THURSDAY: We saw "the storm" blow through The Five!

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2025

This is the illness we've chosen: Aside from a few basic points, we won't even try to describe what happened yesterday on The Five.

The full tape of the relevant segment is available at the program's web site.  Somewhat comically, the dual headline says this:

We're in a season of 'real leftist violence,' says Paul Mauro
'The Five' co-hosts discuss a shooting at an I.C.E. facility in Dallas and the state of political rhetoric in America

We call that comical for an obvious reason. What actually happened during that segment had nothing to do with the things Paul Mauro said.

What actually happened involved a remarkable example of "the storm"—a remarkable example of the irrational fury which increasingly seems to come from the Fox News Channel's Greg Gutfeld. As we've been noting this week, this irrational fury has also been coming from other members of Red America's elites.

The basic background to yesterday's storm is this:

In every segment of this ludicrous show, one of the five co-hosts is assigned to serve as the moderator. The other four co-hosts then take their turns discussing the topic in question.

As we've often noted, the gruesome program achieves its considerable frisson on the days when Jessica Tarlov sits in the one (1) "liberal / Democratic Party" chair. 

The four (4) pro-MAGA children all listen politely when their pro-MAGA colleagues take their turns to speak. The excitement starts when Gutfeld and Watters start interrupting and overtalking Tarlov, with the other pro-MAGA co-hosts sometimes joining in.

(That was especially likely to happen when Judge Jeanine was still a daily co-host.)

Yesterday, the first topic involved the fatal shooting at the ICE facility in Dallas. Jesse Watters, acting as moderator and seeming to be on his best behavior, threw to Tarlov in the manner shown:

WATTERS (5/24/25): Jessica, you've never called ICE agents "fascists" or "Gestapo," "Nazis." You've never done that. But there are people in your party that have done that. Do you think that's responsible?

TARLOV: Listen, I think that "fascism" and fascists" is a very special category of people, and you should use it when it's really applicable and sparingly, because then people will believe you when you say it. And it has become too common to hear words like that...

So far, so acceptable! At that point, Tarlov began recalling her recitation, on last Friday's show, of the many times when President Trump has dropped that same f-bomb on Democratic heads. 

Yesterday, she said it was a "both sides problem." That's when the roof fell in.

"That's garbage! That's absolute garbage!" the visibly furious Gutfeld now shouted, breaking in. After ordering Tarlov to "Continue," he instantly began railing at her again.

By our count, Tarlov had been permitted to speak for 37 seconds before the roof fell in.

Gutfeld's furious interruptions went on and on, then on and on some more. At one point, he seemed to have decided to stifle himself. But he soon returned to the practice of shouting at Tarlov, generally as soon as she had uttered three or four words.

It wasn't the familiar rudeness of the behavior, and it wasn't the sheer stupidity of some of the ways he tried to refute Tarlov's assertions. For us, it was the raw fury this extremely unusual person exhibited in his rant at Tarlov this day.

At Sunday's memorial service for Charlie Kirk, Stephen Miller described a growing reality. We offered a longer transcript this morning, but this was Miller's key statement:

MILLER (9/21/25) When I see Erika [Kirk] and her strength and her courage, I'm reminded of a famous expression:

The storm whispers to the warrior that you cannot withstand my strength. And the warrior whispers back, "I am the storm."

Erika is the storm. We are the storm. And our enemies cannot comprehend our strength, our determination, our resolve, our passion. Our lineage and our legacy hails back to Athens, to Rome, to Philadelphia, to Monticello. Our ancestors built the cities. They produced the art and architecture. They built the industry.

[...]

We will prevail over the forces of wickedness and evil. They cannot imagine what they have awakened. 

We assume that Miller's reference to "the storm" is a nod to the QAnon crowd. But the fury to which Miller gave voice erupted yesterday, on The Five, in Gutfeld's weirdly unhinged performance.

We strongly suggest that you watch the tape; to do so, just click here. Tarlov starts attempting to speak at the seven-minute mark. Strangely, the tape of the program is missing from the Internet Archive's compilation of yesterday's Fox News Channel programs.

We strongly suggest that you watch that tape to see where the nation is going. Or you could just consider this:

In this morning's New York Times, we read this overview of President Trump's current stance on climate change:

At a Times Event, Opposing Views on Climate Change Collide

[...]

The split-screen view underscored the extent to which the United States under President Trump has become isolated from the rest of the world on climate change, perhaps more than on any other issue. Mr. Trump has said the United States will withdraw from the Paris accord, joining Iran, Libya and Yemen as the only four countries to not recognize it. In recent months, Mr. Trump has also issued numerous policies that could thwart renewable energy projects, and his administration has ordered a halt to the construction of offshore wind farms.

[...]

By contrast, Mr. Trump told the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday that climate change is the “greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world” and called renewable energy “a joke.”

On climate change, it's Iran and Libya and Yemen—and it's also us! Meanwhile, on your TV screen, you have the endless apparent misogyny of Gutfeld, tied to the remarkable, barely controllable anger he put on display yesterday.  

We're sincere in saying that the furious Gutfeld seems to need some help. We do want to comment on one of the many ridiculous things he said as he kept overtalking Tarlov:

GUTFELD: The left calls Trump a hatemonger. They've called me a hatemonger because  ridicule the left, I ridicule protesters, I ridicule academia—Hollywood, the news media. I make fun of The View every day...

Actually, no. The gentleman doesn't "make fun of" The View. Night after night, he compares the women of The View to horses, cattle, cows and pigs, to whales and also to "livestock." 

(After that, it may be time to start saying that "Tampon" is secretly gay.)

They open the garbage can every night. This is what comes slithering out. Blue America's orgs avert their gaze. To appearances, no one wants to report what happens on Fox.

In fairness, Tarlov was granted her 37 seconds. Then "the storm" began.

We'd like to see the guy get some help. But more and more, in various ways, this is the illness we've chosen.

HEALING: "One of yours killed Charlie," she said!

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2025

Megyn Kelly signs on with the storm: "I saw an interesting thing happen today."

So says Michael Corleone—the Al Pacino character—during the Cuba interlude in the 1974 feature film, The Godfather Part II. 

To watch the scene in which he says it, you can just click here.

He's referring to the determination displayed by a Cuban revolutionary as Castro is coming to power. He saw this man being shot to death by Cuban police in the final days before the fall of the Batista regime. 

Yesterday, we too "saw an interesting thing happen"—in this case, on yesterday's edition of The Five. We saw a startling display of Red American fury—what you might even call "the storm." 

That startling display is being ignored at Mediaite even as we sit here typing today.  We'll link you to yesterday's startling event in this afternoon's post. 

For now, we think it's important to spend another day contemplating recent examples of the strength of that tribal fury—in the strength of that storm.

In yesterday's report, we showed you the bulk of what Stephen Miller said at Sunday's memorial service for the late Charlie Kirk. At this point, we offer a subjective assessment:

We apologize for the length of the excerpt from Miller's speech. That said, judged by any pre-existing norm, it's shocking to think that this furious man sits at the right hand of the father:

MILLER (9/21/25): Hello, Turning Point. Hello, patriots. Hello to our fearless president, Donald J. Trump. 

And hello to millions of Americans all across this land who are gathered in sadness and sorrow to mourn Charlie Kirk, but also to dedicate ourselves to finishing his mission and achieving victory in his name.

[APPLAUSE] 

The day that Charlie died the angels wept. But those tears had been turned into fire in our hearts, and that fire burns with a righteous fury that our enemies cannot comprehend or understand. 

When I see Erika [Kirk] and her strength and her courage, I'm reminded of a famous expression:

The storm whispers to the warrior that you cannot withstand my strength. And the warrior whispers back, "I am the storm."

Erika is the storm. We are the storm. And our enemies cannot comprehend our strength, our determination, our resolve, our passion. Our lineage and our legacy hails back to Athens, to Rome, to Philadelphia, to Monticello. Our ancestors built the cities. They produced the art and architecture. They built the industry.

[...]

We will prevail over the forces of wickedness and evil. They cannot imagine what they have awakened. They cannot conceive of the army that they have arisen in all of us because we stand for what is good, what is virtuous, what is noble. 

And to those trying to incite violence against us, those trying to foment hatred against us, what do you have? You have nothing. You are nothing. You are wickedness. You are jealousy. You are envy. You are hatred. You are nothing. You can build nothing. You can produce nothing. You can create nothing.

We are the ones who build. We are the ones who create. We are the ones who lift up humanity. 

You thought you could kill Charlie Kirk. You have made him immortal. You have immortalized Charlie Kirk. And now millions will carry on his legacy. And we will devote the rest of our lives to finishing the causes for which Charlie gave his last measure of devotion. You cannot defeat us. You cannot slow us. You cannot stop us. You cannot deter us.

We will carry Charlie and Erika in our heart every single day and fight that much harder because of what you did to us. You have no idea the dragon you have awakened. You have no idea how determined we will be to save the civilization, to save the West, to save this republic, because our children are strong and our grandchildren will be strong. And our children's children's children will be strong.

And what will you leave behind? Nothing. Nothing. To our enemies, you have nothing to give. You have nothing to offer. You have nothing to share but bitterness. We have beauty. We have light. We have goodness. We have determination. We have vision. We have strength. We built the world that we inhabit now, generation by generation.

[...]

We will defeat the forces of darkness and evil. And we will stand every day for what is true, what is beautiful, what is good. And we will achieve victory for our children, for our families, for our civilization, and for every patriot who stands with us. 

God bless you. God bless Turning Point. God bless Erika. God bless the Kirk family. God bless our heroes. And God bless the United States of America. Thank you.

ANNOUNCER: Please welcome to the stage, Susie Wiles.

For what it's worth, we would guess that Miller's reference to "the storm" is a shoutout to QAnon—a shoutout to the tortured souls who would shoot up pizza parlors based on crazy reports.

We apologize for the length of that excerpt. But judged by any pre-existing norm, it defies comprehension to think that the furious man who delivered that speech sits at the right hand of the father. 

So too, we would say, with respect to Megyn Kelly. As we noted yesterday, she has explained why Red American forces DO NOT CARE if Tom Homan really did accept a bribe in the form of a big bag of cash.

Judged by any traditional norm, Kelly's post took the form of a remarkable screed. It was Kelly's response to the report about Homan's possible acceptance of a large bag of cash, a matter which was first report by MSNBC.

Did Homan possibly accept a sack of cash? "We DO NOT CARE," Kelly had initially posted. 

Then, responding to MSNBC's report, she added this lengthy post:

KELLY (9/20/25): We don’t trust you. We don’t trust the work of your president’s DOJ. We don’t trust the work of your president’s FBI. 

You indicted our presidential candidate 4x with made-up BS charges trying to put him in jail for life. You changed laws so he could be civilly sued by a woman who didn’t even remember what year her alleged “rape” by him was. 

You let an AG who ran for office promising to “get Trump” try to bankrupt him on a claim so specious even the NY appellate court scoffed at it & had to reverse the damage award. 

One of yours killed Charlie and then you laughed at our pain, protested our vigils & said Charlie was to blame and in hell. You lied about the killer’s motives & said he was MAGA when you knew he wasn’t. You put us all in danger by not admitting the truth and then not relenting on the lies you tell about us. You cried endless tears for Jimmy Kimmel but none for Charlie.

You gleefully cancelled all of us for five+ years and danced when we suffered. You censored us & ruined careers of distinguished doctors & others who dared to say the truth during Covid and George Floyd. You cost our children years of learning during lockdowns and endangered them with deadly myocarditis by burying the risk disclosures and never apologized or owned it.

Your govt tried to strong arm Fox into firing Tucker bc of his J6 coverage and you said not a peep about the first amendment.

You changed Title IX with the stroke of a pen, without consent, and endangered and hurt our defenseless daughters. You sterilized and cut off the healthy body parts of children & want to keep doing it.

You lied about a near-vegetative president being fine with the nuclear codes. 

You (personally) had Doug Emhoff on as the scandal of his alleged woman abuse and cheating broke and you didn’t ask him ONE Q about it, then tried to tell us you care about women. 

You opened the border and let in ten+ million illegals who killed Laken Riley and 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray after they sexually assaulted her and threw her off a bridge, along with the countless other innocents they rape, murder and molest to this day.

So no, we don’t care what you say about Tom Homan. We do not trust you. We only care about defeating you.

"We only care about defeating you," Megyn Kelly said. 

Did Homan accept a big sack of cash? We DO NOT CARE, Kelly had already said. 

Presumably addressing Blue America (or its elites), she now referred to President Biden as "your president," not hers or that of her tribe. She said that "one of yours" killed Charlie Hurt, and that "you then laughed at our pain."

The sense of grievance was remarkably strong. "You danced when we suffered," the aggrieved multimillionaire said. 

In effect, this was a statement of tribal secession. Tied to Miller's astonishing speech, attention must be paid.

That said, attention is only tangentially being paid within the ranks of Blue America. It's astonishing to think that a person like Miller sits at the right hand of the father—but major organs in Blue America continue to avert their gaze as remarkable war cries keep emerging from within the ranks of "the storm."

Like Miller, Kelly offered a lengthy list of complaints—and her sense of grievance was strong.

In our view, quite a few of her grievances have a reasonable basis in fact. Some of her grievances strike us as remarkably silly, but others among them do not.

In the case of Miller, the problem is the undisguised madness. In Kelly's case, the problem isn't a lack of reasonable complaints. The problem is the massive mountain of self-pity, joined to the wholly unregulated whirlwind of anger within this part of the storm.

Tomorrow, we'll look at some of Kelly's grievances, some of which are unmistakably justified. As we do, we'll show you the ways our elites in Blue America keep whistling past the graveyard as they avert their gaze from the ways we Blues have worked to earn our way out.

Furious players like Miller and Kelly are part of a gathering storm. We Blues remain remarkably feckless and uncomprehending, or so it will say right here.

"I saw an interesting thing happen today." 

So Michael Corleone said—and within the context of the film, Batista was gone by that night.

"The sunshine of the prairie summer and fall months would come sifting down with healing and strength?"

That's what Sandburg said, near the end of Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years. We see few signs of healing here, given the state of our Blue cluelessness in the face of their furious storm.

This afternoon: We saw "the storm" as it blew through The Five

Tomorrow: "Ignorant / uneducated," one of our major stars said

WEDNESDAY: What did Jimmy Fallin mean?

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2025

Interpretation is hard: Did Al Gore ever say that he invented the Internet?

We'd say no, he did not.

While being interviewed by Wolf Blitzer, he made a remark which was widely paraphrased that way, though not until a few days later. He made the statement in question only once, and when people began to paraphrase it in the manner described, he instantly said that that wasn't what he had literally said, nor was it what he had meant.

Too late! At the time, he was a target of the mainstream press—the last person they could attack after their war against Bill Clinton had failed. (The impeachment of Clinton had failed only a few weeks earlier.)  

For years, Gore was assailed for having said that he "invented he Internet"—and yes, the word "invented" even slipped inside quotation marks, even though the pleasing word had never passed Gore's lips.

That's the way our mainstream press corps was functioning as of March 1999. Those of us in Blue America were so dumb that we widely let it go.

As a group, we the humans aren't enormously sharp, nor are we obsessively honest or fair. We tend to stick to reciting our tribal storylines. That leads us to an unresolved question:

What did Jimmy Fallin say last Monday night about the 22-year-old man who murdered the late Charlie Kirk?

What did Jimmy Fallin say? More to the point, what did he mean by what he said? What did he seem to mean?

It's easy to transcribe what he actually said. These are the words he said:

FALLIN (9/15/25): We hit some new lows over the weekend, with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it.

Those are the words he actually said. It was a rather jumbled locution, which leads us to the ultimate question:

When he said those forty words, what did he seem to mean?

He plainly said that we'd "hit come new lows," but what "new lows" did he have in mind? His jumbled presentation makes his meaning a bit unclear, but let's pare his statement down to this:

"We hit some new lows over the weekend, with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them..."

According to Fallin, "the MAGA gang" had been "desperately trying" to say that Tyler Robinson wasn't "one of them." To our ear, that formulation seemed to suggest that Robinson actually was "one of them"—that the new low involved the desperate attempts by the MAGA gang to pretend that he actually wasn't.

Could someone have interpreted that presentation differently? In a world where reams of major journalists insisted, for years, that Al Gore said he invented the Internet, almost any interpretation—almost any paraphrase of some remark—fits within the borders of what a tribal group can imagine.

As to what Fallin actually meant—as to what he may have thought he was saying—there's no perfect way to tell. But it's the job of a major public figure to make his meaning reasonably clear, especially about an important matter like this. 

At the very least, Fallin failed to do that last Monday night. Also, there was this:

Fallin's remark that night didn't come out of nowhere. Inevitably, an instant battleground had formed, with warring tribal groups presenting different claims about Robinson's motive and tribal membership. 

Some people on "the left" were explicitly saying or suggesting that Robinson hailed from the right of the MAGA movement. As we noted last Thursday, Professor Heather Cox Richardson had explicitly posted this on her widely read Substack over the weekend preceding Fallin's remarks:

RICHARDSON (9/13/25 or 9/14/25): [I]n fact, the alleged shooter was not someone on the left. The alleged killer, Tyler Robinson, is a young white man from a Republican, gun enthusiast family, who appears to have embraced the far right, disliking Kirk for being insufficiently radical.

Rather than grappling with reality, right-wing figures are using Kirk’s murder to prop up their fictional world. Briefly, they claimed Robinson had been “radicalized” in college. Then, when it turned out he had spent only a single semester at a liberal arts college before going to trade school, MAGA pivoted to attack those who allegedly had celebrated Kirk’s death on social media.

We have no idea why Professor Richardson would have made so explicit a claim. That said, there's little doubt about what she was asserting—and as far as we know, no particular evidence has ever emerged to show that her assessment was accurate.

The following Monday, along came Fallin! He seemed to offer a jumbled version of what the professor had said—or so it seemed to us.

Sad! Even as late as last night, America's two major tribes still couldn't agree on what Fallin had actually said—rather, on what he appeared to have meant.

We would guess that he might have thought, when he went on stage last Monday night. that Robinson actually was a figure of the right. To our ear, it sounded like that was most likely what he believed when he fashioned his statement.

Or then again, possibly not! That said, matters like these are important. Last night, in his opening monologue, Fallin apologized for a possible pair of lesser offenses. But last Monday, did he actually think, and mean to say, that Tyler Robinson was a figure of the right?

There's no perfect way to know. But it's obvious why members of the Red American tribe might think that's what he meant.

In the end, who was—who is—Tyler Robinson? What was the ideation behind the murder he committed?

At some point, the answer may become more clear. For now, we'd be inclined to assume the accuracy of something Amy Cox Barrett said, as reported by Mediaite last week:

That was horrific...I mean, for the father of two young children and a husband to be murdered in cold blood was a tragedy and certainly sobering for the nation.

And I think it is a sign of a culture that has– where political discourse has soured beyond control and something that we need to really pull back. I mean, obviously, well, I assume that the person who murdered Charlie Kirk was mentally ill. But nonetheless, you know, to create a culture in which political discourse can lead to political violence is unacceptable in the United States.

As far as we know, Robinson had never been diagnosed with a serious mental illness (with a serious "mental disorder"). But the fact that some such disorder hadn't been diagnosed doesn't mean that it didn't exist.

A tiny percentage of the two major tribes engage in murders of this type. The vast majority of the members of each tribe, Red and Blue, have never engaged in any such conduct.

Inevitably, Greg Gutfeld was playing the fool with respect to this question on the Fox News Channel last night. There's nothing that won't be said on programs like Gutfeld! and The Five—while the rest of the tribal stooges politely wait for their chance to agree.

What makes Gutfeld behave as he does? We'd call him "unrecognizable." We don't think we've ever seen a person that strange on TV.  Speaking as someone who taught fifth grade for seven years, we know he could do better.

(Also, everyone is now said to be gay on The Five and on the Gutfeld! show. They open the garbage can each night and that's what slithers out.)

That said, interpretation is hard! We humans aren't especially good at the practice, nor are we always obsessively honest. We do tend to be eager to repeat the memorized claims of our tribes.

Schorr (almost) gets it right: At Mediaite, Isaac Schorr seems to think that Fallin was faking last night. This is the headline on his opinion piece:

The Left Should Be Embarrassed by Jimmy Kimmel

In our view, Schorr is perhaps a bit too sure about what Fallin must have meant last Monday night. 

As Freud once insisted, Sometimes a jumbled presentation is just a jumbled presentation. Someone should maybe ask Fallin, at some point, what he actually believed about Tyler Robinson as of last Monday night.

Or then again, maybe not! Climate change and vaccine chaos may be more important, not to mention crazy flips concerning a former darling like Vladimir Putin, who is suddenly no longer great.

HEALING: "We are the storm," Stephen Miller declared!

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2025

Then, Megyn Kelly signed on: In fairness to Stephen Miller, he wasn't denouncing a group as amorphous—as far-ranging and hard to define—as "the left."

In the literal sense, he wasn't even talking about "the Democrat [sic] Party!" This is the start of what he said at Sunday's memorial service for the late Charlie Kirk:

MILLER (9/21/25): Hello, Turning Point. Hello, patriots. Hello to our fearless president, Donald J. Trump. 

And hello to millions of Americans all across this land who are gathered in sadness and sorrow to mourn Charlie Kirk, but also to dedicate ourselves to finishing his mission and achieving victory in his name.

[APPLAUSE] 

The day that Charlie died the angels wept. But those tears had been turned into fire in our hearts, and that fire burns with a righteous fury that our enemies cannot comprehend or understand. When I see Erika and her strength and her courage, I'm reminded of a famous expression:

The storm whispers to the warrior that you cannot withstand my strength. And the warrior whispers back, "I am the storm."

That "famous expression" seems to come from a novel, Wretched, by Jake Remington. We would assume that Miller's citation of "the storm" is a call to the forces of QAnon, though that assumption could always be wrong.

Already, Miller was assailing the people he described as "our enemies." As he continued, he offered this call to arms in the latest American war.

There was a certain sense of "us against them" as this angry man kept shouting and praising the ultimate greatness and of his great and good warrior tribe:

MILLER (continuing directly): Erika [Kirk] is the storm. We are the storm. And our enemies cannot comprehend our strength, our determination, our resolve, our passion. Our lineage and our legacy hails back to Athens, to Rome, to Philadelphia, to Monticello. Our ancestors built the cities. They produced the art and architecture. They built the industry.

[...]

We will prevail over the forces of wickedness and evil. They cannot imagine what they have awakened. They cannot conceive of the army that they have arisen in all of us because we stand for what is good, what is virtuous, what is noble. 

And to those trying to incite violence against us, those trying to foment hatred against us, what do you have? You have nothing. You are nothing. You are wickedness. You are jealousy. You are envy. You are hatred. You are nothing. You can build nothing. You can produce nothing. You can create nothing.

We are the ones who build. We are the ones who create. We are the ones who lift up humanity. 

You thought you could kill Charlie Kirk. You have made him immortal. You have immortalized Charlie Kirk. And now millions will carry on his legacy. And we will devote the rest of our lives to finishing the causes for which Charlie gave his last measure of devotion. You cannot defeat us. You cannot slow us. You cannot stop us. You cannot deter us.

We will carry Charlie and Erika in our heart every single day and fight that much harder because of what you did to us. You have no idea the dragon you have awakened. You have no idea how determined we will be to save the civilization, to save the West, to save this republic, because our children are strong and our grandchildren will be strong. And our children's children's children will be strong.

And what will you leave behind? Nothing. Nothing. To our enemies, you have nothing to give. You have nothing to offer. You have nothing to share but bitterness. We have beauty. We have light. We have goodness. We have determination. We have vision. We have strength. We built the world that we inhabit now, generation by generation.

[...]

We will defeat the forces of darkness and evil. And we will stand every day for what is true, what is beautiful, what is good. And we will achieve victory for our children, for our families, for our civilization, and for every patriot who stands with us. God bless you. God bless Turning Point. God bless Erika. God bless the Kirk family. God bless our heroes. And God bless the United States of America. Thank you.

ANNOUNCER: Please welcome to the stage, Susie Wiles.

With that, the explicitly Christian memorial service moved on.

Having seemed to evoke QAnon, Miller also seemed to evoke Abraham Lincoln when he said that Charlie Kirk "gave his last measure of devotion," presumably in the fight against those who are wickedness, those who are jealousy, those who are hatred, those who are nothing. 

That said, here's what President Lincoln said this as that first civil war was about to start:

 We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies.

That's what President Lincoln said. Last Sunday, a different spirit was driving a furious man as he denounced his American enemies and seemed to pray for a war.

That said, who was Miller denouncing this day? In the specific and literal sense, he was denouncing "those trying to incite violence against us, those trying to foment hatred against us."

In the literal sense, that's who Miller was denouncing—but who gets to decide who belongs in that group? We'll guess "the storm" get to decide—the people who, or so Miller says, are the ones "who lift up humanity."

At any rate, so it went at the memorial service in which a nation was told, by other speakers, that it should align itself with Jesus Christ, a time-honored decision a person might choose to make.

(In his first book, Stride Toward Freedom, Dr. King repeatedly described his dedication to 
"the love ethic of Jesus." The book was Dr. King's account of his role in the Montgomery bus boycott.)

As the first civil war was nearing its end, the healing didn't come easy with a person like John Wilkes Booth. Last Sunday, it seemed that there might not be an impulse toward healing with people like Stephen Miller, a top adviser to President Trump.

The healing won't come easy—in fact, there may be no healing at all! A similar tone could clearly be heard when top podcaster Megyn Kelly explained why she said what she said about the fact that Tom Homan is alleged to have accepted a possible bribe in the form of a big bag of cash.

As we noted yesterday, that allegation was widely reported over the weekend. Given a chance to deny the claim that he had accepted a big bag of cash. Homan didn't deny it.

He didn't deny that he'd taken the cash! As we noted yesterday. Kelly's initial post said this:

We DO NOT CARE!

According to Kelly, she and the rest of her furious tribe don't care if Homan took the cash. Later, in a second post, Kelly explained why that is.

Her post was reported at Mediaite. Elsewhere, the biggest orgs in Blue America politely averted their gaze.

Why doesn't Megyn Kelly care? As reported by Alex Griffing, that is what Kelly said:

KELLY (9/20/25): One of yours killed Charlie and then you laughed at our pain, protested our vigils & said Charlie was to blame and in hell. You lied about the killer’s motives & said he was MAGA when you knew he wasn’t. You put us all in danger by not admitting the truth and then not relenting on the lies you tell about us. You cried endless tears for Jimmy Kimmel but none for Charlie.

You gleefully cancelled all of us for five+ years and danced when we suffered. You censored us & ruined careers of distinguished doctors & others who dared to say the truth during Covid and George Floyd. You cost our children years of learning during lockdowns and endangered them with deadly myocarditis by burying the risk disclosures and never apologized or owned it.

Your govt tried to strong arm Fox into firing Tucker bc of his J6 coverage and you said not a peep about the first amendment.

In fact, Kelly listed quite a few other grievances. You can read her X post here, but she ended by saying this:

So no, we don’t care what you say about Tom Homan. We do not trust you. We only care about defeating you.

"We only care about defeating you!" That's what Kelly now said. Indeed, even as she had raked in tens of millions of dollars, Kelly had seen rivers. There seems to be little end to her sense of grievance—or perhaps to her sense of entitlement.

Presumably, Megyn Kelly was speaking for millions of people—for millions within "the storm." She had listed some of the grievances those in that whirlwind have felt.

In our view, some of those grievances have a perfectly reasonable basis. Others quite plainly do not.

Some of those grievances have a sound basis! Over here in Blue America, we still insist on refusing to come to terms with that fairly obvious fact.

So some of those grievances have a sound basis? Tomorrow, we'll start to flesh out that assessment. But as for warfighters like Miller and Kelly, it seems to us that the real problem lies in a dangerous place:

It lies with the inability to regulate anger—with the inability to see that everyone doesn't see the world in the infallible way they do. It involves the inability to acknowledge the fact that their "enemies" may not be "evil"—that their "enemies" might not even be wrong when they state some assessment or fact.

Megyn Kelly seems to be part of the storm—and the human impulse to align with the storm is bred rather deep in the bone. Healing can be hard to achieve when the blood which flows through our veins starts blowing up a new storm.

By the way:

The New York Times is ignoring what Miller and Kelly have said. The major elites of our own Blue America don't seem to want to come to terms with this latest quite dangerous storm.

Tomorrow: Maddow interviews Harris

TUESDAY: We didn't think he looked or seemed well!

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2025

The problem which can't be discussed: Some of what happened at the U.N. today was familiar, all too familiar.

Given the norms of the venue, the president spoke at extraordinary length. Sometimes he read from teleprompter. Even after the teleprompter started to work, sometimes he plainly didn't.

Much of what he said this day was familiar, all too familiar. At Mediaite, Zachary Leeman offered a post, on the fly, which appeared beneath this headline:

Trump Insists To UN He’s Been ‘Right About Everything’ As He Spells Out Potential Doom for Foreign Countries

President Donald Trump declared on Tuesday while speaking with the United Nations General Assembly in New York City that he’s “been right about everything” while warning leaders they could be destroying their own countries.

Trump made his declaration while warning countries against the “green energy scam,” referring to investments in efforts to combat global warming like windmills.

“I’m really good at predicting things,” the president said, going on to brag about a “best-selling” hat during his campaign that boasted about him being right about everything.

Yes, he mentioned the hat! Thanks to the invaluable Rev, you can read a full transcript of what he specifically said:

And I'm really good at predicting things. They actually said during the campaign, they had a hat, the best-selling hat, "Trump was right about everything." And I don't say that in a braggadocious way, but it's true. I've been right about everything. And I'm telling you that if you don't get away from the green energy scam, your country is going to fail. 

In fairness, he wasn't being braggadocious. Also at Mediaite, Alex Griffing went with this:

Trump Lobbies for Nobel Peace Prize in UN Speech—Then Insists He Doesn’t Care About It

President Donald Trump addressed the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday and boasted about the wars he claims he ended, repeating a favorite line of his in recent months. Trump went on to claim he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, another regular refrain from the president, but added that the lives saved are prize enough for him.

[...]

Trump then went on a tangent about the construction of the U.N headquarters in New York City, “Many years ago, a very successful real estate developer in New York, known as Donald Trump, I bid on the renovation and rebuilding of this very United Nations complex. I remember it so well.”

Concerning that tangent in question, the president offered this filibuster, as recorded by the invaluable Rev:

Many years ago, a very successful real estate developer in New York, known as Donald J. Trump, I bid on the renovation and rebuilding of this very United Nations complex.

I remember it so well. I said at the time that I would do it for $500 million, rebuilding everything. It would be beautiful. I used to talk about, "I'm going to give you marble floors, they're going to give you terrazzo." The best of everything. "You're going to have mahogany walls, they're going to give you plastic." But they decided to go in another direction, which was much more expensive at the time, which actually produced a far inferior product. And I realized that they did not know what they were doing when it came to construction and that their building concepts were so wrong, and the product that they were proposing to build was so bad and so costly, it was going to cost them a fortune. And I said, "And wait until you see the overruns." 

Well, I turned out to be right. They had massive cost overruns and spent between two and $4 billion on the building and did not even get the marble floors that I promised them.

You walk on terrazzo. Do you notice that? As far as I'm concerned, frankly, looking at the building and getting stuck on the escalator, they still haven't finished the job. They still haven't finished. That was years ago. The project was so corrupt that Congress actually asked me to testify before them on the tremendous waste of money because it turned out that they had no idea what it was, but they knew it was anywhere between two and $4 billion as opposed to 500 million with a guarantee, but they had no idea. And I said, "It costs much more than $5 billion." Unfortunately, many things in the United Nations are happening just like that, but on an even much bigger scale, much, much bigger.

Ah yes—he remembers it well! Various leaders of the world's many nations were forced to sit around listening to such observations as that.

Inevitably, CNN called on Daniel Dale. His presentation was mercifully short, but Mediaite's Ahmad Austin quoted a few of Dale's fact-checks:

‘A Reversal of Reality’: CNN’s Daniel Dale Calls Out Barrage of False Claims from Trump’s Marathon UN Speech

CNN’s Daniel Dale on Tuesday fact-checked a litany of false claims made by President Donald Trump during his marathon UN speech.

[...]

"He claimed that China builds a lot of wind turbines and manufactures them for others, but refuses to use it itself, barely uses wind power. In fact, China is the world leader in the use of wind power. It is building additional wind power in China far faster than the pace at which the U.S. is building in the United States itself. So the idea that China is just, you know, foisting this terrible source of energy on other countries while refusing to use it is a reversal of reality."

Dale called it "a reversal of reality." The president has been right about everything, except for some of the windmill stuff.

Dale called it "a reversal of reality." Yesterday, the president engaged in some remarkably unsophisticated prattle about autism, vaccines and the like. Today, the New York Times has published a colloquy between three medical specialists, one of whom says this about yesterday's event as a whole:

‘This May Be the Most Difficult Day in My Career’: Experts React to Trump’s Autism Remarks

[...]

Helen Tager-Flusberg: I was expecting some of what was presented, but I have to say I was shocked and appalled to hear the extreme statements without evidence in support of what any of the presenters said. In some respects this was the most unhinged discussion of autism that I have ever listened to. It was clear that none of the presenters knew much about autism...and nothing about the existing science. This may be the most difficult day in my career.

We've long asked if something might be wrong with the sitting president. Stating the obvious, it would be a human tragedy—a tragic loss of human potential—if the answer is yes.

The American press corps has agreed that such questions must never be asked or discussed. That said, we thought, as we watched the president today, that he neither looked nor seemed to be well.

That would be a human tragedy. But that's how it looked to us.

We haven't mentioned the insults directed today against former President Biden. At one point, wasting the time of the planet's leaders, the sitting president said this:

That's why the United States is now applying tariffs to other countries. And much as these tariffs were, for many years, applied to us, uncontrollably applied to us, we've used tariffs as a defense mechanism under the Trump administration, including my first term, where hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs were taken in. And by the way, we had the lowest inflation and now we have very low inflation. The only thing different is that we have hundreds of billions of dollars flowing into our country. But this is how we will ensure that the system works for everyone and is sustainable into the future. We're also using tariffs to defend our sovereignty and security throughout the world, including against nations that have taken advantage of former U.S. administrations for decades, including the most corrupt, incompetent administration in history—the Sleepy Joe Biden administration.

For the record, no money is "flowing into the country" when those tariff payments are made. Meanwhile, the fellow can't quit the childish, insulting nicknames, even on this global stage.

We didn't think he looked or seemed well. That would be a human tragedy, but this is the situation our nation has chosen, and as Chekhov said at the end of Lady With Lapdog, things don't get any simpler from here.

HEALING: Laura Ingraham didn't ask...

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2025

...and Kelly doesn't care: "The sunshine of the prairie summer and fall months would come sifting down with healing and strength..."

As we noted yesterday—as we've noted in the past—Sandburg offered that mysterious claim near the end of his two-volume biography, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years (1926).

Lincoln would soon be on his way from Illinois to the White House. He left "not knowing when, or whether ever, I may return, with a task before me greater than that which rested upon Washington." 

So the rail-splitter told the crowd at the Springfield railway station—the congregation to whom he would bid "an affectionate farewell." 

In fact, the healing of the American nation didn't come easily after he himself was shot and killed in April 1865. In truth, it isn't entirely clear that the healing ever took place at all.

That war had been fought between the Blue and the Grey. Today, we're involved in a great if undeclared civil war between the Red and the Blue. 

Could some sort of political genius accomplish some sort of healing now? Consider what happened just last night on a Fox News Channel program.

We refer to The Ingraham Angle, that channel's 7 p.m. show (that's 4 p.m. out on the coast). Midway through the program, Laura Ingraham spoke with Tom Homan. This was part of the background:

Trump Justice Dept. Closed Investigation Into Tom Homan for Accepting Bag of Cash

Tom Homan, who was later named President Trump’s border czar, was recorded in September 2024 accepting a bag with $50,000 in cash in an undercover F.B.I. investigation, according to people familiar with the case, which was later shut down by Trump administration officials.

The cash payment, which was made inside a bag from the food chain Cava, grew out of a long-running counterintelligence investigation that had not been targeting Mr. Homan, according to the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the case.

Mr. Homan’s encounter with the undercover agents, recorded on audiotape, led him to be investigated for potential bribery and other crimes, after he apparently took the money and agreed to help the agents—who were posing as businessmen—secure future government contracts related to border security, the people said.

After Mr. Trump took office this year, Justice Department officials shut down the case because of doubts about whether prosecutors could prove to a jury that Mr. Homan had agreed to do any specific acts in exchange for the money, and because he had not held an official government position at the time of the meeting with undercover agents, the people added.

That was the start of the front-page report in Sunday's New York Times. One day earlier, MSNBC's Leonnig and Dilanian had first reported these allegations. To see their report, click here.

Say what? Today, Homan is a major player within the Trump administration. When he allegedly accepted that bag of cash, last year's campaign between Candidates Trump and Harris was still going on.

Their lone debate had taken place on September 10. Two weeks later, had Homan accepted a big sack of cash? Last night, it almost seemed that Laura Ingraham wanted to find out. 

Her interview with Homan started at 7:22 p.m. Three minutes later, she asked:

INGRAHAM (9/22/25): Tom, I want to give you a chance to address this article that came out over the weekend. It was on our always reliable MSNBC and they said that you took $50,000 in cash in a bag from an undercover FBI agent to help them win government contracts in Trump’s second term.

The DOJ said they concluded there was no criminal wrongdoing. But nevertheless, that story is out there and I imagine you want to respond to that.

For the record, it was the DOJ under President Trump which apparently "concluded there was no criminal wrongdoing" with respect to that bag of cash. Still, had Homan accepted that big sack of cash? And if he had accepted the cash, why would he have done that?

Ingraham had asked about the report. In this, his first response, Tom Homan described. or perhaps failed to describe, what he, Tom Homan, had done:

HOMAN (continuing directly): Absolutely. I did nothing criminal. I did nothing illegal. And you know, it’s hit piece after hit piece after hit piece. And I’m glad the FBI and DOJ came out and said, you know, said that nothing illegal happened, nothing—you know, no criminal activity.

You’re talking about a guy who spent 34 years enforcing law. I mean, I left a very successful business that I ran to come back and work for a government again. I’m back on a government paycheck. Not only did I sacrifice, my family sacrifices. I make sacrifices every day. I got more death threats than anybody. 

INGRAHAM: I know that.

HOMAN: I got a security team around me, but guess what? My kids don’t, my wife don’t. I mean, I haven’t lived with my wife in months because I don’t want her to be here right now with all the threats.

So after all the sacrifices, after serving my nation for all these years, they want to come out and dirty me up. And it’s not going to end. There’s a hit piece on me every two weeks. But keep coming, because you know what? Tom Homan isn’t going anywhere, Tom Homan isn’t shutting up, and Tom Homan’s gonna keep doing what he’s doing because working with President Trump is the greatest honor of my life. We’re making this country safer again every day and we’re gonna keep doing it.

So said Tom Homan, just last night, speaking about Tom Homan. "Tom Homan’s gonna keep doing what he’s doing, "Tom Homan assertively said.

Tom Homan also said that Tom Homan had done nothing illegal. According to various legal specialists, that statement may (or may not) be accurate.

That said, had Tom Homan actually accepted that big bag of cash? As you can see, Tom Homan hadn't said whether Tom Homan had actually done that!

Tom Homan hadn't said if Tom Homan accepted the cash! For that reason, Ingraham advanced this probing follow-up question:

INGRAHAM (continuing directly):  Thank you for joining us.

Thank you for joining us, she said! At that point, she teased the next topic, then went to a commercial break.

For whatever reason, Ingraham had waited until the end of the short interview segment before she asked about this topic. After Homan's rambling statement, she thanked him and went to a break.

Was that a serious attempt at journalism, or was that merely a set-up—a set-up engineered by the pro-Trump Fox News Channel? You can judge that one for yourself—but an earlier statement by Megyn Kelly seemed to illustrate the very deep hole we're all in at this point.

It's a very deep tribal hole—the kind of hole a nation is in when a functioning nation (or empire) has essentially broken apart. 

At this point, Kelly is a high-profile, somewhat flamboyant pro-Trump podcaster. There's no law against such a stance, but her initial reaction to the report about Homan and the cash had perhaps been a bit surprising.

She spoke on behalf of Red America. We DO NOT CARE, the podcaster wrote. 

Here's Mediaite's report:

Megyn Kelly Defends Declaring ‘We DO NOT CARE’ About Tom Homan Corruption Allegations

Former Fox News host turned successful podcaster Megyn Kelly declared over the weekend that she absolutely does not care about the allegation that Trump border czar Tom Homan was recorded accepting $50,000 to help with securing government contracts.

[...]

Carol Leonnig, who broke the story, posted the report to X over the weekend. Kelly quickly replied to Leonnig’s post and wrote, “We DO NOT CARE. Don’t bother @RealTomHoman he’s a national treasure.”

Lay off Homan, the podcaster said. We don't care whether he took that cash!

Later, Kelly provided a lengthy explanation of that initial post. In the course of that post, she offered a rather startling statement.

We'll start with that angry post tomorrow—but a former nation has come apart when a major segment of its population has reached the point Kelly described in that second post.

Question:

Should we bid this struggling nation an affectionate farewell? Laura Ingraham didn't ask—and Kelly doesn't care!

Tomorrow: According to Kelly, this is all her emerging tribe really wants to do