THURSDAY: Only one question remains in this realm!

THURSDAY, JULY 10, 2025

Who is President Trump: Last evening, Lawrence O'Donnell continued his weeks-long sacking of Rome. As we watched his program last night, we weren't quite sure that his attack on Peter Doocy necessarily made perfect sense.

Let's start at the beginning! Yesterday, Doocy asked President Trump a question. As you can see at Mediaite, the Q-and-A went like this:

DOOCY (7/10/25): James Comey and John Brennan now under criminal investigation related to the Trump Russia probe. Do you want to see these two guys behind bars?

TRUMP: Well, I know nothing about it other than what I read today, but I will tell you, I think they’re very dishonest people. I think they’re crooked as hell and maybe they have to pay a price for that. I believe they are truly bad people and dishonest people. So whatever happens, happens.

That was the exchange in question. After playing tape of the Q-and-A, O'Donnell lowered the boom:

O’DONNELL (7/10/25): What a babbling buffoon! And I mean the reporter this time, the Fox so-called reporter. 

"Do you want to see these two guys behind bars?" That reporter used to be by far the stupidest reporter in the White House press corps, but he has now been outdone by the dregs of Trump worshipping media that have been allowed to join the White House press corps.

So, if you work at Fox and your father got you the job because he’s the morning host there, and you enjoy all of the white male privilege that comes from your father being a morning host at Fox for many years, you then become the Fox White House correspondent who thinks, “Do you want to see these two guys behind bars?” is a good question for a president.

That incompetent buffoon probably has no idea that no president would ever, or has ever, answered a question like that prior to Donald Trump. If a real criminal investigation were actually involved here, and if a president did say he wants to see these two guys behind bars, they could never end up behind bars because they would be able to appeal any prosecution on the grounds of prejudicial presidential pre-trial publicity with the president of the United States trying to publicly convict them before trial.

Which is exactly why Richard Nixon immediately issued a corrective written statement after he once let slip into a microphone just for a second that he thought Charles Manson was guilty in the middle of Charles Manson’s criminal trial in which Charles Manson was eventually found guilty of multiple murders. Charles Manson tried to get a mistrial in the case by bringing a newspaper headline into the courtroom the next day saying, “Manson guilty, Nixon declares.”

If you are a thinly educated in the law or presidential history Fox guy, and your father gets you a job as a White House correspondents, you know none of that. And you brandish your stupidity every day with a kind of egotistical obliviousness that comes from the deep well of ignorance that you bring to your job every day at Fox and at the Trump White House.

O'Donnell has been like this for weeks. We're not sure that last night's attack on (Peter) Doocy necessarily made perfect sense.

O'Donnell's aim was certainly true when it comes to the history and to the historical norms. It's true! Presidents have (almost) always avoided making statements about matters like this, for the reasons O'Donnell cited.

That said: 

As Doocy certainly understands, President Trump is like no other president in modern American history. We'll guess that Doocy probably does know that no other president would have answered a question like that. But since President Trump almost surely would, we're not sure that Doocy shouldn't have asked.

Trump came close to answering Doocy's question. Let's face it—he basically did! That's a break with long tradition, but there's no part of being president which isn't, for better or perhaps for much worse, currently being reengineered by the sitting president.

We're not sure why Doocy shouldn't have asked. A more traditional and measured president would have refused to answer, as others have typically done.

At any rate, this incident helps illustrate a basic fact of contemporary American political life. There's only one question within that realm:

Who is Donald Trump? 

Who the heck is Donald Trump? Also, Why does President Trump do the unusual things he does?

Blue America's leading reporters and analysts have largely focused on a couple of answers to that question, starting with this:

Donald J. Trump is a liar! 

Also, He's in it every step of the way for no one but Donald J. Trump!

In this conventional portrait, President Trump is the person described by Bob Dylan way back in the earliest days:

That man who with his fingers cheats
Who lies with every breath

In this portrait, President Trump is a rational actor, but one who is relentlessly acting in his own narrow self-interest. It seems to us that the actual portrait might lead off in another direction—off in the direction of a certain type of delusional belief. 

The president's niece, Mary Trump, sketched the general outline of this portrait in her 2020 best-seller, Too Much and Never Enough. It's too late to do anything about it now, but we'll sketch that portrait in more detail in the days to come.

In our ultimate view, the people to speak to would be medical specialists. In Blue America, our journalists have almost universally agreed that they must never do any such thing—that they must never do that.

More on Doocy the elder: At any rate, O'Donnell went off on Peter Doocy last night. For the record, Doocy's father—Steve Doocy—is no longer one of the three co-hosts of the weekday Fox & Friends program.

Complaints had surfaced, post-election, that Doocy Sr. was perhaps a bit soft. After twenty-six years on the Fox & Friends couch, he's been replaced by the more reliably irate Lawrence Jones.

After twenty-six years on the sofa, he's been relegated to life on the road, where he now does human interest reports. Post-election, Fox has continued to toughen its fare, not that anyone in Blue America would ever notice or comment or care.

As for O'Donnell, he is extremely angry—but however understandable such anger may be, it may not always help. On Tuesday night, his weird criticism of CNN's Kaitlin Collins struck us as his biggest misfire yet.

O'Donnell has a lot of to offer. His anger may not always help.