FAULTY: The president continued his "nonstop talk!"

MONDAY, JULY 20, 2026

The next night, Brooks reacted: Last Thursday night, the president delivered his major address about our scary elections.   

The next morning, Manohla Dargis described the speech in the New York Times. She even made it a CRITIC'S PICK. Here's part of what she said:

The speech consisted of 12,109 lines of nonlinear, nonstop talk and action featuring gods, mortals, monsters, weird doings, hospitality rituals and oceans of blood, tears and wine.   

No, wait! Actually, that was part of Dargis' review of the new feature film, "The Odyssey." With apologies for the error, here's the actual passage in question:

‘The Odyssey’ Review: Passion in Every Frame   

Throughout his career, Christopher Nolan has taken on big stories—though especially those of men, their struggles and their wars...  

[...]

It seems inevitable that Nolan would eventually take on “The Odyssey,” one of the foundations of Western literature. And why not? The story is a trippy, far-out blast, and has the kind of sinuous, complex layering that has become one of his signatures. Credited to Homer, the original poem consists of 12,109 lines of nonlinear, nonstop talk and action featuring gods, mortals, monsters, weird doings, hospitality rituals and oceans of blood, tears and wine. Whatever the adaptation, the tale is so ingrained in our cultural DNA that even those who haven’t read the original...will be familiar with it. 

That's what Dargis actually said. But as with Homer's endless tale, so too with the sitting president's! 

By now, everyone is familiar with the "nonlinear, nonstop talk" driving its ever-shifting stream of allegations. Everyone is familiar with its "monsters, weird doings and oceans of blood," even though the president's tale has only been around for six years!   

What actually happened, or didn't happen, in the 2020 presidential campaign? Tomorrow, we'll try to fashion a list of the various claims the president made in his 26-minute address.

That said: 

One night later, on Friday night, David Brooks offered his assessment of the address on the PBS NewsHour. As always, he was paired with Jonathan Capehart on the program which occupies the highest end of Blue American journalism.   

David Brooks is a good, decent person. But we thought you should see what he said.   

Full disclosure! In the immediate aftermath of the address, politicians and journalists in Blue America fact-checked the rambling effort within an inch of its life. 

Over in Red America, the Fox News Channel essentially disappeared the address. Fox chose not to discuss it at all, pretended it hadn't occurred.   

One night later, out came Capehart and Brooks for their weekly session with Geoff Bennett. We thought the assessment offered by Brooks was remarkably strange:    

BENNETT (7/17/26): President Trump once again putting false claims about the 2020 election at the center of the national political debate is where we start as we turn tonight to the analysis of Brooks and Capehart. 

That's The Atlantic's David Brooks and Jonathan Capehart of MS NOW. Good evening, gentlemen.

CAPEHART: Hey, Geoff.

BENNETT: So, David, what did you hear in that speech last night? What do you think President Trump is trying to accomplish here?   

BROOKS: Oh, subtle. I couldn't figure it out.

(Chuckling)

He was— He's got to get more original in his confabulation. I mean, he's just stuck on this 2020 thing. There's never been any evidence. There's no evidence. 

I think the good news is, he doesn't have any policies to actually ruin our election system, as we heard from the secretaries of state. So we're going to have fair elections in this country.

We're going to have fair elections, he said. We thought that remark by Brooks was amazingly strange.  

As you can see, Bennett began the session by saying that the president's speech had been driven by "false claims." 

As far as we know, that statement is fundamentally accurate—but it represents a new way of doing journalism, an approach which sprang full-blown from the head of Zeus in reaction to the endless counterfactual wanderings of the sitting president.   

Bennett referred to "false claims;" Brooks went with "confabulation." Tomorrow, we'll try to list the various presidential claims they were talking about—but what in the world, what on earth, led Brooks to say something like this:

The good news is, he doesn't have any policies to actually ruin our election system...So we're going to have fair elections. 

Why in the world—why on earth—would Brooks say something like that? Tomorrow, we'll show you why we ask.

In the Odyssey, sacred Homer fashioned a tale full of "monsters, weird doings, and oceans of blood." The sitting president has done something similar in the course of six long years of nonlinear, nonstop talking.

Last Thursday night, we saw two of the brightest bulbs in the Congress express their fear about what President Trump might decide to do this fall to undermine our elections. One night later, up jumped Brooks with a very strange statement. 

There's nothing to worry about, he said. Why is the world did he do that?

Tomorrow: Confabulations and fears