HELLO STRANGER: A strange little man on a major "news channel"...

MONDAY, JULY 28, 2025

...could no longer hold it in: As of last Thursday night, he could no longer hold it in.

Or at least. that's the way it appeared as the Fox News Channel's Greg Gutfeld swung into action on Gutfeld!, his (prime time) "cable news" program.

(The program airs at 10 p.m.—in the East. It airs at 9 o'clock in the Central Time Zone, at 7 o'clock on the coast.)

Judging from appearances, the little guy with the very large anger could no longer hold it in. "At this stage of the narrative," we may perhaps, be allowed to describe the immediate triggers to the astounding account of the relevant facts he unloosed on the nation that evening.

His account was an unmistakable fraud. The triggering events went like this:

The fellow exploded last Thursday night. Six days earlier—on Friday, July 18—the Trump administration's Director of National Intelligence had issued a hall-of-mirrors press release which carried an eye-catching headline:

New Evidence of Obama Administration Conspiracy to Subvert President Trump’s 2016 Victory and Presidency 

Tulsi Gabbard's press release had employed some remarkable language. After presenting a welter of bullet points, it included a statement by Director Gabbard which started off like this:

The issue I am raising is not a partisan issue. It is one that concerns every American. The information we are releasing today clearly shows there was a treasonous conspiracy in 2016 committed by officials at the highest level of our government. Their goal was to subvert the will of the American people and enact what was essentially a years-long coup with the objective of trying to usurp the President from fulfilling the mandate bestowed upon him by the American people.

"I am providing all documents to the Department of Justice to deliver the accountability that President Trump, his family, and the American people deserve," the Director said at the end of her statement. 

According to Director Gabbard, President Trump and his family deserved nothing less! 

Unmistakably, for better or worse, Gabbard had detonated a major rhetorical bomb. Over that weekend—from Friday, July 18 through Sunday, July 20—she proceeded to appear on three major Fox News Channel / Fox Business shows. 

On those programs, she made it clear that she was accusing President Obama himself of having engaged in that "treasonous conspiracy"—of having engaged in the act of treason which designed to "enact what was essentially a years-long coup."

Back in 2016, President Obama had engaged in an act of treason designed to enact a coup! So said the DNI—but one problem quickly emerged:

As she shuffled the jumble of bullet-points which had appeared in her published statement, certain acts of conflation—of confusion and apparent illogic—instantly seemed to appear. 

Despite this fairly obvious problem, the Director doubled down on her initial claims, in dramatic fashion, on Wednesday, July 23. She did so during an appearance in the White House press briefing room—an appearance whose transcript and videotape you can peruse by clicking here.

At the nine-minute mark of that day's press briefing, scolder-in-chief Karoline Leavitt stepped aside and turned the proceedings over to Gabbard. Dressed in the color of female enfranchisement, Gabbard delivered a thirteen-minute statement, then took questions for an additional seventeen minutes. 

Gabbard commanded the stage at the briefing for thirty minutes in all. Immediately after the handoff occurred, the Director restated major points of her basic claim:

LEAVITT (7/23/25): I will now pass it over to the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, to speak more about all of this, and then we will open it up for questions afterwards. Tulsi, thank you for being here.

GABBARD: Thank you very much. Good afternoon. 

At President Trump's direction and with the support and coordination with the House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rick Crawford, today, we've released a declassified oversight majority staff report that was produced in September of 2020.

The stunning revelations that we are releasing today should be of concern to every American. This is not about Democrats or Republicans. This has to do with the integrity of our democratic republic and American voters having faith that the votes cast will count. There is irrefutable evidence that detail how President Obama and his national security team directed the creation of an intelligence community assessment that they knew was false. They knew it would promote this contrived narrative that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help President Trump win, selling it to the American people as though it were true. It wasn't.

The report that we released today shows in great detail how they carried this out. They manufactured findings from shoddy sources, they suppressed evidence and credible intelligence that disproved their false claims, they disobeyed traditional tradecraft intelligence community standards and withheld the truth from the American people.

In doing so, they conspired to subvert the will of the American people who elected Donald Trump in that election in November of 2016, they worked with their partners in the media to promote this lie, ultimately to undermine the legitimacy of President Trump, and launching what would be a years-long coup against him and his administration. We're here today because the American people deserve the truth, they deserve accountability, and they deserve justice.

And so on from there, at some length. Having said that, we'll quickly add this:

It almost seemed that the T-bomb had been withdrawn at this point. No version of the word "treason" emerged from the Director's lips during her thirteen-minute statement.

There had still been "a years-long coup," but no claim of treason had been made—but then, the Q-and-A session began. 

At that point, Leavitt threw to Emily Jashinsky of UnHerd, a British news and opinion site. Jashinsky was perched in Leavitt's "new media seat." This exchange occurred:

LEAVITT: Thank you, Tulsi, and we do want to take questions on this topic while the Director has time for this topic. She will leave. I'm happy to take questions on other matters after that, but if anyone has questions for Director Gabbard, you're welcome to ask them. 

We'll start with our new media seat, as always. Emily, go ahead.

JASHINSKY: Thank you, and Director Gabbard, this one is for you. Do you believe that any of this new information implicates former President Obama in criminal behavior?

GABBARD: We have referred and will continue to refer all of these documents to the Department of Justice and the FBI to investigate the criminal implications of this.

JASHINSKY: For even former President Obama?

GABBARD: Correct. The evidence that we have found and that we have released directly point to President Obama leading the manufacturing of this intelligence assessment, there are multiple pieces of evidence and intelligence that confirm that fact.

Obama had likely engaged in criminal conduct. That said, the word "treason" still hadn't been heard. 

At that point, Leavitt called on Ed O'Keefe of CBS News. As usual, the deep state was up to no good.

For that obvious reason, this exchange occurred:

LEAVITT (continuing directly): Ed, go ahead.

O'KEEFE: Director Gabbard, thank you. So just two questions, but to begin on that. The president yesterday, you've inferred that the former president helped lead a coup. Based on what you now see, do you believe President Obama is guilty of treason?

GABBARD: I'm leaving the criminal charges to the Department of Justice. I'm not an attorney, but as I've said previously, when you look at the intent behind creating a fake manufactured intelligence document that directly contradicts multiple assessments that were created by the intelligence community, the expressed intent and what followed afterward can only be described as a years-long coup and a treasonous conspiracy against the American people, our republic, and an attempt to undermine President Trump's administration.

Borrowing from Camus, "The word [treason] had just been uttered for the first time." And yes, Gabbard seemed to say that the former president had engaged in some such conduct.

So it went as Director Gabbard brought her mountains of alleged evidence forward. How complicated can it get within her binders of bullet points? 

The complexification can be a bit overwhelming! Here's what happened next:

O'KEEFE (continuing directly): The Senate Intelligence Committee spent several years looking into this and unanimously agreed in a bipartisan fashion, Secretary of State Rubio was a member of that committee, that there was no political interference. There was a years-long Justice Department investigation into this as well that also concluded no political interference. So help us from a 50,000-foot level, explain—what do you now have that refutes those two [inaudible]?

GABBARD: I will encourage you. In my role as the Director of National Intelligence, my job began, as I said, when I came into this role, was to make sure that we are telling the truth to the American people and that we are ensuring that the intelligence community is not being politicized. So I'm not asking you to take my word for it. I'm asking you and the media to conduct honest journalism, and the American people to see for yourself in the documents that we've released now, close to 200 pages, that point in multiple references, multiple examples to include comments that have been made by senior intelligence professionals who are some still working within these agencies today that confirm the conclusions that we have drawn, that President Obama directed an Intelligence Community Assessment to be created to further this contrived false narrative that ultimately led to a years-long coup to try to undermine President Trump's presidency.

Uh-oh! In a jumble of salad-adjacent locutions, Gabbard said she was asking the media (and the public itself!) to examine "close to 200 pages" of documents as they sought to confirm her swirling array of statements and accusations. 

She was making that simple request! Over at the Fox News Channel, it was extremely unlikely that a very small man with a mountain of anger was going to conduct such a search.

As of Wednesday, July 18, Gabbard was doubling down on her accusations, "treasonous" conduct and all. On Thursday evening, July 19, a major star of "cable news" could no longer hold it in.

The little guy was very angry, as he routinely is. In the next two days, we're going to show you what he told millions of viewers that night, right at the start of his heavily watched, prime time "cable news" program.

Can a sprawling nation expect to survive with people like this angry fellow in seats of "journalistic" power? You're asking a very good question—and all this week, we're going to ask you to ponder who this particular person actually is.

Hello, Stranger! As far as we know, the song emerged, live and direct, from the American song book. In the early years of the recorded music industry, it became one of the trademark songs of "The Original and Great Carter Family."

(Full disclosure! We opened for Johnny and June on one occasion in the late 1990s. Then, we stayed to watch.)

Why did the Carter Family choose to adopt that particular song? Even today, we have no idea.

That said, we're going to float in and out of that song this week as we ask you to contemplate a present-day state of affairs:

As at sacred Troy, so too here! For better or worse, an extremely angry population has been swarming over the walls of the prevailing American city state. The angry, coarse and profane Master Gutfeld, along with the T-bomb throwing Gabbard, is part of that furious swarm.

That said, who are these unfamiliar people? In many ways, this angry, swarming aggregation may seem like puzzling strangers to those of us in Blue America. 

Who are the strangers coming over the walls? They may seem like strangers to many of us, but is it also possible that those of us, in Blue America, are strangers to ourselves?

Last Thursday evening, a furious man on a "cable news" channel could no longer hold it in! We'll admit that he persistently seems like a very strange person to us.

Who in the world is this furious person? Also, who are the strangers in Blue America who are afraid to discuss this small man?

Tomorrow and Wednesday: What the strange man (astoundingly) said 

The discography: We first encountered Hello Stranger when it appeared as the initial cut on Mike Seeger's 1964 Vanguard album. That was during our high school years!

It was the opening track on the album. You can hear it by clicking here.

In the handful of years since then, Emmylou Harris has performed the song again and again. To hear the version she recorded with the late Nicolette Larson, you can just click this. (Our advice: Don't cheat yourself out of listening to this beautiful evocation.)

The story told by that mysterious song has always been a bit hard to decipher. We'll continue to float in and out of its lyrics as we pursue this week's pair of questions:

Who in the world are the furious strangers currently storming Blue America's walls? Also, who are the timorous strangers who insist on pretending that this "night assault" isn't occurring?