MONDAY: Walz is described as the Antichrist!

MONDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2025

Also, Minnesota's Somalis don't love or respect the U.S.: As we noted this morning, the Fox News Channel has been pounding away about all that fraud in Minnesota.

Is Minnesota's Blue American political establishment compromised by these events in some way? Is the administration of Governor Walz responsible in some way?

We can't answer those questions. Moving forward from here, Red America will hear all about this matter, Blue America won't. 

Full disclosure! In its November 30 front-page report, the New York Times offers a more courteous overview of what is now being widely bruited on the Fox News Channel. Here's part of what was reported:

How Fraud Swamped Minnesota’s Social Services System on Tim Walz’s Watch

[...]

Outrage has swelled among Minnesotans, and fraud has turned into a potent political issue in a competitive campaign season. Gov. Tim Walz and fellow Democrats are being asked to explain how so much money was stolen on their watch, providing Republicans, who hope to take back the governor’s office in 2026, with a powerful line of attack.

[...]

Debate over the fraud has opened new rifts between the state’s Somali community and other Minnesotans, and has left some Somali Americans saying they are unfairly facing a new layer of suspicion against all of them, rather than the small group accused of fraud. Critics of the Walz administration say that the fraud persisted partly because state officials were fearful of alienating the Somali community in Minnesota. Governor Walz, who has instituted new fraud-prevention safeguards, defended his administration’s actions.

“No one will support these programs if they continue to be riddled with fraud,” Joseph H. Thompson, the federal prosecutor who has overseen the fraud cases said in an interview. “We’re losing our way of life in Minnesota in a very real way.”

The episode has raised broader questions for some residents about the sustainability of Minnesota’s Scandinavian-modeled system of robust safety net programs bankrolled by high taxes. That system helped create an environment that drew immigrants to the state over many decades, including tens of thousands of Somali refugees after their country descended into civil war in the 1990s.

That's a more courteous version of what is being said and alleged on the Fox News Channel. We thought you might like to see what Fox & Friends Weekend viewers were already hearing during the 6 o'clock hour yesterday morning—on Sunday, the most sacred morning of the Christian week.

At 6:34 yesterday morning, co-host Rachel Campos-Duffy spoke with Jack Brewer, a former Minnesota Viking who runs a nonprofit in the state. Brewer strikes us as completely sincere. A quick overview by the leading authority starts by telling us this:

Jack Brewer

Jack Brewer (born January 8, 1979) is an American former professional football safety who played in the National Football League (NFL) for the Minnesota Vikings, New York Giants, Philadelphia Eagles, and Arizona Cardinals. He attended Grapevine High School in Grapevine, Texas, where he competed in football and track, and played football while earning both bachelor's and master's degrees at the University of Minnesota. 

Brewer now is the CEO of The Brewer Group, chair of Center for Opportunity Now at America First Policy Institute, White House presidential appointee as the Commission on the Social Status of Black Men and Boys, board member, for the Federal Enforcement Homeland Security Foundation, vice-chair of the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice State Advisory Group, founder and executive director of The Jack Brewer Foundation, on the board of directors at the Geo Group, Inc, and a Fox News, Yahoo Finance, and NewsMax TV media contributor.

And so on from there. Last Tuesday and Wednesday, President Trump had angrily said that the Somalis in Minnesota are "garbage." Speaking with co-host Rachel Campos-Duffy, Brewer, who seems to be completely sincere, managed to scale that back. 

We're offering only the highlights. To watch the full interview, you can start by clicking here:

CAMPOS-DUFFY (12/7/25): Jack, what do you know about the situation? And I know you run a non-profit. You help poor people, people in need. How much does this anger you?

BREWER: It's disgusting. You know, I've said it before—Tim Walz is the worst governor on the planet—not just in the U.S., but across the world...He's let, you know, Muslims come over from Somalia who don't respect this country, they don't love this country...

It's embarrassing what he's done. He's yoked up with all these Somalis just to get their votes. He's allowing them to steal money from poor people—steal money from people that need it, taxpayer money, and it's ending up in the hands of terrorists across the water...

CAMPOS-DUFFY: Yeah. I mean, the question everyone has is, Is it incompetence or did he know this and didn't want to say anything? We saw there were certain people who were working in the government who said, "We thought something was fishy, but we were afraid to say anything because we'd be accused of racism if we blew the whistle on it."

BREWER: That's exactly what it is, Rachel. I mean, this guy is DEI, everything that comes out of his mouth, and so people feel the pressure. They couldn't say anything to this guy. He's a tyrant...You see, God was revealing to us, showing us who this man really was. This man is the Antichrist. He has a demonic spirit in him. And somethings needs to be done because what he's doing to those good, poor, innocent people in Minnesota is not right...

None of this seemed to give Campos-Duffy pause. By 6:40 on Sunday morning, Governor Walz had been revealed as the Antichrist. Also, he has the demonic spirit in him, Fox News Channel viewers were told. According to Brewer, the Antichrist to whom we've referred has let these Muslims come in!

On other programs on this "cable news" channel, Walz is typically referred to a bit more coarsely, as "Tampon Tim" or simply as "Tampon." As for the roughly 100,000 members of Minnesota's Somali community, they don't love or respect this country, Brewer sweepingly declared.  

(As far as we know, there is no evidence supporting the claim about money going overseas to terrorists, though that is also being bruited around on this "cable news" channel. According to the Times report, "that claim emerged in 2018, but there has been no solid evidence to substantiate it, and none of the federal fraud cases have featured a link to terrorism.")

None of these proclamations seemed to give Campos-Duffy pause. This is the way this program's aggressively Christian co-host was working during the six o'clock hour on a sacred Sunday morning.

That was life, yesterday morning, inside Silo Red. People inside Silo Blue rarely hear about such matters. There's much more to be said about some of the commentary we've posted, but what happens inside Silo Red is rarely mentioned inside Silo Blue.

No one challenged anything Brewer said. These are the America(s) we've chosen. To our eye, Campos-Duffy is extremely genial, though mainly among her own.

AMERICA(S) THE BEAUTIFUL: America Red and America Blue!

MONDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2025

As always, dueling America(s): For the second successive week, the New York Times has performed a substantial service on the front page—on page A1—of its Sunday print editions.

For the second straight Sunday, the Times is challenging those of us in Blue America to come to terms with ourselves—with our past behaviors, with our imperfect cultural instincts. In its online iteration, this week's challenge appears beneath this dual headline:

How Biden Ignored Warnings and Lost Americans’ Faith in Immigration
The Democratic president and his top advisers rejected recommendations that could have eased the border crisis that helped return Donald Trump to the White House.

What happened at the southern border "helped return President Trump to the White House?" That's the challenging judgment which is rendered within yesterday's (lengthy) front-page piece.

Accompanied by three photographs, the lengthy report appears above the fold, square in the center of page A1. In print editions, its display ate up roughly half the space on yesterday morning's front page.

Yesterday's report speaks to a topic we Blues ignored—a topic we may have tried to wish away—all through the presidential campaign which returned President Trump to the Oval. Last Sunday, something similar happened:

Dating to last Sunday's print editions, a front-page report is now packaged online under these challenging headline:

How Fraud Swamped Minnesota’s Social Services System on Tim Walz’s Watch
Prosecutors say members of the Somali diaspora, a group with growing political power, were largely responsible. President Trump has drawn national attention to the scandal amid his crackdown on immigration.

The name "Tim Walz" is right in the headline! President Trump is mentioned too.

Last week, the situation described in that report triggered an ugly two-day outburst from President Trump. For those of us in Blue America, it's easy to focus on that behavior while ignoring everything else—but this is the way that lengthy report started:

(Start of the news report)
The fraud scandal that rattled Minnesota was staggering in its scale and brazenness.

Federal prosecutors charged dozens of people with felonies, accusing them of stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from a government program meant to keep children fed during the Covid-19 pandemic.

At first, many in the state saw the case as a one-off abuse during a health emergency. But as new schemes targeting the state’s generous safety net programs came to light, state and federal officials began to grapple with a jarring reality.

Over the last five years, law enforcement officials say, fraud took root in pockets of Minnesota’s Somali diaspora as scores of individuals made small fortunes by setting up companies that billed state agencies for millions of dollars’ worth of social services that were never provided.

Federal prosecutors say that 59 people have been convicted in those schemes so far, and that more than $1 billion in taxpayers’ money has been stolen in three plots they are investigating. That is more than Minnesota spends annually to run its Department of Corrections. Minnesota’s fraud scandal stood out even in the context of rampant theft during the pandemic, when Americans stole tens of billions through unemployment benefits, business loans and other forms of aid, according to federal auditors.

Outrage has swelled among Minnesotans, and fraud has turned into a potent political issue in a competitive campaign season...

That's the way last Sunday's front-page report got started.

For the record, the New York Times isn't the Fox News Channel. But let the word go forth to the American nation which is Blue:

The American nation which is Red is fortified by reports of this type on the Fox News Channel. 

Viewers of the Fox News Channel heard about this giant problem all through the course of last week. For those who live inside Silo Blue, where MS NOW supplies the cable news, it's very likely that viewers never heard this topic mentioned at all.

Full disclosure:

The journalism performed on the Fox News Channel is routinely a vaudeville / parody / fraudulent version of actual journalism, performed by a collection of wrestlers, cheerleaders, former VJs, hangers-on and semi-coherent clowns. But the complaints and criticisms which lie at the heart of such parody broadcasts are often perfectly valid.

People who live in Red America hear about the topics in question, if in parodic form. But for those of us in Blue America, these topics may not even be known to exist.

So it has gone in the past eight days with respect to these front-page reports by the New York Times. On the cable news channel which services Blue America, the sprawling scandal in Minnesota was barely mentioned last week, if it was mentioned all.

Similarly, will denizens of Blue America hear discussions of yesterday's front-page report—the giant report about those border issues during President Biden's term? For anyone familiar with current arrangements, the question answers itself.

Indeed, on the renamed MS NOW, this morning's Morning Joe broadcast instantly adopted an oddly remedial tone. With co-host Joe Scarborough absent for the second straight broadcast day, co-host Mika Brzezinski opened the program with a lengthy discussion—a lengthy discussion which was exactly like last week's lengthy discussions:

Starting at 6 o'clock sharp, the day's "Top Story" was identified as the way Pete Hegseth is affirming the legality of the September 2 attack on an alleged set of drug runners.  

Everything said in this morning's lengthy first segment had been said, again and again, all through the course of last week. For better or worse, the odds are very low that anyone on this cable news channel will ever conduct a retrospective discussion of the issues which were raised in yesterday's front-page report.

In Red America, the information / propaganda / messaging flow will be massively different. On the programs of the Fox News Channel, panelist groups will arrive and depart throughout the day like hockey teams changing lines on the fly. 

These panels will continue to pound away at issues involving President Biden's handling of the southern border—and they will continue to pound away at the fraud prosecutions in Minnesota, as was the case all last week.

For the record, those fraud prosecutions are an actual news event. Red America will hear the topic cited again and again. In Blue America, cable hosts will likely continue to do what Brzezinski was doing this morning—they'll try to establish the fact that a war crime has been committed by a targeted figure within the Trump administration.

One epistemic world will emerge from Silo Blue. A totally different world will be described for those inside Silo Red.

As everyone knows, we citizens live in two America(s) at the present time. A mournful observer might even ask if a very large modern nation can expect to prosper with, or even survive, an epistemic regime of this type.

We close this morning with a quick note about a journalistic oddity. That oddity concerns the way yesterday's giant report in the New York Times has managed to disappear.

In print editions, the giant report consumed roughly half of Sunday morning's front page. It's a very lengthy report about one of the ways Blue American bungling allegedly helped President Trump make his way back to the White House.

Meanwhile, how odd! If you go the New York Times' "Today's Paper" site for December 7, you won't find this giant report listed among yesterday's reports! Through a repetitive type of bungling we've mentioned several times in the past, this giant report about President Biden's border policies somehow fell through some sort of editing crack:

It isn't listed among the reports found in yesterday's paper! We've mentioned this weirdly repetitive problem—"The featured front-page news report vanishes!"—at least several times in the past.

People who perused the print edition of yesterday's New York Times immediately saw the giant layout devoted to this lengthy report. That said, many more people read the New York Times online—and if they scanned the "Today's Paper" list of reports, such people had no way of knowing that this giant report even existed.

We're the smart and moral ones, we Blues have constantly said, In Red America, our self-adoration has long been noted, and it's vastly disliked.

Where did yesterday's giant news report go? It never appeared in the listings on yesterday's "Today's Paper" site—and as of 7 o'clock yesterday morning, it was hard to find a link to that giant report at the up-to-the-minute "nytimes.com" site.

So it can go inside Silo Blue, as maintained in Blue America, where our leading purveyors of cable porridge are still trying, this very morning, to get someone locked up.

It seems to be the only thing we know how to do. Just so you can know how this works, they feed off this conduct at Fox.

Tomorrow: We've always lived in different America(s). Ken Burns takes us back.

SATURDAY: Important Fox propaganda defeat!

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2025

Weekend Friends try to explain: The friends held off as long as they could. This morning, at 6:23 a.m., they finally confessed, if haltingly.

To its credit, Fox News Digital had reported the relevant fact yesterday. The report had appeared right around noon. 

Headline included, here's what the Fox report says:

DC pipe bomb suspect admitted to planting the devices, expressed doubts about 2020 election outcome: source

The accused D.C. pipe bomber has been speaking with investigators for hours, admitting he planted the devices and expressing doubts about the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, a source close to the investigation tells Fox News.

The explosive devices were placed near the Republican and Democratic National Committees' headquarters on Capitol Hill just hours before the Jan. 6, 2021 congressional certification that erupted into riots by demonstrators.

The suspect, Brian Cole Jr., is scheduled to make a federal court appearance later Friday for a first appearance before a magistrate as FBI interviews with him continue. He has not yet entered a plea.

And so on from there. That report appeared yesterday, right around noon—and right there, in the highlighted material, you see a major propaganda win for Blue America's side.

With that, let's state the obvious:

As soon as this arrest was announced, a major propaganda advantage was hanging in the balance. Assuming the actual bomber had been arrested—and reportedly, Coles Jr. has confessed—an obvious, long-standing question awaited resolution:

Had the bomb maker been a MAGA man? Or was he an agent of the Biden-era FBI, as the manifest nutcase Dan Bongino had blared and bruited and bellowed and claimed over the past several years.

Today, the nutcase Bongino is the #2 man inside the Trump-era FBI. To its credit, the FBI now seems to have arrested the person who assembled and then positioned the bombs. But if you work for the Fox News Channel, a messaging problem arises:

Awkwardly, the person in question turns out to be MAGA! He's one of the many millions of people who got conned into believing Donald J. Trump's nut-ball claims about the 2020 election.

Now for a bit of reality:

We Americans are living through a dangerous era which can be characterized in the following way:

Government by the mentally ill. National discourse increasingly shaped by corporate messaging agents.

So "our democracy" now goes, in the dangerous era into which we've all been thrown.

Within that structure, the Fox News Channel has, by far, the largest viewership of our three major "cable news" channels. Every day, and then on into the night, the channel drags out panels reminiscent of The Bar Scene from Star Wars to deliver the crackpot messaging the profit-seeking corporate channel wants this nation to hear.

Yesterday afternoon at 5, there sat a group of these defectives. On the nation's most-watched "cable news" show, a trio of messaging agents—Watters, Gutfeld and Compagno—laughed and clowned and gamboled and played as they generated conspiracy theories as to why the Biden-era FBI hadn't arrested this man.

(To watch this entire slapstick-adjacent segment, you can just click here. There was plenty of outright clowning around on our flailing nation's most-watched "cable news" program.)

In a less forgiving world, the three messenger stooges we've named would be marched off into the countryside for years of re-education activities. Yesterday afternoon, on this edition of The Five, Harold Ford stammered out a minor, halting reference to the fact which had already emerged at Fox itself, roughly five hours earlier:

The suspect was a MAGA man. He's told the FBI that he believed the 2020 election had been stolen.

Yesterday afternoon, on The Five, no one was willing to say it straight out. This morning, at 6:23 a.m., the unrecognizables on Fox & Friends Weekend finally blurted it out.

To its credit, Fox News Digital had been willing to publish the report. Somewhat surprisingly, producers now let the Fox & Friends Weekend Three voice a brief acknowledgment:

The arrested pipe bomb maker was one of theirs. He was one of the millions of people who got conned into a ruinously false belief by the never-ending tsunami of bullshit they themselves spew on the air.

Full disclosure:

If there had been the slightest sign that the bombmaker came from Blue America, that would have been seized upon as a major propaganda win by tribal messengers like these three:

Fox & Friends Weekend: Saturday, 12/6/25
Charlie Hurt: co-host, Fox & Friends Weekend
Rachel Campos-Duffy: co-host, Fox & Friends Weekend
Griff Jenkins: co-host, Fox & Friends Weekend

They would have blared it to the ends of the earth—but that propaganda victory had now been taken away. Tragically, the autistic man they had managed to con turned out to be one of their own.

In truth, there's nothing especially good about what seems to have happened. We can only tell you this—with the revelation in that news report, our flailing American nation (or nations) has been lucky enough to avoid something very bad.

The message mavens at this "cable news" channel had been robbed of an extremely large win. This morning, to someone's credit, they briefly informed their viewers about what the bomb-maker has said he believes. 

After that, they began to thrash about, throwing gorilla dust all around with Charlie Hurt saying that this whole thing still seems to be "completely bonkers." (For link to tape, see below.)

Those friends! They then opened their 7 o'clock hour with a report on this same topic. By now, the news we've cited had apparently slipped their minds.

Viewers in the 7 A.M. hour didn't hear about the way this unfortunate young man had been conned. The friends didn't say that Coles was one of theirs—that he was on many millions who had been conned by a crackpot president's crackpot claims about the 2020 election.

To its credit, Fox News Digital reported what it was told. The weekend gang even told their viewers, if only fleetingly, and with several forms of misdirection quickly added.

America dodged a bullet with this. For those of us in Blue America, it's less a propaganda win than the avoidance of a big major loss.

For partial videotape: We can't yet link you to full videotape of what the three friends said. The invaluable Internet Archive hasn't done any such posting yet.

To watch part of the report which started at 6:23 a.m., you can just click here. "Completely bonkers," a chuckling Charlie Hurt says. In essence:

Please look over here!

FRIDAY: What kind of "illness" was mental illness?

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 5, 2025

Rep. Omar gets to respond: What manner of "illness" was mental illness? We place our question in a past tense because, when we consult the leading authority, it almost sounds like that familiar locution may be going away:

Mental disorder

"Mental Illness" redirects here. For the album by Aimee Mann, see Mental Illness (album).

A mental disorder, also referred to as a mental illness, a mental health condition, or a psychiatric disability, is a behavioral or mental pattern that causes significant distress or impairment of personal functioning. A mental disorder is also characterized by a clinically significant disturbance in an individual's cognition, emotional regulation, or behavior, often in a social context. Such disturbances may occur as single episodes, may be persistent, or may be relapsing–remitting. There are many different types of mental disorders, with signs and symptoms that vary widely between specific disorders. A mental disorder is one aspect of mental health.

The causes of mental disorders are often unclear. Theories incorporate findings from a range of fields. Disorders may be associated with particular regions or functions of the brain...

In 2019, common mental disorders around the globe include: depression, which affects about 264 million people; dementia, which affects about 50 million; bipolar disorder, which affects about 45 million; and schizophrenia and other psychoses, which affect about 20 million people. Neurodevelopmental disorders include attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and intellectual disability, of which onset occurs early in the developmental period. Stigma and discrimination can add to the suffering and disability associated with mental disorders, leading to various social movements attempting to increase understanding and challenge social exclusion.

Definition

The definition and classification of mental disorders are key issues for researchers as well as service providers and those who may be diagnosed. For a mental state to be classified as a disorder, it generally needs to cause dysfunction. Most international clinical documents use the term mental "disorder," while "illness" is also common. It has been noted that using the term "mental" (i.e., of the mind) is not necessarily meant to imply separateness from the brain or body.

Interesting! The leading authority presents its lengthy discussion under the heading of "mental disorder," not under "mental illness." We also call your attention to this:

Most international clinical documents use the term mental "disorder," while "illness" is also common.

It almost sounds like the more familiar, traditional term is perhaps being phased out. We note the desire to avoid "stigma" in the discussion of such life-draining disorders. Beyond that, we note the fact these disorders "may be associated with particular regions or functions of the brain."

It has been noted that using the term "mental" (i.e., of the mind) is not necessarily meant to imply separateness from the brain or body.

It sounds like a so-called "mental" disorder may be a physiological disorder. As we've noted elsewhere, it seems to be generally assumed that antisocial personality disorder (ASPD; colloquially, sociopathy) can be, at least in part, inherited from a parent.

Or something like that. We're forced to be the ones to say these things because the imitations of journalists and academics with whom we're saddled have all agreed—cowering in a corner as they do—that topics like these must never be reported or discussed, even as our failing society keeps sliding toward the sea.

According to various sources, something like 5-6 percent of adult males can be diagnosed with ASPD—can be diagnosed as (colloquial) "sociopaths." What goes on in the mind of a person who may even have entered the world predisposed to such a moral or intellectual affliction?

Why do they behave in the antisocial ways they tend to manifest? What leads them to behave in ways you yourself might more often avoid?

We don't know how to answer those questions, and the people you're told to regard as journalists aren't ever going to ask them. That said, when Rep. Ilhan Omar ran into some poisonous antisocial behavior this week, she penned a guest essay for the New York Times, chronicling her reactions. 

Headline included, here's the way her essay begins in today's print editions:

Ilhan Omar: Trump Knows He’s Failing. Cue the Bigotry.

On Tuesday, President Trump called my friends and me “garbage.”

This comment was only the latest in a series of remarks and Truth Social posts in which the president has demonized and spread conspiracy theories about the Somali community and about me personally. For years, the president has spewed hate speech in an effort to gin up contempt against me. He reaches for the same playbook of racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia and division again and again. At one 2019 rally, he egged on his crowd until it chanted “send her back” when he said my name.

Mr. Trump denigrates not only Somalis but so many other immigrants, too, particularly those who are Black and Muslim. While he has consistently tried to vilify newcomers, we will not let him silence us. He fails to realize how deeply Somali Americans love this country. We are doctors, teachers, police officers and elected leaders working to make our country better. Over 90 percent of Somalis living in my home state, Minnesota, are American citizens by birth or naturalization. Some even supported Mr. Trump at the ballot box.

“I don’t want them in our country,” the president said this week. “Let them go back to where they came from.”

Somali Americans remain resilient against the onslaught of attacks from the White House. But I am deeply worried about the ramifications of these tirades...

For reasons which should be obvious, Rep. Omar should be worried about the possible ramifications of those poisonous assaults. Over here in the emptier realms of our unimpressive Blue America, Joe and Mika and other such players were too busy getting lost in the fog of the latest chase to discuss what the president said and did, right there in the White House, on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons.

In our opinion, Rep. Omar might have better luck dealing with the disorder which came crashing down on Somali-American heads—by extension, on all American heads—if she placed less stress on our Blue American bombs—on instant assertions of bigotry, racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia and the like. 

It seems that Rep. Omar disagrees with that view, and her view may be more right. That said, our own Blue American corporate stars largely agreed this week to let this poisonous conduct go unreported and undiscussed. 

In recent months, we've suggested that we Blues should teach ourselves to "pity the child" as we try to deal with the effects of the storm of "mental illness" which almost surely helped occasion these dangerous outbursts. We've suggested that we "pity the child" as we look for the most productive ways to restrain the pathologies of the powerful, disordered adult.

There's much, much more to say about the sounds of silence which greeted the president's outbursts. For today, we compliment the New York Times for its forthright reporting about what the president did, and for the fact that it published Rep. Omar's reaction.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but we Blues have amazingly little self-awareness, even at this perilous point in time. As every sane person must know by now, our cluelessness helped send the tragically disordered person in question to the Oval Office—not once, but two separate times. 

Will we Blues ever get over ourselves? Will we ever come to see ourselves as we actually are? Will we ever come to see our behavior as it actually is?

Rep. Omar ran into an apparent "illness" once again this week. On the corporate messaging level, the children were busy getting lost in the fog of the chase. Utter incompetence looks like that—and of course, almost surely, the salaries are too damn high and the livin' is way too easy. 

There's much more to be said about (clinical) "mental disorder." For better or worse, the people who get sold to us as journalists are never going to do it.

ILLNESS: O'Donnell got lost in "the fog of the chase!"

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 5, 2025

So did quite a few others: As we've noted in recent weeks, Lawrence O'Donnell has been the must-see cable news anchor of the past month or so.

Other hosts at MSNBC have basically gone through the mandated topics, performing critiques by rote. O'Donnell has seemed to take President Trump's deteriorating conduct much more personally in these recent weeks. 

You wouldn't normally recommend that approach. In our view, the approach has worked quite well for O'Donnell of late.

Beyond that, O'Donnell has now started his annual promotional drive for his "Kid in Need of Desks" (KIND) project. The brilliant project arranges for school kids in the African nation of Malawi to have the chance, for the first time in their lives, to sit at a desk, not on the ground, as they pursue their dreams for the future in their nation's schools.

We regard Kid in Need of Desks as the most signicant use of time any cable news host has ever accomplished. The videotapes of O'Donnell's interactions with the deeply grateful young people of Malawi is a constant lesson in the astounding potential greatness of the human spirit.

That said:

LOD has long had a bit of an anger problem. Dating at least to 2004, it got him suspended from his posts at NBC cable at several times down through the years.

He also has an extreme relationship to the concept of "lying." For O'Donnell, every misstatement is a lie. We've never seen a person that smart who had so much trouble with that pair of basic concepts.

Last night, O'Donnell went off about the investigation of the events of September 2. His presentation started with this declaration, then went downhill from there:

O'DONNELL (12/4/25): First, they lie.

That's what has happened in the American military after every war crime committed by the American military.

First, they lie. Somewhere in the chain of command, they lie.

That is what Donald Trump's incompetent Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, did when first confronted with the Washington Post's breaking news report of a second missile strike on a small boat that had already been destroyed, and burst into flames, after the first missile strike.

The Washington Post reported that the second missile strike killed two people clinging to the wreckage, which would be a war crime in a war, and is murder outside of war. 

There is no war in the Caribbean. There is no "fog of war" there. So Pete Hegseth lied and said that everything in the Washington Post article was "the fake news delivering more fabricated, inflammatory and derogatory reporting."  

That was Pete Hegseth's first lie about this story, as soon as it came out.

That's the way O'Donnell started. Sadly, we have to say no.

Sadly, no! Simply put, Hegseth didn't lie and say that everything in the Washington Post article was "the fake news delivering more fabricated, inflammatory and derogatory reporting."   

Simply put, that didn't happen. Whatever you may think of Hegseth, he simply didn't say that.

Also, Hegseth's later remark about "the fog of war" was perfectly easy to parse, and it seems that what he said on that occasion is now being corroborated. 

It's possible that Hegseth committed a war crime on September 2 (or possibly not), though there will never be a consensus. But he actually didn't say what O'Donnell says he said. 

Lost in the fog of the chase, O'Donnell was grossly misdescribing what his target said about "the fog of war." A boatload of prejudgment was floating about as O'Donnell made that presentation—and as he continued, he made a series of inexcusable misstatements concerning the current investigation of this high-profile event.

In fairness, O'Donnell wasn't the only Blue American politician or journalist engaged in what we've described as "the fog of the chase." In this instance, the chase has been directed at the highly erratic Hegseth, and it's been quite widespread. 

For the record, we've seen this sort of group stampede being conducted before. As O'Donnell pursued the chase of Hegseth, he engaged in flagrant embellishment of elementary facts, but also in the practice we'd describe as "creative paraphrase." 

In truth, we humans aren't built for this line of work. We aren't built for the task of providing respectable journalism at a time of tribal war.

The explanation is this:

We humans all have a lizard brain. As everyone actually knows, that lizard brain is a basic part of our basic human wiring.

At times of tribal war, our lizard brains instruct us to believe the statements which support our tribal preconceptions. As individuals, our ability to function as the ballyhooed "rational animal" is determined by the extent to which we remain in thrall to our lizard brain.

Did Pete Hegseth commit a war crime in connection with the events of September 2? As far as we know, it's entirely possible that he did, though there will never be anything like a unanimous judgment across tribal lines on that point.

That said:

Did Hegseth lie and say that everything in the Washington Post article was "the fake news delivering more fabricated, inflammatory and derogatory reporting?" 

Was that his first lie about this story, as soon as it came out?

(For the source which Lawrence flashed on the screen, you can just click here.)

In fact, Hegseth made no such statement about that initial report. But as O'Donnell's angry presentation wound on, he lost himself in the fog of the chase, especially with respect to Hegseth's later reference to "the fog of war."

O'Donnell opened with one wild misstatement, then made several others. In one instance, he played tape of Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), appearing on last night's All In.

At least as O'Donnell framed his presentation, Rep. Smith seemed to have no idea what Hegseth was talking about when he spoke of "the fog of war." Creatures like us aren't built for this kind of work. We've proven that point many times.

Three nights have now passed since President Trump launched his two-day poisonous attack on the human "garbage" he says he's spotted in Minnesota. O'Donnell hasn't said a word about that "shocking" conduct as these nights have flown by.

This morning, the Morning Joe gang also took a third straight pass on that poisonous conduct. They piddled their way through some dog-eared topics, ran in fear from that. 

Joe Scarborough embarrassed himself the past two days as he engaged in the fog of the chase. This morning, he was nowhere to be seen. 

With Scarborough's bluster and embellishments gone, Mika Brzezinski actually staged a calmer, smarter presentation about the events of September 2. But for the third straight day, there was no mention—none at all!—of the poisonous attacks the president launched, two days in a row, about all the Somali "garbage" in the aforementioned state.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep. That said, our Blue elites don't know how to talk about the type of "illness" with which the president is quite possibly afflicted.

As for us in the rank and file, we weren't up to the task of pushing back when chases of the current type were being directed at our own tribal leaders.

Al Gore said he invented the Internet? We sucked our thumbs for two solid years as these millionaire corporate toys conducted that form of the chase.

Rep. Omar has written a guest essay in today's New York Times. As our stars have conducted their chase after Hegseth, they've taken an astonishing pass on two days of undisguised poison.

This afternoon, we'll discuss Rep. Omar's essay. But let the word go forth to the nations—we Blues aren't up to the challenge of making accurate statements at a time of tribal war. Hegseth may have committed a crime—but no, he didn't say that.

Kids in Need of Desks is a brilliant use of cable news time. Malawi's kids are clearly deeply grateful to Lawrence. We Blues should be thanking him too.

This afternoon: Rep. Omar speaks

Also this: Go ahead and take a look. This is superlative work.