WEDNESDAY: Gutfeld was back in the saddle again!

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2025

America's prospects aren't good: Last night, he was back in the saddle again.

Monday afternoon, on The Five, he had launched a long attack on Jessica Tarlov in the program's first segment. To our ear, he was announcing the end of a famous experiment—the end of the very possibility of an American nation.

As we noted yesterday, he had started Monday's outburst with a ludicrous claim—with the claim that political murders have only been aimed by "the left" against "the right." 

Asked by Tarlov about the murder of Melissa Hortman (and her husband) back in June, he authored a factual error in the course of executing an utterly silly dodge.

He insulted Tarlov—McEnany had staged the first interruption—and he let his cuss words fly. Tarlov hadn't mentioned the arson attack on Governor Shapiro, so he brought it up himself, and then he proceeded to this:

GUTFELD (9/15/25): Now, you can bring up Josh Shapiro, but then you will not bring up, for example, that that was a pro-Palestine person. So don’t use your “What about this?” 

The fact of the matter is the “both sides” argument not only doesn’t fly—we don’t care! We don’t care about your “both sides” argument. That shit is dead! 

He doesn't care about sh*t like that! That shit is dead, he now said.

(For the record, the man who committed the arson attack against Shapiro had urged his brother to vote for Candidate Trump—or so the brother said. He had a long history of mental illness, as do many of the people, Red or Blue or unaligned, who have engaged in such attacks.)

In fairness, Greg Gutfeld is just a person, just like everyone else. None of us people are perfect. That said, his conduct on the Fox News Channel has long been astoundingly strange.

Last night, he was back in the saddle on his eponymous 10 p.m. show. At 10 o'clock sharp, he started the hour-long show in the usual way:

GUTFELD (9/16/25): Good evening, everyone. 

Former transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg now says that Kamala Harris should not have run.

Oh wait, I'm sorry—I misread that. She should not have rum.

That was the first of his handful of opening jokes. Ever since last year, he's been trafficking the idea that Harris is—what else?—a "drunk."

That was a familiar start. He moved directly to this:

GUTFELD: The Biden family has hit the financial skids. Instead of private jets, Joe has been spotted with a book in the first-class cabin of flights.

Which, according to Bill Clinton, is a great way to hide your boner.

Aside from the endless fury, this is pretty much all this guy has. His next quip went like this:

GUTFELD: Meanwhile, at least one organization tried to negotiate a lower rate for Joe's speaking gigs. The offer includes one round-trip Amtrak ticket, a set of complementary Depends and a case of Ensure.

That involved a return to a favorite theme of the past several years—the endless suggestion that President Biden is constantly "pooping [or shitting] his pants." He offered this as a chaser:

GUTFELD: But Joe's agent keeps stressing that Joe is a limited time offer. 

AUDIENCE: [Laughter]

GUTFELD: Time's running out, we just don't know when!

That involved the ghoulish, repetitive death wish the peculiar fellow routinely directs at the former president.

Remember what we said about all the pooping and sh*tting? The TV star now said this:

GUTFELD: Worse, when Biden left office, he told friends that he needs to pay off $800,000 in debt. 

Which coincidentally is the same amount required for steam cleaning the Oval Office furniture.

AUDIENCE: [Groans]

GUTFELD: I know! But to raise the money, he's planning to sell his car.

[PHOTOGRAPH OF A HEARSE]

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! With that, it was back to Harris:

GUTFELD: Jill Biden has retired from her teaching job and will be starting a new unpaid position at a think tank.

While Kamala will be sleeping it off in a drunk tank.

Then this:

GUTFELD: Good news, though! Jill is also working on a book.

It's called, "The Old Man and the Pee."

It's all this angry man has.

We'll skip past a tedious joke about Hunter Biden's crack pipe being repossessed. At 10:02, the soul-draining set of opening jokes ended—where else?—with this:

GUTFELD: In non-Biden news, a free diver from Croatia held his breath underwater for an incredible 29 minutes, shattering the previous record held by Joy Behar's waxer.

AUDIENCE: [Cheering, sustained applause]

Behar is 82 years old; she'll be 83 next month. For reasons no one has tried to explain, this seems to be who and what this broken souled cable star is. 

The misogyny is undisguised on this show—and his audience seems to love it.

During that sustained applause, Gutfeld's relief was evident. 

"Yeah—we're back," the crippled man triumphantly said. Presumably, that meant that he'd moved back beyond the fury of the previous day. It was back to nosing around inside Behar's shorts!

The Fox News Channel thinks of this as a form of prime time "cable news." It's even worse when you factor in the behavior of the four reliable stooges who are paid to sit on the set and pretend that this makes sense. 

(Kat Timpf is cast as the "reasonable" one, though it may take months for you to notice.)

This is what a very large audience wants to see and hear. This is who, and this is what, our exceptional nation is.

In fairness, Gutfeld didn't compare any liberal woman to a horse, a cow, a pig or a whale or "livestock"
during this two-minute segment. He hadn't complained about Rep. Tlaib's alleged mustache, or about Nancy Pelosi's Botox abuse.

On the other hand, this is who and this is what many of us Americans are. The "democratization of media" has turned this grisly spectacle loose—and over here in Blue America, major news orgs avert their gaze from this astounding departure from traditional form.

Can a nation survive a regime of this type? We can't say the prospects are good.

Jesse Watters is almost as bad. Might this nightly spectacle perhaps be the downfall we've chosen?

In fairness, also this: He didn't ask if Hunter Biden has started "banging" or "[BLEEP]ing" Jill Biden yet.

He did that on at least three separate occasions last year. Kat Timpf—she's cast as the reasonable one—seems to think that makes sense!

PRETENDERS: The killer was motivated by Obama!

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2025

So a pretender now said: We're losing the soul of the culture, he said. The writer was Bret Stephens.

In this morning's New York Times, Stephens recalls the culture to which he was exposed as a student at the University of Chicago. It was built upon a respect for reasoned argument—upon respect for traditional notions of reason itself:

Our Vanishing Culture of Argument

[...]

What is the soul of the Western tradition? Argument. Socrates goes around Athens investigating the claims of the supposedly wise and finds that the people who claim to know things don’t. The Lord threatens to destroy Sodom for its alleged wickedness, but Abraham reproaches and bargains with Him—that for the sake of 10 righteous people He must not destroy the city.

In both traditions, Athens’s and Jerusalem’s, the lone dissenting voice is often the heroic one.

To read Western philosophy and literature was our chance to understand these dissents...The curriculum made us appreciate that the best way to contend with an argument was to engage with it rather than denounce it, and that the prerequisite to engagement was close and sympathetic reading. Reading Marx didn’t turn me into a Marxist. But it did give me an appreciation of the power of his prose.

I came to Chicago when Western civilization courses were falling out of fashion at other universities, as was the idea of a core curriculum, as was the idea that underlay the core: that there was a coherent philosophical tradition based in reasoned argument and critical engagement that explained not only how we had arrived at our governing principles but also gave us the tools to debate, preserve or change them.

That's how it was for those in the class of 1995, or so Stephens says. We know of no reason to doubt him. 

As he continues, he says this culture has changed. In this passage, he pokes at the chaos which has resulted from the transformation we've described as the "democratization of media:"

All this has happened in tandem with the digital transformations of this century, which have further pushed us into personalized bubbles of ideology and information. The effect of the new technologies has generally been terrible for our health, psychological as well as political. But I don’t think it would have been as bad if we hadn’t first given up on the idea of a culture of argument rooted in a common set of ideas.

Which brings me to Charlie Kirk.

Stephens, a man of the center right, goes on to offer an unflattering portrait of Kirk's manner of dialogue. For us, this still isn't the time to criticize Kirk, who was murdered last Wednesday while engaged in the type of dialogue Stephens seems to view as a large step back.

We'll quote Stephens' portrait before we're done. We've seen a few others paint a similar portrait of Kirk's approach in the past few days. 

For today, we'll return to the Fox News Channel, and to a younger graduate of the University of Chicago.

This younger graduate hails from the class of 2021. As we noted yesterday, she appeared on last Saturday's broadcast of the four-hour morning "cable news" program, Fox & Friends Weekend.

We thought she made an astonishing claim during her appearance. As we noted yesterday, Kevin Corke introduced her at 6:52 a.m., as the program emerged from a commercial break:

CORKE (9/13/25): As we continue to celebrate Charlie's life and memory, shocking and sickening celebrations of his death have occurred on social media, and those who are mourning him have actually faced heated backlash. Independent journalist Evita Duffy-Alonso joining us now with reaction.

So great to have you with us, my friend! I just want to set the table here by asking you about your experience as you watch some of the reaction. How has it struck you?

References to "Charlie" require no last name on this tribal "cable news" program. Corke introduced the young independent journalist as "my friend."

Remarkably (in our view), this is what the young journalist said:

DUFFY-ALONSO (continuing directly): I mean, it's been unconscionable. I mean, this is—the reaction itself is such a good example of how there is no intellectual diversity on the left.

Not only is there no intellectual diversity on the left towards the right, they're not even tolerant of diversity on their own side. And there are deadly consequences, clearly, to not agreeing with them.

Obama said, right after Charlie was killed, "We don't know what motivated this." I think Obama should know what motivated this. It was his entire political career, sprung out of his close relationship with left-wing terrorist Bill Ayers.

Between 1971 and 1972, an 18-month period, left-wing terrorists set off nearly five bombs a day in American cities. So it went from the Weather Underground to our institutions, and what Charlie Kirk did is he went to our institutions, the heart of the indoctrination machine of the left, and he evangelized young people.

Young men have swung, between 2023 and 2025, 44 points to the right. That is why they hated him so much. 

What motivated the young man who murdered Kirk last week? It all goes back to Barack Obama, this young Chicago grad confidently alleged.

Let several things be said:

It seemed to us that this young independent journalist was completely sincere. (Sometimes, people on the Fox News Channel may simply seem to be reciting the memorized dogmas which are central to that "cable news" channel's mission.)

Also, the young journalist said at least one thing which seems to be fully accurate!

The statistic about those bombings in the early 1970s is taken from Bryan Burrough's 2015 book, Days of Rage. America's Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence.

Fifty years later, it's hard to remember the vast sweep of those "days of rage," but that statistic about all those bombings has long been assumed to be accurate. Just yesterday, in this New York Times column, Ross Douthat cited Burrough's book as the go-to text concerning the tumult of that era.

Those bombings actually happened—but Barack Obama was ten years old at that particular time! His association with Bill Ayers started in 1995, but Ayers was no longer a "left-wing terrorist." Nor was the relationship known to have been especially "close."

Ayers was no longer a "left-wing terrorist!" His remarkable transformation still seems puzzling to us, but here's part of the leading authority's description of his academic career:

Civic and political life

Ayers worked with Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley in shaping the city's school reform program and was one of three co-authors of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge grant proposal that in 1995 won $49.2 million over five years for public school reform. In 1997, Chicago awarded him its Citizen of the Year award for his work on the project. Since 1999, he has served on the board of directors of the Woods Fund of Chicago, an anti-poverty, philanthropic foundation established as the Woods Charitable Fund in 1941. The Wall Street Journal columnist Thomas Frank praised Ayers as a "model citizen" and a scholar whose "work is esteemed by colleagues of different political viewpoints."

Go figure! By 1995, Ayers had long been established as one of Chicago's civic leaders. Two years later, he was named that city's Citizen of the Year!

In various ways, the presentation by the young independent journalist struck us as perhaps a bit misleading. That said, it seemed to us that she was engaged in a familiar type of undertaking on the "cable news" channel in question:

She was adding 2 plus 2 and coming up with three million and one! Or at least, so it almost seemed to us as she made her phantasmagoric overall claim, with the smiling Corke urging her on.

Last week's murder of Charlie Kirk? According to Corke's friend, the motivation was obvious! It was President Obama's entire career, "sprung out of his close relationship with a left-wing terrorist"—a close relationship which doesn't seem to have been especially close, with a person who would soon be hailed as Chicago's "man of the year."

As of today, the evidence clearly suggests that Tyler Richardson, age 22, murdered Charlie Kirk. According to Evita Duffy-Alphonso, age 25, the motivation for this act tracks straight back to Barack Obama—to his entire career!

Kevin Corke, age 60, warmly thanked her for her participation when the segment came to an end. For what it's worth, the genial Corke seems like the nicest guy in the world.

Tomorrow, we'll take you further down this particular road. But this is the sort of thing which now happens, all day and all night, on this ersatz "cable news" channel.

According to Stephens, "the digital transformations of this century" have "pushed us into personalized bubbles of ideology and information."

We've described those transformations, and those which preceded them in the past century, as the "democratization of media." We've suggested the possibility that this type of "democratization" simply can't be survived.

The bizarre remarks of that young journalist may help you see why we've persistently said that. For today, we'll end with this:

In our view, the very genial Kevin Corke was a bit of a "pretender" this day. The young independent journalist seemed to be completely sincere, but was she a "pretender" too?

Another group of high-end pretenders were sleeping soundly in their lairs in Blue America as this interview took placed. That second major group of pretenders have long agreed on a basic rule:

Wat happens on the Fox News Channel must never be discussed.

Tomorrow: What the other journalist said. (She was 42 at the time.)

TUESDAY: When the Achaeans came over the walls...

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2025

...we'll guess that it sounded like this: Yesterday afternoon, at 5 o'clock, we sat down to watch The Five. The analysts all gathered around us.

We make it a point to watch at least the first half hour—the first two segments—of the program every day. It's a very painful, very difficult watch.

When a person watches The Five, he's watching a deliberate, scripted breakdown in post-Enlightenment human ideals. Presumably, some of the program's MAGA co-hosts understand that fact. We're not sure that all of them do.

The Five is a four-on-one, gladitorial gong show. When Jessica Tarlov sits in the one "Democrat [sic] Party" chair, this depressing show achieves its frisson as its four MAGA members interrupt and overtalk here.

(When Harold Ford sits in that chair, interruption is much less frequently needed.)

Yesterday, at 5 o'clock, the program wasn't on! The Fox News Channel was airing President Trump, live and direct from the Oval Office. We chose not to watch, thereby missing what occurred later in the hour.

The president wrapped at 5:36 p.m. Instantly, at that very moment, The Five came on the air. 

Eight minutes later, it fell to Kayleigh McEnany to stage the first interruption of Tarlov. This program features moral and intellectual squalor at its undisguised best, in this case performed by a graduate of Harvard Law School.

Seconds later, the Achaeans came over the walls. Below, you see the way the report at Mediaite starts. Rightly or wrongly, Mediaite favors histrionic headlines—but the overall aim here is true: 

‘Did You Know Her Name?!’ Gutfeld LOSES IT on Co-Host for ‘Bulls–t’ Comparison of Kirk Assassination [to] Democratic Lawmaker’s

Greg Gutfeld went nuclear on co-host Jessica Tarlov after she cited the assassination of a Democratic lawmaker as an example of right-wing violence.

Last week, Charlie Kirk was shot and killed while speaking at Utah Valley University. Police have arrested 22-year-old Tyler Robinson in connection with the killing. Police have not revealed a possible motive, but Utah’s governor said Robinson has left-wing views.

You can peruse the full report simply by clicking here. In fact, Gutfeld did "go nuclear" on Tarlov. When we saw the videotape this morning, we feared for what's coming next.

The program's first segment concerned the murder of Charlie Kirk. As noted, McEnany authored the first interruption at 5:44 p.m.

Tarlov had been saying that we need to wait for more information before we attempt to describe the motive behind the murder of Kirk with absolute certainty. ("It may absolutely be the case that" the killer was a man of "the left," she had already said.)

Seconds later, as Tarlov tried to respond to McEnany, the furious Gutfeld broke in:

TARLOV (5/15/25): I'm just saying, we need more information before you smear—

GUTFELD: We don't need more information! We don't need it! 

TARLOV: Really?

GUTFELD: Yes. What is interesting here is, why is only this happening on the left and not the right? That’s all we need to know.

We don't need no stinking information, the furious Achaean now said. This is only happening on the left, the trooper absurdly said.

His furious assault continued from there. Below, you see the next partial chunk. A person has to watch the tape to drink the fury in:

TARLOV (continuing directly): What about Vance Boelter? What about Melissa Hortman?

GUTFELD: Oh! You want to talk about Melissa Hortman? Did you know her name before it happened? None of us did! None of us were spending every single day talking about Mrs. Hortman. I never heard of her until after she died—

TARLOV: So it doesn’t matter?

GUTFELD: Don’t play that bullshit with me! You know what I’m talking—what I’m saying is there was no demonization amplification about that woman before she died! It was a specific crime against her by somebody who knew her.

Melissa Hortman was the widely-respect leader of the Minnesota House. Speaking of "bullshit," she and her husband were murdered in their home, in the middle of the night, by Vance Boelter—by a person who didn't know them.

As in the case of the murder of Kirk, that assailant may have been mentally ill. As for the meltdown on The Five, the furious nutcase continued:

GUTFELD (continuing directly): Now, you can bring up Josh Shapiro [Tarlov didn't and hadn't], but then you will not bring up, for example, that that was a pro-Palestine person. So don’t use your “What about this?” 

The fact of the matter is the “both sides” argument not only doesn’t fly—we don’t care! We don’t care about your “both sides” argument. That shit is dead! 

For one thing, there’s no cognitive dissonance on our side. On your side, your beliefs do not match reality. So, you’re coming up with these rationalizations like “What about this?” Or “What about that?”

We are not doing that because we saw it happen. We saw a young, bright man assassinated, and we know who did it. We are not coming up with rationalizations. We are calm. We are honest. And we are resolute. We’re not defensive!

We’re not defensive, the channel's star nutcase excitedly said. We are calm, the overwrought fruitcake added. 

Along the way, he had added to his portrait of the group which will soon be coming over the walls:

They don't need no information! Also, if the other side does present some relevant information, so what? They don't care!

The furious screed of this manifest nutball continued long after that. First, he said that Tarlov herself wasn't part of the problem. Then he plainly implied that she was.

At any rate, he doesn't want to put up with her sh*t. "Don’t play that bullshit with me," he insultingly said.

Inevitably, let's be fair. The overwrought fellow didn't compare Tarlov to a cow, to a pig, to a horse or to a whale or even to "livestock." He saves that insanity for his insane nightly 10 p.m. program, when he peddles that garbage every weekday night.

You can watch the full harangue through one of the two links shown below. As we watched, we felt that we were seeing a famous experiment nearing its ugly end. 

Inevitably, the three other pro-MAGA corporate tools all sat staring politely into the air, pretending that nothing had happened.

Why are we calling this guy an Achaean? More on this fellow tomorrow. By the way, Blue America's major news orgs all agree that his channel's behavior must be ignored, apparently right to the end.

Two chances to view the tape: Yesterday, this fellow did, in fact, "go nuclear." It's something he's been doing for a very long time. According to Variety, he's paid $9 million per year.

You can watch the full videotape of his profanity-laden rant as part of the Mediaite report. Also, you can click here for the Internet Archive tape, and then continue to click.

As noted above, he didn't call Tarlov a cow.

For the record, Greg Gutfeld is a person too. We advise you to pity the child—to wonder how this ever happened.

PRETENDERS: The murder tracks back to Obama, she said!

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2025

She seemed to be fully sincere: Friend, how about it? Did you have the nerve to take yesterday morning's Daily Howler Challenge?

Did you watch the videotape of the start of Sunday's Fox & Friends Weekend program? 

In real time, we had been struck by the jumble of claims and insinuations as that program got started. By 6:07 a.m., Rachel Campos-Duffy had seemed to suggest, several times, that the accused assailant, Tyler Robinson, was himself transgender. 

Perhaps that wasn't what she meant, but it's what she had seemed to say. At one point, guest co-host Kevin Corke had possibly seemed to agree.

Dear friend, there had been more! At 6:05, Lawrence Jones had oddly said that "the line of questioning" at Charlie Kirk's UVU event "got to the transgender issue before the shot was fired. So all of that is connected to what the investigators are going to be looking at."

In fact, Kirk was being questioned about a transgender issue when the fatal shot was fired. Was Jones suggesting that this was something other than a coincidence? That's the way his unexplained statement might have sounded. 

By 6:09, it was time for more from Jones. By now, the conversation, such as it was, had actually gotten to this:

JONES (9/14/25): You know, I have some personal friends of mine that are on the left, and we were going back and forth this weekend about what is an extremist and what is not an extremist. And they have the point of view that they condemn what happened to Charlie, but he was extreme.

I was like, those have legal ramifications! When you call someone an extremist, this pushes people to the edge, to feeling they've got to—

CAMPOS-DUFFY: Yeah.

JONES: When you call someone Hitler, when you say they're a threat to democracy—

CORKE: A fascist!

JONES: —some people, in their brain, feels like you've got to stop that person!

For some people, that may well be true! That said, we now seemed to have reached the point where, if you think that someone's extreme, you can't give voice to that view. 

The same objection holds if you think that someone—President Trump, to cite one example—is a threat to democracy. Apparently according to Jones, if you think that someone's a threat to democracy, you should keep such thoughts to yourself.

That's extremely undercooked thinking. Meanwhile, left unstated was an obvious fact:

President Trump makes such statements every day of the week and several times on Sundays! Unless you're watching the Fox News Channel, on whose programs Christian soldiers like Campos-Duffy, Corke and Jones will never mention such facts.

We'll offer a simple assessment:

Campos-Duffy, Jones and Corke may be completely sincere. But they belong on a major American news broadcast in much the way that they should be the starting backfield for the Green Bay Packers this week.

Most people aren't equipped to play for the Green Back Packers. We ourselves aren't qualified to play for the Packers, and certainly not as a starter.

Similarly, many people aren't equipped to be part of a major news broadcast. That doesn't mean that they're bad people. It means that they're people people, possessing all the limitations and flaws that human flesh is heir to.

We were especially struck by what we saw on Sunday morning because of something we'd seen on Fox & Friends Weekend the day before.  It had happened on the Saturday broadcast, in a segment which started at 6:52 a.m.

On that occasion, Kevin Corke introduced a guest. This is what he said:

CORKE (9/13/25): As we continue to celebrate Charlie's life and memory, shocking and sickening celebrations of his death have occurred on social media, and those who are mourning him have actually faced heated backlash. Independent journalist Evita Duffy-Alonso joining us now with reaction.

So great to have you with us, my friend! I just want to set the table here by asking you about your experience as you watch some of the reaction. How has it struck you?

That's what the guest host said as he introduced the independent journalist. For the record:

The young journalist welcomed by Corke is 25 years old. To our eye and ear, she was fully sincere in every word she said this day, but the American experiment is nearing its end when people like this are sent on the air to offer to offer assessments of this type:

DUFFY-ALONSO (continuing directly): I mean it's been unconscionable. I mean, this is—the reaction itself is such a good example of how there is no intellectual diversity on the left.

Not only is there no intellectual diversity on the left towards the right, they're not even tolerant of diversity on their own side. And there are deadly consequences, clearly, to not agreeing with them.

Obama said, right after Charlie was killed, "We don't know what motivated this." I think Obama should know what motivated this. It was his entire political career...

Say what? The motivation for the murder of Charlie Kirk was President Obama's political career? Hs entire political career?

That's what the young woman said. We offer these surface assessments:

The young woman introduced by Corke as "my friend" is highly telegenic. To our eye and to our ear, she seemed to be fully sincere.

Also, part of her name sounded somewhat familiar. Later, we googled it out.

Tomorrow morning, we'll show you the rest of what this "independent journalist" said about the way the murder of Kirk tracks straight back to Obama. For the record, her brief segment at the end of the 6 o'clock hour ended with this:

DUFFY-ALONSO: The left can't even have—the radical left—a normal human reaction to the death of a father, of a husband, of a Christian man. I think that speak volumes.

CORKE: Evita, have a wonderful weekend. We appreciate your time this morning.

As you may know, we've long suspected that the American experiment, imperfect as it always has been, is already over. We could be wrong about that, of course.

There can be little doubt concerning a different fact. The Fox News Channel is devoted to the task of sending pretenders out onto the air. 

They may not know that they're pretenders; they may be fully sincere. But pretenders is what they actually are, and they tend to be spilling over with ardent tribal belief.

Other pretenders refuse to report this. Nothing to look at, they've said.

Tomorrow: As the Achaeans come over the walls, it's always Obama's fault!

This afternoon: Yesterday's explosion

MONDAY: FDR learned about human suffering!

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2025

Or so PBS said: "This is a delicious evening, when the whole body is one sense, and imbibes delight through every pore."

It's our favorite line from Walden. Watching the largely broken American discourse in the wake of the murder of Charlie Kirk hasn't been like that at all.

Yesterday, we had the good sense to exit into an earlier era when the 1994 American Experience program, FDR, was shown on a local PBS station. For that program's official site, click here.

Good lord! In 1920, at age 38, FDR was the Democratic Party nominee for vice president. After the ticket's resounding defeat, he seemed to be next in line for the Democratic presidential nod.

One year later, at age 39, the polio came. It left him paralyzed from the waist down. 

According to the PBS program, his mother wanted him to come home to Hyde Park and spend the rest of his life working on his stamps. At a time when no one could dream of being elected to office from a wheelchair, he undertook a long and arduous physical campaign designed to let him appear healthy enough, in the eyes of the world, to pursue political office. 

The result:

In 1928, he was elected governor of New York. In 1932, he was elected president. Along the way, the program related, he created the Warm Springs Foundation in rural Georgia, where he experienced this:

Janice Howe Raper, Physical Therapist: After everybody had treatment, they would all go out into what was called the "play pool," and they would play vigorous games of ball. He played with them and he was just as tough as any of the children. They loved him.

Geoffrey Ward, Biographer: Whether or not people got better at Warm Springs, they felt that they were better and they felt that with him present, anything was possible.

David McCullough [voice-over]: Warm Springs was Franklin's creation. For the rest of his life, in times of stress he would retreat to the piney woods and the warm waters. It became his second home.

Franklin loved to drive and he drove fast. He designed his car himself, with ingenious levers and pulleys so he could drive without his legs. For the first time since he was paralyzed, he felt free. Over the years, his drives through the Georgia countryside would provide him with a valuable political education.

Ben C. Fowler, Warm Springs Resident: He was interested in the people. He got out and visited with them. Even after he was president, he would slip away from his bodyguards and get out and ride the back ways and back roads and meet people, stop and talk with them. But he'd never met people like that before.

David McCullough [voice-over]: Everywhere he went he heard stories about the lack of electricity in the countryside and the exorbitant rates paid for it in town, about bad schools and low farm prices—stories that left their mark on him.

Robert Fulton Copeland, Warm Springs Resident: ...We would walk to Warm Springs just to see him just board the train. He'd come on down the—"Hello, Warm Springs. Hello, Warm Springs." That's the way—we wanted to see him greet the little town, and we walked four miles to see that...

Janice Howe Raper, Physical Therapist: After he became president, they were very, you know, polite. But they used to call him, in the early days, "Rosie," which I think was a wonderful name.

Robert Fulton Copeland, Warm Springs Resident: Everybody loved him. Go beyond like—they loved him.

Eleanor Roosevelt: I don't think he changed completely. There were certain things that were always there, but he certainly learned to understand what suffering meant in a way that he'd never known before, because he could understand how people could suffer in ways that he had not experienced. And I think that grew out of his polio experience.

As with legendary stories of the Buddha, so too here. His polio forced him beyond the cloistered life into which he'd been born. Because of "his polio experience," he learned to understand the ways people suffer in a way he'd never experienced before. 

Inevitably, we thought of Emanuel Leplin, father to one of our best friends back in high school. Like Roosevelt, he contracted polio as an adult, at age 37. As a result, he had to leave the San Francisco Symphony, where he'd been a violist. But with the help of an aide he continued to paint, directing the aide how to mix his paints, then holding the brush in his teeth.

Our friend constructed an homage to his astonishing father here. For Mr. Leplin's Wikipedia page, you can just click this. 

In all honesty, Mr. Leplin could be a tough visit! He didn't suffer fools gladly, not even if the fool in question was only 12 or 13. We recall being grilled, though we can't recall about what, but the gods favored us with a very large gift when they let us see him creating some of the paintings which can be viewed at that site.

"Go touch grass," Governor Cox has said. We don't agree with everything he has said, but we do agree with that advice, where such things are possible. (We do agree with his overall tone.)

In the literal sense, we do that every day, especially at first light. We go touch grass, and we also look at trees, occasionally voicing best wishes. But yesterday, as we recalled our enormous luck at having been grilled by Emanuel Leplin, it seemed to us, at this difficult juncture, that we were getting the chance to escape in a different way.

For the record, these are "first world" bits of luck. Children will be dying around the world today. Truth to tell, their suffering plays a very small role in our lauded American discourse.

We aren't always the people we think we are. That's even true of us Blues!

PRETENDERS: Over the weekend, the powers that be...

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2025

...said the murder of Charlie Kirk tracks straight back to Obama: Yesterday morning, the comment was made at 6:04 a.m. It came at the start of yesterday morning's Fox & Friends Weekend program.

Almost surely, the person who made the comment was completely sincere. Despite that, we'd be inclined to describe her as a "pretender" of a certain type.

The comment was made at 6:04 a.m. To our ear, it seemed like a rather odd comment. It went exactly like this:

"We were talking yesterday on the couch, Lawrence, about how much Christian blood has been spilled this month."

The comment was made at 6:04 yesterday (Sunday) morning. On Fox & Friends Weekend, the friends were starting the second day in which they would discuss the murder of Charlie Kirk—a murder which had occurred in Utah four days before.

The comment was made by Rachel Campos-Duffy, an extremely genial person who is a regular co-host of the four-hour weekend program on the Fox News Channel. For the record, it was the reference to Christian blood which struck us as slightly odd, though others might score it differently.

The person to whom Campos-Duffy was speaking was Lawrence Jones, one of the regular co-hosts on the weekday Fox & Friends program. On Sunday, Jones was serving as a substitute co-host. 

(Kevin Corke, a Fox News contributor, served as the day's third friend.)

After Campos-Duffy made her remark, Jones launched a presentation about the murder of Kirk which struck us as almost completely incoherent. 

In fairness, other pretenders have been out in force, in various venues, as this disastrous event has been discussed in the past few days. but few presentations have seemed as peculiar as the presentation which followed.

Lawrence Jones started like this:

JONES (9/14/25): Well, I just want to go deep into the investigation a little bit—

CAMPOS-DUFFY: Sure.

JONES: —because I think it's important to set the record straight on some things. 

 Yesterday—actually during your show, Rachel—if you were following the traffic through the day online, they were trying to make it seem that this shooter was MAGA

CAMPOS-DUFFY: Yeah, that's right. Because his family was conservative.

JONES: Because his family was conservative. Because as we know, your family member can be one thing, and you can have a totally different ideology.

According to Jones, that's what "they" had been trying to do all through the previous day. Needless to say, Jones never said who "they" were, and Campos-Duffy and Corke never asked.

In fact, all kinds of people were saying all kinds of things over the weekend,  online and everywhere else, about this disastrous event. But as Jones went "deep into the investigation," he seemed to have only one alleged type of claim in mind.

According to Jones and Campos-Duffy, "they" had been trying to say that the shooter was MAGA! For the record, we know of no reason to believe that the shooter was MAGA, nor do we know how many people might have been trying to say that. 

But now, as Jones continued his presentation, it seemed to us that he went completely off the rails. If you can follow what he's saying here, you should probably receive some sort of genius grant:

JONES (continuing directly): And you gotta go back to— You know, I don't want everybody to continue to watch the video of what happened—the assassination of Charlie Kirk. But the line of questioning [at Kirk's event in Utah last Wednesday] got to the transgender issue before the shot was fired—

COKE: Yep.

JONES: —and so all of that is connected to what investigators are going to be looking at—the ideology? 

So it's important to know that his lover, the transgender individual that's transitioning, is cooperating with the investigation. But there's something deeper too, because you've got the chat room that was going on—the video game. 

What did the people know? Could it have been prevented if someone would have reported it? Now, they've been saying a lot of this traffic was after the fact. We don't know that for sure yet. That's incumbent on the investigation. 

So he was radicalized. We know the ideology here, and this guy wasn't a part of MAGA. Now we've got to get to the bottom of, could this have been prevented if someone would have said something?

We assume that Jones was completely sincere in whatever it was he was trying to say. But to our ear, he had now wandered extremely deep into the weeds, producing one of the most incoherent "deep" critiques we had ever heard.  

As the three friends continued to talk, the incoherence grew. By 6:07, it was time for Campos-Duffy again. Perhaps weirdly, here's what she now said:

CORKE: Here's the problem I have. There are a lot of people out there indoctrinated with leftist ideology. but that's where I wonder if there is a nexus between, not just this individual, but also his community. And maybe we'll find out more, as you point out, Lawrence, as the investigation continues.

CAMPOS-DUFFY: Or maybe even some of the drugs that they take in order to trans [sic]. What do those drugs do to their bodies, their minds? We had Dr. Amen on yesterday as well, talking about the impact of that.

At this point, can it be said, in some defensible way, that the alleged assailant, Tyler Robinson, had been "indoctrinated with leftist ideology" of some definable type?

We don't have the slightest idea; neither do Corke or Campos-Duffy. Almost surely, neither does Governor Cox, who had made the original statement to that effect.

That said, it isn't Robinson who is transitioning; it's been reported that his roommate is.  To our ear, Campos-Duffy made it sound like it was Robinson had been taking the drugs in question—that Robinson might have been pushed over the edge by the effect these drugs might have on a person's body or mind.

We'll assume that can't be what she meant. To our ear, that was the peculiar way it sounded.

Did Campos-Duffy mean that the roommate had possibly been taking the drugs in question and—possibly having been badly affected—had possibly become the vehicle for Robinson's alleged "indoctrination?" We don't have the slightest idea, but we can tell you this:

The first ten minutes of yesterday's show produced a conversation which was about as incoherent as any we've ever heard. In our view, this can be seen as the work of three pretenders—as was the astonishing presentation which had occurred at the end of this program's 6 a.m. hour the day before.

A quick thought experiment:

Would the New York Yankees hire these three to be the team's starting outfield? Would American Airlines hire these three stumblebums to pilot a commercial flight today?

We'll guess that the answer is no! The friends aren't equipped for such tasks. They don't belong in those roles, and it seems to us that they're also rank pretenders when cast in their current roles on the Fox News Channel's imitation of a "cable news" program.

The same could be said of the 25-year-old daughter of Campos-Duffy, who had performed the astonishing segment on this program the day before. 

The young woman in question seemed to be completely sincere as she traced the murder of Charlie Kirk straight back to Barack Obama. But her inclusion on Saturday morning's "cable news" show was an undisguised insult to the American interest—an arrow aimed at the heart of the very possibility of maintaining an American nation.

The murder of Charlie Kirk tracks straight back to Barack Obama, Campos-Duffy's daughter said. "Thank you, my friend," Corke said as her segment ended. We'll show you the transcript tomorrow.

Pretenders (or The Pretenders) was and is the name of a major rock group—"a British rock band formed in March 1978." The group was founded by Chrissie Hynde. For our money, "Back on the Chain Gang" (1982) was their most arresting hit. 

The song's lyrics continue to speak today. At one point, the lyrics say this:

The powers that be
That force us to live like we do
Bring me to my knees
When I see what they've done to you.

Chrissie Hynde wrote and sang it; we still believe it. As it turns out, she was referring to the death of a very close friend. Today, a similar sentiment could be extended to the denatured state of the dying American experiment, imperfect as it always was.

Various pretenders have swarmed the American discourse over the past many years. Some of these pretenders—the ones who appear on the Fox News Channel—belong to Red America

A separate group of pretenders belong to us in Blue America. We refer to the pretenders who refuse to report or discuss the deranged assault on American discourse performed all day, and then all night, by the kinds of pretenders we see on the Fox News Channel.

The vicious murder of Charlie Kirk tracks straight back to Barack Obama! Campos-Duffy's daughter said it, and she clearly seemed to believe it. Some viewers believe it now too.

Their journalistic pretenders make statements like that. Our journalistic pretenders refuse to report or discuss this.

Which group of pretenders is worse? Tomorrow, we'll show you the text—and we'll link to the tape—of what this youngest pretender said.

Tomorrow: The daughter was plainly sincere

THERE "THEY" GO AGAIN: We're all in this flailing nation together!

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2025

Jesse Watters returns: Yesterday, at 5 p.m., Jesse Watters was back on The Five. In the broadest sense, he made the same presentation he'd made on Wednesday's program.

Needless to say, he has the perfect right to say what he thinks. Early in yesterday's five o'clock hour, Martha MacCallum tossed to Watters.

Here's the first thing he said about the arrest of Tyler Robinson, age 22:

MACCALLUM (9/12/25): Your thoughts on how this played out, Jesse.

WATTERS: Well, so he was a smart kid and he got a scholarship and dropped out after one semester. So something happened in the first semester and it went crazy. And so he went back to live with his parents, and then he isolated and became all online and went loco. And he was a bad seed and the family did the right thing and I'm glad they did.

With respect to Robinson: It went crazy, then he went loco, and he was a bad seed. 

To watch the full segment from The Five, you can just click here. As to what may have happened to Robinson "in the first semester" (or thereabouts), we'll offer one possibility down below.

Last evening, Watters continued from there. Along the way, he may have explained his absence from Thursday's Fox News Channel shows:

WATTERS (continuing directly): I want to talk about Charlie though. I'm still shook. I can't believe it. It's not going away, this feeling that I have.

We were at a funeral service for Emma's grandmother last night, and everyone came up to me and talked about Charlie. He touched so many people—and he died honorably. He died fighting in the battle of ideas. And that's what he loved to do. He loved to do battle—verbally! 

And the left is losing the battle of ideas, and they're losing badly. They're losing on DEI, on trans, on the border, on crime. And because they can't win an argument, they're trying to kill...

We're going to stop right there.

We agree with one chunk of what Watters said. Speaking broadly, "the left" has been losing the battle of ideas with respect to the southern border, but also with respect to various aspects of "DEI" and "trans."

We Blues have often advanced ideas and policies in those areas which are very hard to defend, not just within the realm of public opinion but also on the merits. 

Viewed broadly, Blue America has been losing some of those battles. But then, this highly unsophisticated thinker transitioned over to this:

And because they can't win an argument, they're trying to kill.

In the formulation of this fuzzy thinker, there "they" are going again!

As we noted yesterday, "they" is a dangerous word. Within the context of "cable news," it encourages viewers to condemn extremely large groups of people—to condemn and denounce them en masse.

Did a 22-year-old man named Tyler Robinson commit an act of murder this week? All of a sudden, the answer starts to seem to be this:

Robinson didn't conduct that killing. As it turns out, "they" did!

Full disclosure! In last November's presidential election, 75.0 million people voted for Candidate Harris.

Question: How many of those people killed the late Charlie Kirk this week?

Answer: None of them did! Tyler Robinson apparently killed Charlie Kirk, and he didn't vote!

Also this:

Last November, 77.3 million people voted for Candidate Trump. Back in June, how many of those people murdered Melissa Hortman, the Democratic (DFL) speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives?

Answer: At the very most, one (1) of those 77.3 million people did! The other 77.3 mullion people didn't shoot and kill that highly regarded political figure.

Simply put, Jesse Watters isn't a sophisticated political analyst. That doesn't mean that he's a bad person. It means he's a person person.

At one time, fuzzy thinkers of this type would not have bene hired to play key roles in American broadcast news. Today, the instinct to engage in dangerous acts of generalization and conflation make Watters a perfect fit for the apparent purposes of the Fox News Channel.

Fellow citizens, we aren't making this up! Here's what he actually said:

Because "they" can't win an argument, "they" are trying to kill!

That's the amazingly flyweight construction which came from Watters upon his return. His group accusation last night was delivered with less vehemence than had been the case on Wednesday. But he was still trafficking a very dangerous pair of words:

He was trading in the glory of "us" versus the demonic "them."

That is very dangerous conduct. It seems to be what the bosses of this "cable news" channel want.

As to what may have happened to Tyler Robinson, we'll link you to what's shown below. It's a PBS report from 2017—the year in which one (1) person shot Rep. Gabby Giffords, wounding her for life:

For Some Young Men, a Dangerous Age for Mental Illness

Jared Loughner, the 22-year-old suspect accused of killing six people this week and wounding 14 others, including his target Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, joins an infamous roster of gunmen—23-year-old Virginia Tech shooter Seung-hui Cho, Columbine high school seniors Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, and others.

The shooting has, once again, focused attention on a young man with possible mental illness who slipped through the cracks. But why is it that so many of these perpetrators are young men?

The first signs of severe mental illness often appear in adolescence and early adulthood, doctors say. Schizophrenia, for example, is usually diagnosed in men in their late teens to mid-20s, and in women about five years older...

And so on from there.

Was an onset of severe mental illness involved in what happened in Utah this week? Refashioning that in WattersSpeak, might that explain why it went crazy with the bad seed, after which he went loco? 

We have no way to answer that question. Almost surely, the major organs of our national press will be reluctant to speak to medical specialists.

Meanwhile and overall, this:

"They" is a dangerous word! Watters is drawn to such dangerous words because, if we're willing to be honest, he has no business being cast in the prominent role he now holds. 

(We ourselves shouldn't be running the Bolshoi Ballet. Jesse Watters shouldn't be starring on Fox.)

In conclusion, this:

Many people have said many dumb things over the past many years. Some have been Red and some have been Blue, but we're all in this nation together. 

We're all in this flailing nation together—but, as Franklin is said to have said, only if we can keep it!

THE SEVERAL AMERICAS: Jesse went with a four-letter word!

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2025

It was a dangerous word: At this site, we're inclined to cut some slack for people who are fated to comment, in real time, on some shocking public event.

In the current instance, we'd extend that courtesy to the Fox News Channel's Jesse Watters. On Wednesday, he authored the most ill-advised instant reaction to the announcement of the late Charlie Kirk's death.

Perhaps because of that mishap, Watters was absent from Fox last night.  On The Five, he was replaced by Brian Kilmeade. Three hours later, he was absent from his own program, Jesse Watters Primetime, with Kayleigh McEnany sitting in as guest anchor.

Maybe he felt he needed to take some time to recover from Wednesday's shocking event. Maybe his bosses made some such decision. At any rate:

On Wednesday's edition of The Five, it fell to Watters to offer comment in the immediate aftermath of the news that Kirk had lost his life. His commentary was perhaps unwise, but we think it was also instructive.

Below, you see part of what Watters said. (We join his remarks in progress.) We'll suggest that you pay special attention to his insistent, repeated use of a dangerous four-letter word:

WATTERS (9/10/25): ...We’re sick, we’re sad, we’re angry, and we’re resolute, and we’re going to avenge Charlie’s death in the way Charlie would want it to be avenged. He was such a beautiful boy, he was an American boy, and he was incredibly positive, he was full of energy, and life, and he made politics fun.

[...]

As Greg [Gutfeld] said, this hits differently, because Charlie was one of us. And Trump gets hit in the ear; Charlie gets shot dead. 

They came after Kavanaugh with a rifle to his neighborhood. They went after Musk’s cars. They just shot two Jews outside the embassy. 

Think about it! Scalise got shot, barely survived. It’s happening. We've got trans shooters. We've got riots in LA.

They are at war with us! Whether we want to accept it or not, they are at war with us! And what are we gonna do about it? How much political violence are we going to tolerate? And that’s the question we’re just gonna have to ask ourselves...

The gentleman continued from there, in a way which might sound vaguely threatening, or then again possibly not. To see video of Watters' full presentation, you can click here for Mediaite's report.

(For today, we're omitting one of the most striking parts of what Watters said—the part where he insistently said, two separate times, that Charlie Kirk, the "beautiful American boy," wasn't controversial. Is it possible that Watters really believes that? Does he know what the key word there means?)

We expect to review what Watters said in more detail next week. We don't think that this is the time—but for today, we will report this:

Again and again, Watters turned to a dangerous four-letter word—the dangerous four-letter word "they." It's paired in his presentation with the words "we" and "us"—two other dangerous words. 

Alas, poor Macbeth! Within the annals of human history, the use of those words has "lighted [us humans] the way to dusty [societal] death." Here's the way that works:

To Watters, it wasn't one disordered person who appear in Justice Kavanaugh's neighborhood. According to Watters, some undefined "they" did that!

According to the D.C. police, it was Elias Rodriguez, a 30-year-old Chicago man, who shot and killed two innocent people outside the Capital Jewish Museum. But according to Watters, it wasn't that one person at all! "They" are the ones who did that!

They they they they they they they, he said again and again. Within the corporate logic of the Fox News Channel, this presentation was drawn from a familiar playbook. To wit:

If one liberal or progressive commits some inappropriate act, it means that every liberal did it! It means that everyone in the Democrat [sic] Party did it!  

Also, similar acts by disordered people on the political or cultural right will, as if by rule of law, go completely unmentioned. Such actions must be disappeared. 

They shot Trump, and they shot Kirk. Forced to react on the spur of the moment, Watters instantly turned to this ancient construction.  It led him to expose his foundational belief:

They are now at war with us! What are we going to do about it?

At this point, let's be fair. It fell to Watters to react on the spot to the news of Kirk's death. Given time to compose himself, he might have said something different.

Given time to compose himself, he might have said something different—but then again, he probably would have done no such thing! The resort to the all-encompassing "they" is one of the most basic tools in the Fox News Channel tool box.

In our view, Watters belongs on a "cable news" program the way a fish belongs on a bicycle. We don't mean that as an insult. He might be well suited for something else, perhaps in the comedy.

That said, he's the most watched performer at the Fox News Channel when his daily spot on The Five is joined to his own nightly program. They they they they they, he now said. Some unspecified group known as "they" is now at war with "us!"

Long ago and far away, John Edwards ran for the Democratic presidential nomination. He ran on the theme of "the two Americas." 

Even then, there were more than two. Yesterday, we watched tape of the full hour of Wednesday evening's edition of The Five. We were struck by the way the four pro-MAGA performers on that show seem to live inside their own self-contained tribal world.

By now, there are quite a few Americas out there. On Wednesday, "Kennedy" and Watters and Perino and Gutfeld seemed to be hiding in one.

In that world, the late Charlie Kirk was "a beautiful American boy" who wasn't even controversial! More on that will come next week. Today still isn't the time.

Final point:

We feel sure that Brother Jesse could do much better than this. But if he did, would the Fox News Channel still be willing to pay him?

Where did that messaging come from? In yesterday's report, we discussed the peculiar messaging which seemed to be taking hold on CNN and the Fox News Channel as of Wednesday night. 

Based on evidence which seemed quite flimsy, we quoted three different law enforcement specialists, including CNN's John Miller, saying that the murder of Charlie Kirk seemed to be the work of "a professional"—someone who wasn't an "amateur."

We had forgotten a peculiar fact—that messaging seemed to start with Greg Gutfeld himself! Without any attempt at explanation, he floated the idea two separate times on Wednesday's edition of The Five. 

First, he floated the notion at 5:44. To see him do that, click here. He went there again at 5:52. To see that instance, click this.

By now, with the suspect under arrest, it seems abundantly clear that the presumed assailant was not a professional—not even in the slightest. Where in the world—where on earth—did that strange messaging come from? 

Where did that very strange messaging come from? We'll try to tell you next week.

Tomorrow: Governor Cox

FALSE SPRING: Who committed yesterday's murder?

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2025

Are we nearing the end of a spring? This morning, we flashed on the passage from Hemingway's memoir, A Moveable Feast—his rumination about life in Paris in the face of that city's "false spring."

We'll reproduce a bit of that passage at the end of this piece. We'll start with the somewhat peculiar thing John Miller said last night.

Currently, Miller's a major figure at CNN. To his credit, there's nothing flashy about the guy, and he has an impressive resume:

John Miller (police official)

John Miller (born July 29, 1958) is an American journalist and police official. From 1983 to 1994, he was a local journalist in New York City, before serving as the NYPD's chief spokesman from 1994 to 1995.

In 1995, Miller joined ABC News, and secured an interview with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan in 1998. In 2003, he returned back to law enforcement as a senior official in the LAPD and in 2005 as Assistant Director for Public Affairs at the FBI. Miller was named a senior correspondent for CBS News in 2011.

In 2013, Miller rejoined law enforcement as the NYPD's Deputy Commissioner for Intelligence & Counterterrorism under Commissioner William Bratton. Miller left the NYPD in July 2022 and in September [2022] he was hired as CNN's chief law enforcement and intelligence analyst.

Miller isn't inclined to shoot off his mouth. He tends to be appropriately cautious.

That said, he's very experienced in law enforcement, and he's highly connected. That's why we were surprised by what we saw him say last night, which of course turn out to be totally wrong.

Speaking with Kaitlan Collins, Miller offered this during the 9 o'clock hour:

COLLINS (9/10/25): So, is it clear if anyone is in custody right now? Or is the answer still no, based on what we know so far?

MILLER: Based on what we know so far, they have somebody they're interested in, who, according to my sources, when I last spoke to them, was not in custody.

But, in a case like this, you are looking for someone who has detachment and a lack of empathy, who likes to be in control.

The offender characteristics of the—of the assassin, sniper, are something that's been studied very closely, especially by the Secret Service, and it's someone who is methodical and patient, self-reliant.

In other words, Kaitlan, this is the kind of person who would have planned to get in silently, try to be invisible, take this shot, accomplish the mission, take the gun with them, and leave little evidence behind, which is why I think they're having a very difficult time getting started on this. This is someone who was a planner...

"This is someone who was a planner?" Miller almost seemed to be saying—well, here's what he actually said

COLLINS (continuing directly): And John, also, what stood out to me, from what we heard from officials earlier, was they said it was a single shot that was fired. It wasn't multiple shots in Charlie Kirk's direction. They said it was about 200 yards away from where he was sitting under that tent.

What does that tell you about the person's familiarity with firearms?

MILLER: That tells you that the person is not new to shooting, that they understood exactly what type of long rifle to bring, what kind of optics in terms of scopes and sights to have on that, what the windage was that might affect a shot from that distance.

This is someone who knew exactly what they were doing, and is probably known to others, and this may be working to the advantage of law enforcement as someone who has a long history in shooting. This wasn't an amateur.

"This wasn't an amateur," Miller said, having referred to what he's heard from his unnamed sources.

He seemed to be saying that this probably wasn't another 20-year-old man who was deeply depressed and was therefore significantly "mentally ill." 

To us, his assessment sounded highly speculative. But one hour earlier, on Jesse Watters Primetime, another law enforcement specialist had told Watters this, as reported by Newsweek:

Charlie Kirk assassination "had professional hallmarks": Security experts

[...]

Former FBI Agent Stuart Kaplan said the shooter likely put a lot of preparation into the attack, telling Fox News' Jesse Watters: "This assassination, different to the attack [on Trump] back in Butler, Pennsylvania, was a very well planned, very well orchestrated plot that was put in motion days before.

"This individual had a plan of escape to elude detection of being out on a rooftop, and also being able to evade and elude law enforcement," added Kaplan. "This assassination of Charlie Kirk to me is indicative of a professional hit, and I'm not so sure we are quickly going to be able to apprehend this individual without some luck."

Kaplan said it had the feel of "a professional hit." 

On New York City's Fox 5, a different specialist offered a similar speculation. Here's more from the Newsweek report:

Former Republican New York State Senator and Homeland Security adviser Michael Balboni made a similar point, telling Fox News: "It's an incredibly chaotic scene on a college campus. Hundreds and hundreds of people there, right immediately afterward.

He added: "That a rifle sound...was heard, and yet nobody was able to identify an individual, which most likely means that the individual was shooting from concealment and maybe had some way to suppress or to hide the flash of the gun, and again, indicating that this is a sophisticated individual.

"One shot hitting the target from 200 meters away and then escaping without anybody seeing them—those are the hallmarks of a professional." 

It seems to us that those speculations are based on fairly limited evidence. But Miller had offered a similar assessment, and he's a thoroughly sober judge.

Is it possible that the person who committed this murder was a professional assassin? Everything is always possible, though some people—inevitably, Watters among them, on The Five—had seemed to leap to instant conclusions concerning the motive of the person who committed this murder.

It may turn out that the person in question was another disturbed young (or older) man. It may turn out that he was an amateur—that he wasn't a professional at all, that his instant escape was pure luck.

Then again, professional assassins are hired by someone, for that person's purpose, and the possibilities there would be endless. 

Like Watters, we ourselves don't know who might have committed this crime, or why he might have done that.  Unlike Watters, we'd be inclined to wait until we all (may) get to find out.

Meanwhile, no one was a bigger winner in this disaster than the peace-seeking Vladimir Putin. 

He's been staging a long gamble in which the western world's form of democracy won't be able to sustain itself under modern arrangements. Yesterday's murder undermines the ability of this flailing nation to continue a famous experiment:

That government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

At Gettysburg, that was Lincoln's prayer. Two years later he himself was shot and killed by an enraged fellow citizen.

Putin isn't an amateur. As of yesterday, he was invading Polish air space, and one of his lackeys was openly threatening Finland's existence.

He won't get tired of all the winning.! That said, yesterday's murder was his latest win as he proceeds with his gamble that our form of government won't be able to survive the information wars which have now emerged from the "democratization of media"—from the new arrangements in which, to borrow from Huey Long, it's "every flyweight a king."

We've been coming undone for a long time now. We started telling you that long ago.

We Blues insist that it's still 1898—pr 1955, or 1619. This angers the Reds you see on Fox & Friends Weekend, and they start chanting Communist Communist Communist Communist and also "lunatic left."

Was our species made for this type of work, or will we return to rule by strongman? We can't answer that question, but we'd say the signs aren't real good.

For the record:

You aren't allowed to shoot and kill someone because you don't like his politics or his way of pursuing his politics. Also, you aren't allowed to shoot and kill someone because somebody paid you to do that.

We don't know who murdered Charlie Kirk, but you aren't allowed to do that. We flashed this morning on Hemingway's passage about life in Paris in the early days, but also about what he called the "false spring:"

With so many trees in the city you could see the spring coming each day until a night of warm wind would bring it suddenly in one morning. Sometimes the heavy cold rains would beat it back so that it would seem that it would never come and that you were losing a season out of your life. This was the only truly sad time in Paris because it was unnatural. You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintry light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person had died for no reason.

It was like a young person had died for no reason. 

We don't know who committed yesterday's crime. But given the way we're going now, might our handful of centuries of fitful self-government turn out to have been a false spring?

Later in that striking memoir: Later in that striking memoir, with the stunning reversal in its last few pages:

Life had seemed so simple that morning when I had wakened and found the false spring...

 

WEDNESDAY: We heard the news today, oh boy...

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2025

It arrived in several parts: As we walked home from the subway stop subsequent to a medical event, we were thinking about what President Trump had said. 

More specifically, we were thinking about what he said in the aftermath of the Russian drone excursions into Poland. It was, indeed, a "head-scratching reply." The Truth Social post says this:

Truth Details

Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump

What’s with Russia violating Poland’s airspace with drones? Here we go!

That was the entire post.

We were also thinking about what he said to President Macron, recorded through an open mike, a few days after the Alaska summit. We think it's the most revealing thing we've ever heard an official say:

PRESIDENT TRUMP (8/18/25): I think he wants to make a deal. I think he wants to make a deal for me. 

Do you understand that? As crazy as it sounds.

By now, it seems clear that the president's assessment was wrong, possibly trending toward delusional. Everyone else in the world thought they had already known that.

Had we ever seen a public official make such a revealing remark? In person, probably not—but we thought of the passage in President Clinton's memoir where he says how much he liked and admired the Arkansas Pentecostals, even though they were disinclined to vote for him.

The ability to like (and admire!) those with whom you disagree? Formulated slightly differently, we've referred to something similar as the ability to "pity the child."

When we got home, we heard the news—that Charlie Kirk has been shot. We thought of the portrait Gene Brabender drew:

Where I come from, we only talk so long. After that, we start to hit.

And just this minute, we see the next news—the news that Kirk has now died. "They perish. They cannot be brought back." 

So Yevtusheno said.

As this latest death has been imposed on the world, Putin has seemed to surrender his pose. In the aftermath of the president's odd Truth Social post, we must wonder, with concern and with fear:

What might be coming next?

We suggest that we all learn to pity the child. "Their fate is like the chronicle of planets," Yevtushenko said. 

What the earlier president said: Part of the much longer passage from Bill Clinton's book:

PRESIDENT CLINTON (page 251): Far more important than what I saw the Pentecostals do were the friendships I made among them. I liked and admired them because they lived their faith. They are strictly anti-abortion, but unlike some others, they will make sure that any unwanted baby, regardless of race or disability, has a loving home. They disagreed with me on abortion and gay rights, but they still followed Christ’s admonition to love their neighbors.

[...]

Knowing the Pentecostals has enriched and changed my life. Whatever your religious views, or lack of them, seeing people live their faith in a spirit of love toward all people, not just your own, is beautiful to behold. If you ever get a chance to go to a Pentecostal service, don’t miss it.

Some will disagree with the logic of what Clinton said. They deserve to be heard from too. 

NORMAL AND NOT: This morning, we saw Blue America die!

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2025

It happened on Morning Joe: We apologize for briefly returning to a certain famous text. But in Book VI of the Iliad, Hector, the noble Trojan prince, gives voice to a chilling prophecy.

He's speaking to his sister, Cassandra. According to Greek mythology, it was she who was "fated by [Apollo] to utter true prophecies but never to be believed."

This time, it was her brother, Hector, who spoke:

"The day will come when sacred Troy must die."

So the noble Prince Hector said.

This morning, we ourselves had the misfortune of seeing, with something resembling a startling clarity, that our own sacred Blue America seems to be fated to die. We saw it as watched the first hour of Morning Joe, and then as we gaped at fifteen more minutes after that.

Several ironies obtain. One irony would be this:

On average, the smartest discussions in all of American cable news take place during Morning Joe's first hour. More specifically, we refer to the discussions of world affairs which routinely take place at that time.

Typically, those discussion involve Richard Haass, former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Washington Post's deeply experienced David Ignatius. 

Back in February, Admiral Stavridis "shifted his flag," leaving NBC for CNN, where he now serves as senior military analyst. Despite his unfortunate absence from Morning Joe, the program's serious conversations continue.

They're easily the smartest conversations in daily cable news. The existence of these serious discussions has created one of the several sick pleasures available to the "cable news" watcher—the chance to see a never-ending assortment of flyweights, stumblebums, dumbbells and stooges over at the Fox News Channel as they batter the Morning Joe program around for its alleged major dumbness.

Frequently, the D-minus students support their claims through the use of videotape clips which have been edited down past the point of recognition.  We've often groaned at such ludicrous conduct. 

This morning, we saw the worm turn.

We refer to the way the Morning Joe gang ignored the elephant in the room—the news event which was being  discussed when we briefly flipped over to Fox & Friends at 6:06 a.m. It's had to be dumber than the Fox & Friends show, but Morning Joe accomplished that feat today by an enormous margin.

The regular friends were on duty today. One extremely dumb thing was said as we  watched—but Ainsley quickly stepped in to correct the groaner. 

Let's say the three friends' names:

Fox & Friends: September 10, 2025
Lawrence Jones: co-host, Fox & Friends
Ainsley Earhardt: co-host, Fox & Friends
Brian Kilmeade: co-host, Fox & Friends

Steve Doocy has been dispatched, apparently for being too soft. But when we flipped over, the friends were discussing the remarkable news event which the New York Times was reporting at length in today's print editions:

A Fatal Stabbing on a Train in Charlotte Ignites a Firestorm on the Right

The video, captured by a security camera in Charlotte, N.C., shows a 23-year-old woman named Iryna Zarutska sitting on a light-rail train one night in late August, dressed in the uniform of the pizza parlor where she worked.

She is looking at her phone when suddenly, a man sitting behind her stands up, gripping a knife in his raised right hand. Moments later, the police say, he stabbed and killed Ms. Zarutska, a Ukrainian refugee, in what appeared to be a random and unprovoked attack.

The police arrested Decarlos Brown Jr. soon after and charged him with first-degree murder. But the brutal killing did not capture widespread attention until the security footage was released on Friday, at which point it became an accelerant for conservative arguments about crime, race and the perceived failings of big-city justice systems and mainstream news outlets in the Trump era.

That's the way the news report starts. It didn't appear on the Times front page. Instead, it was a lengthy report inside the paper's National section—but if you were watching Morning Joe, none of this has ever occurred.

Full disclosure! The Times is already being criticized for the framework it dropped on these events. The criticism starts with that headline. For ourselves, we can't say that the criticisms are totally wrong. 

In our view, the report in the Times had clearly gone off the rails right here, in just the fourth paragraph of the lengthy report:

The outrage over the Charlotte killing is a part of a pattern in which President Trump and his allies highlight horrific crimes to bolster their case that the country is plagued by “American carnage,” as Mr. Trump put it in his first inaugural address, despite statistics that show crime is dropping. In Charlotte, overall crime was down by 8 percent in the first half of this year compared with the same period last year, according to the police, while violent crime was down by 25 percent.

We Blues! We instantly run to that "crime was down by 8 percent" framework. In other words, our instinctive reaction is this:

It was even worse last year!

That's our tribe's scripted reaction! Except on the Morning Joe show, where they talked and talked, then talked and talked, about everything except this event.

They talked about the Red Sox and Yankees—did so two separate times. Starting at 6:27, they burned a full seven minutes away with an inane discussion, full of convivial tribal laughter, about Mika's inane appearance on Andy Cohen's inane podcast.

(That foolishness involved an inane discussion about a pointless practical joke performed by Howard Stern.)

They kept burning time in such ways. We viewers even got to learn what Mike Barnicle thinks about Pedro Martinez!

Starting at 6:56, four additional minutes were burned away in an inane discussion about the way Siri's performance has allegedly flagged of late. Then it was on to the first excerpts from Kamala Harris' forthcoming book—a perfectly serious news topic, except on a morning when the program was working extremely hard to avert its gaze from the elephant in the room.

In fairness,  let's be fair:

The program had started with one of those serious discussions. After a few minutes of Red Sox chatter, the discussion concerned yesterday's attack inside Doha by the Israeli air force.

That discussion continued until 6:17. At that point, the serious discussion continued, switching over to this startling new topic:

Poland Says It Shot Down Russian Drones That Entered Its Airspace

Those serious discussions continued until 6:24 a.m. At that point, Mika teased a discussion concerning Howard Lutnick—but after a commercial break, the gang burned a bunch of time away, chuckling and laughing about that nonsense involving Howard Sterm.

The gang was really enjoying itself by this time. On this campus, we thought we were seeing the ongoing process by which our tribunes in Blue America have been working to let our sacred nation die.

As that New York Times report continues, so does that possible impulse. It should be noted, at this point, that President Trump has already said this about the murder in Charlotte:

‘Stop This Madness’: Trump Calls For ‘Vicious’ Law And Order After Charlotte Train Murder

President Donald Trump on Tuesday called for law and order to counteract the “senseless crime” infecting Democrat-run cities like Charlotte, North Carolina, where the president said liberal policies allowed a “deranged monster” to recently slaughter Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska aboard a train.

“We cannot allow a depraved criminal element of violent repeat offenders to continue spreading destruction and death throughout our country,” Trump said. “We have to respond with force and strength. We have to be vicious, just like they are. It’s the only thing they understand.”

And so on from there. 

We have to be vicious, just like [the criminals] are? That strikes us as very unwise.

That strikes us as an example of a possible disorder—one we Blues have agreed to ignore. On Morning Joe, the reaction was to pretend that none of this has even occurred.

As for the New York Times, its lengthy report about this killing was full of information. That said, the report also slipped away to this familiar framing—to this familiar plea for Blue America's death:

The idea that mainstream news outlets downplay crimes committed by Black people has become more of a talking point in some conservative circles in recent years. The critique has emerged even as liberal critics of the news media have argued that crime coverage by American news outlets is distorted by anti-Black bias.

In North Carolina, as in other Southern states, newspapers in the Jim Crow era often egregiously exaggerated stories about Black criminality. Among other things, such stories served as a precursor to a white supremacist uprising in Wilmington, N.C., in 1898, in which at least 60 Black men were killed.

Sad. Our Blue elites insist on talking about what the deplorables did in 1898. We can't seem to quit this self-defeating practice, which seems to emerge from a desire to signal our own (non-existent) Blue American moral greatness.

We simply can't stop doing these things! Through these behaviors, we continue to light the way to Blue America's possible death.

This morning, the three friends had it right! A million very serious questions are raised by that murder in North Carolina. Could the talk about the Red Sox wait? How about all the joking around about Siri, and also about Howard Stern?

On Joe, they preferred to laugh about Stern. This was an insult to the American public interest. In our view, it displayed an instinct for the impending death of our own sacred Troy.

Some Blues will be inclined to insist that what we're saying is wrong. We'll then want to turn back to the birthday book. In fairness, that's an actual serious topic, until we Blues beat it to death.

Sadly, the impulse to fiddle while sacred Troy burns is the most normal thing in the world. In 1990, Professor Knox described the lesson Greek citizens drew from the Iliad:

No civilization, no matter how rich, no matter how refined, can long survive once it loses the power to meet force with equal or superior force.

After ten years, the Trojans succumbed to the weapons of Bronze Age war. The final line of the Fagles translation is this:

Such was the burial of Hector, breaker of horses.

Eventually, the more civilized Trojans succumbed to the weapons of Bronze Age war. We Blues seem to be looking for ways to lose an Information Age war, in which the weapons are vastly different.

Mika had a lot of laughs with Andy Cohen. So they said today, on Morning Joe, as our sacred Troy burned!

Final point:

It's no longer 1898. We need to stop hiding behind that.

Tomorrow: Whatever's next

TUESDAY: Colby Hall gets it right about Fox!

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 2025

But where are the larger news orgs? As we noted in real time, we thought Mediaite's Colby Hall took a giant swing and a miss over the summer concerning the Fox News Channel's "smart [and] funny" "prankster," the baldly disordered Greg Gutfeld.

In our view, Hall's assessment of that disordered "cable news" star could hardly have been more cockeyed.  This very day, though, extremely good news:

Hall is back on track regarding Fox in an extremely large way.

At present, Hall is listed as the founding editor of Mediaite. At present, the site principally serves as the place to learn about the weird behaviors by President Trump which Blue America's biggest new orgs routinely prefer to pass over.

Mediaite is also the site which produced this report. It's the kind of thing you'll apparently never read at the New York Times:

OPINION
Fox News Is Trying—and Failing—to Bury the Epstein Scandal

The Jeffrey Epstein story is everywhere: Capitol Hill hearings, newly unsealed documents, lurid details splashed across front pages, and endless dissection on cable news. It’s one of those rare scandals with genuine bipartisan reach—Democrats and Republicans alike want answers, and the public is riveted.

Unless, that is, you’re watching Fox News. According to a transcript search database search over the past three weeks, Fox has mentioned “Epstein” just 429 times. CNN clocked 3,668. MSNBC? 5,624. For a scandal this dominant, the disparity isn’t just surprising—it’s damning. The most-watched cable news network in America is barely acknowledging one of the most talked-about stories in the country.

And this relative silence seems far more deliberate than accidental. For a scandal that fascinates both Beltway insiders and the QAnon corners of the MAGA base, Fox has gone quiet. The mentions that do slip through are quarantined to non-prime time programs—the very hours where Fox has the least at stake. In the slots that drive ratings and revenue, Epstein barely exists.

In all honesty, a lot of things "barely exist" at the Fox News Channel! Meanwhile, major newspapers refuse to report or discuss the way this channel works.

It isn't just the news division at the Times, where the groaning misconduct of the Fox News Channel can barely be said to exist.  Until an initial stab last week, no columnist at the New York Times has been willing to report or discuss this topic. 

The same is true of the anchors at CNN and MSNBC, even as they themselves are routinely trashed on Fox News Channel shows, often in the most misleading and dim-witted ways.

To appearances, no one wants to tangle with Fox. That's another way of saying this:

As the American nation slides toward the sea, no one wants to behave like an actual functioning journalist.

Hall starts today with the Fox News Channel's virtual refusal to discuss the Epstein matter. He moves on to other topics on which Fox is plainly operating in service to President Trump:

Epstein isn’t the only story caught in the bargain. Take last week’s disastrous jobs report: a meager 22,000 new positions, with June revised down 12%. A brutal number by any measure. Fox & Friends gave it all of 16 seconds before moving on. Had Biden been in office, the coverage would have been apocalyptic...

Inflation tells the same story. Headline inflation hasn’t budged: the Consumer Price Index stands at 2.7% year-over-year, the same as July a year ago. Core inflation—what really matters for budgets—also sits stubbornly above target. Egg prices? Still staggering: retail cartons remain roughly 16.4% higher than in 2024.

But Fox, once obsessed with grocery store “crisis” segments and on-air displays of soaring receipts, has quietly dropped the subject. The problem hasn’t disappeared. Only the president has.

[...] 

In early July the network’s hosts invoked “Obama” more than 100 times in a single day but “Epstein” just twice. That’s not news judgment. That’s narrative management.

With respect to the mentions of Obama, "narrative management" is a major euphemism. What Hall is describing is pure propaganda. It's tribal and corporate propaganda all the way down.

Today, Hall offers quantifications. In fairness, there's no way to say how many times the Fox News Channel should have mentioned the Epstein matter, or that jobs report.

That said, something else can be obscured by the (highly valuable) quantifications Hall is providing. Mere quantification can't begin to inform the reader about how many of those mentions of "Obama" were mentions on the Gutfeld! program, where the little mutt we've already mentioned specializes in claims that Michelle Obama is really a man and her husband is secretly gay.

In short, the moral squalor of this squalid program can't be captured by numbers alone. Hall is providing a major service, but even Mediaite gives amazingly wide berth to the moral and intellectual squalor found all over that channel's most watched "cable news" pseudo-programs.

Last night, Gutfeld was his usual squalid self. We advise you to pity the child—to regret the accidents of upbringing and development which somehow managed to produce such a furious, squalid small man.

All that said, the problem remains:

The New York Times won't report or discuss any of this. Neither will the Washington Post or the Wall Street Journal.

David Brooks won't talk about this. Neither will Nicholas Kristof. 

As we noted yesterday afternoon, David French took a first step just last week. We're waiting to be told that Bret Stephens has astonished himself by watching a few of the Fox News Channel's ugly, dim-witted programs.

Lawrence and Rachel won't talk about this. Neither will Nicolle Wallace, or any other CNN / MSNBC figures. 

This may result from direction by their corporate bosses. The silence is real all the same.

For those among us with eyes to see, the American nation is rapidly sliding toward the sea. The astounding misconduct at the Fox News Channel is a major part of the "night assault" which is creating this state of affairs.

The New York Times has devoted itself to reporting no evil in this major area. As for the Washington Post, understand this:

As we noted last Thursday, the Post disappeared the press event by the Epstein victims to an even greater extent than the Fox News Channel did. In short, various people are knuckling under in various ways. 

As for us in Blue America, we weren't able to see what was happening back in the 1990s and early 2000s during the wars against Clinton and Gore. Despite the brilliance we tend to ascribe to ourselves, we're still unable to see the ways we're being misled today.

Colby Hall has it right in today's report! More on the unreported squalor of Gutfeld and Gutfeld! will follow here at some point this week. Hopefully, that dimwitted squalor will start to be covered by the Mediaite site.

None of this is likely to matter, of course. Due to our failure to see what's before us, the undeclared war in which we're all caught may already have been won.