THURSDAY: Pride in the nation, plus cable news ratings!

THURSDAY, JULY 2, 2026

It's the semi-stupidity, Stupid: We humans just aren't super-sharp. 

That doesn't mean that we're bad people; it means that we're people people. Still, this shortcoming tends to obtain all the way up the line:

Here's an anecdote from the career of (Lord) Bertrand Russell, IQ roughly three million. It's drawn from Stephen Budianky's 2021 biography of Kurt Gödel:

Journey to the Edge of Reason: The Life of Kurt Gödel

[...]

(page 108): ...Russell's idea had been to establish the soundness of mathematics by showing how it could all be reduced to principles of logic so self-evident as to be beyond doubt. Defining even the simplest operations of arithmetic in terms of what Russell called such "primitive" notions, however, was far from an obvious task. Even the notion of what a number is raised immediate problems. The laboriousness of the methodology and notation was all too evident in the (often remarked) fact that that it took more than seven hundred pages to reach the conclusion, "1 + 1 = 2," a result which Russell and Whitehead described as "occasionally useful."   

As far as we know, that "often remarked" fact is an actual fact. In Budiansky's formulation, Russell and Whitehead performed that act of labor in their giant text, Principia Mathematica.   

(How giant was it? According to Budiansky, Russell and Whitehead's "massive manuscript, with its complex notation which could only be written out laboriously by hand, had to be carted in a four-wheeler cab to the offices of the Cambridge University Press when it was finally done." Years after publication, Russell is quoted as having said this: "I used to know of only six people who had read the later parts of the book." Russell was gifted with a self-effacing sense of humor.)

In the passage we've posted, Budiansky seems to be chuckling about that apparent side trip to the dark side of Neptune on the part of Russell and Whitehead. One page later, he discusses a related, extremely well-known artefact of academic logic--the peculiarity famously known as "Russell's Paradox:"  

(page 109): "Russell's Paradox," as it came to be known, echoed paradoxes that had been around since antiquity. The prototype is the Liar's Paradox, attributed to Epimenides the Cretan, who asserted, "All Cretans are liars." Russell noted that this was akin to the conundrum posed by a piece of paper on which the sentence, "The statement on the other side of this paper is false" is written on one side, and the sentence "The statement on the other side of this paper is true" on the other.

"It seemed unworthy of a grown man to spend his time on such trivialities," Russell later recalled, and "at first, I supposed that I should be able to overcome the contradictions quite easily, and that there was some trivial error in the reasoning." The more he thought about it, the more he realized it was a flaw in the reasoning too deep to be ignored...  

Budiansky seems to be taking this foolishness seriously. We can't tell you why.   

At any rate, so it went as people with the planet's highest IQs ran down famous rabbit holes of their own peculiar making. 

Luckily, CNN's Harry Enten isn't quite that smart! On the other hand, he recently stood in line to join the crowd of observers who are puzzled, or who are willing to say they're puzzled, by this puzzling manifestation: 

...CNN Data Guru Stunned by Democrats’ ‘Nutty’ Lack of Pride in America

CNN’s Harry Enten expressed shock over Democrats’ lack of pride in America during a Tuesday morning segment previewing the country’s 250th birthday celebration.

After being asked, “Who is proud to be an American?” by anchor John Berman, Enten replied:  

"There is such a polarization, partisan split on this issue, the largest that I’ve ever seen. Just take a look at this. This is where it really gets interesting, and I would dare say a little bit nutty..."  

You can continue reading from there. Fox has been pimping this blather quite hard. We stop here to ask a question:  

Is there anyone alive on the planet who doesn't know why liberals, Blues, progressives or Dems might balk at expressing pride in this country at this particular point in time?   

Really? Is anyone really that dumb? You may not agree with, or share, the outlook of those citizens. But is anyone really so dumb that they can't discern at least one obvious reason for this "nutty" manifestation? 

Moving right along, we move to some recent cable news ratings, as reported by Forbes. We start with some of the basic numbers, before a Forbes writer does it again: 

Fox News Beats CBS, NBC And All Of Cable TV In Prime Time   

Fox News Channel ended the second quarter with a strong ratings delivery in June, leading not just every network in cable TV in prime time, but outperforming CBS and NBC as well. In June, Fox had an average weekday prime time audience of 2.63 million viewers, compared to NBC’s 2.42 million viewers and CBS’s 2.05 million viewers.

For the second quarter, Fox News finished first among the cable news networks with 2.5 million viewers in prime time, well ahead of MS NOW (1.06 million viewers) and CNN (716,000 viewers). 

For better or worse, Fox News averaged roughly 30 percent more viewers than MS NOW and CNN combined. Moving right along once again, these were the top-rated programs:  

FNC’s The Five continued its incredible run as the most-watched show in cable news...In the second quarter, The Five finished first with an average total audience of 3.58 million viewers, followed by Jesse Watters Primetime (3.23 million viewers), Gutfeld! (2.84 million viewers), Hannity (2.8 million viewers), and Special Report with Bret Baier (2.72 million viewers)--all airing on Fox News. 

[...] 

In June, The Five was most-watched with 3.39 million total viewers, followed by Jesse Watters Primetime (2.96 million viewers), Gutfeld! (2.64 million viewers), Special Report with Bret Baier (2.55 million viewers), and Hannity (2.41 million viewers).

As a rough rule of thumb, the dumber it gets, the more people watch. By the way, do those numbers include a given evening's rebroadcasts, or are they just the numbers for the initial airings? 

In all our years of checking such numbers, we've never seen anyone say!

Speaking of the stupidity, Stupid, we'll quit with this classic mandated memorized press corps howler:  

The end of CBS’ The Late Show with Stephen Colbert left Fox News with the most-watched show in late night, with Gutfeld! drawing 2.8 million viewers...

There's no way to make them stop doing this! According to every known expert, Gutfeld! airs at 10 p.m. in the east, 7 p.m. on the coast. According to normal parlance, it simply isn't a late-night show, except 1) in Fox News Channel propaganda releases, and 2) inside the brains of the journalists who rush to repeat such claims.  

Russell and Whitehead filled 700 pages. Judged by the norms of the species, they were extremely high-IQ. 

"Why does arithmetic need a foundation," Wittgenstein thoughtfully asked.

Thought question: If Fox let Hannity add an exclamation point, might it outperform Gutfeld!?

REVERSIONS: One nominee has some horrible tweets!

THURSDAY, JULY 2, 2026

The other two nominees don't: On Monday, it only got worse.

No, dear reader! Mayor Mamdani's three nominees aren't all exactly the same. For example, at least as far as we know at this time, only one of the three has generated an awkward situation like this:   

Mamdani-Backed Chevalier Praised North Korea’s Kim in Unearthed Communist-Friendly Tweets  

Deleted tweets from Darializa Avila Chevalier (D)—one of the three [sic] Democratic Socialist candidates who won their Democratic congressional primary in New York City last week—showed the congressional hopeful praising communists like North Korean founder Kim Il Sung and lamenting that books by Joseph Stalin weren’t available.

The tweets were unearthed by CNN’s K-File on Monday. Journalist Andrew Kaczynski reported Chevalier praised Karl Marx as an “essential must-read,” complained public libraries didn’t have enough books by Vladimir Lenin and other Marxist leaders, and was upset a bookstore’s “banned books” display did not include The Complete Works of J. V. Stalin. 

She also showed affection for several brutal communist leaders.

[...] 

The latest batch of unearthed tweets comes after previous deleted posts showed Chevalier describing the U.S. flag as a napkin. She also questioned interracial dating and called for abolishing borders and prisons.  

For starters, let it be said that Mediaite's Sean James opened with an apparent misstatement. In fact, only two of the three nominees are members of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). 

The third nominee--former New York City comptroller Brad Lander--joined DSA as a University of Chicago student, way back in 1991. According to the leading authority on Lander's career, "he split with and left the Democratic Socialists of America in 2023 following the October 7 [Hamas] attacks."   

At present, two of the three are DSA; one of the three is not. But Avila Valdez is generating headlines which seem to belong to her alone--except on venues like The Five, where imitation journalists loudly pretend that behaviors engaged in by one of the three have of course been engaged in by all.   

As in The Sixth Sense, so too here--we Americans have a hard time seeing that we've already become a failed state! That said, are the other claims actually true--the other claims summarized by James? 

We aren't huge fans of Kacynski's overall work for CNN, but his new starts off like this: 

Deleted tweets on Darializa Avila Chevalier’s account had favorable references to communist leaders and Marxism

Darializa Avila Chevalier, the Democratic congressional nominee endorsed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who ousted longtime Rep. Adriano Espaillat in Tuesday’s primary, maintained a since-deleted Twitter account with repeated sympathetic references to communism, Marxist ideology and Soviet figures, including Vladimir Lenin.

Avila Chevalier, a sociology PhD student whose victory sent shockwaves throughout the Democratic establishment, has been under fire for a since-deleted Twitter account, previously reported by CNN, that included phrases such as “seize the means of production,” along with calls to abolish police, prisons and borders. Other controversial tweets include one that said Black and Arab men are both “Fetishizing ugly colonizer women” and another that described wiping her dirty hands on the American flag in lieu of a napkin.

As an undergraduate, Avila Chevalier attended Columbia University, where she organized with Students for Justice in Palestine, and after graduation became involved in pro-Palestinian campus protests over Israel’s war in Gaza. She also attended a controversial October 8, 2023, pro-Palestinian rally in Times Square—one day after Hamas’ attack on Israel—that featured speeches and rhetoric praising the attack.   

There are some slippery accusation swimming around in that prose. We often get the impression, watching Kacynski's interviews, that his thumbs may perhaps be placed on some scales--sometimes in reports criticizing Blue targets, sometimes in alleged exposes of key Red figures.   

On the other hand, has Avila Chevalier issued "calls to abolish police, prisons and borders?" Does she issue such calls today? For the New York Times account of these awkward matters, see yesterday's report. 

(A brief aside: Avila Chevalier's past complaints about "ugly colonizer women” suggest that she might be best suited for a regular spot on the Gutfeld! show, whose host routinely attacks women with whom he disagrees for being too fat, for being too ugly, and for being insufficiently sexually attractive to satisfy his grisly demands.)

Of the three congressional candidates endorsed by Mayor Mamdani, no one has generated awkward copy in the way Avila Chevalier has done. By possible way of contrast, consider what happened when the third nominee, Assemblywoman Claire Valdez, was interviewed by CNN's Erin Burnett on Wednesday, June 24.

Assemblywoman Valdez, age 36 though perhaps looking younger, had won nomination the previous day. The interview started like this:  

BURNETT (6/24/26): Out front now, State Assemblywoman Claire Valdez, and this is her first national interview since her win. And obviously, it's a win that has sent shockwaves through the Democratic Party, through the Republican Party, you name it.

Assemblywoman, you know, what do you -- what do you think? Now, you've had not even 24 hours here. What do you think your victory means?

VALDEZ: I think it means that the movement that elected Zohran Mamdani last year continues, and that the movement that has been fighting for working-class New Yorkers for years before his election continues. We have a lot to win, and when we go to working people, when we say, you know, "This is our platform. We want to fight for you, we want to fight to abolish ICE and win Medicare for All, to make your lives more dignified and affordable, to empower workers," that resonates with people and we win. 

And so, I'm very proud of the campaign.   

That's what the candidate said. In Burnett's next question, the C-bombs were cited. She asked about a reversion:  

BURNETT: [The president is] seizing, as are other Republicans, on your victory and other victories by Democratic Socialists here in New York as a negative. Let me just play some of what they've said.

PRESIDENT TRUMP (video): Well, they're going radical left. They're going really, you know, you talk about the Democrat socialists, you took really -- it's really Communist.

SPEAKER JOHNSON (video): These are the times that Reagan was warning about. He was warning about Communism overseas. Now it is on our own shores.

REP. SCALISE (video): Call it the Bolshevik Revolution of 2026, but the Mamdani takeover of the Democrat Party is official now.

BURNETT: Okay, now, I'm just going through here, and, you know, Trump using the word "Communist." Mike Johnson using the word "Communism." Is that a badge of honor to hear them talk like that?

VALDEZ: You know, I'm a proud Democratic Socialist. And what that means for me is that my union taught me that when we organize together, we can take on bad bosses, we can win good wages, we can win dignified working conditions. And it's funny that they would invoke Reagan, who famously decimated the labor movement, attacked-- after PATCO, really set the tone for what the federal government has done to the labor movement over the last decades.

My goal in running for office is always, "How do we get as many people as possible into unions? How do we pass the PRO Act? How do we stand on the side of working people so that they have the power to fight for themselves and their coworkers and their neighbors?" And that's the movement that I come out of, and I'm very proud to be a part of that.   

Communism, the Communists, and of course the Commies and Bolsheviks! People like President Trump had already swung into action--but is it actually true? Is Assemblywoman Valdez a Communist? 

 Is Assemblywoman Valdez a Communist? Possibly seeking to avoid participation in a reversion, Burnett never asked!  

Along the way, as the interview proceeded, CNN listed the policies Valdez supports. The list of policies appeared on the screen as the interview proceeded.  To watch the full session, click here.

Were we supposed to be shocked by the policies Valdez supports? Tomorrow, we'll show you what those policies were--and we'll show you how they're polling.   

All in all, one nominee has left a trail of awkward, embarrassing, exploitable tweets. As far as we know, the other two nominees haven't. 

On Fox, they're screaming about the Commies.  We regard that as a striking reversion, but there are quite likely others to choose from.

Tomorrow: Chait spots a different reversion

WEDNESDAY: According to a hillbilly's harangue...

WEDNESDAY, JULY 1, 2026

...the Commies are taking over: Will Democrats be able to gain control of the House in the mid-term elections? Is the Senate a possibility?   We'd say there's no way to know. One thing does seem to be clear:  

With wins by DSA members in Democratic Party primary elections, the GOP's campaign slogan is coming clear. It seems to go like this:   

Communist Communists Commies!   

As the reversion continues, it's much like the good old days!

It isn't just Jesse Watters, who ran up an astounding Commie / Communist / Commie word count during last Friday's Jesse Watters Primetime. It isn't just the sitting president, who has also been throwing the C-bombs around.   

Last evening, Vice President Vance connected himself to the famous old theme. Below, you see the way Laura Ingraham teased his forthcoming appearance on The Ingraham Angle:

INGRAHAM (6/30/26): Coming up, my exclusive interview with Vice President JD Vance. He has a prediction: 

How long will Schumer last in this new socialist Bolshevik Communist surge? Next!   

It isn't just a Communist surge. It's also a Bolshevik surge!

After a commercial break, there was Vice President Vance. After a bit of a birthright exchange, the rubber was hitting the road:

INGRAHAM: You've been following what's going on with the Democrat [sic] Party and the rise of socialism. The president calls it Communism and says this is the biggest threat to the country now, an internal threat... 

So my question to you is, are these DSA types really, in your estimation, going to dominate the entire party?

VANCE: I unfortunately fear that's the direction the Democrats are headed. And it is Communism, Laura. This is not raising taxes a little bit, however much we might disagree with that.  

It is Communism, the Vice President gravely said. This isn't foreigners eating cats and dogs. This is something that's even more primal.

That's the way his answer began. After attributing a set of positions to the Dems, he turned to the C-bomb again:

VANCE (continuing directly): This is abolishing the police. This is let criminals run amok in your cities. This is flood your country with low wage, third world immigrants. And importantly, it’s confiscating wealth, not because we want to make anybody’s life better but purely out of resentment, out of an attack on the people who have that wealth to begin with.

It really is something we haven’t seen in the United States of America in the history of our politics. And Laura, I think that it actually is a consequence of the fact that the Democrat [sic] Party has become run by the universities and by the professors.

This is not working class, union Democrats. This is not socially conservative people who just want a fair shake at life. This is fundamentally a view that the United States is an evil country that must be dismantled from the ground and then built back up.

That’s Communism at its core, and you see more and more momentum in that direction from the Democrat [sic] Party.

In all honesty, there are some problems with Blue America's stances on several social issues—possibly caused by the way the Blue point of view has come from "the universities and [some of] the professors." 

That said:

Friend, how many Democrats have proposed "abolishing the police?" Whatever the number may turn out to be, that’s "Communism at its core!"  

Vance was given one more chance to drive the new message home. The closing Q-and-A went like this: 

INGRAHAM: Yes or no! Do you think Schumer ultimately survives this surge from the radicals?  

VANCE: It depends on how long you're talking about. I think they'll survive for a couple of years, Laura, but in five years, people will look back at Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer, as shocking as this might sound, and they are going to say they were the reasonable moderates of this time, and the DSA types, the far left, the Communists, have taken over the party.   

The Communists are on the march, the Vice President said. Within five years, they'll be in control of the Democrat [sic] Party.

Communists Communists Commies! This line has sprung up like a fast summer storm. It's a very old theme in American rhetoric. In the main, one nominee in one Gotham race has helped make this messaging fly. 

Through her endless array of weird remarks, she's been giving these Redbirds their wings. More on this problem tomorrow.

REVERSIONS: "Monsters" and "psychos," the co-host said!

WEDNESDAY, JULY 1, 2026

All in all, Look who's talking: On Election Day in Gotham, Emily Compagno, co-hosting The Five, was visibly upset.    

Mayor Mamdani had endorsed three candidates for the House in that day's Democratic Party primaries. On the "cable news" show which defines the shape of our failed state, Compagno assessed the three candidates thusly:   

COMPAGNO (6/23/26): Yeah, I'm horrified by this. I'm horrified! When did the Democrat [sic] Party normalize monsters like these? 

Compagno linked her use of the term "monsters" to an earlier use of the word by Mamdani himself. But as her assessment unfolded, the excitable co-host blazed a trail to her own linguistic frontier:  

COMPAGNO: There is no gray area here, in my opinion. It's pretty obvious that these candidates are absolutely disqualified to even run. And yet somehow, they're being celebrated, and then endorsed, by our super-smiley, annoying mayor. 

These people are pro-defund the police. Every deportation is an abomination. They are against prison altogether. They are against everything that makes a society run, and they continue to display such juvenile comments and tendencies in policies like [mocking tone] "free buses" and "free houses."  

[...]

This city is going to Hell in a handbasket because of this mayor and I do not understand... why he is bothering to endorse all of these psychopaths instead of saying, "You know what? I'm in the office. I'm going to sit this one out," as he should. 

I hope there's more national leadership that comes out and says all of these people are tragically unqualified and disqualified...

Right there, on primary Election Day, so Compagno said. The three candidates weren't just "monsters." They were also "psychopaths," the horrified co-host said.

(For the record, we have a bunch of free bus lines in Baltimore. For full exposure, click here.) 

More to the point, were the three candidates all just alike? Setting the "psychopath" claim to the side, were all three "tragically unqualified?"   

We're willing to venture a no.

As we noted yesterday, one of the three was Brad Lander, the former comptroller of the city of New York. Before being elected citywide to that position, he'd been elected to three terms on the Gotham City Council, serving from 2010 through 2021. 

In June 2025, the New York Times Opinion Panel (a group of Gotham residents) made him their choice to be the city's next mayor. The Times explained his selection thusly:   

OPINION
Who Should Lead New York City? 
15 New Yorkers assess the candidates for the Democratic mayoral primary

[...]

In the end, a veteran civic leader and elected official, Brad Lander, the city comptroller, emerged as the top overall choice among the panelists, including four who recently shifted away from Mr. Cuomo, Mr. Mamdani and other candidates. Mr. Lander was also cited as best on education, the economy and leadership. Those who favored him cited his experience in city government and his ability to work with others—but, truth be told, he also benefited from lacking the heavy baggage of Mr. Cuomo and the democratic socialist image of Mr. Mamdani. Danny Meyer, the restaurateur, spoke for others in our group when he said of Mr. Lander, “He understands the complexity of how the city works, what our city government does and what it can and cannot do.”

Depending on your policy views, he may not be your cup of tea. No candidate is ever the everyone's choice.

No one is ever everyone's choice! But is Lander "tragically unqualified" even to seek a seat in the House? 

We're going to venture a no. Meanwhile, does Lander hold the beliefs the three "monsters" were said to share?  Is Lander "against prison altogether," to cite one example?

This being The Five, no evidence was ever given in support of Compagno's assertions. Given the way the game is played by reliable messaging agents like Compagno, we know of no reason to place any faith in anything she ever says.    

Further thoughts on Compagno below. Earlier in the segment that day, Jessica Tarlov had offered a saner assessment of the three nominees in question.   

As we've frequently noted, Tarlov is the designated punching bag on this ersatz "cable news" show. Compagno screeches and Greg Gutfeld offers towel-snapping jokes, as he inanely did in this very segment about "a Muslim Santa" flying his sled into the chimneys of houses. 

By way of contrast, Tarlov tends to operate in conventional ways when she co-hosts the show, until she's interrupted and overtalked by guardians of the corporate line like Gutfeld and Jesse Watters.   

Uh-oh! According to Tarlov, the three Mamdani-endorsed nominees actually aren't all alike! Regarding the three alleged psychopaths, the lone liberal co-host said this:   

TARLOV (6/23/26): I think that there is a big difference between, for instance, Claire Valdez, who you played the original clip of, and then Darializa [Avila] Chevalier, who is challenging Espaillat in New York 13. 

I mean, she is dangerous [notable pause] and seems pretty dumb also. And I don't know why Mamdani would waste capital on that.  

Tarlov didn't mention the highly experienced Lander. She said there was a significant difference between Avila Chevalia and Claire Valdez, the other two candidates.    

Avila Chevalier is "dangerous," Tarlov said. Unless she meant dangerous to Democratic Party interests, we don't know why she said that.   

After a pause, she also said that Avila Chevalier "seems pretty dumb." We wouldn't use that term in this context ourselves, but in her June 24 column for the New York Times, Michelle Goldberg sketched the shape of the possible problem:   

Democrats Are Done With Caution

Of the three New York City congressional candidates endorsed by Zohran Mamdani in Tuesday’s primary, Darializa Avila Chevalier was the weakest.

A sociology Ph.D. student and doctrinaire leftist who has never held elected office, she was running against Adriano Espaillat, head of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus... 

Last week, in an interview with the New York Editorial Board, a group of veteran journalists who question local political and civic leaders, Avila Chevalier said she opposed all deportations, even those of violent criminals. A prison abolitionist, she either couldn’t or wouldn’t answer repeated questions about whether murderers should be incarcerated...In [several] since-deleted tweets, Avila Chevalier cursed at Kamala Harris, called Joe Biden a “rapist” and derided his support for Ukraine as “bullying Russia.” Her name was notably absent from a get-out-the-vote message that Bernie Sanders posted for other progressives on Tuesday.

But in the end, Avila Chevalier won, carried to a narrow victory by the left-wing tsunami that created landslides for the other congressional candidates Mamdani endorsed, Brad Lander and Claire Valdez. She will almost certainly become the most left-wing member of Congress, and Republicans are sure to try to make her the face of the Democratic Party.   

Like Tarlov, Goldberg said that Mamdani's three nominees simply aren't all alike. 

As she continued, she said "the Democratic version of the Tea Party is here." Avila Chevalier was offered as the poster child for this potentially (politically) dangerous set of unconventional candidates.

Goldberg's assessment was the work of a qualified journalist—of a person who is able to draw the most obvious sorts of distinctions between as many as three different people. Compagno's rather typical rant seemed more like the work of someone who shouldn't be on the nation's most watched "cable news" program—someone who may not be "qualified" to be cast in such a position.    

It flies in the face of American instinct to say that someone is unqualified to offer a political assessment or opinion. Borrowing from President Kennedy in Berlin, we would say this:   

Let the person who feels that way watch some programs on the Fox News Channel! 

That person will see the intellectual squalor which arises when people like Compagno, Watters and Gutfeld are hired by a corporate empire, then are deployed for the purpose of advancing an endless array of corporate propaganda messages.

Within the context of American politics, there seem to be few unlikely statements Avila Chevalier hasn't made. Within the context of American pseudo-journalism, the same could be saif of a person like Compagno—or of an apparent nutcase like Jesse Watters, who still seemed to think, as of June 24, that Mayor Mamdani's three "Commie" nominees were, in fact, all women.    

A nation which tolerates staffing like this may already be a failed state. As in The Sixth Sense, so too here, with us:

It's possible that we the people simply don't know that the American project is already dead.

That said, were Compagno's various claims really true? Do all three "monstera" and "psychopaths" hold the outlandish views she attributed to them in her latest angry rant?  

What do the nominees think and believe? Just how crazy are their beliefs?

Tomorrow, we'll note what happened when Claire Valdez was interviewed by Erin Burnett, right there on CNN.

Tomorrow: Medicare for All—even that!