WEDNESDAY: Did the president make any misstatements in Michigan?

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 30, 2025

The Post's report says no: Last evening, during the 6 o'clock hour, we looked in on President Trump's rally in Macomb County.

We were watching on CNN. As taken from the CNN transcript, he started by saying this:

PRESIDENT TRUMP (4/29/25): We just had the biggest victory in Michigan. They said, "Sir, it's going to be hard." Well, we won it twice. 

We won it twice. We actually won it three times. You want to really know this. But I'm thrilled to be back in this beautiful state. I love this state. 

Actually, according to official reality, he didn't win the state three times. According to official reality, he lost the state, by 1.8 points, to Candidate Biden in November 2020.

Nor has President Trump ever explained why he keeps making this claim. It's been corrected a million times. The gentleman just keeps saying it.

Not long after that, we were watching again when CNN decided to stop carrying the speech. With a special alert to Blue America, here's what he was saying then. 

TRUMP: There's never been such a difference in anything as the difference between the border today and the border, what it was just six months ago. So, I want to say, "Congratulations, America. It's about time."

If we had not won the 2024 election—Oh, does that sound good, right? We won the '24, all that work—the radical left Democrats would right now be importing the next 10 million invaders and giving amnesty to 30 or 40 million illegals, many of them criminals, many of them, frankly, murderers and people of crime at the absolute highest level, real, real bad people. It would only be a matter of years or months until America itself became a failed third world nation.

That was happening to us. We were going to be a third world nation. I'll tell you what. If these guys won, if this group of radical lunatics, and, by the way, you know, Biden, we find out that whoever operated the autopen was the real president and Biden knew nothing about it. You know, we had a group of radical left guys who were very smart and a woman, a particular woman, very, very smart people. 

These are not stupid people. These are sick people, but they're not stupid people, and they were very smart. What they're best at is cheating at an election. They cheat on elections. That's their single greatest trait. They cheat like hell. And let me tell you, they tried to cheat on this election, but we made it. Too big to rig, remember? Too big to rig. They tried.

I watched those numbers. I watched those numbers. We had Elon with us. Elon is a smart guy. Elon was with us. Elon Musk and I were sitting with Dana White and Elon Musk, and I'm watching the numbers in Pennsylvania and we are winning so easily, then all of a sudden it flatlined. And I said, "You know," I said, "I think they're cheating again. Look at this. What's going on? I think they're cheating again." 

And Elon looking at us, he goes, "No, you are going to win. They just don't know it yet." And about fifteen minutes later, we won. You know, it was sort of crazy.

TAPPER: All right. We've been listening to President Trump celebrating his first 100 days at a rally in battleground Michigan, in Warren, Macomb County. This is a state that he flipped red to win the 2024 election. Today, he's marking 100 days in office.

In fact, Michigan is a state that he "flipped red" in 2024. That of course means that he didn't win the state in 2020.

Is that why CNN dropped the feed? We have no idea. But the president never stops with the inflammatory claims about the stolen 2020 election, and about the alleged attempt to rig last year's election as well.

He says it and says it and never stops saying it. He has also never presented some sort of "white paper" in which he attempts to explain and justify these endless inflammatory claims.

At this site, it seems to us that he may even believe these claims. Then again, it's always possible that he actually doesn't.

In the next few days, we'll return to what the president said in that passage about the southern border. In our view, the bell is tolling for us Blues whenever he makes such remarks.

In our view, those are three million other false claims are the heartbeat of our failing modern politics. The bogus claims so on and on, no matter how many times they're corrected—and they almost never get challenged or corrected at the sites, from the Fox News Channel on down, from which many Red American voters now get their view of the world.

In the next few days, we'll return to what the president said in the passage we've posted about the southern border. In our view, the bell is tolling for those of us in Blue America whenever he makes such remarks.

For today, we'll stick with his flatly bogus claims. How frequent are those bogus claims? At the Washington Post, Glenn Kessler has compiled a lengthy factcheck of the president's recent interview with ABC's Terry Moran. Dual headline included: 

One hundred days of Trump 2.0: Falsehood after falsehood, again and again
The president’s Time magazine interview featured 32 false or misleading claims.

President Donald Trump granted a lengthy interview to Time magazine in honor of completing his first 100 days of his second term today. As usual, the interview consisted of bluster and bombast, with hefty doses of B.S. Here’s a guide to the inaccuracies in 32 claims, in the order in which he made them.

We would have added one more "and again." But Kessler fact-checked 32 claims from that one interview. Here's how his scorecard looks:

Census of the 32 claims:
False: 18
Misleading: 1
Exaggerated: 1
Needs context: 1
Trump’s numbers are wrong: 1
Dubious: 2
Poppycock: 1
Fantasy: 1

That's 26 of the 32 claims. Specialized rejections were appended to the other six falsehoods.

Back to yesterday's address:

As we noted this morning, the New York Times mentioned this problem in the third paragraph of its news report about the Michigan speech. 

("Mr. Trump was in campaign mode, peppering his sentences with false statements—such as the lie that the 2020 election had been stolen—exaggerations, jokes and insults.")

So said the Times news report. By way of contrast, the Washington Post published a lengthy report about yesterday's speech—one that almost sounds like it was written by the president's messaging team.

On the same day that the Post's owner bowed to one of the president's demands, the Post seemed to pull out the pom-poms and cheerlead the president on. The tone of its news report struck us as astounding. We'll treat you to nine paragraphs, out of 43 total.

Dual headline included:

Trump rallies supporters in Michigan to mark 100 days in office
“We’ve just gotten started,” the president said after a whirlwind three months that included steep tariffs on imports, massive cuts to the federal workforce and deportations of undocumented immigrants. “You haven’t seen anything yet.”

WARREN, Mich.—President Donald Trump arrived here Tuesday afternoon for a rally to mark his first 100 days in office, returning to a battleground state he won last year and to the cheering crowds that marked his campaign but that he has largely eschewed so far in office.

In what aides billed as a “100th Day in Office Achievement Speech,” Trump touted the rapid pace he has kept during three months of dramatic changes to the federal workforce and global economic policy that have served to reorient the country and confuse the world. He chose as his backdrop a place that has lost much of the manufacturing base that once defined the greater Detroit area—but also one that is feeling the effects of his tariff proposals and his threats to occupy nearby Canada.

“In 100 days, we have delivered the most profound change in Washington in 100 years,” Trump said.

In the first three months of his second term, Trump has imposed tariffs on foreign imports, reshaping the global economy and sending markets into a frenzy. He has imposed drastic government cuts, rattling millions in the federal workforce. He has threatened to take Greenland, pressed for significant deportations of undocumented immigrants, issued pardons to those who participated in the insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and, as he mentioned here, banned the federal use of paper straws.

“We’ve just gotten started,” he said here, after taking the stage to Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA.” “You haven’t seen anything yet.”

Trump focused many of his remarks on immigration, the issue that most riles up his base, and at one point paused to show a video of migrants being taken to El Salvador that pictured them in chains and on flights. When it was over, the crowd rose to its feet and chanted, “USA! USA! USA!”

The rally had the feel of a festival. Hawkers sold T-shirts and hats that read, “Trump 2028,” suggesting Trump might be unbound by the Constitution and serve a third term. An ambulance was emblazoned with “Trump Save the USA” on the side.

Lining the stage were signs including “THE GOLDEN AGE” and “100 DAYS OF GREATNESS” and “THE AMERICAN DREAM IS BACK.”

“I love it,” said Charles Bryant, a 53-year-old from Shelby Township who had a career working at Ford and wore a “Gulf of America” T-shirt and a hat he got at the inauguration. “He’s making omelets, just shaking everything up. Tariffs. Trade. He’s confusing everybody!”

The report proceeds for 34 more paragraphs. Did the president make any of his trademark misstatements? In this extremely lengthy news report, the answer was simple:

No.

To our ear, it was a very odd news report. Can this be the culture we've chosen?

Also, beware those remarks about the southern border! Whether we want to admit it or not, the bell is tolling for us Blues when the president makes those remarks.

THE HUNDRED DAYS: The madness of King Donald T. George!

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 30, 2025

The madness of Blue America: Not long ago, we discussed the phenomenon which is commonly described as "the madness of King George."

Back in 1994, it was the name of a major film. It's also a colloquial description of an apparent medical condition—the kind of medical condition our immature culture lets you discuss, but only after several centuries have passed in the case of public figures.

Back in 1788, King George III was a public figure. In 2023, Dr. Howard Markel offered this assessment of his medical condition near the end of a long essay for PBS:

What illness did King George III have?

[...]

So what caused the erratic behavior of mad King George III? I honestly cannot say. But the porphyria-bipolar arguments demonstrate one of the greatest problems when diagnosing those who died 200 years ago and without the physical evidence to back up such claims.

Blame it on the bossa nova? Actually, modern medical specialists think it may have been porphyria! But by the rules of the ongoing game, we're allowed to discuss it now because it no longer matters.

Yesterday, President Donald J. Trump conducted a rally just outside Detroit. He spoke for his usual ninety minutes. 

The Washington Post has published a lengthy, astoundingly whitewashed "news report" about what the president said. We'll run through that astounding non-report report in a post this afternoon. 

Elsewhere, a certain "madness' may have seemed to perhaps be floating about. Here's the start of the New York Times' account of this public figure's address

Trump Marks 100 Days by Vilifying Migrants and Attacking Opponents

President Trump marked the first 100 days of his second term on Tuesday at a rally in Michigan in which he celebrated his border crackdown and boasted of the retribution he has carried out against his perceived enemies and his opponents’ inability to thwart his agenda.

The president addressed about 3,000 of his supporters at Macomb Community College, in an area near Detroit seen as key to his electoral victory in the state and emblematic of union workers’ shift from the Democratic to the Republican Party.

Mr. Trump was in campaign mode, peppering his sentences with false statements—such as the lie that the 2020 election had been stolen—exaggerations, jokes and insults. He mocked the way his predecessor, Joseph R. Biden Jr., looked in a bathing suit and encouraged the crowd to cheer to indicate which demeaning nickname for him they preferred: “Sleepy Joe” or “Crooked Joe.”

“I miss the campaign,” Mr. Trump said at one point.

As an editor, we wouldn't use the term "lie" there ourselves. We'd look for language which was (arguably) just a bit tougher—and perhaps a bit more searching.

Still, that short passage in the Times describes conduct which, judged by conventional norms, seems to be highly unusual. We refer to the crazily unfounded claims, but also to the endless crude insults.

The president simply won't stop with his inflammatory, unfounded claims. Later, the Times report also mentions this:

Outside the venue, however, protesters gathered with signs saying, “I dissent.” Two protesters who made it into the rally were removed by security, and the president laughed after calling one by the wrong gender.

[...]

At the rally, Mr. Trump showed little concern about his falling poll numbers, dismissing them as rigged. 

The election was stolen; the new polls have been rigged. Boys are boys and girls are girls and never the twain shall meet.

As we type, no one has yet published a transcript of yesterday's endless speech. At least one transcript does exist of the president's interview with Terry Moran of ABC News.  

ABC broadcast large chunks of the interview last night. Mediaite discusses one part of that interview in a report which appears beneath this headline:

Trump Argues With ABC’s Terry Moran About Photoshopped Image: ‘He Had MS-13 On His Knuckles Tattooed!’

Along with the stolen election and the rigged polls, the knuckles of Kilmar Abrego Garcia are back!

We discussed the president's largely unexplored claim about those knuckles all last week. In its report, Mediaite provides videotape of the exchange and a substantial chunk of transcript. Here's a slightly longer bit of transcript:

PRESIDENT TRUMP (4/29/25): He said he wasn't a member of a gang. And then they looked, and on his knuckles, he had MS-13—

MORAN: All right. There's a dispute over that—

TRUMP: Wait a minute! He had “MS-13” on his knuckles tattooed!

MORAN: He had some tattoos that are interpreted that way, but let’s move on.

TRUMP: Wait a minute! Hey, Terry, Terry, Terry! Don’t do that!

MORAN: He did not have the letter “MS-13.”

TRUMP: It says “MS-13.”

MORAN: That was photoshopped.

TRUMP: That was photoshopped? Terry, you can’t do that. They’ve given you the big break of a lifetime. You know, you’re doing the interview. I picked you because, frankly, I had never heard of you, but that’s okay. But I picked you, Terry, but you’re not being very nice. He had “MS-13” tattooed. Terry. Terry. Do you want me to show you the picture?

MORAN: I saw the picture.

TRUMP: And you think it was photoshopped? Well, don’t photoshop it, go look at his hand. He had “MS-13.”

MORAN: He did have tattoos that can be interpreted that way. I’m not an expert on them.

The journalist wasn't being nice, the sitting president said. Actually, in keeping with "journalistic" practice, Moran had tried to move on—but the president insisted on repeating a baldly implausible claim:

He insisted on saying, again and again, that Abrego Garcia has "MS-13" tattooed on his knuckles. 

So it goes with the madness of King George. But so too, a person might argue, with the madness of the upper-end mainstream press corps here in Blue America.

In an imperfect search this morning, we could find no sign that ABC News ever fact-checked this initial claim when the sitting president made it.  As we noted last week, the brilliant children who people our highest "news orgs" walked away from this high-profile claim when the president made it back on April 18.

To appearances, the children simply turned tail and ran. Arguably, this is the (colloquial) madness of the  children who went to the finest schools. As these hundred days reach their end, should the bell perhaps be tolling for these players too?

Is something wrong with President Trump as he hits one hundred days? If so, that's a tragic loss of human potential—but also, given his station, it's a dangerous situation.

That said:

Under prevailing rules of their game, the children refuse to discuss that possibly. That said, on Monday night's Last Word, Lawrence O'Donnell did make a jumbled pass at this forbidden topic.

O'Donnell went to the finest school. He's way out past where the lifeguards let you go with respect to this topic, but these opening remarks on Tuesday night were jumbled and borderline incoherent:

O'DONNELL (4/28/25): Well, imagine a 78-year-old man who often speaks incoherently and lies to you in ways that leave you wondering whether he is a pathological liar or delusional or both.

That's the way he started. Already, what he said may not have made clear sense:

If someone is "delusional," we wouldn't normally say that his strange statements were "lies." We'd more likely say that some such "delusional" person was mentally ill—unless he was a public figure, in which case we'd find ways to work around that possibility.

As O'Donnell continued, he described some other recent strange behavior by this sitting president. Soon he was saying this:

O'DONNELL: Imagine that same 78-year-old man is angrily braying at the world at 5:24 a.m., claiming people have committed crimes—crimes that do not exist, and coming up with a name for those people committing those crimes that don't exist, using words that have never been joined together and make absolutely no sense, calling them "negative criminals."

Of course, you would be concerned about the mental health of such a person...

With respect to prevailing rules of the game, O'Donnell was way out over his skis at that point. That said, is he "concerned about the mental health" of the person he was discussing? 

If he was, he would presumably speak to a (carefully selected) medical specialist about his perfectly reasonable point of concern. Instead, O'Donnell simply rambled on himself, perhaps conflating delusions with lies, then later conflating mental illness with "cognitive decline."

O'Donnell isn't a medical specialist. Was he playing one on TV?

Robert Frost saw this day coming. He fashioned this lament:

The Road Not Taken

[...]

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence...

Is there a road Blue America's stars haven't taken? Will someone be allowed to tell the story of this era "ages and ages hence," when it no longer matters?

Borrowing from that formulation, we'll tell you this:

Somewhere ages and ages hence, someone may be telling our current story with a sigh. Under prevailing rules of the game, they'll have to wait several centuries to address the perfectly reasonable question O'Donnell fleetingly drove by:

Is something with President Trump? If so, that's a terrible human tragedy—but is something actually wrong, some matter of "mental health?"

Terry Moran tried to "move on." He wanted to sidestep the recent strange claim concerning Abrego Garcia's knuckles. 

With almost complete uniformity, Blue America's news orgs chose to ignore that latest odd claim when it was made back on April 18. The highly educated children of the mainstream press have normalized the president's peculiar conduct in these ongoing ways. 

The bell is tolling for President Trump as his first hundred days reach their end. That said, our question is this:

Should the bell be tolling for Moran and O'Donnell and for their many colleagues? 

It was porphyria, the experts have said. What's happening now? 

Don't ask!

Tomorrow: Back to Homan, flat and round. Or at least, so we hope

This afternoon: A truly astonishing "news report" from the Washington Post

TUESDAY: An angry Homan splits some hairs!

TUESDAY, APRIL 29, 2025

Attention should be paid: Friend, did the administration commit an "administrative error" when it sent Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador?

That's what the administration originally said. Yesterday, as part of a White House briefing with Karoline Leavitt, Tom Homan seemed to possibly split a hair as he rejected that notion: 

REPORTER (4/28/25): Late last week, there were three U.S citizen children who were removed with their mothers who were in the United States illegally. A federal judge in Louisiana who was appointed by President Trump said that he was concerned that there was "no meaningful process." 

Are you concerned that due process, at least for the U.S. citizen children, is being flouted and that the speed at which the enforcement is being done could lead to errors, as was the case in the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case?...

HOMAN: First of all, I don't accept the term "error "in Abrego-Gracia. There is an "oversight." There was a withholding order, but things have changed. The facts around the withholding order has changed. He's now a terrorist, which means the withholding order's set aside, and the gang he was fearing from being removed to El Salvador no longer exists. So the facts around that case are totally different. 

That was no error—that was an oversight! So Tom Homan said. 

(At this link, the invaluable Rev provides transcript and tape of the entire briefing.)

Later, another hair was vanquished. A reporter asked if Mexico was going to pay for the miles of new border wall which are now being constructed. Eventually, Homan offered this explanation:

REPORTER: Mr. Homan, talking about the border wall, can you give us an update as far as how many miles are being built to date? And is Mexico paying for it as the President said they were going to?

LEAVITT: Well, first of all, I'll answer that question, because I already answered it in my opening remarks. To date, since January 1st, there's been more than 85 miles of new border wall construction in various stages of that construction and planning. The president has made it clear to Congress that we want to see more funding, for not just border wall construction, but also to support our ICE agents and our border patrol agents who are on the ground facilitating with this mass deportation effort.

REPORTER: So [President Trump] is clear that Mexico is not going to pay for it? Is that what you're saying?

HOMAN: Let's address that. Trump said Mexico will pay for the wall. They have been, in a roundabout way, have they not? Putting 10,000 military on the north and southern border, taking the action they did remain in Mexico. They didn't have to do that. They're doing it. Putting military on the southern border. Have moved illegal immigration to a record low. We're saving millions of dollars every day on detention, transportation, removal proceedings. We've more than made up for the cost of that wall because the actions of Mexico. So is Mexico helping build that wall? Yeah, because we're saving so much money, millions of dollars a day that we can afford to build that wall. So actually, yes, they're helping to build the wall.

Mexico has been paying for the miles of new wall. If in a roundabout way!

Another question referred to Leavitt's earlier statement about the way President Trump has declared "a national emergency at the southern border."

Should that declaration stand? In Homan's answer, it all depends on what the meaning of "emergency" is: 

REPORTER: If border crossings are at a record low, why should it still be considered an emergency?

HOMAN: It is because of what has happened on the last administration. We got to ensure that not one ounce of fentanyl comes across the [inaudible] that kill Americans. 

The president has declared the cartels of Mexico a terrorist organization along with MS-13, TDA. They killed more Americans than every terrorist organization in the world combined. It's an emergency until we shut it down, it's an emergency til the cartels are wiped off the face of this earth. 

If a single ounce crosses the border, that qualifies as an emergency! By that standard, almost every event on the face of the earth could trigger some such designation.

In our view, the questions this day weren't always the sharpest. Homan may have been splitting hairs in service to a substantial amount of piddle.

Meanwhile, Leavitt is a genuine piece of work. She too displayed a way with words in this ridiculous non-answer answer to a very basic question:

REPORTER: A question on Abrego Garcia, if I can. The president recently said when it comes to facilitating his release, he's leaving that up to his lawyer. So just to be clear, have there been any negotiations between the US and El Salvador over his release or facilitating his release?

LEAVITT: Look, I will tell you what the president of El Salvador told all of you in the Oval Office. El Salvador does not intend to smuggle a designated foreign terrorist back into the United States. He is an El Salvadorean national, that is his home country. That is where he belongs. And the administration intends to comply with what President Bukele said of El Salvador. He does not intend to send that individual back.

REPORTER: So that's a no? There's been no talks?

LEAVITT: What I have told you is that the president of El Salvador has made this quite clear.

In that exchange, Leavitt showcased her patented dismissive tone, even as she took a semantic dive in service to a disingenuous statement by a Central American strongman.

Obviously, no one is suggesting that the nation of El Salvador should "smuggle" someone into the United States. That said, we're going to do what Bukele says, this young true believer declared.

Leavitt's a constant piece of work. Her first "Q-and-A" this day has to be seen to be believed.

Karoline Leavitt speaks fluent Trump. Homan is very angry, and he's highly insistent.

He also stands at the place where Blue America's conduct in recent years helped send President Trump back to the White House. That same unaddressed conduct by us Blues helps President Trump maintain his current level of support. 

Homan is angry and very insistent. It's also true that his anger seems to have been earned, and as we'll note as the week continues, a lot of the anger he expresses comes directly back on us Blues.

Some of the questions were fairly silly. With respect to Homan's anger, attention [should] be paid.

Should the bell be tolling for what we've done? We'll discuss such questions all week.

THE HUNDRED DAYS: Tarlov lowered the boom on The Four!

TUESDAY, APRIL 29, 2025

The bell should be tolling for these: A wonderfully comical, pitiful moment occurred on last Thursday's The Five. 

First, let's say their names! It wasn't the usual lineup this day. The five performers were these:

Panelists, The Five—April 24, 2025
Kayleigh McEnany: co-host, Outnumbered 
Jessica Tarlov: twice-weekly co-host, The Five
Brian Kilmeade: co-host, Fox & Friends
Dana Perino: co-host, The Five
Greg Gutfeld: co-host, The Five

Jesse Watters wasn't present this day; neither was Judge Jeanine. The judge's absence reduced the likelihood that viewers would hear repeated references to the man she calls "Tampon Tim."

(To see her mock Walz that way on last Wednesday's edition of The Five, you can just click here. The judge is 73 rears old. This is the conduct she's chosen.)

Back to last Thursday's program! Midway through the show's second segment, Tarlov lowered the boom. 

The latest poll by the Fox News polling unit had been released to the public one day before. All in all, the numbers in this new Fox poll weren't especially good for President Trump.

After the poll had been released, Tarlov had broken every rule in the book. Plainly, she had actually reviewed the contents of her channel's new poll. 

True to form, it seems that the other four hadn't.

The other four tend to work from the stapled packet of papers they get handed by their producers each day, the better to message from. And so, it came to pass this day:

At 5:23 p.m., Tarlov lowered the boom.

As you can see by clicking this link, the other four had been chortling about the way the Democratic Party had doomed itself by seeking the return of Kilmar Abrego Garia from a Central American prison. With Kilmeade serving as moderator for the segment, the foolishness started like this:

KILMEADE (5/24/25): Jessica, do you think this is the dry hole we're portraying this as, or do you see some benefit for the Democrats continuing to get behind this guy?

TARLOV: Well, there's definitely benefit to it, and that doesn't mean that I don't think the majority of the emphasis should be on the economy. But if you look at our own latest polling—Fox poll, which came out yesterday—Reuters, YouGov, Quinnipiac—now Donald Trump is under water on immigration, which was his strongest issue...

Two-to-one margin, in the YouGov poll, that Americans think that Abrego Garcia should be brought back here.

Say what? Trump is under water on immigration, Tarlov said. Also, Americans favor the return of Abrego Garcia!

So the liberal punching bag said. Inevitably, Gutfeld knew how to respond. Instantly, he broke in with this:

GUTFELD (continuing directly): Because they're not getting the information!

Gutfeld understands the rule which prevails on his channel's programs. If respondents don't support the company line, respondents have been misled!

On Olympus, the gods roared with pleasure at the fellow's instant response. Even better, it soon became clear that he had no idea what was in his own Fox News poll. 

To appearances, neither did Kilmeade. At Fox, they seem to read off the talking points presented to them in their stapled packets. No further research required!

Tarlov had actually looked at the results reported in the latest Fox poll! There was no sign that her four companions had bothered.

Regarding Abrego Garcia, Gutfeld seemed to be sure that something had to be wrong with the question on the YouGov poll. As Tarlov tried to explain why people feel the way they do, the fellow, his annoyance showing, broke in again with this:

GUTFELD: What was the question? I guarantee you—

TARLOV (sarcastically): Oh, so now you're a pollster?

GUTFELD: No, I'm just saying, I guarantee it was worded in a way to get the intended answer.

Everything is possible. But on the clown car shows of this clown car "news channel," certain things are automatically true.

Gutfeld was assuring this program's very large audience that what they were hearing was bunk. Tarlov responded in the following way, and things spiraled down from there:

TARLOV (continuing directly): Well, I can guarantee you that our own [Fox News] polling, which showed him underwater on immigration, was fair...

Oof! There was no obvious pushback available there.

Quickly, a bit of embarrassment followed. When Tarlov mentioned "the Turkish Ph.D. student in Boston," Gutfeld interrupted with this:

GUTFELD: Not him!

The fellow didn't seem to know that the Ph.D. student in question was actually a young woman. 

Upon correction, he tried to slide away from his apparent error by transitioning to familiar clowning mode, complaining about the question of pronouns and saying that Tarlov spends too much time focused on who's gay.

As you can see by clicking those links, Gutfeld's insistence persisted. "None of these stories are real," he eventually insisted, trying to fight off Tarlov's claims.

By now, Kilmeade seemed to have accessed the results of the Fox News poll on his pad. Could Trump possibly be underwater on immigration? As he struggled to puzzle it out, this exchange occurred:

KILMEADE (looking at his pad): On "border security," he gets 55 percent approval.

TARLOV: Hit "immigration," where—Brian, I'm not making it up!

Indeed, she wasn't making it up! On the new Fox poll, Trump wasn't underwater on immigration by much—but he was underwater. 

That said, the resistance continued. Eventually, Kilmeade said this:

KILMEADE: I don't know how he could be under water on immigration. He might be under 50 percent, but he's not under water on immigration.

Except, on various polls, he actually is. Tarlov rattled the names of the polls again, but Gutfeld finally said this:

GUTFELD: Keep defending a gangbanger all you want.

So it goes when these messenger children run into bad poll results.

We'll suggest that you watch the whole segment. What you'll see is a corporate-fueled cancer on the society—indeed, on the human experiment.

This week, the bell is tolling for President Trump's first hundred days. The numbers aren't especially good. 

In fairness, they could get better—or they could always get worse.

We'd suggest that the bell should also be tolling for the Fox News Channel. Also, for the New York Times, which refuses to report or discuss the misinformation and misdirection which get dragged out, around the clock, on this powerful "cable news" channel.

That said, should the bell be tolling for our own Blue America in a more general way? Is there conduct for which we Blues should atone? 

Are there things we Blues have been doing wrong? Should the bell be tolling for us?

Tomorrow: Possible sources of President Trump's support (a report on Fox & Friends Weekend)

The wording of the question: As you can see by clicking this link, here's the way that question was worded on that YouGov poll:

The Trump administration recently deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador despite a court order prohibiting his deportation. Do you believe Trump should bring Abrego Garcia back to the U.S.?

Fifty percent of respondents said yes. Twenty-eight percent said no.

MONDAY: When Bill Maher interviewed Al Gore...

MONDAY, APRIL 28, 2025

...it was REGO all over again: As you may know, Al Gore did the special guest spot on Friday night's Real Time. 

We don't get HBO around here. Thanks to the wonders of the Internet Archive, you can watch CNN's Saturday night rebroadcast of the interview simply by clicking here.

We were glad to see Al looking and sounding good. All in all, we think it's better to avoid asking about the vastly destructive "Al Gore said he invented the Internet" press corps scam, even in the way Bill did.

Soon, it was down to Musk! As you can see by clicking here, that exchange started like this:

MAHER (4/25/25): I'd love to hear your thoughts on the Department of Government Efficiency, because I certainly remember—you didn't use that title, but you could have. You did something very similar—could you just compare and contrast for the class?

GORE: Yeah, thanks for asking. We had a project called Reinventing Government—REGO, they called it—and it was actually quite successful by pretty broad consent, by bipartisan analysis. And we had the benefit of doing it over seven years...

"We used a scalpel, not a chainsaw," Gore eventually said.  For the record, we'd probably stay away from comparisons to Elon Musk too!

Looking back at the way the leading authority recalls the undertaking, we were surprised to see what the project's formal name had been:

National Partnership for Reinventing Government

The National Partnership for Reinventing Government (NPR) was a U.S. government reform initiative launched in 1993 by Vice President Al Gore. Its goal was to make the federal government "work better, cost less, and get results Americans care about." The initiative aimed to streamline processes, cut bureaucracy (with a focus on overhead costs beyond issues addressable by statute), and implement innovative solutions. NPR was active until 1998.

During its five years, it catalyzed significant changes in the way the federal government operates, including the elimination of over 100 programs, the elimination of over 250,000 federal jobs, the consolidation of over 800 agencies, and the transfer of institutional knowledge to contractors. NPR introduced the use of performance measurements and customer satisfaction surveys, and encouraged the use of technology including the Internet. NPR is recognized as a success and had a lasting impact according to government officials who worked on or were influenced by it under the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations.

Background

In March 1993, President Bill Clinton stated that he planned to "reinvent government," declaring that "Our goal is to make the entire federal government less expensive and more efficient, and to change the culture of our national bureaucracy away from complacency and entitlement toward initiative and empowerment." Clinton assigned the project to Gore with a six-month deadline to develop the plan. The National Performance Review (NPR) released its first report in September 1993...

[...]

The partnership was announced during Clinton's address on March 3, 1993, to a joint session of the United States Congress. This initiative was a reboot of the National Performance Review, and consisted of a six-month efficiency review spearheaded by U.S. Vice President Al Gore. After preparing the report, Gore led an effort that evolved into the longest-running and arguably most successful reform effort in U.S. history.

And so on from there, in detail. 

In September 1993, Gore did a widely discussed spot with David Letterman to unveil the project. To see the whole thing, click here.

Roughly three minutes in, you'll see Dave try to get Al to talk trash about Dan Quayle, with whom he had served in both the House and the Senate.

"We were good friends," the vice president said. "I've avoided piling on."

Full disclosure! Elsewhere, in award winning fashion, we've described the magical night, in June 1969, when we were present with Al and Tipper and NAME WITHHELD as the four of us discovered an amazing new syndicated TV program.

The amazing new program was Hee Haw! Al said we'd get to the Opry someday, but given "how way leads on to way," it turned out that we never did.

In 1999 and 2000, the mainstream press corps spent two years pretending that Candidate Gore kept making crazy statements. Now that several high officials do make incessant crazy remarks, the mainstream press corps has largely said this about that:

Nothing to look at! Just move along!

They mocked the feller for two years, then for years after that. In November 1999, the New York Times even ran a front-page piece making an incoherent, jumbled mess of his 1992 best-seller, Earth in the Balance.

As it turned out, the feller had gotten it right. He went on to win the Nobel peace prize, after his documentary film about climate change had won an Oscar.

Back then, the children pretended that he was crazy. Today, their timid, timorous, frightened successors pretend that nobody is!

This is the journalism we have chosen. We Blues have agreed to accept such conduct. This seems to be all we have!

THE HUNDRED DAYS: The bell has been tolling for President Trump!

MONDAY, APRIL 28, 2025

Has it also been tolling for these? It's as we reported last Friday afternoon:

Wandra Petronski, a fictional grade school kid, said she had "a hundred dresses," all lined up in her closet.

In similar fashion, President Trump has now had (almost) a hundred days in the White House in this, his second time around.

As the hundredth day approaches, a wide array of polling entities, including the Fox News polling unit, has surveyed the public's view of this second bite at the apple. Last Friday night, as she opened her show, Rachel Maddow reviewed the findings of those polls. 

In our view, she may have overstated a bit—though then again, possibly not. For ourselves, we've been vastly encouraged by these polls—but in several programs at the end of last week, Maddow seemed elated. 

Below, we'll link you to Mediate's fuller report about what Maddow said last Friday night. Here's the way she started:

MADDOW (4/25/25): ...We started last night’s show with a look at public opinion concerning this president and this presidency as he approaches the end of his crucial first 100 days in office. And as we discussed on last night’s show, the numbers for him are brutally bad.

In the Pew poll, President Donald Trump is underwater in his overall approval rating by 19 points. 

In the Fox News poll, people are asked if Trump’s policies are helping or hurting the U.S. economy. They say Trump’s policies are hurting the U.S. economy by a margin of 22 points. 

In The Economist/YouGov poll, they asked if Trump is generally helping or hurting not just the economy, but the whole United States....The American people say Trump has hurt the United States, and they say it by a 24-point margin.

From there, Maddow proceeded to list detailed results from a newly released New York Times / Siena College poll. In this report for Mediaite, Tommy Christopher provides a lengthy transcription of Maddow's remarks:

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Gleefully Roasts ‘Rejected And Hated’ Trump Over Brutal Blizzard Of Polls

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow gleefully mocked President Donald Trump over a raft of devastating poll numbers, and suggested his desperation is making him do “crazy” things.

On Friday night’s edition of MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show, the host opened the hour with a recitation of devastating poll numbers...

That's the way Christopher started. Soon, he provided a lengthy transcript of Maddow's remarks about numbers she said were "brutally bad"—about numbers which, she further said, show that Trump is "roundly rejected and hated."

Was Maddow right in her general assessment? Yesterday, the situation almost seemed to get worse for the president when the Washington Post reported the results of its own new poll. 

Some of these numbers were brutally worse! Here's a chunk of the Post's report: 

Trump approval sinks as Americans criticize his major policies, poll finds

[...] 

Trump’s overall approval rating is lower than it was only two months ago. The poll shows that 39 percent of adult Americans approve of the way Trump is handling his job, compared with 55 percent who disapprove, including 44 percent who disapprove strongly. In February, those numbers were 45 percent positive and 53 percent negative.

Among registered voters, the deterioration has been even larger. In February, 48 percent of registered voters gave him positive marks, compared with 51 percent negative. Today those numbers are 42 percent positive and 55 percent negative, a swing from net negative three percentage points to net negative 13 points.

Trump’s approval rating is lower than for any past president at the 100-day mark in their first or second terms. At a similar point in their first terms as president, 42 percent approved of Trump and 52 percent approved of President Joe Biden... 

The Washington Post had the president all the way down to 39 percent. It was "lower than for any past president at the 100-day mark in their first or second terms"—and the numbers got even worse with respect to most major issues.

Meanwhile, even the Fox News poll had Trump's job approval at 44 percent, as opposed to 55 percent disapproval. And that survey was released last Wednesday, at a time when the approval numbers seemed to be getting worse on a daily basis.

That said, consider this:

All across the Fox News firmament, messenger children struggled and strained to keep those low approval numbers away from Red America's eyes. This started with a comical performance on last Thursday afternoon's broadcast of The Five—a performance which showed how far we humans will sometimes go, possibly in service to true belief, possibly in defense of high corporate salaries.

As the week went along, the numbers were bad—and they seemed to be getting worse. That said, to our own eye and ear, the numbers aren't bad enough.

What do we mean by that? Consider that first number from the Washington Post's report:

Just 39 percent of respondents approved of the job President Trump has been doing—but 42 percent of registered voters said they approved of his performance.

Presumably, 42 percent is more than enough to keep the president moving ahead. His ability to function unfettered is tied to the refusal of Senate Republicans to oppose his various ventures—and their refusal to stand and fight is directly tied to the strong allegiance Trump still holds within the Republican base.

If (something like) 40 percent of voters approve of the president's performance, that's way more than enough to keep Republican senators in line. As they look around the Senate chamber, they no longer see Senator Corker or Senator Flake, two solons who stood against Trump in the earliest days and are now gone, long gone. 

Also, they no longer see Senator Romney, who didn't choose to seek re-election. When they steal a glance at the House chamber, Rep. Cheney is no longer there, and neither is Rep. Kinsinger.

At this site, we don't approve of the president's performance—but something like 40 percent of American voters do. They have a perfect right to their views, but those numbers aren't "brutally bad enough" to create a world in which a bipartisan Congress will refuse to go along with the president's ongoing proposals and conduct.

Where will things go from here? Conceivably, the president's poll numbers could get even worse. How would the president respond to that? 

There's no way to answer that question.

To our taste, Maddow may have been getting a bit ahead of reality by the end of an encouraging week. To that, we'd rush to add this:

Tomorrow, the first hundred days are up for the sitting president. But if the bell is tolling for him, is it also tolling for other people and groups? Is the bell tolling for us? Could it be tolling for thee?

The president has completed his first hundred days, but the same is true of the opposition in Blue America and in the Democratic Party. 

The same is true of the possibly timorous New York Times. The same is true of the endless clown show performed on the Fox News Channel. The same is true of ludicrous conduct all over the burgeoning world of the podcast.

President Trump is now seeing the numbers regarding his first hundred days. In the rest of this week, we're going to consider the first hundred days of those other groups.

We're going to look at the endless clown show performed by the Fox News Channel. We're going to look at the perpetual silence about that clown show performed by the New York Times.

We're going to look at the Red America's voters—but we're going to look at Blue America's voters too. Along the way, we expect to direct you to such manifestations as these:

We'll direct you to what Alex Thompson said in a burst of Saturday evening fever this past Saturday night. At Mediaite, the headline says this:

Axios Reporter Calls Out DC Press Corps at Correspondents’ Dinner for Blowing Coverage of Biden’s Decline: We ‘Missed a Lot of This Story’

Have those of us in Blue America come to terms with this matter, which still helps freeze Trump's ongoing support? Have we attempted come to terms with what happened at the southern border under President Biden—what happened at the southern border without a word of explanation? 

For us, the voters of Blue America, might the bell be tolling now too?

That said, how about the voters of Red America? Needless to say, people are free to believe what they believe. That said, we were struck by this report from Mediaite, possibly including the snark in its headline:

Fox News Poll Shows Yuge Chunk of Voters Think God Saved Trump From Assassination

People are free to believe what they believe. According to that Fox News survey, 62 percent of Trump voters "feel he was saved from two assassination attempts because God wanted him to be president."

People are free to think what they think. We were struck by that (widely unreported) number.

The Fox News Channel is a clown show. As for Blue America's journalists, it seems to us that The Atlantic may still be picking and choosing what it reports concerning the Trump administration's claims about Kilmar Abrego Garcia. 

That said, we also want to mention the greatest essay we read this weekend. That essay was written by Helen Lewis, she of the same Atlantic. The essay started like this:

Ideas
Finally, Someone Said It to Joe Rogan’s Face

Recently, I felt a great disturbance in the world of podcasts, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in horror and were suddenly silenced. Someone had been on Joe Rogan’s show and pointed out that getting your opinions entirely from stand-up comics, Bigfoot forums, and various men named Dave might not be the optimal method for acquiring knowledge. Rogan fans were appalled at this disrespect.

The culprit was the British writer Douglas Murray, who confronted Rogan earlier this month over the podcaster’s decision to platform a series of guests with, shall we say, minority views on the Second World War. The obvious example is Darryl Cooper, a “storyteller” who has lately taken a sharp turn into Nazi apologism....

Murray’s pointed criticism of Rogan’s approach, made right to his face, has prompted other aftershocks across the Roganverse, that loose collection of comics and podcasters who dominate the podcast market. 

Who in the world is Helen Lewis, and why does she frequently seem to be sharper than everyone else in print at major orgs? 

For the record, Lewis focused only on the world of dim-witted podcasts dominated by the clueless opinions and claims of D-list comedians and similar manifest know-nothings. Increasingly, that's also the broadcast strategy of the powerful Fox News Channel, a fact of life the timorous New York Times has agreed it must never report or discuss.

The bell is tolling for President Trump. Is it also tolling for the likes of these?

Within an undisguised madhouse like this, what the heck is a citizen's duty? We may even get to Bill Maher and Al Gore! We'll examine such questions all week.

Tomorrow: Ross Douthat is making sense!

SATURDAY: Blue America has never heard this claim!

SATURDAY, APRIL 26, 2025

Red America has: Last night, she opened the garbage can. When she did, Greg Gutfeld came crawling out.

By "she," we refer to the Fox News Channel's CEO. She opens that can each weekday night, with a rerun on Saturday nights.

Sean Hannity proves the lead-in at 9:59 p.m. Eastern each weekday night. Each night, he cheerfully tells Fox News Channel viewers that the garbage in question "will put a smile on your face." 

Last night, the garbage guy's string of opening jokes went a bit long. They worked from the usual premises:

Hillary Clinton murders people. Kamala Harris is constantly drunk.

Rep. Tlaib has a mustache. Joe Biden keeps wetting his bed. 

Jerry Nadler is way too fat, and so is Stacey Abrams. 

With Mary Trump's book back in the discourse this past week, he even aimed a braindead, poisonous shot at her, at the start of his "issues monologue." 

With respect to his opening "jokes," he'd saved the best for last! At 10:06 p.m., he ended his "jokes" with a favorite premise—at the age of 85, Nancy Pelosi isn't sufficiently attractive:

GUTFELD (4/25/25): And finally, after complaints of public masturbation in a Seattle park, officials are looking to build a, quote, public masturbation deterrent infrastructure.

Which is a complicated way of saying a giant billboard of this:

PHOTO OF NANCY PELOSI

AUDIENCE: (LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE)

GUTFELD: Shuts it down right away, kids.

This garbage-strewn show is an anthropology lesson. But it also serves as an assault on basic human decency. 

The 60-year-old person who chairs the show has an anger he can't seem to quell. Meanwhile, people like these agree to go on the show in support of his grisly behavior:

Gutfeld! panel, April 25, 2025
Erin Maguire: Formerly Erin Perrine; Republican communicator
Joe Machi: D-list comedian
Guy Benson: Fox News Channel contributor
Dagen McDowell: co-host of two shows, Fox Business Network

Benson is too smart to take part in this garbage dispersal except as a cynical venture. In fairness, the overall pay is good.

This trash is spread around each night. The program serves as an assault on the human experiment, but also as an anthropology lesson.

Blue America's major news orgs give this conduct a pass. Each person can decide what this agreement to maintain silence says about Blue America's major orgs.

Red America is exposed to this garbage every night; Blue America knows nothing about it. For today, we thought we'd link you to something else Blue America won't be told about. 

We refer to a recent, updated news report from the New York Post:

Deported alleged MS-13 gangbanger Kilmar Abrego Garcia was driving convicted smuggler’s car during Tennessee traffic stop

That's the headline on the news report—but should the updated report be believed? Here's the way it starts:

Deported alleged MS-13 gangbanger Kilmar Abrego Garcia was driving convicted smuggler’s car...

Deported alleged MS-13 gangbanger Kilmar Abrego Garcia was driving a convicted human smuggler’s car when he was stopped by cops while transporting a group of men on a Tennessee highway in 2022, the Department of Homeland Security confirmed Wednesday.

Abrego Garcia, 29, was pulled over by a Tennessee state trooper in 2022 for speeding, but when the cop stumbled upon the Salvadoran illegal migrant with eight others and no luggage amid their days-long trip from Texas to Maryland, he suspected something was amiss, according to an internal memo obtained by The Post last week.

At the time, the alleged gangbanger—who was deported by the Trump administration last month—claimed that the packed SUV was owned by “his boss” at his construction job, who turned out to be Jose Ramon Hernandez Reyes, an illegal migrant previously convicted of smuggling others into the US, Just The News first reported.

That's the way this news report starts. We've discussed this unusual traffic stop before, but this latest report adds the claim that Abrego Garcia was driving the car of a confessed "human smuggler" when the alleged events occurred.

Red Americans will hear about this latest report. Blue America won't. Here's the way this matter was reported on the Fox News website:

Deported ‘Maryland man’ championed by Dems was pulled over driving car belonging to human smuggler

The so-called deported "Maryland man" Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whom Democrats have been demanding the Trump administration return to the U.S., was previously pulled over by a highway patrol officer while driving a car belonging to a confessed human smuggler, multiple sources in DHS confirmed to Fox News Digital.

The sources confirmed documents reported by Just the News that revealed Abrego Garcia was pulled over driving an SUV belonging to Jose Ramon Hernandez Reyes, another illegal alien who in 2020 confessed to human smuggling across the U.S.-Mexico border.

As previously reported by Fox News Digital, Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old illegal alien whom the Trump administration recently deported back to El Salvador, was pulled over on Dec. 1, 2022, by a Tennessee Highway Patrol trooper who stopped him after he was "observed speeding" and unable to stay in his lane.

The trooper noticed eight individuals in the car with Abrego Garcia, who said he began driving three days prior from Houston, Texas, to Temple Hills, Maryland, via St. Louis, Missouri, to "perform construction work." The report on the stop states that the trooper suspected it was a human trafficking incident, as there was no luggage in the vehicle. Additionally, the individuals in the car reportedly gave the same address as Abrego Garcia's home address.

[...]

New documents further reveal that Abrego Garcia was driving a black 2001 Chevrolet Suburban that he said belonged to his "boss." The Suburban was identified by DHS as belonging to Hernandez Reyes, who pleaded guilty to human smuggling after being caught in Mississippi in a car with passengers from Mexico, El Salvador and Honduras.

And so on from there.

Red America is hearing about this new report; Blue America isn't. That said, should the claims in this new report be believed—in this new report, which seems to link Abrego Garcia to a confessed "human trafficker?"

Should these new claims be believed? Does it even matter if the new claims are true? 

At this point, we can't really say. That said, half the country will hear about this updated report. Half the country won't.

The garbage can is opened each night. Blue America's timorous orgs have agreed that they will never report or discuss what happens on that channel.

Blue American orgs have also agreed to ignore news reports like the one we're citing. Can a very large modern nation expect to survive under arrangements like these?

Do you believe what those news reports say? Do you think it's a good idea when the most exalted American journalists agree to ignore such reports?

We now offer one final point regarding the garbage can:

The garbage guy was scaling it back last night when he pictured President Biden wetting his bed. All through 2024, he dined out, night after night, on images of Biden "pooping" or "[BLEEPING]" his pants, but also soiling everything in the Oval Office, from the Resolute desk on down.

This program is an anthropology lesson. It's also a grisly assault on the human experiment.

In fairness, the pay is good. So is the pay for the Blue American media moguls who agree that their orgs won't report or discuss the ugly idiocy which emerges from that low-IQ hellhole night after night after night.

Who and what do you believe? Whose judgment can you trust?

FRIDAY: There the president seems to have gone again!

FRIDAY, APRIL 25, 2025

Time magazine chose not to notice: What do we mean when we say that mainstream news orgs are refusing to ask the obvious question about the sitting president? 

When we say that such orgs are refusing to turn that obvious question into a basic news hook?

In fairness, many of these major orgs also took a pass on the possibility that President Biden might be experiencing cognitive loss during his term in the White House. 

We may have more on that next week. For today, we'll start with this:

It's one of the best books we came across in our years as a Baltimore fifth grade teacher. We once saw a room full of "black" kids sit transfixed as Mrs. Young, a reading resource teacher, read the book out loud.

It was a book about Wanda Petronski, a Polish-American kid who lived in a fictional town in Connecticut. Her parents didn't have a lot of money, and her father spoke with a Polish accent. Some of the other girls in her grade school class teased her about her lack of finery on a daily basis. 

The book in question is a time-honored, Newberry Award winning book. Here's the start of a basic synopsis:

The Hundred Dresses

The Hundred Dresses is a children's book by Eleanor Estes, illustrated by Louis Slobodkin, published in 1944. In the book, a Polish girl named Wanda Petronski attends a Connecticut school where the other children see her as "different" and mock her.

The book centers on Wanda, a poor and friendless Polish-American girl. Although her grades are very good, she sits in the worst seat in the classroom and does not say anything when her schoolmates tease her. One day, after Wanda's classmates laugh at her Polish last name and the faded blue dress she wears to school every day, Wanda claims to own one hundred dresses, all lined up in her closet in her worn-down house. This outrageous and obvious lie becomes a game, and the group of girls in her class, headed by Maddie and Peggy, mock and corner her every day before school demanding that she describe all of her dresses for them. Her father, Jan Petronski, reveals that due to the constant discrimination directed at his family they must leave town.

The story goes on from there. It may be the best book about moral experience we have ever read.

Eventually, the other girls learn that Wanda does have a hundred dresses at home. She has a hundred beautiful crayon drawings of the hundred beautiful dresses she wishes she could own. 

After Wanda's family has moved away, one of the girls is lucky enough to be wracked by remorse. Here's Amazon's shorter synopsis:

The Hundred Dresses

This Newbery Honor classic, illustrated by a Caldecott Medalist, is a beautifully written tribute to the power of kindness, acceptance, and standing up for what's right.

Wanda Petronski is ridiculed by her classmates for wearing the same faded blue dress every day. She claims she has one hundred dresses at home, but everyone knows she doesn’t. When Wanda is pulled out of school one day, the class feels terrible, and classmate Maddie decides that she is "never going to stand by and say nothing again."

A timeless, gentle tale about bullies, bystanders, and having the courage to speak up.

We watched thirty "black" kids on the edge of their seats, captured by the tale of the injustice being absorbed by this "Polish" girl. Those Baltimore kids were very good kids. They learned something from the Eleanor Estes book. We ourselves learned something that day as we sat there watching them.

Wanda Petronski told the other kids that she had "a hundred dresses in her closet, all lined up." In a newly released interview, President Trump seems to have told Time magazine that he has two hundred tariff deals, with two hundred different countries, which are already in place.

What was the president talking about? At Mediaite, Tommy Christopher reports this puzzling claim under this headline:

Trump Stuns Time Magazine With Outlandish Claim When They Confront Him on Zero Trade Deals

Easy to be hard! 

To read the full exchange in the transcript published by Time, you can just click this. Here's the start of the lengthy exchange, with Time's questions in italics:

Read the Full Transcript of Donald Trump’s ‘100 Days’ Interview With TIME

[...]

Your trade adviser, Peter Navarro, says 90 deals in 90 days is possible. We're now 13 days into the point from when you lifted the reciprocal, the discounted reciprocal tariffs. There's zero deals so far. Why is that? 

No, there’s many deals. 

When are they going to be announced? 

You have to understand, I'm dealing with all the companies, very friendly countries. We're meeting with China. We're doing fine with everybody. But ultimately, I've made all the deals.

Not one has been announced yet. When are you going to announce them?

I’ve made 200 deals. 

You’ve made 200 deals?

100 percent.

Can you share with whom?

Because the deal is a deal that I choose. View it differently: We are a department store, and we set the price. I meet with the companies, and then I set a fair price, what I consider to be a fair price, and they can pay it, or they don't have to pay it...

The puzzling exchange continues at length from there.

Wanda Petronski said she had a hundred dresses. President Trump seems to have said that he has two hundred tariff deals, apparently all lined up.

What do we mean when we say that this sort of thing has been normalized? When we say that major news orgs keep saying and signaling this:

 Nothing to look at! Just move along!

What do we mean when we say such things? You can click here for Time magazine's lengthy report about this lengthy interview. Not a single word is said about the possible oddness of this lengthy, peculiar exchange.

Eleanor Estes wrote a deeply insightful book. Here in Baltimore, long ago, we watched thirty kids as they hung on every word. 

Those good kids cared about Wanda Petronski. Knowing how to pity the child, they very badly needed to know how the story turned out.

THE GREAT I-AM: There he went again!

FRIDAY, APRIL 25, 2025

The stumblebums chose to move on: Should anyone believe the claims made by Mary L. Trump? 

We refer to Mary L. Trump, Ph.D., a trained clinical psychologist and the niece of President Trump. In the summer of 2020, she published a major best seller, Too Much and Never Enough, in which she offered a detailed family history of the Trumps—and a set of diagnostic assessments of her very important uncle.

Full disclosure! Here's the full title of Mary Trump's book:

Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man

Plainly, that's a challenging title. Should people believe the various things its author said? 

Let's start with the family history:

As we noted yesterday, Mary Trump's account of the family history takes us back into the 1940s (and beyond)—to a time when the current American president was just two years old. To a time well before she herself was on the scene of the family drama. 

What was the source of her presentations? At the start of the book, in an Author's Note, she addresses that question:

Author’s Note

Much of this book comes from my own memory. For events during which I was not present, I relied on conversations and interviews, many of which are recorded, with members of my family, family friends, neighbors, and associates. I’ve reconstructed some dialogue according to what I personally remember and what others have told me. Where dialogue appears, my intention was to re-create the essence of conversations rather than provide verbatim quotes. I have also relied on legal documents, bank statements, tax returns, private journals, family documents, correspondence, emails, texts, photographs, and other records.

On which family members might she have relied for her account of the president's earliest years? Early in the prologue of the book, she suggests one obvious answer

Prologue

[...]

When Donald announced his run for the presidency on June 16, 2015, I didn’t take it seriously. I didn’t think Donald took it seriously. He simply wanted the free publicity for his brand. He’d done that sort of thing before. When his poll numbers started to rise and he may have received tacit assurances from Russian president Vladimir Putin that Russia would do everything it could to swing the election in his favor, the appeal of winning grew.

“He’s a clown,” my aunt Maryanne said during one of our regular lunches at the time. “This will never happen.”

We talked about how his reputation as a faded reality star and failed businessman would doom his run. “Does anybody even believe the bullshit that he’s a self-made man? What has he even accomplished on his own?” I asked.

“Well,” Maryanne said, as dry as the Sahara, “he has had five bankruptcies.”

Maryanne Trump was 12 years old when her brother was only two. Mary Trump says she was having regular lunches with her somewhat sardonic aunt—with the president's older sister—as of 2015.

We know of no reason to doubt that! That said, those who want to disbelieve—like those who may want to shirk their journalistic duty—can always find ways to do so.

In part, we're inclined to trust Mary Trump's text because she's so empathetic to the child whose mother was essentially taken away when he was two years old. 

For Mary Trump's account of the early history, see yesterday' report. As an author, Mary Trump displays the rare ability to keep two dueling thoughts in her head:

She's able to pity the child, even as she describes the adult—her adult uncle—as "the world's most dangerous man."

Was he "the world's most dangerous man?" Is that a fair assessment today? That, of course, is a matter of judgment. But we admire Mary Trump's ability to pity the child whose father was (in her assessment) a sociopath, whose mother suffered a massive medical disability when he was still just two.

That brings us to the question of Mary Trump's medical assessments.  

We're using the term "medical" here because it's a more pleasant word. It's a more pleasant word than "psychiatric." It's even more pleasant than "psychological"—but what about the various assessments Mary Trump makes is realm?

Borrowing from President Nixon, let us say this about that:

As everyone knows, it violates the rules of high-end American journalism to discuss such medical assessments. Rather, it violates the rules of the guild to discuss issues of possible mental illness or mental health in the case of powerful public figures.

With respect to the hoi-polloi, our journalists are free to plow ahead. Just last week, a lengthy report in the Washington Post was described this way on the website's front page, in a link to the actual article:

Deep Reads
NYC is removing mentally ill people from the subway. She’s a nurse who makes the call.
Amid calls to make the transit system safer, Lisa Singh’s mission is to treat people with severe mental illness whom many riders have come to fear.

That's how the report was thumbnailed on the website's front page. 

After clicking the link, a reader encountered this lengthy, perfectly intelligent report—a "Deep Read" in which the term "mental illness" appears seven separate times.

It isn't that our high-end journalists don't believe in mental illness. Instead, they don't believe that this  part of human life should ever be discussed with respect to major public figures.

In conventional reckoning, this well-known prohibition dates at least to 1973, to the adoption of the so-called "Goldwater rule." Full disclosure! As the leading authority on the topic notes, that so-called rule applies, in the literal sense, to the behavior of psychiatrists, not to the practices of American journalists:

Goldwater rule

The Goldwater rule is Section 7 in the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) Principles of Medical Ethics, which states that psychiatrists have a responsibility to participate in activities contributing to the improvement of the community and the betterment of public health, but when asked to comment on public figures, they shall refrain from diagnosing, which requires a personal examination and consent. It is named after former U.S. Senator and 1964 Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater.

As of 1973, psychiatrists were formally told that they must "refrain from diagnosing" public figures. Along the way, American news orgs largely adapted a similar informal rule of the road. (It was frequently honored in the breach during Campaign 2000.)

Should journalists refrain from this kind of medical talk with respect to public figures? In our view, that's an extremely good rule of thumb—until such time as it isn't.

Should the behavior of President Trump be subjected to such talk today? That, of course, is a matter of judgment. At the end of her Prologue, Mary L. Trump, Ph.D., explained her thinking on the subject:

Prologue

[...]

No one knows how Donald came to be who he is better than his own family. Unfortunately, almost all of them remain silent out of loyalty or fear. I’m not hindered by either of those. In addition to the firsthand accounts I can give as my father’s daughter and my uncle’s only niece, I have the perspective of a trained clinical psychologist. Too Much and Never Enough is the story of the most visible and powerful family in the world. And I am the only Trump who is willing to tell it.

I hope this book will end the practice of referring to Donald’s “strategies” or “agendas,” as if he operates according to any organizing principles. He doesn’t. Donald’s ego has been and is a fragile and inadequate barrier between him and the real world, which, thanks to his father’s money and power, he never had to negotiate by himself. Donald has always needed to perpetuate the fiction my grandfather started that he is strong, smart, and otherwise extraordinary, because facing the truth—that he is none of those things—is too terrifying for him to contemplate.

Donald, following the lead of my grandfather and with the complicity, silence, and inaction of his siblings, destroyed my father. I can’t let him destroy my country.

Did her uncle really destroy her father? That's part of the complex family history told in this well-written book.

That said, Mary Trump plainly qualifies as an interested party in the sprawling story she tells. That said, she's also "a trained clinical psychologist"—and after helping us pity the child, she said we should fear the adult. 

It's as we noted (again) yesterday. In the case of her powerful uncle, she had already offered this assessment of the medical lay of the land:

Prologue

[...]

None of the Trump siblings emerged unscathed from my grandfather’s sociopathy and my grandmother’s illnesses, both physical and psychological, but my uncle Donald and my father, Freddy, suffered more than the rest. In order to get a complete picture of Donald, his psychopathologies, and the meaning of his dysfunctional behavior, we need a thorough family history.

In the last three years, I’ve watched as countless pundits, armchair psychologists, and journalists have kept missing the mark, using phrases such as “malignant narcissism” and “narcissistic personality disorder” in an attempt to make sense of Donald’s often bizarre and self-defeating behavior. I have no problem calling Donald a narcissist—he meets all nine criteria as outlined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5)—but the label gets us only so far.

[...]

Does Donald have other symptoms we aren’t aware of? Are there other disorders that might have as much or more explanatory power? Maybe. A case could be made that he also meets the criteria for antisocial personality disorder, which in its most severe form is generally considered sociopathy but can also refer to chronic criminality, arrogance, and disregard for the rights of others...

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

That's the trained psychologist talking. As we've noted again and again, the assessments she offers in that passage (and elsewhere) may or may not be "right."

In the summer of 2020, Too Much and Never Enough became a massive best-seller. Our journalists reacted in a predictable way—they almost wholly ignored Mary Trump's clinical assessments, continuing to trod the path blazed by the Goldwater rule.

Mary Trump made many TV appearances, but she was treated as a standard political pundit. For better or worse, her clinical assessments were almost completely disappeared.

For better or worse, our journalists chose that path. But here's something else which they have continued to do:

As of last Friday night, there he went again! Her uncle—he's now 78—issued his latest peculiar claim, supported by a highly suspicious "photograph."  Almost surely, the president's highlighted claim about Kilmar Abrego Garcia was—no major surprise—silly and bogus and false:

Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump

This is the hand of the man that the Democrats feel should be brought back to the United States, because he is such “a fine and innocent person.” They said he is not a member of MS-13, even though he’s got MS-13 tattooed onto his knuckles, and two Highly Respected Courts found that he was a member of MS-13, beat up his wife, etc. I was elected to take bad people out of the United States, among other things. I must be allowed to do my job. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

In the course of the past week, that highlighted claim has been bruited all over Red America. Over here, in Blue America, our journalists have told us this:

Nothing to look at! Just move along!

It seems to have been the latest of his endless array of bogus claims, many of which seem to hail from the land of the crazy. 

It was a truly remarkable claim. Our Blue press slumbered and snored.

In the wake of these endless claims, a certain question might seem to arise. Is something "wrong" with Donald J. Trump? Also, is something "wrong" with the apparent nutcase he put in charge of DOGE?

Completing the rule of three, is something wrong with the clown car conduct seen all day, and then all night, on the "cable news" programs of the Fox News Channel? We could extend our question further, but we'll stop here at the count of three.

Is something wrong with those major public figures? Over here, in their comfort zone, the timorous scribes of Blue America have generally taken a pass on that blindingly obvious question. They act like Fox doesn't even exist, and they proceed from there. 

With respect to President Trump, they've chosen to stay away from the medical talk. Given the intellectual immaturity of the American public discourse, a sensible person can even imagine that this has been a good choice.

They've stayed away from the medical talk—but they've also chosen to normalize this president's bizarre behaviors. As of last weekend, this permissive behavior had reached the point where the giants of Blue America's press corps all agreed to walk away from his latest extremely weird statement.

His claim was spread all over Red America, In Blue America, the guardians walked off their posts.

The Great I-Am had gone there again! Nothing to look at, these stumblebums said, at which point they simply moved on.

Pity the child, his niece had said. But don't give a pass to the adult!

We'd recommend pity for the adult too—for the great loss of human potential chronicled in the story the niece has told.  (In her telling, it's a story of what can occur when a child is born to "a high-functioning sociopath.")

We'd recommend pity for the loss of human potential That said, the very powerful adult's ridiculous conduct must be reported, again and again and again and again, as it endlessly appears and re-appears on the American scene.

This conduct should be reported on the nation's front pages. The endless array of peculiar and blindingly bogus statements should be the subject of a recurrent front-page news hook.

Pity the child, his niece had said. But try to avoid taking a dive for the world's most dangerous man! 

As of last Friday night, The Great I-Am had done it again. Nothing to look at, the Voices said, at which point the Voices moved on.

THURSDAY: "Let me repeat myself," she said!

THURSDAY, APRIL 24, 2025

There Judge Jeanine went again: Judge Jeanine—that's Judge Jeanine Pirro to you—simply refuses to quit. 

On Monday's edition of The Five, she waved her arms and tugged on her fingers as she offered an angry, bogus account of the Abrego Garcia case. 

Why wasn't Abrego Garcia returned to his native El Salvador back in 2019? As we noted yesterday, this is what she (inaccurately) said during Monday's program:

JUDGE JEANINE (4/21/25): Why was the hold put on the 2019 order of deportation that was affirmed by the immigration appellate court? Because he was afraid his life is jeopardized by a rival gang in El Salvador. 

Now, listen to what I just said—"because of a rival gang." What better proof that you are a member of MS-13 than you're afraid to go back to your own country because of a rival gang will kill you?

Okay? That is proof positive! That's his admission! Everybody's like just ignoring it!

So that's why there was a hold. This whole thing is a game. The reason the Dems are in a hole is because they don’t know what they were doing. They don’t know the law. They don’t know the facts. They are just swinging around aimlessly.

As usual, the judge was disgusted. According to the Fox News Channel star, Abrego Garcia couldn't be returned to his native El Salvador "because he was afraid his life [was] jeopardized by a rival gang" in that country.

The judge took that as perfect proof that Abrego Carcia actually was a member of MS-13. We quote her world-class logic:

What better proof that you're a member of MS-13 than you're afraid to go back to your own country because of a rival gang will kill you?

That would make perfect sense if Abrego Garcia had ever said that he feared an attack by "a rival gang." Unfortunately, the court record concerning this case offers no sign that any such thing by anyone involved in this case.. 

As you can see by clicking this link, the official court record is vastly different. In his written opinion, Judge David Jones gave a detailed account of the testimony he had received from Abrego Garcia and his family members in El Salvador. 

True to form, Judge Jeanine was offering an invented account of what Abrego Garcia and his family members had actually said. Along the way, Judge Jones—the actual judge in this case—said he found Abrego Garcia's statements to be credible and internally consistent.

(To read Judge Jones' written opinion, you can just click that link. It doesn't comport, in any way, with the portrait the "cable news" judge had drawn.)

True to form, the "cable news" judge had offered an invented account of what had been claimed in the case—but then again, so what? Two days later, on yesterday's edition of The Five, having had two days to think it through, there she went again!

JUDGE JEANINE (4/23/25): ...Abrego Garcia, in El Salvador, was found to be a proper target of deportation. The only issue was the withholding order. 

The withholding order—again, I will repeat myself—it's only because, as a member of MS-13, he had enemies in El Salvador who wanted to kill him and therefore there was a hold order to not send him there because, as a gang member, he would be killed by the other gang members. That's the only issue with Abrego Garcia!

Gesticulating convincingly, the TV judge went there again. "Again, I will repeat myself," she grandiosely said.

For the record, it's true! Judge Jones did grant a "withholding order"—an order saying that Abrego Garcia could not be sent back to El Salvador. That's the order which was ignored last month, allegedly due to "administrative error."

Judge Jones did say that Abrego Garcia had a legitimate fear of serious harm from the Barrio 18 gang if he was returned to El Salvador. But nothing—zero, nada, zilch—was ever said about Abrego Garcia being afraid of Barrio 18 because he himself was a member of MS-13. 

Nothinmg was said about him being a member of any gang. As anyone can see by reading the written opinion, that simply wasn't the nature of the threat or the fear.

That isn't the story Judge Jones was told. It bears no resemblance to the state of affairs he described in his detailed court order—but then again, so what?

"Again, I will repeat myself," the oracular TV judge proclaimed on yesterday's "cable news" program. Once again, her presentation was utterly bogus on this, the most watched show in the whole realm of "cable news."

This is the soul of this phony "news" show. As Michael Moore once prophetically said, "We live in fictitious times."

THE GREAT I-AM: Did it start when he was two years old?

THURSDAY, APRIL 24, 2025

In search of The Great I-Am: Last Friday evening, sure enough! There he went again!

The person once dubbed "The Great I-Am" made his latest unfortunate statement. As far as we know, his literal statement was false. Once again, here's what he said:

Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump

This is the hand of the man that the Democrats feel should be brought back to the United States, because he is such “a fine and innocent person.” They said he is not a member of MS-13, even though he’s got MS-13 tattooed onto his knuckles, and two Highly Respected Courts found that he was a member of MS-13, beat up his wife, etc. I was elected to take bad people out of the United States, among other things. I must be allowed to do my job. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

As far as we know, the highlighted statement is false. That said, it's being blared all over Red America. There he went again!

Should major organs in Blue America be addressing this latest misstatement? Tomorrow, we'll offer the pros and the cons regarding that undiscussed question. For today, we'll focus on this:

 He once was mocked as "The Great I-Am." Today, he's known as the sitting president.

It was his latest ridiculous claim—the latest in an endless succession of ludicrous but widely repeated misstatements. Is something "wrong" with this powerful person? 

Also, how in the world—how in earth—did he get to be this way?

How did he get to be like this? In Monday morning's report, we started pointing you at one insider's explanation. In the summer of 2020, she offered her assessment of that puzzle in a major best-selling book. 

Simon and Schuster, start packing your bags! The best-seller in question was this:

Too Much and Never Enough:
How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man
By Mary L. Trump

About The Book

In this revelatory, authoritative portrait of Donald J. Trump and the toxic family that made him, Mary L. Trump, a trained clinical psychologist and Donald’s only niece, shines a bright light on the dark history of their family in order to explain how her uncle became the man who now threatens the world’s health, economic security, and social fabric.

Mary Trump spent much of her childhood in her grandparents’ large, imposing house in the heart of Queens...

For the record, that's Mary L. Trump, Ph.D. She actually is "a trained clinical psychologist"—and she said she considers her famous uncle to be "the world's most dangerous man."

Setting that assessment to the side, how did her uncle get to be the way he currently is? How did he become a person who would emit endless streams of ludicrous claims, like the apparently bogus claim he launched on the world last Friday?

We don't want to bury the lede! Early in her massive best-seller, Mary Trump asserted that, in her view, President Trump's father, Fred Trump, was "a high-functioning sociopath." 

She noted the widely-accepted fact that the children of sociopaths will often have a hard way to go. Be that as it may, she also offered his assessment of her uncle, the president:

Prologue

[...]

None of the Trump siblings emerged unscathed from my grandfather’s sociopathy and my grandmother’s illnesses, both physical and psychological, but my uncle Donald and my father, Freddy, suffered more than the rest. In order to get a complete picture of Donald, his psychopathologies, and the meaning of his dysfunctional behavior, we need a thorough family history.

In the last three years, I’ve watched as countless pundits, armchair psychologists, and journalists have kept missing the mark, using phrases such as “malignant narcissism” and “narcissistic personality disorder” in an attempt to make sense of Donald’s often bizarre and self-defeating behavior. I have no problem calling Donald a narcissist—he meets all nine criteria as outlined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5)—but the label gets us only so far.

[...]

Does Donald have other symptoms we aren’t aware of? Are there other disorders that might have as much or more explanatory power? Maybe. A case could be made that he also meets the criteria for antisocial personality disorder, which in its most severe form is generally considered sociopathy but can also refer to chronic criminality, arrogance, and disregard for the rights of others...

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

So the niece assessed. 

The fact that Mary Trump stated those views doesn't mean that those views are accurate, true or correct. Also, assessments concerning "mental illness / mental disorder" are, on a conceptual basis, more complex than are assessments of most matters of "physical illness." 

That said, Mary Trump has the background of a trained specialist—and she has a second background as a member of the president's family. She was prepared to say that her uncle is the world's most dangerous man—but also that he seems to check the boxes for what we would call a "sociopath."

In her well-written, largely undiscussed book, she said that we should fear the adult—but she was also able to pity the child. Based upon family history which was apparentlty largely passed down by her aunt Maryanne (Donald Trump's older sister), she traces the story of the dangerous man back to his father's alleged sociopathy, but also to his mother's very serious medical issues, which began when the world's most dangerous man was just two years old.

Pity the child, she was able to say. At the start of Chapter One, she takes us back to the late 1940s. Her uncle is two years old as these events take place:

CHAPTER ONE: The House

“Daddy, Mom’s bleeding!”

They’d lived in the “House,” as my grandparents’ home was known, for less than a year, and it still felt unfamiliar, especially in the middle of the night, so when twelve-year-old Maryanne found her mother lying unconscious in one of the upstairs bathrooms—not the master bathroom but the bathroom she and her sister shared down the hall—she was already disoriented. There was blood all over the bathroom floor. Maryanne’s terror was so great that it overcame her usual reluctance to disturb her father in his bedroom, and she flew to the other end of the house to rouse him.

Fred got out of bed, walked quickly down the hall, and found his wife unresponsive. With Maryanne at his heels, he rushed back to his bedroom, where there was a telephone extension, and placed a call.

Already a powerful man with connections at Jamaica Hospital, Fred was immediately put into touch with someone who could get an ambulance to the House and make sure the best doctors were waiting for them when they arrived at the emergency room...

Shortly after Mary arrived at the hospital, she underwent an emergency hysterectomy after doctors found that serious postpartum complications had gone undiagnosed after Robert’s birth nine months earlier. The procedure led to an abdominal infection, and then further complications arose.

The niece's tale invites us to pity more than one child. "Maryanne spent the night crying alone in her room while her younger siblings remained asleep in their beds, unaware of the calamity," she writes. After that, also this:

She went to school the next day full of dread. Dr. James Dixon, the headmaster of Kew- Forest, a private school she had begun attending when her father joined the board of directors, came to get her from study hall. “There’s a phone call for you in my office.”

Maryanne was convinced that her mother was dead. The walk to the principal’s office was like a walk to the scaffold. All the twelve-year-old could think was that she was going to be the acting mother of four children.

There's more than one child to be pitied here. That said, the life of the president's mother had been saved. Here is the fuller account:

Mary would undergo two more surgeries over the next week, but she did indeed make it. Fred’s pull at the hospital, which ensured that his wife got the very best doctors and care, had probably saved her life. But it would be a long road back to recovery.

For the next six months, Mary was into and out of the hospital. The long-term implications for her health were serious. She eventually developed severe osteoporosis from the sudden loss of estrogen that went with having her ovaries removed along with her uterus, a common but often unnecessary medical procedure performed at the time. As a result, she was often in excruciating pain from spontaneous fractures to her ever-thinning bones.

According to Mary L. Trump, Mary Trump—the president's mother—never did fully recover. A bit later, she offers this account:

Mary never completely recovered. Restless to begin with, she became an insomniac. The older kids would find her wandering around the House at all hours like a soundless wraith. Once Freddy found her standing at the top of a ladder painting the hallway in the middle of the night. In the morning her children sometimes found her unconscious in unexpected places; more than once, she ended up having to go to the hospital. That behavior became part of the life of the House. Mary got help for the physical injuries she sustained but none for whatever underlying psychological problems made her put herself into high-risk situations.

We invite you to pity the children thrown into this circumstance. 

In the wake of this medical incident, an unfortunate state of affairs obtained inside The House. According to this nation's folk wisdom, "Motherless child sees a hard time when mother is gone." According to Mary L. Trump, this situation now obtained: 

During and after her surgeries, Mary’s absence—both literal and emotional—created a void in the lives of her children. As hard as it must have been for Maryanne, Freddy, and Elizabeth, they were old enough to understand what was happening and could, to some extent, take care of themselves. The impact was especially dire for Donald and Robert, who at two and a half years and nine months old, respectively, were the most vulnerable of her children, especially since there was no one else to fill the void. The live-in housekeeper was undoubtedly overwhelmed by the sheer volume of housework. Their paternal grandmother, who lived nearby, prepared meals, but she was as terse and physically unaffectionate as her son. When Maryanne wasn’t in school, much of the responsibility of taking care of the younger kids fell to her. (As a boy, Freddy wouldn’t have been expected to help.) She gave them baths and got them ready for bed, but at twelve there was only so much she could do. The five kids were essentially motherless.

"The five kids were essentially motherless." In the judgment of the clinical psychologist, the impact would have been especially dire for the fourth of the five Trump children, who was then only two years old.

So it started, Mary Trump writes, though it's also true that the child of a sociopath may be facing mental health danger under any circumstance. (Sociopathy can have "some or even a strong genetic basis." standard sources seem to say.)

In the family history she offers, Mary L. Trump goes on to describe the deeply unattractive way Fred Trump, the president's father, related to his children as the sole functioning parent. That complex story takes us up to the time when the current sitting president received an unflattering nickname and was even shipped off to "reform school."

In Monday's report, we showed you the passage in which Donald Trump, then maybe 11 or 12, came to be mocked as "The Great I-Am" by his brother, Freddy, who was eight years older. According to Mary L. Trump, the future president's behavior was already rather unattractive at this point in time. 

In Chapter Three of her best-selling book, she describes the state of play as adolescence drew on:

CHAPTER THREE: The Great I-Am

[...]

Encouraged by his father, Donald eventually started to believe his own hype. By the time he was twelve, the right side of his mouth was curled up in an almost perpetual sneer of self-conscious superiority, and Freddy had dubbed him “the Great I-Am,” echoing a passage from Exodus he’d learned in Sunday school in which God first reveals himself to Moses.

[...]

Though Donald’s behavior didn’t bother [his father]—given his long hours at the office, he wasn’t often around to witness much of what happened at home—it drove his mother to distraction. Mary couldn’t control him at all, and Donald disobeyed her at every turn. Any attempt at discipline by her was rebuffed. He talked back. He couldn’t ever admit he was wrong; he contradicted her even when she was right; and he refused to back down. He tormented his little brother and stole his toys. He refused to do his chores or anything else he was told to do. Perhaps worst of all to a fastidious woman like her, he was a slob who refused to pick up after himself no matter how much she threatened him. “Wait until your father comes home” had been an effective threat with Freddy, but to Donald it was a joke that his father seemed to be in on.

Finally, by 1959, Donald’s misbehavior—fighting, bullying, arguing with teachers—had gone too far. [The private] Kew-Forest [school] had reached its limits. Fred’s being on the school’s board of trustees cut two ways: on the one hand, Donald’s behavior had been overlooked longer than it otherwise might have; on the other, it caused Fred some inconvenience. Name-calling and teasing kids too young to fight back had escalated into physical altercations. Fred didn’t mind Donald’s acting out, but it had become intrusive and time consuming for him. When one of his fellow board members at Kew-Forest recommended sending Donald to New York Military Academy as a way to rein him in, Fred went along with it. Throwing him in with military instructors and upperclassmen who wouldn’t put up with his shit might toughen up Fred’s burgeoning protégé even more. Fred had more important things to do than deal with Donald.

I don’t know if Mary had any say in the final decision, but she didn’t fight for her son to stay home, either, a failure Donald couldn’t help but notice. It must have felt like a replay of all the times she’d abandoned him in the past.

Over Donald’s objections, he was enrolled at NYMA, a private boys’ boarding school sixty miles north of New York City. The other kids in the family referred to NYMA as a “reform school”—it wasn’t prestigious like St. Paul’s, which Freddy had attended. Nobody sent their sons to NYMA for a better education, and Donald understood it rightly as a punishment.

The essentially motherless child had been renditioned to what his siblings called "a reform school." According to Mary L. Trump, his behavior had exceeded the bounds of what was tolerable at the local private school he attended, even though his wealthy father sat on the school's board.

In that passage, Mary Trump describes the conduct of the 12-year-old child. A fairly obvious complaint could be made about this familiar, unflattering portrait:

He talked back. He couldn’t ever admit he was wrong; he contradicted [his mother] even when she was right; and he refused to back down. He tormented his little brother and stole his toys. 

A person could wonder if that unflattering portrait had perhaps been "reversed engineered"—had perhaps been composed, intentionally or otherwise, with the familiar behaviors of the sitting president in mind.

Was that passage "reverse engineered?" Everything is possible! That said, the young person in question was sent off to NYMA, which he attended through his high school graduation. 

(Years later, as reported by Slate, he made ludicrous claims about the athletic greatness he displayed while playing first base on that school's baseball team. Such conduct rarely stops.)

Last Friday, the person in question made his latest odd claim. It seems fairly clear that his claim was  false on the literal level, and that a second, more fanciful interpretation of what he had conceivably meant was also simply absurd.

There the president went again, making his latest ludicrous claim. When he did, braindead adepts repeated his claim on the Fox News Channel, and the permissive organs of Blue America agreed to just stare into air.

To her credit, Mary Trump is able to pity the child. She also said that we should fear the dangerous adult who emerged from her family's tortured history.

By the age of 12, he was being mocked as "The Great I-Am." Today, at the age of 78, major organs of Blue America afford him a much wider berth.

His latest claim was almost surely false. It's being bruited all over Red America, but then again, so what? Over here in Blue America, this latest familiar misconduct has been almost completely ignored.

Should the organs of Blue America find a way to confront this practice? Tomorrow, we'll examine that question—though by tomorrow, without any doubt, the beat will have gone on.

Many citizens believe what the president said. "Something we were withholding made us weak," Robert Frost once alleged.

Tomorrow: A few things we've perhaps been withholding