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.)
ReplyDelete"Also, the claim he advanced was "completely unsubstantiated," the Post report correctly said."
Look, Bob, I could "retweet" some "claim" of some of your BlueAnon comrades -- just to demonstrate how idiotic you BlueAnons are.
Capeesh? To "retweet" doesn't necessarily mean to "advance", or to "endorse", or to "be in agreement with". To "retweet" just means to retweet. Capeesh?
"Trump Offers No Evidence for Claim About Bill Clinton and Epstein Island"
You know, BlueAnon, we, all of us, had been exposed to so much absolutely unnecessary, unsolicited, and unwelcomed information about Bubba's sexual proclivities 30 (or so) years ago, that we really don't need any new details of it. Who the fuck cares if Bubba flew 500 times on Lolita-express to Siberia, or to a tropical island? Okay, you do, but no one else, trust me.
Retweet means exactly to advance and endorse and be in agreement with, unless the retweeting includes some debunking or statement of disagreement. There is no reason to retweet anything otherwise.
DeletePeople definitely care whether Trump participated with Epstein in raping and abusing underage girls (and adult women). Trump is president. We do not want a rapist president. You seem to be saying that one more rape doesn't matter, but it certainly does.
There is a reason why women are more likely to be Democrats than men are. Women see Trump for what he is. Men are too busy defending Trump. Bill Clinton is not running for president, but Trump is in office when he shouldn't be. It is not too late to do something about that.
Quiet, piggy.
DeleteHahahaha misogyny is so funny. Will you be laughing when Democrats sweep the midterms, because right wing men can't stop defending rapists?
Deleteanon 10:18, if no one cares how many times Pres. C. visited the island, why does Trunp constantly allege it?
Delete
DeleteAnything he does on social media has one purpose: to troll you idiots.
Yesterday, Steve M. at No More Mister Nice Blog wrote a column entitled: "TRUMP IS JUST THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG" about the need to weaken the right wing "messaging apparatus."
ReplyDeleteToday, Somerby writes: "TRUMP IS JUST THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG" and talks about the messaging of squalor red.
Generally, when someone else's writing influences you, it is expected that you will give credit where due, to those other sources. Crickets from Somerby on the others he may have read that pointed his own subconscious in the direction of today's iceberg metaphor.
Steve M. is unambiguously against Trump and for so-called Blue America (though he never uses that term). Somerby today advances Trump's claim about Clinton and calls blue squalor a big problem. But Somerby has never explained how Blue America is supposed to stop Trump from saying any damned thing he wants, dutifully reported by all of the press. We on the left did not create Trump, we do our best to resist and unveil his atrocities, but WE are not responsible for him. MAGA is resonsible for Trump, a creation of the Republicans, billionaires, Russia, the mob, and anyone else with the money to bribe Trump. That does not include Blue America.
Correction:
DeleteSomerby wrote: "There's an iceberg-adjacent quality to the moral and intellectual squalor we're describing as "Squalor Red."
Somerby did not directly quote Steve M. but said something similar. The incorrect quote was inadvertently repeated instead of Somerby's actual words because of a cut-and-paste error.
The point is that Somerby needs to stop borrowing without acknowledgment. Real journalists and writers are careful about such things. Yes, stand-up comics steal other comics ideas and even jokes, but that isn't how writing works. I am absolutely certain that Somerby should have learned this at Harvard, where professors work hard to teach students how to properly credit other people's ideas because academia is about discussing ideas.
Theft is theft, whether it is Trump stealing money or someone like Somerby treating words and ideas cavalierly for their own benefit or to advance right wing propaganda. Russia and the Republicans use words as if they were meaningless, as if there were no truth but only self-interest. Here is another similarity between Somerby and Trump -- they both have no respect for words and the ideas they convey.
You presume to know that Our Host is aware of, and has read the recent post at NMMN. As is your habit, you assume to further your endless obsession.
DeleteTo be fair, Somerby was cribbing the work of people like Dean Baker and Al Franken back in the 90's, so Somerby is hardly due any benefit of doubt.
DeleteRead the two sites and judge for yourself whether this likely to be a huge coincidence.
DeleteSomerby cribs everytime he quotes without attribution, which is often.
DeleteSomerby is a poor thinker, he uses quotes to mask his lack of acuity and insight.
DeleteNMMNB published a headline that used the familiar phrase "tip of the iceberg." Our host did not use that phrase, but described behavior as "iceberg-adjacent."
DeleteThis is not plagiarism by even the most expansive definition.
You're desperation is on display, Nonny.
You don’t care. I do, because I respect the conventions of the profession. It is wrong not to acknowledge an idea even when not quoted exactly but used as inspiration. You might care if you made your living as a creative person. Hacks steal.
DeleteAccording to Semrush, NMMN blog had only 500 visitors in all of December. 500.
DeleteIn other words, he's just a aging white idiot pissing in the wind.
Delete(For those wondering, this blog had 2,400).
Somerby says: "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."
ReplyDeleteThis isn't how it works. When Trump has worked so hard to suppress all information to explore the question of who visited that island, he does not get to claim innocence. Trump's lies about never going to the island do not get to be called presumptive truth when Trump suppressed the data that would show whether he did or did not go there.
Similarly, Trump has always said that the Mueller report showed no evidence of his collusion with Russia. But Trump refused to participate in the investigation but blocked access to the data needed to explore that question. Trump doesn't get presumptive innocence on that questions when he prevented the investigation from doing its job.
Somerby's willingness to believe Trump innocent in the face of the mountain of evidence showing that Epstein and Trump were engaged in sex-games, that Epstein ran a sex trafficking ring exploiting young girls, that Maxwell was convicted of being his accomplice and went to jail for it, and so on, suggests that Somerby is going to extreme lengths to preserve a presumptive innocence that cannot be maintain in the face of a great deal of circumstantial evidence, including about Trump's own behavior (not just his association with Epstein and his communications with Epstein about girls/women).
The extent to which Somerby goes to preserve Trump's innocence shows that Somerby's purpose here is not to chide the press for not following up on red atrocities, but to preserve and argue for Trump's presumptive innocence on a variety of matters, to shill for Trump in other words, to advance the right wing talking points about Trump's fitness as president. That reflects badly on Somerby, but what else is new?
Nicely done, Nonny. We almost didn't detect the sleight-of-hand when you switched "never been any evidence Trump visited Epstein's island" for "Somerby's willingness to believe Trump is innocent."
DeleteYou nearly got us to believe these are the same. In the end, though, we notice how you rig your game.
Slabby will never stop.
DeleteLeroy
DeleteWhat are you talking about, Soros-bot? Of course it's the same: everyone is innocent until proven guilty.
Quaker, Somerby is defending Trump. But Trump didn’t have to visit an island to be served up teens at his own Mar a Lago, his NY apt or any of Epstein’s places. There is testimony to Trump raping underage girls at these other places. So why does Somerby say Trump is innocent because of any island-related uncertainty?
DeleteSomerby thinks this exonerates Trump until proven guilty. No, it doesn’t.
Calling someone slabby doesn’t suggest an open mind.
Delete10:57 makes an unremarkable point that Somerby is narrowing the scope of bad behavior to "visiting the island" and then gives Trump the benefit of the doubt even though Trump is a notorious liar.
DeleteThis blog is not conducting a trial, this blog is trying to engage in public discourse, where there is no presumption of innocence. Trolls here offer little else than loony speculation and misinformation, their hypocrisy here is glaring.
Notably Somerby (and the butthurt trolls) is silent on all the cases where Trump is torturing and killing people without due process.
Trump is an adjudicated rapist. What doubt is there?
Delete"So why does Somerby say Trump is innocent because of any island-related uncertainty?"
DeleteHe doesn't. That is entirely your invention.
Our Host observes, correctly, that we have seen no public evidence that Trump ever traveled to the island. He makes no statement or implication that indicates this evidences his innocence on any other matter, You did that.
Falling back on excessive literalness again. Why do you think Somerby has gone to such lengths to discuss Trump’s absence on a plane? To pretend Trump has no dirty laundry and protect him with his supporters by giving them an argument to cling to.
Delete"Why do you think Somerby has gone to such lengths to discuss Trump’s absence on a plane? To pretend Trump has no dirty laundry and protect him with his supporters by giving them an argument to cling to."
DeleteExactly the sort of invention I refer to. You create a connection between an opinion on one subject with your own conclusion on a different one.
This is shabby reasoning if not plain deception.
I'll save my praise or criticism of Somerby, for when he finally gets around to making a point.
DeleteIf that ever happens.
When a paper such as the New York Times spends 15 years supporting Trump over Blue candidates (Clinton, Biden, Harris), why is it still being called part of Blue America, a Blue press source?
ReplyDeleteSimilarly, when billionaires have gobbled up newspapers and Trump has sued them into compliance with his own propaganda goals and they have settled, how can those other sources be called part of Blue America?
Somerby is being disingenuous today. His idea that the press he criticizes is "blue" is his own strawman that he has been attacking here for years without ever examining the changes in the mainstream/legacy press under Trump. That is hardly media analysis.
Spot on.
DeleteSomerby knows those rats aren't going to fuck themselves.
DeleteErrors of omission can be worse than errors of commission. Trump is an unusually active President. Some of the many things he does are bad, such as inappropriate re-tweeting. Others are good, such as dealing with the massive theft of government money in various programs and states. Biden didn't re-tweet. OTOH he ignored the theft of billions of dollars of our money via a variety of scams. IMO Trump's good far outweighs the bad. YMMV
ReplyDeleteBiden is the one who dealt with the theft of govt money in MN. His agencies identified and reported the fraud, Biden's DOJ investigated and prosecuted those guilty, not Trump. It is hard for Trump to be said to have done good when he is taking credit for Biden's work.
DeleteTrump is pardoning all the people who ran massive scams, DiC. He himself is corruptly profiting off of his presidency. He is scamming all of us. What massive theft of government money has he ended? How’s the budget deficit?
Delete
DeleteDemocrats are the ones who run massive scams. USAID, for example.
Or Hunter Biden's scam, of influence peddling, "selling paintings" made of his own shit. I thought it was Lord Autopen who preemptively pardoned Hunter Biden.
The 11:07 post is incontrovertible evidence that DiC is , as always , peddling fact-free garbage. Like the clown he voted for.
Delete"Trump is an unusually active President."
DeleteConclusion without evidence. I say Trump is not "unusually active." Unless you mean to say he is "unusually active" on social media. We can all see the evidence for that.
A person would have to be blind not to see Trump's assertive use of his office contrasts sharply with modern Democratic presidents, who often argue that meaningful action is constrained, complex, or impossible.
DeleteYeah. Democrat (and, for that matter, most Republican) presidents are figureheads. Before Trump, one would have to go as far back as to Nixon, to find a life one.
DeleteI prefer a president who follows the law, upholds the Constitution and faithfully executes the duties of his office.
DeleteTrump is trying to avoid staff meetings because he lacks vigor. He is a sick elderly man. Talking about his energy is a joke.
DeleteResponding to trolls like David is a fool's errand.
DeleteTrump has already taken 3 or 4 cognitive assessment tests, so he's been pretty active on the front.
DeleteQuaker - I meant Trump is unusually active on social media AND in terms of policy. Here's a partial list of policy actions: ending DEI, changing immigration so as to close the Southern border. Getting rid of 2.5 million illegal immigrants via deportation or self deportation. Pissing off Europe by telling them the truth about their culture going down the drain. Helping to secure half a dozen peace agreements. Cutting federal power and cutting federal employment.
DeleteHow could I forget tariffs.
DeletePosting and retweeting on social media is not the president's job. He has people to do that for him. Similarly, running down to Home Depot to buy marble samples is not the president's job either. That is what his architect and decorator are supposed to do. Meanwhile, the real job of president is being neglected.
DeleteIt has nothing to do with your list of supposed achievements.
"Helping to secure half a dozen peace agreements."
DeleteHa ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Good one.
"Democrats are the ones who run massive scams. USAID, for example."
DeleteSo true. Those starving kids were pretending to eat the peanut paste, but then spitting it out and selling it to buy drugs.
Good catch.
Sorry, Quaker. My list was too short.
DeleteWaPo lists The 20 best things Trump did in 2025
https://archive.is/LQLQg#selection-225.0-225.36
@7:01 - I do agree that posting on social media and buying are not the President's job. But, Trump also did a great many significant things anyhow.
Thanks for the link, David. Mr. Thiessen's flights of fancy never fail to entertain.
Delete
DeleteBuying marble is strictly forbidden for president. It's in our Democrat Constitution, signed by Autopen.
I'll believe Thiessen after he confirms his facts while being water-boarded, like all great thinkers.
Delete"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."
ReplyDeleteOne might argue that the president is the main source of the lies that are commonplace on the right. There are some interesting articles about how Trump learned these lie-related techniques from his mentor, Roy Cohn. Somerby hasn't ever talked about that here.
Somerby says the claim that Obama was born in Kenya is a "ridiculous claim" advanced by Trump, but Somerby is unwilling to admit the point of that lie. It is to portray Obama as foreign (when he was born in Hawaii, raised by an American mother with an absent husband/father and is American). But it is even more intended to portray Obama as blacker than he is (his mother is white and his father black but he grew up raised with white grandparents attending a white/Asian private school and college). Somerby dislikes talking about race, but the point of Trump's incessant birther campaign was to attach stigma to Obama over his race and make it appear he was hiding his actual heritage as a Kenyan man (thereby questioning his legitimacy as a presidential candidate). Obama did deemphasize his international background and Trump brought it to the forefront of the campaign.
Somerby has made various statements against multi-culturalism in America, claiming at one point that it undermines democracy by introducing more heterogeneity than our system can handle. He perhaps would have said such things again if he had stuck with the Universalism discussion he briefly introduced. Somerby has never defended Obama on any basis other than that his birthplace was falsely stated in Trump's attacks on him. Trump's broader context has apparently never been on Somerby's radar, but he routinely ignores context in many of his incoherent essays. See the argument above about Trump's presumptive innocence on visiting the island, as if that absolves Trump from all and any other accusations about mistreating women, because the entire Epstein context of Trump's life can be ignored if he never took a plane with him to a specific island.
Trump put his bigotry on the table back when he offered his birther attacks on Obama. Somerby ignored it and then pretended that Trump's lies are not actually lies if Trump believe their truth. As if that absolved Trump either. Somerby's own attempts to redeem Trump's ongoing fraud, treason, corruption and greed, coupled with mistreatment of women, reveal his own motives and they are as sordid as Trump's.
So, when Somerby chides so-called Blue America for its squalor (a spectacularly inappropriate term), it is not as a member of our blue tribe, but as a right winger carrying out a campaign against Democrats, liberals, and anti-Trumpers, to maintain Trump's corruption and destruction of our nation. Trump is going away soon. Somerby might profitably follow his example.
Why should Somerby argue for special treatment for some stories (but not others) when the president lies about everything all the time?
ReplyDeleteTiedrich says:
"In an impromptu phone interview that came after the Journal shared details about its reporting with the White House, the president expressed irritation about the public debate over his health. He has grown upset with his own White House staff for not promoting him as more vigorous.
spoiler alert: this whole ‘interview’ is just Donny lying his big dumb pumpkin face off, spewing the usual fever-swamp hallucinations about how he’s super fucking healthy — healthy like no one thought possible, maybe the healthiest person ever.
“My health is perfect,” he added.
whatever you say, President Rottinghand."
https://www.jefftiedrich.com/p/elderly-golfer-suffering-from-advanced
Somerby's complaints about trivial stuff sound very stupid in the face of the major and blatant lies Trump tells about absolutely everything.
He mistakes anger for seriousness. Trump’s dishonesty is not a reason to abandon standards, it is the strongest possible reason to defend them, no matter what the size.
DeleteLiberalism is stuck in outrage mode, endlessly proving that Trump is awful, long after that fact is universally known, while avoiding the harder question of why such behavior keeps working politically.
ReplyDeleteSqualor Blue is not fearful journalists averting their gaze or insufficient moral clarity. It is a political culture that substitutes condemnation for reform. It's a class of elites who are more comfortable policing discourse than confronting power.
Meh. I haven't seen any signs of liberalism in decades. We've been living in Orwell's IngSoc for a long time.
DeleteWe're experiencing a bit of a prole uprising now, but it's unlikely to decisively drain the swamp, unfortunately.
You’re both wrong.
DeleteRepublicans are the party of personal grievances; Dems do get outraged at the horrible things in the world, and that is exactly how a healthy society functions: calling out the bad and making sure people have what they need. Without that outrage, we would still have slaves, still have Nazis....well, nevermind on that point, and Jews would all be dead.
DeleteCope, piggy.
DeleteSo you say.
DeleteSomerby is still using the word squalor without regard for its meaning. It does not mean what he is pretending it means. That undermines his ability to communicate anything coherent.
ReplyDeleteThere is nothing wrong with the way Our Host uses the word.
DeleteAnother assertion without evidence or argument.
DeleteSomerby’s usage annoys me because he applies the word out of context to equate press misbehavior with the circumstances of poverty which are often undeserved by those in need.
Quaker perhaps thinks poor people deserve to live in filth. Quite a few conservatives think they deserve every penny that falls into their pockets and everything they can buy with it.
DeleteYour reading skills are as weak as your reasoning.
Delete
DeleteLeave the poor retard alone, Soros-bot. Posting word-salads here is her raison d'être. Leave her be.
Will 2026 be the year Somerby finally says something in his writing on TDH?
DeleteAnything is possible.
Q in a B,
DeleteSorry. Not all of us were born with your high-level of mind-reading.
BTW, what am I thinking about you right now?
Somerby's writing about how Trump is in the throes of cognitive decline, is his way of agreeing with the person who posts that every Republican voter is a bigot, because they don't care about Trump's mental state--just that he's hurting non-whites.
DeleteIt's on you, if you can't see that.
"BTW, what am I thinking about you right now?"
DeleteThat's an easy one: The untreated compulsive disorder that drives you to post poison pen messages to Our Host multiple times every day.