THURSDAY: "Troubled times had come..."

THURSDAY, AUGUST 28, 2025

Mayor Scott speaks with Ana Cabrera: We've admired Ana Cabrera's calm demeanor dating back to the CNN days.

We think she pretty much did the right thing on yesterday's MSNBC program, speaking to Mayor Scott. There is no perfect thing:

MSNBC Anchor Reminds Mayor His City Has One of the Highest Crime Rates After He Snaps Back at Trump

MSNBC anchor Ana Cabrera reminded Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott (D) that his city suffers from some of the highest crime rates in the country after he celebrated a 50-year low in recorded homicides in response to President Donald Trump.

Scott joined Cabrera on Tuesday, where he responded to the president’s insults against Baltimore. Trump called it a “hellhole” after Maryland Governor Wes Moore (D) invited him to walk the streets with him. Moore’s comments were to push back on Trump’s suggestion that he could deploy National Guard troops to cities like Baltimore to crack down on crime, as he has already done in Washington, D.C.

Scott argued that he is already leading the effort to reduce violent crime in Baltimore, referencing programs focused on rehabilitation and the targeting of illegal guns.

[...]

As Cabrera also pointed out, there have also been dozens of homicides in Baltimore this year. As of August 1, the city has seen 84 homicides this year, a drop from 111 during the same time in 2024.

And so on from there.

At present, Baltimore is on pace to record roughly 150 homicides this year. Would that represent a 50-year low?

Sadly, yes—it would. Let's take a look at the record.

We came to Baltimore in September 1969. We stopped being a college senior, instead becoming a fifth-grade teacher in the Baltimore City Public Schools.

According to Wikipedia's numbers, Baltimore recorded 237 homicides hat year. According to Wikipedia's numbers, that represented 26.2 homicides per 100,000 residents, while the nationwide homicide rate that year was only 7.3.

From there, the numbers bounced around—sometimes below 200, more often over. As happened almost everywhere, the big jump came in the early 1990s:

Homicides / Homicide rates, Baltimore City
1990: 305 (41.4)
1991: 304 (40.6)
1992: 335 (44.3)
1993: 353 (48.2)
1994: 321 (43.4)

As was the case elsewhere, the numbers eventually began to recede, dropping to 196 (31.3) in 2011. Then they went up again. For whatever reason, they didn't fall back from Covid-year levels until the past few years:

Homicides / Homicide rates, Baltimore City
2020: 335 (57.1)
2021: 337 (58.3)
2022: 333 (58.4)
2023: 261 (46.0)
2024: 201 (34.3)
2025: 150, projected

Yes, those numbers are dropping. That said, in 2023, the national homicide rate was only 5.5, as opposed to Baltimore's 46.0. 

Mayor Scott was elected mayor in November 2020. For whatever reason, the numbers have plainly dropped on his watch.

Who dies in all those homicides? At least two of our former fifth graders, back in the 1980s and 1990s. Also, NAME WITHHELD, under whose barely perceptible coaching we played alongside Marvelous Marvin Webster in the Baltimore Neighborhood Basketball League in the summer of 72.

(Even with Webster, we only went 9-9 that summer.  Wes Unseld was the citywide association's hands-on commissioner. Years later, we were told that our coach, a very genial person, had been murdered while driving a cab.)

It largely depends on where you live, or possibly on what you have to do to earn a living. Also, Wikipedia's entry says this:

Homicides in Baltimore are heavily concentrated within a small number of high-poverty neighborhoods. According to a 2016 Baltimore Sun investigation, around 80% of the city's gun homicides are committed in 25% of the city's neighborhoods...

Gang-related crimes are usually clustered in drug territories and mostly affect people involved in drug dealing, particularly narcotics and rival gangs.

Elsewhere, homicide rates are lower. In 2017, London's homicide rate was 1.6 per 100,000. (For Montreal, click here.) The high rate of homicide in the U.S. is something we Blues sometimes like to discuss, though mainly in certain contexts. 

In large part, the ultimate story behind all this tragedy stretches back into our nation's history, as everyone surely knows. 

On a nationwide basis, the first big jump in homicide rates seems to have started in the late 1960s. Bruce Springsteen described one part of that situation in "My Hometown:"

Two cars at a light on a Saturday night
In the back seat there was a gun
Words were passed, then a shotgun blast
Troubled times had come
To my hometown.

"Troubled times had come," he said. Has any song in the annals of popular music ever been more tightly written?

THE DUEL: The dumbest children in the world...

THURSDAY, AUGUST 28, 2025

...performed on three "cable news" programs: We start with a statement of gratitude to the invaluable Rev.

The invaluable site seemed to have taken a hike in the past few weeks. As of yesterday, it was back to providing an invaluable service—it was once again publishing transcripts of such events as the bizarre "cabinet meeting" which took place two days ago.

The "cabinet meeting" ran for three hours and seventeen minutes. The invaluable Rev lets you read the statements of its various players, but especially of President Trump.

Given "the wickedness of the times" (Plato), that's an invaluable service. We expect to sample the president's endless orations at that event over the next several days.

For today, we move on to a basic question. At present, is a duel really taking place—a duel of this description: 

The Revolt of the D-Minus Students v. The Haplessness of the Elites?

For starters, is there really some such thing as "a revolt of the D-minus students?" For those who would doubt the things we say, we take you to this report from Mediaite:

Jesse Watters and Brian Kilmeade Discuss ‘The Most Attractive First Lady Ever’

Fox News hosts Jesse Watters and Brian Kilmeade debated on The Five, Wednesday about who was “the most attractive first lady ever.”

Reacting to a report which claimed a Vanity Fair editor had threatened to walk out of the company with half of her staff if First Lady Melania Trump was featured on the cover, Watters questioned, “Was Jill [Biden] on the cover?”

“Twice, I think,” replied Kilmeade.

The conversation continued...

Full disclosure! Yesterday afternoon, we ourselves had the misfortune of watching this inanity as it occurred in real time. 

Were Watters and Kilmeade once D-minus students? We can't answer that question.

That said, their imitation of a conversation was taking place on the nation's most-watched "cable news" program! As they continued, the well-matched pair of corporate dimwits proceeded to discuss the nation's news in the following manner, with guest co-host Kennedy, the former VJ, trying to make the boys stop:

WATTERS (8/27/25): She was on the cover twice?

KILMEADE: And then you have—

WATTERS: Was Michelle Obama on the cover?

KENNEDY: Three times.

KILMEADE: Three times.

WATTERS: Okay. Do you think those two women are prettier than Melania Trump?

KENNEDY: You’re not gonna answer that. Not gonna answer that! Not gonna answer that!

WATTERS: No, do you think they’re prettier?

KILMEADE: No, no. Melania—

WATTERS: Is it not about pretty? Is it about fashion? Because Melania’s also more fashionable.

KILMEADE: Right. She is—she’s the most attractive first lady ever. Let’s be honest. I have not seen Martha Washington.

WATTERS: Martha Washington?

KILMEADE: I have not seen her.

WATTERS: She’s not your type?

KILMEADE: The problem is, when you have portraits instead of pictures—

WATTERS: You can’t really get a good look.

KILMEADE: Thank you.

WATTERS: What about Jackie O?

KILMEADE: All right, what’s your point? Why am I [inaudible]—

WATTERS: What’s my point? What’s your point? You said she [co-host Kennedy] is going to start dating somebody...

And so on, inanely, from there. Videotape is included at Mediaite's report.

"What's your point?" the one nitwit finally said. Did we mention the fact that this imitation of a discussion was taking place as an imitation of human life on the American nation's most-watched "cable news" program?

In fairness, we must say this. This imitation of a discussion was nowhere near as stupid as a discussion which occurred, two hours later, near the start of the same "cable news" channel's Ingraham Angle program.

Three hours after that, the second half of last night's Gutfeld! program was raw stupidity as raw and as stupid as raw stupidity ever gets. Greg Gutfeld himself wasn't present last night, but these imitations of humanity were:

Gutfeld!: Wednesday, August 27, 2025
Tyrus: former professional "wrestler"
Michele Tafoya: former sideline reporter
Kat Timpf: acting moderator
Jamie Lissow: comedian
Tom Shillue: comedian

Their discussions last night were jaw-dropping. We expect to expose you to those transcripts in the course of the next several days. But make no mistake:

The manicured dumbness of these discussions is the lifeblood of the programming on the current Fox News Channel. The channel's CEO, Suzanne Scott, hires the flyweights in question to offer this service, even paying them for their labors.

https://archive.org/details/FOXNEWSW_20250827_210000_The_Five/start/2580/end/2640

Also, in fairness, this: 

The flyweights on The Five were attempting to discuss this exclusive news report from the tabloid, The Daily Mail:

Vanity Fair staff erupt in fury over proposed Melania Trump cover with foul-mouthed meltdown

In fairness, if the exclusive report was accurate, we'd be inclined to regard its contents as the latest example of "the haplessness of the (Blue American) elites." 

The silly children on The Five were enjoying their silly fun. Later that evening, the bloated blowhard who performs as "Tyrus" extended a standard practice on the Gutfeld! show, offering the latest oration on the theme of what an unattractive dog Taylor Swift really is.

It's hard to overstate the sheer stupidity this corporate channel provides, or the throwback nature of its sexual content. But this is all part of what we mean when we refer to "the revolt (or revenge) of the D-minus students"—when we refer to the way their D-minus culture is seizing control of our flailing nation's culture.

A version of that destructive culture was on display in the "cabinet meeting" transcribed by the invaluable Rev. Though Blue elites preferred to focus on the conduct of the cabinet members, it was the endless orations of the sitting president which put this problem on its most vivid display.

Thanks to the invaluable Rev, it's possible today to revisit one of the endless strange claims which emerged from the sitting president's endless array of rambling, self-glorifying filibusters. In yesterday's report, we briefly sampled the claim in question. 

With the transcription now complete, we can offer the presentation at greater length. The oration concerned "my darling Vladimir." We hope you have plenty of time:

REPORTER (8/26/25): On Alaska, you had mentioned that there would be severe consequences if Vladimir Putin did not agree to a ceasefire. After that summit, that was rolled back, given the negotiations. Is he back on the clock now?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: I want to see that deal end. It's very serious what I have in mind if I have to do it, but I want to see it end. 

I think that in many ways he's there. Sometimes he'll be there, and Zelenskyy won't be there. It's like, who do we have today? I got to get them both at the same time. But I want to have it end. We have economic sanctions. I'm talking about economic, because we're not going to get into a world war.

I'll tell you what! In my opinion, if I didn't win this race, Ukraine could have ended up in a world war. We're not going to end up in a world war any more, but it would've ended up possibly in a world war. That would have been a, that would have been a— 

They were ready to trot. But just like India and Pakistan were going to end up in a nuclear war if I didn't stop them. 

It was sort of strange. I saw they were fighting, then I saw seven jets were shot down. I said, "That's not good." That's a lot of jets. $150 million planes were shot down. A lot of them. Seven, maybe more than that. They didn't even report the real number. And I'm talking to a very terrific man, Modi of India, and I say, "What's going on with you and Pakistan?" Then I'm talking to Pakistan, on trade. I say, "What's going on with you and India?" And the hatred was tremendous.

Now, this has been going on for a hell of a long time, sometimes with different names, for hundreds of years. But I said, "What's going on?" I said, "I don't want to make a trade deal." 

"No, no, no, we want to make trade deal." 

I said, "No, no, I don't want to make a trade deal with you. You're going to have a nuclear war. You guys are going to end up in a nuclear war." And that was very important to them. I said, "Call me back tomorrow, but we're not going to do any deals with you. Or we're going to put tariffs on you that are so high." 

You were there, Howard, right?

LUTNICK: Yep.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: We're going to put tariffs on you that was so high, I don't give a damn, your head's going to spin. You're not going to end up in a war. 

Within about five hours, it was done. It was done. Now, maybe it starts again. I don't know. I don't think so, but I'll stop it if it does. We can't let these things happen. 

The Russia-Ukraine situation. Last week, 7,012 soldiers—seven thousand oh twelve—soldiers died. They were Russian, they were Ukrainian, they weren't American. So a lot of people would say, "What do you care? They're not American." I care. 

Over the last couple of weeks, over 12,000 people died in two weeks. We're talking about crime where somebody's killed here? Think of it:

You have your son leaving Russia, leaving Ukraine, their little house, wherever they live with their parents. They're waving goodbye, just like our parents would wave goodbye. And they're waving, "Goodbye, son." And then a week later, his head's blown off in a stupid war by a drone. A whole new form of military problem.

So no, I'd like it to stop. I want to get it to stop. And it will not be a world war, but it'll be an economic war. And an economic war is going to be bad and it's going to be bad for Russia, and I don't want that. 

Now I have to also see, because not everybody—you know, Zelenskyy is not exactly innocent either OK? You know. It takes two people to tango, and I say it all the time, you got to get them together. I get along with Zelenskyy now, but we have a much different relationship because now we're not paying any money to Ukraine. I stopped that. We're paying money to ourselves. What's happening is NATO is buying all of the equipment and paying in full.

But even with that, forget about that. I want to get it stopped because it's a lot of lives that are being lost. Every week it's seven thousand, five thousand, six. I get the reports and I see battlefields. I'd rather not see them. And you read about Gettysburg, and you see those thousand, 600,000 people, but in that war in particular was really bad. Like 150,000 or something. Just dead bodies. 

I'm seeing the same. I see pictures, I see satellite pictures of heads over here, arms over here, legs over here. And this is like a modern age? It's no different than the worst wars that I've ever seen. And if I can stop it because I have a certain power or a certain relationship? I had a very good relationship with President Putin. Very, very good. That's a positive thing, again. 

And I think I'm probably the only—Steve Witkoff would tell you I'm the only one that can solve it. I don't know. He's told me that a few times. Unless he was saying that just to build up my ego, but it's not really. I have no ego when it comes to this stuff. I just want to see it stop. 

Thousands of young people, mostly young people, are dying every single week. If I can save that by doing sanctions, or by just being me, or by using a very strong tariff system that's very costly to Russia or Ukraine or whoever we have. But I stopped seven wars and three of those wars were going on for more than 30 years. 

You know, if you look at Congo, if you just look at any of them, almost all of them were going on for extended period of time. Now interestingly, one had just started, it was two days old and you know that one. That we did that one when we were in Scotland negotiating, it was two days, but there were two thousand dead bodies laying on the border, and I got that one stopped too. And I'm very honored by that. 

But I still—the one that I thought would be the easiest is turning out to be the hardest. That's President Putin and President Zelenskyy, but I think I'll get it done.

REPORTER: Why do you think—

PRESIDENT TRUMP: You never know, it's war. With war, you never know, right?

War's very tricky, very horrible. But with war, you never know. Things change. 

People go into war, think they're going to win the war, and then they get their asses kicked and they lose their country and they lose millions of lives. 

Nobody goes into a war thinking they're going to lose. They go in—I'm sure that Ukraine thought they were going to win, It's going to be, you know, "We're going to win." You're going to beat somebody that's 15 times your size? Biden shouldn't have let that happen. Biden shouldn't have—I mean, the man was grossly incompetent. He should have never been there. That would've never happened. But you don't go into a war that's 15 times your size.

Videotape of the whole event is available thanks to C-Span.

So went that oration. As the three-hour mark approached, the rambling disquisition consumed a full seven minutes, complete with a set of tales about the seven wars the president says he has brought to an end.

One of his miracles took only five hours! He has already stopped quite a few world wars.

The original question was never answered—the question about whether his darling, Vladimir Putin, was once again "on the clock" concerning a possible ceasefire. Last night, his darling bashed downtown Kyiv with a massive new set of attacks. Arms and legs and heads were everywhere, but the sitting American president can't seem to quit this man.

At the end of that wandering, occasionally ghoulish oration, we had heard about the arms and legs and the severed heads of the people who die in Ukraine. 

We had heard about the deaths at Gettysburg. The president still hadn't offered an assessment of his good friend, Vladimir—and he ended with that puzzling statement about the way Ukraine had somehow chosen, decided or agreed "to go into this war."

As we've watched videotape of this "cabinet meeting," we've thought that something seems to be visibly wrong with its principal participant. That would, of course, be a human tragedy, but it would also be a serious national problem.

Over here, our Blue American elites preferred to mock the cabinet members, who struggled to keep their eyes from closing as this very strange man droned on. He thinks he's probably the only one who can stop it—or at least, that's what Witkoff constantly says.

Is something wrong with President Trump? In Monday's report, we linked to the leading authority's lengthy report on the clinical term, "Grandiosity." But over here in Blue America, our tribunes don't know how to discuss that type of question, and they've agreed that they must never try.

Tomorrow, we'll tell you what we mean by that. Also, we'll visit more of this Tuesday's wandering orations. 

To see some pushback to the odd claim that Ukraine somehow chose to go into this war, you can peruse this additional report from Mediaite. But as the Fox News Channel keeps dragging the D-minus students out onto the air, they keep saying that Taylor Swift is really just a 5. They're extremely limited children.

Thye keep saying that Swift is a 5. Over here, in Blue America, our tribunes don't know how to discuss that part of their revolt either.

Tomorrow: Discussions of mental health


WEDNESDAY: When President Trump locked Washington up...

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 27, 2025

...his approvals jumped five points: As is true of every poll, the new poll by AP-NORC is only one poll.

No poll is ever perfectly accurate. If some poll was perfectly accurate, there would be no way to know that it was.

Polls provide approximations. That said, here's the way matters stand according to AP-NORC, Mediaite reporting:

Trump Surges to Best Approval Rating Ever in New AP Poll

President Trump is more popular than ever, at least according to one new poll released on Wednesday, with his approval rating jumping 5 points in the last month—an increase that coincides with his administration’s crime crackdown in Washington, D.C..

The poll results, from the The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, shows the president has a 45% approval rating nationwide. That is the best approval rating Trump has received from the AP-NORC poll in either his first or second term.

Trump’s handling of crime received a thumbs up from 53% of Americans who were polled; a whopping 88% of Republicans said they approved of the commander-in-chief’s approach to crime, while only 16% of Democrats said they liked what Trump is doing.

Some other key points on crime: 55% of respondents said it is “acceptable for the U.S. military and National Guard to assist local police in large cities,” according to the AP-NORC, but only one-third of Americans said they would support the federal government taking over police departments in American cities. The nationwide poll also found 80% of Americans believe crime is a major problem in big cities.

The report by Sean James continues from there. For the official report by AP-NORC, you can just click this.

For the record, the numbers in this poll aren't exactly "good"—but the numbers there are better. With respect to Trump's approval rating, AP-NORC had it at 42% back in March. It slid to 39 in April and June, then went to 40 last month. 

Now it's up to 45. The jump could be a statistical anomaly—or then again, probably not.

By the way:

Crime is "a major problem in big cities." When we Blues don't know how to say such things, we're looking for ways to lose.

THE DUEL: The Stepfords get mocked and the president walks!

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 27, 2025

Blue elites fail you again: We started telling you more than a decade ago:

It's all anthropology now!

At roughly that same time, Professor Norman O. Brown's presentation popped back into our heads. We don't know how or why that happened—but once again, here's part of the strange thing he said:

Apocalypse and/or Metamorphosis

[...]

I sometimes think I see that societies originate in the discovery of some secret, some mystery...and end in exhaustion when there is no longer any secret, when the mystery has been divulged, that is to say profaned...

There comes a time—I believe we are in such a time—when civilization has to be renewed by the discovery of some new mysteries...by the undemocratic power which makes poets the unacknowledged legislators of all mankind, the power which makes all things new.

For the fuller passage, just click this

Whatever he was talking about, he said that in May 1960, as part of this Phi Beta Kappa address. At that time, Professor Brown was becoming very hot in progressive circles. 

He said that in 1960; he may have been wrong at the time. Plainly, though, the problem he said he believed he saw has deeply infested us now. 

We refer to yesterdays "cabinet meeting"—to the more than three hour televised spectacle which Blue America's failing elites have described in a uniform manner. 

To the extent that they're bothering with the event at all, they're mocking the Stepfords—the cabinet members—but largely rushing past the president's extremely strange conduct. As the Stepfords are being mocked for their embarrassing conduct, the president deeply peculiar behavior is largely being disappeared. 

Likely through no fault of her own, Katie Rogers was assigned to discuss the event for the New York Times. Despite the astonishing conduct in question, her "news analysis" doesn't appear in today's print editions.

Yesterday afternoon, it appeared online. Headline included, her analysis starts like this

NEWS ANALYSIS
What, Exactly, Was That Cabinet Meeting?

What do you get for a president who commands everybody’s attention, all of the time?

For members of President Trump’s cabinet on Tuesday, the answer was apparently this: a televised meeting at the White House that lasted almost half the workday.

In front of a wall of cameras, the old “Apprentice” host offered a clear window into the way he was running his administration, starting with an ego that appeared to need frequent feeding, and blustery stamina: “This has never been done before,” the president said at one point, in between calling on secretaries to speak and marveling over the waiting reporters’ abilities to hold microphones and cameras aloft for several hours.

There in the Cabinet Room—which is starting to take on the gilded-cage look of Mr. Trump’s Oval Office—all of the president’s men and women took their turns, each working a little bit harder than the last to offer Mr. Trump praise and to assure him that they were working to tackle his long list of grievances.

It's true! Rogers starts with a glancing comment about the president's ego. We're even told that yesterday's bizarre event "offered a clear window into the way he was [sic] running his administration."

The tone about Trump is lightly mocking all through the Roger piece. Quickly, though, she starts to focus on the embarrassing conduct of the cabinet members:

On the embarrassing conduct of Lori Chavez-DeRemer, the labor secretary who "implored the president to come to her agency to look at his own 'big, beautiful' face on a banner."

On the embarrassing conduct of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.; "who once sawed the head off a whale and drove it home." 

On the embarrassing conduct of Secretary of State Marco Rubio; "who in his spare time is Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, acting head of the National Archives and Records Administration and acting administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development;" .

But also on the ludicrous conduct of Steve Witkoff, whose embarrassing conduct yesterday was this:

And then there was Steve Witkoff, a billionaire whose praise was so slavish that even the president seemed to pick up on the overkill. During his turn, Mr. Witkoff, the president’s peace envoy, complimented Mr. Trump’s leadership in the Israel-Gaza conflict, a war that continued this week with Israeli strikes killing 20, including journalists, at a Gazan hospital. He suggested again that Mr. Trump should receive the Nobel Peace Prize he has long coveted.

“There’s only one thing I wish for: that the Nobel committee finally gets its act together and realizes that you are the single finest candidate since the Nobel Peace, this Nobel award was ever talked about,” Mr. Witkoff said.

When he was finished, the billionaire received a round of applause from his colleagues.

Greetings from North Korea! And yes, they all knew to applaud.

For what it's worth, the conduct by the long list of sycophants—by the assembly of Stepfords—was truly astounding this day. As such, it teaches an anthropology lesson. 

Until you see such conduct occur, you might not know that it would be possible to get a room full of American adults to behave in such embarrassing ways. Plainly, yes, it's more than possible—and that was Rogers' focus.

As her "news analysis" proceeded, Rogers maintained her snarky tone—and she focused on the subordinates. Also this:

By paragraphs 6 and 7 of her analysis, she had even sought escape in this:

Mr. Trump, a pop culture maven, had relatively little to say about what was arguably the biggest news of the day: the engagement of Taylor Swift, whom he has publicly insulted and threatened for not supporting him, to Travis Kelce, the Kansas City Chiefs tight end. The event rattled on for so long that the president was asked to comment on news that had broken during the meeting.

“I wish him a lot of luck,” Mr. Trump said. “I think he’s a great guy, and I think that she’s a terrific person. So I wish them a lot of luck.”

"Arguably," the engagement was "the biggest news of the day," the New York Times journalist said. She failed to see that the actual biggest event was the extremely strange presidential behavior she was now refusing to describe.

Rogers told us what the president had to say about that high-profile engagement. She didn't tell us about the endless array of very strange things he said in the course of the three-plus hours, or about the very strange demeanor he had displayed.

She didn't tell us what was plain to the eye:

Something plainly seems to be wrong with this very important person. To anyone with eyes to see, that fact should be hard to miss.

In fairness, it wasn't just Rogers. All over the Blue American firmament, Blue elites offered mockery of the cabinet members while sliding past the disturbing state of affairs which was sitting right there before them.

Maggie Haberman did it on CNN. On MSNBC, Jen Psaki started last night's program with an essay about how strange the cabinet members had been

At 6 o'clock this very morning, Morning Joe started the same way, The cabinet members had demeaned themselves, Morning Joe viewers were told. The fact that something seems to be wrong with the sitting president is something these people can't say.

In yesterday's report, we made a certain statement about Monday's press events. We said we thought it had never been more clear that something seemed to be (tragically) wrong with the sitting president.

Yesterday, the president's weird demeanor and weird behavior were even more apparent. At Mediaite, the correspondents were perhaps a bit more frank about that fact than others who sit at higher stations.

They noted the president's very strange conduct. They did so in a string of reports which sat beneath headlines like these:

Trump Claims ‘Scum’ MSNBC Is Worse Than Violent Gangs

Trump Declares, ‘I Have the Right To Do Anything I Want’ Because ‘I’m the President’

Trump Says America Would Accept a Dictator in Exchange for Less Crime

Trump Tells Fake ‘Greatest President Of My Lifetime’ Story Hours After Fox News Busted Him—With Video

Trump Crows About His Economy, Falsely Claims Gas Is Below 2 Dollars In the South

Fox’s Jacqui Heinrich Notes ‘Unusual’ Moment When a Reporter Boosted Trump Rhetoric With Personal Story

Trump Pushes Wild Autism Claims During Cabinet Meeting With RFK Jr.

To their credit, they tried to capture some—and only some—of the president's very strange claims. Journalistically, it's much more difficult to describe his remarkably strange demeanor

How strange were many of the president's claims? Yes, he actually said that the people at MSNBC are worse than violent gang members. And no, he didn't seem to be joking, as one other Mediaite reporter decided to say.

Such claims were general over the meeting. Consider the report which started like this:

Trump Tells Fake ‘Greatest President Of My Lifetime’ Story Hours After Fox News Busted Him—With Video

President Donald Trump told a fake story about being called “the greatest president of my lifetime” by a Democratic governor—hours after a Fox News host showed the claim was false by going to the videotape.

During a photo op on Monday, Trump told the tale of how Gov. Wes Moore (D-MD) came up to him at a football game and couldn’t stop praising him:

[Transcript from Monday's event event]

Hours later, Fox News dug up the behind-the-scenes video of the scene in question—from Fox Nation’s Art of the Surge — and it proved that while Gov. Moore was respectful and collegial while discussing the Key Bridge disaster, he never said anything remotely resembling what Trump claimed.

It's true! As you can see in the full report, the president had made an extremely unlikely claim about something Governor Moore had allegedly said. But, as happenstance had it, videotape existed of the exchange in question. 

As the (Fox News) videotape showed, Moore had said nothing like what Trump had claimed—but then again, so what? During yesterday's event, "Trump told the story again—and even falsely claimed the video proved it."

Tommy Christopher provides the transcripts and the tapes of this remarkably strange bit of behavior. Such bizarre behaviors were given no place in Rogers' "analysis" piece.

Colloquially, the president's behavior might be called delusional.  Was it also diagnosable as some sort of clinical affliction?

We don't know how to answer your question. But late in yesterday's event, as he rambled and blustered, heaping mountains of praise on himself, the very strange American president took sides, once again, with his darling Vladimir. 

He offered this during a lengthy walk in the woods concerning the war on Ukraine. We apologize for the deletions, but the rambling side trips are endless:

PRESIDENT TRUMP (8/26/25): You know, Zelensky's not exactly innocent, either, OK? You know, it takes two people to tango...I have a very good relationship with President Putin—very, very good. That's a positive thing, again.

[...]

Nobody goes into a war thinking they're going to lose. They go in—I'm sure that Ukraine thought they were going to win. It's going to be, you know, "We're going to win," you're going to beat somebody that's fifteen times your size...But you don't go into a war that's fifteen times your size. 

Under the circumstances, how was Ukraine supposed to avoid "going into" this war? Strange presentations of that type littered the countryside during yesterday's "cabinet meeting"—but it was the president's rambling presentations which ate the bulk of the three hours, not the bizarre behavior of the Pyongyang-adjacent sycophants he had gathered around him.

All over Blue America, tribunes have focused on the mountains of praise heaped on Trump by the Stepfords. They have ignored the much larger mountains of praise heaped on Trump by Trump himself as he told rambling, absurdly fact-challenged stories about his own inescapable greatness.

To our eye and to our ear, something plainly seems to be wrong with this important man. Long ago, Hans Christian Andersen sketched an anthropological lesson which is being enacted here:

We humans are often unable, or unwilling, to see our monarchs as they actually are. We refuse to see what's right before us. Instead, we "look over there."

Blue elites have fought, every step of the way, to avoid discussing what seems to be obvious about the sitting president. At the Times, they haven't even been willing to build a journalistic framework around this basic question:

Why does this man insist on saying things which are baldly and wildly inaccurate?

No president has ever behaved in the crazy way this president does, but the Times keeps saying there's nothing to look at. Instead, let's talk about the cabinet members, or about that engagement!

Watching tape of his conduct yesterday, it seemed tragically obvious to us that something seems to be wrong. Something's also wrong with the sycophants, but something plainly seems to be wrong with the man in charge. 

That is, of course, a human tragedy—but so is the conduct of the Blue elites, who continue to run in fear from what is sitting right before them.

Andersen wrote it; our Blue elites live it. Do we need the discovery of a new mystery?

We'll guess that it could be too late.

Tomorrow: Unhelpful ideas about "mental illness"

Friday: Are we sure Maureen Dowd has it right?


TUESDAY: Actual numbers for actual cities!

TUESDAY, AUGUST 26, 2025

Not that it actually matters: As we noted this morning, there's no such thing as a real discussion in this, the most degraded of all possible worlds.

Also, when various people speak these days, there's no such thing as a fact. 

This morning, we mentioned some of the misstatements which took place yesterday morning and afternoon in the Oval Office. Concerning crime in Washington, D.C., Mediate reports that CNN's Daniel Dale rose with an instant fact check.

We join his fact check in progress:

DALE (8/25/25): On the subject of D.C. crime, he said that it was an all-time crime high when he took office. He said the worst day was the day he came back.

Not even close to true. D.C. has not been even close to the all-time highs of the early 1990s.

Now, I know he’s raised questions, as the D.C. Police Union has, about the validity of some D.C. crime stats. But let’s just look at murder as an example, the least falsifiable kind of crime. 

D.C. had 187 homicides in 2024. It was over 470 in a couple years in the early ’90s. So no, nowhere close to an all-time peak.

Is homicide "the least falsifiable kind of crime?" Ot's generally regarded as the most reliable crime statistic. It's assumed that the vast majority of homicides end up getting reported or discovered—and it's hard to reclassify a dead body, turning an actual homicide into some lesser offense.

Full disclosure! Over the weekend, we gathered homicide numbers, then and now, for some of the cities which have been getting mentioned of late. We'll start with D.C., then and now. 

According to Wikipedia, here's how some of those numbers look:

Washington D.C. homicides:
1991: 482 (80.2)
1992: 443
1993: 454
1994: 399

[...]

2022: 203
2023: 274
2024: 187 (25.5)

We're starting at 1991 because that's where some of our other data sets start. The numbers in parentheses are homicide rates—number of homicides per 100,000 residents.

(Full disclosure! In 1991 and the like, we often walked to our car, late at night, after performing at the Washington Improv. On Saturday nights, we sometimes made double trips, after midnight, lugging cartons of objets. We don't remember ever thinking about the very high homicide rates; in fact, we don't think we ever did. We offer this as a way to put some of the more hysterical claims you might have heard about "roving gangs" into a type of context.)

Today, Washington's homicide rate seems to be less than one-third what it was back then. (It's still very high compared to homicide rates in other developed countries.) As with other cities, Washington's numbers are recovering from what happened in the Covid years. In most of the cities presented here, the homicide numbers are currently down again from where they were last year.

What about the nation's three biggest cities? Unless you're watching the Fox News Channel, where Gotham is persistently pictured as a dystopian hellhole, New York City has enjoyed the most striking statistical change. We'll offer homicide rates where Wikipedia does:

New York City homicides:
1991: 2,154 
1992: 1,995
1993: 1,946
1994: 1,561

[...]

2022: 436
2023: 391
2024: 377 

Los Angeles homicides:
1991: 1,025
1992: 1,092
1993: 1,077
1994: 850

[...]

2022: 382
2023: 327
2024: 280
Chicago homicides:
1991: 929 (33.3)
1992: 948
1993: 867
1994: 932

[...]

2022: 715
2023: 621
2024: 581 (21.4)

In New York City and L.A., the numbers are way down—unless you watch the Fox News Channel, where the various messengers routinely swear that they're barely able to fight their way to the studio.

The president may be coming to Baltimore. Forty miles north of D.C., here's how our numbers look:

Baltimore homicides:
1991: 304 (40.6)
1992: 335
1993: 353
1994: 321 

[...]

2022: 333
2023: 261
2024: 201 (34.3)

Way up the coast, there's Boston! For whatever reason, there were 47 homicides there in 1991, 24 last year.

There you see a bunch of reasonably accurate statistical facts. We have more to suggest about the way these homicide numbers are being debated. For now, we leave you with a warning:

At present, facts play almost zero role in the American "discourse!" As our warring tribes war on, the facts you may occasionally hear tend to be what we make them.

THE DUEL: He's changing some names and telling some tales!

TUESDAY, AUGUST 26, 2025

Could something be "wrong" with this man? On the very day we led with "Grandiosity," the theme of the day in Washington seemed to be this:

Grandiosity Gone Wild, Quite Possibly All the Way Down!

We refer to a snowstorm of statements and actions by the sitting president. Along the way, he even announced a new name change—his apparent decision to change the name of the Department of Defense to this:

The Department of War

Yes, he said he plans to do that. You can see him say it here:

PRESIDENT TRUMP (8/26/25): Pete Hegseth has been incredible with the, as I call it, the Department of War. You know, we call it the Department of Defense, but I—between us, I think we’re going to change the name. 

You want to know the truth? I think we’re going to have some information on that, maybe soon, because I think— 

You know, "Department of Defense." We won the World War I, World War II—it was called the "Department of War." And to me, that’s really what it is. Defense is a part of that. But I have a feeling we’re going to be changing. I'm talking to the people. Everybody likes that.

We had an unbelievable history of victory when it was "Department of War." Then we changed it to "Department of Defense."...It's something that you're going to be hearing about, or seeing about, over the next couple of weeks. Probably that change is going to be made over the next week or so.

So true! We adopted that name in 1949, and then we began encountering stalemates and even losing wars.

That statement was made during the president's second presser of the day—his press event in the Oval Office with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung, who was condemned to sit and listen to a serious of lengthy harangues and expositions and all-around displays of something strongly resembling grandiosity in the colloquial sense. 

In an earlier session, the president had conducted a presser as he sat at the Resolute Desk, with an array of high officials forced to stand behind him, fighting to stay awake. As happenstance had it, we happened to watch part of each of these press events, and we had a simple reaction:

We didn't think we'd ever seen the president behaving in a way which made it seem so clear that something might possibly seem to be "wrong." 

We saw him talk about burning the flag and about the riots that action (allegedly) tends to set off. We saw him talk about cashless bail, a topic we'll turn to below.

We saw him make embarrassingly silly claims about the massive "landslide" win he said he achieved last November. We saw him make what seem to be ludicrous claims about certain aspects of life in Washington at this point in time—about the way the people of the area are flocking into restaurants again.

We saw him go on and on concerning all manner of topics. The gods must have been on our side because, during the afternoon session, they spared us from seeing the apparent oddness of this:

Trump Reminds South Korean President About Country’s Sex Slave History With The Japanese

During an Oval Office Meeting with South Korean President Lee Jae-myung on Monday, U.S. President Donald Trump brought up a painful subject from the nation’s past to illustrate why South Korea doesn’t get along with its neighbor, Japan.

“Japan is a great ally of us. And I had a little bit of a hard time getting your two together because you’re still thinking about Comfort Women, right? Comfort Women! That’s all they wanted to talk about was Comfort Women. And I thought that was settled a few times over the decades.”

“Comfort Women” was the euphemism given to Korean women and girls forced into sexual slavery for Japanese soldiers during World War II. A statue memorializing the victims was erected in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul in 2011—which caused major diplomatic tensions between the two nations. “The Statue of Peace” remains standing, despite Japan’s demands that it be removed.

Trump continued, “Perhaps I’m wrong in saying it. Perhaps this isn’t right, but the whole issue of the women, Comfort Women, very specifically. We had talked, and it was a very big problem for Korea. Not for Japan. Japan, they wanted to get — they want to get on, but Korea was very stuck on that, you understand?” he asked President Lee.

“I don’t know. Perhaps you would like to answer. It’s a good question. It was hard getting Japan and Korea together because of what took place a long time ago. But Japan wants to do it. Korea was a little bit more tenuous.”

Was that an oddly awkward topic to go on about? We aren't experts on this particular topic. We did see the president when he reminisced about all the rifles at the DMZ. We'll link you to Roll Call's transcript:

REPORTER (8/25/25): Would you go back to the DMZ to meet with the North Korean leader?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: I loved it. Remember when I walked across the line and everyone went crazy, especially Secret Service? I would say they [Inaudible] and I looked into those windows, you know the windows, the glass that you could only see if you looked direct, because there was all sorts of stuff. But I looked in and I saw more rifles pointing at me than you could— There were a lot of rifles in that building.

The Secret Service was not happy. You know the buildings I'm talking about, the two blue buildings on each side. And I walked up the middle and I looked in the window and I saw more guns in that room than I've ever seen in my life. I looked at the other side and it was the same thing. And yet I felt safe.

I felt safe because I have a great relationship with Kim Jong Un. I hope it stays that way. I think it will. I have a very good relationship—I understand him. I spent a lot of free time with him talking about things that we probably aren't supposed to talk about and you know, I just—I get along with him really well.

Did that actually happen? We have no idea. The president quickly tranitioned to his standard inaccurate claim, in which this is said to occur:

"As you know, we're taking a lot of money in from China because of the tariffs."

That's what we actually saw him say; he says it all the time. As everyone knows except viewers of the Fox News Channel, what he said there is baldly untrue. As part of the cultural meltdown in which we're involved, none of the reporters in the Oval would ever so much as dream about challenging this ludicrous misstatement, which he makes all the time.

We aren't medical specialists here. That said, our reaction yesterday was simple:

It seemed to us that we'd never seen him when it seemed quite so obvious that something might seem to be "wrong." We wondered when some journalist will finally speak to some medical specialist and bring that fairly obvious, tragic question out into the light.

Was "grandiosity" (in the clinical sense) involved in those statements? How about "delusions of grandeur?" We aren't medical specialists here, but the president also said these things in the course of the day's doubleheader:

Trump Said Maryland Gov. Wes Moore Called Him “The Greatest President of My Lifetime”

Trump Claimed Europeans [Jokingly] Call Him the “President” of the Continent

We're fairly sure that Governor Moore never said that. Do Euros now ("jokingly") call hm the president of Europe? We're willing to guess that they pretty much don't, especially when he's not around.

Has there ever been a day when so many different presentations seemed to be "wrong." so strange and odd, while delivered with so much bluster? Concerning the move to declare an end to cashless bail, we were struck by this part of this news report in today's New York Times:

Trump Signs Orders Aiming to End Cashless Bail

[...]

Starting in the late 2010s, many states started to reconsider bail laws. New Jersey and Alaska were among the first states to eliminate bail for many criminal cases.

In 2019, New York passed a similar law. The measure meant that judges would not be able to set bail for misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies, like assault without serious injury and burglary.

The impetus for change in New York was the case of Kalief Browder, a Bronx teenager who spent three years on Rikers Island while he awaited trial, accused of stealing a backpack. The case was eventually dismissed, and Mr. Browder later killed himself at his parents’ home.

He died when he was 22. We heard the voice of the fictional Gretta Conroy, first heard by the younger Joyce:

"He died when he was only seventeen. Isn't it a terrible thing to die so young as that?"

Also terrible here. We know that Browder was 22 because we clicked the link to the original report, in June 2015, about his death. Discussions of matters like "cashless bail" may turn out to be quite complex:

Kalief Browder, Held at Rikers Island for 3 Years Without Trial, Commits Suicide

Kalief Browder was sent to Rikers Island when he was 16 years old, accused of stealing a backpack. Though he never stood trial or was found guilty of any crime, he spent three years at the New York City jail complex, nearly two of them in solitary confinement.

In October 2014, after he was written about in The New Yorker, his case became a symbol of what many saw as a broken criminal justice system. Mayor Bill de Blasio cited the article this spring when he announced an effort to clear the backlogs in state courts and reduce the inmate population at Rikers.

For a while, it appeared Mr. Browder was putting his life back together: He earned a high school equivalency diploma and started community college. But he continued to struggle with life after Rikers.

On Saturday, he committed suicide at his parents’ home in the Bronx.

Jennifer Gonnerman, the author of the article in The New Yorker, said in an interview on Monday that it appeared he was never able to recover from the years he spent locked alone in a cell for 23 hours a day.

[...]

Ms. Gonnerman said she was drawn to Mr. Browder because he was able to speak about what he had been through with unusual insight. She said before he agreed to go public with his story, he insisted on finishing his high school equivalency diploma. “He wanted to show that he had accomplished something before he entered the spotlight,” she said.

In jail he had tried to commit suicide several times. He told Ms. Gonnerman that he was repeatedly beaten by correction officers and fellow inmates, but she said she did not realize the extent of the abuse until she watched security videos showing him being knocked to the ground by an officer and attacked by inmates.

Throughout, he insisted on his innocence, refusing several offers from prosecutors to take a plea deal, including one that would have allowed him to be released immediately.

Ultimately, prosecutors dropped the charges. In the course of the three years Mr. Browder was being held, they lost contact with their only witness.

At the end of the article, Mr. Browder...described being unable to rid himself of the fears that had consumed him in jail. He said he was afraid of being attacked on the subway. And before going to sleep at night, he checked to make sure every window in the house was locked.

As it continues, the report becomes even more tragic and worse. Rosie O'Donnell steps up at one point, as does Senator Rand Paul. That said:

"He died when he was only twenty-two. Isn't it a terrible thing to die so young as that?" 

Meanwhile, is prohibition of cashless bail a good idea? For the Brennan Center's report on the topic, you can just click here. Like many other topics, this topic may be complex—and that introduces a problem:

At present, our society has zero room for discussions which may be complex. In fact, our dying civilization has little room, at this point in time, for anything resembling a real discussion at all.

Instead, a battle is waged between two groups. In yesterday's report, we named the dueling cadres. We're engaged in The Revolt of the D-Minus Students versus The Haplessness of the Elites.

Meanwhile, at the top of it all, there sits President Trump, heralding the Department of War and recalling what Wes Moore said. Tomorrow, we may briefly sample the medical science again, before we start to consider the efforts of the dueling groups.

Tomorrow: Might it have been the other Wes Moore? Onward toward the two groups!