TUESDAY: Is Adam Smith allowed to say that?

TUESDAY, MARCH 31, 2026

What the congressman said: Adam Smith appeared as a guest on Fox News Sunday last weekend. 

We refer to Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), a Democrat from the state of Washington. In our view, he tends to be smart and sane. 

He serves as Ranking Member of (as top Democrat on) the House Armed Services Committee. It was in that capacity that he appeared on Fox News Sunday with its anchor, Shannon Bream, who has sometimes also been caught being both smart and sane. 

Bream isn't the standard Fox News Channel messenger person. On Sunday, she and Smith had a lengthy discussion about the current partial government shutdown.

In the main, we aren't concerned today with the shape of that longer discussion. Along the way, Smith surprised us with something he actually said. We join that discussion in progress:

BREAM (3/29/26): If you [Democrats] all want to change ICE policy, why not fund everyone as these bills were already agreed to? There was a bipartisan agreement on these bills. They hit this block in the Senate after they'd already been part of a bipartisan negotiation.

SMITH: Yes! They hit the block in the Senate after two American citizens were killed in Minneapolis, without any accountability!

BREAM: Which is a tragedy, but there are Americans too—Rachel Morin, Jocelyn Nungaray—I mean, those are Americans who have been killed too.

SMITH: We have a legitimate debate to be had over how to do immigration enforcement. And by the way, I agree with Senator Cotton [an earlier guest]. The Biden administration did not do immigration enforcement the way it should have. We should have the border more secure than it was. But there's plenty of room between that policy, between the "radical left" policy you keep talking about—you know, open borders and all of that—and having masked, unidentifiable ICE agents show up, no probable cause, no due process, killing two people, warrantless searches of peoples' homes, detaining people without any due process. Can't we get somewhere in between in those two extremes? 

And so on from there. 

You're looking at part of a longer discussion. We're mainly concerned with these highlighted statements by Smith: 

The Biden administration did not do immigration enforcement the way it should have. We should have the border more secure than it was. 

We think we may have heard some major Democrat making some such statements before. But we're not totally sure that we have.

The handling of the southern border under President Biden remains the political gift which keeps on giving to purveyors of agitprop inside Silo Red. It's always there for Red American messengers to mention and fall back on. 

To the best of our knowledge, the handling of the southern border under President Biden remains unexplained to this day. Smith has at least acknowledged a fact what will seem to be obvious to tens of millions of voters: 

Absent some future explanation, the first three-plus years of border policy under President Biden are very hard to affirm. It seems to us that Smith had the right idea in admitting that this unexplained policy matter went wrong. 

A final point: 

Who were Rachel Morin and Jocelyn Nungaray?  Every Fox News Channel viewer will know. Some Blue Americans may not.

In our view, we Blues have promulgated some slippery evasions regarding the way they (and others) were sexually assaulted and murdered in recent years. Jocelyn Nungaray was only 12 years old at the time of her vicious killing by a pair of assailants. 

In our view, attention should have been paid by Blues as well as by Reds.

We Blues may be inclined to cling to our tribal dodges. It's a very human thing to do, but as we try to shape the future, we think it's a bad idea.

HEALTH: Tur was also concerned by the Sharpies!

TUESDAY, MARCH 31, 2026

No specialists need apply: As we noted yesterday, the president held a televised "cabinet meeting" last Thursday. 

That evening, CNN's Erin Burnett was concerned. Her program, Erin Burnett OutFront, starts at 7 p.m. That evening, she started like this:  

BURNETT (3/26/26) Out front next, breaking news: 

Iran with a new threat against U.S. troops as Trump reportedly weighs new military options to seize Iranian land.

Also breaking: Are TSA lines about to finally get shorter? An announcement just in that could make a major difference at airports across the country tonight.

And why did President Trump spend five minutes talking about Sharpies today? Is this what Americans want? Let's go OUTFRONT. 

With respect to the cabinet meeting, he had her (concerned) with the Sharpies! Granted, it wasn't the first piece of breaking news that night. But the Sharpies were out front as Burnett opened her show. 

As we noted yesterday, Burnett called upon S. E. Cupp to help her discuss the five minutes the president spent on the Sharpies. Cupp was concerned about that matter too. As we noted yesterday, here's part of what she said: 

CUPP: Listen, the truth is, most voters are not watching these insane cabinet meetings. We have the pleasure of having to do that, and they are insane. 

And if you watch them, that's one, one of several moments that are just kind of nutso. If you watch them, you have to seriously question Trump's stability. 

"It's insane. It's insane," she later said. "It could get people killed." 

In fairness, it wasn't clear, at that later point, what Cupp was actually talking about. 

Was she talking about the president's conduct? Or was she talking about "the groveling, the flattery" of the cabinet members—"the North Korea coded kind of attitude you have to have in this White House?" 

At that point, it wasn't clear what was insane. As we noted yesterday, the segment ended with this:

CUPP: He hasn't even told the American public why were in Iran, when we're going to get out, what to expect. He hasn't conditioned us to know what's about to happen. And he's rambling for four minutes about Sharpies. It's embarrassing. 

BURNETT: Four minutes and 56 seconds, to be exact. 

Linguistically, "embarrassing" seems less troubling than "insane." But along the way, Cupp had made this statement about the "nutso moments" from that day's televised event:

You have to seriously question Trump's stability. 

You have to (seriously) question the president's stability, Cupp had plainly said. But does anyone have a clear idea what she meant by that? 

During the program, Burnett played a brief chunk of videotape from the president's five-minute ramble. Later, People magazine presented a lengthy report about the ramble, including extensive excerpts of what the president had actually said.  

(Headline: Trump Rambles About Sharpie Pens for 5 Straight Minutes During High-Level Cabinet Meeting amid Iran War. To read that report, just click here. Lengthy quotations from Trump included!)

To appearances, Burnett was concerned about what she had seen when the president went on that extensive side trip. But please note what she and her producers did: 

They didn't book a medical specialist to discuss what the president's conduct might mean. Instead, they booked a political commentator—and when that commentator voiced concern about the president's "stability," Burnett made no attempt to ask her what she might mean. 

So it goes as our major journalists tiptoe on eggshells, pretending to discuss such points. Plainly, Burnett and Cupp thought there was something to be concerned about in the president's five-minute discussion of Sharpies—but then again, so did MS NOW's Katy Tur.

Yesterday afternoon, Tur devoted a segment to the same topic on her two-hour afternoon program, Katy Tur Reports. In our view, Tur is thoroughly sharp. 

At Mediate, Alex Griffing published a detailed report about what Tur now said. Headline included, his report, with videotape included, started off like this: 

‘Is Donald Trump Well?’ MS NOW’s Katy Tur Does Deep Dive on President’s Mental Acuity 

MS NOW anchor Katy Tur asked her viewers on Monday if President Donald Trump is still mentally fit, taking a deep dive into polls showing a growing number of Americans are starting to ask the question.

“Is Donald Trump well? Is his head in the presidency? Does he have the mental acuity to lead this country?” Tur began to kick off the segment, adding:

"More people are starting to doubt that—beyond, of course, Democrats who have always doubted it. "

Soon, Tur was focusing on the Sharpies monologue. Specifically, she was asking about the president's "mental acuity," just as that headline said. 

Tur was concerned by that five-minute ramble too! In our view, that concern is perfectly reasonable—is quite important, in fact.

That said, Tur didn't bring anyone on her show to evaluate what the president said. After playing extensive tape of his comments about the Sharpies—after listing various claims by the president which had apparently turned out to be false—Tur simply expressed her own concern in the manner shown: 

TUR (3/30/26): While a lot of this has always just been part of who Donald Trump is—a man who works the room, seeks attention, seeks applause—he’s now about to be 80 years old, and he’s launched a war that he does not seem to have a plan for. 

Based upon the highlighted statement, it seemed that Tur was voicing concern about a familiar type of cognitive decline. We refer to the type of decline which will often occur—but which often doesn't occur—when people reached an advanced age.   

Might something be wrong with the sitting president? Is it possible that he is experiencing a cognitive decline of a fairly familiar type? Is there reason to question his stability, whatever that might? 

Also, is it possible that he's "insane," whatever that might mean? Was that merely colloquial speech on Cupp's part, or did Cupp mean something specific by that choice of wods? 

Quite a few journalists and news orgs have called attention to the apparent oddness of the president's ramble about Sharpies last week. As far as we know, none of them have interviewed medical specialists about their alleged points of concern. 

None have spoken to medical specialists about their concern! We'll leave you today with this question: 

How sincere a concern is that? 

On this sprawling campus, we're conducting a search for the president's health. That said, we're also conducting a maddening search for intelligent American journalism. 

Should journos be speaking to medical specialists? Or are interviews with other cable figures "close enough for journalistic work?"

Tomorrow: Cognitive decline v. "mental illness"

Still coming: The intriguing essay which carried this headline:

OPINION

We’ve Stopped Noticing That Trump’s Cabinet Meetings Are Completely Insane 

MONDAY: We didn't want to leave Friday behind!

MONDAY, MARCH 30, 2026

Truth beauty, beauty truth: "Truth is beauty, beauty truth?" Or was it the other way around? 

We couldn't quite remember! We've never ingested the poem in question, but that bromide has been banging around inside our heads over the past few days. 

Today, we finally googled it up. There Keats had gone again, at the end of a famous ode, addressing some ancient pottery:

Ode on a Grecian Urn 

[...]  

When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
 "Beauty is truth, truth beauty—that is all
 Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

That's the way the poem ends. Aside from its famous bromide, we wouldn't necessarily recommend it. 

Truth is beauty, beauty truth? The misordered saying had been banging around in our heads because of what we got to write about on Friday afternoon, after spending some time down at the medical mission. 

We had taken two books along to combat the hours of sitting around. As we noted in Friday afternoon's report, the two books in our satchel were these: 

Mary L. Trump
Too Much and Never Enough 
Simon & Schuster, 2020

Francine Prose
Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife
HarperCollins, 2009

Until that very day, it hadn't occurred to us that there's a type of connection between those two books. The connection is lodged in the first thing Prose includes in her endlessly fascinating book. 

Prose starts with something John Berryman wrote about Anne Frank's extremely famous book way back in 1967:

I would call the subject of Anne Frank’s Diary even more mysterious and fundamental than St. Augustine’s, and describe it as the conversion of a child into a person…. 

In fact, each of the books we scanned that day involve "the conversion of a child into a person"—or perhaps, the way that conversion may fail to occur in the case of the unfortunate child who is raised in a profoundly unhelpful way. 

Mary Trump's book describes the disordered upbringing of her uncle, starting at age 2 and a half. There is also a passing mention of the fact that certain kinds of (serious) "personality disorders" can be inherited—can be passed along right there in the genes.

Mary Trump describes a tragically disordered upbringing. As Prose describes Anne Frank's upbringing, she describes something quite different. 

On Friday, we posted a pair of anecdotes from Prose's book. We didn't want to post on Saturday morning—didn't want to leave those captured moments behind.

Before the madness arrived, the one child was receiving what you'd hope every child would receive. In Mary Frank's detailed account, the other child was receiving a vastly different type of experience.

You can almost imagine that the results are there for all to see. Pity the child, we've said

We didn't want to post again on Saturday morning. We wanted to stay where we were.

We wanted to stay with that extremely famous, sacred child—with the developing, cherished young person before the madness arrived. Truth is beauty, beauty truth, Prose's book always seems to say.

HEALTH: We're launching a search for the president's health!

MONDAY, MARCH 30, 2026

And for what that familiar term means: Last Thursday afternoon, the sitting president convened one of his televised "cabinet meetings."  

We employ scare quotes there because these televised events are unlike the classic cabinet meetings of the American past. That evening, on CNN's Erin Burnett Outfront, Burnett asked S. E. Cupp to comment on this latest event.

Meanwhile, who is S. E. Supp? Burnett introduced her on this occasion as "former Republican strategist, now podcast and television host S. E. Cupp." 

The leading authority on Cupp's career as a political commentator offers this somewhat dated overview:  

S. E. Cupp 

Sarah Elizabeth Cupp (born February 23, 1979) is an American television host, political commentator, and writer. In August 2017, she began hosting S. E. Cupp: Unfiltered, a political panel show, co-hosted by Andrew Levy, on HLN and later CNN.

She is a former panelist on the CNN political debate show Crossfire, author of Losing Our Religion: The Liberal Media's Attack on Christianity and co-author of Why You're Wrong About the Right. She was a co-host of the MSNBC talk show The Cycle...

[...]  

Throughout her career, Cupp has described herself as a "mainstream conservative" and a supporter of "limited government, self-reliance, self-empowerment, lower taxes." ... 

Cupp was strongly critical of Donald Trump's [first term] presidency, saying "I don't know these Republicans [that support Trump]. This isn't what drew me to this party." She voted for Joe Biden in the 2020 United States presidential election. 

So it had gone with Cupp as of 2020. Now she was discussing the president's latest "cabinet meeting." In part, she offered this:

CUPP (3/26/26): Listen, the truth is, most voters are not watching these insane cabinet meetings. We have the pleasure of having to do that, and they are insane. 

And if you watch them, that's one, one of several moments that are just kind of nutso. If you watch them, you have to seriously question Trump's stability.

She described the televised events as "kind of nutso," insane. Most strikingly, she said the televised events raise serious questions about the sitting president's "stability."

That was one observer's instant assessment of the day's event. Later, Cupp added this commentary on the cabinet members, but also concerning the president himself:

CUPP: This is the cost of being in Trump's orbit. Pam Bondi unfurled a banner at DOJ with Trump's face on it to suck up to him. Rick Grenell put Trump's name on the Kennedy Center to suck up to him. He's now gone.

I mean, it's really humiliating. The groveling, the flattery, the North Korea coded kind of attitude you have to have in this White House and news breaking today, he's going to put his name on our money. I mean, this is just humiliating for a great nation like ours.

I just think we are looking increasingly like a North Korea, you know, like a hermit nation where you just have to tell the president what he wants to hear. I hear they're showing him videos of things blowing up in Iran. Like that's his security briefing. 

It's insane. It's insane. It could get people killed. But just at the basic level, this is not America as we know.

[...]

He hasn't even told the American public why were in Iran, when we're going to get out, what to expect. He hasn't conditioned us to know what's about to happen. And he's rambling for four minutes about Sharpies. It's embarrassing. 

BURNETT: Four minutes and 56 seconds, to be exact.

That was one (1) observer's assessment. For whatever it may be worth, the word "insane" kept sliding in as Cupp assessed that day's "North Korea coded" event. 

That said, also this:

That was Cupp's first mention of the Sharpies. Right at the start of the show, Burnett had beaten her to it.

Burnett had explicitly teased the president's discussion of the Sharpies in the CNN program's first minute. Later, she mentioned the Sharpies again as she teased the upcoming segment with Cupp:

("Why did President Trump spend nearly five minutes today talking about Sharpies while America is at war?")

Say what? Had the president really spent five minutes discussing Sharpies at the "cabinet meeting?" As shown above, Burnett timed the president's rambling discussion at "four minutes and 56 seconds, to be exact." 

Plainly, Burnett thought this discussion had been strange. Cupp seemed to think it was part of what made her question the president's "stability."

So it went inside much of Silo Blue in the wake of the "cabinet meeting." Cupp made liberal use od the word "insane." Earlier, a headline in Mediaite had used that same word, except a bit more so. 

The opinion piece at Mediate had been written by Colby Hall, one of the site's founding editors. The headline atop Hall's opinion piece said this:  

OPINION
We’ve Stopped Noticing That Trump’s Cabinet Meetings Are Completely Insane 

In the headline, the president's cabinet meetings were said to be completely insane. In the body of his piece, Hall quickly mentioned the Sharpies, along with a few other somewhat peculiar "subjects covered by the President of the United States at Thursday’s cabinet meeting."

The headline called the meeting insane—completely insane at that. Somewhat oddly, the word "insane" doesn't appear in the body of Hall's essay. 

Still, an obvious question might have seemed to arise in Hall's piece. It seems like a very important question:

Was Hall suggesting that something may be wrong, in a serious, significant or dangerous way, with the president's "mental health?"

Was Hall suggesting something like that? We'll examine his essay tomorrow. For today, we'll close with this:

On a conceptual basis, physical illness is easy. On a conceptual basis, so-called "mental illness" is hard. 

Our struggling society, such as it is, operates with a very limited set of understandings about the nature of "mental illness." Also, our news orgs have long agreed that questions of mental health must never arise in discussions of major political figures.

That was always a very good rule—until the time came when it wasn't.

Is it possible that our sitting president is struggling with (serious) mental health issues? How well do we understand what that claim might even mean?

Today, we start down a long and winding road in pursuit of those plainly important questions. Is something wrong with the president's "stability"—with the president's health? As a nation, shouldn't we possibly be trying to puzzle that out?

As a society, we're looking at this question through a glass extremely darkly. Like all people, the president deserves to be in good health—but what is the actual situation on this very day?

Tomorrow: Hall seemed to voice a major complaint—a complaint about the press

SATURDAY: She had a question for President Trump!

SATURDAY, MARCH 28, 2026

We have a question for you: You'll have to forgive us for our minor activity today. 

We're looking ahead, starting Monday, to (as Lincoln had it) "a task greater than that which rested upon Washington." Also, how can a person hope to keep pace with the moral and intellectual squalor which now stirs the drink of this failing nation's imitation of a public discourse?

We speak as someone who watched the angry, fantastically bungled first segment of last night's Gutfeld! show. But also, as someone who watched the children pretend to question President Trump on Thursday's edition of The Five, in an imitation of an interview which lasted 46 minutes.

As we noted yesterday morning, the children's attention spans were notably short that day. As we noted, it fell to Jesse Watters to ask the session's fourth question. 

By now, attention spans were almost spent. This was the best he could do:

WATTERS (3/26/26): But let me ask you about Iran. You've kind of suggested that we'd knocked out Ayatollah Junior. Have we—and did the CIA tell you that Ayatollah Junior is gay? 

Is "Ayatollah Junior" gay? It seemed to be the only question the famous fellow could conjure. 

Question 6 came from Greg Gutfeld. Inevitably, it concerned himself: 

GUTFELD: Mr. President, let's shift onto some other topics. I'm debating whether to be serious or not serious. 

I'm gonna be not serious! 

[...] 

You know, you're doing the White House Correspondents Dinner for the first time, and you're gonna get a 10. Why wasn't I asked to do the roast? 

It was the best he could manage. (We think we've correctly transcribed the part about the president getting a 10.)

(We've edited out an interruption, in which the president asked if "Sleepy Joe" could have handled an interview session like this one. The children chuckled and agreed that he never could have done it!)

Lincoln headed off from Springfield, hoping to save the nation. As in The Sixth Sense, so too today:

Has the death of the nation already occurred, but we just don't know it yet? 

Special bonus question: Question 9 came from Dana Perino. By now, the charade was splayed out for all to see. This is what she asked: 

PERINO: Hi, it's Dana again, and I have a kind of pop culture question for you. 

So I'm new to New York, relatively speaking—so, fifteen years—and there's all these young people across America are watching Love Story, which is the story of JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette. And I'm curious: 

Did you know JFK Jr.? And do you have any nostalgia for the 90s? 

Other questions were even more pointless. Are these the death throes we've chosen?