WEDNESDAY: What does the state of Texas want?

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 6, 2025

What does California already have? Just for the record, our personal preference would be these:

Our personal druthers:
We would prefer that every state conduct its congressional redistricting every ten years, and only then, based on the new census data.

We would prefer that every state try to create congressional districts which are as geographically compact as possible, with reasonable respect being paid to city and county lines.

Those are the practices we would prefer. That said, those practices aren't required by law, which brings us to the current war which is breaking out between Texas and California.

Let's consider what Texas Republicans are hoping to get:

Texas is often described as a deep red state. That said, we'd score it as only 56% Republican and 44% Democratic, based on results from last year's presidential and congressional elections (including its Senate race).

In last year's elections, Republicans were roughly 56% of the two-party vote in Texas. That said, here's the way the Texas congressional delegation stacks up at this point:

Texas congressional delegation, at present:
Republicans: 25
Democrats: 13

With 56 or maybe 57% of the two-party vote, Texas Republicans hold 65.8% of the state's congressional seats. President Trump says they deserve to hold more of those seats. This is the breakdown they're seeking:

Texas congressional delegation, after proposed redistricting:
Republicans: 30
Democrats: 8

That would take Texas Republicans all the way up to 78.9% of the congressional seats, based on only 56% of the two party-vote!

Based on that stated intention, Governor Newsome is threatening to fight back. He says that two can play that game—but judging by the basic data, it can almost start to look like California already has!

For the record, this:

Based on last year's elections (presidential, Senate and House) we'd say that Democrats represent roughly 59% of California's two-party vote. In that sense, California is (very slightly) bluer than Texas is red.

California is bluer than Texas is red, but just by a small amount. That said, here's the current breakdown of California's House delegation:

California congressional delegation, at present:
Democrats: 43
Republicans: 9

At present, California Democrats hold 82.7% of the state's congressional seats, even before any sudden redistricting! In California, Democrats already hold a larger percentage of seats than Republicans hope to acquire by redistricting down in Texas.

As everyone knows, California's current districts were created by what is described as a nonpartisan commission. Indeed, there may well have been zero attempts at gerrymandering in the creation of the current districts. All we're saying is this:

As the latest civil war starts, it might be worth becoming familiar with the numbers in these two states as those numbers already exist.

According to Governor Newsome, Cali may decide to gerrymander now too. We're not saying that they should; we aren't saying they shouldn't. But here's the new partisan breakdown California's Democrats would reportedly be hoping to attain:

California congressional delegation, after possible redistricting:
Democrats: 48
Republicans: 4

("It could result in as many as five new blue seats and Democrats holding all but four of California’s 52 congressional districts, according to a slide presented to members of Congress and viewed by POLITICO." Click here.)

Are those the numbers the California Democrats might seek? If so, they would then control 92.3% of the state's delegation, with Texas Republicans dreaming of the chance to control a percentage which would be substantially smaller.

Again, we're not saying what's right and what's wrong. We're just presenting the numbers.

As a final point, this:

Imagine a state whose electorate is 60% Party A and 40% Party B. There's nothing in American tradition or law which says that forty percent of that state's congressional seats should be held by Party B. Something like that might seem to be fair, but there's no such law or practice. 

In fact, consider this:

If, by some magical process, the population of that state was evenly distributed all over the state, you could imagine that every district, no matter how scrupulously drawn, would end up with 60% Party A and 40% Party B.

Party A would win every seat! This is the planet we've chosen.

STRANGERS: When Suzanne Scott pried the lid off the can...

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 6, 2025

...this collection of strangers emerged: Among the cognoscenti, the anti-journalistic movement in question has come to be known by a striking name:

The Revolt of the D-Minus Students

Next week, we expect to explore that revolt in more detail. For today, we'll start with the obvious:

The Fox News Channel's Greg Gutfeld is one of the major priests of this destructive, extremely dumb movement.

As we briefly noted in last Friday's report, Gutfeld had always seemed to be just a little bit "off." But when the Fox News Channel decided to make him an integral part of this nation's "cable news" structure, a bit of oddness was transformed into genuine cultural madness.

In Monday's report, we showed you what this "unrecognizable" said and did on his prime time "cable news" program on Thursday, July 24. Our question:

Has anyone ever appeared on an American news broadcast and made a dumber presentation? Also, has anyone ever been more coarse, and more profane, than this strange person was as he dumbed this large nation down?

Has anyone ever been dumber than that? Has anyone been more openly misogynistic, if that term has any meaning? (We all get to decide whether it does,)

We're forced to suppose that the answer is no—that no one has ever been dumber. Spewing ad hominem insults as he went, the fellow attempted to support Tulsi Gabbard's latest fugue—her claim that President Obama engaged in treason—by directing ridicule at the many journalists who have done these things:

Targets of Gutfeld's derision
1) Journalists who claimed that the Russians "hacked the 2016 election."
2) Journalists who discussed Konstantin Kilimnik's role in that election.

Spewing insults as he went, Suzanne's child told millions of viewers that the RUSSIA COLLUSION HOAX was built upon those laughable pillars. Along the way, as he spouted and fumed, he forgot to mention this:

Everyone on the face of the earth agrees that the Russians actually did "hack the 2016 election." Everyone understands that basic fact—everyone except the millions of people who get propagandized by this "prankster" on a daily and nightly basis.

Everyone had long agreed—the Russians actually did "hack the 2016 election." Also, the following passage from the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee's report might start to explain why someone like Rachel Maddow had been discussing the aforementioned Kilimnik on her own cable news show:

REPORT OF THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE, UNITED STATES SENATE
VOLUME 5: COUNTERINTELLIGENCE THREATS AND VULNERABILITIES 

[...]

[Trump campaign chairman Paul] Manafort hired and worked increasingly closely with a Russian national, Konstantin Kilimnik. Kilimnik is a Russian intelligence officer. Kilimnik became an integral part of Manafort's operations in Ukraine and Russia, serving as Manafort's primary liaison to Deripaska and eventually managing Manafort's office in Kyiv. Kilimnik and Manafort formed a close and lasting relationship that endured to the 2016 U.S. elections. and beyond. 

[...]

The Committee found that Manafort's presence on the Campaign and proximity to Trump created opportunities for Russian intelligence services to exert influence over, and acquire confidential information on, the Trump Campaign. Taken as a whole, Manafort's highlevel access and willingness to share information with individuals closely affiliated with the Russian intelligence services, particularly Kilimnik and associates of Oleg Deripaska, represented a grave counterintelligence threat. 

There was much more about Kilimnik in that report. We're just offering the basic lay of the land.

Every Republican senator agreed with the findings of that lengthy, high-profile report. That includes the finding that Kilimnik "was a Russian intelligence agent" whose association with Paul Manfort, Candidate Trump's campaign chairman, had created "a grave counterintelligence threat."

Every committee member from each of the two major parties signed on to those basic assessments. Years later, the aforementioned Gutfeld ridiculed Maddow for having discussed "this guy," directing his trademark personal insults at Maddow as he went.

"It's hard to believe that this was taken seriously," this manifest idiot said. Concerning the journalists who cited the fact that the Russians hacked that election—a fact that everyone on the plane agrees on—Gutfeld voiced one of his angry assessments:

The press corps "swallowed it like a dick!" As we showed you on Monday, that's what this strange person said.

On Thursday evening, July 24, starting at 10 p.m.—7 p.m. out on the coast—that's the way this very strange person staged the latest episode in his long-running "cable news" series, The Revolt of the D-Minus Students.

Fellow citizens, please! On this enchanted Thursday evening, Gutfeld was functioning as a disinformation machine. It's hard to believe that anyone has ever made a dumber or coarser presentation in the history of American broadcast news. But that's what Gutfeld said and did that night, as the better people in Blue America all agreed to avert their gaze.

In fairness to Master Gutfeld, this is the "cable news" product that Suzanne Scott wants. Also, there's strength in numbers: 

As this harmless prankster spewed his insults and spread his astounding disinformation, he was surrounded by this gang of stooges whose names we'll say again:

We've managed to say their names before. They were eager to cheer their flyweight potentate on:

Gutfeld!: Thursday, July 24, 2025
Joe Germanotta: restaurant owner
Kennedy: former VJ
Guy Benson: Fox News contributor
Michael Loftus: comedian

It may not have been the perfect group to assess the topic under review, but they were eager to cheer their flyweight potentate on.

There they sat—the panel! They waited politely as their host rattled on, politely awaiting their chance to support his crackpot presentation. 

When Suzanne Scott pried the lid off the garbage can that night, those enablers slithered out. If anything, their performances were even more appalling than Gutfeld's performance had been. 

They made the debacle that much worse. Just to refresh you, Gutfeld's braindead monologue had angrily ended like this:

GUTFELD (7/24/25):  The New York Times and Washington Post won Pulitzers for spreading the hoax. It's like Lia Thomas being named female athlete of the year just because she could fill her urine sample cup from four feet away.

So today the media is like a junkie that made your life hell for ten years, and now suddenly they claim it is all behind them...So should you forget the hell that they put you through? No, we can't let this go. They need to make serious amends because we're still living with the aftermath...There needs to be consequences... 

There needs to be scalps.

There must be scalps, this stranger said.  At that point, the stooges took over.

After yesterday's medical layoff, we wanted to refresh you today. We think we've accomplished that task. Tomorrow, we'll show you what this collection of stooges said and did when they finally got the chance to earn their checks from the Fox News Channel. 

What happened this night on this "cable new" show was an assault on the possibility of maintaining something like an American nation. As that possibility was undermined, the finer people in Blue America all agreed on one key point:

They mustn't speak up or complain.

Everybody I met seemed to be a rank stranger? That's what the famous old song sadly says

The Library of Congress has honored that song. Tomorrow, four strangers will speak.

Tomorrow: "I found they were all rank strangers to me..."

TUESDAY: Welker went from "rigged" to "wrong!"

TUESDAY, AUGUST 5, 2025

Normalization forever: We said we were going to do it, and so, by gosh, we will. 

Our observation involves the questions Kristen Welker asked—and the type of question she abandoned—on Sunday's Meet the Press.

Welker was stuck with the task of interviewing Kevin Hassett, Director of the White House National Economic Council under President Trump. She was asking him about the president's latest remarkable bit of behavior—the accusation he had directed at Erika McEntarfer, the highly regarded former Director of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

On Friday, the BLS had issued a jobs report the president didn't like. Within hours, he had launched a Truth Social post, saying the numbers were "RIGGED:"

Truth Details

Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump

In my opinion, today’s Jobs Numbers were RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad—Just like when they had three great days around the 2024 Presidential Election, and then, those numbers were “taken away” on November 15, 2024, right after the Election, when the Jobs Numbers were massively revised DOWNWARD, making a correction of over 818,000 Jobs—A TOTAL SCAM. Jerome “Too Late” Powell is no better! But, the good news is, our Country is doing GREAT!

It functions now like a law of physics. Any time a fact turns up which isn't the fact the president wants, the fact is denounced as a bit of fake news—a bit of fake news which has been RIGGED in order to make him look bad.

Not just RIGGED, but a TOTAL SCAM!

Later that day, as he spoke with the press, he announced that he had fired McEntarfer, accusing her of being the one who had done the RIGGING. In that Truth Social post, and then when he spoke with the press, he included wildly inaccurate claims about the earlier (imagined) rigging of BLS data in the run-up to the November 2024 presidential election.

Those factual claims were flagrantly wrong—but so what? The president just kept repeating the claims as he assailed McEntarfer's reputation and character.

Is something wrong with President Trump? If so, it's a human tragedy—but it would also be a dangerous situation.

We've asked that question many times, noting that the mainstream press corps has sworn a blood oath to avoid that question. 

Our big news orgs have never been willing to center that fairly obvious question as a basic framework for reporting and news analysis. Nor will they speak with medical specialists who may have experience with this oarticular kind of disordered behavior. 

In this case, this extremely peculiar man had directed an extremely serious charge at a life-long public servant. Needless to say, he had offered no evidence in support of his claim—and the claims he made about last November were just clownishly wrong. 

Judged by traditional norm, there's no excuse for behavior like that. As she fought off Hassett's filibusters, Welker started her interview by asking a pair of appropriate questions:

WELKER (8/3/25): Let's start with President Trump's decision to fire the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Erika McEntarfer, who he accused of manipulating job numbers. 

Mr. Hassett, what evidence does the administration have that she manipulated the jobs numbers?

HASSETT: [Filibuster]

WELKER: But just to be very clear, do you have— Does the administration have any evidence that it was “rigged,” as the president said? And will you be presenting that to the American public?

Those were Welker's first two questions as Hassett played "Beat the Clock." As part of an opening parry, that second question had landed quite close to the mark.

That said, Hassett continued to filibuster, and Welker seemed to lose her focus, or possibly just her nerve. In our view, she slowly gave ground as Hassett kept avoiding the subject at hand.

Ever so slowly she turned. At the end of about a half dozen questions, here's where she ended up:

WELKER: But bottom line, were the numbers wrong? Do you have any hard evidence that you can present to the American public that these numbers, these revisions that were reported--and there were plenty of revisions under former President Biden including right before the election. 

Do you have any hard evidence that these numbers were wrong?

Were the numbers wrong? That's a relevant question too—almost surely, the answer is yes—but along the way, she had somehow abandoned the path on which she had started.

Why on earth would a sitting president make an accusation like that? It would have been possible to ask Hassett something like this as the endless back-and-forth neared its end:

Director Hassett, the president made a remarkable claim about a well-regarded public official. As far as you know, does the president have any evidence whatsoever with which he can support his claim?

Welker is an appealing person. Frequently, it seems to us that she doesn't much like to stand her ground.

However you choose to explain it, this president's inappropriate behavior just keeps getting normalized. In our view, Welker started with an approximation of the right question, then slowly began to slide.

BREAKING: Just another melancholy Monday!

TUESDAY, AUGUST 5, 2025

Arriving one day late: As we head off for our every-fourth-week medical Tuesday, we leave you with the melancholy pervading Thomas Friedman's new column for the New York Times.

We agree with the overall tone of the piece. The column starts as shown:

The America We Knew Is Rapidly Slipping Away

Of all the terrible things Donald Trump has said and done as president, the most dangerous one just happened on Friday. Trump, in effect, ordered our trusted and independent government office of economic statistics to become as big a liar as he is.

He fired Erika McEntarfer, the Senate-confirmed head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, for bringing him economic news he did not like, and in the hours immediately following, the second most dangerous thing happened: The senior Trump officials most responsible for running our economy—people who in their private businesses never would have contemplated firing a subordinate who brought them financial data they did not like—all went along for the ride.

Rather than saying to Trump: Mr. President, if you don’t reconsider this decision—if you fire the top labor bureau statistician because she brought you bad economic new—how will anyone in the future trust that office when it issues good news”—they immediately covered for him.

And so on from there.

The America we knew—such as it was—is rapidly slipping away? We agree with the overall sentiment. We wouldn't necessarily agree that the firing of the BLS head was the most dangerous action yet.

The American system, such as it was, may already have been dispatched. At present we're exploring the insanity peddled ech night on the Fox News Channel, but a great deal of the story of our apparent American failure involves the unwise behaviors of various elements of our own Blue American tribe.

We may be posting again late this afternoon. Tomorrow, we'll return to the June 24 Gutfeld! debacle, to show you what the host's designated stooges had to say about the crazy monologue he had dumped on Red America that night.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep. Have we failed to come up with the secret?

Apocalypse and/or Metamorphosis

[...]

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

And so 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 but sovereign power of the imagination, by the undemocratic power which makes poets the unacknowledged legislators of all mankind, the power which makes all things new.

The power which makes all things new is magic. What our time needs is mystery: what our time needs is magic. Who would not say that only a miracle can save us?

Who would not say that only a miracle can save us!

Once again, that was Professor Norman O. Brown, in this Phi beta Kappa address from May 1960, at a time when he was very hot.

We don't know what he meant by the various things he said that day. But all the way back in 1960, he seemed to say that our civilization, such as it was, was on the verge of "ending in exhaustion."

He said we needed to find a new secret. It seems to us that the allotted time may have run on that quest.

We may post again this afternoon. Tomorrow, we'll take a look at the kinds of people they put on the air at the Fox News Channel as every tribune in Blue America makes a point of looking away.

Professor Brown was still hopeful that day. Friedman, not so much.

MONDAY: Heartbroken brocaster taking it hard!

MONDAY, AUGUST 4, 2025

"Democratization" in action: At present, the madness in the political culture starts at the top of the pile. Down below, we'll offer a hint about the way Kristen Welker knuckled under to the president on yesterday's Meet the Press.

For starters, though, let's go with this. According to Mediaite's Alex Griffing, manosphere brocaster Andrew Schultz is upset with President Trump:

Ex-Trump Supporter Andrew Schulz Fumes at the President Over Another Broken Promise...

Flagrant podcast host Andrew Schulz fumed at President Donald Trump on Sunday over a recent report that the administration is making no plans to mandate IVF care, despite Trump promising to do so during the campaign.

Schulz, who interviewed Trump during the 2024 presidential campaign and was part of the so-called “manosphere” of alternative media that helped elect him, has become a fierce critic in recent weeks, especially over the Epstein Files and increased government spendingdespite publicly supporting and voting for the president.

On Sunday night, Schulz hit Trump for not fulfilling his promise to help make IVF more affordable for Americans in need of the fertility treatment. In an Instagram story, Schulz shared a Washington Post headline on the topic and wrote, “You don’t break your word. Your word breaks you.”

The broman is upset. He believed that Candidate Trump was someone he could trust. All of a sudden it's nothing but hurt—and who could have seen it coming:

In early July, Schulz raged on his popular podcast, “Everything he campaigned on, I believe he wanted to do, and now he’s doing the exact opposite thing of every single fucking thing.”

“There’ll be people, they’ll DM and say, you see what your boy’s doing? You voted for this. I’m like, I voted for none of this! He’s doing the exact opposite of everything I’ve voted for! I want him to stop the wars; he’s funding them. I want him to shrink spending, reduce the budget—he’s increasing it! It’s like everything that he said he’s going to do—except sending immigrants back,” Schulz added.

A few weeks later, Schulz went so far as to argue that Trump’s new anti-Obama conspiracy theory was proof that Trump is “guilty” when it comes to Jeffrey Epstein.

“The second he started talking about Obama, I was like, ‘Oh, he’s guilty,’” Schulz said, adding, “Like, why are you talking about Obama and treason?”

For unknown reasons, this giant of the manosphere is surprised to see Trump attacking Obama in a way which makes no sense. Does anyone know where this mofo may have been during the past fourteen years?

(Trump's rise as "King of the birthers" began in 2011, on the Fox News Channel. He kept it up for four straight years while Schulz was off the planet.)

Today, the star of the manosphere is shocked, shocked, to see the president attacking Obama in that ludicrous way. He's shocked to learn that President Trump nay not be the person he had somehow imagined.

Might we offer one small thought? Andrew Schulz may well be the world's most sincere and most good / decent person. That said, when we scan the leading authority's thumbnail sketch, we're not sure he was ever the perfect person to be dispensing high-level political advice:

Andrew Schulz

[...]

Schulz has hosted or appeared on numerous MTV2 shows, including Jobs That Don't Suck, Guy Code, Guy Court, Girl Code and The Hook Up. In 2015, he starred in the IFC series Benders...Schulz appeared in the feature film The Female Brain (2017)...

A four-part Netflix special, Schulz Saves America, premiered on December 17, 2020. The special was criticized for its Anti-Asian jokes blaming Asians for the COVID-19 pandemic.

[...]

Schulz also hosts Flagrant with his best friends and fellow stand-up comedians Akaash Singh and Mark Gagnon, and video editor AlexxMedia. Since starting the podcast, Singh created a Patreon where the hosts post an additional podcast a week.

In October 2024, Schulz hosted an episode with then presidential candidate Donald Trump. He later went on to defend his actions, stating that Democrats were "not cool" and his vote being based on "who gets the most pussy." Regarding the controversial quote, Schulz later said "I shouldn’t have said it like that" in an interview with The New York Times

That's the way he decides how to vote! Thanks to the so-called "democratization of media," these are the bros to whom many voters have recently turned for their political guidance. 

There has never been any such thing as perfect political journalism. There has never been any such thing as a perfect political discourse.

Long ago, before the onset of democratization. Walter Cronkite and David Brinkley weren't perfect political analysts. On the other hand, they were deeply experienced correspondents who had reasonably sound personal judgment. They were neither crazy nor crass.

Today, thanks to democratization, a new ethos prevails:

Every flyweight a king!

Youngsters flock to savants like Schultz, intrigued by his thoughts about p***y.

The worst of them all is the nutcase at Fox—the stranger Blue America's tribunes refuse to name or discuss. All in all, it isn't clear that a very large, sprawling nation can survive "democratization" of this particular type.

Also this:

Yesterday morning, it seemed to us Kristen Welker took a dive concerning the president's recent BLS massacre. Tomorrow morning, before we leave campus for the bulk of the day, we'll show you what we mean.

There's no such thing as a perfect discourse. That said, a nation's discourse can get much dumber and it can get much worse.

Increasingly, that seems to be the culture we've chosen, with few people saying a word.

STRANGERS: This just in from the world's strangest man!

MONDAY, AUGUST 4, 2025

"There needs to be scalps," he said: Unless you live in "a distant land from me" (Thoreau), the fellow's a tough act to swallow.

We've long advised against our own Blue America's impulse to drop our tribe's various bombs—racist, sexist, homophobe, transphobe, xenophobe and the like.

In truth, our own tribe barely has a sexual politics at all. as we toss our bombs around, we show very few signs of knowing that about ourselves.)

We've long advised against the promiscuous use of those bombs. But the "cable news" star to whom we refer operates in a realm which—if words have any meaning at all—will inevitably seem to be baldly misogynistic. 

You can add his bizarre obsession with body waste and his love of sexual insult. Unless you live in "a distant land," these peculiar traits make him a difficult figure to love.

Throw in the D-list stooges who support him every night and the audiences who cheer and applaud his behavior! When you do, you've formed a picture of a former nation whose established culture, for better or worse, is rapidly coming apart.

We regard the fellow as "Unrecognizable"—as a type of person we've never encountered in real life. That said, millions of people enjoy the porridge he serves—and then, we come to the greatest offenders of all:

We come to the major stars of Blue America who refuse to even say his name, let alone report or discuss what he does on the air every day, first at 5 p.m. (The Five) and then on his own show at 10.

We regard the angry little man as a difficult fellow to like. That said, we've long advised you to "pity the child"—and our culture suggests that we should regard such strangers as friends. 

Lincoln put it like this:

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

He said that in his first inaugural address. A war then took place among friends.

When we ended Saturday's report, the strange little guy had engaged in his typical ugly and stupid behavior at the start of his prime time "cable news" show on Thursday, July 24. 

His studio audience would cheer what he went on to say after that. In Blue America, our major tribunes would all agree that they must avert their gaze.

As we noted, the angry man would make his transition at 10:02 Eastern that night. Below, you see the last of the evening's "fun, smart" jokes—and you also the start of his nightly "issue monologue:"

GUTFELD (7/24/25): Finally, the man who wrote "YMCA" claims the songs is not a gay anthem, as so many people believe.

Right! And "Stairway to Heaven" isn't about anal!

AUDIENCE: [Unsettled murmurs]

GUTFELD (dismissively): Whatever.

[Jokes end / Monologue starts]

So once again, the media pretends that their corrupt, shameful behavior never happened. Which means it's time for:

ANNOUNCER: Yi-i-i-ikes! Well, nothing to see here!

GUTFELD: They did it with the Covid lab leak, the "fine people" hoax, the Haitian whipping hoax, and of course Joe Biden's brain, where they claimed it was fine when it was missing more screws than a Mexican roller coaster.

Now it's the Russian collusion hoax. 

You can watch the whole monologue simply by starting here.

As you can see, the angry fellow had ended his several minutes of "fun, smart" jokes with a wonderful quip about anal. With that, it was on to his monologue about what he called "the Russian collusion hoax." 

The monologue was built around the failure of "the media" to fall in line behind Tulsi Gabbard's ongoing claim that President Obama had engaged in treason near the end of his second term. Behind the furious, sex-obsessed man, his topic was announced on the screen:

RUSSIAN COLLUSION HOAX

In fact, the behavior by Obama which Gabbard was citing didn't involve any claim of collusion. This little man, though perpetually angry, isn't a stickler for detail.

In that passage, you've already seen the way this fellow started his "issue monologue." We'll now walk you through it step by step.

As we showed you on Saturday, the monologue continued in this pathetically childish way as his studio audience sheered:

GUTFELD: Now it's the Russian collusion hoax. 

So as we unravel the scheme to derail a Trump presidency, the media now wants all of us to move on, after gaslighting us like Jerry Nadler with a Bic lighter near his butt hole.

And so, like the dead bird on Maxine Waters' head, we're supposed to ignore it!

Even as he pretended to discuss an actual topic, his ad hominem insults continued. On this astonishing "cable news" show," Rep. Nadler is routinely assailed for how humongous and smelly his body waste is—and no, we aren't making that up—and Rep. Waters is often said to have a dead animal of some kind on her head.

His studio audiences cheer and applaud. "Man [sic] is the rational animal," Aristotle is widely said to have said.

Joe and Mika won't discuss this behavior. Neither will Rachel or Lawrence.

David Brooks won't discuss this behavior. That said, this behavior takes place, each weekday night, before a very large viewership all across our rapidly failing nation.

At this point, the furious fellow had made his transition from jokes about anal to what posed as a real discussion of a major news topic:

Director Gabbard was out there making her claims, and "the media" wasn't treating her claims as gospel. That had this strange person quite angry. Today, we'll show you the night assault he staged on the nation as his monologue continued.

(For the record, it's Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott who pries the lid off the can each night and lets this garbage slither out. We think it's important to say the names of the people who are most deeply at fault in this mess.)

The transition to the monologue had occurred. Where did this manifest nutcase go after that? 

Let's break his five-minute monologue up into its several parts. We'll leave mist of the personal insults in. Where would this friend be without them?

Part One: "They swallowed it like a dick"

The stranger and friend was angry now. Part One of his exposition went like this:

GUTFELD: Now it's the Russian collusion hoax. 

So as we unravel the scheme to derail a Trump presidency, the media now wants all of us to move on, after gaslighting us like Jerry Nadler with a Bic lighter near his butt hole.

And so, like the dead bird on Maxine Waters' head, we're supposed to ignore it!

[Videotape of CNN's Jeff Zeleny starting to challenge Gabbard]

GUTFELD: Oh, hmmmmppphh!

I get why they want everyone to forget the past ten years. I would want it as well if  I were them.

Their lies created more trauma than those leaked photos from Kathy Griffin's sex tape. 

[UNFLATTERING PHOTO OF KATHY GRIFFIN]

The Democrats, directed by Obama, concocted the claim that Trump conspired with Russia to win in 2016. Then they fed a made-to-order report of Russian meddling to the press, who swallowed it like a dick. 

No! Really, you have to be a dick to swallow stuff like that.

And it wasn't just some small story. It was a relentless narrative that actually ruined lives. What they did to all of us with this hoax is unforgivable and it demands justice.

The press corps "swallowed it like a dick," the articulate fellow now said. For the record:

If we're talking about the claim that Russia meddled in the 2016 election, everyone else has also "swallowed that claim," including the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee in its voluminous five-volume report on the 2016 election.

Everyone agrees that the Russians did "meddle in that election!" Everyone understands that fact except this unrecognizable fellow.

On the other hand, if we're talking about the claim that Candidate Trump, or the Trump campaign, colluded with the Russians, no such claim was made in the treasonous report on which Gabbard has focused. 

The angry man probably didn't know that. He did know that, whatever the hell he was talking about, the press corps had swallowed it like a dick—and their conduct now demands justice!

Part Two: "The media" said that Russia hacked the election!

Where did the stranger go from there? Proceeding from above, he now played tape of seven journalists making a crazy claim in the months and years after the 2016 election:

GUTFELD: What they did to all of us with this hoax is unforgivable and it demands justice. And now, they want us to forget that they ever said this:

[Videotape of seven journalists saying that Russia "hacked the election."]

GUTFELD: Like Macauley Culkin, that hasn't aged well.

[UNFLATTERING PHOT0 OF CULKIN]

But every single legacy new outlet ran with bogus headlines

[These three headlines appeared on the screen}

CNN: Russian hacking and the 2016 election

MSNBC: Why experts believe Russia hacked the 2016 election

Mother Jones: Russian election hacking was very serious.

Incredible! At least seven journalists had said that Russia "hacked the election!" Also, the angry man showed us three headlines which made the same claim!

In truth, it's almost impossible to get any stupider than this angry fellow. In fact, everyone agrees that the Russians did "hack" the 2016 election. 

The claim refers to the way Russian entities like its Internet Research Agency stole material from Democratic Party entities, then used those stolen materials to make Candidate Clinton look bad.

Everyone agrees about this! Here's a passage from the Republican-led Senate committee where this obvious fact is being discussed:

RUSSIAN HACKING OPERATIONS 

At the same time that the IRA operation began to focus on supporting candidate Trump in early 2016, the Russian government employed a second form of interference: cyber intrusions (hacking) and releases of hacked materials damaging to the Clinton Campaign. The Russian intelligence service known as the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Army (GRU) carried out these operations.

In March 2016, the GRU began hacking the email accounts of Clinton Campaign volunteers and employees, including campaign chairman John Podesta. In April 2016, the GRU hacked into the computer networks of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and the Democratic National Committee (DNC). The GRU stole hundreds of thousands of documents from the compromised email accounts and networks. Around the time that the DNC announced in mid-June 2016 the Russian government’s role in hacking its network, the GRU began disseminating stolen materials through the fictitious online personas “DCLeaks” and “Guccifer 2.0.” The GRU later released additional materials through the organization WikiLeaks. 

Every Republican senator, including acting chairman Rubio, agreed with that presentation. Everyone on the face of the earth understands these elementary facts—everyone except the Fox News Channel's resident nutcase, and the millions of people he propagandizes every night for $9 million per year.

Part Three: Konstatin Kilimnik

From there, the "cable news" star turned to an inane attack on Rachel Maddow. As he continued, Suzanne Scott's primal idiot told Fox viewers this:

GUTFELD: And who could forget our favorite Mark Cuban impersonator—

[PHOTOS OF RACHEL MADDOW AND MARK CUBAN]

who found a new crush in this guy, Konstantin Kilimnik.

[There followed ten brief video clips of Maddow saying "Konstantin Kilimnik." All ten carried a date of May 2018, imaginably having been drawn from one single show.]

GUTFELD: If I didn't know any better, I'd think she had the hots for that guy.

But it's hard to believe that this was taken seriously. No wonder they want everyone to forget it. They're like a drunk coworker who wakes up the next day hoping his pals forget that he went home with the office hunchback. 

But while Trump was framed, these hacks earned a living off it, wrote books, even won awards. It was the biggest scam since those pills I bought that promised to make me taller.

What a scam, this idiot said. Maddow almost seemed to have fallen in love with "this guy, Konstantin Kilimnik." 

It's hard to believe that this was taken seriously, he said.  So you'll know, here's a chunk from Volume 5 of that Senate committee report in which Paul Manafort, Candidate Trump's campaign chairman, is being discussed:

[Chairman] Manafort hired and worked increasingly closely with a Russian national, Konstantin Kilimnik. Kilimnik is a Russian intelligence officer. Kilimnik became an integral part of Manafort's operations in Ukraine and Russia, serving as Manafort's primary liaison to Deripaska and eventually managing Manafort's office in Kyiv. Kilimnik and Manafort formed a close and lasting relationship that endured to the 2016 U.S. elections. and beyond. 

[...]

The Committee found that Manafort's presence on the Campaign and proximity to Trump created opportunities for Russian intelligence services to exert influence over, and acquire confidential information on, the Trump Campaign. Taken as a whole, Manafort's highlevel access and willingness to share information with individuals closely affiliated with the Russian intelligence services, particularly Kilimnik and associates of Oleg Deripaska, represented a grave counterintelligence threat. 

Every Republican senator agreed! Years later, there was Gutfeld, Suzanne's clown, disinforming millions of viewersand insulting Maddow, who is becoming one of his standard targetsas his studio audience sheered.

The Russians disinformed the public in various ways the public during the 2016 election; Gutfeld performs the same service today. That said, is it humanly possible to get any dumber than what this corporate idiot had now said? 

He had told millions of people who don't know better that it was crazy when journalists said that the Russia "hacked the election." He had told those same people that it was crazy when Maddow spoke about "this guy, Konstantin Kilimnik."

His ugly insults rolled down like mighty waters as he peddled this nonsensical tripe. Now, it was time for him to summarize.

Here's the way he did that:

Part Four: "There needs to be scalps"

GUTFELD:  The New York Times and Washington Post won Pulitzers for spreading the hoax. It's like Lia Thomas being named female athlete of the year just because she could fill her urine sample cup from four feet away.

So today the media is like a junkie that made your life hell for ten years, and now suddenly they claim it is all behind them...So, should you forget the hell that they put you through? No, we can't let this go. They need to make serious amends because we're still living with the aftermath...There needs to be consequences... 

There needs to be scalps.

"There needs to be scalps," the termagant said. There needs to be scalps because of the fact that many journalists were seen in public making blindingly obvious statements of fact about the 2016 election.

(With apologies, we've omitted parts of his closing declamation. You can watch by clicking here.)

Greg Gutfeld is your neighbor and friend. We advise you to pity the child.

On the other hand, Suzanne Scott turns him loose every afternoon and then again every night. This corporate action is a cancer on the possibility of maintaining an American nation, or are we unable to see that?

We've shown you what he said in his "monologue" that night. He was surrounded by four stooges as he did

Gutfeld!: Thursday, July 24, 2025
Joe Germanotta: restaurant owner
Kennedy: former VJ
Guy Benson: Fox News contributor
Michael Loftus: comedian

Tomorrow, we'll show you what those stooges then said. If possible, it may have gotten even dumber and even worse as they took their turns.

Over here in Blue America, this is all ignored. Our stars' pay levels are still quite good.

To appearances, no one wants to wrestle with Fox:

Please keep moving along!

Tomorrow: What they actually said...


HELLO STRANGER: Women don't know how to drive, he said!

SATURDAY, AUGUST 2, 2025

Manifest nutcase speaks: By now, the reigning "King of 7 P.M." couldn't seem to hold it in for even a minute longer.

On Friday, July 18, Director Gabbard had accused Barack Obama of engaging in "a treasonous conspiracy" at the end of his second term in the White House.

That evening, Gabbard survived a tough grilling by Sean Hannity as she advanced her claim on his Fox News Channel program. The next day, she survived a gauntlet established by three inquisitors on that day's Fox & Friends Weekend broadcast.

On Sunday, July 20, she took her claims to the Fox Business show, Sunday Morning Futures, where Maria Bartiromo rolled over and died in support of her accusations. And then, on Wednesday, July 23, the Director hit the big time:

Gabbard appeared on the main stage right there at the White House! During that day's White House press briefing, Karoline Leavitt stepped aside and introduced her to the crowd. 

As we noted in Monday's report, the Director then performed a thirty-minute briefing in which she continued to advance her claims—the accusations she quickly described as "stunning revelations." 

Finally! Finally, the conduct by the traitor Obama had been laid out for all to see! And yet, "the left" kept insisting that the Director's presentations didn't quite seem to make sense. 

For the king of 7 p.m., the frustration had apparently reached the point where he could no longer hold it in. As his program started on Thursday, July 24, he proceeded in the normal way—but it was clear that normal procedures, on this one day, just wouldn't be nearly enough.

He started with his normal array of strange, astoundingly dated jokes in which he denigrated a wide array of women, including women in general. In his very first joke, he compared the women of The View to a collection of cows.

(The View is going on summer hiatus, he said. During that time, "the cast will sun themselves in a field while slowly digesting an entire goat," after which "they'll be rounded up by border collies and outfitted with new cowbells.")

As you can see by clicking here, that's what the little guy said! And yet, something seemed to be wrong this night, and the studio audience seemed to have noticed.

That joke was much clumsier, and much more attenuated, than the normal fare in which he compares the women of The View to horses, cows, pigs and dogs, cattle and "livestock" and whales. 

The audience laughed a bit tentatively at this clumsy first joke. They didn't cheer the fellow's insult nearly as much as usual.

For the record, the finer people of Blue America—Brooks and Kristof and Maddow and O'Donnell, but also Hayes and Wallace and Ruhle and even Anderson Cooper—have all agreed that we Blues must let such nightly behavior proceed without a word of reporting or comment. To appearances, nobody wants to tussle with Fox, and certainly not with the "fun, smart comedy" produced by one of its strangest "cable news" stars.

The little guy had started the program like that, but something didn't seem to be right. To his credit, he tried to continue his kampf

Soon, he was telling a wonderful joke about Hillary Clinton—actually, about "women" in general. That pitiful bit of old world throwback went exactly like this:

GUTFELD (7/24/25): Tulsi Gabbard released info that suggests Russia had dirt on Hillary, claiming that she "suffered from fits of anger, aggression, and cheerfulness."

So basically, she's a woman.

AUDIENCE: [Groaning]

Fo the record, the "info" in question seems to have been a bit of Russkie dis-information. However you choose to score that particular point, the premise of the fellow's joke was so old world than even the people in his studio audience didn't quite seem to be buying. 

Quickly, though still in throwback mode, he decided to go with this:

GUTFELD: Today is Amelia Earhart Day, commemorating the life of the woman who vanished while trying to fly around the world. 

She was last seen in New Guinea trying to parallel park.

STOOGE TO HIS LEFT: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

Women don't know how to parallel park! That's how far back in the annals of old world sexual politics this strange man was willing to go.

(A few weeks back, he even offered a joke based on the premise that Asian Americans are terrible drivers! We recall being amazed to see that premise floating around when we spent a few weeks in San Francisco comedy circles—in the summer of 1985.)

There's really nowhere this fellow won't go as he pursues his strange desire to denigrate women—most often, in his desire to denigrate the amazingly fat, unattractive women who don't agree with his own infallible pseudo-political views. 

These inane acts of denigration take place every night, night after night, as his studio audiences cheer and applaud—and as the tribunes of Blue America cower and hide, in fear.

For a year or two, not long ago, we Blues pretended to have a sexual politics, though it was rather plain that we actually didn't (and don't). After a year or so, we Blues gave up that particular ghost:

The Fox News star with the endless collection of grievance parades in these ways every night. As you can see here, his next joke on that unsettled evening was directed at Ellen DeGeneres—more specifically, at the idea that she has unusually oversized ears. 

Finally—dare we say mercifully?—he ended his handful of opening jokes with this attempt at a nonpartisan crowd-pleaser:

GUTFELD: Finally, the man who wrote "YMCA" claims the songs is not a gay anthem, as so many people believe.

Right! And "Stairway to Heaven" isn't about anal!

AUDIENCE: [Unsettled murmurs]

GUTFELD: Whatever.

To enjoy that performance, just click here. It was still just 10:02 p.m. Eastern (7:02 on the coast). Mercifully, his "fun, smart" collection of opening jokes had finally come to an end! 

For the record, what you've just seen is pretty much all this strange person actually has. That said, something wasn't quite right this evening, and the studio audience seemed to be able to sense it.

Something seemed to be "off" this night.  Meanwhile, this was the quartet of stooges who had been hired to support everything Greg Gutfeld would say and do in the course of this midsummer evening:

Gutfeld!: Thursday, July 24, 2025
Joe Germanotta: owner, Joanne's Trattoria
Kennedy: former VJ
Guy Benson: Fox News contributor
Michael Loftus: comedian

Those were the savants the channel had assembled for the apparent purpose of discussing the day's most important news topics.

The women of The View are cows. Also, women in general can't parallel park, and women in general are hopelessly emotional.

It was only 10:02 p.m., but the "cable news" titan had already established those essential points. Now it was time for his monologue—the monologue he delivers each night on one of the day's key issues.

It was Thursday evening, July 24, and on this particular evening, he could no longer hold it in. It was time to speak in support of Director Gabbard. The (60-year-old!) cable star started off like this:

GUTFELD (continuing directly): So once again, the media pretends that their corrupt, shameful behavior never happened. Which means it's time for:

ANNOUNCER: Yiiiikes! Well, nothing to see here!

GUTFELD: They did it with the Covid lab leak, the "fine people" hoax, the Haitian whipping hoax, and of course Joe Biden's brain, where they claimed it was fine when it was missing more screws than a Mexican roller coaster.

Now it's the Russian collusion hoax. 

He was tackling the claim of "Russian collusion"—a topic which doesn't seem to be implicated by the claims Gabbard had made.

A screen behind his blared these words:

RUSSIAN COLLUSION HOAX

As the screen announced his topic, the fellow continued as shown:

GUTFELD: So as we unravel the scheme to derail a Trump presidency, the media now wants all of us to move on after gaslighting us like Jerry Nadler with a Bic lighter near his butt hole.

And so, like the dead bird on Maxine Waters' head, we're supposed to ignore it! Right, Jeff?

There followed a very brief bit of tape of CNN's Jeff Zeleny as he started to fact-check Gabbard's press event.

In fairness, we should have warned you! The childish personal insults routinely continue even as the Fox News analytical giant delivers his major daily assessment. So it was as he launched his attempt to review what Director Gabbard had been saying about President Obama's treason.

What followed was one of the dumbest performance ever staged on an American news broadcast. That said, the studio audience cheered along, pleased by his performance at last.

We're going to leave it here for today. We'll continue our act of transcription on Monday.

We didn't want to move ahead and simply ignore those monstrously stupid throwback jokes about half the world's population. For today, we'll simply ask you to ask yourself this:

Women don't know how to drive! Also, women are hopelessly emotional! 

The women who appear on The View should be rounded up by border collies and equipped with cowbells! Last night, we were even back to this old favorite:

Something seems to be wrong with Nancy Pelosi's face!

This goes on, night after night and year after year, on one of the most heavily watched TV shows in the American "cable news" firmament. As for the Blue American tribunes you've been told that you can trust, you've never seen even one of those people so much as mention this very strange cable star's name.

Hello stranger, the old song said. By norms which largely survived until the Trump era, most sensible people might have said the same thing when confronted with conduct like this.

For today, we're asking you to ask yourself why the people you've been told you can trust have been willing, year after year, to look away from this aggressive assault on the possibility of maintaining something resembling an American nation. Furious strangers keep coming over the walls, and our Blue stars keep looking away.

Hello stranger, the slightly mysterious old song said. Mysteriously, it soon added this:

You are a stranger, and you're a pal of mine.

Monday: What this manifest nutcase said on the evening in question

FRIDAY: The gentleman's conduct gets stranger and stranger!

FRIDAY, AUGUST 1, 2025

Just look somewhere else, press says: To our eye and to our ear, President Trump's behavior has been getting stranger and stranger of late.

We aren't speaking about minor word choices from someone who is a very limited talker. We're speaking, for example, about the crazy reposts to Trust Social which you can link to through this report at Mediaite:

'Trump Shares a Bunch of Off-the-Wall Memes in Rollercoaster Truth Social Spree—Including One With Obama and Hillary Behind Bars

President Donald Trump went on a rollercoaster re-posting spree on his Truth Social platform Wednesday during which he shared a number of off-the-wall memes—including several alluding to the imprisonment of his political enemies.

The president began re-posting shortly before 7 a.m. ET Wednesday—in all sharing 30 memes and other posts from his followers. The one sure to raise the most eyebrows was a meme in which 14 major Democratic politicians were depicted behind bars, with the caption: “Until this happens, nothing will change.” Among those included in the image; former President Barack Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and former FBI director James Comey.

And so on from there. 

In fact, Wednesday's latest depiction of Obama-in-chains has raised very few eyebrows. As is the well-established norm by now, major news orgs have simply chosen to ignore this peculiar behavior.

At this point, the president seems to want to lock everyone up, possibly including Jessica Tarlov. For his initial depiction of Obama-in-chains, you can just click this.

Meanwhile, in what seems to be an erratic manner, he's gone back to changing his tariffs on the fly—and then, this morning, it happened!

An undesirable jobs report appeared. According to this Wall Street Journal brief update, the president knew what to do next:

Trump Orders Firing of BLS Chief

President Trump said he directed his team to fire the top Bureau of Labor Statistics official after the bureau issued a weak jobs report on Friday.

Trump in a social media post said Erika McEntarfer, the BLS commissioner, would be “replaced with someone much more competent and qualified,” asserting without evidence that the government’s jobs numbers have been manipulated for political purposes.

To our eye and to our ear, the president's behavior has been highly erratic. To our major news orgs, we might say this:

Thank you for your lack of attention to this ongoing matter!

HELLO STRANGER: The Fox News prankster did it again!

FRIDAY, AUGUST 1, 2025

It may be too late to turn back: Last evening, at 10:01 sharp, the little guy with the boatload of anger started his "cable news" program in the standard way—with one of his "smart, fun" jokes.

It was still just 7:01 on the coast—"late night" in Los Angeles! The first thing he said is shown below. Could comedy ever get smarter|?

GUTFELD (7/31/25): Good evening, everyone. Well, a former high-ranking Biden aide claims that Biden "was fully capable of exercising his presidential duties."

Unfortunately, they were in his diaper.

COMPAGNO: [Laughter]

Trust us! As soon as the little guy said the word "duties," we knew where this effort was going.

Could comedy ever get smarter than that? It's hard to see how it could! As we noted yesterday, he had explored the same theme the previous night with this early deposit:

GUTFELD (7/30/25): Geese have reportedly caused a popular beach in Finland to be covered in "a shocking amount of poop."

"Define shocking amount of poop," said Joe Biden's night nurse.

[PHOTO OF PRESIDENT BIDEN]

All through 2024, the claim that President Biden was constantly "pooping his pants" or "sh*tting his pants" was a popular, well-received theme on this very smart "cable news" program. 

(Fox News censors would let the word "pooping" go out on the air, would BLEEP the less seemly locution.)

On at least three occasions during that same election year, this very same fellow had authored jokes built around an important question: 

Now that President Biden was no longer sentient, had Huner Biden started banging or f*cking Jill Biden yet?

We transcribed such queries on three separate occasions. There may well have been more.

(Fox News censors would let the word "banging" go out on the air, would BLEEP the less seemly term.)

"Everybody I met was a stranger to me?" We'll admit that we're inclined to include this highly peculiar 60-year-old man in a list of Unrecognizables. We find it hard to recognize his persistent behavior, to know how a reasonable person might best choose to describe it.

We find it hard to track his behavior to any behavior we've ever encountered in real life—even to anything we ever encountered curing decades of experience within the actual comedy world. Everybody I met was a stranger to me, the American song famously says.

Also strange is the puzzling way journalists have chosen to describe this Fox News Channel employee. Back in February, Variety's Tatiana Siegel took a major dive in her lengthy profile of the man and his TV show. Two weeks ago, a good decent person at Mediaite described this fellow as a "prankster" while assuring us of how "smart" and "fun" his comedy actually is.

In truth, Gutfeld! isn't a comedy show, nor is it "political satire." Our journalists don't seem to want to say so, but Gutfeld! is a corporate propaganda show which smuggles its intense corporate messaging onto the air under cover of comedy elements.

It also isn't a "late night" show; as noted, it airs at 7 p.m. on the coast. Having said that, so what?

The Fox News Channel calls it a "late night" show, and American journalists—Everybody I met seemed to be a rank stranger—seem to agree they should go ahead and say the same thing.

(This is done so they can praise the program's host as the so-called "King of Late Night.")

Is the person in question really an imp—really a harmless "Fox News prankster?" As the leading authority on the topic explains, the merry pranksters arrived on the scene long ago:

Merry Pranksters

The Merry Pranksters were followers of American author Ken Kesey. Kesey and the Merry Pranksters lived communally at Kesey's homes in California and Oregon, and are noted for the sociological significance of a lengthy road trip they took in the summer of 1964, traveling across the United States in a psychedelic painted school bus called Furthur, organizing parties, and giving out LSD. During this time, they...presaged what are commonly thought of as hippies with odd behavior, tie-dyed and red, white, and blue clothing, and renunciation of normal society, which they dubbed The Establishment. Tom Wolfe chronicled their early escapades in his 1968 book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, including a bit on the same epic 1964 cross-country trip on Furthur—a sojourn to Houston, stopping to visit Kesey's friend the novelist Larry McMurtry.

Notable members of the group include Kesey's best friend Ken Babbs, Carolyn "Mountain Girl" Garcia, Lee Quarnstrom, and Neal Cassady. Stewart Brand, Dorothy Fadiman, Paul Foster, George Walker, the Warlocks (later known as the Grateful Dead), Del Close (then a lighting designer for the Grateful Dead), Wavy Gravy, Paul Krassner, and Kentucky Fab Five writers Ed McClanahan and Gurney Norman...were associated with the group to varying degrees.

These events are also documented by one of the original pranksters, Lee Quarnstrom, in his memoir, When I Was a Dynamiter.

And so on, at length, from there. Kesey had Carolyn "Mountain Girl" Garcia. Gutfeld has the overwrought Emily Compagno.

For what it may be worth, we were in the Bay Area ourselves at that time, though just as a high school student. At that time,  the "democratization of media" was getting one of its principal starts in the suddenly booming talk radio show of the puzzling Les Crane at San Francisco's KGO.

(You can read a brief account of that pre-Limbaugh history here. "Helping to pioneer talk radio, he was outspoken and outraged some callers by hanging up on them," Variety said. We well recall the puzzlement surrounding this new behavior. For the New York Times obituary, you can just click this.)

At any rate, those were the merry pranksters. As pranksters go, the subject of today's narration is—at least as judged by traditional norms—angry, coarse, vulgar, perhaps one might even say vile.

Angry, coarse, ugly and vile, but also unbelievably stupid. Last night, as this apparent idiot delivered his alleged issues monologue, he detoured to pleasure his fans with two of his favorite characterizations:

GUTFELD: This whole ["Democrat"} party has lost its mind. What's next?

Will Cory Bookey want me to engage in a tug of war?

Will Rashida Tlaib want me to engage in a beard-growing contest? Will Jerry Nadler threaten me with a turd-off?

COMPAGNO: [Laughter]

Just so you'll know, because Tlaib's ancestry is Palestinian, this Fox star is constantly mocking her for her (imagined) mustache and beard. Meanwhile, as with President Biden, so too with Rep. Nadler:

Gutfeld's presentations are constantly spiked with talk about Nadler's poops and farts, and even with talk of his turds. Indeed, when we turned to YouTube this morning, we found an official tape from the Fox News Channel—the official videotape of last night's imitation of an "issue monologue."

There it was, the official video. As you can see, the official title is this:

Gutfeld: Thanks for the offer, fartman

For the record, the "fartman" of this imitation of an issue monologue actually isn't Nadler. But this is who and what these idiots are as, night after night after night after night, they churn out the "cable news" propaganda product—product which has somehow struck one journalist as being "smart" and "fun."

Actually, no—it isn't comedy. Also, it isn't "cable news." It's corporate propaganda messaging, delivered each night by an apparent idiot and four hand-picked enablers. 

Nor can anything about it be thought of as "smart." Or at least, that's true within the cultural framework which is currently being taken down as this collection of strangers keep coming over the walls.

Last night, this is who these dumbbells were as Master Gutfeld, 60 years old, clued us in about fartman:

Gutfeld!, July 31, 2025
Jamie Lissow: comedian
Brooke Goldstein: "human rights attorney"
Andrew Gruel: chef and restaurant owner
Emily Compagno: former Oakland Raiders cheerleader

The chef and the comedian had been flown in to explore the day's news topics.

At one point, after ten long years, the Achaeans finally came over the walls and took down sacred Troy in a murderous night assault. Ten years into this Age of Trump, Gutfeld!'s ship of fools sets sail each night to the cheers of a studio audience.

After a few minutes of human waste-infested jokes, the angry prankster proceeds to offers his nightly issues monologue. Last Thursday evening, he could no longer hold it in. 

He explained Barack Obama's participation in that "treasonous conspiracy." Over here in Blue America, the finer people all looked away as this strange person told his tale.  

Tomorrow—we keep pushing it back!—we'll show you what he said. For today, we'll offer a spoiler alert:

It was corporate propaganda all the way down. To a truly amazing extent, the fellow seemed to have no idea what he was talking about.

When the Carter Family debuted the song, its mysterious, elusive lyrics started out like this:

Hello, stranger, put your loving hand in mine
Hello, stranger, put your loving hand in mine
You are a stranger and you're a pal of mine.

The Carter Family went with "pal." Later, other performers said "friend."

As the song continues, it emerges that someone is headed to prison. A mournful air takes over the song. Soon, the lyrics say this:

Oh, I'll see you when your troubles are like mine
I'll see you when your troubles are like mine
I'll see you when you haven't got a dime.

Weeping like a willow, mourning like a dove
Weeping like a willow, I'm mourning like a dove
There's a man up the country that I really love.

There's a desire to return to a better place. As those of us in Blue America keep averting our gaze from the onslaught, we may already have created a world in which it's too late for that.

Don't cheat yourself out of hearing what Emmylou Harris teased out of Hello Stranger. Way back in 1976, she recorded this version of the old song with the late Nicolette Larson.

Tomorrow: What the strange fellow crazily said


THURSDAY: Greg Gutfeld won't discuss this tonight!

THURSDAY, JULY 31, 2025

Blue journalists won't discuss him: The Washington Post had published a report about conditions at the gulag-adjacent confinement center in El Salvador—the mega-prison to which United States sent 270 men.

According to the Post, many of the deportees "had entered the United States legally and were actively complying with U.S. immigration rules." Below, headline included, we show you some of the basics from the start of the lengthy report:

‘Welcome to hell’: Inside the mega prison where the U.S. deported migrants

One detainee was beaten unconscious. Others emerged from the dark isolation room covered in bruises, struggling to walk or vomiting blood. Another returned to his cell in tears, telling fellow detainees he’d just been sexually assaulted.

“Let’s hit him like a piñata,” guards shouted amid the beatings, detainees recalled, the blows echoing against the metal walls.

They called it “La Isla”—The Island—the cell where Venezuelans deported from the United States by the Trump administration said they suffered some of the worst abuse of their 125 days in El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT.

The matching firsthand accounts across multiple interviews offer the most complete view yet of conditions inside the mega prison, where inmates are denied access to lawyers and almost all contact with the outside world—and where about 14,000 Salvadorans remain incarcerated. Few detainees have ever left CECOT, and fewer have spoken publicly of their experience there.

The Washington Post interviewed 16 of the more than 250 men who were deported by the United States to CECOT, held there for four months and then released this month to Venezuela as part of an international prisoner swap.

The Venezuelans, rounded up in President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign, told The Post they were subjected to repeated beatings that left them bruised, bleeding or injured. They said prison staff restricted medical care for detainees suffering from diabetes, high blood pressure or kidney failure.

That's the way the report begins. As it continues, it describes sadistic behaviors on the part of prison personnel—sadistic behaviors of a type known to exist within our flawed human population.

DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin is quoted issuing her standard mumble-mouthed official deflections. We feel completely sure that McLaughlin is secretly better than that.

Regarding the legal status of some of the brutalized deportees, the Post offers this later passage:

The Post has found that many of the detainees had entered the United States legally and were actively complying with U.S. immigration rules.

Many of the men had fled political oppression and extreme poverty under Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, a U.S. adversary. Some had been granted permission to live and work in the United States. At least two arrived in the U.S. as refugees seeking safety from persecution in Venezuela.

A number suspected they had been detained and deported by the U.S. based solely on their tattoos.

Marco Jesús Basulto Salinas, 35, had temporary protected status shielding him from deportation and worked legally in kitchens and pizzerias to pay for his mother’s breast cancer treatments back home.

Andry Hernández, a 31-year-old makeup artist, entered the U.S. legally with a CBP One appointment, where an official in a preliminary screening determined he had shown a credible fear of persecution as a gay man living and working in Venezuela.

Roger Molina, a food delivery driver and aspiring professional soccer player, had been vetted by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and federal law enforcement, flown to the U.S. and conditionally accepted into a State Department resettlement program for refugees.

We don't know what every word means. We'll offer one basic critique: 

Given the fact that the Post was able to speak with only sixteen of the deportees, the Post should have tried to explain the meaning of words like "many" and "some" within such passages as that.

That said, the descriptions of the sadistic behavior are easy to recognize. The United States paid $16 million to El Salvador to pay the costs of such treatment.

Also this:

Greg Gutfeld won't discuss this new report tonight. In a certain kind of way, if you squint your eyes, he's one of the prison guards too.

Meanwhile, our own Blue American journalists won't discuss Greg Gutfeld! They won't report or the things he says and does each night. Nor will they name or discuss the rest of the messenger children at the Fox News Channel—and the list of such strangers is long.

As for Gutfeld, he'll open his show tonight with a few minutes of his "fun, smart, non-lecturey comedy." As we noted in this morning's report, he touched a familiar set of deranged bases at the start pf last evening's "cable news" show, then finished that two- or three-minute, fun / smart segment with this bit of extremely smart comedy:

GUTFELD (7/30/25): Finally, scientists are now dressing pigs in clothes and burying them in Mexico.

Except for one that fled to Ireland.

[PHOTO OF ROSIE O'DONNELL]

AUDIENCE: [Extended yelping and applause]

As a general matter, Gutfeld doesn't agree with O'Donnell's political views. That seems to be the way he prefers to react to women who don't agree with him

A few nights back, the gang was noting that it's hard to get a boner at all if photos of O'Donnell are around. This is the way this collection of idiots agree to conduct themselves night after night, often to loud applause.

For now, we offer this question:

Within the bounds of differing national cultures, who is morally worse?

Who is morally worse?
1) The sadistic guards whose sadistic behaviors are described in the Post's report.
2) An American who is being paid $9 million per year to pretend to discuss news topics.
3) The loftier commentators who refuse to report or discuss the behaviors of people like Gutfeld.
4) The people who swore that the southern border was tight as a drum and that President Biden was sharp as a tack.

That last group got President Trump elected again. Which of those four groups is worst?

There are many strangers among us! Hello stranger, the old song says.  

More specifically, that old American song starts off exactly like this:

Hello, stranger, put your loving hand in mine
Hello, stranger, put your loving hand in mine
You are a stranger and you're a friend of mine.

The evocative lyrics continue from there. At one point, the singer finally confesses to "mourning like a dove."

(That' the way the old song goes. For a transplendent rendition, click this.)

HELLO STRANGER: Gutfeld wasn't "mass market" back then!

THURSDAY, JULY 31, 2025

He's very "mass market" today: What did the citizens of sacred Troy think? What did they think in the terrible moment when they first saw the murderous Achaeans coming over the walls?

Their noble prince Hector—their sacred city's greatest defender—had been slain by Achilles. Achilles had then dragged his body behind his chariot as Hector's parents—King Priam and Queen Hecuba—watched in horror from atop their city's high walls.

Soon, the furious victors came over the walls. For hundreds of years, every Greek citizen understood what happened that night, or so said Professor Knox:

The images of that night assault—the blazing palaces, the blood running in the streets, old Priam butchered at the altar, Cassandra raped in the temple, Hector's baby son thrown from the battlements, his wife Andromache dragged off to slavery—all this, foreshadowed in the Iliad, will be stamped indelibly on the consciousness of the Greeks throughout their history...to reinforce the stern lesson of Homer's presentation of the war: that no civilization, no matter how rich, no matter how refined, can long survive once it loses the power to meet force with equal or superior force.

So it went as sacred Troy died. Is the Blue American civilization, such as it was, being overrun now? 

We can't really say that it isn't! One oddity of the current assault is this:

Even as a furious group of strangers continue to swarm over the walls, those of us in Blue America agree to ignore their advances. This makes us more like the denizens of Camus' fictional Oran, less like the determined Trojans who fought and died as they held off the Achaeans for ten years.

Eventually, the furious Achaeans came over the walls and sacred Troy did in fact die, just as Hector had prophesied. Last evening, Greg Gutfeld started his prime time "cable news" show with a couple of minutes of jokes, as he always does.

Last evening, that handful of jokes lasted until 10:03 p.m.  The handful unspooled like this:

As the premise of his first joke, he restated an unfounded claim about former President Clinton—that he had visited Epstein Island some 28 times.

(Astoundingly, MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace had done the same thing the day before. There's no known cure for this.)

That was the way it started. His second joke turned on the premise that former prime minister Trudeau isn't really a man. 

His third joke—it was based on a survey he misdescribed—turned on the premise that Michelle Obama is a man.  As we've noted, this has become a very familiar source of derision on this little's mutt's program.

That joke about Michelle Obama the secret man produced extended audience applause. Those were the stranger's first three jokes. Predictably enough, his fourth joke went like this:

GUTFELD (7/30/25): Geese have reportedly caused a popular beach in Finland to be covered in "a shocking amount of poop."

"Define shocking amount of poop," said Joe Biden's night nurse.

[PHOTO OF PRESIDENT BIDEN]

AUDIENCE: [Scattered applause]

The jokes about President Biden BLEEPing his pants and soiling the Oval Office had been featured, night after night, all through 2024.

He returned to that theme last night. Soon, we had his latest joke about Ruchard Gere and gerbils.

For unknown reasons, this has become a favorite recent topic. AI Overview fills us in:

The rumor that Richard Gere was hospitalized for a "gerbilling" incident is an urban legend and is completely untrue. The story, which involves the fictitious sexual practice of inserting a gerbil into one's rectum, has circulated for decades, but there's no evidence to support it. According to Reddit users, the rumor likely started as a malicious fabrication and has been perpetuated through word-of-mouth and online discussion. 

The premise dates to 1998. The little guy can't seem to quit it. For the debunking of this ancient claim by Snopes, you can just click here.

By now, it was only 10:02, but the little guy was on a familiar roll. After a joke about "Butt Plug Night" at a WNBA game—inevitably, the WNBA is becoming a favorite target—the little guy offered a joke about Sydney Sweeney's American Eagle ad and a nationwide rise in "boners."

In closing, inevitably, the little guy turned to this:

GUTFELD: Finally, scientists are now dressing pigs in clothes and burying them in Mexico.

Except for one that fled to Ireland.

[PHOTO OF ROSIE O'DONNELL]

AUDIENCE: [Extended yelping and applause]

By now, it was 10:03 Eastern—7:03 out on the coast. Mercifully, after less than three minutes, he had completed his opening handful of jokes. 

It had been a painfully typical set of jokes from this possibly strange little man, and yes—this is all part of the way a collection of strangers are currently coming over the walls, even as Blue America's hapless defenders insist on looking away.

That was the handful of jokes. To watch that three minutes of jokes, you can just click here.

Strangers were coming over the walls as the audience yelped and cheered. To help you see that strangers can be found almost anywhere, one good and decent person recently said that he himself doesn't care for Gutfeld's brand of humor, but he praised the Fox News Channel's Suzanne Scott for putting Gutfeld's brand of "smart, fun, non-lecturey comedy" on the air.

"Smart!" Yes, that's what he said!

Back in February, a lengthy profile in Variety had misdescribed Gutfeld's comedy in an even more ridiculous way. So it goes at times like these as, for better or worse, a long-established, prevailing culture is perhaps being taken down.

What explains the peculiar behavior of this strange little man with the large "cable news: audience? Incredibly, the fellow is sixty years old, but he still behaves this way on a nightly basis, with tribal helpmates like Tyrus (former professional "wrestler") and Kennedy (former MTV VJ) fake-laughing by his side.

Just for the record, it's more typically the 83-year-old Joy Behar, or the women of The View as a group, who are compared on a nightly basis to cattle, pigs, horses and cows—or, more simply, to "livestock. They're also routinely mocked for being insufficiently sexually attractive to satisfy the requirements of this bizarre, deeply strange little man.

This is all part of the current war on Blue America, much of which is occurring under the radar. That said, this fellow has pretty much always been like this—or so it may seem, based upon a profile which appeared, long ago, in the New York times.

We think we saw the profile once before. Yesterday, with a fortuitous click, we stumbled upon it again.

Warning! It's extremely rare to see a profile in a major publication where the writer makes so little attempt to hide his disdain, or perhaps his contempt, for the person being profiled. 

For that reason, we're surprised that the profile ever appeared. But it did appear, in the New York Times, on September 4, 2003.

The writer of the profile, Warren St. John, was a reporter for the Times from 2002 through 2008. He was apparently 33 at the time his profile appeared. 

St. John didn't try to hide his disdain for the stranger in his midst. The stranger had just been dropped from a publishing post at a certain "lad magazine." Strangely unflattering headline included, the profile started as shown:

A Publishing Pest Moves On

FOR Greg Gutfeld, the 38-year-old former editor of the brooding lad magazine Stuff, the set-up was just too rich: an earnest group of publishing types were gathering at the American Society of Magazine Editors in Manhattan for a seminar in April on ''What Gives a Magazine Buzz.'' His first thought upon hearing of the meeting was, in his words, ''If you need to go to that seminar, you're hopeless.'' His second thought, he said, was dwarfs.

Mr. Gutfeld called a local casting agent and hired three dwarfs for the day. He equipped them with cellphones and bags of potato chips and sent them into the seminar. As editors from Rolling Stone, Glamour and O: The Oprah Magazine opined on the serious business of buzz creation, the actors began chomping loudly on handfuls of potato chips as their cellphones started ringing furiously. (The actors, of course, loudly took the calls.)

After 15 minutes or so of steadily escalating mayhem, the actors were ejected, but not before giving those editors an object lesson in buzz creation, Gutfeld style.

Sipping a Stoli and orange on Wednesday night in the Bellevue, a favorite Hell's Kitchen dive with glam rock on the jukebox and a coffin next to the bar, Mr. Gutfeld said the prank was in keeping with his personal credo. ''I love the idea of showing up at a place and just disrupting it,'' he said.

That's the way the fellow had approached the seminar on creating buzz. 

The pitiful conduct with the "three dwarfs" had happened back in April. Now, though, it was September—and according to the profile, a certain reign had ended at Stuff. 

This is what St John wrote as he continued directly:

A day later, on Thursday, Mr. Gutfeld's reign of disruption came to an end, when he stepped aside as editor of Stuff to become ''director of brand development'' for the magazine, a job in which he is ostensibly to promote his style of bizarro humor in other media, like television. The new arrangement, billed as a promotion for Mr. Gutfeld, has a certain neatness to it; he gets to pursue a long-held ambition to go big with his own brand of dark, self-loathing humor, and Dennis Publishing gets its magazine back from a self-described loud-mouth, troublemaker and freak.

Mark Golin, a friend of Mr. Gutfeld who develops online content at AOL Time Warner and who once edited Maxim, said that the dark nature of his friend's sense of humor limited Stuff's appeal ''to aficionados and people in prison.''

''It's not necessarily the most mass market,'' he said.

It's not necessarily mass market? We'll return to that assessment below. For now, let's return to the fun with the dwarfs:

Later in the profile, St John suggested that Gutfeld had been bumped from his editor's post in part because of that event, but also because of a wide array of arguably strange behaviors.

For better or worse, St. John seemed to disapprove of what he called "lad culture." With respect to Gutfeld's tenure at Stuff, here's part of what that "lad culture" had entailed:

Mr. Gutfeld said that his move is fine with him. During his rampage as Stuff's editor, the magazine's circulation rose from 750,000 to 1.2 million, but it is still far below the 2.5 million readership of its more accessible sibling publication Maxim. But along the way, Mr. Gutfeld said, he has been a frustrated man—frustrated that more people don't acknowledge the brilliance of, say, the Bathroom Tapes, a regular feature that makes editorial fare of conversations tape-recorded in the stalls of women's bathrooms in various Manhattan nightclubs; frustrated that more people don't identify with the self-loathing genius of his profile of a man with leprosy, who, it turned out, had a much more fulfilled life than Mr. Gutfeld himself. (The headline: ''So a Leper Walks Into a Bar—and You Find Out YOUR Life Is a Joke.'')

Mr. Gutfeld thinks he can find his audience through television and the stage. He will be working with the Endeavor Agency in Los Angeles to translate Stuff features into the sort of thing lad culture will watch after a few rounds of Grand Theft Auto III and reruns of ''The Simpsons.'' He wants to make a theater production from the dialogue of the Bathroom Tapes feature, which he sees as a kind of ''Vagina Monologues'' for a male audience.

''It could be huge,'' Mr. Gutfeld said.

Mr. Gutfeld said that his former magazine, and to some degree his life, takes its comic energy from the juxtaposition of the comfortable and familiar with the dark and disturbing. For example, the magazine's always puzzling last page typically features a close-up photo of a cute stuffed animal with a depraved line of text like ''Please kill me.'' Mr. Gutfeld said that joke is emblematic of his world view.

And so on at length, like that.

Was or is anything wrong with Mr. Gutfeld's sense of humor? By contemporary standards, the joking in which he engages now, on a nightly basis, almost insists on being called "openly misogynistic."

That said, is anything wrong with that? Or as these strangers come over the walls, is Blue America simply learning that a lot of people didn't like the structure of the new "sexual politics" which began emerging from the women's movement around, let's say, 1970? Do people just think that it's good clean fun to hear women compared to horses, pigs, cattle and cows on a nightly basis?

A great deal more was included in that somewhat unusual New York Times profile, including Gutfeld's  ruminations upon his lifelong failure to attract women:

Though Stuff is crammed with photos of young models in bikinis, Mr. Gutfeld said his quest to be funny keeps him ''inside my own head.'' He said he hasn't had much luck with women.

''I've dated but I've never been successful in that realm,'' Mr. Gutfeld said. ''I'm a tourist in the real world, and that prevents you from doing what normal people do.''

If he was being quoted fairly, the fellow said he wasn't normal with respect to that realm. There may have been decades of pain lurking there at that point. We've long suggested that we should remember to "pity the child."

Were decades of pain perhaps lurking there? If so, a person could even imagine that the fellow is still lashing out.

St. John made no attempt to hide his utter disdain for the stranger before him. As for that stranger's sensibility, let the word go forth to the nations:

''It's not necessarily the most mass market,'' the stranger himself had said.

Today, that same sensibility seems to be very mass market. It's smeared all over the Fox News Channel, where he joins his towel-snapping bro, Jesse Watters, as one of the two biggest stars.

As people applaud his horses, pigs and cattle jokes, is Blue America going down, even as its sophisticated leading tribunes insist on looking away? Also, what did Emmylou Harris hear, for years, in the mournful lyrics of that mournful Carter Family song?

She sang it again and again. She drew it out in beautiful ways, on this occasion with Ricky Skaggs—in Germany, no less!

Hello Stranger, the first lyric says. We'd love to know what she heard in the evocative, slightly mysterious lyrics of the mournful American song.

Tomorow: What he said, last Thursday night, about Obama's treason

The discography: Regarding the Emmylou Harris renditions, our favorite live performance of Hello Stranger had always been the version she performed with Rodney Crowell.

Alas! It seems to have disappeared from YouTube. Nothing gold can stay?