THURSDAY: We saw "the storm" blow through The Five!

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2025

This is the illness we've chosen: Aside from a few basic points, we won't even try to describe what happened yesterday on The Five.

The full tape of the relevant segment is available at the program's web site.  Somewhat comically, the dual headline says this:

We're in a season of 'real leftist violence,' says Paul Mauro
'The Five' co-hosts discuss a shooting at an I.C.E. facility in Dallas and the state of political rhetoric in America

We call that comical for an obvious reason. What actually happened during that segment had nothing to do with the things Paul Mauro said.

What actually happened involved a remarkable example of "the storm"—a remarkable example of the irrational fury which increasingly seems to come from the Fox News Channel's Greg Gutfeld. As we've been noting this week, this irrational fury has also been coming from other members of Red America's elites.

The basic background to yesterday's storm is this:

In every segment of this ludicrous show, one of the five co-hosts is assigned to serve as the moderator. The other four co-hosts then take their turns discussing the topic in question.

As we've often noted, the gruesome program achieves its considerable frisson on the days when Jessica Tarlov sits in the one (1) "liberal / Democratic Party" chair. 

The four (4) pro-MAGA children all listen politely when their pro-MAGA colleagues take their turns to speak. The excitement starts when Gutfeld and Watters start interrupting and overtalking Tarlov, with the other pro-MAGA co-hosts sometimes joining in.

(That was especially likely to happen when Judge Jeanine was still a daily co-host.)

Yesterday, the first topic involved the fatal shooting at the ICE facility in Dallas. Jesse Watters, acting as moderator and seeming to be on his best behavior, threw to Tarlov in the manner shown:

WATTERS (5/24/25): Jessica, you've never called ICE agents "fascists" or "Gestapo," "Nazis." You've never done that. But there are people in your party that have done that. Do you think that's responsible?

TARLOV: Listen, I think that "fascism" and fascists" is a very special category of people, and you should use it when it's really applicable and sparingly, because then people will believe you when you say it. And it has become too common to hear words like that...

So far, so acceptable! At that point, Tarlov began recalling her recitation, on last Friday's show, of the many times when President Trump has dropped that same f-bomb on Democratic heads. 

Yesterday, she said it was a "both sides problem." That's when the roof fell in.

"That's garbage! That's absolute garbage!" the visibly furious Gutfeld now shouted, breaking in. After ordering Tarlov to "Continue," he instantly began railing at her again.

By our count, Tarlov had been permitted to speak for 37 seconds before the roof fell in.

Gutfeld's furious interruptions went on and on, then on and on some more. At one point, he seemed to have decided to stifle himself. But he soon returned to the practice of shouting at Tarlov, generally as soon as she had uttered three or four words.

It wasn't the familiar rudeness of the behavior, and it wasn't the sheer stupidity of some of the ways he tried to refute Tarlov's assertions. For us, it was the raw fury this extremely unusual person exhibited in his rant at Tarlov this day.

At Sunday's memorial service for Charlie Kirk, Stephen Miller described a growing reality. We offered a longer transcript this morning, but this was Miller's key statement:

MILLER (9/21/25) When I see Erika [Kirk] and her strength and her courage, I'm reminded of a famous expression:

The storm whispers to the warrior that you cannot withstand my strength. And the warrior whispers back, "I am the storm."

Erika is the storm. We are the storm. And our enemies cannot comprehend our strength, our determination, our resolve, our passion. Our lineage and our legacy hails back to Athens, to Rome, to Philadelphia, to Monticello. Our ancestors built the cities. They produced the art and architecture. They built the industry.

[...]

We will prevail over the forces of wickedness and evil. They cannot imagine what they have awakened. 

We assume that Miller's reference to "the storm" is a nod to the QAnon crowd. But the fury to which Miller gave voice erupted yesterday, on The Five, in Gutfeld's weirdly unhinged performance.

We strongly suggest that you watch the tape; to do so, just click here. Tarlov starts attempting to speak at the seven-minute mark. Strangely, the tape of the program is missing from the Internet Archive's compilation of yesterday's Fox News Channel programs.

We strongly suggest that you watch that tape to see where the nation is going. Or you could just consider this:

In this morning's New York Times, we read this overview of President Trump's current stance on climate change:

At a Times Event, Opposing Views on Climate Change Collide

[...]

The split-screen view underscored the extent to which the United States under President Trump has become isolated from the rest of the world on climate change, perhaps more than on any other issue. Mr. Trump has said the United States will withdraw from the Paris accord, joining Iran, Libya and Yemen as the only four countries to not recognize it. In recent months, Mr. Trump has also issued numerous policies that could thwart renewable energy projects, and his administration has ordered a halt to the construction of offshore wind farms.

[...]

By contrast, Mr. Trump told the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday that climate change is the “greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world” and called renewable energy “a joke.”

On climate change, it's Iran and Libya and Yemen—and it's also us! Meanwhile, on your TV screen, you have the endless apparent misogyny of Gutfeld, tied to the remarkable, barely controllable anger he put on display yesterday.  

We're sincere in saying that the furious Gutfeld seems to need some help. We do want to comment on one of the many ridiculous things he said as he kept overtalking Tarlov:

GUTFELD: The left calls Trump a hatemonger. They've called me a hatemonger because  ridicule the left, I ridicule protesters, I ridicule academia—Hollywood, the news media. I make fun of The View every day...

Actually, no. The gentleman doesn't "make fun of" The View. Night after night, he compares the women of The View to horses, cattle, cows and pigs, to whales and also to "livestock." 

(After that, it may be time to start saying that "Tampon" is secretly gay.)

They open the garbage can every night. This is what comes slithering out. Blue America's orgs avert their gaze. To appearances, no one wants to report what happens on Fox.

In fairness, Tarlov was granted her 37 seconds. Then "the storm" began.

We'd like to see the guy get some help. But more and more, in various ways, this is the illness we've chosen.

HEALING: "One of yours killed Charlie," she said!

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2025

Megyn Kelly signs on with the storm: "I saw an interesting thing happen today."

So says Michael Corleone—the Al Pacino character—during the Cuba interlude in the 1974 feature film, The Godfather Part II. 

To watch the scene in which he says it, you can just click here.

He's referring to the determination displayed by a Cuban revolutionary as Castro is coming to power. He saw this man being shot to death by Cuban police in the final days before the fall of the Batista regime. 

Yesterday, we too "saw an interesting thing happen"—in this case, on yesterday's edition of The Five. We saw a startling display of Red American fury—what you might even call "the storm." 

That startling display is being ignored at Mediaite even as we sit here typing today.  We'll link you to yesterday's startling event in this afternoon's post. 

For now, we think it's important to spend another day contemplating recent examples of the strength of that tribal fury—in the strength of that storm.

In yesterday's report, we showed you the bulk of what Stephen Miller said at Sunday's memorial service for the late Charlie Kirk. At this point, we offer a subjective assessment:

We apologize for the length of the excerpt from Miller's speech. That said, judged by any pre-existing norm, it's shocking to think that this furious man sits at the right hand of the father:

MILLER (9/21/25): Hello, Turning Point. Hello, patriots. Hello to our fearless president, Donald J. Trump. 

And hello to millions of Americans all across this land who are gathered in sadness and sorrow to mourn Charlie Kirk, but also to dedicate ourselves to finishing his mission and achieving victory in his name.

[APPLAUSE] 

The day that Charlie died the angels wept. But those tears had been turned into fire in our hearts, and that fire burns with a righteous fury that our enemies cannot comprehend or understand. 

When I see Erika [Kirk] and her strength and her courage, I'm reminded of a famous expression:

The storm whispers to the warrior that you cannot withstand my strength. And the warrior whispers back, "I am the storm."

Erika is the storm. We are the storm. And our enemies cannot comprehend our strength, our determination, our resolve, our passion. Our lineage and our legacy hails back to Athens, to Rome, to Philadelphia, to Monticello. Our ancestors built the cities. They produced the art and architecture. They built the industry.

[...]

We will prevail over the forces of wickedness and evil. They cannot imagine what they have awakened. They cannot conceive of the army that they have arisen in all of us because we stand for what is good, what is virtuous, what is noble. 

And to those trying to incite violence against us, those trying to foment hatred against us, what do you have? You have nothing. You are nothing. You are wickedness. You are jealousy. You are envy. You are hatred. You are nothing. You can build nothing. You can produce nothing. You can create nothing.

We are the ones who build. We are the ones who create. We are the ones who lift up humanity. 

You thought you could kill Charlie Kirk. You have made him immortal. You have immortalized Charlie Kirk. And now millions will carry on his legacy. And we will devote the rest of our lives to finishing the causes for which Charlie gave his last measure of devotion. You cannot defeat us. You cannot slow us. You cannot stop us. You cannot deter us.

We will carry Charlie and Erika in our heart every single day and fight that much harder because of what you did to us. You have no idea the dragon you have awakened. You have no idea how determined we will be to save the civilization, to save the West, to save this republic, because our children are strong and our grandchildren will be strong. And our children's children's children will be strong.

And what will you leave behind? Nothing. Nothing. To our enemies, you have nothing to give. You have nothing to offer. You have nothing to share but bitterness. We have beauty. We have light. We have goodness. We have determination. We have vision. We have strength. We built the world that we inhabit now, generation by generation.

[...]

We will defeat the forces of darkness and evil. And we will stand every day for what is true, what is beautiful, what is good. And we will achieve victory for our children, for our families, for our civilization, and for every patriot who stands with us. 

God bless you. God bless Turning Point. God bless Erika. God bless the Kirk family. God bless our heroes. And God bless the United States of America. Thank you.

ANNOUNCER: Please welcome to the stage, Susie Wiles.

For what it's worth, we would guess that Miller's reference to "the storm" is a shoutout to QAnon—a shoutout to the tortured souls who would shoot up pizza parlors based on crazy reports.

We apologize for the length of that excerpt. But judged by any pre-existing norm, it defies comprehension to think that the furious man who delivered that speech sits at the right hand of the father. 

So too, we would say, with respect to Megyn Kelly. As we noted yesterday, she has explained why Red American forces DO NOT CARE if Tom Homan really did accept a bribe in the form of a big bag of cash.

Judged by any traditional norm, Kelly's post took the form of a remarkable screed. It was Kelly's response to the report about Homan's possible acceptance of a large bag of cash, a matter which was first report by MSNBC.

Did Homan possibly accept a sack of cash? "We DO NOT CARE," Kelly had initially posted. 

Then, responding to MSNBC's report, she added this lengthy post:

KELLY (9/20/25): We don’t trust you. We don’t trust the work of your president’s DOJ. We don’t trust the work of your president’s FBI. 

You indicted our presidential candidate 4x with made-up BS charges trying to put him in jail for life. You changed laws so he could be civilly sued by a woman who didn’t even remember what year her alleged “rape” by him was. 

You let an AG who ran for office promising to “get Trump” try to bankrupt him on a claim so specious even the NY appellate court scoffed at it & had to reverse the damage award. 

One of yours killed Charlie and then you laughed at our pain, protested our vigils & said Charlie was to blame and in hell. You lied about the killer’s motives & said he was MAGA when you knew he wasn’t. You put us all in danger by not admitting the truth and then not relenting on the lies you tell about us. You cried endless tears for Jimmy Kimmel but none for Charlie.

You gleefully cancelled all of us for five+ years and danced when we suffered. You censored us & ruined careers of distinguished doctors & others who dared to say the truth during Covid and George Floyd. You cost our children years of learning during lockdowns and endangered them with deadly myocarditis by burying the risk disclosures and never apologized or owned it.

Your govt tried to strong arm Fox into firing Tucker bc of his J6 coverage and you said not a peep about the first amendment.

You changed Title IX with the stroke of a pen, without consent, and endangered and hurt our defenseless daughters. You sterilized and cut off the healthy body parts of children & want to keep doing it.

You lied about a near-vegetative president being fine with the nuclear codes. 

You (personally) had Doug Emhoff on as the scandal of his alleged woman abuse and cheating broke and you didn’t ask him ONE Q about it, then tried to tell us you care about women. 

You opened the border and let in ten+ million illegals who killed Laken Riley and 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray after they sexually assaulted her and threw her off a bridge, along with the countless other innocents they rape, murder and molest to this day.

So no, we don’t care what you say about Tom Homan. We do not trust you. We only care about defeating you.

"We only care about defeating you," Megyn Kelly said. 

Did Homan accept a big sack of cash? We DO NOT CARE, Kelly had already said. 

Presumably addressing Blue America (or its elites), she now referred to President Biden as "your president," not hers or that of her tribe. She said that "one of yours" killed Charlie Hurt, and that "you then laughed at our pain."

The sense of grievance was remarkably strong. "You danced when we suffered," the aggrieved multimillionaire said. 

In effect, this was a statement of tribal secession. Tied to Miller's astonishing speech, attention must be paid.

That said, attention is only tangentially being paid within the ranks of Blue America. It's astonishing to think that a person like Miller sits at the right hand of the father—but major organs in Blue America continue to avert their gaze as remarkable war cries keep emerging from within the ranks of "the storm."

Like Miller, Kelly offered a lengthy list of complaints—and her sense of grievance was strong.

In our view, quite a few of her grievances have a reasonable basis in fact. Some of her grievances strike us as remarkably silly, but others among them do not.

In the case of Miller, the problem is the undisguised madness. In Kelly's case, the problem isn't a lack of reasonable complaints. The problem is the massive mountain of self-pity, joined to the wholly unregulated whirlwind of anger within this part of the storm.

Tomorrow, we'll look at some of Kelly's grievances, some of which are unmistakably justified. As we do, we'll show you the ways our elites in Blue America keep whistling past the graveyard as they avert their gaze from the ways we Blues have worked to earn our way out.

Furious players like Miller and Kelly are part of a gathering storm. We Blues remain remarkably feckless and uncomprehending, or so it will say right here.

"I saw an interesting thing happen today." 

So Michael Corleone said—and within the context of the film, Batista was gone by that night.

"The sunshine of the prairie summer and fall months would come sifting down with healing and strength?"

That's what Sandburg said, near the end of Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years. We see few signs of healing here, given the state of our Blue cluelessness in the face of their furious storm.

This afternoon: We saw "the storm" as it blew through The Five

Tomorrow: "Ignorant / uneducated," one of our major stars said

WEDNESDAY: What did Jimmy Fallin mean?

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2025

Interpretation is hard: Did Al Gore ever say that he invented the Internet?

We'd say no, he did not.

While being interviewed by Wolf Blitzer, he made a remark which was widely paraphrased that way, though not until a few days later. He made the statement in question only once, and when people began to paraphrase it in the manner described, he instantly said that that wasn't what he had literally said, nor was it what he had meant.

Too late! At the time, he was a target of the mainstream press—the last person they could attack after their war against Bill Clinton had failed. (The impeachment of Clinton had failed only a few weeks earlier.)  

For years, Gore was assailed for having said that he "invented he Internet"—and yes, the word "invented" even slipped inside quotation marks, even though the pleasing word had never passed Gore's lips.

That's the way our mainstream press corps was functioning as of March 1999. Those of us in Blue America were so dumb that we widely let it go.

As a group, we the humans aren't enormously sharp, nor are we obsessively honest or fair. We tend to stick to reciting our tribal storylines. That leads us to an unresolved question:

What did Jimmy Fallin say last Monday night about the 22-year-old man who murdered the late Charlie Kirk?

What did Jimmy Fallin say? More to the point, what did he mean by what he said? What did he seem to mean?

It's easy to transcribe what he actually said. These are the words he said:

FALLIN (9/15/25): We hit some new lows over the weekend, with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it.

Those are the words he actually said. It was a rather jumbled locution, which leads us to the ultimate question:

When he said those forty words, what did he seem to mean?

He plainly said that we'd "hit come new lows," but what "new lows" did he have in mind? His jumbled presentation makes his meaning a bit unclear, but let's pare his statement down to this:

"We hit some new lows over the weekend, with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them..."

According to Fallin, "the MAGA gang" had been "desperately trying" to say that Tyler Robinson wasn't "one of them." To our ear, that formulation seemed to suggest that Robinson actually was "one of them"—that the new low involved the desperate attempts by the MAGA gang to pretend that he actually wasn't.

Could someone have interpreted that presentation differently? In a world where reams of major journalists insisted, for years, that Al Gore said he invented the Internet, almost any interpretation—almost any paraphrase of some remark—fits within the borders of what a tribal group can imagine.

As to what Fallin actually meant—as to what he may have thought he was saying—there's no perfect way to tell. But it's the job of a major public figure to make his meaning reasonably clear, especially about an important matter like this. 

At the very least, Fallin failed to do that last Monday night. Also, there was this:

Fallin's remark that night didn't come out of nowhere. Inevitably, an instant battleground had formed, with warring tribal groups presenting different claims about Robinson's motive and tribal membership. 

Some people on "the left" were explicitly saying or suggesting that Robinson hailed from the right of the MAGA movement. As we noted last Thursday, Professor Heather Cox Richardson had explicitly posted this on her widely read Substack over the weekend preceding Fallin's remarks:

RICHARDSON (9/13/25 or 9/14/25): [I]n fact, the alleged shooter was not someone on the left. The alleged killer, Tyler Robinson, is a young white man from a Republican, gun enthusiast family, who appears to have embraced the far right, disliking Kirk for being insufficiently radical.

Rather than grappling with reality, right-wing figures are using Kirk’s murder to prop up their fictional world. Briefly, they claimed Robinson had been “radicalized” in college. Then, when it turned out he had spent only a single semester at a liberal arts college before going to trade school, MAGA pivoted to attack those who allegedly had celebrated Kirk’s death on social media.

We have no idea why Professor Richardson would have made so explicit a claim. That said, there's little doubt about what she was asserting—and as far as we know, no particular evidence has ever emerged to show that her assessment was accurate.

The following Monday, along came Fallin! He seemed to offer a jumbled version of what the professor had said—or so it seemed to us.

Sad! Even as late as last night, America's two major tribes still couldn't agree on what Fallin had actually said—rather, on what he appeared to have meant.

We would guess that he might have thought, when he went on stage last Monday night. that Robinson actually was a figure of the right. To our ear, it sounded like that was most likely what he believed when he fashioned his statement.

Or then again, possibly not! That said, matters like these are important. Last night, in his opening monologue, Fallin apologized for a possible pair of lesser offenses. But last Monday, did he actually think, and mean to say, that Tyler Robinson was a figure of the right?

There's no perfect way to know. But it's obvious why members of the Red American tribe might think that's what he meant.

In the end, who was—who is—Tyler Robinson? What was the ideation behind the murder he committed?

At some point, the answer may become more clear. For now, we'd be inclined to assume the accuracy of something Amy Cox Barrett said, as reported by Mediaite last week:

That was horrific...I mean, for the father of two young children and a husband to be murdered in cold blood was a tragedy and certainly sobering for the nation.

And I think it is a sign of a culture that has– where political discourse has soured beyond control and something that we need to really pull back. I mean, obviously, well, I assume that the person who murdered Charlie Kirk was mentally ill. But nonetheless, you know, to create a culture in which political discourse can lead to political violence is unacceptable in the United States.

As far as we know, Robinson had never been diagnosed with a serious mental illness (with a serious "mental disorder"). But the fact that some such disorder hadn't been diagnosed doesn't mean that it didn't exist.

A tiny percentage of the two major tribes engage in murders of this type. The vast majority of the members of each tribe, Red and Blue, have never engaged in any such conduct.

Inevitably, Greg Gutfeld was playing the fool with respect to this question on the Fox News Channel last night. There's nothing that won't be said on programs like Gutfeld! and The Five—while the rest of the tribal stooges politely wait for their chance to agree.

What makes Gutfeld behave as he does? We'd call him "unrecognizable." We don't think we've ever seen a person that strange on TV.  Speaking as someone who taught fifth grade for seven years, we know he could do better.

(Also, everyone is now said to be gay on The Five and on the Gutfeld! show. They open the garbage can each night and that's what slithers out.)

That said, interpretation is hard! We humans aren't especially good at the practice, nor are we always obsessively honest. We do tend to be eager to repeat the memorized claims of our tribes.

Schorr (almost) gets it right: At Mediaite, Isaac Schorr seems to think that Fallin was faking last night. This is the headline on his opinion piece:

The Left Should Be Embarrassed by Jimmy Kimmel

In our view, Schorr is perhaps a bit too sure about what Fallin must have meant last Monday night. 

As Freud once insisted, Sometimes a jumbled presentation is just a jumbled presentation. Someone should maybe ask Fallin, at some point, what he actually believed about Tyler Robinson as of last Monday night.

Or then again, maybe not! Climate change and vaccine chaos may be more important, not to mention crazy flips concerning a former darling like Vladimir Putin, who is suddenly no longer great.

HEALING: "We are the storm," Stephen Miller declared!

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2025

Then, Megyn Kelly signed on: In fairness to Stephen Miller, he wasn't denouncing a group as amorphous—as far-ranging and hard to define—as "the left."

In the literal sense, he wasn't even talking about "the Democrat [sic] Party!" This is the start of what he said at Sunday's memorial service for the late Charlie Kirk:

MILLER (9/21/25): Hello, Turning Point. Hello, patriots. Hello to our fearless president, Donald J. Trump. 

And hello to millions of Americans all across this land who are gathered in sadness and sorrow to mourn Charlie Kirk, but also to dedicate ourselves to finishing his mission and achieving victory in his name.

[APPLAUSE] 

The day that Charlie died the angels wept. But those tears had been turned into fire in our hearts, and that fire burns with a righteous fury that our enemies cannot comprehend or understand. When I see Erika and her strength and her courage, I'm reminded of a famous expression:

The storm whispers to the warrior that you cannot withstand my strength. And the warrior whispers back, "I am the storm."

That "famous expression" seems to come from a novel, Wretched, by Jake Remington. We would assume that Miller's citation of "the storm" is a call to the forces of QAnon, though that assumption could always be wrong.

Already, Miller was assailing the people he described as "our enemies." As he continued, he offered this call to arms in the latest American war.

There was a certain sense of "us against them" as this angry man kept shouting and praising the ultimate greatness and of his great and good warrior tribe:

MILLER (continuing directly): Erika [Kirk] is the storm. We are the storm. And our enemies cannot comprehend our strength, our determination, our resolve, our passion. Our lineage and our legacy hails back to Athens, to Rome, to Philadelphia, to Monticello. Our ancestors built the cities. They produced the art and architecture. They built the industry.

[...]

We will prevail over the forces of wickedness and evil. They cannot imagine what they have awakened. They cannot conceive of the army that they have arisen in all of us because we stand for what is good, what is virtuous, what is noble. 

And to those trying to incite violence against us, those trying to foment hatred against us, what do you have? You have nothing. You are nothing. You are wickedness. You are jealousy. You are envy. You are hatred. You are nothing. You can build nothing. You can produce nothing. You can create nothing.

We are the ones who build. We are the ones who create. We are the ones who lift up humanity. 

You thought you could kill Charlie Kirk. You have made him immortal. You have immortalized Charlie Kirk. And now millions will carry on his legacy. And we will devote the rest of our lives to finishing the causes for which Charlie gave his last measure of devotion. You cannot defeat us. You cannot slow us. You cannot stop us. You cannot deter us.

We will carry Charlie and Erika in our heart every single day and fight that much harder because of what you did to us. You have no idea the dragon you have awakened. You have no idea how determined we will be to save the civilization, to save the West, to save this republic, because our children are strong and our grandchildren will be strong. And our children's children's children will be strong.

And what will you leave behind? Nothing. Nothing. To our enemies, you have nothing to give. You have nothing to offer. You have nothing to share but bitterness. We have beauty. We have light. We have goodness. We have determination. We have vision. We have strength. We built the world that we inhabit now, generation by generation.

[...]

We will defeat the forces of darkness and evil. And we will stand every day for what is true, what is beautiful, what is good. And we will achieve victory for our children, for our families, for our civilization, and for every patriot who stands with us. God bless you. God bless Turning Point. God bless Erika. God bless the Kirk family. God bless our heroes. And God bless the United States of America. Thank you.

ANNOUNCER: Please welcome to the stage, Susie Wiles.

With that, the explicitly Christian memorial service moved on.

Having seemed to evoke QAnon, Miller also seemed to evoke Abraham Lincoln when he said that Charlie Kirk "gave his last measure of devotion," presumably in the fight against those who are wickedness, those who are jealousy, those who are hatred, those who are nothing. 

That said, here's what President Lincoln said this as that first civil war was about to start:

 We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies.

That's what President Lincoln said. Last Sunday, a different spirit was driving a furious man as he denounced his American enemies and seemed to pray for a war.

That said, who was Miller denouncing this day? In the specific and literal sense, he was denouncing "those trying to incite violence against us, those trying to foment hatred against us."

In the literal sense, that's who Miller was denouncing—but who gets to decide who belongs in that group? We'll guess "the storm" get to decide—the people who, or so Miller says, are the ones "who lift up humanity."

At any rate, so it went at the memorial service in which a nation was told, by other speakers, that it should align itself with Jesus Christ, a time-honored decision a person might choose to make.

(In his first book, Stride Toward Freedom, Dr. King repeatedly described his dedication to 
"the love ethic of Jesus." The book was Dr. King's account of his role in the Montgomery bus boycott.)

As the first civil war was nearing its end, the healing didn't come easy with a person like John Wilkes Booth. Last Sunday, it seemed that there might not be an impulse toward healing with people like Stephen Miller, a top adviser to President Trump.

The healing won't come easy—in fact, there may be no healing at all! A similar tone could clearly be heard when top podcaster Megyn Kelly explained why she said what she said about the fact that Tom Homan is alleged to have accepted a possible bribe in the form of a big bag of cash.

As we noted yesterday, that allegation was widely reported over the weekend. Given a chance to deny the claim that he had accepted a big bag of cash. Homan didn't deny it.

He didn't deny that he'd taken the cash! As we noted yesterday. Kelly's initial post said this:

We DO NOT CARE!

According to Kelly, she and the rest of her furious tribe don't care if Homan took the cash. Later, in a second post, Kelly explained why that is.

Her post was reported at Mediaite. Elsewhere, the biggest orgs in Blue America politely averted their gaze.

Why doesn't Megyn Kelly care? As reported by Alex Griffing, that is what Kelly said:

KELLY (9/20/25): One of yours killed Charlie and then you laughed at our pain, protested our vigils & said Charlie was to blame and in hell. You lied about the killer’s motives & said he was MAGA when you knew he wasn’t. You put us all in danger by not admitting the truth and then not relenting on the lies you tell about us. You cried endless tears for Jimmy Kimmel but none for Charlie.

You gleefully cancelled all of us for five+ years and danced when we suffered. You censored us & ruined careers of distinguished doctors & others who dared to say the truth during Covid and George Floyd. You cost our children years of learning during lockdowns and endangered them with deadly myocarditis by burying the risk disclosures and never apologized or owned it.

Your govt tried to strong arm Fox into firing Tucker bc of his J6 coverage and you said not a peep about the first amendment.

In fact, Kelly listed quite a few other grievances. You can read her X post here, but she ended by saying this:

So no, we don’t care what you say about Tom Homan. We do not trust you. We only care about defeating you.

"We only care about defeating you!" That's what Kelly now said. Indeed, even as she had raked in tens of millions of dollars, Kelly had seen rivers. There seems to be little end to her sense of grievance—or perhaps to her sense of entitlement.

Presumably, Megyn Kelly was speaking for millions of people—for millions within "the storm." She had listed some of the grievances those in that whirlwind have felt.

In our view, some of those grievances have a perfectly reasonable basis. Others quite plainly do not.

Some of those grievances have a sound basis! Over here in Blue America, we still insist on refusing to come to terms with that fairly obvious fact.

So some of those grievances have a sound basis? Tomorrow, we'll start to flesh out that assessment. But as for warfighters like Miller and Kelly, it seems to us that the real problem lies in a dangerous place:

It lies with the inability to regulate anger—with the inability to see that everyone doesn't see the world in the infallible way they do. It involves the inability to acknowledge the fact that their "enemies" may not be "evil"—that their "enemies" might not even be wrong when they state some assessment or fact.

Megyn Kelly seems to be part of the storm—and the human impulse to align with the storm is bred rather deep in the bone. Healing can be hard to achieve when the blood which flows through our veins starts blowing up a new storm.

By the way:

The New York Times is ignoring what Miller and Kelly have said. The major elites of our own Blue America don't seem to want to come to terms with this latest quite dangerous storm.

Tomorrow: Maddow interviews Harris

TUESDAY: We didn't think he looked or seemed well!

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2025

The problem which can't be discussed: Some of what happened at the U.N. today was familiar, all too familiar.

Given the norms of the venue, the president spoke at extraordinary length. Sometimes he read from teleprompter. Even after the teleprompter started to work, sometimes he plainly didn't.

Much of what he said this day was familiar, all too familiar. At Mediaite, Zachary Leeman offered a post, on the fly, which appeared beneath this headline:

Trump Insists To UN He’s Been ‘Right About Everything’ As He Spells Out Potential Doom for Foreign Countries

President Donald Trump declared on Tuesday while speaking with the United Nations General Assembly in New York City that he’s “been right about everything” while warning leaders they could be destroying their own countries.

Trump made his declaration while warning countries against the “green energy scam,” referring to investments in efforts to combat global warming like windmills.

“I’m really good at predicting things,” the president said, going on to brag about a “best-selling” hat during his campaign that boasted about him being right about everything.

Yes, he mentioned the hat! Thanks to the invaluable Rev, you can read a full transcript of what he specifically said:

And I'm really good at predicting things. They actually said during the campaign, they had a hat, the best-selling hat, "Trump was right about everything." And I don't say that in a braggadocious way, but it's true. I've been right about everything. And I'm telling you that if you don't get away from the green energy scam, your country is going to fail. 

In fairness, he wasn't being braggadocious. Also at Mediaite, Alex Griffing went with this:

Trump Lobbies for Nobel Peace Prize in UN Speech—Then Insists He Doesn’t Care About It

President Donald Trump addressed the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday and boasted about the wars he claims he ended, repeating a favorite line of his in recent months. Trump went on to claim he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, another regular refrain from the president, but added that the lives saved are prize enough for him.

[...]

Trump then went on a tangent about the construction of the U.N headquarters in New York City, “Many years ago, a very successful real estate developer in New York, known as Donald Trump, I bid on the renovation and rebuilding of this very United Nations complex. I remember it so well.”

Concerning that tangent in question, the president offered this filibuster, as recorded by the invaluable Rev:

Many years ago, a very successful real estate developer in New York, known as Donald J. Trump, I bid on the renovation and rebuilding of this very United Nations complex.

I remember it so well. I said at the time that I would do it for $500 million, rebuilding everything. It would be beautiful. I used to talk about, "I'm going to give you marble floors, they're going to give you terrazzo." The best of everything. "You're going to have mahogany walls, they're going to give you plastic." But they decided to go in another direction, which was much more expensive at the time, which actually produced a far inferior product. And I realized that they did not know what they were doing when it came to construction and that their building concepts were so wrong, and the product that they were proposing to build was so bad and so costly, it was going to cost them a fortune. And I said, "And wait until you see the overruns." 

Well, I turned out to be right. They had massive cost overruns and spent between two and $4 billion on the building and did not even get the marble floors that I promised them.

You walk on terrazzo. Do you notice that? As far as I'm concerned, frankly, looking at the building and getting stuck on the escalator, they still haven't finished the job. They still haven't finished. That was years ago. The project was so corrupt that Congress actually asked me to testify before them on the tremendous waste of money because it turned out that they had no idea what it was, but they knew it was anywhere between two and $4 billion as opposed to 500 million with a guarantee, but they had no idea. And I said, "It costs much more than $5 billion." Unfortunately, many things in the United Nations are happening just like that, but on an even much bigger scale, much, much bigger.

Ah yes—he remembers it well! Various leaders of the world's many nations were forced to sit around listening to such observations as that.

Inevitably, CNN called on Daniel Dale. His presentation was mercifully short, but Mediaite's Ahmad Austin quoted a few of Dale's fact-checks:

‘A Reversal of Reality’: CNN’s Daniel Dale Calls Out Barrage of False Claims from Trump’s Marathon UN Speech

CNN’s Daniel Dale on Tuesday fact-checked a litany of false claims made by President Donald Trump during his marathon UN speech.

[...]

"He claimed that China builds a lot of wind turbines and manufactures them for others, but refuses to use it itself, barely uses wind power. In fact, China is the world leader in the use of wind power. It is building additional wind power in China far faster than the pace at which the U.S. is building in the United States itself. So the idea that China is just, you know, foisting this terrible source of energy on other countries while refusing to use it is a reversal of reality."

Dale called it "a reversal of reality." The president has been right about everything, except for some of the windmill stuff.

Dale called it "a reversal of reality." Yesterday, the president engaged in some remarkably unsophisticated prattle about autism, vaccines and the like. Today, the New York Times has published a colloquy between three medical specialists, one of whom says this about yesterday's event as a whole:

‘This May Be the Most Difficult Day in My Career’: Experts React to Trump’s Autism Remarks

[...]

Helen Tager-Flusberg: I was expecting some of what was presented, but I have to say I was shocked and appalled to hear the extreme statements without evidence in support of what any of the presenters said. In some respects this was the most unhinged discussion of autism that I have ever listened to. It was clear that none of the presenters knew much about autism...and nothing about the existing science. This may be the most difficult day in my career.

We've long asked if something might be wrong with the sitting president. Stating the obvious, it would be a human tragedy—a tragic loss of human potential—if the answer is yes.

The American press corps has agreed that such questions must never be asked or discussed. That said, we thought, as we watched the president today, that he neither looked nor seemed to be well.

That would be a human tragedy. But that's how it looked to us.

We haven't mentioned the insults directed today against former President Biden. At one point, wasting the time of the planet's leaders, the sitting president said this:

That's why the United States is now applying tariffs to other countries. And much as these tariffs were, for many years, applied to us, uncontrollably applied to us, we've used tariffs as a defense mechanism under the Trump administration, including my first term, where hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs were taken in. And by the way, we had the lowest inflation and now we have very low inflation. The only thing different is that we have hundreds of billions of dollars flowing into our country. But this is how we will ensure that the system works for everyone and is sustainable into the future. We're also using tariffs to defend our sovereignty and security throughout the world, including against nations that have taken advantage of former U.S. administrations for decades, including the most corrupt, incompetent administration in history—the Sleepy Joe Biden administration.

For the record, no money is "flowing into the country" when those tariff payments are made. Meanwhile, the fellow can't quit the childish, insulting nicknames, even on this global stage.

We didn't think he looked or seemed well. That would be a human tragedy, but this is the situation our nation has chosen, and as Chekhov said at the end of Lady With Lapdog, things don't get any simpler from here.

HEALING: Laura Ingraham didn't ask...

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2025

...and Kelly doesn't care: "The sunshine of the prairie summer and fall months would come sifting down with healing and strength..."

As we noted yesterday—as we've noted in the past—Sandburg offered that mysterious claim near the end of his two-volume biography, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years (1926).

Lincoln would soon be on his way from Illinois to the White House. He left "not knowing when, or whether ever, I may return, with a task before me greater than that which rested upon Washington." 

So the rail-splitter told the crowd at the Springfield railway station—the congregation to whom he would bid "an affectionate farewell." 

In fact, the healing of the American nation didn't come easily after he himself was shot and killed in April 1865. In truth, it isn't entirely clear that the healing ever took place at all.

That war had been fought between the Blue and the Grey. Today, we're involved in a great if undeclared civil war between the Red and the Blue. 

Could some sort of political genius accomplish some sort of healing now? Consider what happened just last night on a Fox News Channel program.

We refer to The Ingraham Angle, that channel's 7 p.m. show (that's 4 p.m. out on the coast). Midway through the program, Laura Ingraham spoke with Tom Homan. This was part of the background:

Trump Justice Dept. Closed Investigation Into Tom Homan for Accepting Bag of Cash

Tom Homan, who was later named President Trump’s border czar, was recorded in September 2024 accepting a bag with $50,000 in cash in an undercover F.B.I. investigation, according to people familiar with the case, which was later shut down by Trump administration officials.

The cash payment, which was made inside a bag from the food chain Cava, grew out of a long-running counterintelligence investigation that had not been targeting Mr. Homan, according to the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the case.

Mr. Homan’s encounter with the undercover agents, recorded on audiotape, led him to be investigated for potential bribery and other crimes, after he apparently took the money and agreed to help the agents—who were posing as businessmen—secure future government contracts related to border security, the people said.

After Mr. Trump took office this year, Justice Department officials shut down the case because of doubts about whether prosecutors could prove to a jury that Mr. Homan had agreed to do any specific acts in exchange for the money, and because he had not held an official government position at the time of the meeting with undercover agents, the people added.

That was the start of the front-page report in Sunday's New York Times. One day earlier, MSNBC's Leonnig and Dilanian had first reported these allegations. To see their report, click here.

Say what? Today, Homan is a major player within the Trump administration. When he allegedly accepted that bag of cash, last year's campaign between Candidates Trump and Harris was still going on.

Their lone debate had taken place on September 10. Two weeks later, had Homan accepted a big sack of cash? Last night, it almost seemed that Laura Ingraham wanted to find out. 

Her interview with Homan started at 7:22 p.m. Three minutes later, she asked:

INGRAHAM (9/22/25): Tom, I want to give you a chance to address this article that came out over the weekend. It was on our always reliable MSNBC and they said that you took $50,000 in cash in a bag from an undercover FBI agent to help them win government contracts in Trump’s second term.

The DOJ said they concluded there was no criminal wrongdoing. But nevertheless, that story is out there and I imagine you want to respond to that.

For the record, it was the DOJ under President Trump which apparently "concluded there was no criminal wrongdoing" with respect to that bag of cash. Still, had Homan accepted that big sack of cash? And if he had accepted the cash, why would he have done that?

Ingraham had asked about the report. In this, his first response, Tom Homan described. or perhaps failed to describe, what he, Tom Homan, had done:

HOMAN (continuing directly): Absolutely. I did nothing criminal. I did nothing illegal. And you know, it’s hit piece after hit piece after hit piece. And I’m glad the FBI and DOJ came out and said, you know, said that nothing illegal happened, nothing—you know, no criminal activity.

You’re talking about a guy who spent 34 years enforcing law. I mean, I left a very successful business that I ran to come back and work for a government again. I’m back on a government paycheck. Not only did I sacrifice, my family sacrifices. I make sacrifices every day. I got more death threats than anybody. 

INGRAHAM: I know that.

HOMAN: I got a security team around me, but guess what? My kids don’t, my wife don’t. I mean, I haven’t lived with my wife in months because I don’t want her to be here right now with all the threats.

So after all the sacrifices, after serving my nation for all these years, they want to come out and dirty me up. And it’s not going to end. There’s a hit piece on me every two weeks. But keep coming, because you know what? Tom Homan isn’t going anywhere, Tom Homan isn’t shutting up, and Tom Homan’s gonna keep doing what he’s doing because working with President Trump is the greatest honor of my life. We’re making this country safer again every day and we’re gonna keep doing it.

So said Tom Homan, just last night, speaking about Tom Homan. "Tom Homan’s gonna keep doing what he’s doing, "Tom Homan assertively said.

Tom Homan also said that Tom Homan had done nothing illegal. According to various legal specialists, that statement may (or may not) be accurate.

That said, had Tom Homan actually accepted that big bag of cash? As you can see, Tom Homan hadn't said whether Tom Homan had actually done that!

Tom Homan hadn't said if Tom Homan accepted the cash! For that reason, Ingraham advanced this probing follow-up question:

INGRAHAM (continuing directly):  Thank you for joining us.

Thank you for joining us, she said! At that point, she teased the next topic, then went to a commercial break.

For whatever reason, Ingraham had waited until the end of the short interview segment before she asked about this topic. After Homan's rambling statement, she thanked him and went to a break.

Was that a serious attempt at journalism, or was that merely a set-up—a set-up engineered by the pro-Trump Fox News Channel? You can judge that one for yourself—but an earlier statement by Megyn Kelly seemed to illustrate the very deep hole we're all in at this point.

It's a very deep tribal hole—the kind of hole a nation is in when a functioning nation (or empire) has essentially broken apart. 

At this point, Kelly is a high-profile, somewhat flamboyant pro-Trump podcaster. There's no law against such a stance, but her initial reaction to the report about Homan and the cash had perhaps been a bit surprising.

She spoke on behalf of Red America. We DO NOT CARE, the podcaster wrote. 

Here's Mediaite's report:

Megyn Kelly Defends Declaring ‘We DO NOT CARE’ About Tom Homan Corruption Allegations

Former Fox News host turned successful podcaster Megyn Kelly declared over the weekend that she absolutely does not care about the allegation that Trump border czar Tom Homan was recorded accepting $50,000 to help with securing government contracts.

[...]

Carol Leonnig, who broke the story, posted the report to X over the weekend. Kelly quickly replied to Leonnig’s post and wrote, “We DO NOT CARE. Don’t bother @RealTomHoman he’s a national treasure.”

Lay off Homan, the podcaster said. We don't care whether he took that cash!

Later, Kelly provided a lengthy explanation of that initial post. In the course of that post, she offered a rather startling statement.

We'll start with that angry post tomorrow—but a former nation has come apart when a major segment of its population has reached the point Kelly described in that second post.

Question:

Should we bid this struggling nation an affectionate farewell? Laura Ingraham didn't ask—and Kelly doesn't care!

Tomorrow: According to Kelly, this is all her emerging tribe really wants to do

MONDAY: Nicholas Kristof has published a column...

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2025

...from a forgotten world: We're so old that we can remember when, from the Blue American perspective, the peculiar behavior of Elon Musk seemed to be worth complaining about.

In part, we refer to his dismantling of USAID and to the effects of that conduct. Quixotically, Nicholas Kristof returned to that topic in yesterday's New York Times.

We call Kristof's conduct "quixotic" due to a basic fact. As of Wednesday, September 10, little matters in this nation's Red/Blue Civil War other than the reactions of various individual players to the murder of Charlie Kirk.

Round the decay of [our nation's] colossal Wreck, little beside remains! In yesterday's Sunday Opinion section, Kristof proceeded with a column from Uganda all the same.

It's likely that material of this type never mattered all that much within the American political context. That said, we were struck by how thoroughly dated the excerpt presented below now seems.

Below, you see part of yesterday's column. We were struck by the total irrelevance which now accrues to this type of concern:

Trump’s Most Lethal Policy

The Trump administration has claimed that no one has died because of its cuts to humanitarian aid, and it is now trying to cancel an additional $4.9 billion in aid that Congress already approved. Yet what I find here in desperate villages in southwestern Uganda is that not only are aid cuts killing children every day, but that the death toll is accelerating.

[...]

Let me introduce [President] Trump to the mothers of children that his cost-cutting has killed.

Valentine Tusifu, a 36-year-old refugee from the Democratic Republic of Congo, is mourning her 10-year-old daughter, Jibia. The girl excelled in school here in Rwamwanja, ranking third out of 58 students in her fourth-grade class, and dreamed of becoming a nurse.

But the family had to pull Jibia out of school in May when the loss of American funding led to a mass firing of teachers. Jibia cried inconsolably, her mother recalled, as the girl became an elementary school dropout.

Then it got worse. The family’s mosquito nets developed holes, but with aid cuts, the health center had run out of new nets, so Jibia slept unprotected. She contracted malaria. Normally, a village health worker would have handed out an inexpensive medicine, but that system disintegrated along with aid budgets, and so did the supply of anti-malaria medication.

So Jibia’s mom took the girl, feverish and vomiting, to the local health center, but it, too, had run out of necessary medicines. Doctors say they tried to rush the girl to a regional hospital. But ambulances were unavailable because drivers had been laid off as a result of cuts in U.S. assistance.

By the time Jibia arrived at the hospital, the malaria had destroyed her red blood cells, leaving her urine dark with their residue, medical records show. A person normally has a hemoglobin level above 10; Jibia’s stood at just 2.9. So she desperately needed a blood transfusion, but Uganda’s blood transfusion program relied on American support and is now struggling. A transfusion was unavailable.

So Jibia died on July 7.

“It was aid cuts,” her mom told me—without bitterness or any sense of entitlement, simply stating a fact that is obvious on the ground here. “People are dying every day and night.”

So it went. First, the cuts took away the mosquito nets. Then, the cuts took away the inexpensive anti-malarial medicine.

When Jibia needed transportation to a regional hospital, ambulances were no longer available. Eventually, she needed a transfusion, but that too was unavailable due to the cuts in aid.

For those reasons, Jibia died. She was the girl who had cried because she was losing the chance to become a nurse, due to the way the spending cuts has led to the firing of teachers.

Kristof's column is quite lengthy; it touches on various topics. That includes the claim that these deaths have resulted from spending cuts which have actually saved the United States zero money. It also touches on the possible effect this sort of thing might have on this nation's global "soft power."

It's a lengthy column. We were struck by its dated feel. 

A few months ago, it still seemed that (hundreds of thousands of such) deaths might function as part of the American political discourse. Those days are long, long gone. Kristof's column seems to come from an earlier century, not from a time, just a few months ago, when an apparent nutcase like Elon Musk was rampaging through the federal government with his band of merry men.

Should the United States be providing the financial aid which might have kept this girl in school and might even have kept her alive? In the end, there is no ultimate answer to that sort of question.

As of yesterday, it seemed almost quaint to see the Times present this lengthy column. We've moved a very long way, baby, since the days when Musk was rampaging through the pea-patch with his gang of incompetent men.

The onset of our American civil war has been remarkably rapid. By now, it's all about who may have said what about the murder of Kirk and the tribe to which tribe they belong. 

Is there a way to recover from the tribal divide which is now so stark? It's hard for us to believe that there is. As we'll be (quixotically) noting all week, the need for healing is vast. 

HEALING: Our suffering nation needs healing now!

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2025

A deeply humane feature film: At some point, some years ago, the following thought had occurred to us. If we could ask one question of one public figure, we'd ask this question of Robert Redford:

What made you decide to film that same story twice?

We refer to the story Redford explored in the first film he ever directed, then again eighteen years later. The films in question were these

Ordinary People (1980)
The Horse Whisperer (1998)

Ordinary People won Oscars for Best Picture and also for Best Director. The Horse Whisperer was less successful in such ways. But in our view, it may have explored the story in question in a way which was even more deeply empathetic.

At any rate, it was a twice-told tale! Each film explores the process by which a suffering, tormented teenage child is retrieved on behalf of the world. 

In our view, The Horse Whisperer is a dreamscape version of the much more literal earlier film. Example:

In Ordinary People, the suffering child is saved through the intervention of a psychiatrist. In the second film, the suffering, 13-year-old girl is saved by the empathy of a regular person who's gifted with wisdom. 

The girl is saved by a person with a unusual form of sight.

Even before we meet that character, we're told this, in a voice-over, about his unusual powers. Fairly early in the film, the child's mother reads this text about people who know how to see into the souls of horses:

A million years before man, they grazed the vast and empty plains, living by voices only they could hear. 

They first came to know man as the hunted knows the hunter, for long before he used horses for his labors, he killed them for meat. The alliance with man would forever be fragile, for the fear he had struck into their hearts was too deep to be dislodged. 

Since that Neolithic moment when a horse was first haltered, there were those among men who understood this. They could see into the creature's soul and soothe the wounds they found there. 

For secrets uttered softly into troubled ears, these men were known as the whisperers.

So we're told about the character Redford plays in the film. He has the ability to see into another being's soul and soothe the wounds found there. 

When he finally appears in the film, he's been asked to save a badly wounded, deeply traumatized horse. But he's able to see, out of the corner of his eye, that it's the suffering, traumatized teenage girl who's most directly in need of help.

Ordinary People tells the same story in a much more literal way. In each film, the trauma of the teenage child begins with a tragic, accidental death. In the first film, the trauma of the surviving child begins with the accidental death of her older brother. 

In the second film, the suffering begins with the accidental death of the child's best friend. 

In each film, we end up learning that the child's trauma involves a feeling of parental pressure, connected to life as an only child. The similarities continue from there, disguised by a vastly different pair of cultural settings.

Why did Redford explore that story? Eighteen years later, why did he make it a twice-told tale? 

In last week's obituary in the New York Times, we finally thought we saw the hints of a possible explanation. But as we watched the second film again this weekend, we wondered if we've ever seen another film so drenched with the power of empathy and with the glory of healing.

That said, good God—our struggling is badly in need of healing now! We flashed on where we once might have seen that word, and sure enough, there it was, near the end of our favorite passage from Sandburg's two-volume poetic biography, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years.

Sandburg is describing Lincon's last trip, as president-elect, out to deeply rural Coles County, Illinois to say goodbye to his beloved stepmother, Sally Bush Lincoln. 

According to Sandburg, she had seen into his soul when he was still just a child, and she had seen something unusual there. Decades later, the scene in question unfolds like this: 

Sally Bush and he put their arms around each other and listened to each other’s heartbeats. They held hands and talked; they talked without holding hands. Each looked into eyes thrust back in deep sockets. She was all of a mother to him.

He was her boy more than any born to her. He gave her a photograph of her boy, a hungry picture of him standing and wanting, wanting. He stroked her face a last time, kissed good-by, and went away.

She knew his heart would go roaming back often, that even when he rode in an open carriage in New York or Washington with soldiers, flags or cheering thousands along the streets, he might just as like be thinking of her in the old log farmhouse out in Coles County, Illinois.

The sunshine of the prairie summer and fall months would come sifting down with healing and strength; between harvest and corn-plowing there would be rains beating and blizzards howling; and then there would be silence after snowstorms with white drifts piled against the fences, barns, and trees.

So ends Chapter 162 (sic) of Sandburg's two-volume effort. And sure enough, there it was, the mysterious reference to healing. 

It's hard to parse the exact meaning of Sandburg's passage. But the nation Lincoln served as president badly needs healing now.

In our view, The Horse Whisperer does go on too long. It ends up telling two stories—the story of the Redford character and the girl, but also the story of the Redford character and the girl's mother.

In our view, that ends up being one story too many. But as the week proceeds at this site, we'll be exploring our faltering nation's need for healing now—along with the afflictions, Blue as well as Red, from which we need to be saved.

Meanwhile, have we ever seen a film which was more humane? The story telling is brisk and beautiful in the first half of that second film.

We'll never get to ask Redford the question we had in mind. But Robert Redford, eighteen years later, had the decency and the humanity to explore that important story again.

Once again, he explored the mysterious pathway toward the "soothing of wounds." It's something we badly need now.

Tomorrow: What do we need healing from?

SATURDAY: The cleaning crew scoured the office!

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2025

Fox & Friends Weekend holds forth: We'll start today with something puzzling—with an apparent look at the puzzling way Blue America's elites sometimes work.

The snapshot comes from Maureen Dowd's new column. Headline included, her column starts like this:

The Way They Were

In 1986, my most prized possession was a little pink phone message slip written by a hotel clerk.

“Miss Dowd,” it read, “Robert Redford called. He’s at the same number as last night.”

I’d never met Redford, but that piece of paper was a magic portal to all kinds of pink-cloud fantasies. I stuck it up on my cubicle in the Washington bureau of The Times and gazed at it whenever I needed a lift.

Then, one night, the bureau chief went on a crazed cleaning campaign and sent a crew in to throw out every stray piece of paper around our desks.

I came in the next morning and my beloved message was gone.

The column continues from there. But can that possibly be the way Blue America's most important newspaper works?

Really? One night, out of the blue, a bureau chief ordered a cleaning crew to go through the cubicles of the paper's Waashington staff? The crew had been ordered to "throw out every stray piece of paper around [their] desks?" 

That's what Dowd reports. She herself lost a note she treasured as a keepsake. But what else could have ben thrown away—what important telephone number of what elusive source—if some such cleaning campaign was really sent through that office?

Is that the way our Blue elites work? Is that the size and the shape of their basic intelligence?

We don't have the slightest idea! But if you've watched this cadre for the past forty years, you'd have to say that it's possible.

"Man [sic] is the rational animal," Aristotle is said to have said. Over here in Blue America, we remarkably self-impressed Blues have tended to rework that claim:

"We Blues are the rational and moral animal," we Blues have long messaged and thought. The others—the ones over there—are the dumb and immoral ones. That's the picture we Blues have conveyed.

In fact, our Blue elites aren't actual giants. And in our view, at the present time, the Red elites are even worse!

(We're speaking here about "journalists," academics and office holders. We're not speaking about the tens of millions of regular people who show up to vote for the Reds, or perhaps for the Blues, in our election years.)

As it suddenly happens, we may be away from our sprawling campus today, but we want to give you a minor hint of what we just saw. 

Before we do, we offer this query:

Does anyone really think that those of us in Blue America haven't already earned our way out?  As the Achaeans keep coming over the walls, does anyone think, for even a minute, that we Blues are going to find a way to roll back this assault and prevail?

We're speaking about a segment we just watched on this morning's Fox & Friends Weekend program. The segment was teased at 7:21. A few minutes later, the deluge.

The segment involved what Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ) said yesterday about the late Charlie Kirk. More specifically, it involved (some of) what Sherrill said about Kirk "after the passage of a House resolution honoring the conservative activist."

Sherrill voted in favor of the resolution, then sought to explain her vote. Dual headline included, Fox News Digital offers this report about the basics of the matter:

Far-left Dem says Charlie Kirk wanted to 'roll back rights of women and Black people' after House tribute
Rep. Mikie Sherrill made the controversial statement after the House honored Kirk following his assassination

Rep. Mikie Sherrill, D-N.J., the far-left Democratic nominee for governor, called Charlie Kirk a Christian nationalist who wanted to roll back the rights of women and Black people after the passage of a House resolution honoring the conservative activist.

The House adopted a resolution to honor Kirk's "life and legacy" Friday, just over a week after he was shot and killed during a college campus speaking event in Utah. The measure got bipartisan support in a 310-58 vote, with both Democrats and Republicans condemning political violence after Kirk's assassination.

The vote divided Democrats, however, with 95 lawmakers, including Sherrill, voting to adopt the resolution, 58 voting against it and 22 not voting at all.

"I take my oath to the Constitution seriously. I believe in free speech and that the First Amendment wouldn’t be necessary if it were only meant to cover language we agreed with," Sherrill said in a statement. "It is meant to protect people like Charlie Kirk who present vile dissenting views. But it is also meant to protect teachers, doctors and TV comedians who may express views the president doesn’t like.

"Charlie Kirk was advocating for a Christian nationalist government and to roll back the rights of women and Black people. This flies in the face of every value I hold dear and that I fight for," she added. "But the Constitution protects free speech, even for those I vehemently oppose."

For ourselves, we probably would have voted "Present." But that's part of what Sherrill said.

Sherrill is especially important today because she's the Democratic nominee in this year's gubernatorial election in New Jersey. She was savaged, in deeply instructive ways, during the Fox & Friends segment in question.

The three official co-host/friends brought Lara Trump onto the set to assist in the trashing of Sherrill. The insults were flowing freely all through the remarkable segment.

At present, Achaeans of this type are coming over the walls of our own sacred Troy. Blue America's journalists and office holders don't seem to know how to react.

Increasingly, the Democratic Party is being represented in the public square by Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas). She strikes us as a gift which won't stop giving for propagandists of the MAGA right. 

Other members of the party seem to have no idea how to respond to the present Red American onslaught. That said, this morning's journalistic behavior by the three Fox friends, with Lara Trump thrown in, struck us as a study in ongoing societal downfall:

We start with the "editing" of the remarks made by the targeted "far left" player in question. (She's so "far left" that she voted in favor of the resolution!)

From there, we move to the creative paraphrase of what that target said and must surely have meant—but mainly to the aggressive name-calling which characterized the segment.

Fox viewers were given little chance to hear what Sherrill had said. No attempt was made to let viewers decide if there was some sort of rational basis for what she had said.

The name-calling took the place of such traditional journalistic niceties as the three friends, joined by the poisonous daughter-in-law, offered an array of insults about how "gross" and "insulting" Merrill's "lies" had been.

("The most disgusting thing I've ever seen!" So several of the spear-chuckers actually said.)

Even by the norms of this TV show, the propaganda seemed extreme. Did we mention the fact that Rep. Sherrill is running for governor this year?

Can a large modern nation survive the arrangements which have given birth to inanities of this type? To wit:

The Democratic Party (assisted by MSNBC) seems to be trying to align itself behind a self-defeating figure like Rep. Crockett. Meanwhile, Blue America's major journalists and major news orgs refuse to report or discuss what happens on the Fox News Channel—on this nation's most-watched "cable news" channel by far.

According to Dowd, she lost her note about Robert Redford when an unannounced cleaning crew rampaged through the office one night. Are Blue elites really that feckless? 

Based upon the behaviors of the past forty years, you can bet your sweet bippy they are!

As for the rest of us in our struggling nation, how did we get from "the way we were" to the way we currently are? 

Nothing to look at! Look over here, our Blue elites tend to say.

Will Putin get tired of all the winning? At this point, there's no sign of any let-up from the determined spear-chuckers at the Fox & Friends Weekend program. 

(Later today, for two solid hours, The Big Weekend Show will likely be worse.)

They continue to work under cover of darkness. Over here in Blue America, our elites seem to like it that way!

FRIDAY: Man is the rational animal, he said!

 FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2025

He'd never looked in on The Five: "Man [sic] is the rational animal," Aristotle is widely said to have said. 

That's what he is said to have said. He'd never looked in on The Five! 

For tomorrow, we'd planned to discuss a twice-told tale—the story Robert Reford told two times, first in Ordinary People (1980), then again, in dreamscape fashion, in The Horse Whisperer (1998). 

On occasion, a fellow dreams of writing about something decent, even about something humane. 

Then, that fellow may look in on The Five. It's the conundrum we've chosen!

PRETENDERS: "Not ready for prime time" around the clock!

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2025

Fleshing out what David French said: The designation started out as a joke. The leading authority limns it thusly:

Saturday Night Live

Saturday Night Live (SNL) is an American late-night live sketch comedy variety show created by Lorne Michaels and developed by Michaels and Dick Ebersol that airs on NBC. The show's premiere was hosted by George Carlin on NBC on October 11, 1975, under the original title NBC's Saturday Night. The show's comedy sketches, which often parody popular culture and politics, are performed by a large and varying cast of repertory and newer cast members.

[...]

By 1975, Michaels had assembled the show's initial cast, including Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Chevy Chase, Jane Curtin, Garrett Morris, Laraine Newman, Gilda Radner, and George Coe. The cast was nicknamed the "Not Ready for Prime-Time Players," a term coined by show writer Herb Sargent. Much of the talent pool involved in the inaugural season was recruited from The National Lampoon Radio Hour, including the original head writer, Michael O'Donoghue.

From the talent pool, he'd assembled a cast. They were known as the "Not Ready for Prime-Time Players." 

It's a bit like that on today's round-the-clock imitations of TV "news" programs. Within the realm of cable "news," cast members are sent out on the air from 5 a.m. until midnight.

Especially on the Fox News Channel, these actors have scripts they've been hired to read and perform. 

When it comes to any actual discussion of any actual news topic, these players are very rarely "ready for prime time" themselves! Nor is that the actual role they've been hired to perform.

We've been discussing one such player all through the course of this week. Last Saturday morning, near the end of the 6 o'clock hour, she was dragged out on her mommy's show to offer a gong-show denunciation of a familiar Fox News Channel demon.

The player is question is just 25. Based upon her performance that day, she's about as "not ready for primetime" as a person ever gets.

Here's how her segment ended:

DUFFY-ALFONSO (9/13/25): ...[Kristen Chenoweth] had a normal to a horrific tragedy. The left can't even have—the radical left—a normal human reaction to the death of a father, of a husband, of a Christian man. I think that speak volumes.

CORKE: Evita, have a wonderful weekend. We appreciate your time this morning.

The youngster closed with a sweeping denunciation of "the left"—or possibly just of "the radical left." If she had simply said "some on the left": she might have been making an accurate point, if one that was inconsequential. 

After all, "some on the right" had also produced imperfect reactions to the murder of Charlie Kirk. That said, cast members on this "news channel's" ersatz "news programs" will almost never mention any such fact.

This young woman became a cast member this day. That said, her extremely genial mother's is a Fox cast member too.

These cast members know the scripts they're being paid to recite and perform. On this particular day, the young woman unloosed a savage accusation against Barack Obama—a bizarre presentation for which her "news channel" should have been assailed.

That said, the game isn't played that way at the present time. At present, the Fox News Channel lashes out against Blue America's various players—but Blue America's various players all know they must avert their gaze from what is occurring on Fox.

If you're watching the Fox News Channel, one rule will prevail above all. The various cast members who are paid to feed you preferred corporate pablum will tell you about alleged misconduct on "the left." 

They will also disappear any such conduct on "the right." That starts with the bizarre behaviors of the current sitting president and works its way down from there.

President Trump's endless weird statements and behaviors will be disappeared. So will those of everyone else on "the right." One recent example will involve the reactions by several members of Congress, D and R, to the murder of Charlie Kirk.

Murder is a heinous crime. It may produce strong reactions.

Some such reactions may go over the top. So it was when Rep. Onder (R-Mo.) took the floor of the House the next day and offered the wild reaction described in this Mediaite report:

House Republican Calls the Left ‘Evil’ And Willing to Kill Like Pol Pot In Wild Floor Speech

Rep. Bob Onder (R-MO) raised eyebrows on Thursday with a House floor speech on the killing of Charlie Kirk, in which he claimed Americans on the left “embrace the evil, the false, and ugly.” Onder went so far as to say his fellow citizens across the aisle “literally will kill those with whom they disagree, just as their predecessors—leftists Marx, and Stalin, and Lenin, and Pol Pot, and Fidel Castro—did.”

That was the start of the news report. The report continues from there at length, with videotape provided.

Bob Onder may be the world's nicest person—or possibly not, at least not all the time. Whatever the overall truth might be, he may not have been completely ready for prime time on this particular day. 

One (1) person had killed Charlie Kirk, but Onder kept using the magic word, saying that "they they they they they they they " had done it. 

Beyond that, there were very few crimes Rep. Onder wasn't willing to lay on "their" heads.

He compared Kirk to Socrates, a talking-point which was being repeated by others, even including George Will. He also compared Kirk to Jesus Christ. 

Concerning the people he referred to as "they," here's what Rep. Onder said "they" had done, and here's what he said "they" believe:

Most of all, [Kirk] was a very convincing advocate for love of God, family, and country, the hatred of which is a sacred creed of the left. They could not have it. They killed him.

[...]

Charlie also died as he was answering a question about the transgender cult that has gripped so much of our society and destroyed the life and health of so many of our young people. They couldn’t stand for that. So they killed Charlie: martyr for the truth and for Christ.

Well, what for us? Well, everything has changed. If we didn’t know it already, there is no longer any middle ground. Some of the American left are undoubtedly well-meaning people, but their ideology is pure evil. They hate the good, the truth, and the beautiful, and embrace the evil, the false, and ugly. And they literally will kill those with whom they disagree, just as their predecessors—leftists Marx, and Stalin, and Lenin, and Pol Pot, and Fidel Castro—did. We must know that. And we must stand firm, and we must win this twilight struggle.

Some of "them" are well-meaning, he said. But what "they" believe is pure evil!

"They" hate the good, the truth, and the beautiful. Also, "they" embrace the evil, along with the false and the ugly. 

Quite literally, "they" will kill those with whom they disagree. It's what Stalin and Pol Pot did, so "they" will do it too!

You can watch Rep. Onder's full statement that day at the Mediaite site. Along the way, he voiced some complaints about Blue America's current political culture which may well contain a substantial germ of truth.

That said, his inability to regulate the fruits of his anger was fully apparent this day. From there, he went so far over the top that you could no longer see the top from where he ended up. 

His bottom line that day was this:

Kirk was Socrates and Jesus Christ. "They"—those on "the American left"—are Pol Pot and Castro and Stalin.

We'll assume that Rep. Onder is normally better than that. It would be hard to be much worse, basic sanity-wise. Disordered people may respond to such words with violence—to the claim that those on "the American left" hate the good, the truth, and the beautiful, and instead embrace the evil.

On that same day, another member of Congress—a Democrat—spoke about Charlie Kirk. We refer to Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who spoke with Mehdi Hasan for his Zeteo News website.

Their discussion could be characterized in various ways. 

The pair challenged the accuracy of some of the flattering portraits of Kirk which were being offered by people like Rep. Onder, and even by President Trump. Along the way, just for the record, Rep. Omar said this:

OMAR (9/11/25): You know, you have people like Trump who has incited violence against people like me. And so, you know, the these people are full of shit, and it’s important for us to call them out while we feel anger, and sadness, and you have, you know, empathy, which Charlie said, “No, it shouldn’t exist, because that’s a newly created word,” or something. 

Like, I have empathy for his kids, and his wife, and what they’re going through because I do not want that—

HASAN: No one should go through that! And we hold ourselves, I hope, to higher standards.

OMAR: And we consider, you and I, as people of deep faith, and our faiths are based on grace and mercy—which is empathy. And we want, you know, like for people not to dance on our grave, because that is not what our faith teaches us. We want to be able to mourn, and pray for—

At this point, Hasan cut Omar off again. We ourselves would have liked to hear what she was going to say.

We ourselves would not be inclined to speak unflatteringly about someone, even if accurately, the day after he'd been shot and killed.  When a person dies, "what has gone is not nothing," or so Yevtushenko said.

We only note that Rep. Omar made a point of expressing the empathy she felt for Charlie Kirk's widow and kids. When The Five went after Omar a few days later, that statement—Surprise!—disappeared.

It seems to us that Mediaite's Isaac Schorr overstated the way Omar had "ragged on" Kirk in her discussion with Hasan. We refer to the report which starts like this:

Medi Hasan and Ilhan Omar Rag on Charlie Kirk One Day After His Murder

Zeteo’s Mehdi Hasan and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) held nothing back while criticizing Charlie Kirk on Thursday, one day after the conservative activist was assassinated in Utah.

Both Hasan and Omar expressed their horror at Kirk’s murder, but nevertheless were scathing in their criticism of him.

And so on from there.

That strikes us as overstated. Beyond that, we only note that Rep. Omar made a point of expressing the empathy she felt for Kirk's widow and kids—her statement that she doesn't want to see anyone subjected to the grief they were now experiencing. 

We mention this because, on Monday, September 15, the not ready for prime-time players found at The Five devoted a segment to ragging on what Rep. Omar had said—and they based their pseudo-discussion on one tiny clip from the longer discussion, with no mention of what she'd said and Charlie Kirk's wife and kids.

They were appalled by what Rep. Omar had said—rather, by what they now said she had said. Meanwhile, the astonishing rant by Rep. Onder went completely unmentioned, as did these remarks by two other Republican members of Congress:

MAGA Congressman Goes on Wild Rant Blaming Democrats, Media, Canadians for Kirk Shooting: ’21st Century Brown Shirts’

Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-WI) reacted furiously to the assassination of Charlie Kirk, posting dozens of tweets and making angry comments to reporters blaming Democrats, the media, Canadians, liberal members of the European Parliament, schools and universities, and more for the fatal shooting, calling them “21st century brown shirts” and vowing to “be at war” for 20 years against them.

In the below clip, Van Orden shakes his finger at gathered reporters and blames them directly for Kirk’s death.

“Every. Single. One. Of. You. Here. You’re at fault,” said Van Orden.

For the full report, click here. But then again, also click this:

GOP Congresswoman Says ‘It’s Our Job to Tone Down the Rhetoric’—Before Suggesting Democrats Are ‘Evil’ 

Something went wrong with Mediaite's posting on that report about Rep. Lisa McClain (R-Mich.). But as for Rep. Van Orden, there one of them went again!

According to Rep. Van Orden, a remarkably wide array of players are “21st century brown shirts." According to his colleague, Rep. Onder, those on "the American left" are Pol Pot and Castro and Stalin. 

"They" hate the good, the truth, and the beautiful. "They" embrace the evil and false. And on Monday's edition of The Five, sure enough! 

Rep. Omar was trashed. The diatribes by Reps. Onder and Van Orden were, of course, disappeared. 

Based upon the rules of this prehuman game, Omar's empathy for Kirk's widow went unmentioned. Simply put, the Fox News Channel hires stooges—gangs of pretenders—to go out and play it like this.

In this recent column for the New York Times, David French—a man of the Christian right—said this about "the average Republican," many of whom are his friends:

The Corporate Logo That Broke the Internet

[..]

The process of stoking outrage has another effect: It crowds out the news cycle. Most Democrats I know would be shocked at how little the average Republican knows about Trump’s actual conduct and his actual wrongdoing. Republicans can, however, cite chapter and verse about left-wing outrages and left-wing overreactions to Trump.

That creates a reality where they simply can’t conceive of how any reasonable, rational person would vote Democratic or oppose the president and his policies.

On Monday, September 15, the five pretenders who performed on The Five were stoking outrage about Omar. Two days earlier, a 25-year-old "independent journalist" had deceptively schooled the channel's viewers how to loathe Obama more. 

This is what players are paid to do as part of the Fox News Channel's extremely large circle of "not ready for any time" player.

On Fox, they disappear people like Onder and Van Orden. They disappear every strange thing the sitting president says and does.

This leaves Red America full of badly misinformed voters. In Blue America, the finer pretenders avert their gaze from this misconduct as they stare off into the air.

On Saturday morning, September 13, Rachel's daughter was sent in for the kill. Her kill shot on this occasion  was aimed at Barack Obama.

Viewers don't know that they're being conned. Over here in Blue America, our own gang of "not ready for prime time players" have agreed that they mustn't be told.