SONG(S) SUNG BLUE: When Bouie pictured Trump's Waterloo...

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 2026

...French said, Not so fast: European literature is said to begin with the war poem known as the Iliad. Midway through the ancient text, Achilles is sulking in his tents, down along the shore.

Insulted by Agamemnon, Achilles is refusing to participate in the Achaeans' attempt to sack Troy. Odysseus is sent to win this mightiest warrior back.

It's a sobering assignment. In translation, we moderns are told this:

"Ajax and Odysseus made their way at once where the battle lines of breakers crash and drag, praying hard to the god who moves and shakes the earth that they might bring the proud heart of Achilles round with speed and ease." 

No one is eager to confront this mighty warrior's rage. But when they arrive at Achilles' tents, this is what they find:

Reaching the Myrmidon shelters and their ships,
they found him there, delighting his heart now,
plucking strong and clear on the fine lyre—
beautifully carved, its silver bridge set firm—
he won from the spoils when he razed Eetion's city.
Achilles was lifting his spirits with it now,
singing the famous deeds of fighting heroes.
Across from him Patroclus sat alone, in silence,
waiting for Aeacus' son to finish with his song.

As beloved Patroclus looks on, mighty Achilles is lifting his spirits by singing a tribal song! This was all happening down by the shore, "where the breakers crash and drag."

Over this past weekend, it may have been a bit like that at the New York Times. In his new column for the Times, Jamelle Bouie almost seemed to be singing a (familiar) song sung Blue:

Minneapolis May Be Trump’s Gettysburg

That was the headline on Bouie's column. A separate column by Ezra Klein seemed to suggest this same pleasing notion:

The misbehavior of federal troops in Minnesota might be this president's Gettysburg—perhaps even his Waterloo!

We Blues have sung this song again and again, dating all the way back to 2015. In June of that year, Candidate Trump's peculiar remarks about John McCain were going to bring his campaign to an end. 

Later, we heard the same claim about the crude remarks the fellow had offered on the Access Hollywood videotape.

Eleven years later, we Blues almost seem to be singing that same song all over again. But at that very same New York Times, David French had a different view.

David French is nobody's fool. His personal history isn't Blue, but he's thoroughly NeverTrump.

His new column poses a terrible warning—a warning worthy of Cassandra, daughter of Troy's King Priam. Headline included, his column starts like this:

This Is Not a Drill

It’s only February, and the November elections are already in peril.

When I think back to the days and weeks before Jan. 6, 2021, one thing that’s clear is that many of us suffered from a failure of imagination. We knew President Trump’s lies and conspiracy mongering were dangerous, but it’s hard to think of a single person who predicted that a MAGA mob would storm the Capitol.

Very few people anticipated the sheer scale and scope of the effort to overturn the election or that an incredible 147 Republicans would vote not to certify Joe Biden’s clear and unambiguous presidential victory. We did not realize that they would go along with something that plainly corrupt and dangerous.

We must not make that mistake again.

Bouie was picturing a Waterloo—but French was aggressively saying this:

Fellow scribe, not so fast!

November's elections "are already in peril," French said at the start of his column. In the handful of days since his column appeared, his warning has emerged as prophetic.

What the Hellespont was the columnist talking about? Given the president's declining approval ratings, how could the indolent forces of Blue America fail to win the day in November's elections?

How could we fail to win back the House? Based on a bit of extremely strange recent conduct, French proceeded to lay it out. Eventually, he imagined this state of play as this year's elections draw near:

[T]his is not a normal election year.

Now, in October, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which rapidly expanded throughout the year, is running large-scale operations in Democratic-controlled cities. Hundreds if not thousands more American citizens have been caught in the dragnet. So have thousands of lawful residents.

Citizens, lawful residents and undocumented immigrants alike have been shackled and transported to brutal detention facilities in Texas and Florida.

Despite repeated court orders holding that federal officials cannot stop, much less detain, anyone purely on the basis of perceived ethnicity, the stops are still happening on a daily basis in cities across the United States.

That's the way it will be, French prophesies, by the time of November's elections. In his column, he pictures a state of play in which nonwhite citizens are afraid to go the polls because the polls are under federal guard. 

He offers much more detail in his dystopian musing. Along the way, he says this:

"The horrifying thing about our current moment is that not a single aspect of the scenario above is far-fetched. In fact, some of it is already happening."

Question:

Can something like that actually happen here? When French's column appeared, he cited the recent, extremely peculiar federal raid on the Fulton County election center, with Tulsi Gabbard on the scene, heroically directing the commander's federal troops. 

Massive volumes of records were carted off in support of the president's undying claim that he actually won the 2020 election. As French notes in his column, the sitting president is so delusional that he has even revived the lunatic "Italian satellite theory," according to which "Italian military satellites hacked the 2020 election."

Yes, that's correct. Even that!

Many observers were able to see the Fulton County raid as a threat to basic American process. That said, could French's detailed prophesy actually turn out to be true? 

Sadly, this:

In the handful of days since the column appeared, the president has angrily said that we ought to "nationalize" this year's elections. And then, Steve Bannon delivered the coup de grace on his WarRoom program.

As reported by Mediaite, here's what the gentleman said:

You’re damn right we’re gonna have ICE surround the polls come November. We’re not gonna sit here and allow you to steal the country again. And you can whine and cry and throw your toys out of the pram all you want, but we will never again allow an election to be stolen.

In this subsequent report, Politico records Bannon's further statements along these lines. Yesterday, the unusual fellow said this:

President Trump has to nationalize the election. You’ve got to put—not just, I think, ICE—you’ve got to call up the 82nd and 101st Airborne [Divisions] on the Insurrection Act. You’ve got to get around every poll and make sure only people with IDs, people … actually registered to vote and people that are United States citizens vote in this election

Could this actually happen here? Sadly, of course it could!

We've offered you reports about Bannon from Mediaite and Politico. We've done so for the following reason:

As best we can tell from the Times search engine, the New York Times, to this very minute, hasn't reported what Bannon has said.

In the end, Achilles abandoned his lyre and returned to the battle. We don't expect behavior like that from singers like Bouie and Klein.

We close for today with one final point:

As these disturbing events unfold, our major journalists still refuse to report and discuss the fairly obvious state of affairs which is sitting right there before them. 

A guild rule tells them that they mustn't ever discuss such obvious possibilities. Obedient to a fault, they sleepwalk into a frightening future, singing a familiar song sung Blue and thereby lifting our spirits.

Overthrows have happened before. All in all, in the end, we would offer this:

Our species wasn't built for this line of work. That fact has been proven before.

Tomorrow: Lawrence O'Donnell returns his prize

This afternoon: Who the Sam Hill is Charles Exum? Don't ask the New York Times!