TUESDAY, DECEMBER 30, 2025
We'd call it Squalor Red: It's one more example of "the problem we all [currently] live with."
We can't find it in today's New York Times. But as reported by Mediaite, there he went again:
Trump Drops All-Time Whopper About Israeli Hostages...
President Donald Trump falsely took credit for all Israeli hostages being released, even though more than 100 were freed during the presidency of Joe Biden.
[...]
“Every hostage, just about, that’s been released was released because of me, Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner, my whole team, Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth,” Trump replied. “They were all released because of us. None were released in the Biden administration. None. They were all released because of us.”
It was an absurdly inaccurate claim. Appearing yesterday with Bibi, he made it two separate times.
Full disclosure! On this campus, we're inclined to think that the president may even believe his various crazy claims.
Presumably, medical specialists could offer some perspective on that possibility. But, for better or worse, major news orgs have agreed that such discussions must never happen.
We've turned to Mediaite for that absurdly inaccurate claim. In fairness to the New York Times, they were at least reporting another such misstatement, right there on the front page of today's print editions:
Families of Murder Victims in Washington Say Trump Is Ignoring Them
[...]
“We haven’t had a murder in six months,” Mr. Trump said of Washington.
It was the kind of glaringly false claim about crime in the capital that Mr. Trump has made repeatedly since August, when he deployed the National Guard and took federal control of the police force...D.C. police have recorded 127 murders through Dec. 26, including 28 since Mr. Trump announced his federal takeover.
The president's claim is "glaringly false"—but he's been "repeatedly" making it.
We've started with a pair of claims which are crazily inaccurate. In this morning's print editions, the Times is also reporting a different kind of presidential misstatement:
Russia Threatens to Toughen Its Stance on Ending the War in Ukraine
With talks on ending the Ukraine war making little progress on the toughest issues, Russia issued a dramatic threat on Monday to harden its stance, linking the potential change to what the Kremlin called a failed Ukrainian drone attack overnight targeting a rural residence of President Vladimir V. Putin.
Ukraine immediately denied any such attack...
[...]
Mr. Trump said that he heard about the alleged attack from Mr. Putin himself during a previously scheduled phone call early Monday to discuss the peace talks. “I was very angry about it,” he told reporters at Mar-a-Lago, though he conceded that he had no independent confirmation that it had occurred.
Can we talk? Aside from what Putin had said, he didn't even claim to know some such (alleged) attack had actually occurred! But so what? In the absence of any evidence—in the absence of anything resembling knowledge--the president went on and on, seeming to assume that Putin's statement was true.
In short, there are various kinds of public misstatements. There are claims which are plainly false, but there are also claims for which there seems to be no evidence.
Under current arrangements, these claims emerge from the sitting president on a regular basis—but does any of this really make any difference?
Uh-oh! On page A12 of this morning's Times, this profoundly unfortunate news report suggests that the answer is yes:
Suspect Confessed to Planting Pipe Bombs Near the Capitol Before Jan. 6
The Virginia man arrested this month on charges of placing two pipe bombs in Washington on the night before a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, has given a detailed confession, according to court papers released on Sunday night.
In the public first hint at a motive in the case, the documents said that the man, Brian J. Cole Jr., felt he needed to “speak up” after he began to suspect that the 2020 election, in which President Trump was defeated, had been “tampered with.”
Fortunately, those pipe bombs failed to detonate. But according to his confession, Cole decided to plant the bombs because he had come to believe that the 2020 election had been "tampered with"—in more familiar parlance, had been stolen.
Five years later, the sitting president was still making that inflammatory claim when he held a press event this Sunday, right there at Mar-a-Lago.
He appeared there with President Zelensky. Inevitably, he was soon saying this:
TRUMP (12/28/25): I've said, and nobody has disputed it, that if the election weren't rigged and stolen, 2020, you wouldn't have had this war. It would have never happened. And it didn't happen for four years. Never was even thought to happen.
And I spoke with President Putin. I got along with him very well despite the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax, which was a total hoax. He used to say, "What is going on over there?" But it was a total hoax, as he knew and as I knew.
[...]
Don't forget, we went through the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax together. And he'd call me, I'd call him. I said, can you believe the stuff that they're making up? And it turned out we were right. They made it all up...
But the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax, which was a terrible made-up fictional thing by Crooked Hillary and by Adam Shifty Schiff and bad people, sick people, they made it up. It was all a made-up hoax.
For starters, the election "was rigged and stolen!" There he went again!
This sitting president has now had more than five years to present a white paper in which he could attempt to justify that inflammatory statement. No such presentation has been made.
He just keeps repeating the statement. People like Cole believe what he says and may even decide to react.
Such people may also believe the other ludicrous claims the president made in that same press event. That includes the endless (and endlessly vague) assertion about "the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax," which was "a total hoax," the sitting president once again said.
What exactly was "the Russia hoax?" As far as we know, the president has never tried to say. He just keeps making his fuzzy claim concerning that undefined "hoax."
That said, the wonderfully useful, imprecise claim gets repeated all day and all night by the messenger children at the Fox News Channel. All across the fruited plain, people like Cole hear the vague claim, and they may not realize that the claim is so poorly defined as to be basically meaningless.
Also, "Russia wants Ukraine to succeed!"
Yes, he actually said it! But so it goes, day after day, as we the people deal with the pernicious effects of "the problem we all currently live with."
Let us count the ways:
Some of his statements are "glaringly false." But no matter how many times this gets pointed out, he just continues to make them.
Some of his bogus statements could be true, at least in theory—but he makes no attempt to offer evidence in support of his inflammatory claims. Also, some of his claims are so vague, so poorly defined, that no one can really say what they actually mean.
This situation has continued, day after day, dating back to the four or five years when he kept appearing on The Fox News Channel to claim that Barack Obama, who was then the sitting president, had been born in Kenya. His willing enabler during those years was Greta Van Susteren, who's now employed as a news anchor by Newsmax TV.
More on that matter will follow. For today, we call your attention to this:
Dating back to 2011, our nation has suffered under the reign of misstatement authored by the sitting president. We would describe this reign of misstatement as the principal component of (moral and intellectual) "Squalor Red."
The president's remarkable conduct qualifies as Squalor Red. As we noted yesterday, it took a remarkable squalid form on August 10, 2019—on the day when Jeffrey Epstein was found dead in his prison cell.
The squalor was general over the next several days as the president messaged his gullible followers concerning Epstein's death. As you may recall, here are two of the things this (colloquial) madman did:
Trump retweets conspiracy theory tying the Clintons to Epstein’s death
President Trump used his Twitter account Saturday to spread a baseless conspiracy theory about the death of Jeffrey Epstein, a wealthy and politically connected financier who had been facing multiple charges of sex trafficking involving underage girls.
Trump’s Justice Department announced that Epstein, who was being held in a federal corrections facility, died by “apparent suicide.”
But Trump appeared to disregard his administration’s statement, instead retweeting a message from conservative actor and comedian Terrence K. Williams, who suggested that Epstein’s death might be tied to former president Bill Clinton...
The claim is completely unsubstantiated...
On the day that Epstein died, that's the way the squalor started. Three days later, this:
Trump defends sharing Clinton-Epstein conspiracy theory
President Donald Trump on Tuesday defended his decision to share a tweet suggesting Bill and Hillary Clinton were involved in financier Jeffrey Epstein’s suicide, and stoked speculation about the former president’s relationship with the deceased convicted sex offender.
“The retweet—which is what it was, just a retweet—was from somebody that’s a very respected conservative pundit, so I think that was fine,” Trump told reporters, referring to a conspiratorial message by comedian and commentator Terrence K. Williams, which he re-posted Saturday.
Trump, who has been criticized for promulgating the unfounded theory that the Clintons had a hand in Epstein’s death, said on Tuesday that he had “no idea” whether they played a role in the high-profile prisoner’s demise.
On that same August 10, he messaged his poisonous claim about Bill and Hillary Clinton. Three days later, he acknowledged that he "had no idea" if the "theory" he messaged was true.
Even today, the creepy host of the Fox News Channel's Gutfeld! program repeatedly reinforces the astonishing claim that Hillary Clinton is a person who murders her opponents. But even back in August 2019, the sitting president was messaging a second accusation about Bill Clinton—an accusation based on bungled data, an accusation which is almost certainly false.
He returned to that poisonous messaging this summer, then again in recent weeks. The hacks who amplify his disorder were happy to repeat his various claims on the Fox News Channel. This is the problem we've all been living with over the past fifteen years.
We would regard this as Squalor Red. No large modern nation can expect to function under such a squalid regime.
We regard that as Squalor Red, but what in the world is Squalor Blue? We'll tell you that in our first report of the new year.
Tomorrow, we'll review the other claim being peddled about concerning President Clinton.
Once again, a bit of disclosure:
In our view, he may even believe the various things he says. In our view, the refusal to come to terms with that possibility is part of Squalor Blue.
Tomorrow: Facts and fact checks are utterly useless in the face of these Squalor(s).
ReplyDeleteWhoa, what a trivial, petty-minded shit you concern yourself with, Bob.
You are so consumed by your TDS that you often sound completely insane. President of Russia informs the American president of an assassination attempt, and the American President says it made him angry -- horrors, horrors!!! Are you listening to yourself, Bob?
No, Bob, asserting that the 2020 election was rigged is not an "inflammatory claim". It's a statement of fact. And your ostentatious endless search for that "white paper" is an utterly idiotic pretext to deny it.
Etc., etc., etc.
Nice first sentence, Boris.
Delete"that the 2020 election was rigged is not an "inflammatory claim". It's a statement of fact."
DeleteIn World War II, Japanese soldier Hiroo Onoda was stationed on Lubang Island, now part of the Philippines.
At war's end Onoda did not accept that it was over, even refusing to believe letters from his family telling him so. He did not formally give up the fight until March 10, 1974.
So the election was "rigged" when the idiot was the President, and the elections were run fine when Obama and Biden were President. You fuckin sure about that idiot Mao?
ReplyDeleteI’ve seen all this before, but we can’t be reminded enough about what degenerates voted for this pile of shit.
ReplyDelete"We can't find it in today's New York Times."
ReplyDeleteThat doesn't mean it isn't there. Somerby is not very good at doing this kind of search. He has previously concluded that if he can't find it, it isn't there, only to be contradicted in comments by people more adept at searching. At least today Somerby doesn't conclude the Times said nothing about Trump's misstatement.
ReplyDeleteI, for one, would like to hear more about President's uncle eaten by cannibals. Also about him being 18-wheeler's driver, university Perfessir, and all the other interesting things I used to hear back when Autopen was President.
11:10,
DeleteAgree. Life was so much better when Biden was President.
Although, it was hilarious when Trump was President, and a bunch of Right-wing snowflakes threw a childish temper tantrum at the United States Capitol, just because black people's votes were counted in the 2020 Presidential election.
I laughed so hard, when they shot one of the fools for trying to trespass.
Those are the times, we'll all look back at fondly.
Nowadays, we have President smaller hands then a four-year old girl, reminiscing about the days when his daughter was a pre-teen and fuckable.
If you had listened the first time, you would know that Biden's uncle went down in a plane off New Guinea during WWII. At the time, there were still cannibals inhabiting remote areas of that land. Biden said he did not know what happened to his uncle, then joked that perhaps he was eaten by cannibals.
DeleteIf @11:10 is suggesting that perhaps Trump's statements that are jokes are being taken too literally, he has a small point, but there are two problems: (1) Trump has no sense of humor, no matter how accidentally funny his statements are, and (2) Trump's cancellation of wind farm contracts suggests he really does believe they are making whales crazy and killing birds, if he cared about whales or birds (he does not seem to). His remarks are to justify (using a crude approximation of environmental concerns) cancelling the competition to his preferred energy sources, coal and oil, the people who funded his campaigns and are continuing to give him money. Self-interest not humor.
Trump doesn't listen to himself speak while he is blathering. It is part of why he doesn't recognize whether he is saying something socially inappropriate, like his remarks to those children on the Santa call-in line, or his comments to female dignitaries or journalists. Most people monitor their own speech, planning what to say and censoring the inappropriate or incorrect. Trump doesn't do that at all. So, he is not being funny when he is wrong. He is displaying a cognitive deficit.
Did they eat Autopen uncle's pets too? Or only Autopen's uncle himself?
DeleteWhy do trolls think it is OK to mock someone else's dead relatives, especially those who fought and died in WWII? Here in the US, we honor such people.
DeleteBut the real question Trump posed remains unanswered. Sharks, magnets, or cannibals?
Delete
DeleteWe retards know exactly what rare-earth magnets are. And we honor cannibals.
The trouble with rare earth magnets is they don't work when wet, so I've been told.
DeleteToday Somerby shows a series of examples demonstrating that Trump doesn't think very well. Some of these also demonstrate his cognitive decline. But someone who lies a lot without caring whether his lies are true, is not going to waste much energy evaluating whether his lies are believable or whether things said by others are true or even likely.
ReplyDeleteSomerby has been wasting a lot of his own energy asserting that Trump believes his lies (thus they are not actually lies, Somerby claims). There is no way to climb into Trump's head and examine his beliefs, but it seems clear that Trump doesn't care whether the things he says are true or not.
One way to know whether Trump believes what he says is to examine whether Trump's behaviors are consistent with his statements. Someone who believes the seas are rising is not going to buy beachfront property, for example. Trump's behavior suggests his only belief is that he should get richer and his only actions are the achieve that goal. I suspect that everything he says and does is aimed at the same selfish aggrandizing and wealth accumulation, not at being a good president or helping others, or even building our nation in any specific ways. So, I expect his statements are not to be evaluated as true or false but in terms of what they get for Trump, how they advance his wealth accumulation and puff himself up.
That makes Somerby's assertions today a big pile of horseshit. Trump is not a normal person, so one cannot evaluate whether his statements are true or not using normal criteria, and one certainly cannot use a standard of "does he believe what he is saying" to determine whether his statements make any sense. The correct standard is "what does it gain for Trump to be saying this?" and Somerby has never applied that standard. Trump uses language to manipulate people and to prop up his self-esteem (by making himself seem bigger in other people's eyes, again manipulating people). Truth is unimportant to Trump, and it should be seen as irrelevant to Somerby in his analysis of Trump's speech.
Expecting a liar to value truth or adhere to a personal truth (even if it does not conform to the shared truth of others) makes Somerby seem like a huge fool. We have had plenty of time to know what Trump is like. Why is Somerby still assuming he is normal?
And then, of course, Somerby blames us blues:
"In our view, he may even believe the various things he says. In our view, the refusal to come to terms with that possibility is part of Squalor Blue."
It is Somerby who is not coming to terms with Trump's behavior. And Red America, which accepts lies as truth in order to manipulate Trump himself. How else does one deal with a person so out of touch with reality? Psychiatrists have a saying "no collusion with a delusion." It means that the role of a psychiatrist is to reflect reality back to someone who is lost and not functioning in touch with the real world. Trump is not seeking reality -- he is trying to force his own reality onto all others, as an exhibition of power. We are not psychiatrists, obviously. But it is important that we maintain our own sanity by holding on to our sense of what is true in the world, what is real. Somerby is not doing that, and then he blames Blue America because we ARE holding onto our reality, blaming us for not immersing ourselves in Trump's bullshit, simply because he thinks Trump might believe what he says.
We must not follow Somerby down any rabbit holes, not even if Trump is lost in his own fantasies (i.e. believes his own lies). Someone has to keep feet on the ground, and it might as well be us, in Blue America.
Today is a perfect illustration of the advantage higher intelligence and more education gives to Blue America compared to Red America. The stupid are more likely to believe Trump's pile of lies than those with some basis for evaluating the truth of bullshit. That's just a fact and that IQ gulf has widened along with the polarity of red vs blue in our country. Somerby doesn't like to hear this truth, but there are more stupid people among Trump's followers than there are on the left, by measures such as IQ tests and levels of educational attainment (years in school).
ReplyDeleteIt is not that Blue America is always right or knows everything, but we do have a slight edge in sorting through the nonsense that Trump spews and are thus less likely to buy gold-plated sneakers or watches that don't work, or to believe that those seeking asylum are literally coming from Venezuelan insane asylums, or that wind farms are making whales crazy. It astonishes me that Somerby can daily call Trump crazy without seeing how crazy someone would have to be to support Trump given how much crap he spews. And here is Somerby desperately trying to redeem anything Trump says, on the grounds that perhaps he believes it, again, after saying this since Trump first came on the scene. Why does Somerby have such a strong need to find some reason to believe Trump is not a total con artist? Is he still searching for his daddy figure? Sad.
"It astonishes me that Somerby can daily call Trump crazy without seeing how crazy someone would have to be to support Trump given how much crap he spews."
DeleteHis supporters have chosen a news silo that shields them from seeing or hearing much of the crap Trump spews.
That is an aspect of being undereducated.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteBest comment in 2025!
Delete
ReplyDeleteNick Shirley deserves the Pulitzer Prize for journalism. His video has over 110 million pageviews.
This 24 year old kid out-reported the entire media.
https://x.com/nickshirleyy/status/2004642794862961123?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2005091171148943654%7Ctwgr%5E1833c198a2dfdecb53fabe4eb95075fc377263b9%7Ctwcon%5Es3_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Finstapundit.com%2F765239%2F
Alternative link to the now famous video. Last figure I saw said 111 million page4 views.
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8AulCA1aOQ&t=455s
Opposing view: https://brooklyndaddefiant.substack.com/p/something-about-minnesota-doesnt
Delete"Let’s be clear about what Nick Shirley’s video actually is. It is not investigative journalism, it is not a balanced inquiry, it is not a methodical fraud audit. It is a xenophobic YouTuber pile-on; a street-corner sting operation framed as hero-journalism, designed for outrage clicks more than truth."
DeleteWhen official inquiries are suppressed, street-corner sting operations is what's left. You should've started complaining about Democrat-enabled corruption years ago.
You said it, brother. Just ask Tom "bags of cash" Homan.
DeleteOh for fucks sake you fucking clowns, the Resident has stuffed about $6 billion in his pickets while his SIL dirty Jew businessman has bagged $2 billion from Saudi Arabia, $1.5 billion from Qatar, a half billion from UAE, etc. We found the corruption, it's in the house of white.
DeleteTriggered, Hillary?
DeleteBari Weiss's CBS News says, "Slow your roll on the Minnesota 'fraud' claims."
Deletehttps://x.com/CBSNews/status/2006040360741458116
@2:01: Suppressed? There weren't any suppressed inquiries. Way before Nick Shirley popped up with his camera, the fraud allegations had been reported, charged, and tried in court.
DeleteShirley is another right wing bullshit artist. Why can't you people have reliable news sources? Why always get all jacked up on their nonsense?
Delete"Full disclosure! On this campus, we're inclined to think that the president may even believe his various crazy claims."
ReplyDeleteHe's nothing more than a TV shill. Shills don't care enough to even bother with truth.
Yes, he is a TV shill. And, he's exceptionally good at that. But, that's not all he is. He has other virtues (and vices) as well. One big virtue is the courage (or foolhardiness) to do daring things. E.g., recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital.
Delete
DeleteHe's not a TV shill. He is great on TV, and he's even better at a rally. He's a great communicator; TDS-sickos, like Bob, can't stop watching him. This has nothing to do with "shill".
He is a manipulator not a communicator. Communication is two-way. Trump is one-way because he doesn’t listen or learn.
DeleteIt's the same thing. Purpose of communication is manipulation.
DeleteActually, no. Sometimes the purpose is mutual understanding and sharing of knowledge. I can see how trolls would get that wrong.
DeleteOnly thing the felon is exceptionally good at is getting away with child rape.
Delete"he is a TV shill. And, he's exceptionally good at that."
DeleteNo, you're the shill.
"shill: an accomplice of a hawker, gambler, or swindler who acts as an enthusiastic customer."
Trump is the swindler.
squalor definition: "the state of being extremely dirty and unpleasant, especially as a result of poverty or neglect"
ReplyDeleteIs this really what Somerby means when he refers to red and blue squalor?
Is the worst thing about Republicans that they are smelly? Should a term that arises from disgust over the poor and needy be used as a political reference? We on the left do not despise the poor and needy. We try to help them. It is thus offensive to characterize political opponents using such a term. Those on the right try to avoid the poor, not reduce their numbers. They might refer to Democrats using this term, but it isn't reciprocal. Is this perhaps another sign that Somerby has a greater affinity for the right than the left, even though he pretends the right is unpleasant too?
When was the last time Somerby considered the strengths of blue America instead of despising us for imaginary faults that are never quite explained?
My larger point is that this is a derogatory term that Trump might apply to immigrants. Why is Somerby using it against us now?