SATURDAY: Shine on me, sunshine? Walk with me, world?

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2026

The president gay-baits Ossoff: We want to show you two bits of text from last night's Anderson Cooper program on CNN. 

In this, the first of these clips, the president is gay-baiting Senator Ossoff. Cooper is speaking with Tim Pawlenty, the former (Republican) governor of Minnesota, a person who never engaged in this kind of conduct:   

COOPER (10/16/26): Governor Pawlenty, I just want to play another part of the president's speech in Georgia today.

PRESIDENT TRUMP (videotape): I call him Pee-Wee Herman. Pee-Wee Herman, he looks like Pee-Wee. His name is Jon Ossoff, highly overrated. 

Somebody said he's a good-looking man. I don't think he's a good-looking man. I actually think Mike Collins is a good-looking man. And he's all man. He's all man. I'm not sure about Ossoff. 

If I am casting a movie for a senator, I like the white hair. I like the big, strong build, big, strong guy. But that's what I want. But he's a respected man.

COOPER: I'm not sure what he was insinuating about Ossoff, but why does he keep commenting on men's appearances? I mean, it's sort of fascinating to me.

PAWLENTY: You know, he says all kinds of things that are sort of entertaining. But you know what the voters want to hear is what's going on with my pocketbook, what's going on with affordability, what's going on in the economy...

Obviously, Cooper knew what the president was saying about Ossoff. (Pawlenty also avoided the obvious.) Next week, we expect to note the way this sort of thing is currently driving so much of MAGA (and Fox News Channel) politics.   

In this, the second clip, the president is Muslim-baiting Abdul El-Sayed. Cooper is speaking with Lulu Garcia-Navarro of the New York Times:   

COOPER: And Lulu, I want to play you something else the president said today about Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed.

PRESIDENT TRUMP (videotape): He's as bad almost as Mohamed Abdul El-Sayed. 

You know, I took a lot of heat for calling him "Mohamed." And I said, I don't care, I'm the president of the United States. I can call you whatever the hell I want. I can call you whatever I want, Mohamed.

And then today, a guy sends me something. His name is actually "Abdullah bah-bah-bah-bah-bah"—Mohammed El-Sayed. So, his middle name is Mohamed. So, I was right, almost.

Oh, by the way, how about that guy? He's a Jihadist. He's a radical left person. He hates our country.

COOPER: How do you think? I mean, do you think that works for the people he wants to turn out?

GARCIA-NAVARRO: No, I mean, I think it's racist, obviously. He's using "Mohamed" as a sort of slur, when it's the name of the prophet and for Muslims. And then beyond that, it's just more of the same...

By any normal standard, that was astonishing conduct by the sitting president. 

It was obvious Muslim-baiting. We were struck by the fact that Cooper was only willing to fashion a question as to whether this obvious baiting would "work." 

(In response, we wouldn't have used the highly general term "racist" ourselves.)

By the way, here's a quick thumbnail of the man who was being baited by our sitting president—the man who hates our country:

Abdul El-Sayed

Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed (born October 31, 1984) is an American epidemiologist and politician who is the Democratic nominee in the 2026 United States Senate election in Michigan.

Born and raised in southeast Michigan, El-Sayed graduated from the University of Michigan and was a Rhodes Scholar at the University of Oxford, where he earned a doctorate in public health. He then earned his medical degree from Columbia University. He then became an assistant professor of epidemiology at the Columbia University School of Public Health. He was the executive director of the Detroit Health Department from 2015 to 2017. From 2023 to 2025, he served as director of the Wayne County Department of Health, Human & Veterans Services.   

[...]   

In 2003, El-Sayed graduated from Bloomfield Hills Andover High School, where he was a three-sport athlete and captain of the wrestling, football, and lacrosse teams. He then attended the University of Michigan...He graduated Phi Beta Kappa with highest distinction in 2007 with a bachelor's degree and gave that year's student commencement speech. 

Once captain of his high school's football team, he hates the U.S. today! Along somewhat similar lines, here is some background on Ossoff, whose background is not widely known:

Jon Ossoff   

Thomas Jonathan Ossoff (born February 16, 1987) is an American politician who has served as the senior United States senator from Georgia since 2021. He is the youngest incumbent U.S. senator, and a member of the Democratic Party.

[...]

He attended The Paideia School, a private school in Atlanta. While in high school, he interned for civil rights leader and U.S. representative John Lewis. Ossoff is a 2009 graduate of Georgetown University's Walsh School of Foreign Service with a Bachelor of Science degree in culture and politics. He earned a master of science degree in international political economy from the London School of Economics in 2013.   

[...]   

Ossoff is married to Alisha Kramer, an obstetrics and gynecology doctor at Emory University, where she completed her residency in 2023, and a graduate of Georgetown University and Emory University School of Medicine. Ossoff married Kramer in 2017 after 12 years of dating. On the night of Ossoff's election to the United States Senate in January 2021, Kramer was working an overnight shift in Emory University Hospital in Atlanta. They have two daughters, born in December 2021 and June 2025.  

Just a guess: Those two girls got a very good deal when the gods selected their parents.

At any rate, despite the president's recent gay-bating, Ossoff doesn't seem to be gay. Of course, as (almost) everyone knows by now, many millions of good, decent people are.  And we don't have a person to waste, as Bill Clinton used to say.

In recent weeks, the gay-baiting and the Muslim baiting have been general over MAGA elites and the Fox News Channel. With respect to that sad situation, we speak to this obvious question:   

Shine on me, sunshine? Walk with me, world? What the heck's up with that?   

Our record-shattering answer:  

We Americans can't fact-check or name-call our way back out of our current national mess—"back out of all this now too much for us," as Frost confusingly had it. 

Instead, we'll need to emerge into a world of deepened American values—some of them seeming to be a bit Reddish, some of them tilting toward Blue. 

We need a deeper connection to happiness. More on that to follow.