THE PLAYERS: Furious president does it again!

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 25, 2025

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

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

Men's Health

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

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

[...]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

First, a bit of background:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For the record, this:

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

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

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

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

It had been an honor to hear him!

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

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

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