REFUSAL TO ASK: Senator Whitehouse became the latest...

TUESDAY, AUGUST 25, 2026

...who wasn't willing to ask:  Is something wrong with President Trump? We've called it the one remaining question.

Last night, we'd have to say it was Senator Whitehouse (D-RI) who was refusing to ask.  

We'll detail his refusal below. It came during his appearance with Lawrence O'Donnell, whose work this year we've often admired and praised.

Down below, we'll detail the senator's refusal to ask. First, though, we'll take a look at O'Donnell's monologue concerning the new Supreme Court decision—a decision which may (or may not) turn out to be disastrous.

The monologue started exactly as shown below.  It started at 10:02 p.m., after two minutes of chuckling and laughing with Rachel Maddow, who continues to prove—or so it sometimes seems to us—that life can still be very good if a major corporate group is paying you $20 million per year.

(Given the ongoing state of play, we do find all that laughing and chuckling highly unattractive at times.)

The monologue started at 10:02. There's no correct answer to this next question:

Does anything in this opening passage possibly seem slightly odd? 

O'DONNELL (8/24/26): If Natalie Harp went to law school, she could have written the Supreme Court opinion today about Donald Trump's attempt to seize control of voting by mail in the United States.  

It's one of those opinions issued on the so-called emergency docket, which means the case was not fully argued to the Supreme Court, but all of the Republican appointees to the Supreme Court decided that the case was so urgent that it needed to be ruled on immediately, with none of them willing to actually sign this thing today, which leaves it very likely to have been written by Chief Justice John Roberts, whose first sentence could only be written by a Natalie Harp-type Trump groupie, someone who believes in the Trump fairy tale of a Never Never Land where Donald Trump was never. ever. ever indicted and charged with conspiracy against the United States of America for trying to illegally overturn the 2020 presidential election.  

Donald Trump is the biggest and most famous election criminal in American history—the only president of the United States in history to call the secretary of state of Georgia and ask him to commit an election crime. [Audiotape]: "All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have."  

The Supreme Court and Natalie Harp are just totally cool with that—the Republican Supreme Court. 

What you just heard is one of the crimes that Donald Trump was charged with in both a federal indictment and a criminal indictment for violating Georgia state law. And so it took Natalie Harp-like delusion for the Supreme Court decision today to begin with this first sentence...

At this point, Lawrence quoted the decision's first sentence. But does anything in that opening passage possibly seem a bit odd? 

As we watched O'Donnell last night, that opening did strike us as odd. He had started at 10:02. It was now just 10:04, and he had already flagged "Natalie Harp" on four separate occasions! 

He had assailed the Chief Justice as a "Natalie Harp-type groupie." He'd also accused the Chief Justice of engaging in "Natalie Harp-like delusion."   

He'd pictured her as a law school grad. He'd pictured Natalie and the Court pretty much joined at the hip. 

She, of course, had nothing to do with the decision in question, which might turn out to be disastrously important. But it almost seemed that a "Natalie Harp-style obsession" had taken hold of this good person's head!

At this point, O'Donnell gave his analysis of the new Supreme Court decision. Soon, though, he was back to describing the six Republican-appointed Justices as "the Natalie Harps of the Supreme Court," and he later referred to John Roberts as "Chief Justice Natalie Harp!"

We've frequently admired O'Donnell's work this year. To our eye, he often seems like the only MS NOW anchor who actually takes it personally as the United States of America continues to slide down the slope, becoming a type of failed state, due to the conduct of the sitting president.   

The president's current move to seize control of voting by mail may end up hastening that descent. (Or not.) In large part, it will depend on what the Court decides to do when it assesses this matter on the merits.

But it seemed to us that O'Donnel was well out over his skis during last night's monologue. Eventually, he almost made it sound like Natalie Harp is the real cancer on the presidency—that poor unknowing President Trump is being unknowingly taken in by her Natalie Harp like behaviors. 

Harp was cited more than twenty times in the opening monologue—a monologue about a Supreme Court decision in which she played no part.

Is something wrong with Natalie Harp? We can't exactly tell you. We can, however, tell you this:

It seems quite likely that something's wrong with the sitting president. His niece, the doctorate-holding clinical therapist, has assessed it like this:   

BURNETT (2/26/26): You've known him your whole life. Do you actually see a decline?

MARY TRUMP: I do, but I think it's important to remember that Donald has never been fit in any capacity. Obviously, what we're dealing with now are age-related cognitive declines. We're dealing with physical issues that the White House tries to cover over.

But this is somebody who for decades now has had serious, undiagnosed and untreated psychiatric disorders, which are only going to worsen, especially given the pressure he's under and given the cognitive and physical declines.  

His untreated disorders will only get worse. They're "only going to worsen"

Presumably, everyone can see that this is happening before our eyes, as he declares that he's good with flagpoles and very good with trees. 

He also seems to think he's good with the design of aircraft carriers, as Maddow noted last night. He's trying to affix his name to every available surface.

If this is the "cognitive decline" his niece described as "obvious," we'll only say that these declines happen to some people, not to all, and we'll note that the afflicted don't choose to go into decline.

He says he's good at everything now, and he's putting his name on every known surface. Still, men like Lawrence may want to talk about "the girl." 

Meanwhile, Senator Whitehouse! Last night, he spoke with Lawrence about the Court's ruling. He then discussed the president's latest (trade) war, which seems to make zero sense.

Even the Wall Street Journal has called it his dumbest trade war, the senator correctly said. And then, at least to our ear, he became the latest to take a dive:

SENATOR WHITEHOUSE (8/24/26): He's making a huge mess. And I can't help but think there's something in the back of his strange mind that knows he's failing as president and that wishes to tear down the whole Republican Party with him so that he does not fail alone. 

There's almost no other reason why a president with control over all the chamber of Congress and the White House, would, on the issue most important to the American people, do something so stupid and so counterproductive and so chaotic...

Question! Does the sitting president have "a strange mind?" Or could it be that he's mentally ill, and that it's going to worsen? Because that's what his niece told Erin Burnett before being hustled away, leading to the next bout of media silence.  

("There's no other reason" for what he keeps doing? Could it be that he's mentally ill, or in "obvious" cognitive decline?)

Will he gain control of voting by mail? That remains to be seen. 

What night he do after November 3? Having taken down the GOP, could he decide to take down the whole country?

Could he even decide to do that? Everyone is in agreement! They agree not to wonder or ask!

Tomorrow: We leave this framework behind