THURSDAY: "Troubled times had come..."

THURSDAY, AUGUST 28, 2025

Mayor Scott speaks with Ana Cabrera: We've admired Ana Cabrera's calm demeanor dating back to the CNN days.

We think she pretty much did the right thing on yesterday's MSNBC program, speaking to Mayor Scott. There is no perfect thing:

MSNBC Anchor Reminds Mayor His City Has One of the Highest Crime Rates After He Snaps Back at Trump

MSNBC anchor Ana Cabrera reminded Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott (D) that his city suffers from some of the highest crime rates in the country after he celebrated a 50-year low in recorded homicides in response to President Donald Trump.

Scott joined Cabrera on Tuesday, where he responded to the president’s insults against Baltimore. Trump called it a “hellhole” after Maryland Governor Wes Moore (D) invited him to walk the streets with him. Moore’s comments were to push back on Trump’s suggestion that he could deploy National Guard troops to cities like Baltimore to crack down on crime, as he has already done in Washington, D.C.

Scott argued that he is already leading the effort to reduce violent crime in Baltimore, referencing programs focused on rehabilitation and the targeting of illegal guns.

[...]

As Cabrera also pointed out, there have also been dozens of homicides in Baltimore this year. As of August 1, the city has seen 84 homicides this year, a drop from 111 during the same time in 2024.

And so on from there.

At present, Baltimore is on pace to record roughly 150 homicides this year. Would that represent a 50-year low?

Sadly, yes—it would. Let's take a look at the record.

We came to Baltimore in September 1969. We stopped being a college senior, instead becoming a fifth-grade teacher in the Baltimore City Public Schools.

According to Wikipedia's numbers, Baltimore recorded 237 homicides hat year. According to Wikipedia's numbers, that represented 26.2 homicides per 100,000 residents, while the nationwide homicide rate that year was only 7.3.

From there, the numbers bounced around—sometimes below 200, more often over. As happened almost everywhere, the big jump came in the early 1990s:

Homicides / Homicide rates, Baltimore City
1990: 305 (41.4)
1991: 304 (40.6)
1992: 335 (44.3)
1993: 353 (48.2)
1994: 321 (43.4)

As was the case elsewhere, the numbers eventually began to recede, dropping to 196 (31.3) in 2011. Then they went up again. For whatever reason, they didn't fall back from Covid-year levels until the past few years:

Homicides / Homicide rates, Baltimore City
2020: 335 (57.1)
2021: 337 (58.3)
2022: 333 (58.4)
2023: 261 (46.0)
2024: 201 (34.3)
2025: 150, projected

Yes, those numbers are dropping. That said, in 2023, the national homicide rate was only 5.5, as opposed to Baltimore's 46.0. 

Mayor Scott was elected mayor in November 2020. For whatever reason, the numbers have plainly dropped on his watch.

Who dies in all those homicides? At least two of our former fifth graders, back in the 1980s and 1990s. Also, NAME WITHHELD, under whose barely perceptible coaching we played alongside Marvelous Marvin Webster in the Baltimore Neighborhood Basketball League in the summer of 72.

(Even with Webster, we only went 9-9 that summer.  Wes Unseld was the citywide association's hands-on commissioner. Years later, we were told that our coach, a very genial person, had been murdered while driving a cab.)

It largely depends on where you live, or possibly on what you have to do to earn a living. Also, Wikipedia's entry says this:

Homicides in Baltimore are heavily concentrated within a small number of high-poverty neighborhoods. According to a 2016 Baltimore Sun investigation, around 80% of the city's gun homicides are committed in 25% of the city's neighborhoods...

Gang-related crimes are usually clustered in drug territories and mostly affect people involved in drug dealing, particularly narcotics and rival gangs.

Elsewhere, homicide rates are lower. In 2017, London's homicide rate was 1.6 per 100,000. (For Montreal, click here.) The high rate of homicide in the U.S. is something we Blues sometimes like to discuss, though mainly in certain contexts. 

In large part, the ultimate story behind all this tragedy stretches back into our nation's history, as everyone surely knows. 

On a nationwide basis, the first big jump in homicide rates seems to have started in the late 1960s. Bruce Springsteen described one part of that situation in "My Hometown:"

Two cars at a light on a Saturday night
In the back seat there was a gun
Words were passed, then a shotgun blast
Troubled times had come
To my hometown.

"Troubled times had come," he said. Has any song in the annals of popular music ever been more tightly written?

THE DUEL: The dumbest children in the world...

THURSDAY, AUGUST 28, 2025

...performed on three "cable news" programs: We start with a statement of gratitude to the invaluable Rev.

The invaluable site seemed to have taken a hike in the past few weeks. As of yesterday, it was back to providing an invaluable service—it was once again publishing transcripts of such events as the bizarre "cabinet meeting" which took place two days ago.

The "cabinet meeting" ran for three hours and seventeen minutes. The invaluable Rev lets you read the statements of its various players, but especially of President Trump.

Given "the wickedness of the times" (Plato), that's an invaluable service. We expect to sample the president's endless orations at that event over the next several days.

For today, we move on to a basic question. At present, is a duel really taking place—a duel of this description: 

The Revolt of the D-Minus Students v. The Haplessness of the Elites?

For starters, is there really some such thing as "a revolt of the D-minus students?" For those who would doubt the things we say, we take you to this report from Mediaite:

Jesse Watters and Brian Kilmeade Discuss ‘The Most Attractive First Lady Ever’

Fox News hosts Jesse Watters and Brian Kilmeade debated on The Five, Wednesday about who was “the most attractive first lady ever.”

Reacting to a report which claimed a Vanity Fair editor had threatened to walk out of the company with half of her staff if First Lady Melania Trump was featured on the cover, Watters questioned, “Was Jill [Biden] on the cover?”

“Twice, I think,” replied Kilmeade.

The conversation continued...

Full disclosure! Yesterday afternoon, we ourselves had the misfortune of watching this inanity as it occurred in real time. 

Were Watters and Kilmeade once D-minus students? We can't answer that question.

That said, their imitation of a conversation was taking place on the nation's most-watched "cable news" program! As they continued, the well-matched pair of corporate dimwits proceeded to discuss the nation's news in the following manner, with guest co-host Kennedy, the former VJ, trying to make the boys stop:

WATTERS (8/27/25): She was on the cover twice?

KILMEADE: And then you have—

WATTERS: Was Michelle Obama on the cover?

KENNEDY: Three times.

KILMEADE: Three times.

WATTERS: Okay. Do you think those two women are prettier than Melania Trump?

KENNEDY: You’re not gonna answer that. Not gonna answer that! Not gonna answer that!

WATTERS: No, do you think they’re prettier?

KILMEADE: No, no. Melania—

WATTERS: Is it not about pretty? Is it about fashion? Because Melania’s also more fashionable.

KILMEADE: Right. She is—she’s the most attractive first lady ever. Let’s be honest. I have not seen Martha Washington.

WATTERS: Martha Washington?

KILMEADE: I have not seen her.

WATTERS: She’s not your type?

KILMEADE: The problem is, when you have portraits instead of pictures—

WATTERS: You can’t really get a good look.

KILMEADE: Thank you.

WATTERS: What about Jackie O?

KILMEADE: All right, what’s your point? Why am I [inaudible]—

WATTERS: What’s my point? What’s your point? You said she [co-host Kennedy] is going to start dating somebody...

And so on, inanely, from there. Videotape is included at Mediaite's report.

"What's your point?" the one nitwit finally said. Did we mention the fact that this imitation of a discussion was taking place as an imitation of human life on the American nation's most-watched "cable news" program?

In fairness, we must say this. This imitation of a discussion was nowhere near as stupid as a discussion which occurred, two hours later, near the start of the same "cable news" channel's Ingraham Angle program.

Three hours after that, the second half of last night's Gutfeld! program was raw stupidity as raw and as stupid as raw stupidity ever gets. Greg Gutfeld himself wasn't present last night, but these imitations of humanity were:

Gutfeld!: Wednesday, August 27, 2025
Tyrus: former professional "wrestler"
Michele Tafoya: former sideline reporter
Kat Timpf: acting moderator
Jamie Lissow: comedian
Tom Shillue: comedian

Their discussions last night were jaw-dropping. We expect to expose you to those transcripts in the course of the next several days. But make no mistake:

The manicured dumbness of these discussions is the lifeblood of the programming on the current Fox News Channel. The channel's CEO, Suzanne Scott, hires the flyweights in question to offer this service, even paying them for their labors.

https://archive.org/details/FOXNEWSW_20250827_210000_The_Five/start/2580/end/2640

Also, in fairness, this: 

The flyweights on The Five were attempting to discuss this exclusive news report from the tabloid, The Daily Mail:

Vanity Fair staff erupt in fury over proposed Melania Trump cover with foul-mouthed meltdown

In fairness, if the exclusive report was accurate, we'd be inclined to regard its contents as the latest example of "the haplessness of the (Blue American) elites." 

The silly children on The Five were enjoying their silly fun. Later that evening, the bloated blowhard who performs as "Tyrus" extended a standard practice on the Gutfeld! show, offering the latest oration on the theme of what an unattractive dog Taylor Swift really is.

It's hard to overstate the sheer stupidity this corporate channel provides, or the throwback nature of its sexual content. But this is all part of what we mean when we refer to "the revolt (or revenge) of the D-minus students"—when we refer to the way their D-minus culture is seizing control of our flailing nation's culture.

A version of that destructive culture was on display in the "cabinet meeting" transcribed by the invaluable Rev. Though Blue elites preferred to focus on the conduct of the cabinet members, it was the endless orations of the sitting president which put this problem on its most vivid display.

Thanks to the invaluable Rev, it's possible today to revisit one of the endless strange claims which emerged from the sitting president's endless array of rambling, self-glorifying filibusters. In yesterday's report, we briefly sampled the claim in question. 

With the transcription now complete, we can offer the presentation at greater length. The oration concerned "my darling Vladimir." We hope you have plenty of time:

REPORTER (8/26/25): On Alaska, you had mentioned that there would be severe consequences if Vladimir Putin did not agree to a ceasefire. After that summit, that was rolled back, given the negotiations. Is he back on the clock now?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: I want to see that deal end. It's very serious what I have in mind if I have to do it, but I want to see it end. 

I think that in many ways he's there. Sometimes he'll be there, and Zelenskyy won't be there. It's like, who do we have today? I got to get them both at the same time. But I want to have it end. We have economic sanctions. I'm talking about economic, because we're not going to get into a world war.

I'll tell you what! In my opinion, if I didn't win this race, Ukraine could have ended up in a world war. We're not going to end up in a world war any more, but it would've ended up possibly in a world war. That would have been a, that would have been a— 

They were ready to trot. But just like India and Pakistan were going to end up in a nuclear war if I didn't stop them. 

It was sort of strange. I saw they were fighting, then I saw seven jets were shot down. I said, "That's not good." That's a lot of jets. $150 million planes were shot down. A lot of them. Seven, maybe more than that. They didn't even report the real number. And I'm talking to a very terrific man, Modi of India, and I say, "What's going on with you and Pakistan?" Then I'm talking to Pakistan, on trade. I say, "What's going on with you and India?" And the hatred was tremendous.

Now, this has been going on for a hell of a long time, sometimes with different names, for hundreds of years. But I said, "What's going on?" I said, "I don't want to make a trade deal." 

"No, no, no, we want to make trade deal." 

I said, "No, no, I don't want to make a trade deal with you. You're going to have a nuclear war. You guys are going to end up in a nuclear war." And that was very important to them. I said, "Call me back tomorrow, but we're not going to do any deals with you. Or we're going to put tariffs on you that are so high." 

You were there, Howard, right?

LUTNICK: Yep.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: We're going to put tariffs on you that was so high, I don't give a damn, your head's going to spin. You're not going to end up in a war. 

Within about five hours, it was done. It was done. Now, maybe it starts again. I don't know. I don't think so, but I'll stop it if it does. We can't let these things happen. 

The Russia-Ukraine situation. Last week, 7,012 soldiers—seven thousand oh twelve—soldiers died. They were Russian, they were Ukrainian, they weren't American. So a lot of people would say, "What do you care? They're not American." I care. 

Over the last couple of weeks, over 12,000 people died in two weeks. We're talking about crime where somebody's killed here? Think of it:

You have your son leaving Russia, leaving Ukraine, their little house, wherever they live with their parents. They're waving goodbye, just like our parents would wave goodbye. And they're waving, "Goodbye, son." And then a week later, his head's blown off in a stupid war by a drone. A whole new form of military problem.

So no, I'd like it to stop. I want to get it to stop. And it will not be a world war, but it'll be an economic war. And an economic war is going to be bad and it's going to be bad for Russia, and I don't want that. 

Now I have to also see, because not everybody—you know, Zelenskyy is not exactly innocent either OK? You know. It takes two people to tango, and I say it all the time, you got to get them together. I get along with Zelenskyy now, but we have a much different relationship because now we're not paying any money to Ukraine. I stopped that. We're paying money to ourselves. What's happening is NATO is buying all of the equipment and paying in full.

But even with that, forget about that. I want to get it stopped because it's a lot of lives that are being lost. Every week it's seven thousand, five thousand, six. I get the reports and I see battlefields. I'd rather not see them. And you read about Gettysburg, and you see those thousand, 600,000 people, but in that war in particular was really bad. Like 150,000 or something. Just dead bodies. 

I'm seeing the same. I see pictures, I see satellite pictures of heads over here, arms over here, legs over here. And this is like a modern age? It's no different than the worst wars that I've ever seen. And if I can stop it because I have a certain power or a certain relationship? I had a very good relationship with President Putin. Very, very good. That's a positive thing, again. 

And I think I'm probably the only—Steve Witkoff would tell you I'm the only one that can solve it. I don't know. He's told me that a few times. Unless he was saying that just to build up my ego, but it's not really. I have no ego when it comes to this stuff. I just want to see it stop. 

Thousands of young people, mostly young people, are dying every single week. If I can save that by doing sanctions, or by just being me, or by using a very strong tariff system that's very costly to Russia or Ukraine or whoever we have. But I stopped seven wars and three of those wars were going on for more than 30 years. 

You know, if you look at Congo, if you just look at any of them, almost all of them were going on for extended period of time. Now interestingly, one had just started, it was two days old and you know that one. That we did that one when we were in Scotland negotiating, it was two days, but there were two thousand dead bodies laying on the border, and I got that one stopped too. And I'm very honored by that. 

But I still—the one that I thought would be the easiest is turning out to be the hardest. That's President Putin and President Zelenskyy, but I think I'll get it done.

REPORTER: Why do you think—

PRESIDENT TRUMP: You never know, it's war. With war, you never know, right?

War's very tricky, very horrible. But with war, you never know. Things change. 

People go into war, think they're going to win the war, and then they get their asses kicked and they lose their country and they lose millions of lives. 

Nobody goes into a war thinking they're going to lose. They go in—I'm sure that Ukraine thought they were going to win, It's going to be, you know, "We're going to win." You're going to beat somebody that's 15 times your size? Biden shouldn't have let that happen. Biden shouldn't have—I mean, the man was grossly incompetent. He should have never been there. That would've never happened. But you don't go into a war that's 15 times your size.

Videotape of the whole event is available thanks to C-Span.

So went that oration. As the three-hour mark approached, the rambling disquisition consumed a full seven minutes, complete with a set of tales about the seven wars the president says he has brought to an end.

One of his miracles took only five hours! He has already stopped quite a few world wars.

The original question was never answered—the question about whether his darling, Vladimir Putin, was once again "on the clock" concerning a possible ceasefire. Last night, his darling bashed downtown Kyiv with a massive new set of attacks. Arms and legs and heads were everywhere, but the sitting American president can't seem to quit this man.

At the end of that wandering, occasionally ghoulish oration, we had heard about the arms and legs and the severed heads of the people who die in Ukraine. 

We had heard about the deaths at Gettysburg. The president still hadn't offered an assessment of his good friend, Vladimir—and he ended with that puzzling statement about the way Ukraine had somehow chosen, decided or agreed "to go into this war."

As we've watched videotape of this "cabinet meeting," we've thought that something seems to be visibly wrong with its principal participant. That would, of course, be a human tragedy, but it would also be a serious national problem.

Over here, our Blue American elites preferred to mock the cabinet members, who struggled to keep their eyes from closing as this very strange man droned on. He thinks he's probably the only one who can stop it—or at least, that's what Witkoff constantly says.

Is something wrong with President Trump? In Monday's report, we linked to the leading authority's lengthy report on the clinical term, "Grandiosity." But over here in Blue America, our tribunes don't know how to discuss that type of question, and they've agreed that they must never try.

Tomorrow, we'll tell you what we mean by that. Also, we'll visit more of this Tuesday's wandering orations. 

To see some pushback to the odd claim that Ukraine somehow chose to go into this war, you can peruse this additional report from Mediaite. But as the Fox News Channel keeps dragging the D-minus students out onto the air, they keep saying that Taylor Swift is really just a 5. They're extremely limited children.

Thye keep saying that Swift is a 5. Over here, in Blue America, our tribunes don't know how to discuss that part of their revolt either.

Tomorrow: Discussions of mental health

WEDNESDAY: When President Trump locked Washington up...

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 27, 2025

...his approvals jumped five points: As is true of every poll, the new poll by AP-NORC is only one poll.

No poll is ever perfectly accurate. If some poll was perfectly accurate, there would be no way to know that it was.

Polls provide approximations. That said, here's the way matters stand according to AP-NORC, Mediaite reporting:

Trump Surges to Best Approval Rating Ever in New AP Poll

President Trump is more popular than ever, at least according to one new poll released on Wednesday, with his approval rating jumping 5 points in the last month—an increase that coincides with his administration’s crime crackdown in Washington, D.C..

The poll results, from the The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, shows the president has a 45% approval rating nationwide. That is the best approval rating Trump has received from the AP-NORC poll in either his first or second term.

Trump’s handling of crime received a thumbs up from 53% of Americans who were polled; a whopping 88% of Republicans said they approved of the commander-in-chief’s approach to crime, while only 16% of Democrats said they liked what Trump is doing.

Some other key points on crime: 55% of respondents said it is “acceptable for the U.S. military and National Guard to assist local police in large cities,” according to the AP-NORC, but only one-third of Americans said they would support the federal government taking over police departments in American cities. The nationwide poll also found 80% of Americans believe crime is a major problem in big cities.

The report by Sean James continues from there. For the official report by AP-NORC, you can just click this.

For the record, the numbers in this poll aren't exactly "good"—but the numbers there are better. With respect to Trump's approval rating, AP-NORC had it at 42% back in March. It slid to 39 in April and June, then went to 40 last month. 

Now it's up to 45. The jump could be a statistical anomaly—or then again, probably not.

By the way:

Crime is "a major problem in big cities." When we Blues don't know how to say such things, we're looking for ways to lose.

THE DUEL: The Stepfords get mocked and the president walks!

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 27, 2025

Blue elites fail you again: We started telling you more than a decade ago:

It's all anthropology now!

At roughly that same time, Professor Norman O. Brown's presentation popped back into our heads. We don't know how or why that happened—but once again, here's part of the strange thing he said:

Apocalypse and/or Metamorphosis

[...]

I sometimes think I see that societies originate in the discovery of some secret, some mystery...and end in exhaustion when there is no longer any secret, when the mystery has been divulged, that is to say profaned...

There comes a time—I believe we are in such a time—when civilization has to be renewed by the discovery of some new mysteries...by the undemocratic power which makes poets the unacknowledged legislators of all mankind, the power which makes all things new.

For the fuller passage, just click this. 

Whatever he was talking about, he said that in May 1960, as part of this Phi Beta Kappa address. At that time, Professor Brown was becoming very hot in progressive circles. 

He said that in 1960; he may have been wrong at the time. Plainly, though, the problem he said he believed he saw has deeply infested us now. 

We refer to yesterdays "cabinet meeting"—to the more than three hour televised spectacle which Blue America's failing elites have described in a uniform manner. 

To the extent that they're bothering with the event at all, they're mocking the Stepfords—the cabinet members—but largely rushing past the president's extremely strange conduct. As the Stepfords are being mocked for their embarrassing conduct, the president deeply peculiar behavior is largely being disappeared. 

Likely through no fault of her own, Katie Rogers was assigned to discuss the event for the New York Times. Despite the astonishing conduct in question, her "news analysis" doesn't appear in today's print editions.

Yesterday afternoon, it appeared online. Headline included, her analysis starts like this

NEWS ANALYSIS
What, Exactly, Was That Cabinet Meeting?

What do you get for a president who commands everybody’s attention, all of the time?

For members of President Trump’s cabinet on Tuesday, the answer was apparently this: a televised meeting at the White House that lasted almost half the workday.

In front of a wall of cameras, the old “Apprentice” host offered a clear window into the way he was running his administration, starting with an ego that appeared to need frequent feeding, and blustery stamina: “This has never been done before,” the president said at one point, in between calling on secretaries to speak and marveling over the waiting reporters’ abilities to hold microphones and cameras aloft for several hours.

There in the Cabinet Room—which is starting to take on the gilded-cage look of Mr. Trump’s Oval Office—all of the president’s men and women took their turns, each working a little bit harder than the last to offer Mr. Trump praise and to assure him that they were working to tackle his long list of grievances.

It's true! Rogers starts with a glancing comment about the president's ego. We're even told that yesterday's bizarre event "offered a clear window into the way he was [sic] running his administration."

The tone about Trump is lightly mocking all through the Roger piece. Quickly, though, she starts to focus on the embarrassing conduct of the cabinet members:

On the embarrassing conduct of Lori Chavez-DeRemer, the labor secretary who "implored the president to come to her agency to look at his own 'big, beautiful' face on a banner."

On the embarrassing conduct of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.; "who once sawed the head off a whale and drove it home." 

On the embarrassing conduct of Secretary of State Marco Rubio; "who in his spare time is Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, acting head of the National Archives and Records Administration and acting administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development;" .

But also on the ludicrous conduct of Steve Witkoff, whose embarrassing conduct yesterday was this:

And then there was Steve Witkoff, a billionaire whose praise was so slavish that even the president seemed to pick up on the overkill. During his turn, Mr. Witkoff, the president’s peace envoy, complimented Mr. Trump’s leadership in the Israel-Gaza conflict, a war that continued this week with Israeli strikes killing 20, including journalists, at a Gazan hospital. He suggested again that Mr. Trump should receive the Nobel Peace Prize he has long coveted.

“There’s only one thing I wish for: that the Nobel committee finally gets its act together and realizes that you are the single finest candidate since the Nobel Peace, this Nobel award was ever talked about,” Mr. Witkoff said.

When he was finished, the billionaire received a round of applause from his colleagues.

Greetings from North Korea! And yes, they all knew to applaud.

For what it's worth, the conduct by the long list of sycophants—by the assembly of Stepfords—was truly astounding this day. As such, it teaches an anthropology lesson. 

Until you see such conduct occur, you might not know that it would be possible to get a room full of American adults to behave in such embarrassing ways. Plainly, yes, it's more than possible—and that was Rogers' focus.

As her "news analysis" proceeded, Rogers maintained her snarky tone—and she focused on the subordinates. Also this:

By paragraphs 6 and 7 of her analysis, she had even sought escape in this:

Mr. Trump, a pop culture maven, had relatively little to say about what was arguably the biggest news of the day: the engagement of Taylor Swift, whom he has publicly insulted and threatened for not supporting him, to Travis Kelce, the Kansas City Chiefs tight end. The event rattled on for so long that the president was asked to comment on news that had broken during the meeting.

“I wish him a lot of luck,” Mr. Trump said. “I think he’s a great guy, and I think that she’s a terrific person. So I wish them a lot of luck.”

"Arguably," the engagement was "the biggest news of the day," the New York Times journalist said. She failed to see that the actual biggest event was the extremely strange presidential behavior she was now refusing to describe.

Rogers told us what the president had to say about that high-profile engagement. She didn't tell us about the endless array of very strange things he said in the course of the three-plus hours, or about the very strange demeanor he had displayed.

She didn't tell us what was plain to the eye:

Something plainly seems to be wrong with this very important person. To anyone with eyes to see, that fact should be hard to miss.

In fairness, it wasn't just Rogers. All over the Blue American firmament, Blue elites offered mockery of the cabinet members while sliding past the disturbing state of affairs which was sitting right there before them.

Maggie Haberman did it on CNN. On MSNBC, Jen Psaki started last night's program with an essay about how strange the cabinet members had been

At 6 o'clock this very morning, Morning Joe started the same way, The cabinet members had demeaned themselves, Morning Joe viewers were told. The fact that something seems to be wrong with the sitting president is something these people can't say.

In yesterday's report, we made a certain statement about Monday's press events. We said we thought it had never been more clear that something seemed to be (tragically) wrong with the sitting president.

Yesterday, the president's weird demeanor and weird behavior were even more apparent. At Mediaite, the correspondents were perhaps a bit more frank about that fact than others who sit at higher stations.

They noted the president's very strange conduct. They did so in a string of reports which sat beneath headlines like these:

Trump Claims ‘Scum’ MSNBC Is Worse Than Violent Gangs

Trump Declares, ‘I Have the Right To Do Anything I Want’ Because ‘I’m the President’

Trump Says America Would Accept a Dictator in Exchange for Less Crime

Trump Tells Fake ‘Greatest President Of My Lifetime’ Story Hours After Fox News Busted Him—With Video

Trump Crows About His Economy, Falsely Claims Gas Is Below 2 Dollars In the South

Fox’s Jacqui Heinrich Notes ‘Unusual’ Moment When a Reporter Boosted Trump Rhetoric With Personal Story

Trump Pushes Wild Autism Claims During Cabinet Meeting With RFK Jr.

To their credit, they tried to capture some—and only some—of the president's very strange claims. Journalistically, it's much more difficult to describe his remarkably strange demeanor

How strange were many of the president's claims? Yes, he actually said that the people at MSNBC are worse than violent gang members. And no, he didn't seem to be joking, as one other Mediaite reporter decided to say.

Such claims were general over the meeting. Consider the report which started like this:

Trump Tells Fake ‘Greatest President Of My Lifetime’ Story Hours After Fox News Busted Him—With Video

President Donald Trump told a fake story about being called “the greatest president of my lifetime” by a Democratic governor—hours after a Fox News host showed the claim was false by going to the videotape.

During a photo op on Monday, Trump told the tale of how Gov. Wes Moore (D-MD) came up to him at a football game and couldn’t stop praising him:

[Transcript from Monday's event event]

Hours later, Fox News dug up the behind-the-scenes video of the scene in question—from Fox Nation’s Art of the Surge — and it proved that while Gov. Moore was respectful and collegial while discussing the Key Bridge disaster, he never said anything remotely resembling what Trump claimed.

It's true! As you can see in the full report, the president had made an extremely unlikely claim about something Governor Moore had allegedly said. But, as happenstance had it, videotape existed of the exchange in question. 

As the (Fox News) videotape showed, Moore had said nothing like what Trump had claimed—but then again, so what? During yesterday's event, "Trump told the story again—and even falsely claimed the video proved it."

Tommy Christopher provides the transcripts and the tapes of this remarkably strange bit of behavior. Such bizarre behaviors were given no place in Rogers' "analysis" piece.

Colloquially, the president's behavior might be called delusional.  Was it also diagnosable as some sort of clinical affliction?

We don't know how to answer your question. But late in yesterday's event, as he rambled and blustered, heaping mountains of praise on himself, the very strange American president took sides, once again, with his darling Vladimir. 

He offered this during a lengthy walk in the woods concerning the war on Ukraine. We apologize for the deletions, but the rambling side trips are endless:

PRESIDENT TRUMP (8/26/25): You know, Zelensky's not exactly innocent, either, OK? You know, it takes two people to tango...I have a very good relationship with President Putin—very, very good. That's a positive thing, again.

[...]

Nobody goes into a war thinking they're going to lose. They go in—I'm sure that Ukraine thought they were going to win. It's going to be, you know, "We're going to win," you're going to beat somebody that's fifteen times your size...But you don't go into a war that's fifteen times your size. 

Under the circumstances, how was Ukraine supposed to avoid "going into" this war? Strange presentations of that type littered the countryside during yesterday's "cabinet meeting"—but it was the president's rambling presentations which ate the bulk of the three hours, not the bizarre behavior of the Pyongyang-adjacent sycophants he had gathered around him.

All over Blue America, tribunes have focused on the mountains of praise heaped on Trump by the Stepfords. They have ignored the much larger mountains of praise heaped on Trump by Trump himself as he told rambling, absurdly fact-challenged stories about his own inescapable greatness.

To our eye and to our ear, something plainly seems to be wrong with this important man. Long ago, Hans Christian Andersen sketched an anthropological lesson which is being enacted here:

We humans are often unable, or unwilling, to see our monarchs as they actually are. We refuse to see what's right before us. Instead, we "look over there."

Blue elites have fought, every step of the way, to avoid discussing what seems to be obvious about the sitting president. At the Times, they haven't even been willing to build a journalistic framework around this basic question:

Why does this man insist on saying things which are baldly and wildly inaccurate?

No president has ever behaved in the crazy way this president does, but the Times keeps saying there's nothing to look at. Instead, let's talk about the cabinet members, or about that engagement!

Watching tape of his conduct yesterday, it seemed tragically obvious to us that something seems to be wrong. Something's also wrong with the sycophants, but something plainly seems to be wrong with the man in charge. 

That is, of course, a human tragedy—but so is the conduct of the Blue elites, who continue to run in fear from what is sitting right before them.

Andersen wrote it; our Blue elites live it. Do we need the discovery of a new mystery?

We'll guess that it could be too late.

Tomorrow: Unhelpful ideas about "mental illness"

Friday: Are we sure Maureen Dowd has it right?

TUESDAY: Actual numbers for actual cities!

TUESDAY, AUGUST 26, 2025

Not that it actually matters: As we noted this morning, there's no such thing as a real discussion in this, the most degraded of all possible worlds.

Also, when various people speak these days, there's no such thing as a fact. 

This morning, we mentioned some of the misstatements which took place yesterday morning and afternoon in the Oval Office. Concerning crime in Washington, D.C., Mediate reports that CNN's Daniel Dale rose with an instant fact check.

We join his fact check in progress:

DALE (8/25/25): On the subject of D.C. crime, he said that it was an all-time crime high when he took office. He said the worst day was the day he came back.

Not even close to true. D.C. has not been even close to the all-time highs of the early 1990s.

Now, I know he’s raised questions, as the D.C. Police Union has, about the validity of some D.C. crime stats. But let’s just look at murder as an example, the least falsifiable kind of crime. 

D.C. had 187 homicides in 2024. It was over 470 in a couple years in the early ’90s. So no, nowhere close to an all-time peak.

Is homicide "the least falsifiable kind of crime?" Ot's generally regarded as the most reliable crime statistic. It's assumed that the vast majority of homicides end up getting reported or discovered—and it's hard to reclassify a dead body, turning an actual homicide into some lesser offense.

Full disclosure! Over the weekend, we gathered homicide numbers, then and now, for some of the cities which have been getting mentioned of late. We'll start with D.C., then and now. 

According to Wikipedia, here's how some of those numbers look:

Washington D.C. homicides:
1991: 482 (80.2)
1992: 443
1993: 454
1994: 399

[...]

2022: 203
2023: 274
2024: 187 (25.5)

We're starting at 1991 because that's where some of our other data sets start. The numbers in parentheses are homicide rates—number of homicides per 100,000 residents.

(Full disclosure! In 1991 and the like, we often walked to our car, late at night, after performing at the Washington Improv. On Saturday nights, we sometimes made double trips, after midnight, lugging cartons of objets. We don't remember ever thinking about the very high homicide rates; in fact, we don't think we ever did. We offer this as a way to put some of the more hysterical claims you might have heard about "roving gangs" into a type of context.)

Today, Washington's homicide rate seems to be less than one-third what it was back then. (It's still very high compared to homicide rates in other developed countries.) As with other cities, Washington's numbers are recovering from what happened in the Covid years. In most of the cities presented here, the homicide numbers are currently down again from where they were last year.

What about the nation's three biggest cities? Unless you're watching the Fox News Channel, where Gotham is persistently pictured as a dystopian hellhole, New York City has enjoyed the most striking statistical change. We'll offer homicide rates where Wikipedia does:

New York City homicides:
1991: 2,154 
1992: 1,995
1993: 1,946
1994: 1,561

[...]

2022: 436
2023: 391
2024: 377 

Los Angeles homicides:
1991: 1,025
1992: 1,092
1993: 1,077
1994: 850

[...]

2022: 382
2023: 327
2024: 280

Chicago homicides:
1991: 929 (33.3)
1992: 948
1993: 867
1994: 932

[...]

2022: 715
2023: 621
2024: 581 (21.4)

In New York City and L.A., the numbers are way down—unless you watch the Fox News Channel, where the various messengers routinely swear that they're barely able to fight their way to the studio.

The president may be coming to Baltimore. Forty miles north of D.C., here's how our numbers look:

Baltimore homicides:
1991: 304 (40.6)
1992: 335
1993: 353
1994: 321 

[...]

2022: 333
2023: 261
2024: 201 (34.3)

Way up the coast, there's Boston! For whatever reason, there were 47 homicides there in 1991, 24 last year.

There you see a bunch of reasonably accurate statistical facts. We have more to suggest about the way these homicide numbers are being debated. For now, we leave you with a warning:

At present, facts play almost zero role in the American "discourse!" As our warring tribes war on, the facts you may occasionally hear tend to be what we make them.

THE DUEL: He's changing some names and telling some tales!

TUESDAY, AUGUST 26, 2025

Could something be "wrong" with this man? On the very day we led with "Grandiosity," the theme of the day in Washington seemed to be this:

Grandiosity Gone Wild, Quite Possibly All the Way Down!

We refer to a snowstorm of statements and actions by the sitting president. Along the way, he even announced a new name change—his apparent decision to change the name of the Department of Defense to this:

The Department of War

Yes, he said he plans to do that. You can see him say it here:

PRESIDENT TRUMP (8/26/25): Pete Hegseth has been incredible with the, as I call it, the Department of War. You know, we call it the Department of Defense, but I—between us, I think we’re going to change the name. 

You want to know the truth? I think we’re going to have some information on that, maybe soon, because I think— 

You know, "Department of Defense." We won the World War I, World War II—it was called the "Department of War." And to me, that’s really what it is. Defense is a part of that. But I have a feeling we’re going to be changing. I'm talking to the people. Everybody likes that.

We had an unbelievable history of victory when it was "Department of War." Then we changed it to "Department of Defense."...It's something that you're going to be hearing about, or seeing about, over the next couple of weeks. Probably that change is going to be made over the next week or so.

So true! We adopted that name in 1949, and then we began encountering stalemates and even losing wars.

That statement was made during the president's second presser of the day—his press event in the Oval Office with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung, who was condemned to sit and listen to a serious of lengthy harangues and expositions and all-around displays of something strongly resembling grandiosity in the colloquial sense. 

In an earlier session, the president had conducted a presser as he sat at the Resolute Desk, with an array of high officials forced to stand behind him, fighting to stay awake. As happenstance had it, we happened to watch part of each of these press events, and we had a simple reaction:

We didn't think we'd ever seen the president behaving in a way which made it seem so clear that something might possibly seem to be "wrong." 

We saw him talk about burning the flag and about the riots that action (allegedly) tends to set off. We saw him talk about cashless bail, a topic we'll turn to below.

We saw him make embarrassingly silly claims about the massive "landslide" win he said he achieved last November. We saw him make what seem to be ludicrous claims about certain aspects of life in Washington at this point in time—about the way the people of the area are flocking into restaurants again.

We saw him go on and on concerning all manner of topics. The gods must have been on our side because, during the afternoon session, they spared us from seeing the apparent oddness of this:

Trump Reminds South Korean President About Country’s Sex Slave History With The Japanese

During an Oval Office Meeting with South Korean President Lee Jae-myung on Monday, U.S. President Donald Trump brought up a painful subject from the nation’s past to illustrate why South Korea doesn’t get along with its neighbor, Japan.

“Japan is a great ally of us. And I had a little bit of a hard time getting your two together because you’re still thinking about Comfort Women, right? Comfort Women! That’s all they wanted to talk about was Comfort Women. And I thought that was settled a few times over the decades.”

“Comfort Women” was the euphemism given to Korean women and girls forced into sexual slavery for Japanese soldiers during World War II. A statue memorializing the victims was erected in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul in 2011—which caused major diplomatic tensions between the two nations. “The Statue of Peace” remains standing, despite Japan’s demands that it be removed.

Trump continued, “Perhaps I’m wrong in saying it. Perhaps this isn’t right, but the whole issue of the women, Comfort Women, very specifically. We had talked, and it was a very big problem for Korea. Not for Japan. Japan, they wanted to get — they want to get on, but Korea was very stuck on that, you understand?” he asked President Lee.

“I don’t know. Perhaps you would like to answer. It’s a good question. It was hard getting Japan and Korea together because of what took place a long time ago. But Japan wants to do it. Korea was a little bit more tenuous.”

Was that an oddly awkward topic to go on about? We aren't experts on this particular topic. We did see the president when he reminisced about all the rifles at the DMZ. We'll link you to Roll Call's transcript:

REPORTER (8/25/25): Would you go back to the DMZ to meet with the North Korean leader?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: I loved it. Remember when I walked across the line and everyone went crazy, especially Secret Service? I would say they [Inaudible] and I looked into those windows, you know the windows, the glass that you could only see if you looked direct, because there was all sorts of stuff. But I looked in and I saw more rifles pointing at me than you could— There were a lot of rifles in that building.

The Secret Service was not happy. You know the buildings I'm talking about, the two blue buildings on each side. And I walked up the middle and I looked in the window and I saw more guns in that room than I've ever seen in my life. I looked at the other side and it was the same thing. And yet I felt safe.

I felt safe because I have a great relationship with Kim Jong Un. I hope it stays that way. I think it will. I have a very good relationship—I understand him. I spent a lot of free time with him talking about things that we probably aren't supposed to talk about and you know, I just—I get along with him really well.

Did that actually happen? We have no idea. The president quickly tranitioned to his standard inaccurate claim, in which this is said to occur:

"As you know, we're taking a lot of money in from China because of the tariffs."

That's what we actually saw him say; he says it all the time. As everyone knows except viewers of the Fox News Channel, what he said there is baldly untrue. As part of the cultural meltdown in which we're involved, none of the reporters in the Oval would ever so much as dream about challenging this ludicrous misstatement, which he makes all the time.

We aren't medical specialists here. That said, our reaction yesterday was simple:

It seemed to us that we'd never seen him when it seemed quite so obvious that something might seem to be "wrong." We wondered when some journalist will finally speak to some medical specialist and bring that fairly obvious, tragic question out into the light.

Was "grandiosity" (in the clinical sense) involved in those statements? How about "delusions of grandeur?" We aren't medical specialists here, but the president also said these things in the course of the day's doubleheader:

Trump Said Maryland Gov. Wes Moore Called Him “The Greatest President of My Lifetime”

Trump Claimed Europeans [Jokingly] Call Him the “President” of the Continent

We're fairly sure that Governor Moore never said that. Do Euros now ("jokingly") call hm the president of Europe? We're willing to guess that they pretty much don't, especially when he's not around.

Has there ever been a day when so many different presentations seemed to be "wrong." so strange and odd, while delivered with so much bluster? Concerning the move to declare an end to cashless bail, we were struck by this part of this news report in today's New York Times:

Trump Signs Orders Aiming to End Cashless Bail

[...]

Starting in the late 2010s, many states started to reconsider bail laws. New Jersey and Alaska were among the first states to eliminate bail for many criminal cases.

In 2019, New York passed a similar law. The measure meant that judges would not be able to set bail for misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies, like assault without serious injury and burglary.

The impetus for change in New York was the case of Kalief Browder, a Bronx teenager who spent three years on Rikers Island while he awaited trial, accused of stealing a backpack. The case was eventually dismissed, and Mr. Browder later killed himself at his parents’ home.

He died when he was 22. We heard the voice of the fictional Gretta Conroy, first heard by the younger Joyce:

"He died when he was only seventeen. Isn't it a terrible thing to die so young as that?"

Also terrible here. We know that Browder was 22 because we clicked the link to the original report, in June 2015, about his death. Discussions of matters like "cashless bail" may turn out to be quite complex:

Kalief Browder, Held at Rikers Island for 3 Years Without Trial, Commits Suicide

Kalief Browder was sent to Rikers Island when he was 16 years old, accused of stealing a backpack. Though he never stood trial or was found guilty of any crime, he spent three years at the New York City jail complex, nearly two of them in solitary confinement.

In October 2014, after he was written about in The New Yorker, his case became a symbol of what many saw as a broken criminal justice system. Mayor Bill de Blasio cited the article this spring when he announced an effort to clear the backlogs in state courts and reduce the inmate population at Rikers.

For a while, it appeared Mr. Browder was putting his life back together: He earned a high school equivalency diploma and started community college. But he continued to struggle with life after Rikers.

On Saturday, he committed suicide at his parents’ home in the Bronx.

Jennifer Gonnerman, the author of the article in The New Yorker, said in an interview on Monday that it appeared he was never able to recover from the years he spent locked alone in a cell for 23 hours a day.

[...]

Ms. Gonnerman said she was drawn to Mr. Browder because he was able to speak about what he had been through with unusual insight. She said before he agreed to go public with his story, he insisted on finishing his high school equivalency diploma. “He wanted to show that he had accomplished something before he entered the spotlight,” she said.

In jail he had tried to commit suicide several times. He told Ms. Gonnerman that he was repeatedly beaten by correction officers and fellow inmates, but she said she did not realize the extent of the abuse until she watched security videos showing him being knocked to the ground by an officer and attacked by inmates.

Throughout, he insisted on his innocence, refusing several offers from prosecutors to take a plea deal, including one that would have allowed him to be released immediately.

Ultimately, prosecutors dropped the charges. In the course of the three years Mr. Browder was being held, they lost contact with their only witness.

At the end of the article, Mr. Browder...described being unable to rid himself of the fears that had consumed him in jail. He said he was afraid of being attacked on the subway. And before going to sleep at night, he checked to make sure every window in the house was locked.

As it continues, the report becomes even more tragic and worse. Rosie O'Donnell steps up at one point, as does Senator Rand Paul. That said:

"He died when he was only twenty-two. Isn't it a terrible thing to die so young as that?" 

Meanwhile, is prohibition of cashless bail a good idea? For the Brennan Center's report on the topic, you can just click here. Like many other topics, this topic may be complex—and that introduces a problem:

At present, our society has zero room for discussions which may be complex. In fact, our dying civilization has little room, at this point in time, for anything resembling a real discussion at all.

Instead, a battle is waged between two groups. In yesterday's report, we named the dueling cadres. We're engaged in The Revolt of the D-Minus Students versus The Haplessness of the Elites.

Meanwhile, at the top of it all, there sits President Trump, heralding the Department of War and recalling what Wes Moore said. Tomorrow, we may briefly sample the medical science again, before we start to consider the efforts of the dueling groups.

Tomorrow: Might it have been the other Wes Moore? Onward toward the two groups!

MONDAY: Campos-Duffy plays the card again!

MONDAY, AUGUST 25, 2025

Margaritas and human misconduct: On Sunday's morning's Fox & Friends Weekend, Rachel Campos-Duffy got to talking—once again—about Kilmar Abrego Garcia and his alleged margaritas.

On this occasion, as we'll show you below, it got even worse than that.  Before we show you what she said, let's get clear on the state of play as Sunday morning started. 

The background went like this:

Kilmar Abrego Garcia has indeed been in the United States as an "illegal immigrant." He has been living in the United States, without authorization, ever since he was 16 years old.

He has been charged with serious crimes by the Trump DOJ. Here you see the AP's report on the state of play as yesterday morning's Fox & Friends Weekend program came on the air:

US seeks to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia to Uganda after he refused plea offer in his smuggling case

Immigration officials said they intend to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia to Uganda after he declined an offer to be sent to Costa Rica in exchange for remaining in jail and pleading guilty to human smuggling charges, his defense attorneys told a court Saturday.

The Costa Rica offer came late Thursday and included a requirement that he remain in jail for the time being and then serve whatever sentence he would receive for pleading guilty, according to a brief filed in Tennessee, where the criminal case was brought. After Abrego Garcia left jail on Friday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement notified his attorneys that he would be deported to Uganda and should report to immigration authorities on Monday.

Later on Friday, “the government informed Mr. Abrego that he has until first thing Monday morning—precisely when he must report to ICE’s Baltimore Field Office—to accept a plea in exchange for deportation to Costa Rica, or else that offer will be off the table forever,” his defense attorneys wrote.

He has been charged with a serious crime. Instead of simply putting him on trial in a court of law, then sending him to prison if he's convicted, the Trump administration came up with a better idea:

They wanted him to plead guilty and serve an apparently unspecified prison sentence. After he had served that sentence, he would be deported to Costa Rica, a highly civilized place to land.

Either that, or he would be sent to Uganda, a very different place. This offer came from the same administration which had mistakenly remanded him to one of the world's most notorious prisons in March of this year, then seemed determined to leave him there.

For whatever reason, the administration doesn't seem to want to put him on trial. They were threatening a very challenging deportation if he wasn't willing to plead guilty to serious crimes.

How about it? Has Abrego Garcia committed the crimes with which he's been charged? 

We can't necessarily tell you that! As a general matter, this nation maintains courts of law—featuring judges, lawyers and juries!—to settle questions like that.

The DOJ wanted him to enter a guilty plea—a plea he didn't want to make. That was the state of play as Campos-Duffy and a pair of simpering colleagues turned up on the air. 

Campos-Duffy said that Abrego Garcia is "clearly guilty." Except for the word "clearly," she could of course be right! 

On the other hand, it will be hard to maintain an American nation when our most-watched "cable news" channel insists on paying people of Campos-Duffy's caliber to peddle such foofaw as this:

CAMPOS-DUFFY (8/24/25): He could have pled guilty to human smuggling, which he did! He was in a vehicle with a bunch of illegal aliens. There was no luggage—it was obvious what was happening. 

He said he's not in a gang, but he has gang tattoos. He said he's not in a gang, but "I couldn't be sent to a certain prison because, you know, the gangs were going to, you know, retaliate against me because I'm not in a gang."

It doesn't make any sense. None of it makes sense. I mean, as he was picking up the margarita glass, there were tattoo signs on his fingers!

So this guy is clearly guilty, and he is definitely an illegal alien. And they offered him to go to Costa Rica, a place not far from his own home country of El Salvador, And he said, "No, I'm not going to plead guilty. I'm not going to Costa Rica." So his option is Uganda!

The pseudo-discussion continued from there. To watch the whole thing, just click here, then continue to click.

Is Abrego Garcia guilty as charged? He certainly may be! Also, it's true that he was in this country without authorization. On that basis, he was therefore subject to deportation every step of the way.

Does he have a right to a trial on the charges before him? Not necessarily, no. To which we'll append a second question:

Does the Fox News Channel have the right to put people like Campos-Duffy on the air?

As we've noted in the past, Campos Duffy is remarkably genial—among her own. She's also a bit of a religionist, and an apparent true believer of the tribal kind.

She has been misstating basic facts about this case ever since the case became a high-profile news event. She's allowed to do that 1) because it serves the corporate messaging interest, and 2) because our tribunes here in Blue America simply don't care enough to report or discuss such endless public misconduct.

As we noted on Saturday, Campos Duffy played the margarita card on that day's show, then she played it again on Sunday. Her willingness to continue doing such things is an insult to what little is left of the American interest.

Right from the start, she has been saying that Abrego Garcia's story about danger from gangs in El Salvador "doesn't make sense." As anyone who has bothered to read the background material knows, his actual story about the gangs did in fact make perfect sense, whether it was true or not.

(The immigration judge who ruled that he couldn't be deported to El Salvador understood the basics of the story and seemed to believe it was true.)

At this point, the yak about the tattoos is embarrassing. The playing of the margarita card is an insult to the American interest.

Campos-Duffy can, and does, keep this up for four hours straight. A modern nation can't function this way—not with this conduct from Red America, and not with the utter lack of interest shown by our own Blue elites.

Abrego Garcis may be guilty as charged (or not). Campos Duffy plainly is, along with her simpering friends!

THE DUEL: The Randy Revolt of the D-Minus Students!

MONDAY, AUGUST 25, 2025

The Haplessness of the Elites: At the risk of beating a pony to death, we'll start by saying that you should regard it as a remarkable moment.

We refer to the moment when President Trump took President Macron aside. 

He had left a meeting of mere Euros to speak by phone with "his darling Clementine." In this case, his Clementine was Vladimir Putin. As captured by a hot microphone, his report to Macron concerning the  call went exactly like this:

PRESIDENT TRUMP (8/18/25): I think he wants to make a deal. I think he wants to make a deal for me. 

Do you understand that? As crazy as it sounds.

[Addressing the entire room]

Sit down. Sit down, everybody. I think we’ll let the press come in for a minute.

To his credit, he said he knew that it sounded crazy. But it's hard to deny that he wanted to believe this dream.

Subsequent evidence strongly suggests that President Putin doesn't want to make a deal for peace in Ukraine. Nor does he want to make a deal for his darling, President Trump.

Almost surely, these men don't share the friendship concerning which the American president seems to have dreamed. With that, we once again present our assessment:

To our ear, the moment that microphone captured that day was one of the most revelatory statements we've ever heard a political figure make.

On this campus, we heard the voice of Gretta Conroy when we heard what the president said. Others may not have heard her voice, but we believe that her voice was there. 

Over here on this sprawling campus, we believe what we heard was true. We bel.ieve that President Trump revealed an unfortunate part of himself that day.

Concerning our president, this:

We think he tends to have extremely poor judgment. We've suggested that something seems to be wrong, and that you should pity the child.

We've recommended his niece's account of how he came to be this way. For the record, even as she seemed to pity the child, her assessment of the adult that child became was lodged right there in the title of her 2020 best-seller:

Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man

Oof! Plainly, her best-selling "family memoir" wasn't an endorsement of her famous and powerful uncle. Along the way, it seems to us that she was able to pity the child. But this brings us to a key question:

Is something wrong with this powerful man? Is something "wrong" in the way we mean?

Over here in Blue America, your journalists have agreed that they must never speak to medical specialists about that fairly obvious question. No matter what the gentleman does, their pose is simple:

In an unhelpful spin-off from Groundhog Day, our journalists are perpetually shocked.

This Blue elite refuses to ask if something might be wrong with the president—with the angry, erratic man who thought that Vladimir might actually want to make a peace deal for him. Handicapped by their silence, we ourselves have decided to click around in popular accounts of the relevant medical science.

In Saturday's report, we touched upon what the medical science says about "compulsive [or] pathological lying." (Some say they aren't the same thing.)

A link within that report took us here—to "Delusions of grandeur." At that site, another link took us to this:

Grandiosity

In psychology, grandiosity is a sense of superiority, uniqueness, or invulnerability that is unrealistic and not based on personal capability. It may be expressed by exaggerated beliefs regarding one's abilities, the belief that few other people have anything in common with oneself, and that one can only be understood by a few, very special people. Grandiosity is a core diagnostic criterion for hypomania/mania in bipolar disorder and narcissistic personality disorder.

[...]

Grandiosity is also measured as part of other tests, including the Specific Psychotic Experiences Questionnaire (SPEQ), Personality Assessment for DSM-5 (PID-5), Psychopathy Checklist-Revised, and diagnostic interviews for bipolar disorders and NPD. The Grandiosity section of the Diagnostic Interview for Narcissism (DIN), for instance, describes:

1. The person exaggerates talents, capacity, and achievements in an unrealistic way.

2. The person believes in their invulnerability or does not recognize their limitations.

3. The person has grandiose fantasies.

4. The person believes that they do not need other people.

5. The person over-examines and downgrades other people's projects, statements, or dreams in an unrealistic manner.

6. The person regards themself as unique or special when compared to other people.

7. The person regards themself as generally superior to other people.

8. The person behaves self-centeredly and/or self-referentially.

9. The person behaves in a boastful or pretentious way.

Grandiose narcissism is a subtype of narcissism with grandiosity as its central feature, in addition to other agentic and antagonistic traits (e.g., dominance, attention-seeking, entitlement, manipulation). The term "narcissistic grandiosity" is sometimes used as a synonym for grandiose narcissism.

A great deal more content follows. But even as we've suggested that you should learn to pity the child, we're also asking if that list of symptoms sounds like any public figure you see on the stage at this time.

Is something wrong with President Trump—with the adult the child became? Also, what does it even mean when someone is diagnosed with a "mental disorder?" 

If a person is so diagnosed, are we simply describing that person's behavior, or is that person gripped by an "illness," in something like the way a person can be gripped by the measles or mumps? 

Here on this planet, the elites of our own Blue America make it clear that they don't intend to tackle any such questions. This is a fuzzy branch of medical science, but that's especially so when the people who went to the finest schools aren't even willing to ask.

Yesterday, the furious American president exploded again, as reported by Mediaite:

Trump Threatens ‘Sloppy’ Chris Christie with ‘Bridgegate’ Probe After ABC Jab

So it went, once again. The news report in the New York Times starts exactly like this:

Trump Threatens to Investigate Chris Christie Over ‘Bridgegate’

President Trump on Sunday threatened to investigate former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey over a 2013 political scandal, days after the F.B.I. raided the home and office of another former Trump official turned critic.

Mr. Trump made the threat on social media after Mr. Christie said during an appearance on ABC News that the president “doesn’t care” about maintaining a separation between his office and criminal investigations. 

[...]

Mr. Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform late Sunday that Mr. Christie had lied about 2013 lane closures on the George Washington Bridge “in order to stay out of prison, at the same time sacrificing people who worked for him.” The president was referring to a decision by Mr. Christie’s associates to close access lanes to the bridge, which links New Jersey and Manhattan, in order to punish the Democratic mayor of a New Jersey town.

“Chris refused to take responsibility for these criminal acts,” Mr. Trump wrote. “For the sake of JUSTICE, perhaps we should start looking at that very serious situation again? NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW!”

That's the start of the news report. On Truth Social, the post went like this:

Truth Details

Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump

I just watched Sloppy Chris Christie be interviewed on a ratings challenged “News” Show, “This Week With George Slopadopolus,” on ABC Fake News (By the way, what the “hell” happened to Jonathan Karl’s hair? He looks absolutely terrible! It’s amazing what bad ratings, on a failed television show that was forced to pay me $16,000,000, can do to one’s appearance!). Can anyone believe anything that Sloppy Chris says? Do you remember the way he lied about the dangerous and deadly closure of the George Washington Bridge in order to stay out of prison, at the same time sacrificing people who worked for him, including a young mother, who spent years trying to fight off the vicious charges against her. Chris refused to take responsibility for these criminal acts. For the sake of JUSTICE, perhaps we should start looking at that very serious situation again? NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DJT

"Slopadopolus" interviewed "Sloppy Chris;" Karl's hair was an absolute mess. In response, the president threatened to reopen a matter which was resolved long ago. 

(For the record, Christie "refused to take responsibility for these criminal acts" because no one believed, in the end, that he had committed such acts.)

Just this once, we'll be honest. We feel sorry for this tormented man—for anyone so tortured. That said, we direct your attention to the war between the two armies who are currently fighting about the things he says and does.

One of these armies is staging this war:

The Revolt of the D-Minus Students

You can see them on Fox & Friends, or on The Five, or on The Big Weekend Show (now expanded to two hours, replacing one hour of news). 

There's nothing so dumb that they won't say it, with everyone affirming whatever the last person said. But due to the failures of a second group, these numbskulls are never completely wrong.

A revolt is being waged by one army—and they're often right on the merits! How can such numbskulls be right on the merits? It's because of this second armed force:

The Determined, Stubborn Haplessness of the (Blue American) Elites

The haplessness of the Blue elites supplies a great deal of the fuel for the D-minus brigade. In each case, we're speaking about professional armies. We're not speaking about 152.3 million citizens who voted for Harris or Trump.

A war is being fought between those two groups. At present, it seems to us that the Blue army seems to be losing.

We heard the voice of Gretta Conroy when the president waylaid Macron last week. In fairness, there was one major difference:

As it turned out, Gretta Conroy's tragic assessment, drenched in regret, seemed to be well founded. The president made a crazy claim. He seemed to be lost in delusion, a dream.

We feel sorry for someone so lost. If you can learn to pity the child who gave birth to the man, we Blues might even be able to find the way to bring on his (political) defeat.

Tomorrow: There's nothing so dumb they won't say it 

SATURDAY: A pair of defectives had some good fun...

SATURDAY, AUGUST 23, 2025

...on our most watched "cable news" program: Early this morning, the thought came to mind:

Had we ever attempted to research the concept of "compulsive lying?"

We say had we ever attempted to research that topic for the obvious reason—we aren't medical specialists here. But our journalists refuse to speak to such specialists, and so we did a bit of clicking, quickly landing on this:

Pathological lying

Pathological lying, also known as pseudologia fantastica, is a chronic behavior characterized by the habitual or compulsive tendency to lie. It involves a pervasive pattern of intentionally making false statements with the aim to deceive others, sometimes for no clear or apparent reason, and even if the truth would be beneficial to the liar. People who engage in pathological lying often report being unaware of the motivations for their lies.

In psychology and psychiatry, there is an ongoing debate about whether pathological lying should be classified as a distinct disorder or viewed as a symptom of other underlying conditions. The lack of a widely agreed-upon description or diagnostic criteria for pathological lying has contributed to the controversy surrounding its definition. But efforts have been made to establish diagnostic criteria based on research and assessment data, aligning with the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Various theories have been proposed to explain the causes of pathological lying, including stress, an attempt to shift locus of control to an internal one, and issues related to low self-esteem. Some researchers have suggested a biopsychosocial-developmental model to explain this concept...

[...]

Pathological lying is listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), although only as a symptom of other disorders such as antisocial, narcissistic, and histrionic personality disorders, not as a stand-alone diagnosis. The former ICD-10 disorder Haltlose personality disorder is strongly tied to pathological lying. Pathological lying is represented in both the DSM-5 and ICD-11 alternative models of personality disorder which emphasize dimensions of personality dysfunction, rather than specific categorical disorders. "Deceitfulness," an aspect of the Antagonism domain, is a trait encompassing pathological lying in the DSM-5's model, while the current ICD-11 trait domain of Dissociality (analogous to DSM-5 Antagonism) holds pathological lying to be a behavioral expression of the Lack of Empathy facet...

The complex discussion goes on from there. But "pathological lying" is, in fact, a clinical term in the DSM, though only as a symptom of other disorders. 

Just yesterday, we had occasion to note the way one clinical psychologist linked antisocial and narcissistic personality disorders to one of her famous relatives in a recent best-selling book.

We did this clicking today for the obvious reason. Yesterday, we saw the commander in chief making this presentation again, as a group of malfunctioning upper-end journalists politely averted their gaze and kept their frightened traps shut:

PRESIDENT TRUMP (8/22/25):  I have said to Pam and everybody else, give them everything you can give them, because it’s a Democrat hoax. It’s just a hoax, the whole Epstein thing is a Democrat hoax.

So we had the greatest six months, seven months in the history of the presidency, and the Democrats don’t know what to do, so they keep bringing up that stuff.

But it affected them. Bill Clinton was on his plane and went to the island, supposedly 28 times. I don’t want to bring that up, frankly. You have Larry, whatever his name is, Summers, the head of Harvard, who was Jeffrey Epstein’s best friend. Nobody ever talks about that. I mean, but I don’t want to hurt Larry Summers, but he was best friends with Jeffrey Epstein.

No, this is a Democratic hoax to try and get the significance of what we’ve done over the past seven months. Nobody’s ever seen anything like it. They say it’s number one in history. What we’ve done, including stopping seven wars. I mean, just including that. And now you look at the stock market today, it’s way up to start off with, from where I took it.

There the gentleman went again, as the band failed to play on. 

The president didn't want to say what he said, but he persistently says it, with the word "supposedly" thrown in to give him a way to hide. As he keeps doing this, the journalists in the room keeping fail to challenge or question his statement, and the children at Mediaite just keep publishing what he said without a word of comment.

Yesterday, the transcripts of the two days of interviews with Ghislaine Maxwell were released. There's no obvious reason to believe anything she said, but this very morning, on Fox & Friends Weekend, we saw legal correspondent Gregg Jarrett fleetingly refer to this:

TODD BLANCHE: I think you said you don't—you're not aware of President Clinton ever going to the island?

MAXWELL: He never. Absolutely never went.

Her elaboration goes on from there. 

The fact that she made this emphatic statement doesn't mean that it's true. But there has never been any credible evidence saying that Clinton ever went to the island, despite the garbage the sitting president keeps serving to the individuals who are cast in the role of what's left of "the American press corps."

(For the record, we also know of no reason to think that Summers was Epstein's best friend. That was just crazy talk too, part of a string of crazy clams by the sitting commander.)

It was said this morning on Fox & Friends Weekend—said fleetingly, but yes it was said! It was said by Jarrett at 6:29 a.m.—and the three friends all ignored it:

Fox & Friends Weekend: August 23, 2025
Charlie Hurt: co-host, Fox & Friends Weekend
Rachel Campos-Duffy: co-host, Fox & Friends Weekend
Griff Jenkins: co-anchor, Fox News Live

They had opened the show with one of the stupidest presentations in the history of human stupidity—with a three-pronged attempt to say that Republicans are currently gerrymandering Texas because gerrymandered states like Massachusetts have forced them to do it.

The three stoopnagles took turns advancing this brainless claim, with Massachusetts offered as the featured demon. As we noted on Thursday, the New York Times has even gotten around to explaining the situation in Massachusetts. But as this nation sinks into the sea, the sheer stupidity of the Fox News Channel is one of the jagged icebergs which is bringing the ship of state down.

The exchange about the allegedly gerrymandered Bay State occurred at 6:03 a.m. In fairness, we'll guess that none of the trio of friends actually knew that what they were saying made no sense at all.

At 6:09, Campos-Duffy really began to earn her pay, saying that Kilmar Abrego Garcia and Senator Van Hollen were shown "having a margarita" together in that famous photo from El Salvador.

Actually, she actually said they were "having a margarita or whatever." With that, the genial Fox News Channel religionist seemed to be playing the president's "supposedly" game. We do feel sure that she understood the game she was playing this time.

These are the people who are working, around the clock, to sink the American ship of state, such as it is at this time. They're sinking the ship through their far-reaching dumbness, but also through their true belief in Red American tribal greatness.

Our human brains are wired this way. As we started telling you long ago, there's no obvious reason to believe that we'll be able to extricate ourselves from this ongoing tribal mess.

For what it's worth, the haplessness has also been general over Blue America. Down below, we'll link you to something Joy Reid has now said, thereby creating a bit of tape the Fox News Channel has been playing all week.

First, though, we turn to what we saw this Thursday on The Five. This array of children had been gathered together on the Fox News Channel set:

The Five: Thursday, August 21, 2025
Kennedy: former MTV VJ
Jessica Tarlov: designated Democratic pincushion
Jesse Watters: co-host, The Five
Dana Perino: co-host, The Five
Greg Gutfeld: co-host, The Five 

Kennedy sat in "the Judge Jeannine chair" as the nation's most-watched "cable news" program went on the air. Six minutes into the clownish program, a pathetic but increasingly typical exchange occurred.

It started with the practiced idiot Watters ruminating about an inaccurate report—the report that President Trump was going to go on patrol that night with the federal troops in D.C. That notion never really made sense, but it was being widely reported.

It started as Watters clowned about that. It ended as two defectives joined forces to undermine the very possibility of maintaining an American nation:

WATTERS (8/21/25): I love that Trump's going out there like a general to inspect the troops...I'm with Greg. This is the best episode of Cops we're ever going to see. 

[Laughter] 

I hope he does a field sobriety test on some sloppy drunk kid from Georgetown. I hope someone, they arrest and pull drugs out of their pocket, and Trump's like, "That's a lot of crack!"

GUTFELD: Ha ha ha ha ha.

WATTERS: I hope he goes out with the vice squad and finds Adam Schiff trying to score some dope and women at some seedy hotel on the wrong side of the tracks.

KENNEDY (off camera): "Women?"

WATTERS (chuckles): Didn't say that! Not that there's anything wrong with that!

We wondered if we'd heard that right. When we played it back, we had.

An exchange like that would be par for the course on the Gutfeld! program. As we've noted in the past, the defective culture of that grisly program has been migrating down to The Five.

At any rate, six minutes into the nation's most watched "cable news" program, a pair of employees were now playing one of their channel's favorite games. It's the game where they say that various Democrats are secretly gay, or that Michelle Obama is secretly a man.

These are defective, ill-functioning boys and girls; they're hired because they're defective. Also defective is the Blue American world, which has agreed to avert its gaze as this relentless attack on the possibility of maintaining a nation goes on and on and on.

Something is wrong with the sitting president? In fairness, over here in Blue America, something is also wrong with us!

On Fox, the following bromide obtains:

It's the stupidity, Stupid!

They keep it up all day long, and then on into the night. At 6 o'clock on weekend morning, Campos-Duffy comes on, serving those margaritas to her viewers. 

"Or whatever," of course.

Starting on Monday, we expect to sample more mental health / "mental disorder" content. We'll also try to keep you posted about what the stoopnagles have done. Last week, they were delightedly playing tape of these recent statements by Joy Reid:

Joy Reid claims 'mediocre White men' like Trump, Elvis can't 'invent anything,' steal culture from other races

You can assess the merits of her statements for yourself. Almost surely, the politics of that tape is the politics of ongoing defeat.

Regarding Senator Schiff:

Stating the obvious, it wouldn't matter if he was gay. We know of no reason to believe that he is, but many people are.

On the other hand, we give you Kennedy and Watters, bringing the demented culture of the Gutfeld! program all the way down to The Five. Please note:

As they played their soul-draining game, no one else said a word:

Dana Perino kept her trap shut. In accord with whatever theory, so did Jessica Tarlov.

Something is wrong with that channel's terrible children. Also, something is wrong with us.

FRIDAY: Concerning My Darling Clementine...

FRIDAY, AUGUST 22, 2025

...we learned from the late Roger Ebert: Our president seems to have his darling Vladimir Putin. We advise you to pity the child—to find a way to pity the child for the way the adult apparently got here.

Thanks to director John Ford, we all have My Darling Clementine. The leading authority's overview starts exactly like this:

My Darling Clementine 

My Darling Clementine is a 1946 American Western film directed by John Ford and starring Henry Fonda as Wyatt Earp during the period leading up to the gunfight at the O.K. Corral. The ensemble cast also features Victor Mature (as Doc Holliday)...

The title of the movie is borrowed from the theme song "Oh My Darling, Clementine," sung in parts over the opening and closing credits. The screenplay is based on the biography Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal by Stuart Lake, as were two earlier movies, both named Frontier Marshal (released in 1934 and 1939, respectively).

My Darling Clementine is regarded by many film critics as one of the best Westerns ever made. In 1991, the film was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. It was among the third annual group of 25 films named to the registry.

[...]

Fifty years after its release, Roger Ebert reviewed the film and included it in his list of The Great Movies. He wrote it was "one of the sweetest and most good-hearted of all Westerns, unusual in making the romance between Earp and Clementine the heart of the film rather than the gunfight."

We came to appreciate the film thanks to Ebert's decency. His lengthy 1997 review can be read by clicking here. We gained a great deal from this passage:

My Darling Clementine

[...]

The gentlest moments in the movie involve Earp’s feelings for Clementine (Cathy Downs), who arrives on the stage from the East, looking for “Dr. John Holliday.” She is the girl Doc left behind. Earp, sitting outside the hotel, rises quickly to his feet as she gets out of the stage, and his movements show that he’s in awe of this graceful vision. Clementine has been seeking Doc all over the West, we learn, and wants to bring him home. Doc tells her to get out of town...

Clementine is packed to go the next morning when the marshal, awkward and shy, asks her to join him at the church service and dance. They walk in stately procession down the covered boardwalk, while Ford’s favorite hymn plays: “Shall We Gather at the River?” When the fiddler strikes up, Wyatt and Clementine dance—he clumsy but enthusiastic, and with great joy. This dance is the turning point of the movie, and marks the end of the Old West. There are still shots to be fired, but civilization has arrived.

[...]

“My Darling Clementine” must be one of the sweetest and most good-hearted of all Westerns. The giveaway is the title, which is not about Wyatt or Doc or the gunfight, but about Clementine, certainly the most important thing to happen to Marshal Earp during the story. There is a moment, soon after she arrives, when Earp gets a haircut and a quick spray of perfume at the Bon Ton Tonsorial Parlor. Clem stands close to him and says she loves “the scent of the desert flowers.” 

“That’s me,” says Earp. “Barber.”

Ford loved American music; he also loved cornball humor. His female characters were very important. In Stagecoach, the duke (John Wayne) stands up for an equally compelling lady, even in 1939. In The Searchers, we're always struck by the portrayal of the Vera Miles character, an extremely spirited young woman who's living, with her immigrant parents, next door to the end of nowhere, way out in the desert west.

(Then too, Ford made the deeply human Grapes of Wrath. He chose this lyric from the American songbook: "Do not hasten to bid me adieu.")

In My Darling Clementine, the painfully shy Fonda character finally has the courage to act on his admiration for the young woman who has arrived from the east but is about to go away on the morning stage. You can see the scene in question here. It culminates in their dance under an open sky.

Their dance is beautifully rendered. With that dance, Ebert says, civilization has come to the west.

In large part, civilization depends on the ability of the people thought of as men to respect, and to admire, the people thought of as women. More broadly, it depends on the ability of us the humans to come to terms with the challenges of sexuality, attraction and romance, which have always been very hard.

The Fonda character has his darling Clementine. Tragically, President Trump almost seems to be pursuing a darling of a different stripe. (We suggest that you pity the child.)

On programs on the Fox News Channel, many top stars are having a very hard time respecting the challenges of modern sexuality. Tomorrow, we'll show you an especially grisly example of what we're talking about. 

Despite the stories we tell ourselves, Blue America has never had much of a sexual politics either, not even during the recent period when we were briefly pretending. That said, the current backsliding on the Fox programs we have in mind is astounding and hard to believe, as is the liberal world's silence about this behavior.

Our nation is in a world of hurt. We'll need good luck to survive.