FRIDAY, JUNE 27, 2025
Today, it's Hegseth and Leavitt: How strange has American culture become in the years since their arrival?
We're speaking of the type of arrival which formed the basis for a major feature film back in 2026.
In this brand-new survey, the New York Times has created a list of this century's hundred best films. The film in question got voted at #29—as the 29th best so far:
Arrival
Denis Villeneuve’s lyrical alien film, based on a short story by Ted Chiang, is sci-fi at its most emotionally devastating. When a mysterious, looming extraterrestrial craft lands on Earth, a linguist played by Amy Adams, in a career-best role, is recruited to try to speak to the tentacled beings known as heptapods. Less a saga about invasion than it is about communication, “Arrival” is intoxicatingly mysterious until it wallops you with its time-turning gut punch of an ending.
We ourselves weren't blown away by the Oscar-nominated film, though we probably should have seen it in an actual movie theater.
That said, the arrival of the present day's new group of beings has now produced a cultural result as monumentally stupid as this:
Trump Threatens to Sue The NY Times and CNN Over ‘Unpatriotic’ Reporting On U.S. Military Intel
The New York Times struck a defiant tone in a Thursday letter in response to a personal lawyer for President Donald Trump demanding the paper “retract and apologize” or be sued over a report on the state of Iranian nuclear sites following Trump’s bombings.
The Times reported on the letter sent by Alejandro Brito, which threatened to sue the paper and CNN for publishing reports on a leaked Pentagon assessment that said Trump’s bombings only set Iran’s nuclear program back a few months. The assessment was labeled as an initial intelligence finding, but contradicted Trump’s public claims that Iran’s nuclear sites had been totally “obliterated.” Trump’s lawyer called the article “false,” “defamatory,” and “unpatriotic” while demanding it be retracted.
David McCraw, the Times’s deputy general counsel, replied to Brito, saying, “No retraction is needed. No apology will be forthcoming. We told the truth to the best of our ability. We will continue to do so.”
Trump has publicly raged against both the Times and CNN in recent days. On Thursday, he took to his Truth Social platform and wrote, “FAKE NEWS REPORTERS FROM CNN & THE NEW YORK TIMES SHOULD BE FIRED, IMMEDIATELY!!! BAD PEOPLE WITH EVIL INTENTIONS!!!”
And so on from there, Mediaite reporting. The stupidity has gone on and on, and then it's gone on and on some more. Existing news orgs on the planet don't seem to know how to discuss it—or they may be too frightened to try.
How peculiar has our political culture become in the years since this arrival? The fury of yesterday's press event with Pete Hegseth would be one obvious case in point.
A few hours after that serial meltdown, Karoline Leavitt went off. Is her endless ridiculous conduct really "a cancer on the discourse?" Again, we'll let Mediaite report, and then you can decide:
‘She Should Be Ashamed of Herself!’ Karoline Leavitt Unleashes on CNN Reporter Trump Wants Network to Fire
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt laid into CNN national security correspondent Natasha Bertrand on Thursday, one day after President Donald Trump demanded the reporter be “thrown out like a dog” over her reporting on the U.S.’s strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Trump took aim at Bertrand over her reporting on a leaked intelligence assessment that concluded strikes against the Iranian sites likely only set their nuclear programs back by months, rather than years as the president and other officials claimed. Trump has called the report “fake news” and lashed out at The New York Times and others for reporting on the assessment."
[...]
At a Thursday White House press briefing, Leavitt called out Bertrand by name and suggested she was being “used” by Washington, D.C. insiders with an anti-Trump agenda to “push a false narrative.” She also claimed only “bits and pieces” of the initial report were leaked.
As Leavitt called out Bertrand from her podium, she listed out other reporting the administration takes issue with, including reporting in 2020 on dozens of intelligence officials chalking up Hunter Biden’s infamously abandoned laptop to Russian disinformation, as well as reports on the origins of Covid-19.
How dumb was Leavitt yesterday? So dumb that her claims were foolish even by her own standards! Tomorrow, we'll show you the kinds of past reporting by Bertrand which had Leavitt, our latest very strange arrival, calling for the CNN journalist's head.
In the 29th best film of this century, a linguist played by Amy Adams is recruited to try to speak to a bunch of tentacled beings. Where are some such linguists now with respect to these latest arrivals?
Tomorrow, we'll look at Leavitt's pathetic attack on Bertrand. Next week, we'll conduct a type of search—a search for some sort of way to describe this new group of arrivals.
As for the film Arrival, it wasn't about an "invasion," the New York Times has said. We're not sure we'd say the same thing about the arrival of furious, deeply entitled beings like the aforementioned Leavitt and Hegseth.
They're deeply entitled and deeply aggrieved. We Blues set the stage for their arrival, but where did their looming craft come from?
No, we blues did not “set the stage” for the arrival of Trump’s goon squad. Republicans and whoever voted for Trump did that. They didn’t arrive from anywhere. They were here already but no one gave them power until Trump’s election.
ReplyDeleteSomerby is an asshole.
Wow, so it's really that simple, huh?
DeleteYes, especially when Somerby NEVER chides red voters for putting Trump into office (either term). It is time for the people who did this to our country to step up and take responsibility for it. That will mean impeaching Trump and then undoing the damage.
DeleteThey accept responsibility. They’re glad they did it.
DeleteA more complete quote from Leavitt shows that that her anger is justified.
ReplyDeleteAnd I would just like to reemphasize, you mentioned this was a low-confidence, preliminary intelligence assessment. And the entirety of that assessment was not leaked to the media. Only tidbits of that assessment were leaked to CNN.
And we have seen this playbook run before, where you have people in the intelligence community or perhaps on Capitol Hill, we don't know, but I believe the FBI is investigating to find out who that leaker was, because it's illegal, and they should be held accountable for that, leaked bits and pieces of an intel assessment to push a false narrative. And it's to the same reporter, I will add, Natasha Bertrand of CNN, who has done this in the past. In 2020, it was Natasha Bertrand, who had 51 intelligence analysts falsely lie to her, but she still put it on paper for some reason, that the Hunter Biden laptop story was Russian disinformation.
We all know that's not true, right? We can all agree on that now. That was a lie from the intelligence community.
Also in 2020, this same reporter, Natasha Bertrand, wrote that a top intel agency ruled out the man-made lab leak theory of the coronavirus origins. Again, the president was right about that. This reporter wrote a lie from the intelligence community to seek a narrative she wanted to prove, and guess what?
We now know that's the truth. Also in 2024, Bertrand pushed the suckers and losers hoax. She also pushed the fine people hoax, which was taking the president's words purposely out of context.
And then last October, and I believe this is notable, Natasha Bertrand published an article in Politico from the intelligence agency. She said that John Ratcliffe was speaking without any evidence when he said Iran was attempting to undermine President Trump's presidential campaign. And then we, of course, found out that was absolutely true.
In fact, the Biden administration declassed an intel report, which said they had high confidence that Iran had done exactly what Ratcliffe alleged. They did run an influence campaign to hurt President Trump's candidacy. In fact, we know the Iranians tried to take President Trump's life.
And so this is a reporter who has been unfortunately used by people who dislike Donald Trump in this government to push fake and false narratives. She should be ashamed of herself. And that's not what reporting is.
Journalism is trying to find the facts and the truth. And this week, we saw this same reporter being used to push a fake narrative to try to undermine the president of the United States.
Oh dear, Trump Lickspittle is still angry. What to do, what to do. Go fuck yourself, Dickhead in Cal.
Delete"A more complete quote from Leavitt shows that that her anger is justified."
DeleteNo. Not really.
What's the big deal? Bertrand merely co-authored a news piece based on a leaked, “low confidence” assessment from the DIA that claimed the U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear program had little effect. What is wrong with that? Trumpers are trying to claim it fits a pattern of partisan leaks from within the U.S. government (e.g., current and former officials in intelligence and national security agencies) to adversarial media outlets (e.g., CNN, The Washington Post) that they think were selectively framed to damage his administration politically. (e.g. the Russia-collusion allegations and Mike Flynn’s calls) but they are racists so you can't take accusations like that seriously unless they is hard evidence.
ReplyDeleteWhen James Comey admitted under oath that he leaked memos to a friend to trigger a special counsel investigation of Trump, it was just more racist, MAGA bullshit.
Deletehttps://time.com/4811044/james-comey-testimony-media-leaks/