FRIDAY, JULY 18, 2025
A delusion we can't seem to quit: President Trump is back in the news this morning.
Rather, he was back in the news last night. Hope sprang eternal on Blue America's cable news shows in the wake of the latest report.
The report had come from the Wall Street Journal. Headline included, it starts out like this:
Jeffrey Epstein’s Friends Sent Him Bawdy Letters for a 50th Birthday Album. One Was From Donald Trump.
It was Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday, and Ghislaine Maxwell was preparing a special gift to mark the occasion. She turned to Epstein’s family and friends. One of them was Donald Trump.
Maxwell collected letters from Trump and dozens of Epstein’s other associates for a 2003 birthday album, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
Pages from the leather-bound album—assembled before Epstein was first arrested in 2006—are among the documents examined by Justice Department officials who investigated Epstein and Maxwell years ago, according to people who have reviewed the pages. It’s unclear if any of the pages are part of the Trump administration’s recent review.
[...]
The letter bearing Trump’s name, which was reviewed by the Journal, is bawdy—like others in the album. It contains several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker. A pair of small arcs denotes the woman’s breasts, and the future president’s signature is a squiggly “Donald” below her waist, mimicking pubic hair.
The letter concludes: “Happy Birthday—and may every day be another wonderful secret.”
To what "wonderful secret" did the letter allude? We can imagine several possibilities, but at present that's an unknown.
The bawdy letter from the future president was a classic example of "boys being [a bit prehuman]." This throwback sexual sensibility is sprawled all over the Fox News Channel every afternoon and everyone with the ladies of the Fox News Channel playing their role in the game.
Last night, Blue American cable news channels were thrilled by the Journal's report. As of this morning, MSNBC and CNN had scaled back the amount of emphasis.
Left to the side, as it constantly is, was a basic political question:
How did we ever manage to lose to this guy in the first place?
How did we lose to President Trump? As we watched Nicolle Wallace (a major cable news journalist) speak with Jason Bateman (a well-known Hollywood actor), we were struck by the following point:
They seem to have no idea. They don't seem to have the first clue.
Let's review! Bateman strikes us as a thoroughly good, decent person. To our eye and ear, he's quite articulate and he's surprisingly sharp.
We find it harder to heap praise on Wallace, but that's only because we think her political judgment has been so poor in recent years. And no one has perfect political judgment, except perhaps for us.
How did we ever lose to President Trump? Let's start with a basic fact:
Especially under the circumstances, we didn't lose by much. Under the circumstances, it's amazing to see how narrow the president's victory margin was.
Last November, Candidate Trump managed to win by less than 1.5 points, in a year when he should have won by a lot. He managed to win by that narrow margin in a year when his apparent opponent melted down in a June debate and had to withdraw from the race in mid-July!
He was then replaced, in clumsy fashion, by a substitute candidate who was never "presidential timber" to begin with. (We don't mean that as an insult. Almost no one ever is, including President Biden.)
Handed that remarkable state of affairs, the current president managed to squeak out a remarkably slender win. That suggests how weak a candidate he too actually was:
Still, those of us in Blue American managed to lose to that guy!
How in the world did we manage to do that? Nicolle Wallace has no idea. Neither does Bateman, a thoroughly good and decent person who isn't a political analyst.
How do we know they have no idea? Because of the things they said during their recent colloquy on Wallace's new podcast.
The podcast has a remarkably ill-advised name: The Best People with Nicolle Wallace. Setting that name to the side for now, has a less insightful political discussion ever taken place on this earth?
Wallace is a major cable news journalist. As noted, Bateman isn't. That said, what sorts of things did they say during their hour-long discussion? We'll start with this stunning incomprehension on display in this portrait of the state of play involving this nation's Trump voters:
WALLACE (6/3/25): I think politics is like Nordstrom, right? Like the customer’s always right.
I worked at Nordstrom one year in college and like people would return things, they were like eleven years old and stained? And I remember going to like a manager, I’m like, "You’re going to take that skirt back?" and they’re like, "Yes, we take back any—" Like, so the voter’s always right.
But I think that to the degree that voters were saying something about Biden’s age, or about inflation, or about the democracy, you know, instead of trying to change what they were saying, I think people are too slow to not listen to it.
But I do think it’s still true that people face-to-face don’t hate each other as much as people do online. And so, I feel like to the degree that I think we could be okay, I still think it’s like going and getting in front of people. Like, I still think the resurgence of like— Like, if this were political—this is retail politics, right? It is two people talking to each other and listening to each other.
I think that’s what politics has to go back to. And then I think—
What in the world was she talking about? We'll admit we aren't real sure—but whatever the answer might turn out to be, that goulash led on to this:
BATEMAN (continuing directly): Well, the thing—
WALLACE: Right?
BATEMAN: But that presupposes that they have access to a speaker from which a bunch of facts are coming. So, what do you do about that, you know, your point about the customer is always right?
Well, they’re making their "right" decision on facts that might not be facts. And so, what do you do about that?
In other words, do you think Trump would have gotten the same number of votes if the people who voted for him had access, to or the curiosity to seek out and find, the truth? Because they’re not getting the truth over on Fox? The $780-some million lawsuit is proof of it.
And that was just one issue. So, what do you do about that?
It's true! Voters aren't getting "the truth" over on Fox a large amount of the time. And that is a major problem within our failing discourse.
One other problem is this:
As is clear elsewhere in this colloquy, Bateman believes that voters are getting "the truth" when they watch MSNBC. You'll see that assumption emerge below. For now, Bateman's question led to this astounding reply from Wallace:
WALLACE (continuing directly): You’re so good. I can’t believe you’re asking me a question. I wanted to ask, so this is my thing.
BATEMAN: Yeah.
WALLACE: This is the thing that keeps me up at night. I think the truth has to be the next moonshot. And I think that all the smartest people in the world, maybe all the fired scientists, have to figure out how to make the truth the thing that’s sticky, the thing that goes viral, like the truth has to be the thing that people are sending around and they’re like, you know, look at this when no one’s watching, this is the truth about Trump or this is the truth about—
BATEMAN: But who’s the arbiter of what is true? I’ve always fantasized that, you know, that little grade that’s on the front of restaurants? You know, A, B, C or whatever?
WALLACE: Yeah!
BATEMAN: Like, it’ll be great if media was forced to have that little bug in the bottom right corner of— You know, just like on MSNBC. During the day, it’s news reporting and it’s facts. And at night, it's opinion!
WALLACE: Yeah.
BATEMAN: And like, that should have—it’s a separate letter. no better, no worse—just identifies that. And therefore, you can intellectualize the thing that you’re talking about, opine on, whatever it is. But the same burden is not placed on that reporter in front. And then on Fox, they can go and freestyle if they want. And on MSNBC, you can freestyle if you want.
I happen to think—I'm a huge fan—but I happen to think that MSNBC doesn’t drift from the truth. They just have this immense amount of really interesting, solid facts to talk about. And so, they don’t have to freestyle and embellish...
With apologies, that has to be one of the most clueless exchanges we've ever seen or heard. And remember:
Bateman isn't a professional journalist—but the host of this podcast has been a highly influential journalist in recent years. She's been a major star of Blue America's journalistic firmament down through these politically disastrous years.
In Wallace's view, "all the smartest people in the world" have to figure out how to turn "the truth" into "the thing that goes viral." That's an astoundingly underfed view of the way any such discourse could ever conceivably work. But this is the person the corporate bosses at MSNBC chose as the person to lead us.
To Bateman's credit, he almost seems to see the basic problem here. To his credit, he almost seem to understand a basic point:
In the vast array of matters under discussion, it isn't easy to come up with some perfect version of "the truth."
He seems to know there's a problem there. But he's soon imagining a system in which someone gives each channel a rating—a sticker the channel can put on display to show their viewers that that they are telling the truth.
Stating the obvious, that picture of a possible world comes from the distant far side of Neptune. The journalist in this discussion shows no sign of being aware of any such obvious fact.
"Who’s the arbiter of what is true?" It's an excellent, ancient question! Sadly, though, Bateman's question quickly led to this:
He seems to think that what he sees on MSNBC really is "true," full stop. For that reason, he says that MSNBC, unlike Fox, doesn't have to embellish.
Those of us in Blue America have been hearing "the truth!" This leads Bateman, a good, decent person, to become a voice for Blue America's long-standing cultural libel:
BATEMAN (continuing directly): Talking about Pete Buttigieg, he’s been on Fox a bunch of times and is somehow, you know, reaching that audience. I asked him why he’s the only one that’s really been on there, and are the politicians not being invited on because Fox is afraid of what they’re going to say, or the politicians not want to be on because they don’t want to take the heat, do you know?
[...]
WALLACE: I love Pete, I love everything that he’s doing. And I think that that's—not only is that like the right model, I think it’s the only model. Like, you cannot leave out half of the country and, you know, you don’t need to win everybody, but you have to win over some of those folks.
BATEMAN: Yeah, but the truth-tellers or whatever book all the facts sit in from day to day, is not—there is no attempt to hide that from Republican voters.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BATEMAN: It’s ubiquitous.
WALLACE: I know.
BATEMAN: You have to make a real effort to stay insulated from the facts—
WALLACE: I know.
BATEMAN: —and common sense.
WALLACE: I know.
BATEMAN: It’s everywhere except on Fox or Breitbart.
WALLACE: It’s insane. It’s insane.
As part of the exchange, Wallace says that a political party can't leave out half the country.
As a journalist, no one has wholly ignored "half the country" any more than Wallace has! But by the end of this exchange, Bateman has slid all the way down to the ultimate libel:
We Blues are getting the truth on our cable channels. As for Republican voters, the truth is almost everywhere, but they're making no effort to attain it.
"You have to make a real effort to stay insulated from the facts," Bateman says—and Trump voters are making that effort.
Sorry, Charlie! In fact, large elements of the truth were disappeared by people like Wallace all through the years leading up to last November's election.
Were we Blues really getting "the truth" from our favorite corporate stars? Fellow Blue Americans, please!
On the channel which allegedly speaks the truth, we were told that the southern border was closed up tight as a drum, when it clownishly wasn't
We were told that President Biden was sharp as a tack, when he plainly wasn't. We were told that the cost of living was all in the electorate's heads, when it plainly wasn't.
People watching the Fox News Channel were, in fact, often receiving a clearer picture of those states of affairs than we were inside our Blue silos. And that's all before we get to the various things we Blues were told about an array of "culture war" topics—before we get to the various stances which came to be widely derided as "woke."
In our own view, the dumbest of all these ridiculous stances was the stance which went like this:
Before the people can know how to vote in 2024, they have to know if Candidate Trump had sex, on one occasion, ten years earlier, with a "porn star" who had now arrived on the scene, seeking a big bag of money.
That was one of the stances which emerged from our own millionaire corporate messengers. But from "Defund the police" on to questions involving transgender sports (and high school locker rooms), our Blue channels never warned us about the tortured logic which was moving voters over to (the highly unpopular) Trump.
Finally, there was Wallace's focus on the various legal actions designed to throw Trump into jail. Every hour she spent on the legal minutia involved in those complex cases was an hour she didn't spend talking about the everyday topics which were changing votes.
All in all, we Blues are afflicted with one major problem—with a problem we can't seem to quit. We've long believed that we liberals are "the best people," and that the others just aren't.
We believe that we're the smart ones! History traces this poisonous attitude all the way back to this story about one of Adlai Stevenson's losses to President Eisenhower:
Still Madly for Adlai
Like many of the best political stories, this one about Adlai Stevenson, the former two-time Democratic presidential nominee, is probably apocryphal. It was late in a long day on the campaign trail in 1956—or 1952, it varies with the telling—when a voice called out of the crowd:
“Every thinking person in America will be voting for you!”
“I’m afraid that won’t do,” Stevenson retorted. “I need a majority.”
So it's said that the candidate said. We convey that attitude a million ways, and everyone sees this but us.
The discussants were sure that we Blues were getting the truth from our cable news stars. They were sure that the Trump voters weren't.
In fact, the Fox News Channel is a nightmare—a cancer on the American discourse. That said, Fox viewers knew more than we Blue Americans did about the southern border, and about President Biden's apparent decline, and about several other major topics, than we admittedly brilliant Blue American voters did.
Inexplicably, Nicolle Wallace— good, decent person—named her podcast "The Best People." Almost surely, without necessarily thinking about it, she believes that she's a part of that group.
She believes that's who we are.
In part, we Blues put President Trump in power again by limping along with such thoughts. It's long been a part of the way we present ourselves to the world. We seem to harbor some desperate need to believe this about ourselves.
Everyone can see this but us! Given the astonishing meltdown of our nation's presidential campaign, President Trump squeezed into the White House.
Over here, we're left with a self-destructive delusion we Blues can't seem to quit. The border was closed up tight as a drum! Our candidate was sharp as a tack!
