TUESDAY: The hopeful promised a "bloody story!"

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2026

Where we all are at this point: Who were we kidding? We misjudged the time it would take to complete an alternate project in which we're engaged. (No, it isn't medical.)   

We look forward to returning to a version of full services, and we know what our first point of focus is likely to be. We expect to start with our favorite passage from Sandburg's Lincoln: The Prairie Years, the beautifully evocative passage which deliberately mentions the phenomenon known as "healing." 

But that won't happen until next Monday. It's just like we told you last week!  

Assuming there is a next Monday, of course. From the sitting president this very day, we see such headlines as these:

Trump Rages at CNN’s Kaitlan Collins in Wild Moment Before Big UN Speech: ‘You Should Not Be Here!’   
(For full report, click here.)  

‘Do I Annihilate the Islamic Republic?’ Trump Issues Shocking Threat to Iran in UN Speech   
(For full report, click this.)

We've long said this is a dangerous time; societal healing isn't likely to be all that easy. As for the notion of danger, medical specialists went there early on, in the 2017 best-selling book, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, edited by the Yale psychiatrist, Dr. Bandy X. Lee. 

Such specialists have routinely said that the situation would only get worse. And here we were, this very morning, with Joe Scarborough saying this about the shooting which has now happened in Austin:  

 ‘Don’t Act Shocked!’ Joe Scarborough Throttles House Republican for Trump Deportation 180

Joe Scarborough tore into Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL) on Tuesday after the Republican, who recently accused President Donald Trump of having “betrayed” Hispanic voters with his immigration crackdown, shifted the focus to advisers she said were steering the president wrong.

The Morning Joe host argued that Republicans now recoiling from the administration’s deportation push could hardly claim they were blindsided after Trump campaigned explicitly on removing millions of undocumented immigrants. 

[...]   

He then aimed directly at Salazar, whose South Florida district has put immigration at the center of her reelection fight.

“Let me say it again for the congresswoman in Miami. Donald Trump, just a year and a half ago on the campaign trail, in a speech you certainly must have heard, promised not just deporting the worst of the worst, he promised millions and millions of people being deported, and that it would be a, quote, bloody deportation.”

“And here we are. So please don’t act shocked, stunned, and deeply saddened—because you’re not,” he added.

Trump’s actual remark came at a September 2024 rally in Mosinee, Wisconsin, where he said removing undocumented immigrants would be a “bloody story.” Later that month in Michigan, he separately vowed to begin “the largest deportation operation in American history.”   

Thanks to the sometimes invaluable Rev, you can see the transcript of what the candidate said in Wisconsin, along with the videotape of him saying it. Click here, then search on "bloody."

That was only one remark, made on that one day, but it may have suggested the shape of the turmoil to come

Serious mental illness is a human tragedy—and, of course, it's an illness. In this particular case, it also seems to be dangerous. To this day, the press corps has refused to explore the possibility that we're dealing with a dangerous medical problem here. 

(It's not clear that it would have mattered had they chosen to come to terms with what sits right before them.) 

This is present-day anthropology. It's a look at the skills we humans haven't developed as of this point in time.