MADNESS: The madman cited the silly stuff!

THURSDAY, JANUARY 23, 2025

Can you hear them cuckoos hollerin'? At one point, The Stumblebum turned to the silly stuff when he spoke with The Sideman.

It started last night at 9 o'clock Eastern. Can't you "hear them cuckoos hollerin' " when you hear what the two men said?

The question is drawn from the American songbook. Last evening, at 9:14, the sitting president once again cited the (missing) 36 percent:

TRUMP (1/22/25): You know the amazing thing? I'm watching now, now it's time. You know, a few months have passed, and the election is over and you see what happened, and it was a rout. I won all seven swing states. We won by millions in the popular vote—millions! And nobody can even believe some of the numbers...How about with youth? I won youth by 36 points.

So said the sitting president, speaking to the Fox News Channel's Sean Hannity. Hannity tried to change the subject, as he frequently does. 

"Nobody can even believe some of the numbers," the sitting president said. Then he cited a number which helps explain why you shouldn't believe what he says:

"I won youth by 36 points," the strange man once again said. For background, see yesterday afternoon's report.

In fairness, the need to rename the Gulf of Mexico went unmentioned last night. Also in fairness, the sitting president did, in fact, win the popular vote by millions (plural) of votes.

(According to the official FEC account, the winning margin was exactly 2.1 million! That isn't a giant number of "millions," but it's "millions" all the same. The winning margin across the nation was 1.48 percent.)

That said, let's be fair! How about the astonishing way this sitting president managed to sweep the youth vote? 

I won youth by 36 points, the nutcase once again said. Once again, according to the exit polls, here's the way "youth" voted:

2024 White House election:
Voters 18-24: Candidate Harris 54%, Candidate Trump 43%
Voters 25-29: Candidate Harris 53%, Candidate Trump 45%
Voters 30-39: Candidate Harris 51%, Candidate Trump 45%

According to the exit polls, that's how it went with the younger set. Unless you watched the Fox News Channel last night, in which case you heard a puzzling claim by someone who seems a bit strange.

Is there "something wrong" with this overwrought man? We'll guess that there actually is. 

That said, the crackpot claim about the youth vote was accompanied by much more serious claims—for example, by his instant claim, at 9:03 p.m., about the 11,000 "people that murdered" who are now "walking around in our country—"and of them, I think 48%, they say, murdered more than once."

That's what he thinks they say! Hannity tried to move him along. You can see the full exchange for yourself simply by clicking here. Try to avoid the earlier craziness about what can happen to your child when he goes to school as a boy, then comes home two days later turned into a girl.

("There are states where that can happen," the crazy man crazily said.)

That would almost seem to be the claim of a virtual madman. Is there something wrong with this man? In what world would the answer be no?

With respect to the 11,000 murderers, that's what this unusual man said he thinks they say! As with so many versions of this claim, the claim seems to be just basically wrong. 

That said, roughly a million factchecks later, our public discourse is completely unable to handle blizzards of claims of this type. Hannity simply let the claim go. Viewers were given no guidance.

Can't you hear them cuckoos hollerin'? The question is found in the American songbook.

For ourselves, we're off to a matinee today—with a friend from far away, to a matinee of A Complete Unknown. We were slated to go last week, but an attack of the labyrinthitis laid us low.

This will likely be our only report for today, but we thought we'd add what follows. Over at the Wall Street Journal, this is more of the way the editors reviewed the sitting president's decision to pardon, or at least to release, everyone convicted of crimes in the January 6 riot.

Again, these are the editors at the Wall Street Journal! Continuing with the text we posted yesterday, they decided to say some names of the people the sitting president has released:

Trump Pardons the Jan. 6 Cop Beaters
Law and order? Back the blue? What happened to that GOP?

[...]

...Mr. Trump tries to wipe Jan. 6 clean, with “a full, complete and unconditional pardon to all other individuals.” The conceit is that there are hundreds of polite Trump supporters who ended up in the wrong place that day and have since rotted in jail.

Out of roughly 1,600 cases filed by the feds, more than a third included accusations of “assaulting, resisting, or impeding law enforcement.”...The rioters who did get jail often were charged with brutal violence, including:

• Daniel Joseph “DJ” Rodriguez, sentenced to 151 months, who can be seen on video, federal prosecutors said, deploying an “electroshock weapon” against a policeman who was dragged out of the defensive line, by “plunging it into the officer’s neck.” The night before, he promised in a MAGA chat group: “There will be blood.”

• William Lewis, given 37 months, “sprayed streams of Wasp and Hornet Killer spray at multiple police officers on four distinct occasions,” forcing several to flee the line and “seek treatment for their eyes.”

• Isreal James Easterday, 30 months, blasted a cop “in the face with pepper spray at point-blank range,” after which the officer “collapsed and temporarily lost consciousness, which enabled another rioter to steal his baton.”

• Thomas Andrew Casselman, 40 months, hit multiple officers “near their faces” with pepper spray. His later internet searches included, “The statute of limitations for assault on a police officer.”

• Curtis Davis, 24 months, punched two police officers in the head. That night he filmed a video of his fist, in which he bragged: “Them knuckles right there, from one of those m— faces at the Capitol.”

• Ronald Colton McAbee, 70 months, hit a cop while wearing “reinforced brass knuckle gloves,” and he held one down on the ground as “other rioters assailed the officer for over 20 seconds,” causing a concussion.

• Michael Joseph Foy, 40 months, brought a hockey stick with a TRUMP 2020 flag attached, which he swung “over his head and downward at police officers as if he were chopping wood.”

There are more like this, which everyone understood on Jan. 6 and shortly afterward. “There is nothing patriotic about what is occurring on Capitol Hill,” one GOP official tweeted. “This is 3rd world style anti-American anarchy.” That was Marco Rubio, now Mr. Trump’s Secretary of State. He was right. What happened that day is a stain on Mr. Trump’s legacy. By setting free the cop beaters, the President adds another.

They didn't even mention Tarrio or Rhodes—the disordered men who actively planned the violence that day.

According to the editors, this: "What happened [on January 6) is a stain on Mr. Trump’s legacy. By setting free the cop beaters, the President adds another."

That's what the editors said; that wasn't us. At this site, we're never happy to see people locked up, but public safety sometimes requires action of that type.

 "What happened [on January 6) is a stain on Mr. Trump’s legacy?" We agree with that assessment, but we'd also say that there are quite a few stains on the legacy of Blue America's various tribunes and elites floating around in this deeply dangerous mess.

The sitting president was speaking last night to one of his trusty sidemen. This particular sideman isn't a dope. He's been trying to get the sitting president back on track in a wide array of interviews over the past year or so.

Sean Hannity isn't stupid. That said, the Fox News Channel, on the whole, is the land of the D-minus students. Our own warrens in Blue America tend to be peopled by their superiors—by the C-minus brigade.

Is something wrong with the sitting president? We'd assume that the answer is yes. That said, those of us who would criticize his pardons need to stake a good look at the conduct, over the past sixty years, of large parts of our own Blue American troops:

In our lack of perfect wisdom, we Blues have played an active role in sending him back to the White House. 

This weird person wants to rename the gulf. He has a nutty thought in his nutty head about the 36 percent.

Also, he's heard something "he thinks they say" about 11,00 murderers. That claim, along with its variants, has been fact-checked a million times, but on the nation's most-watched "news channel," Hannity simply lets it go. 

This is the state of the imitation of discourse within a dying nation. 

Is there something wrong with this hollerin' man? We'd assume that the answer is yes.

Is there something wrong with us? This latter possibility is completely unknown—unless you're watching the Fox News Channel, where it's shouted all day long by the corporate employees.

The newly aggressive Dana Perino is part of the D-minus gang. So are the bulk of the other Fox News Channel employees.

That said, they managed to eke out a narrow win last year, by less than 1.5 points. According to him, he won in a rout. It was a landslide, the employees have constantly said.

As for ourselves right here at this site, this is the best we can manage today. We'll be back on schedule tomorrow—but for the record, we don't see an obvious way out of this deeply dangerous mess.

Can you hear them cuckoos hollerin'? Do you have a TV set?