SATURDAY: There the president went again!

SATURDAY, JANUARY 3, 2026

Is something wrong with this man? You'll understand our decision to postpone the final report in our current award-winning series, THE SQUALOR[S].

Last night's arrest of Nicolás Maduro has burned up our time today. As happenstance had it, we were watching Fox & Friends Weekend this morning when President Trump engaged in a lengthy phone call with a trio of friends (Charlie Hurt, Nicole Saphier, and Griff Jenkins).

Along with remarks about last night's action, standard claims littered the countryside during the lengthy interaction--and sure enough! Along the way, the sitting president did indeed revert to this:

‘A Disgrace!’ Trump Rages About His Own Election Defeat On Fox After Bombshell Attack

President Donald Trump raged about his own electoral defeat as he addressed the aftermath of the strike and capture of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife on Fox News Saturday morning.

News broke after midnight Friday that the United States struck Venezuela’s capital of Caracas early Saturday morning, and at 4:21 AM, Trump announced on Truth Social that Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores were captured and flown to the United States.

Trump called in on this week’s edition of Fox & Friends Saturday for a marathon interview, during which he resurrected the false claim that the 2020 election was “rigged”—a claim that underpinned a settlement that included a $787.5 million payout from Fox to Dominion Voting Systems.

[...]

Trump has spent years falsely claiming that the 2020 election was “rigged” against him and/or “stolen” from him, despite the fact that Biden defeated Trump in an electoral landslide that has been reaffirmed over and over by state officials from Trump’s own party and dozens of court decisions—and despite consistent mockery even from some allies. 

So wrote Tommy Christopher. With respect to President Trump, he doesn't leave home without it—without this shopworn, dog-eared rant about the way he was robbed of victory in November 2020. 

At Mediaite, Christopher has transcribed these latest nutty remarks. Also, you can watch the videotape of the president's rant:

JENKINS (1/3/26): Will you, Mr. President, throw your support behind opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who as you recall, won the Nobel Peace Prize and then in turn dedicated it to you for your efforts in pressuring Maduro? Are you going to fully support her to take over, to run the country.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, we’re going to have to look at it. Right now, they have a vice president, as you know. I mean, I don’t know about what kind of an election that was. But you know, the election of Maduro was a disgrace, just like my election was a disgrace.  

2020 was a disgrace. And you know, a real disgrace!

Now, 2024 was too big to rig. But what [Maduro] did was— I mean, his was open–I would say frankly—

You want to know the truth? I think Charlie [Hurt] would testify to this. It wasn’t a hell of a lot worse than what they did to us in 2020. It was—

 Our election was a disgrace in 2020, and everyone knows it.

And now it’s, it’s come out, and it’s come out even in a legal forum. But it was disgraceful. 

He had an election there was a rigged election and the people have no love for him. That’s for sure. He’d very little loyalty, if any loyalty He was a dictator, who was a tough cookie, and he ran it tough, and the people can’t believe they got so lucky.

The president also punished the trio of friends with standard unsupported claims about an array of other points. Maduro emptied his prisons and his insane asylums! He sent them all to the United States! Also, he sent hundreds of thousands of gang members!

Charlie Hurt was one of the friends with whom the president was speaking. Along the way, the president's dismissive comment about Machado prefigured the surprising revelations he would make during his subsequent press event.

With regard to his claims about the 2020 election:

More than five years later, President Trump never tires of this delusional claim. We say "delusional" because, on balance, it's our impression that he actually seems to believe the unsupported, unexplained claims he never tires of inserting into every attempted discussion.

In past reports, we've tried to outline the possible medical implications of this bizarre behavior. If it weren't for all the fixed ideas and delusional claims, if often seems that there would be no ideas or claims at all!

Should this sort of strange behavior be a point of public concern? Could the possibility of various medical problems possibly be seen as dangerous?

He went on and on, then on again, about the stolen election which wasn't stolen. Over here, in Blue America, as part of our own Squalor Blue, our major journalistic elites have agreed to sidestep, ignore and disappear this apparent problem. 

Is something seriously wrong with this man? If so, that's a human tragedy, of course.

But is something seriously wrong with this man? Over here, in Blue America, Blue orgs have agreed not to ask!

FRIDAY: He's "locked and loaded" for Iran!

FRIDAY, JANUARY 2, 2026

And he's stopping by woods to buy marble: Is the sitting American president in the grip of some sort of cognitive decline?

We don't exactly know how to make some such determination. Meanwhile, Blue America's mainstream press corps has agreed that they will never interview the medical specialists who might know how to shed light on such a topic.

That said, the unusual conduct goes on and on. Today, as they were driving (the possible) Mister Donald, his motorcade (reportedly) stopped for this:

Trump’s Motorcade Reportedly Stops At a ‘Random’ FL Strip Mall So He Could Buy Marble For His Ballroom Project

Go ahead and read the report from Mediaite!

He's threatening to blast Iran to smithereens (and to wreak havoc in parts of Nigeria), but he also wants marble armrests on the seats in the new Trump Center! Is there any chance that this peculiar state of affairs could imaginably, even possibly, maybe become somewhat dangerous at some point? 

We've been asking that question for a long time. We might as well have been trying to catch the wind, or waiting for Dr. Godot to appear with an answer to our gloom-accessible question.

Cognitive decline is tragic, as is any serious "mental illness" ("personality disorder"). It helps if we Blues can remember to state that fact. Politically, we'll likely be even more effective if we really believe that statement.

Having said that, we're thinking this week of the crazy behavior in which this man has engaged for the past fifteen years. Setting possible medical issues to the side—medical issues which are always tragic, whether they involve cognitive decline or "personality disorders"—we're persisting in asking this:

Why haven't major news orgs in Blue America ever screwed their journalism to the sticking point by identifying that crazy behavior as an inexcusable state of affairs? As an inexcusable state of affairs which should be treated as a major front-page "news hook" every time the behavior presents?

More on that tomorrow. To Blue Americans, we'll only say this:

For something closer to forty years, you've been failed by the people you've been trained to trust and respect. When do we Blues plan to reject this dysfunctional lovers' agreement? More on this tomorrow morning, part of our THE SQUALOR[S] series. 

Finally, events like these are always tragic. We advise you to pity the child.

THE SQUALOR(S): The president made a poisonous claim!

FRIDAY, JANUARY 2, 2026

Last summer, he went with another: There's an iceberg-adjacent quality to the moral and intellectual squalor we're describing as "Squalor Red."

On the day Jeffrey Epstein died—way back in August 2019—it was easy to spot the part of the berg which sat above the surface. As we noted earlier in the week, the squalor was open to view at that time—for example, in this real-time news report by the Washington Post:

Trump retweets conspiracy theory tying the Clintons to Epstein’s death

President Trump used his Twitter account Saturday to spread a baseless conspiracy theory about the death of Jeffrey Epstein, a wealthy and politically connected financier who had been facing multiple charges of sex trafficking involving underage girls.

Trump’s Justice Department announced that Epstein, who was being held in a federal corrections facility, died by “apparent suicide.”

But Trump appeared to disregard his administration’s statement, instead retweeting a message from conservative actor and comedian Terrence K. Williams, who suggested that Epstein’s death might be tied to former president Bill Clinton...

The claim is completely unsubstantiated...

He hadn't waited even a day! Also, the claim he advanced was "completely unsubstantiated," the Post report correctly said.

Starting with four years of ridiculous claims about the place of Barack Obama's birth, that sitting president has been a highly visible source of "the problem we all [currently] live with." In the case of this latest "theory," the president later acknowledged that he had "no idea" if the "theory was true, but he had rushed out to message it anyway.

All in all, what else is new? For whatever reason, that sitting president has been a key part of Squalor Red since at least 2011, when he started pimping his birtherism on the Fox News Channel. And with that, we offer a spoiler alert:

Ever since he started doing that, Squalor Blue has involved the refusal of Blue America's journalistic elites to come to terms with this president's squalid behavior—with the failure of those elites to direct a journalistic focus on this highly destructive behavior. 

On and on the squalid behavior has gone, with Blue eyes averting their gaze.

Tomorrow, we'll offer more on the failure to serve which constitutes a major part of Squalor Blue. For today, let's return to the squalid behavior which has been driving Squalor Red over the past fifteen years.

In August 2019, the sitting president had instantly spread a poisonous message—Bill and Hillary Clinton were somehow involved in Jeffrey Epstein's death! This summer, but also just in the past few weeks, he engaged in a related burst of messaging about former president Clinton.

This new messaging involved a claim which would seem to be clownishly false—a claim that the former president had taken dozens to trips to Epstein's private island in the Caribbean. On August 1, 2025, FactCheck.org reported on this latest poisonous conduct. With apologies for the length of our excerpt—no, you can't fit this on a bumper sticker!—we show you how that report stated:

Trump Offers No Evidence for Claim About Bill Clinton and Epstein Island

Former President Bill Clinton flew multiple times on airplanes belonging to the late Jeffrey Epstein. But there is no evidence that Clinton visited the convicted sex offender’s private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands “28 times,” as President Donald Trump has claimed.

In a 2019 statement posted on social media, a spokesman for Clinton acknowledged that he traveled on Epstein’s planes during several international trips in 2002 and 2003, when he was no longer president. However, the statement said that Clinton never went to the Caribbean island that was Epstein’s primary residence.

But in recent interviews, Trump—who has been under public pressure to release files related to Epstein’s crimes—invoked Clinton’s connection to Epstein as Trump responded to questions from reporters about his own past friendship with the disgraced financier who was arrested on charges of sex trafficking of minors in July 2019 and died in prison a month later...

“And by the way, I never went to the island, and Bill Clinton went there, supposedly, 28 times,” Trump said when answering questions about Epstein while in Scotland on July 28.

Days earlier, during a July 25 press gaggle outside the White House, Trump made the same claim about Clinton when a reporter asked Trump if he was considering pardoning Ghislaine Maxwell...

“Well, I don’t want to talk about that,” Trump said to the reporter who asked. “You ought to be speaking about Bill Clinton, who went to the island 28 times. I never went to the island.”

There the sitting president had gone again! He'd made another baseless but poisonous claim directed at Bill Clinton!

One key point should be noted here--there has never been any evidence showing that President Trump ever visited Epstein's island. As far as we know, his claim that he himself never went there remains presumptively true.

"I never went to the island," President said last July. We assume that statement is accurate—but that's when the egregious misconduct starts.

Even as he made that denial, the president directed his latest fact-challenged accusation at former president Clinton. Bill Clinton went there 28 times, he now said.

(In one instance, he added the weasel word "supposedly," presumably as a way to keep his statement "technically accurate.")

It was a second poisonous charge, joined to the earlier claim in which the Clintons had somehow played a role in Jeffrey Epstein's death. To its credit, FactCheck.org offered a lengthy, detailed report about this latest accusation--but in the latest manifestation of the conduct we regard as a major part of Squalor Blue, major news orgs in Blue America largely averted their gaze from this latest squalid conduct.

In its August 1 report, FactCheck.org offered this familiar statement about President Trump's latest round of astounding misbehavior:

"We asked the White House for the source of Trump’s recent claim about Clinton, but we have not received an answer."

What a shock! Once again, the White House hadn't bothered to explain this latest poisonous conduct. Meanwhile, the bulk of Blue American org, including the New York Times, did what they've done for the past fifteen years, including in the matter of the original "birther" claims:

There our big orgs went again! Knees knocking, crippled by fear—perhaps not especially sharp to begin with—the major orgs of Blue America averted their gaze once again. As with so many other bizarre behaviors, they refused to build a journalistic focus around this squalid conduct.

They normalize this astounding behavior. As the poet Frost once said:

"Something we were withholding made us weak."

Donald Trump has repeatedly said that he never went to Epstein's island. That said, Bill Clinton has also said that he never went there, as FactCheck.org duly noted.

Why then was President Trump making this latest bout of poisonous claims? With a bit of regret for ever tackling this complex topic, we'll explore that matter in more detail tomorrow—and we'll paint a clearer picture of the second major squalor we're all living with today.

We refer to the refusal to come to terms with the endless squalor of Squalor Red. It's that basic flight from journalistic duty we refer to as Squalor Blue.

For fifteen years, Squalor Red has been sitting right there on the surface. Down below, submerged by a frigid sea, Squalor Blue has proven to be much harder for us in Blue Nation to spot.

Tomorrow: Nothing to look at! Look over here! (Squalor Blue keeps averting its gaze.)