TUESDAY, DECEMBER 16, 2025
...and by what wasn't discussed: We remain stunned by what we saw—and by what we didn't see—on MS NOW programs last night.
As of this morning, even Susie Wiles, Trump's chief of staff, is being quoted about the sitting president's bizarre behavior. The release of her surprising remarks is largely a matter of serendipitous timing, but the president has even lost Fuentes, according to this report:
Trump Loses Nick Fuentes Over ‘Evil’ Rob Reiner Remarks
Nick Fuentes, an unabashed admirer of Adolf Hitler, said President Donald Trump went too far — even by his standards — with his “despicable” remarks about Rob Reiner the morning after the famed director and his wife were found stabbed to death.
“This is ugly rhetoric. It is ugly, it is actually evil,” Fuentes said on his show on Monday. “Forget for a moment that we are in a war — someone gets murdered by their son, it’s a horrific tragedy. This is a horrible story, and nobody deserves that. I don’t care what their politics are.”
And so on from there. Summation:
Even the "unabashed Hitler admirers" think Trump is too nutty now! Meanwhile, here's the start of CNN's summary of the year-long series of interviews Vanity Fair conducted with Wiles:
Trump chief of staff Susie Wiles says president ‘has an alcoholic’s personality’ and much more in candid interviews
The White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles, delivered a series of unusually candid and at times unflattering assessments of President Donald Trump, his second-term agenda and some of his closest allies in a series of wide-ranging interviews with Vanity Fair published Tuesday.
Across more than 10 interviews, Wiles spoke frankly about working for Trump, saying the president “has an alcoholic’s personality,” despite being known as a teetotaler. She acknowledged the president’s appetite for revenge, conceding many of his second-term actions were driven by a desire for retribution. Wiles suggested Trump was pursuing regime change in Venezuela through his boat-bombing campaign, contradicting official justifications for the strikes. And she described several controversial areas where the president ignored her advice, including on deportations and pardons.
The comments, made in conversations over the past year with author Chris Whipple, are striking both in candor and topic. Wiles—who claimed Tuesday that her words were taken out of context in a “hit piece”—is known inside the White House as a careful operator with few internal detractors, unlike the men who held the job in Trump’s first term. She has retained Trump’s confidence in part by running a functional West Wing that doesn’t attempt to constrain the president’s impulses.
Wiles is universally portrayed as one of the handful of sane ones. As of today, even she is candidly discussing the sitting president's "mental health," according to Whipple's lengthy pair of reports for Vanity Fair.
(For Whipple's part 1, you can just click here. For part 2, just click this.)
We remain stunned by what we saw on MS NOW last night. More to the point, we're stunned by the conduct which went undiscussed on one program after another.
It's as we told you long ago—it's all anthropology now. Putting it a slightly different way:
Our species simply wasn't built for this line of work.
Over here in Blue America, we're being serviced by the dumbest (and most craven) bunch of mother-frumpers even assembled on earth. We'll extend the story about last night's weirdness in tomorrow morning's report.
For now, we remain stunned by what we saw—and by what went undiscussed—all through a long and puzzling "cable news" night. Fuentes (and Ann Coulter) now say they're appalled. Over here in Blue America, our stars kept averting their gaze!
ReplyDelete"Trump Loses Nick Fuentes Over ‘Evil’ Rob Reiner Remarks"
Nick -- who? Why would you, Bob, or anyone else, care what that guy says?
And since when? Are you, Bob, along with faithful Democrat cult comrades, always listening to Nick Fuentes? Or only when his pronouncements happen to caress your TDS idiocy?
Jeez. Too funny.
Dude, so spot on man, and yo, funny too!
DeleteI think that it's just a comical juxtaposition: an unabashed white supremacist thinks that Trump is being vile in his reaction to the death of an accomplished Jewish director.
DeleteTrumptard, it's real simple: we care about anyone Donald had dinner with.
DeleteNick Fuentes has a much larger audience and more influence than Fox News.
DeleteHe started the right wing groyper movement; it was a right wing groyper that supposedly shot Charlie Kirk.
Delete"comical juxtaposition"
You hate Donald Trump. Some prominent radical rightist hates Donald Trump too.
You find it a "comical juxtaposition", Soros-monkey? Why? I find it perfectly natural. After all, back in the 1940s your boss worked for the Nazis in Budapest.
2:18,
DeleteWhy would anyone hate a child rapist?
"Even the "unabashed Hitler admirers" think Trump is too nutty now!"
ReplyDeleteThat group of Hitler admirers does not include David in Cal or Cecelia. They are of the pure asshole Hitler lovers contingent. Hate is their core belief.
Anonymouse 3:21pm, just as long as I’m pure. However, we both know that had the shoe been on Trump’s foot, you’d be advocating for that date to be a national holiday.
DeleteHowever, we both know that had the shoe been on Trump’s foot, you’d be advocating for that date to be a national holiday.
DeleteCecelia is speaking in tongues. Whenever you think that you are posting something clever, you need another pair of eyes to look at it -- 'cause this is gibberish.
Iiya, that same issue might be the case with the implied difference between “Hitler admirers” and “asshole Hitler lovers”. And we both DO know that if Barron had stabbed President Trump to death, anonymices would want that date to be a national holiday.
Delete@3:21 - I will repeat my earlier comment. Trump's post about Rob Reiner was so disgusting and inappropriate that for the first time I take seriously the possibility of mental decline.
DeleteBTW another web site showed that Reiner has posted some awful things about Trump. Those posts help explain Trump's disgusting post, but they don't justify it. De mortuis nil nisi bonum.
Given how every high/mid level Democrat/Democratic pundit reacted when the asshole Kirk was killed, I doubt very much that anyone would be clamoring for a national holiday. I can't promise that there won't be a single anonymous poster on some quasi-anonymous blog who won't rejoice. You seem to conflate those very different things.
DeletePS: I have no earthly clue what the fuck the difference is between "Hitler lovers" and "Hitler admirers". That's probably well-understood in your circles.
Whatever Reiner posted about Trump was true -- and Trump hadn't just been killed. In any case, criticism of the sitting president is par for the course. You need to write that 100 times on the black/whiteboard. Presidents should behave presidentially -- it's 90% of the job. Presidents are supposed to say things that make us feel as we are unified country, striving to achieve the same goals. Does Trump do that? Reiner is just another example of what a small-minded prick Trump is, especially in his state of advancing dementia.
DeleteIlya, oh, no. It’s “asshole Hitler lovers” (and don’t you forget it) and “Hitler admirers” and it’s an anonymouse who used those terms.
DeleteIlya, behaving presidentially is not a rock solid thing with me after all the brouhaha from Russiagate to 1/6 in the last ten years, I’ll stick with behaving like a human being and Trump has issues with that, and so do his critics.
DeleteCecelia, I think I hear your mother calling you. Close your laptop and go to dinner.
DeleteIf you actually believed that behaving like a human being were a criterion for the presidency, you would have rejected Trump entirely, not just acknowledge that he "has issues". Trump raped his own wife Ivana, then talked about grabbing pussies on a live mic to Billy Bush, and had 27+ accusations of sexual assault against him in 2015, but you voted for him anyway (assuming you are not Eastern European).
When you claim to be female, your blase refusal to consider any of his Epstein-related follies important, much less his corruption and fraud, show that you do not identify as female and perhaps think you are special about wouldn't be similarly mauled by a man who has no sexual restraint (by his own admission). Actual women tend to avoid men like that. None of them support a man who attacks women. But it has become harder for MAGA to ignore his sexual abuse now that there is proof in the form of Epstein Files. But we can turn this around and ask what kind of woman would spend any time at all here in blog comments defending scum who lusts after his own daughter, including when she was a young teen.
Any of the scandals against Trump should have ended his career. The question is why they didn't. I can see that hope for financial gain is part of the answer, but I do not understand what kind of person would accept a rapist as president under any circumstances, for any amount of money, much less a female person.
There is something very wrong with Trump supporters. There is also something wrong with a man who would not vote for a female candidate for president while accepting an asshole like Trump in an office he is unfit to hold. When Somerby says we humans were not built for voting, perhaps that is what he means. It has been one of the biggest disillusionments of my long life that people who vote for Trump exist in our country, still, after the revealing episodes where Trump has shown us exactly who and what he is. I used to hope that Somerby was similarly disillusioned, but if he were, he wouldn't devote blog space to promoting right wing memes and excusing Trump by calling him crazy instead of evil.
You, Cecelia, are just pure scum. There is no excuse for what you do here. You are not fit to talk about Rob Reiner and you do not belong among actual human beings with your filthy mind and ugly pretense to be female when we all know that women are better than you.
Anonymouse 5:47pm, you left out the neckties.
Delete7:29,
DeleteYou left out the funny parts, again.
Anonymouse 9:53pm, like your nose and chin?
DeleteLike nothing about you.
DeleteWhat line of work were we humans built for?
ReplyDeleteBabies. Making babies.
DeleteMen were not built for that.
DeleteAnonymouse 4:15pm, yes, men are…involved. We’ll talk about it when you’re older.
DeleteMen do not make babies. They are only sperm donors. Women grow the zygote into a fetus and finally a baby and then go through the pain and risk of childbirth. Men do nothing but have sex, which may or may not be used by a woman's body to fertilize an egg. Today, women do not even need men for sex, because they can use IVF.
DeleteThe real work of raising a child comes after birth. Neither men nor women were "built for" that. It is difficult and not always successful, just like everything else humans do. In prehistoric times, children were raised by family clans, then later, Hillary Clinton's village. Today many families include extended family members in child raising, especially when there is hardship.
Perhaps Somerby thinks robots will be child care workers down the line. Who knows what he is thinking when he writes cryptic sentences about we humans being built for any line of work at all. The word built applies better to machines than people.
I think Somerby is crazier than Trump. That's why he is so fascinated with the DSM, which was never meant to be a catalog that you order a personality out of. What matters is not Trump's DSM classification codes but what he does in his life. So far, he is failing the task of being human, bigly. He seems to have adopted Hitler as a role model and is desperately seeking a bunker to end his life in. But first he has to do some more genocide of Venezuelans and put his name on some buildings.
Many people today are unaware that before Hitler created his extermination camps, he put people into work camps and made them relocate out of Germany and back to whatever country Hitler believed they came from ethnically. He sent Poles back to Poland, Italians to Italy, and so on, repatriating the German citizens who he considered insufficiently "German" (i.e., Aryan). After WWII there was an agency to return people relocated (deported) by Hitler back to their homes before the war. Trump is doing this too. He cannot conceive that someone with brown skin and a Spanish surname might be an American citizen, so he is shipping those people to places where they have never lived and were not born. Because Hitler did that too. This isn't only xenophobia but a direct imitation of someone Trump is fascinated with and wants to emulate. And he has recruited the guys to help him do it, especially Miller. Trump is the Nazi-in-Chief to these Nazi-wannabes. And all Putin had to do to gain Trump's allegiance is promise non-interference by Russia in his revive the Reich plot.
Anonymouse 5:31pm, you might as well argue that dirt makes a plant, not seeds. I admit to not reading most of your post, but I had to stop with your effrontery as to suggesting that transmen don’t make babies. Beat it, you bigot.
DeleteWhy are conservatives so ignorant of biology. Semen alone can’t produce a child. Your seed analogy doesn’t work because people are not plants.
DeleteYou need to read the stuff about Hitler because it could happen to you, even if you are Somerby.
Anonymouse 9:23pm, an unfertilized egg can’t produce a child either. You were so eager to rip me that you contested my quip about women AND men making babies and now you’re saying I don’t understand biology and need to read up on Hitler. You’re an idiot.
DeleteAren't quips supposed to be funny?
DeleteIf so, Cecelia is lying again. This time about making a quip.
Somerby doesn’t actually say what he found stunning or what was omitted by Blue America.
ReplyDeleteFuentes calls Trump’s remarks evil and despicable, not nutty.
ReplyDeleteMust be a Princess Bride fan.
DeleteHahaha that’s so funny. Maybe you should point out that Reiner’s death meter reads 11. Or that Meathead is done eating meatballs. Even Fuentes would find you not funny.
DeleteAnonymouse 4:14pm, it’s always interesting when anonymices put pejorative statements in the mouths of other people. Those sentences came straight from your shrunken head and from nobody else.
DeleteA few threads back, DiC stated that Obama had evil thoughts. Admiring the current asshole of a president is an evil thought.
DeleteCecelia, those were examples of the same kind of remark that you made, so that you could see how crass you too sound. And you should understand that anyone can make these sorts of facile remarks if they aren't worried about hurting other people, as you clearly are not. No one claimed you said any of the ugly remarks suggested by @4:04. YOU are the one mistakenly claiming anyone accused you of saying them. That illustrates your stupidity.
DeleteAnonymouse 5:17pm, you’re here every day to hurt someone’s feelings, specifically Bob’s feelings and afterwards hurt the feelings of anyone who says you’re unfair. In the meantime, anonymouse flying monkeys say worse things about your contrarians and you never utter a peep. We both know that none this crap hurts anyone’s feelings, now go stick your finger into a light socket.
DeleteSomerby says he doesn't read his comments. How can anything said here hurt his feelings when he doesn't read them? Perhaps those comments are hurting YOUR feelings Cecelia, either because you are Somerby or because you identify with him. And then you say that no one's feelings are hurt, contradicting your statement that I am hurting people. Your request that I electrocute myself sounds mad enough to reflect your own hurt. Why lie about what you feel? Oh, wait, that's part of Republican denial of reality and posing, hypocrisy, and just plain inability to be truthful.
DeleteAnonymouse 6:08pm, we know that Bob doesn’t respond to comments, we do not know that he doesn’t read them. My guess is that he does read them, occasionally. I’ll respond directly to Bob when I find it necessary.
DeleteNOW,, Anonymouse 6:08pm, maybe you should point out that Reiner’s death meter reads 11. Or that Meathead is done eating meatballs. Even Fuentes would find you not funny. Now go electrocute yourself.
There’s that famous lack of empathy (aka cruelty).
DeleteAnonymouse 9:20pm, you don’t need empathy, you need electric shock therapy. Anyone who argues that you just want me to see examples of the crass things I say because I quipped that Fuentes must be a Princess Bride fan, needs a shock to their nethers. I’d merely write you off as a ridiculous and highly contrived bossy fusspot, but you’re part of an organized troll operation.
DeleteAnonymouse 9:20om, in my 7:57 pm post, everything after “NOW, Anonymouse 6:08pm” is a quote from your pal anonymouse 4:14pm.
DeleteCecelia,
DeleteIt's funny, because you elected a child rapist to be the President of the United States of America.
anon 6:08, I don't believe TDH ever said he doesn't read his comments. Maybe he does, maybe not - he certainly doesn't directly respond to them. It would be natural that he did read comments, at least sometimes, but there is no way to tell. What is obvious is that you are demented.
DeleteAC/ Ma,
DeleteOf course Somerby reads them.
That's how he knows which ones to disappear when they make a good point.
Trump is a walking dead; with pieces of flesh falling off of him. Everyone can smell that -- literally, sometimes. So, the cultist are jockeying for position. It may be that Trump's days are numbered. We'll see if Vance opens his chinless mouth and chirps something halfway critical of Trump, at which point Trump will attempt to fire him...only to realize that he can't. When Trump posts on Truth Social -- I just fired JD Vance -- 25th amendment is not far behind.
ReplyDeleteIlya, you may not like Vance, but he’s not stupid. My guess is that he won’t address it…. however there is the possibility that Vance could prove me wrong. Still I think any remark Vance would make would be one that was an attempt at irony or humor.
ReplyDeleteIs stupid the same as venal? How stupid is it for someone who claims to believe in Christ to engage in evil-doing under threat of going to hell?
DeleteI don't think Cecelia is qualified to judge anyone else's intelligence given the stupidity she displays here every day. Yes, Vance may have graduated from Yale but Trump demonstrated that anyone with money can hire someone else to take their exams for them and otherwise slide through.
It may also be true that Vance has enough brains to get through school but not much moral courage and no ability to resist being helped along by someone like Peter Thiel. We are similarly supposed to believe that Bannon Trump is smart enough to have earned millions in cryptocurrency schemes while 18 years old and barely out of high school. Given that Vance didn't have a rich daddy like Barron, one wonders why Thiel would invest in him and what Vance provided to hold up his end of things, especially now that he is VP.
Anonmouse 5:14pm, in answer to your first question-because human nature will always be imperfect. We especially exhibit this condition when we make arguments, without a shred of evidence, that someone “might” have paid someone else to take their exams. In fact, I think you just utterly proved the argument against the possibility of perfection. It’s completely settled now. I wish I could say that George Soros has made a good investment in anonymices, but that’s impossible, as exhibited by Daddy Soro’s all too human judgment in hiring you morons.
DeleteThere is plenty of evidence that rich kids breeze through college by having others do their work for them, it has been going on for decades. You are so out of touch, and unfamiliar with American society.
DeleteAnonymouse 7:55pm, right… and there are people who actually murder other people, so why would anyone refrain from suggesting that Vance has done that?
DeleteTrump can’t read or write without a sharpie. How could he do college?
DeleteListen to Vance talk, he is clearly uneducated.
DeleteTrump is dumb as fuck, but he is obviously a sharper bulb than Vance.
"Ilya, you may not like Vance, but he’s not stupid."
DeleteAdmittedly, Vance's voracious ambition outshine his lack of intellect but that doesn't mean he isn't stupid.
Vance is not stupid, but at some point he will also smell the rotting flesh and decide that Trump is done and needs to be carted off to the funny farm. Susie Wiles just created an opening with her interview.
ReplyDeleteIlya, Susie Wiles comments were made before Trump’s comments on Reiner and she says that she was taken out of context. Anyone would know that the interview as printed would not go down with any employer. You’re not going to consider that., but thats the context that she has copped and she can’t be both a liar and a truth teller.
DeleteIlya is not saying that Wiles intentionally committed an opening for Vance, only that her interview does create such an opening.
DeleteWiles should understand how the media works, in order to hold her job. This may be another instance of Trump appointing an underqualified person to hold an important job, but that doesn't get Wiles off the hook. Reporters record their interviews because it is not infrequent for an interviewee to regret having been too open and wanting to claim they were misquoted.
Wiles is now showing that she is a bit more sane than some others surrounding Trump. That will only reflect poorly on her with Trump and his loyalists.
If I were going to speculate, I would think this might be her way of resigning without taking flak for being disloyal. If she is laid off by an angry or suspicious Trump, she can claim unemployment insurance, but not if she quits.
“Ilya is not saying that Wiles intentionally committed an opening for Vance, only that her interview does create such an opening.”
DeleteI never claimed that Ilya said that Wiles was intentionally setting up the VP to comment on Trump. I assumed Ilya meant that there was a confluence of events that did that. You need to start over with that one.
Wiles has certainly given the reporter a reason to share his tapes, let’s see if he does, but that will open a can of worms too as to tampering. Your last paragraph is possible. Wiles may hold those motives. Any resignation in an administration is going to garner conversations, attention, speculation, accusations, with someone else saying “Don’t be so sure.” We’ll see.
Right, anon@4:54. It's just incidental but things are beginning to accumulate, so an avalanche may be triggered.
DeleteReiner thing is just another indication as to how far Trump is in the throes of his dementia. In his earlier, more coherent days, he would've managed to make it about himself without shitting on a tragic death of two people. But he's old and confused now; and that's where it dovetails with the Wiles' interview. Of course, she was "taken out of context", which is another way of saying: I didn't know you were going to publish this.
Wiles is joining a chorus of five year-olds screaming: Trump has no clothes (or mental wherewithal). Of course, the distinction being that she was working behind the scenes to convince us all of the opposite.
Ilya, or after eight years in the jungle and a bit over three to go, Trump can’t put down the machine gun. He’ll never be able to that. Not ever again. As to Wiles and the political wiles you attribute to her, we’ll see.
DeleteWhat character would he be Trump be in Tropic Thunder.
DeleteCecelia -- not to overstate the point, you're spewing utter fucking nonsense. Trump is the one who is persecuting people, not matter how hard you try to make him out to be a victim.
IIya, that is a matter of opinion as influenced by enough law fare to have taken down Satan, let alone Trump. Well, that devil ain’t done yet. I haven’t seen the Tropic Thunder, but I’d wager on Trump being the bad guy. I’ll watch that movie tomorrow.
DeleteTrump is sinking like the Titanic and the rats are escaping from the ship.
DeleteIt is clear that those in Trump's admin that were just following orders, will be facing being pariahs and being prosecuted.
Should raping children be a crime if a bigot does it?
DeleteSusie Wiles is from my town. When she says something it is not without intent.
ReplyDeleteAnonymouse 4:43pm, you dont say things without a particular intent/intention as well. We know your intentions. We don’t know the author’s and he wrote the piece.
DeleteGo ahead and tell me my intentions.
DeleteAnonymouse 4:53pm, your intentions are to contradict Wiles in saying she was taken out of context. Better yet… you make an appeal to authority in this because you’re from the same town.
DeleteSusie Wiles dad kicked a long, game-winning field goal in the snow for the Giants that I still remember.
DeleteI have a first cousin named Susie.
Delete4:59 Nice try. I have seen a lot more press about Susie Wiles than likely you have. I have seen her wield power in local politics where I live even as of this past year. I am not Republican but respect her. You as always are a fucking troll who likes to spew bullshit in your usual half assed way.
DeleteAnonymouse 5:19pm, yet another appeal to authority. BTW, tomorrow when there’s a discussion on Wiles should I wait for you to tell me that you’re the townswoman of Wiles ,who has some insight into her, or should I just assume that anyone who comments on the issue is that person who lived in the same town with Susie Wiles? Let us all know so we can we can sit at your cankles.
DeleteWhen someone says they know Wiles, that is an appeal to experience not authority.
DeleteExperience is almost like fact. Cecelia, in contrast, just bloviates.
DeleteAnonymouse 6:29pm: Oh, you absurd and pretentious fool. Experience provides a basic sense of authority.
Delete6:20. You stupid fucking troll. I live in her hometown. This past year a preserved wetlands in our town was approved to be swapped for multiple plots of junk properties throughout the state so that it could be built on by developers. DeSantis , who also lived in my town before becoming governor, publicly approved of the swap, which was foisted on the public with no warning. Suzie Wiles, much to her credit, got wind of it, publicly denounced it and made sure that it didn't happen. I am not an authority on Suzie Wiles, never claimed to be. I know about things she has done that your level of clairvoyance cannot grasp, having lived in her community, so fuck off. You're a self indulgent piece of work.
DeleteAnonymouse 7:57pm, you engaged me with a claim to being from Wiles hometown and having some sort of sense as to her intent. Yeah, well, that and five bucks will buy you some deodorant.
DeleteAs much as you would like to preen yourself on other people's comments, I did not engage you. Maybe this is one of your problems, that you are so self- involved that you think a random comment on this blog is specifically directed at you. Get a grip.
DeleteCecelia is a Right-winger.
DeleteHis feelings are the most important thing in the world to him.
You can tell, because one of the Right's favorite lies is they don't care about feelings.
If it isn't bigotry, it's completely negotiable.
DeleteSomerby cannot bring himself to explain what stunned him, but Tiedrich does not have the same problem:
ReplyDelete"CNN reporter Manu Raju: “Mr. Speaker [Mike Johnson], do you condemn Trump’s post about Rob Reiner?”
second reporter: “what are your thoughts about what President Trump said about Rob Reiner?
Holy Mike Johnson: “I don’t do ongoing commentary about everything that’s said by everybody in government every day.”
Raju: “he’s the president of the United States. a lot of your members are criticizing him.”
you’ll never guess what happened next: brave Sir Mike ran away!
you know, I keep hearing about how Holy Mike is some super-religious Christian — so why is he carrying water for the literal antichrist? no one’s even asking for a forceful criticism. how hard would it have been for Mike to have mumbled out some halfhearted statement like ‘well of course I don’t agree with the president’?
get the fuck out of the way, Mike. let me show you how a real Christian acts. Russell Moore is the Editor-in-Chief of the magazine Christianity Today. here’s what he had to say.
“How this vile, disgusting, and immoral behavior has become normalized in the United States is something our descendants will study in school, to the shame of our generation.”
‘shame’ is exactly right. it’s just so fucking embarrassing to have a vulgar wart-hog as the leader of our country. the rest of the world is laughing at us, when they’re not cringing in horror."
Anonymouse 5:59 has a new appreciation for Christianity as prefaced upon who is Christian…enough…to condemn Trump’s remarks. She’s a truthseeker. Why it’s not in her to confuse what’s politically beneficial to Democrats with an authentic respect for religious piety. Sure…. She’s got David and me as examples of disapproving of Trump’s remarks from jump and what are his odds of not being cursed out by her in morning?
DeleteI agree with @5:59 that "it's just so fucking embarrassing to have a vulgar wart-hog as the leader of our country." OTOH it's so refreshing to have a President who follows policies that benefit all Americans. I put up with the rudeness in exchange for the well-being of my fellow citizens.
DeleteMike Johnson is following Trump's orders: grind our economy to a halt, and it is working.
DeleteRepublicans, for decades, run on conning the rubes so they can game our economy so they rob us blind.
"I put up with the rudeness in exchange for the well-being of my fellow citizens."
DeleteCloser and closer David in Cal crawls toward Holocaust denial. It shouldn't be too long now.
David in Cal,
DeleteWhen did you become an Argentine?
7:52. The well being of your fellow citizens is amply reflected by a Trump approval rating that has been falling monthly and is now at 36%. You live in a world that became socialist when you turned 65. For the vast majority of Americans the prices of healthcare, education, childcare and groceries have not benefited from ICE raids and the Trump family grifting. The dollar has lost a substantial amount of its value by the design of the crack Trump economic team, measles are breaking out in pockets throughout the country, STEM fellowships have been rescinded by a an autistic narcissist on ketamine who did precious little to solve the deficit that Trump can claim to have ballooned more than any other president in history. Job numbers are in the toilet. But yeah, keep waving that MAGA banner. Remember that 36% approval rating as the embarrassing pronouncements you think are disconnected from his policy failures sinks him even lower in 2026 and drags his zombie enablers down with him.
Delete7:52,
DeleteSure. That's easy for you, because you have never (for even one millisecond) cared about the nation's federal deficit.
Susie Wiles is not going to put the brakes on any illegal thing Trump might wish to do -- her job is to help him accomplish his demands. It seems likely to me that this is why Trump selected her, after having had others who did try to keep him within the bounds of law and the Constitution:
ReplyDelete""But piece number two, Nicolle, I really felt like comparing her to my former boss, John Kelly," said Taylor. "She seems a lot more like a bystander in the Oval Office, a lot more like a bystander. She comes off in these interviews like a nice-ish retired lady who says, 'yeah, Mr. President, that might be bad,' but doesn't really do anything to stop it. In fact, says avowedly that her agenda, even if she doesn't agree with it, is to go make the things happen, seemingly implying that the lawlessness is something she puts up with."
She then went even further, Taylor added.
"That quote you said earlier, Nicolle, that Donald Trump has a view in her words, that there is nothing he cannot do. Nothing. Zero. That's just a full admission that this man doesn't believe he can be stopped by anything. Not by the law, not by the Constitution. And her job is to make that happen. That's scary as hell. And John Kelly's view was diametrically opposite of Susie Wiles' view. His view was, 'No, I cannot and should not tell the president he can do illegal things, and I should help him create off-ramps from doing illegal things and to comply with his duties under the U.S. Constitution.'"
https://www.rawstory.com/susie-wiles-2674405334/
Of course, the value here is not that WIles has done or would ever consider doing anything to stop illegality. The value is that she's putting it out in the open that Trump is unencumbered by law, ethics, morality, or common sense. By stating the obvious, as a Trump insider, she hopefully starts the ball rolling towards Trump's demise.
DeletePS: Possibly wishful thinking on my part.
Susie Wiles apparently did not get the memo that she has to agree with everything that Trump and his toadies have enacted this time around. Hence the multiple comments made by her in the VF article about how she wouldn't have handled deportation, tariiffs, USAID and pardons, among other issues.
Delete"Wiles also claimed to have reviewed the Epstein files and asserted that they contain no incriminating information about either Trump or former President Bill Clinton."
ReplyDeleteThis is the whole reason for the Vanity Faire article. To get across the idea that Trump is innocent of Epstein-related crimes. The rest of Wiles' complaints about being quoted out of context are to enhance the credibility of her remarks, to make it seem like she accidentally told the truth instead of using a journalist to plant another message about Trump's innocence. So, there will be no retribution against Wiles, who just did as instructed to help salvage Trump's reputation in the face of more Epstein leaks.
It would be foolish to believe that Wiles knows whether Trump is guilty of crimes or not. And look how they added Bill Clinton's name, to give the left a reason to believe her. If we want to believe Clinton is innocent, pairing his name with Trump's in Wiles' remarks makes it difficult to accept Clinton's innocence without also accepting Trump's innocence. It is a sales trick.
And we have Somerby here, pumping up interest in what Wiles said, to better put across her claim that Trump is innocent of involvement in Epstein-related crimes. Yet she also said Trump doesn't believe in following laws or rules and doesn't care about being a criminal. Does it seem likely he wouldn't have participated right along with Epstein, as two bro bad-boys who like women on the younger side, having contests to sleep with other men's wives, and so on? Yeah, I believe he is innocent, because Wiles said so, even though she said he breaks laws willy nilly and won't be restrained by anyone on his staff.
ReplyDeleteAnonymouse 6:40pm, there are several commenters discussing Wiles, but Bob is pumping her up? Can you get more ridiculous? Yes, I think your capacity for ridiculousness is bottomless
DeleteWatch what he writes tomorrow.
DeleteTrump doesn’t know where Venezuela is.
DeleteAnonymouse 9:12pm, did Bob write the article for Vanity Fair?
DeleteIf there isn't a Right-wing grievance prominently presented in the article, Somerby had nothing to do with it.
DeleteTrump says Venezuela has stolen American land. Does anybody know of any land that's gone missing?
ReplyDeleteTrump was exaggerating in service to a larger truth, which is every Republican voter is a bigot.
DeleteConcerning the earlier post about ASPD and "bred in the bone":
ReplyDeleteSomerby perhaps misunderstands what he has read about ASPD, but more likely he is cherry-picking and weaponizing the science.
The language used in researching ASPD is very cautious: “generally believed to be caused by a combination and interaction of genetics and environment”...“research suggests… some or even a strong genetic basis”. Researchers use phrases that are explicitly non-causal, instead they refer to correlation, saying things like "associated with", "linked to", "higher risk", "more likely", "prevalence is higher", "small association remains".
The research does not claim that genes determine outcome, that traits are fixed, that antisocial behavior is inevitable or intrinsic. The research emphasizes that "one factor alone is unlikely to be the only cause", and "when environmental interactions are taken out of the equation, a small association remains”.
The research is saying that there may be some heritability under specific environmental conditions but it is not destiny, there may be probabilistic influence but not necessity, that traits are highly plastic especially in early development.
Furthermore, the research suffers from selection bias, the subjects primarily being prisoners, abused children, and people already flagged for conduct disorder.
Somerby tries to cover his bases with coy phrasing like "sounds like" and "can be", but what he is doing is translating statistical population-level correlations into essential individual traits, he is converting scientific uncertainty into folk-biological fatalism. "Bred in the bone" is not a neutral stance, it implies inevitability, permanence, moral hopelessness, and resistance to social intervention; science avoids these notions because they are misleading. Somerby is exploiting the gap in knowledge asymmetrically, he downplays environmental causation, but amplifies biological pessimism. This all fits into Somerby's broader narrative, that humans are broken, that irrationality is fundamental, that social reform is limited, that moral critique is naive, that power structures are besides the point. With Somerby's "bred in the bone", systemic analysis and social reform become useless, resignation becomes the norm. Somerby uses faux humility to disguise his biological essentialism.
Somerby is suggesting "humans are just like this", but the science says "certain traits interact with environments to produce certain outcomes".
Biology is plastic, outcomes are context-dependent, social arrangements shape behavior.
Somerby wants inevitability because it absolves society of responsibility.
The research Somerby cites shows probabilistic risk under specific conditions, not fixed traits. He converts correlation into essence, population statistics into individual destiny, and scientific uncertainty into biological pessimism; Somerby is weaponizing science to push his right wing agenda.
Agree, thank you for this.
DeleteWell said. Asymmetry is one of the pillars upholding Republicans' faulty reasoning.
DeleteYes.
DeleteLess healthcare in exchange for more bigotry against minorities is a deal every Republican voter will take in a heartbeat.
ReplyDeleteTrump could literally take away citizens' healthcare, and not lose a vote, because Republican voters only care about bigotry.
ReplyDeleteWhen you're a fascist, the Right and the mainstream media they own let you get away with it.
DeleteApparently DC was falsifying crime statistics. True numbers show how successful Trump's efforts were.
ReplyDelete'COOKING THE BOOKS': Police chief RESIGNS after being accused of cooking crime data
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1Cn560diqA
Please don't defund the police. They may be habitual liars, who have a huge problem with telling the truth, but we need them to harass black people.
Deleteفرسان الخليج
ReplyDelete