hegseth's presentation.

In the present context, Saturday's bombing mission may, on balance, be judged to have gone extremely well. But this is a story without an ending, and the major players remain. 

That includes Secretary Hegseth along with President Trump. It also includes the major players in Blue America who are struggling to find a way to assess these events.

The young woman in that famous scene said her husband was "such a boy." She doesn't mean it as a criticism—but we've been flashing on that statement as we think about what we saw Secretary Hegseth do and say yesterday morning.

Where have all the flowers gone? As he continues, Sanger raises a similar question about Iran's uranium:

SANGER: Satellite photographs of the primary target, the Fordo uranium enrichment plant that Iran built under a mountain, showed several holes where a dozen 30,000-pound Massive Ordnance Penetrators—one of the largest conventional bombs in the U.S. arsenal—punched deep holes in the rock. The Israeli military’s initial analysis concluded that the site, the target of American and Israeli military planners for more than 26 years, sustained serious damage from the strike but had not been completely destroyed.

But there was also evidence, according to two Israeli officials with knowledge of the intelligence, that Iran had moved equipment and uranium from the site in recent days. And there was growing evidence that the Iranians, attuned to Mr. Trump’s repeated threats to take military action, had removed 400 kilograms, or roughly 880 pounds, of uranium enriched to 60 percent purity. That is just below the 90 percent that is usually used in nuclear weapons.

The site sustained serious damage, but the uranium remains? 

"This is a story without an ending." The Bogart character repeats that statement several times during the course of the Oscar-winning film.

Casablanca was an accident—colloquially, a gift from the gods. It was meant to be a front-line film, but the studio had no idea that it was crafting a masterpiece as filming struggled along.

Its spectacular ending was only devised in the days before filming ended. The film was being composed on the fly, and a miracle somehow occurred.

As of today, Iran is a story without an ending. We don't mean that as a criticism, just as a matter of fact.

A few sites are gone—but as with the uranium, the major players remain. We refer to principals like President Trump and Secretary Hegseth, but to Blue America's leading players too. Can we place our faith in their good judgment as matters unfold from here? 

President Trump "sent out a Truth." That's what one of the players said!

As this week proceeds, we'll look at the people, Red and Blue, who will be the decision-makers as the successor to a legendary nation—as the successor to Casablanca's "America"—responds to whatever comes next.

"It's a story without an ending," the Bogart character says. The screenwriters fashioned a brilliant ending. Will the world be that fortunate here?

Tomorrow: For starters, this person remains

The young wife's heartfelt tale: With apologies for the colorization—to watch the full scene from Casablanca, you can just click here.

SATURDAY: "Darkest mysteries come into focus?"

SATURDAY, JUNE 21, 2025

All except for this: "The universe’s darkest mysteries are coming into focus."

That's what the New York Times headline said. Inevitably, we were intrigued.

For better or worse, here's the fuller pair of headlines. The headlines sit atop a lengthy report for the section called Science Times:

The Universe’s Darkest Mysteries Are Coming Into Focus
As the Vera C. Rubin Observatory surveys the night sky, astrophysicists expect to unlock the secrets of dark matter, dark energy and cosmic phenomena that go “bang!”

Inevitably, the report leads readers into the mysteries of so-called "dark energy" and "dark matter." Into things that go "ou-boum" in the night—as in Forster's Marabar Caves in A Passage to India.

As far as we know, nothing in the Times report is scientifically invalid in any way. But to our ear,  reports of this type take us where the vast bulk of Times readers can't possibly hope to follow.

Such reports tend to go boom in the night. They make us readers feel that we're coming to understand the cosmos when we're actually doing no such thing. It's a way of replacing religious forms of cosmology with their secular first cousins.

All in all, whatever! A larger mystery has been unfolding right before our American eyes, to the extent that we're willing to look. For starters, it's captured in these headlines from the latest batch of news reports at Mediaite:

Trump Complains He Should Have Won FIVE Nobel Prizes By Now But ‘They Only Give Them To Liberals’

‘Listen to Her Spew Off!’ Jessica Tarlov Sends Trump Into Full Fox Meltdown, Claims ‘MAGA is Complaining BIG LEAGUE!’

‘That’s a Serious Crime’: Musk Accuses Top Trump Aide of ‘Breaking the Law’ – Maybe Being Russian Spy

Trump Calls for Special Prosecutor for Alleged Election Fraud in 2020—Claiming He Won in a ‘LANDSLIDE!’

Trump Fumes the U.S. Has ‘Too Many Non-Working Holidays’ On Juneteenth: ‘It Must Change’

New Smartmatic Filing Reveals Fox News Staffers Admitted Election Claims Were ‘So F***ing Cray’ and ‘MINDBLOWINGLY NUTS’

President Trump and Elon Musk and Fox News staffers oh my! 

Is it real or is it Memorex? With respect to President Trump, do these tirades stem from actual beliefs, or are they simply examples of the latest (deliberate) distractions?

As you learn from that Mediate report, Elon Musk made his latest inaccurate claim as he blared about that alleged Russian spy. Beyond that, he's the key player in this new column from Nicholas Kristof:

The Waste Musk Created

[...]

I’ve been traveling through Sierra Leone and Liberia to gauge the impact of Trump’s closing of U.S.A.I.D., to see how bad things have gotten since an earlier trip through South Sudan and Kenya. Here’s what I see: Children are dying because medicines have been abruptly cut off, and risks of Ebola, tuberculosis and other diseases reaching America are increasing—while medicines sit uselessly in warehouses.

After Elon Musk boasted about feeding U.S.A.I.D. “into the wood chipper” over a weekend, he claimed that no one had died as a result. Secretary of State Marco Rubio repeated that claim just last month.

So I challenge them both: Come with me on a trip to the villages where your aid cuts are killing children. Open your eyes. And if you dare to confront actual waste and abuse—the kind that squanders lives as well as money—join me in the village of Kayata, Liberia, where in April a pregnant mother of two, Yamah Freeman, 21, went into labor...

And so on from there. With respect to that young Liberian woman, we'll have more information below.

Kristof's unusual values and unusual degree of dedication take him into parts of the world where few major journalists go. Just to refresh you, Elon Musk—who plainly seemst o be disordered—isn't just the guy who made that prophetic "wood chipper" remark." 

He's also the guy who said the following to Joe Rogan this, earlier in the year:

“The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy..."

Has that statement been taken out of context? For fuller context, click here.

To our own (non-medical) eye and ear, it seems fairly obvious.  It seems fairly obvious that something seems to be fundamentally wrong with Elon Musk. 

Such situations always involve a tragic loss of human capability and potential. Such situations are always tragic—but still and all, there it is.

Is it possible that "something is wrong" with President Trump? How about with Vice President Vance, but also with at least one member of his staff?

Vance Blames L.A. Violence on California Democrats and Disparages Padilla

Eight days ago, Senator Alex Padilla was forcibly removed from a news conference and handcuffed by federal agents after he interrupted Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, at the Wilshire Federal Building in Los Angeles.

At the same building on Friday, Vice President JD Vance disparaged Mr. Padilla for engaging in “political theater” and called him by the wrong name.

“Well, I was hoping Jose Padilla would be here to ask a question, but unfortunately, I guess he decided not to show up because there wasn’t the theater,” Mr. Vance said during a news conference in response to a reporter. “I think everybody realizes that’s what this is. It’s pure political theater.”

Mr. Vance’s spokeswoman later said that he misspoke when he said the senator’s name.

[...]

Later Friday, a spokeswoman for Mr. Vance said the vice president misspoke when he said Mr. Padilla’s name.

“He must have mixed up two people who have broken the law,” said Taylor Van Kirk, the spokeswoman.

Jose Padilla is the name of a man who was convicted of terrorism conspiracy in 2007 after being arrested in Chicago on suspicion of planning to set off a radioactive dirty bomb.

Did Vance (accidentally) misspeak when he misstated Senator Padilla's first name?

Everything's possible, even that! Later, Vance's spokeswoman sought to make things right by comparing the California senator to a convicted terrorist, while seeming to say that each of the two Padillas have (somehow) broken the law.

Where do creatures like these come from? What explains their astonishing conduct?

We've got your "darkest mystery" right there! That mystery is all around us as the American nation continues to come apart.

The mystery is all around us! It has spread all over the conduct on Fox. It escapes the White House through a fire hose which leads to President Trump.

What explains the unusual behavior of the people in question? What explains the behavior of Vice President Vance? Of his astounding spokeswoman?

For better or worse, our big news orgs have agreed not to ask. Within two weeks, one of the people we've mentioned today has a major decision to make.

Regarding Kristof's column: Yamah Freeman, age 21, went into labor in Liberia. Because of some of the things Musk has done, she never made it to the hospital. 

Because of some of the things Musk has done, there was no longer an ambulance to take her there. As neighbors tried to carry her there, she died along the way.

Is something wrong with Elon Musk? Our journalists still refuse to approach that mystery from the (fairly obvious) medical / mental health point of view.

Next week: Even as we adopt a new focus, we'll show you what was said on the Fox News Channel about last weekend's horrific events in Minnesota. (Remember them?)

We'll show you what was said last Sunday. That will include two of the dumbest presentations we've ever seen on a TV "news" program.

FRIDAY: Senator Padilla describes what occurred!

FRIDAY, JUNE 20, 2025

Gutfeld, guests crawl in the gutter: Today, we have nice words to say about some Republican senators. Recent comments by these solons were quoted in a news report by the Washington Post. 

The report discusses Senator Padilla's recent speech in the U.S. Senate—his speech about the way was removed from a press conference, and briefly handcuffed, out in his hometown, L.A.

Four Republican solons were quoted in the Post's report. This is what they said:

What did Sen. Alex Padilla get handcuffed for?

[...]

Over 30 of Padilla’s Democratic colleagues listened intently [to Senator Padilla] as he recounted the questions swirling in his mind during the incident.

“What will my wife think? What will our boys think? And I also remember asking myself: If this aggressive escalation is the result of someone speaking up against the abuses and overreach of the Trump administration, was it really worth it?”

A few Republicans also listened—though they slipped out of the chamber once he finished without addressing him face to face, and not all of them were eager to discuss it afterward.

“You know, he’s a good friend. I just wanted to be supportive,” said Sen. John Boozman (R-Arkansas), boarding one of the underground trolleys.

“Well, he just invited me,” said Sen. James Lankford (R-Oklahoma), before quickly heading back into the chamber.

“I attended a speech. I like Alex Padilla,” said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina), as the doors of an elevator outside the chamber closed.

The elevator doors opened back up. Tillis had more to say. He called the treatment Padilla received “absolutely disgusting” while adding that a standard should not be set where senators are comfortable interrupting a high-ranking official’s news conference.

[...]

“The whole encounter just baffled me and didn’t make sense to me,” said Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyoming), “but I do know this. I know a genuinely gentle, kind person when I see one, and I’m a pretty good judge of character. And Alex Padilla is a kind, gentle person.”

Personally, we admire people who are kind, gentle people. We also like people who understand that they're actually praising other people when they describe them that way.

Especially in the current atmosphere, we like people who are willing to say nice things about members of the other party, even when the other person in question is under the partisan tribal gun, as Senator Padilla has been in the past week.

(Below, we'll link you to what happened when they pried the lid off the garbage can on Wednesday evening's Gutfeld! show and the creatures who slithered out devoted a segment to sliming Padilla. Blue elites have uniformly agreed that there's nothing to look at with "cable news" conduct like that.)

"I like Senator Padilla," Senator Tillis said. Senator Padilla "is a kind, gentle person," Senator Lummis said. "He's a good friend," said Senator Boozman.

We think it's good that those people said those things. That said, we continue to be struck by the account Senator Padilla continues to give of what happened that day.

We feel sure that Senator Padilla is a good decent, person. For various reasons, we can imagine that what happened to him that day was deeply embarrassing, possibly deeply upsetting.

That said, Senator Padilla has written a guest essay for the New York Times about what happened that day. Below, you see the way the essay begins:

Senator Padilla: This Is How an Administration Acts When It’s Afraid

Growing up in the northeastern San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles in the 1980s and ’90s, I knew what could happen if you didn’t completely cooperate with law enforcement.

Even so, it was jarring last week when, despite clearly identifying myself as a U.S. senator, I was forcibly removed from a news conference at which Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security, promised to “liberate” Los Angeles from our democratically elected mayor and governor. As I was thrown to the ground, handcuffed and taken down a hall while officers refused to tell me why I was being detained, my mind raced with questions.

Where are they taking me? Am I being arrested? What will residents of a city already on edge from being militarized think when they see their senator has just been handcuffed?

What will my wife and our three boys think?

I imagined similar questions were running through the mind of Brad Lander, the New York City comptroller and mayoral candidate, this week when he, too, was handcuffed by federal agents for asking them whether they had a warrant to arrest a migrant he had locked arms with. Like me, Mr. Lander had the audacity to question the legitimacy of federal actions, only to find himself pushed against a wall and detained. 

Simply put, that isn't what happened in that day in L.A. Something is missing from that account of the day's events, as you can surely see.

It's a key tenet of Trumpism: A person must never admit a mistake. A person must never apologize, must never say that he may have been wrong in something he may have done.

Above, you see the solon's account of what happened that day. Except that isn't what happened.

We think he made a mistake that day. (Everyone does at some point, sometimes for obvious reasons.)

It wouldn't have hurt if he'd simply said do. In our view, it could have been a step in the right direction.

Instead, Senator Padilla, a good decent person, continues to give this bowdlerized account of his own behavior that day—in his spots on TV shows, and now in the New York Times.

Anyone can make a mistake. Also, we feel quite sure that Senator Padilla—the agent of an impressive life story—is a thoroughly good, decent person, just like those senators said.

Now for the rest of the story: When Fox News pried the lid off the garbage can, this is what came crawling out. That segment about Senator Padilla's speech was aired this past Wednesday night on the routinely gruesome Gutfeld! program.

We dare you to watch that segment. Garbage of this general type is rolled out on Gutfeld! every night. Blue America's major new orgs don't say a word about this break with broadcast news traditions.

Our journalists refuse to speak. They refuse to perform their role in our flailing and failing society.

That segment is prime time "cable news." It gets even worse on this startling show, but go ahead:

Just watch it.

REVOLUTION: What were viewers told on CNN?

FRIDAY, JUNE 20, 2025

What were viewers told on Fox? The latest murders—along with the latest attempted murders—took place in the early morning hours of Saturday, June 14.

We refer to last weekend's murders in Minnesota. As we noted yesterday, they went unmentioned on Saturday morning's four-hour edition of the Fox & Friends Weekend program.

As we noted yesterday, the murders may have gone unmentioned on that program for understandable reasons. As we noted, the breaking news about the shootings was first reported on CNN at the start of Saturday morning's 9 o'clock hour. It was first reported on the Fox News Channel at 10:30 that same morning. 

That wasn't a giant difference. That initial report was delivered in a perfectly professional way by Bryan Llenas, co-host of Fox News Live.

Today, we want to show you what took place on the following day. We want to show you what happened on Sunday morning, June 15, when the Fox & Friends Weekend gang did discuss, or did at least pretend to discuss, the murders in Minnesota

What were Fox News Channel viewers told as they watched Sunday morning's show? Before we answer that question, we'll answer a different question:

 What were CNN's viewers being told during those same hours?

On Monday morning's Morning Joe, Jim VandeHei gave voice to a bit of frustration.  It seems to us that he was describing the poisoned fruits of a largely unexplored revolution:

VANDEHEI (6/16/25): Think about this weekend...How would you even know if the crowds were big this weekend? Or whether or not the shooter was a liberal or a conservative?

It all depends on which channel you went into. It depends on what social media feed you were into—the amount of nonsense that was filtering out there. And that's why I think a lot of people just say, "To hell with it, I'm not going to pay attention to anything. I'm going to have a life, and I'll let politics be politics, and maybe I won't go vote."

VandeHei was referring to the size of the crowds at last weekend's military parade, but also to the size of the crowds at the "No Kings" demonstrations. 

Beyond that, he was referring to what people were being told about the suspect in Minnesota, who by then had been apprehended.

According to VandeHei, people were being told different things about the apparent murderer, all depending on which TV channel they watched! So it has gone with the revolution we've been discussing this week—a revolution in the promulgation of information and its various opposites.

With that, let's return to Sunday morning, June 15. What were people being told about the suspect in the murders? We'll start by returning to CNN, the least watched of our cable news channels.

Last Sunday morning, what were people being told if they watched CNN?

As told on CNN / The CNN Journalists' Tale:

Was the shooter "a liberal or a conservative?" Given events of recent years, it could have gone either way.

That said, CNN viewers were receiving a picture of the most recent shooter during Sunday's earliest hours. During Sunday morning's 6 o'clock hour, CNN'S Danny Freeman was reporting what's shown below, live from Minnesota.

He spoke with Victor Blackwell, host of CNN This Morning:

FREEMAN (6/15/25): The FBI saying it's using every available resource to try and find Boelter at this time...

He ultimately got into a bit of a shootout with local police officers at the second lawmaker's home, but he was ultimately able to escape. Authorities finding a hit list in that car that he was driving with the name of several Democratic lawmakers all across the state of Minnesota.

[...]

Victor, I want to take a moment now to talk about these victims, because this is all happening, this manhunt, as this larger community is mourning a real titan in Minnesota Democratic politics.

Of course, we're talking about state representative Melissa Hortman, the top Democrat in the Minnesota State House. She and her husband were killed in this shooting. People describing her as a fighter and also a loving mother who loved her family tremendously.

And then, Victor, as you noted, the other victims in this particular incident is state senator John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette. They were both shot and injured. They miraculously survived this attack. 

According to Freeman's report, Boelter hadn't murdered just any Democrat. He had murdered Melissa Hortman, the top Democrat in the Minnesota State House.

Senator Hoffman was also a Democrat, Freeman reported. These basic facts had been established by 6:10 a.m.

By that time, Blackwell had reported that "authorities shared what they found in the suspect's car, including what police say are flyers for anti-Trump protests, as well as a list of other lawmakers they believe Boelter was targeting." 

Who was on the list of other lawmakers who Boelter may have been targeting? As noted, Freeman described it as "a hit list in that car that he was driving with the name of several Democratic lawmakers all across the state of Minnesota." A bit later, Juliette Kayyem described it as "a hit list that includes mostly Democrats, mostly progressive causes."

That was the early reporting offered on CNN. Early reports are sometimes wrong, but that's what CNN was reporting during the 6 a.m. hour.

During the 7 o'clock hour, CNN's reporting became more specific:

BLACKWELL: Authorities tell us they found flyers for anti-Trump protests in the suspect's vehicle, as well as a list of other lawmakers they believe Boelter was targeting.

CNN has learned that list includes all of the Democratic members of Minnesota's congressional delegation, and that the U.S. Capitol Police have reached out to them. In a statement, the Capitol Police says, in part, "We have been working with our federal, state, and local partners. For safety reasons, we cannot provide specific details about our security posture."

[...]

FREEMAN: A law enforcement officer said they also found a hit list in his car, as you noted, with many Democratic lawmakers and other folks related to Planned Parenthood in the area as well. 

According to this early reporting, abortion politics seemed to have played a role in Boelter's motivation and outlook. Early in this 7 o'clock hour, a research fellow from George Washington University offered this report on Boelter's religious background:

BAUMGARTNER: So the recognizable profile definitely kind of pops out to us in this sort of research and extremism monitoring sort of community. He was a Christian nationalist who was associated with some pretty anti-LGBT and anti-abortion groups. That's where a lot of his ministerial education came from.

So to find his manifesto with all these names of pro-abortion activists on it is hardly surprising. 

Early Sunday morning, so it was going at CNN. During the morning's 8 o'clock hour, on CNN's Inside Politics program, the profile hardened as Manu Raju interviewed John Miller, CNN's chief law enforcement analyst:

RAJU (6/15/25): And John, a law enforcement official told CNN that authorities found a hit list with nearly 70 targets, including Democratic lawmakers and abortion providers. What are you hearing from your sources about any possible motive?

MILLER: Well, we don't know. But the makeup of the hit list probably provides our best clues so far, which is, it is made up of Democratic members of the Minnesota state legislature. It is made up of Democratic members of Congress. It is made up of Democratic officials, not just in Minnesota, but in Iowa and Michigan. So that is one clue.

The other thing is, sprinkled among those names are also pro-choice organizations, particular medical doctors, particular clinics that provide abortions. 

Early reporting is sometimes wrong—but plainly, a portrait was forming. Miller noted an additional fact: "Up until a couple of years ago, [Boelter] served on a board under Democratic governor Tim Walz—a labor development board, along with Senator Hoffman."

That fact was duly noted. That said, unless its work was totally wrong, CNN's reporting was pointing in a clear direction with respect to this particular assailant's political orientation. 

Full disclosure! In recent years, political murders have been attempted, and have sometimes been accomplished, by assailants from various points on the political spectrum. According to CNN's early reporting, it seemed that this assailant, in this most recent case, had been driven by a particular type of focus.

These assaults were conducted by this person only. They weren't the doing of anyone else. That said, the assailant's general orientation seemed to be coming clear in CNN's reporting, early on Sunday morning.

Now for the rest of the story:

What were Fox News Channel viewers told on that morning's Fox & Friends Weekend program? A trio of friends were perched on the set, prepared to serve the American people—and when they discussed, or perhaps only seemed to discuss, the events in Minnesota, they even interviewed a law enforcement specialist of their own.

What had been the orientation of the apparent assailant? On Fox & Friends Weekend, that law enforcement specialist instantly said that the picture was "very, very murky." He went on to say how murky things were a remarkable number of times.

In the next installment of our own report, we'll report, and you can decide, about what viewers were told on this Fox News Channel program.

Alas! It's taking longer than we'd hoped to tell this particular story. That said, Jim VandeHei had made an important point:

What you thought about these assaults almost surely depended, in large measure, on what "cable news" channel you were watching last Sunday morning. Also, on which branch of "social media" you got your impressions from.

It's as we told you yesterday! Even as CNN was offering the reports we've cited, C-Span callers were angrily saying that the assailant had plainly been a Democrat. 

As of today, it seems quite clear that those furious callers were wrong. But where did they get the instant impression which had them so angry that morning?

Where has they gotten that idea? Also this:

Has a revolution taken place? Can our nation—can any large modern nation—really expect to survive the changes in information culture to which we glumly refer?

Tomorrow: "Very, very murky," he said. 

In fact, he said it quite a few times. After that, it got worse.

THURSDAY: Is the sitting president "out of his mind?"

THURSDAY, JUNE 19, 2025

A reader asked Philip Bump: So now we're left with President Trump being the person who has to make a major, fateful decision.

We don't mean this as an insult, but he isn't the person we would have chosen. For those of us in Blue America, it might not be a bad time to remember some of the ways we managed to get ourselves here.

We kept insisting that nothing was wrong at the southern border. We kept insisting that nothing was wrong with President Biden.

With respect to complaints about the rise in the overall cost of living, we kept insisting, on loan from the early Dylan, that "them old dreams are only in your head." And then too, also this:

Frequently, we adopted stances concerning various social issues—various stances which came to be described as "woke." Even if we judge those stances to be ultimately correct, some of those stances took us well beyond the boundaries of conventional understanding and assessment—and you go to the polls with the electorate you currently have.

(In our view, quite a few of those stances probably weren't ultimately correct. Some of those stances weren't just wrong on the politics, they were also wrong on the merits.)

Also this:

We spent years focusing on the desire to Lock the Other Guy Up. The many hours we spent on the minutia of those legal cases were hours we didn't spend on the topics which may have been moving voters away from our own liberal / progressive / Democratic camp.

We aren't the geniuses we've claimed to be—not morally, not intellectually.  Our endless name-calling also got us here, to the place where President Trump will end up being the person who has to make the decision.

Along the way, we still refuse to improve our journalistic game. We refer you to a recent exchange involving the Washington Post's Philip Bump.

Bump is no one's idea of a slouch; he does plenty of good work. In part for that reason, we were struck by what he said in response to this question from a reader during a Washington Post "Live Chat:" 

Is Trump tactical—or out of his mind? I answered your questions.

[...]

Is Trump truly out of his mind? 
Guest

He demands "unconditional surrender" from Iran and adds that he knows where knows Iran’s supreme leader is but won’t kill him, “at least not for now.” What do you think: Finely tuned negotiating tactic or lunacy?

That was one of a bunch of questions to which Bump responded. The reader seemed to be asking if there could be some kind of a problem with the state of President Trump's mental health. 

The headline seems to have been composed by the Washington Post.

Over the past eight years, medical and psychiatric specialists have sometimes rather clearly suggested that the answer to the headlined question is yes. That said, Bump is a journalist, not a medical specialist—but instead of simply saying so, this is the "answer" he gave:

Philip Bump 
Columnist

President Trump is driven by a number of basic and at times conflicting motivations. One is that he acts on impulse. Another is his desire to look strong. Another, related one is that he is wildly insecure. Another, also related one is that he is eager not to have anyone understand just how out of his depth he is in his current position.

If you consider that Truth Social post in that light, it makes sense. He's demanding "unconditional surrender" from a foreign country that … the U.S. isn't at war with? It is an attainable toughness for Trump, suggesting that the U.S. is leaning on Iran without having to cajole Congress into sending actual troops (or just sending them, as has been the norm in the past few decades).

But it's not like Iran was about to simply surrender to … who, exactly? So the result of this (almost certainly) impulsive declaration is that Trump looks weaker, if only incrementally. OK, they didn't surrender. So now what?

He has no answer for that either. So, for the moment, he appears to be content basking in the reflected glow of Israel's bombing runs.

That's an answer which isn't an answer. It's basically standard yak.

Bump could have summarized some of the analyses which have been offered by some medical specialists, including Trump's own niece. Instead, he went with a standard issue pseudo-answer—with an imitation of life.

Is something wrong with President Trump? (Colloquially, is he "out of his mind?")

At this site, we aren't medical specialists either! That said, we continue to wonder about this assessment by the president's niece:

The fact is, his pathologies are so complex and his behaviors so often inexplicable that coming up with an accurate and comprehensive diagnosis would require a full battery of psychological and neuropsychological tests that he’ll never sit for.

That's a small part of what Mary Trump wrote about her uncle's apparent "psychopathologies" in her best-selling book from 2020. In the book, she accompanies her punishing portrait of the adult version of her uncle with a sympathetic portrait of the way he got to be the way he is, starting with a deeply unfortunate family event when he was two years old.

(Also, starting with an even earlier unfortunate fact—the fact that he was born to a sociopathic father. Or so says Mary Trump.)

For ourselves, we continue to wonder about "Delusional disorder" as described by the leading authority on the unfortunate syndrome. It seems to us that President Trump is gripped by the idea that he's one of the planet's handful of truly great men—that he's a towering figure on a plane with potentates like Putin and Xi, a person whose unmatchable greatness takes him far beyond the stature of the pitiful and stupid people who lead our traditional "allies."

Mary Trump describes the way his (sociopathic) father taught him to see the world through that disordered lens (in effect, as "The Great I-Am"). The fact that she offered these assessments doesn't mean that her assessments are right. But Philip Bump isn't a medical specialist, and when he gets a question like the one he received, he ought to start by stating that fact before he gives something resembling an answer.

(Does the president feel that he is The Great I-Am, a transcendent global figure by dint of his vast abilities? Such a belief would, it seems, be delusion-adjacent—but in this very dangerous moment, he finally stands astride the world, the transcendent figure on whom we must all rely.)

What would a (carefully selected) medical specialist think about the question Bump was asked? If we had the reach of the Washington Post, we'd be inclined to ask!

Our national discourse is quite unimpressive, even among us Blues. By and large, we Blues seem to be unaware of that unfortunate but obvious fact.

Philip Bump does a lot of good work. That said, there's a rule he isn't allowed to break—a rule he failed to acknowledge when he answered that fuzzy, somewhat flippant question in the way he did.

Strong advice for a disabled nation: Dylan was barely 21 when he wrote Talkin' World War III Blues. The song ends with an offer—with a new and transcendent dream—which could hardly be more relevant for our broken nation:

Talkin' World War III Blues

[...]

Well, time passed and now it seems
Everybody's having them dreams.
Everybody sees hisself walkin' around with no one else.
"Half of the people can be part right all of the time;
"Some of the people can be all right part of the time;
"But all of the people can't be all right all of the time."
I think Abraham Lincoln said that.
I'll let you be in my dream if I can be in yours.
I said that.

We'd call that brilliant youthful advice. We'd call it a driving dream. 

There was a bit more room for hope at that time. To hear the recording, click here.

REVOLUTION: The murderer was a Democrat!

THURSDAY, JUNE 19, 2025

So two C-Span callers now said: The murders, and the attempted murders, occurred in the middle of the night.

Technically, they took place on June 14, very early on Saturday morning. CNN's first report of this terrible event came right at the start of that morning's 9 o'clock hour, Boris Sanchez reporting:

SANCHEZ (6/14/25): We begin this hour with the breaking news out of Minnesota. A massive manhunt is underway as police are searching for the person behind the assassination of a top Democratic lawmaker and the attempted assassination of another state lawmaker.

There had been no mention of this event in that morning's 8 o'clock hour. For that transcript, you can click here.

CNN's viewers were thus apprised, for the first time, of these horrific events. For viewers of the Fox News Channel, time was possibly passing a bit more slowly up there in the mountains.

Fox & Friends Weekend had come on the air at 6 a.m. sharp, primed for its standard four-hour run. Searching on "Minnesota," we find no sign that the shootings were ever mentioned during that morning's program.

In fairness, the friends were already in D.C. that morning, broadcasting from the scene of that evening's military parade. Also, the military strikes in Israel and Iran had emerged as the day's top news event. 

The "No Kings" demonstrations would take place around the country that day. On Fox & Friends Weekend, the trio of friends focused this day on the military parade and on the events from the Middle East.

That may explain why Minnesota went unmentioned on Fox until 10:32 a.m. At that time, Bryan Llenas returned from a commercial break with a bit of a Fox News Alert:

LLENAS (6/14/25): We've got some breaking news. This morning, Minnesota residents are being ordered to shelter in place after multiple shootings today.  Here's what we know:

Democratic senator John Hoffman and Democratic House representative Melissa Hortman and their spouses have been shot by someone impersonating a police officer. Minnesota Governor Walz is calling this a targeted attack. 

Police say the suspect is a white man with brown hair wearing black body armor over a blue shirt and blue pants. He's considered armed and dangerous.

Wow! We will keep you updated on this story as we learn more.

That was part of the 10 o'clock broadcast of Fox News Live. 

As you can see, Llenas identified the victims as Democrats. As we'll eventually see, that bit of information may have tended to disappear from Fox News Channel programs last weekend as the channel kept its viewers "updated on the story." 

To his own substantial credit, Llenas actually used the term "Democratic" when he noted the party affiliation of the victims. That's a standard courtesy which is widely observed in the breach as childish employees of this "cable news" channel demonstrate their tribal loyalty by persistently referring to "the Democrat [sic] Party," in their occasional news reports but also in their constant pseudo-discussions.

Also, Llenas had somehow managed to refer to Governor Walz without calling him "Tampon Tim!" As our nation and its discourse devolve, that also marks Llenas as a bit of a standout on Fox.

Llenas behaved exactly as a broadcast journalist should have. Later in that hour, Fox News Live aired the first briefing conducted by Governor Walz other Minnesota officials. Indeed, Fox News Live aired the event in its entirety. 

During that briefing, Governor Walz referred to the Minnesota budget bill which had passed into law the previous week—a budget bill which would soon be part of the disinformation campaign which swept across substantial parts of Red America.

We aren't giant fans of Governor Walz ourselves, but his remarks that day were wholly appropriate—indeed, were quite instructive. So was the behavior of Fox News Live as it reported this emerging news event.

The shootings had occurred at 2 a.m., and then at 3:30 a.m., Central time. CNN reported the basic news first, at 9 a.m. Eastern—but the Fox News Channel soon followed.

From there, the Fox News Channel spent much of the day reporting events from the Middle East, but also from the D.C. parade route. We now skip ahead to something which happened the next day, early on Sunday morning, during the 7 o'clock hour of C-Span's Washington Journal.

If you're an American citizen, you currently live in a type of modern-day Babel. It's the type of Babel which takes form after the so-called "democratization of media"—after the explosion of broadcast capability which has made "every person a king" with respect to the spread of information, or possibly with respect to the spread of its various opposites.

We were surprised by some of what we heard as we watched Washington Journal that morning. At 7:33 on Sunday morning, a phone call from Queens went on the air as C-Span viewers listened.

Carmen from Queens was now on the air. Here's part of what she said:

MODERATOR (6/15/25): Let's hear from Carmen in Queens, New York, Republican line. Good morning!

CARMEN FROM QUEENS: Yes, good morning. Thank you for taking my call. 

I'm calling as someone who used to be a Democrat my entire life and then switched over in 2020 to Republican. I see here that people are calling because they definitely are haters of Trump, and everything they think or do is driven by that hatred.

[...]

As far as the murders in Minnesota, I can't believe no one's even mentioning this. The person who committed the murders, the alleged murderer who they're looking for, appears to have been someone appointed into position by Governor Walz, and he is someone who had "No Kings" fliers in his car. And he apparently was a Democrat supporter.

According to this caller, the murderer was apparently "a Democrat supporter!" 

This claim seemed fly in the face of widespread reporting which had emerged in the course of the previous day. That said, the caller said she couldn't believe that no one was even mentioning this state of affairs. 

The murderer has been appointed into position by Walz. Also, he had "No Kings" fliers in his car. 

On that basis, the caller had apparently concluded that the murderer was "a Democrat supporter," apparently of Governor Walz.  At 7:46, a similar call came in:

RUDY FROM OHIO: ...As far as these people getting shot up in Minnesota, I don't hear nobody saying that the guy worked for Walz—worked for Governor Walz. All these—he was a political appointee, a Democrat political appointee. 

Why doesn't these news— C-Span, NBC, they don't want to mention the fact that the guy's a Democrat, you know? It's amazing to watch this on TV unfold.

I watched TV about all say yesterday, and nobody— Once the fact got out that he's a Democrat, they don't even talk about it no more. You know, it's really sick to watch these people lie, lie, lie, you know? 

[...]

MODERATOR: That was Rudy in Ohio. Bill, also in Ohio—line for Independents. Good morning, Bill!

Bill expressed a different overall view. But in the calls from Queens and Ohio, the discourse was well on its way to the astonishing pair of posts advanced by Senator Mike Lee.

The news was first reported on CNN at 9 o'clock on Saturday morning. Less than 24 hours later, this surprising claim was being advanced, with great certainty, by a pair of C-Span callers:

The murderer was a Democrat—a supporter of Governor Walz!

That's what two callers insistently said, less than 24 hours later, as other viewers listened.

Those phone calls had come from one important region of our deeply entrenched, and deeply destructive, American Babel. That Babel has largely gone unexplored by major news orgs here in our own Blue America. 

There's nothing took at! Move right along! our major new orgs seem inclined to say.

Thoe callers had already become convinced that the murderer was a Democrat. Each caller expressed anger and shock at the way this fact was being suppressed by the lies of the mainstream press.

Tomorrow, with time running out for the week, we'll show you what was being said on Sunday's edition of Fox & Friends Weekend even as those calls were being aired on C-Span.

Then, we'll skip ahead to that evening's edition of The Big Weekend Show. on which we heard some of the dumbest presentations we've ever heard on an alleged news program. That two-hour "cable news" program also airs, each weekend night, on the Fox News Channel.

Our nation is in a world of hurt. We're plainly entrenched in a Babel.

A revolution has taken place. It's a revolution in values, but also in the promulgation of bogus claims and preferred tribal Storyline.

Various clown cars are involved in this sad situation. None of those vehicles match the size of the clown cars maintained by Fox.

Is there something to look at here? We'd say there probably is.

We'd recommend the saying of names—the discussion of ludicrous conduct.

Tomorrow: On Sunday morning, Johnny Joey Jones had some questions—or did he? On Sunday evening, we sat through two of the dumbest hours we've ever seen on TV.

Is there something to look at here? We'd say there possibly is!