PROOF OF LIFE: Scarborough's hunting the bigots again!

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2026

Tapper to Arizona: We managed to make it through the full first hour of today's Morning Joe. For that reason, we got to see the videotape of the deeply sane Chloe Kim.

Kim, who was born in Torrance, California, is a two-time Olympic gold medalist. For that reason, she's over in Italy now, where she defended an Olympic teammate who was criticized, very unwisely and in a dangerous way, by the sitting president.

Late in today's first hour, we got to see what she said. Right there on the videotape, we saw Kim say this:

KIM (2/10/26): My parents being immigrants from Korea, this one definitely hits pretty close to home. And I think in moments like these, it is really important for us to unite and kind of stand up for one another for all that’s going on.

And I think that I’m really proud to represent the United States. The U.S. has given my family and I so much opportunity, but I also think that we are allowed to voice our opinions of what’s going on. And I think that we need to lead with love and compassion, and I would love to see some more of that.

What has any American ever done to merit sharing citizenship with someone as sharp as that?

The videotape of that statement came late in the 6 o'clock hour. Watching Joe Scarborough at the start of the hour, it occurred to us that he needs to go somewhere and take a long rest, or perhaps get back on his meds.

For our money, Kim made a morally brilliant appeal. This morning, Scarborough didn't. He was still name-calling the others about the Bad Bunny halftime show—everyone who isn't reciting the same scripts he's being paid to read.

In our view, what follows is ugly stuff. Joe was chronicling negative reaction to Sunday's halftime show:

SCARBOROUGH (2/10/26): My favorite—and it was said in racist neighborhoods across America over the past couple of days:

"He's not even American! Why aren't we having an American here?"

[He's] more American than U2! More American than Paul McCartney! More American than—go down the list!

It's OK—if they just want to admit that they're bigots, they can always just say, "We don't like brown people doing our halftime shows." They might as well say it

For the record, U2 and Paul McCartney were past halftime acts. (So was Kid Rock, back in 2004!)

At any rate, that's the way Morning Joe started. In our view, that's ugly stuff, but also supremely stupid:

Somehow, the star of the show was able to report what was said, the past two days, "in racist neighborhoods across America." It was being said in those neighborhoods by the "bigots," he reported (but also, we'll guess, by the deplorables.)

(Willie quickly voiced agreement, as he's required to do. Cable news has largely transitioned into tribal reassurance services at this point in time. No complexity need apply!)

In our view, that was ugly stuff—ugly, but also stupid. After the tape of Kim's remarks, Lemire got things back on track with this ridiculous comment, suitable for tribal consumption:

LEMIRE: When you perceive a halftime act as saying, "Our message is love," and you perceive that as an attack on you—well, you're sort of telling on yourself.

Seriously, that's what he said! But what if you didn't perceive the halftime act as saying, "Our message is love?" If you didn't perceive the act that way, is it OK to think the act might have been poorly suited for this particular occasion?

Full disclosure! Normally, we don't watch the Super Bowl halftime shows. We clean house for maybe three hours, then return for the second half.

On this occasion, we did watch the halftime show, intrigued by all the hoopla. For ourselves, we didn't think the act was perfectly suited to the occasion. That has nothing to do with Bad Bunny himself, or with Bad Bunny's music.

At any rate, Joe was trashing the bigots again. Over here in Blue America, it sometimes seems like that's the only reaction we have.

Meanwhile, there was Kasie Hunt—a good, decent person with a winning demeanor—hosting her 4 p.m. CNN show, which has been scoring good ratings. Yesterday afternoon, she had an hour with which to survey the world. 

Many events take place in the world. This is the way she started:

ANNOUNCER (2/9/26): This is CNN breaking news.

HUNT: Hi, everyone. I'm Kasie Hunt. Welcome to THE ARENA. It's good to have you with us on this Monday.

Right now, as we come on the air, we are covering a new video that was just released ahead of the new deadline in a desperate search...

At this point, she played videotape of Savannah Guthrie, then summarized the basic events of the search for Guthrie's mother. Eventually, Hunt said this:

HUNT: As of today, as the search enters its ninth day, police still say they have no suspects or persons of interest. Law enforcement officials were seen at Nancy's home on Sunday. They were also seen at the home of her daughter, Annie, late Saturday.

Let's get off the sidelines, head into THE ARENA.

My panel will be here. We're also joined by CNN senior national correspondent Ed Lavandera. He's outside Nancy Guthrie's home in Tucson.

Ed, can you bring us up to speed with the latest on the ground? This shift in tone from Savannah just now? Pretty remarkable.

Lavandera was on the scene in Tucson. Hunt's panel was there on the set. 

By the time the hour was done, her panelists seemed to number in the thousands. Eventually, at 4:22, she even surprised us with this:

HUNT:  We're going to continue covering this throughout the hour here in THE ARENA. Don't go anywhere.

We have much more breaking news. Our Jake Tapper is on the scene in Arizona. We're going to check in with him live when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) 

Say what? Tapper was also in Arizona? After the commercial break, he was introduced by Hunt as CNN's "chief Washington correspondent!"

Morning Joe was trashing the bigots. CNN was chasing true crime again, to the exclusion of everything else. 

Everything else had disappeared from the coverage on Hunt's show. And that night, on the Fox News Channel's Gutfeld! program, the cable star opened with this:

GUTFELD (2/9/26): Good evening, everyone! So during the fourth quarter of last night's Super Bowl, a half-naked male streaker ran onto the field. 

He left his pants on, leading everyone to believe that he has a small penis.

TYRUS: Wooooo!

It's all this tragic nut-ball has. His next three jokes asserted these themes:

Don Lemon likes getting oral sex from men. Hispanics can't stop having sex. The NBA is crawling with criminals.

That's the way the game is now played on the so-called Fox News Channel. Family values have left the stage. A garbage can has been rolled in.

The Ghosts of True Crime Rampages Past have been evident at CNN and on the Fox News Channel. As panelists kill endless time pretending to discuss the search for Nancy Guthrie, everyone avoids a blindingly obvious question:

Why did "law enforcement officials" spend almost three hours taking a special type of photo inside Annie Guthrie's home late Saturday night? (See Hunt's text, above.) 

Whatever the answer to that question might be, it's the world's most obvious question. Every expert has spent the past three days being careful not to ask it. 

"The American people are pretty sharp!" It's long been a bromide on broadcast news, voiced by pundits and pols alike. But actually, no! We just aren't especially sharp, and neither is anyone else.

The ghosts of true crime rampages past seemed to haunt our dreams last night. Other topics had largely disappeared on two of our cable news channels.

Over where the Good People live, we Blues were hunting the bigots again. In the end, is that all we really have?

We're seeking "proof of (intelligent) life" in our reports at this site this week:

Chloe Kim is 25. How did she get to be like that? What explains everyone else? 

Tomorrow: When a true crime rampage starts, nothing beside remains

MONDAY: Kristof affirms Mississippi miracle!

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2026

We seek "proof of life:" In this morning's New York Times, Nicholas Kristof offers a lengthy column affirming the Mississippi miracle.

A certain class of educational expert has been reporting this alleged miracle for quite some time. For the record, Kristof doesn't use the term "miracle." 

Many others do and have.

Headline included, Kristof's column starts as shown. For today, we'll cite only one of the upbeat claims about the Mississippi public schools:

These Three Red States Are the Best Hope in Schooling

A ray of hope is emerging in American education.

Not among Democrats or Republicans, each diverted by culture wars. Not in the education reform movement, largely abandoned by the philanthropists who once propelled it. Not in most schools across the country, still struggling with chronic absenteeism and a decade of faltering test scores.

Rather, hope emerges in the most unlikely of places: three states here in the Deep South that long represented America’s educational basement. These states—Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi—have histories of child poverty, racism and dismal educational outcomes, and they continue to spend less than most other states on public schools.

Yet, consider:

[...]

Black fourth graders in Mississippi are on average better readers than those in Massachusetts, which is often thought to have the best public school system in the country (and one that spends twice as much per pupil).

On average, are Mississippi's black fourth graders better readers than their counterparts in Massachusetts? We can't say that we're sure, one way or the other.

Claims about the Magnolia miracle have been around for some time. At one point in today's column, Kristof refers back to a column he wrote in May 2023:

I wrote about Mississippi’s educational successes in 2023, but many of my fellow liberals then scoffed at the notion of learning from a state so tainted. Skeptics, mostly on the left, have made many critiques of the gains, including that they fade in upper grades, that the states are cheating, that this is all a temporary blip and that any progress is simply a result of holding back weak readers.

The critiques have been effectively rebutted—for starters, they can’t explain the continuing gains in Mississippi or the magnitude of the gains. Just as striking, the Mississippi gains increasingly are being replicated in Alabama and Louisiana, as they follow similar approaches. That’s enormously encouraging...

We ourselves are one of the liberal skeptics who questioned these claims back then. In this morning's column, Kristof links to a report which cites a column by Michael Hiltzik, who was then a business columnist for the Los Angeles Times. 

Writing in July 2023, Hiltzik offered this:

How Mississippi gamed its national reading test scores to produce ‘miracle’ gains

[...]

A close examination of the numbers suggests that it’s not true. Bob Somerby and Kevin Drum, two of the most adept myth busters in the blogosphere, have done yeomen’s work deconstructing the statistics. Their conclusion is that Mississippi’s program isn’t nearly as successful as its fans assert and may not have produced any improvement at all in fourth-grade reading scores. The apparent gains may be a statistical illusion.

There is a lesson here, however. It’s not about how to effectively teach kids to read, but how difficult it is to teach journalists how to scrutinize statistical claims.

Kristof's source cites Hiltzik's column; Hiltzik cited us. (May Kevin rest in peace. He remains on our list of "favorite sites.")

In fact, we're fairly sure that we didn't reach a conclusion, at that or at any other point, about the claims of a Mississippi miracle. If memory serves, we said that no, we didn't believe the claims—but that we also didn't necessarily believe that the claims were bogus.

(Two days after Hiltzik's column appeared, we headed off to the hospital for some shoulder work. After that, we were shipped to "The Warehouse" for almost a month. For that reason, we didn't see Hiltzik's column until quite a bit later.)

We're big admirers of Kristof's work. Except perhaps at moments like this. 

As for ourselves, we've been aware of, and have reported on, statistical scams involving public school test scores dating all the way back to the early 1970s. The mainstream press—and the nation's "education experts"—finally caught up with this embarrassingly widespread phenomenon roughly thirty years later.

Based on long and astounding experience, we never believe implausible claims of the type Kristof cites. Also, though, just because the claims seem implausible on their face, that doesn't necessarily mean the claims are bogus.

Are the claims about Mississippi true? Even today, we can't tell you. That said, we took a quick look at some NAEP scores today after reading Kristof's new column.

(Kristof's claims are based upon results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress—the NAEP. It's a highly regarded federal testing program which is administered in reading and math in Grade 4 and Grade 8. Not that anyone cares!)

More precisely, we looked at the most recent Grade 8 reading scores for Mississippi and Massachusetts. Before the week is done, we'll show you what we found.

The practices which allegedly produced Mississippi's fourth grade miracle scores have been underway in that state for a fairly long time. If Mississippi's fourth graders have been making those kinds of gains, the gains should be showing up among the state's eighth graders by now.

(Also, if the gains have all disappeared by the time kids reach Grade 8, then, borrowing from the early Dylan, But oh what kind of miracle is this, which goes from bad to worse?)

By the end of the week, we'll show you how some of these numbers look. As we noted this morning, we're seeking "Proof of Life" this week. Here's a possible spoiler alert:

When it comes to upbeat claims of this type, there's been little proof of skeptical life among this failing nation's elites over the past sixty years!

PROOF OF LIFE: The Seahawks won the actual game!

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2026

But who won the halftime performance? After a long string of good luck, the NFL got stuck with a stinker of a game at yesterday's Super Bowl

Seattle's Seahawks won the game. By our reckoning, President Donald J. Trump probably won the halftime performance.

By that, we mean his approvals may have bumped up a point or two, though there's no way to measure such changes. We mean that some people who may have been drifting from Red over toward Blue may perhaps have been frozen in place by their reaction to yesterday's 16-minute performance.

Also, we mean that dangerous divisions may have hardened, in a way that's hard to thaw. Or then again, possibly not! 

There's no real way to measure momentary blips of that type. But as of this morning, our own Blue America was reading from script, on Morning Joe, regarding this very topic.

At 6:15, the first key exchange occurred. Here's how it went between David Drucker, who's very sharp, and the host of that cable news show:

DRUCKER (2/9/26): It's not a big deal.

SCARBOROUGH: Not a big deal, unless you're a bigot.

They were discussing the halftime show. It wasn't a big deal, Scarborough said, unless you're a bigot.

Of course!

Yes, Scarborough is numbered among us Blues now. Also, he's fully alert—but no, we can't help ourselves when it comes to such pictures of the world and of those who live within it.

(Before the program's first hour was done, the coven was talking about this additional topic, as adumbrated by Drucker: "How do you criticize Republicans without offending Republican voters?" 

(Moments later, Katty Kay fashioned the concept a bit more precisely: "How do you go after Donald Trump without insulting Donald Trump's supporters?" Everyone agreed—based upon a recent speech, Jon Ossoff knows how to do it.)

On Morning Joe, everyone agreed with everyone else about the halftime show. Everyone agreed with everyone else about Senator Ossoff's recent speech.

That said, group agreement has been the long-standing rule on two of our three "cable news" channels. Viewers turn to these channels for tribal reassurance—their own tribe is perfectly right.

As the Morning Joe panelists voiced agreement, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal had already posted assessments insisting that there had been no imaginable point of concern in yesterday's halftime show. 

That may or may not be right. The New York Times hadn't weighed in yet, but the Post and the Journal had already posted these reviews:

The Washington Post
Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show was expected to provoke. Did it?

So how provocative was it? On a scale of 1 to 10...Bad Bunny’s halftime show was a solid 3. If that.

If you were looking for political commentary, the closest that you got was the moment at the end when he said “God bless America” in English—then proceeded to name all of the countries in the Western Hemisphere in geographical order from south to north.

Weeks before he set foot on the stage, Bad Bunny’s halftime performance had already become a media event. There was rapturous anticipation from his millions of fans worldwide, and there was boycotting and indignation from right-wing figures who objected to hearing Spanish during the Super Bowl or erroneously claimed that Puerto Ricans are not Americans.

[...]

But if haters were hungry for provocation, Bad Bunny didn’t give them much to sink their teeth into...
(For full review, click here)

The Wall Street Journal
Bad Bunny Uses Joy to Put Out Political Firestorm at Super Bowl Halftime

Bad Bunny delivered a pointed message in Spanish to millions of Americans watching the Super Bowl on Sunday night: “We’re still here.”

In a history-making halftime show performed almost entirely in Spanish, the Puerto Rican star paid tribute to his heritage and the many countries—from Brazil to Mexico—whose people have come to shape the modern-day U.S.

Just a week ago, Bad Bunny denounced Immigration and Customs Enforcement while accepting a Grammy award, stoking further political furor from conservatives ahead of the Super Bowl. But on the halftime stage, he offered up a buoyant celebration of Latino culture.
(For full review, click here)

It was a celebration of joy. Unless you're one of the haters!

Obviously, there's nothing "wrong" with paying tribute to a performer's heritage and to some wider culture. But to what extent does some such celebration make sense as part of the Super Bowl?

On cable news, opinions won't differ! As our fellow Blues name-call the bigots and the haters, we'll let our own tentative assessment stand. 

(Nor do we admire, as Scarborough does, the NFL's never-ending desire to own the last dollar left on Earth. It's an instinct the NFL shares with President Trump. It strikes us as a major part of the problem.)

For ourselves, we spent a substantial chunk of the weekend marveling at the way the Fox News Channel seemed to use a tragic event in Arizona as a way to avoid discussing the president's recent behavior(s).

As of Saturday morning, chief among those recent behaviors was the president's gruesome Truth Social post regarding the two Obamas. 

That very morning, the New York Times had placed its report about that post at the top of the front page of its print editions. With apologies for what we're repeating, this was the dual headline sitting atop that report:

Trump Posts, Then Erases, Racist Video of Obamas
Apes Depiction is Latest Affront in a Pattern of Denigrating Black Americans

Centuries of unspeakable human suffering lie behind that depiction. To read the Times report online, you can just click here.

The sitting president had somehow managed to repost that depiction. He said he didn't know that he had done that. In all honesty, we can't necessarily say that he actually knew that he had.

(More on that to follow.)

On Saturday morning, the gruesome post was the featured topic on the New York Times' front page. But on that morning's Fox & Friends Weekend, the three friends found the perfect way to avoid ever talking about it—and then, the channel continued this act of group avoidance all through a very long weekend.

On Fox, the performers spoke about virtually nothing except Arizona. They spoke about the apparent kidnapping which had apparently happened there, and they spoke about virtually nothing else.

At the start of Saturday morning, the three friends on Fox & Friends Weekend maintained this remarkably tedious pose for their program's full four hours. Other waves of corporate messengers extended this imitation of life. 

They managed to keep it up all weekend long.

(Briefly, words of praise: At Mediaite, Sarah Rumpf had already presented this deeply informative analysis of the way this topic was avoided all through the Fox News Channel's Friday daytime programming. We expect to review her piece in more detail at a later point, but you almost never see an American journalist produce such insightful work.)

At Fox, they staged this "imitation of life" all through the weekend's programming. One expert witness after another was dragged out onto the air.

The experts were forced to pretend that they had something to say about the attempt to locate Nancy Guthrie. None of them had much to say, but they pretended all weekend long.

By Sunday morning, it was fairly clear that the friends on Fox & Friends Weekend suspected that Nancy Guthrie was no longer living. It also seemed fairly clear that they had been told that they mustn't actually say that.

Again and again and again and again, the array of experts on the Fox News Channel discussed the need for "proof of life." Now for a minor surprise:

At this site, our young analysts were seeking proof of life too!

Tomorrow: Did the sitting president know what he'd done? 

Also, Jamelle Bouie's assessment of President Trump, with which, on balance, we don't exactly agree.

FRIDAY: The gentleman's latest Truth Social post!

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2026

Like gunshots on Fifth Avenue? The Truth Social post has been deleted. But you can still see it, just as it was, at the Wayback Machine.

With apologies—at Mediate, the original report started like this:

Trump Posts Video Depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as Apes

President Donald Trump shared a 2020 election conspiracy video to Truth Social on Thursday night that briefly depicts former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama as apes.

And so on from there. It's in that report that we saw the link to the original Truth Social post.

By now, the original post has been deleted. First, though, and again with sorrow, the cosmos was offered this:

White House Shrugs Off ‘Fake Outrage’ Over Trump Post Depicting Obamas as Apes

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has dismissed criticism of President Donald Trump for having shared an AI-generated video on Truth Social depicting former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama as apes.

[...]

Responding on Friday, Leavitt defended the post in comment to PBS and said the controversial clip was from a meme that had depicted Trump as “King of the Jungle” over other lawmakers:

"This is from an Internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from ‘The Lion King.' Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public."

And so on from there. At this point, we may even feel sorry for the routinely astonishing Leavitt. Our main question about her remains unchanged:

How does a person get to be the way she was by the time she was just 25?

How did she get to be that way? We do feel sure that she could do better.

The president once said that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and no major harm would be done to him within his political world. It's also true that Blue America's major news orgs have worked hard, for the past many years, to refuse to see the unfortunate, dangerous state of affairs which has been sitting right there before them.

We'll be watching Fox & Friends Weekend tomorrow morning. Presumably, all three friends will be present—Charlie and Rachel and Griff.

As you know, we always watch that "cable news" show. We'll start watching at 6 o'clock sharp.

SONG(S) SUNG BLUE: When Martinez described her seven wounds...

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2026

...she was widely disappeared: Marimar Martinez, 30 years old, was born right there in Chicago.

Today, she's a preschool teacher at a Montessori school. She speaks lightly accented English—but then again, who doesn't?

(Who isn't speaking "accented English?" Kate Winslet? Jennifer Lawrence?)

This past Tuesday, Martinez was a featured witness on Capitol Hill at a form staged by Democratic Party officeholders. As you can see by clicking here, C-Span summarizes its 22-minute videotape of her testimony in the (slightly comical) manner shown:

February 3, 2026
U.S. Citizen Recounts Being Shot Five Times by Border Patrol Agents in Chicago

Marimar Martinez, 30, a U.S. citizen and resident of Chicago, says she was shot by Customs and Border Patrol agents five times during an attempted traffic stop. During a public forum organized by congressional Democrats, she says, "I felt the bullets continue to pierce my body". She says she is thankful she survived her "attempted murder" by a Border Patrol agent so she can tell her story.

C-Span is playing it safe! Martinez says she was shot five times? That's what the invaluable news org says.

In all honesty, no one disputes the fact that Martinez was shot five times. As we noted yesterday, the federal agent who shot her five times soon seemed to be bragging about that fact in a brace of gruesome text messages.

To its credit, NBC News reported that fact in January. Here's the relevant part of the report in question:

Judge dismisses charges against Chicago woman shot by Border Patrol

[...]

The motion to dismiss comes after it was revealed last week at a court hearing that the Customs and Border Protection agent who shot Martinez multiple times had bragged about it in messages to other officers.

According to Reuters, records presented at the hearing showed that in a group Signal chat with other agents, Exum wrote: “I fired 5 rounds and she had 7 holes. Put that in your book boys.”

In a message to another recipient, Exum sent a news article about the event followed by the message: “Read it. 5 shots, 7 holes,” Reuters reported.

Christopher Parente, an attorney for Martinez, asked the agent what he meant by those messages. According to records presented earlier this month at a hearing against her, Exum responded: “I’m a firearms instructor and I take pride in my shooting skills.”

As we noted yesterday, Michelle Goldberg referred to Exum's "giddy sadism" in this instructive column for the New York Times. We can't say that her diagnosis is wrong, but we also can't say that it's right. We'll assume she was speaking colloquially.

(According to the leading authority on the topic, the term "sadistic personality disorder" no longer exists in the DSM as a clinical diagnosis. At any rate, our journalists have agreed that such matters must never be discussed within the nation's political discourse.)

Martinez, who was shot five times, was a featured witness at Tuesday's congressional forum. Unless you subscribe to the New York Times, in which case you were limited to this account of what was said at that timely event:

Renee Good’s Brothers Call on Congress to Rein In Immigration Crackdown

Nearly one month after a federal immigration agent shot and killed Renee Good, 37, in Minneapolis, two of her siblings, Brent and Luke Ganger, appeared on Capitol Hill on Tuesday and urged lawmakers to move to rein in the deportation crackdown.

“In the last few weeks, our family took some consolation thinking that perhaps Nee’s death would bring about change in our country,” Luke Ganger told members of Congress, using a nickname for his sister. “And it has not.”

Reading from the eulogy he said he had given for his sister days earlier, Brent Ganger called Ms. Good “unapologetically hopeful.” Choking back tears as he described Ms. Good as a devoted mother, he likened his sister to a dandelion.

“They keep coming back stronger, brighter, spreading seeds of hope everywhere they land,” he said.

Ms. Good’s brothers spoke at a public forum held by congressional Democrats, which was focused on the use of force by federal agents conducting the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

That's the way the news report began. It continued from there at some length. 

The testimony by Renee Good's brothers was a major part of the forum. As for Martinez, her ordeal was also mentioned—but not until the news report's final paragraph:

Mr. Pretti’s relatives did not speak at the forum, but Democrats invoked his death as they argued that federal immigration agents needed to operate with stricter limits.

“Congress has a responsibility to step in when constitutional rights are being violated,” said Mr. Garcia, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee.

The Democrats also heard testimony from Antonio Romanucci, a lawyer representing Ms. Good’s family, and a number of American citizens who described violent encounters with immigration officials.

So there! Martinez was one of that "number of American citizens who described violent encounters with immigration officials." That said, you're looking at the way the very end of the Times report. 

Martinez's name was never mentioned in the Times report. Indeed, the highly accommodationist Times came that close to totally leaving her out.

We've repeatedly mentioned the way the New York Times tends to disappear the most disturbing phenomena involving the sitting president. To our reckoning, this lengthy but highly circumscribed news report tends to fit that pattern. 

At present, the New York Times is powering ahead on the national scene. By way of contrast, the once great Washington Post seems to perhaps be dying. 

That said:

As usual, the struggling Post did a better job reporting Tuesday's forum. The Washington Post managed to acknowledge Martinez—and two more "others"—right there in its headline. But it also did so, right from the jump, in the body of its report:

Renée Good’s brothers, others describe assaults, shootings at hearing

American citizens told congressional leaders Tuesday that they had been shot, manhandled and dragged from their cars by aggressive federal immigration enforcement agents in recent months, experiences that left them fearing for their lives.

The witnesses wept and spoke with emotion as they described violent encounters with federal agents at a forum on Capitol Hill sponsored by two Democrats. Some said they were protesting when they encountered immigration agents. Others told lawmakers they were innocent bystanders.

“I struggle every day with the pain and the suffering,” said Marimar Martinez, 30, who was shot five times by a federal agent after following U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and blowing her car horn to warn neighbors of a potential raid in Chicago last fall. She was charged with assaulting the officer who shot her — but the charge was later dropped.

There was one moment, she recounted, that she looked down at blood streaming from poorly bandaged gunshot wounds and feared she might die.

[...]

On Tuesday, lawmakers also heard from Aliya Rahman, a traumatic brain injury survivor who said she was dragged from her car by agents in January, and Martin Daniel Rascon, who was shot at by agents in California in August.

Rahman, a Bangladeshi American software engineer, described becoming ensnared in a traffic jam of ICE vehicles while driving to a doctor’s appointment in Minneapolis on Jan. 13. Agents asked her to move her vehicle then shattered her car window and dragged her from the vehicle before taking her into custody, she said.

“I yelled, ‘I’m disabled,’” she said. “And the agent said, ‘Too late.’”

She said once she was taken to the Whipple Federal Building—where hundreds of immigrants have been detained—agents ignored her protestations that she had a brain injury. She repeatedly asked for medical care before finally blacking out. She was ultimately taken to a local hospital to be treated, she said.

Several weeks ago, in real time, we asked what ended up happening to Rahman. On Tuesday, her account of her treatment was horrifying—and yes, she had been on her way to a medical appointment when she was dragged from her car and subjected to a horrific manhandling.

(She still can't lift her arms normally, she said at Tuesday's forum.)

The Post's report barely scratched the surface of what Rahman said. But to the credit of the Post's news division, the testimony of Aliya Rahman, 43 years old, wasn't wholly disappeared.

The fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti have brought this general topic center stage in the American public discourse. You'd almost think the horrific stories told by Martinez, Rahman and Rascon would have been a matter of high public interest.

Presumably, that's what congressional Democrats thought when they organized this forum. But in its oatmeal-adjacent news report about the Tuesday event, the New York Times ran off and hid.

Tuesday evening, Lawrence O'Donnell didn't.

Elsewhere in Blue America, "cable news" hosts largely went through the motions. Below, we show you the pittance Anderson Cooper dropped into the cup of public awareness on his CNN program that night:

COOPER (2/3/25): Powerful testimony on Capitol Hill today by the brothers of Renee Good, the 37-year-old mom who was shot to death by an ice officer in Minneapolis nearly one month ago. Here's some of what Luke and Brent Gang Ganger told lawmakers.

LUKE GANGER (videotape): The prayers and words of support have truly brought us comfort, and it is meaningful that these sentiments have come from people of all colors, faiths and ideals. That is a perfect reflection of Renee.

BRENT GANGER (videotape): When I think of Renee, I think of dandelions and sunlight. Dandelions don't ask permission to grow. They push through cracks in the sidewalk, through hard soil, through places where you don't expect beauty. And suddenly there they are bright, alive.

COOPER: Also testifying today was Aliya Rahman, who was violently pulled out of her car by ICE agents in Minneapolis last month. It's hard to forget those images just a couple of blocks from where Renee Good was killed. She tried to tell officers she was disabled.

She has autism and a traumatic brain injury and was on her way to a medical appointment when they cut the seatbelt strap to grab her. She was detained, but says she was never told she was under arrest, never read her rights, never charged with a crime.

RAHMAN (videotape): I received no medical screening, phone call or access to a lawyer. I was denied a communication navigator when my speech began to slur. Agents laughed as I tried to immobilize my own neck.

I asked for my cane and was told no. Pulled up by my arms and prodded forward in leg irons by agents laughing and saying, "Walk! You can do it, walk!"

COOPER: She also testified that she ended up in an emergency room after that experience.

In fairness, brief videotape of Rahman's testimony was offered. Martinez wasn't mentioned. Neither was Charles Exum. 

For the record, this brief report came very late in Cooper's hourlong program. Like almost everyone else, he threw Martinez under a bus so he could focus on a "true crime" drama involving the mother of a high=end press corps colleague.

By our reckoning, Cooper took a bit of a dive on Tuesday night, as is his channel's wont. Lawrence O'Donnell didn't. 

In our view, O'Donnell won a Pulitzer Prize with his angry presentation of what was said at that forum. If only his corporate owners were able to see how strong his performance was!

O'Donnell's performance wasn't perfect. No presentation of a news event ever is—and O'Donnell's undisguised loathing of President Trump sometimes undermines his journalistic performance.

But on this Tuesday night, O'Donnell reacted much as a sensible, sane person should. If only his owners were able to see how strong his performance was!

Those owners have made no attempt to call attention to O'Donnell's performance. In a similarly embarrassing way, no one at Mediaite reported on O'Donnell's presentation.

Over at the Last Word site, you can see the first ten minutes—and nothing more—of O'Donnell's lengthy opening segment. He opened his program with two major chunks of the testimony of Martinez. Included was her denunciation of the colloquially sadistic text messages Exum sent.

If you want to see that first ten minutes, you can click to go to the Last Word site. Once there, you must click again on the "Latest Video" entry bearing this capsule description:

Lawrence: No Republicans show up as victims of Trump-encouraged ICE shootings testify

No Republicans showed up? Neither did the New York Times, or Anderson Cooper, or even O'Donnell's corporate owners. At such times, we routinely self-impressed humans may learn who we actually are, in all our variety and given our imperfections.

Even here in Blue America, we aren't the people we often seem to think we are. That's especially true of the corporate ownership types who parcel out what we can see and what we can hear when we visit our most trusted news orgs.

In our view, O'Donnell won a Pulitzer Prize that night. Elsewhere, the public discourse was the biggest loser.

Martinez and Rahman told stories that day which were horrifying but also highly instructive. Given the public concern created by the fatal shooting of Good and Pretti, you'd think the stories told at that forum would have major news value.

No transcripts of what was said that day were created. We ourselves have barely scratched the surface of what Martinez and the two others said.

To appearances, congressional Democrats had tried to fashion a song sung Blue when they presented that forum. For reasons they won't be asked about, major news orgs disappeared the harrowing, highly topical stories the public needs to hear.

For extra credit only: One final point:

Over on the Fox News Channel, has that forum ever been mentioned at all? We'll try to research that point.

As we noted on Wednesday afternoon, Fox viewers were told the latest about Joy Behar. this week They were so informed by someone who strikes us as sadly and weirdly disordered. But were they ever exposed to a single word of what Martinez said?

THURSDAY: When Martinez told her story this week...

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 2026

...the glorious Times took a pass: It's amazing to see how little the American public has been told about Charles Exum.

As best we can tell from the paper's search engine, Exum's behavior in Chicago last year has never been the subject of a New York Times news report. On January 11, his conduct was briefly described by Michelle Goldberg, in this informative opinion column. 

What follows is the sum total of what an avid Times reader has likely read about Exum's behavior. Warning! In this short account, Goldberg seems to have misstated several points concerning what Exum did

By Killing Renee Good, ICE Sent a Message to Us All

[...]

It’s entirely possible that had [Renee] Good lived, the Trump administration might have tried to prosecute her. That’s essentially what happened to Marimar Martinez, a U.S. citizen in Chicago, in October. Martinez was in her car trying to warn people about ICE when she collided with a Border Patrol vehicle. Federal officials claimed she “rammed” a car driven by the agent Charles Exum, while her lawyers say he sideswiped her. Exum then got out of his car and shot her five times.

Martinez survived, only for the Justice Department to charge her with assaulting a federal officer. Her lawyers soon discovered that Exum had been boasting about the shooting in text messages. In one, he wrote, “I fired 5 rounds, and she had 7 holes. Put that in your book boys.” In another, he said, “Sweet. My fifteen mins of fame. Lmao.” The Justice Department ended up dropping the case before even more messages could be revealed.

Exum’s giddy sadism shouldn’t have been surprising; it reflects the culture the administration is encouraging among its immigration enforcers. In one ICE recruiting ad, an agent mans a mounted gun atop some sort of militarized vehicle, with the words, “Destroy the flood.” It was a reference to the video game Halo, where players must kill hostile space aliens. Another shows sword-wielding knights with the words, “The enemies are at the gates.”

Back in October, up in Chicago, Exum shot Marimar Martinez. In fact, he shot her five times, producing seven separate bullet holes—seven separate wounds. 

Goldberg correctly said that federal officials had initially accused Martinex of "ramming" Exum's car. Let the record also show this:

In a fleeting reference to this incident in a "Visual Investigations" piece, a team of Times reporters said that Exum later testified that no "ramming" had occurred. He said the "collision" in question had in fact been "side to side."

Also this:

Back in real time, the struggling Washington Post devoted more attention to this remarkable incident than did the more glorious Times. In this news report—"Federal judge dismisses case against Chicago woman shot by Border Patrol"—the Post reported that Martinez had also been charged with attempted murder, not just with "assaulting a federal officer."

In November, the government dropped all charges. No explanations provided!

All in all, whatever! In her column, Goldberg referred to Exum's "giddy sadism," and there seems to be no doubt—he did send those giddy text messages, in which he did in fact seem to boast about shooting Martinez five times, producing the seven bullet holes about which he seemed to be boasting.

On Tuesday, Martinez, who is 30 years old, told this story from her point of view, right there in Washington, D.C., "at a public forum held by congressional Democrats." Her astonishing story was ignored by the Times in this brief report about that forum. 

Once again, the Washington Post outperformed the Times in its own report about this Tuesday's forum.

As part of our struggling nation's lore, "Frankie she shot Albert—she shot him three or four times." In this more recent American incident, Exum shot Martinez a full five times—and the federal government then walked away from the apparently bogus charges it had initially filed.

Even after what has happened in Minneapolis, our greatest Blue American newspaper took a pass on Martinez's story in this week's news report. Lawrence O'Donnell made no such mistake. More on that tomorrow.

To our eye, O'Donnell won the Pulitzer Prize Tuesday night. Last night, sad to say, the gentleman gave it back.

Frankie she shot Albert: To hear Mike Seeger tell this story, you can just click here. His telling begins in the time-honored way:

"Frankie was a good girl—everybody knows."

SONG(S) SUNG BLUE: When Bouie pictured Trump's Waterloo...

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 2026

...French said, Not so fast: European literature is said to begin with the war poem known as the Iliad. Midway through the ancient text, Achilles is sulking in his tents, down along the shore.

Insulted by Agamemnon, Achilles is refusing to participate in the Achaeans' attempt to sack Troy. Odysseus is sent to win this mightiest warrior back.

It's a sobering assignment. In translation, we moderns are told this:

"Ajax and Odysseus made their way at once where the battle lines of breakers crash and drag, praying hard to the god who moves and shakes the earth that they might bring the proud heart of Achilles round with speed and ease." 

No one is eager to confront this mighty warrior's rage. But when they arrive at Achilles' tents, this is what they find:

Reaching the Myrmidon shelters and their ships,
they found him there, delighting his heart now,
plucking strong and clear on the fine lyre—
beautifully carved, its silver bridge set firm—
he won from the spoils when he razed Eetion's city.
Achilles was lifting his spirits with it now,
singing the famous deeds of fighting heroes.
Across from him Patroclus sat alone, in silence,
waiting for Aeacus' son to finish with his song.

As beloved Patroclus looks on, mighty Achilles is lifting his spirits by singing a tribal song! This was all happening down by the shore, "where the breakers crash and drag."

Over this past weekend, it may have been a bit like that at the New York Times. In his new column for the Times, Jamelle Bouie almost seemed to be singing a (familiar) song sung Blue:

Minneapolis May Be Trump’s Gettysburg

That was the headline on Bouie's column. A separate column by Ezra Klein seemed to suggest this same pleasing notion:

The misbehavior of federal troops in Minnesota might be this president's Gettysburg—perhaps even his Waterloo!

We Blues have sung this song again and again, dating all the way back to 2015. In June of that year, Candidate Trump's peculiar remarks about John McCain were going to bring his campaign to an end. 

Later, we heard the same claim about the crude remarks the fellow had offered on the Access Hollywood videotape.

Eleven years later, we Blues almost seem to be singing that same song all over again. But at that very same New York Times, David French had a different view.

David French is nobody's fool. His personal history isn't Blue, but he's thoroughly NeverTrump.

His new column poses a terrible warning—a warning worthy of Cassandra, daughter of Troy's King Priam. Headline included, his column starts like this:

This Is Not a Drill

It’s only February, and the November elections are already in peril.

When I think back to the days and weeks before Jan. 6, 2021, one thing that’s clear is that many of us suffered from a failure of imagination. We knew President Trump’s lies and conspiracy mongering were dangerous, but it’s hard to think of a single person who predicted that a MAGA mob would storm the Capitol.

Very few people anticipated the sheer scale and scope of the effort to overturn the election or that an incredible 147 Republicans would vote not to certify Joe Biden’s clear and unambiguous presidential victory. We did not realize that they would go along with something that plainly corrupt and dangerous.

We must not make that mistake again.

Bouie was picturing a Waterloo—but French was aggressively saying this:

Fellow scribe, not so fast!

November's elections "are already in peril," French said at the start of his column. In the handful of days since his column appeared, his warning has emerged as prophetic.

What the Hellespont was the columnist talking about? Given the president's declining approval ratings, how could the indolent forces of Blue America fail to win the day in November's elections?

How could we fail to win back the House? Based on a bit of extremely strange recent conduct, French proceeded to lay it out. Eventually, he imagined this state of play as this year's elections draw near:

[T]his is not a normal election year.

Now, in October, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which rapidly expanded throughout the year, is running large-scale operations in Democratic-controlled cities. Hundreds if not thousands more American citizens have been caught in the dragnet. So have thousands of lawful residents.

Citizens, lawful residents and undocumented immigrants alike have been shackled and transported to brutal detention facilities in Texas and Florida.

Despite repeated court orders holding that federal officials cannot stop, much less detain, anyone purely on the basis of perceived ethnicity, the stops are still happening on a daily basis in cities across the United States.

That's the way it will be, French prophesies, by the time of November's elections. In his column, he pictures a state of play in which nonwhite citizens are afraid to go the polls because the polls are under federal guard. 

He offers much more detail in his dystopian musing. Along the way, he says this:

"The horrifying thing about our current moment is that not a single aspect of the scenario above is far-fetched. In fact, some of it is already happening."

Question:

Can something like that actually happen here? When French's column appeared, he cited the recent, extremely peculiar federal raid on the Fulton County election center, with Tulsi Gabbard on the scene, heroically directing the commander's federal troops. 

Massive volumes of records were carted off in support of the president's undying claim that he actually won the 2020 election. As French notes in his column, the sitting president is so delusional that he has even revived the lunatic "Italian satellite theory," according to which "Italian military satellites hacked the 2020 election."

Yes, that's correct. Even that!

Many observers were able to see the Fulton County raid as a threat to basic American process. That said, could French's detailed prophesy actually turn out to be true? 

Sadly, this:

In the handful of days since the column appeared, the president has angrily said that we ought to "nationalize" this year's elections. And then, Steve Bannon delivered the coup de grace on his WarRoom program.

As reported by Mediaite, here's what the gentleman said:

You’re damn right we’re gonna have ICE surround the polls come November. We’re not gonna sit here and allow you to steal the country again. And you can whine and cry and throw your toys out of the pram all you want, but we will never again allow an election to be stolen.

In this subsequent report, Politico records Bannon's further statements along these lines. Yesterday, the unusual fellow said this:

President Trump has to nationalize the election. You’ve got to put—not just, I think, ICE—you’ve got to call up the 82nd and 101st Airborne [Divisions] on the Insurrection Act. You’ve got to get around every poll and make sure only people with IDs, people … actually registered to vote and people that are United States citizens vote in this election

Could this actually happen here? Sadly, of course it could!

We've offered you reports about Bannon from Mediaite and Politico. We've done so for the following reason:

As best we can tell from the Times search engine, the New York Times, to this very minute, hasn't reported what Bannon has said.

In the end, Achilles abandoned his lyre and returned to the battle. We don't expect behavior like that from singers like Bouie and Klein.

We close for today with one final point:

As these disturbing events unfold, our major journalists still refuse to report and discuss the fairly obvious state of affairs which is sitting right there before them. 

A guild rule tells them that they mustn't ever discuss such obvious possibilities. Obedient to a fault, they sleepwalk into a frightening future, singing a familiar song sung Blue and thereby lifting our spirits.

Overthrows have happened before. All in all, in the end, we would offer this:

Our species wasn't built for this line of work. That fact has been proven before.

Tomorrow: Lawrence O'Donnell returns his prize

This afternoon: Who the Sam Hill is Charles Exum? Don't ask the New York Times!

WEDNESDAY: Unrecognizable falls off the wagon!

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2026

Behar a dog, he says: We don't watch Gutfeld! every night. Watching the show is a painful activity, but someone at one of our major news orgs—New York Times, come on down!—should be monitoring this extremely strange, prime time "cable new" program on a nightly basis.

We don't watch every night. Still, we recently said it was our impression that the program's miscreant host had abandoned one of his most common practices:

We said it seemed that he had stopped comparing the female hosts of The View to cattle, horses, elephants and pigs, but also to whales and dogs and explicitly to "livestock."

On balance, Greg Gutfeld seems to possibly be some version of incel-adjacent. Without question, his routine conduct suggests a remarkably throwback loathing of women—an attitude many others would quickly describe as misogyny.

He surrounds himself with four-member panels of ideological stooges who experts sometimes describe as "Unrecognizables." Last evening, this was the lineup:

Gutfeld!: February 3, 2026
Tyrus: former professional "wrestler"
Emily Compagno: former head cheerleader, Oakland Raiders
Greg Gutfeld: host
Joe Machi: well-intentioned comedian
Katie Miller: wife of Stephen Miller

No, we aren't making that up. The previous night, the collection may have been worse:

Gutfeld!: February 2, 2026
Tyrus: former professional "wrestler"
Emily Compagno: perpetually furious fast-talker
Greg Gutfeld: 61-year old host
Michael Malice: that's the pen name he has chosen
Dave Landau: comedian

In fairness to major Blue American orgs, it would be hard to provide a critique of what occurs on this extremely peculiar program. 

On the other hand, the program's fatuous topic selection, mixed with its D-minus level of political analysis and the fury with which its panelists express their perfectly choreographed views, makes it a fascinating sample of the moral and intellectual life which seems be animate some part of the ongoing MAGA revolt.

If we were to characterize the program's content, we'd focus on its increasingly mega-BEEPed language, mixed with its undisguised apparent misogyny. We'd also offer this note:

There are plenty of fully legitimate Red American complaints concerning the recent conduct of Blue America. For example, discussions on The View are often less than ideal—but Greg Gutfeld focuses exclusively on the claim that the show's five female co-hosts are too ugly and too fat, and that they therefore make him think of cattle and dogs.

There are plenty of fully legitimate complaints about the conduct of Blue America. Gutfeld! is marked by the expletive-laden, dimwitted way its participants pretend to explore them.

Long story short:

Last night, the program's perpetually furious, poop-obsessed host finally fell off the wagon! At 10:01, one minute in—that would be 7:01 on the coast—he offered this as the third of his short collection of opening jokes:

GUTFELD (2/3/26): Pharmaceutical companies are developing an Ozempic appetite suppression drug for dogs. 

And it's testing well! Joy Behar has completely stopped eating her own poop.

AUDIENCE: [Cheers, applause]

Yes, that's what this idiot said. Of course, as soon as he said "appetite" and "dogs," everyone knew where the corporate nut-ball was going. 

The reference to poop was an extra. On major Fox News Channel programs, everyone else is paid to pretend that this nut-ball's behavior makes sense.

The program went downhill after that. Monday's program may have been even uglier and dumber, but as of 10:01 last night, there he had gone again!

This very strange person is 61 years of age! Which is stranger:

The fact that he and his followers comport themselves this way every weekday night? Or the fact that no major news org in Blue America has ever tried to publish an accurate account of the very strange behavior offered each night on this, the third most-watched "cable news" program in our rapidly failing nation?

We suspected his owner had told him to stop. Last night, the fellow broke loose.

SONG(S) SUNG BLUE: O'Donnell wins the Pulitzer Prize!

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2026

Also, the president's Waterloo: Last evening, starting at 10 o'clock, Lawrence O'Donnel spent an hour winning the Pulitzer Prize.

We refer to the Pulitzer Prize for Not Being Asleep at The Wheel While Being Powder Blue. Before we describe O'Donnell's performance, let's return to one of the columns which appeared, over the weekend, at the New York Times.

As we noted in Monday's report, we thought we heard a familiar song as we read a few of those columns. In one column, Jamelle Bouie seemed to be dreaming a pleasant dream about a certain president's recent drop in the polls.

"Minneapolis May Be Trump’s Gettysburg," the headline on the column said. The president's current decline may be his Gettysburg—perhaps even his Waterloo!

We thought we heard a familiar old song sung Blue. We thought we possibly heard that same song in the new column by Ezra Klein.

"Trump Has Overwhelmed Himself," the headline said on that column. 

At this site, we recalled the way Candidate Trump had supposedly doomed himself with what he said about John McCain! Also, we recalled the way he had doomed himself with what he said to Billy Bush on that Access Hollywood videotape!

We Blues! We've been singing that song of easy escape since at least 2015. As we read those two columns—even as we read this guest essay by Ruth Ben-Ghiat—we thought we might be hearing the newest version of that same old tribal song.

(At one point, we even flashed on On The Beach, the four major stars 1959 film about the last few months of human life after a nuclear war. That's the danger we apparently saw in the revival of that pleasing old song.)

Will reaction to the fatal shooting of Michael Pretti prove to be the downfall of the sitting president? Everything is possible! 

Without question, that decline could point the way to victory by Democrats in this year's congressional elections. But what happens after that?

Before we consider O'Donnell's performance, let's turn to several striking comments in the three columns we've mentioned. We'll start with the column by Bouie, in which he offers this portrait of MAGA defeat:

Minneapolis May Be Trump’s Gettysburg

[...]

The result was a catastrophic defeat for the Confederacy. Lee lost the initiative and would spend the rest of the war fighting on the defensive, unable to wage another strategic campaign. The Confederacy would not win foreign recognition, leaving it helpless against a Union blockade. And even with the tremendous loss of life—the Union Army suffered more than 23,000 casualties over three days of battle—the Northern public would be reinvigorated by victory, ready to continue the fight.

ICE and C.B.P. still roam the streets, and Trump’s authoritarian aspirations have not dimmed. But surveying the wreckage of Operation Metro Surge—of this reactionary administration’s crushing defeat at the hands of another band of tenacious Northerners—it does look to me like MAGA’s Gettysburg.

Everything is possible (at least until it isn't)! That said, that sounds a bit like wishful thinking. We almost thought we heard the lilt of a very old tribal song.

Full disclosure!  Assuming our scheduled elections take place this fall, MAGA may well get crushed—but President Trump will remain in the Oval Office! And in her balanced, academic presentation, Professor Ben-Ghiat makes a significant claim:

History Shows Trump’s Worst Impulses May Backfire on Him

[...]

“I follow my instincts, and I am never wrong,” said the Italian Fascist dictator Mussolini, shortly before he invaded Ethiopia in 1935. That war and Italy’s ensuing occupation initially made him popular at home, further inflating his ego, but eventually contributed to the bankruptcy of the Italian state.

[...]

It is well documented that strongmen are at their most dangerous when they feel threatened. That is why, as popular discontent with the Trump administration’s actions deepens, Americans should brace for heightened militarized domestic repression and more imperialist aggression abroad.

"I am never wrong," Mussolini said. President Trump makes similar statements pretty much every day of the week.

Could a type of (clinically diagnosable) delusion be present when he makes such grandiose claims? We can't answer that question, but Ben-Ghiat makes a claim which we ourselves have suggested in the past:

Strongmen are at their most dangerous when they feel threatened!

If MAGA does get mauled this November, how might the sitting president react? It would be a peculiar type of Gettysburg which led our struggling nation to "heightened militarized domestic repression and more imperialist aggression abroad."

It seemed to us—we could be wrong!—that Bouie wasn't recognizing the full sweep of the possibilities at this dangerous time. Meanwhile, Ezra Klein, like Bouie, is very smart—but we thought the highlighted assertion was flatly, baldly inaccurate:

Trump Has Overwhelmed Himself

[...]

This is a presidency that is, by any measure, failing. Trump is unpopular; his brutality and his tariffs have turned immigration and affordability, once among of his strongest issues, into liabilities. Trump’s opposition is increasingly united and mobilized; Democrats are besting Republicans in elections all across the country and disciplined, brave, beautiful protest movements have emerged in the cities ICE has sought to occupy.

From what planet does that assertion hail? By the apparent "measure" of the sitting president, his presidency isn't failing at all On the planet where he seems to live, his presidency continues to be a miraculous success. 

(Clinical) delusion being what it is, we ourselves don't doubt the possibility that the sitting president truly believes his claims about his astounding success. For example, we don't doubt the possibility that he really does believe that he won the 2020 election! 

Does he really believe such things? On this campus, we have no idea, in part because Klein and Bouie have joined the rest of the guild in agreeing that medical specialists must never be asked to share what they know about the workings of (diagnosable) "delusional disorder."

We Blues! When we sing our tribal songs, echoing Achilles of old, we agree that such possibilities must not impinge on our tribal pleasure. We'll suggest that you ponder this:

As you may know, "Song Sung Blue" was and is one of Neil Diamond's most popular songs. To see him perform it, click here.

(We remember our conversation, long ago, with our friend, the comedian [NAME WITHHELD], in which we savants agreed—Diamond could sing any page in the phone book and make it sound profound. It's an amazing performance skill—a skill of high persuasion.)

In his popular "Song Sung Blue," Diamond was talking about a different kind of blue song. But in his lyrics, one key phrase almost seems to ring a bell in the present day:

Song Sung Blue

[...]

Funny thing, but you can sing it with a cry in your voice
And before you know it you get to feeling good
You simply got no choice...

Before you know it, you get to feeling good! Seeking such a type of deliverance is a well-known human tendency. 

We still haven't mentioned the way O'Donnell won the Pulitzer Prize last night. Also, we haven't had time to comment on the pathetic omissions which can be ascribed to this morning's report in the New York Times:

Also, we haven't mentioned that other column from the New York Times, the column by David French. That column also appeared this weekend. Yesterday, it appeared in print editions of the Times.

Blue Americans won't get to "feelin' good" in the course of French's column. French says the signs are abundantly clear—the sitting president isn't planning to permit a normal set of congressional elections to take place this year.

French could always be wrong, of course—but he could also be right. We recently read this nostrum somewhere:

Strongmen are at their most dangerous when they feel threatened.

Attention, Blues! Our journalistic elites have failed us every step of the way. That dates all the way back to the invention of the Whitewater pseudo-scandal (now long forgotten), followed by the twenty-month war against Candidate Gore.

That said, what happens in the mainstream press corps' guild stays inside the guild—and every guild member knows he or she must abide by that rule. 

We thought we heard a song sung Blue. Is there any possible chance that we're being ill-served again?

Tomorrow: What Lawrence O'Donnell (and only O'Donnell) correctly and angrily did

This afternoon: Gutfeld, off the wagon

In our view, a brilliant self-portrait: We never were Neil Diamond fans. But has anyone ever defined himself more brilliantly, or more concisely, than he did right here?

I Am, I Said

[...]

Did you ever read about the frog
Who dreamed of being a king
And then became one?
Well except for the names
And a few other changes,
If you talk about me,
The story's the same one...

Wow! Translation, within the context of the song:

Today, I'm a giant star in L.A.—but that's not who I actually am! 

POSTPONEMENT: Subway succumbs to eight inches of snow!

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 2026

Also, goodbye Kennedy Center: True story! 

Last Friday, we never made it to the medical mission. Making a long and frigid story short, we were wrong when we assumed that it doesn't snow in the subway. 

Once they determined that no trains would be running, further chaos ensued.

As a result, we're to the mission today on a makeup assignment. We won't be posting today, not even about this essay in the Washington Post:

The grave risk of Trump’s Kennedy Center shutdown

Last fall, workers at the Kennedy Center slapped a coat of white paint over the gold-hued columns that connect its upper terrace to its plaza, apparently at the direction of the man who effectively appointed himself chair of the center’s board, President Donald Trump.

It was a seemingly small intervention from a man who fancies himself a connoisseur of architecture, but of course, it made no architectural or visual sense. Now, the all-white columns disappear against the building’s white marble cladding, and so too the lovely symbolism of the narrow, modernist metal supports, which look more like the strings of a musical instrument than the traditional, heavy stone supports of a classical structure.

Now there is grave concern from artists and patrons that the institution itself may disappear. Sunday night, Trump announced a two-year closure for renovation beginning in July, which sounds ominously like a complete rebuild of the structure. Trump added Monday that he wasn’t “ripping it down” but then went on to describe a process that could tear the structure down to its steel framing.

Given Trump’s sudden demolition of the White House’s East Wing in October, and the mix of vague promises and bombastic language in his social media post, which promises “a new and spectacular Entertainment Complex,” it certainly seems possible that the 1971 building, designed architect Edward Durrell Stone, could be partially or completely erased...

And so on from there.

The column was written by Philip Kennicott, the paper's long-time art and architecture critic. A letter expressing a similar concern—"Watch for another wrecking ball"—has been published by the New York Times. The letter comes from a former chief editor of Architecture Magazine.

Is it possible that these fears are well-founded? We don't have the slightest idea. We can tell you this:

These peculiar events will keep occurring until we're prepared to discuss what seems to be sitting there right before us. Of course, these peculiar events would almost surely continue to happen even if we did decide to have that discussion.

This is the silence we've chosen. All in all, it seems like the best we can do.

MONDAY: Morning Joe played the videotape!

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 2026

Almost surely, Fox & Friends Weekend won't: It's true! Joe Scarborough did start today's Morning Joe with what could be called "screams of rage."

He was playing the remarkable videotape of the latest bizarre behavior by ICE. As part of this report, Mediate reports the bulk of what he said and provides the Morning Joe tape:

Joe Scarborough Screams in Rage Watching ‘Idiot’ ICE ‘Thugs’ Chase, Pull Guns on Woman

Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough screamed at the camera, trashing ICE as an “undisciplined paramilitary force” as he watched back shocking footage of the moment federal agents chased and surrounded an unarmed Minneapolis woman in her vehicle with their weapons drawn.

The woman is seen in the video from St. Peter, Minnesota, calling police as she’s being pursued by the agents on January 29 after reportedly observing and recording their actions.

As the woman requests help from police and gives her location, the agents’ red vehicle cuts her off, and officers step out to demand she exit her car.

And so on, at length, from there, with no lack of furious behavior involving threats from very large guns. The fuller story of this remarkable incident is provided by Minnesota Public Radio if you simply click here.

St. Peter police chief intervened and got federal agents to release resident, sources say

MPR News has learned that the police chief in the small southern Minnesota city of St. Peter intervened Thursday to prevent federal immigration agents from taking a local resident into detention, although the city of St. Peter denied the intervention in a statement Saturday.

And so on from there. We offer one additional thought:

That seems to be the kind of behavior many Minneapolis residents have witnessed in recent weeks. Can we tell you who won't be witnessing this latest bit of videotape? 

Almost surely, viewers of Fox & Friends Weekend will never see that tape. Neither will viewers of other programs on the Fox News Channel.

Why are people protesting in Minneapolis? As we noted in Saturday's report, Hurt, Campos-Duffy and Jenkins answered that question for Red American viewers on that day's Fox & Friends Weekend. The people were out there protesting in frigid temperatures because they're paid, viewers were told, and because they're "a little bit crazy."

That is the embarrassing way those three friends behave on the air. On Sunday morning, they continued along with that Song Sung Red, but we leave you with an obvious question:

Were some people in Minneapolis protesting last week because they've seen federal agents behaving in similar ways? Or because they've heard about such bizarre behavior? Or because they've seen the videotape?

We'll guess that the answer is yes! That said, viewers of Fox & Friends Weekend aren't likely to see that videotape. That very much isn't a "song sung Red." On programs like Fox & Friends Weekend, the songs involve different events.

Newspapers like the New York Times should be reporting the way our two Americas, Red and Blue, are exposed to different information and to different ideas—and to different pieces of videotape. This is a very basic part of our failing modern politics.

It's a basic part of our crumbling society's ongoing societal meltdown. For reasons only they can explain, most news orgs don't want to go there.

SONG(S) SUNG BLUE: Are we hearing the latest "song sung Blue?"

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 2026

We may not agree with its message: With the release of additional Epstein files, the stumblebum conduct continued. 

That said, was this really stumblebum conduct? Or might it have been a gesture of contempt from within an undeclared "silent secession?" Let's hear from the Wall Street Journal:

Epstein Files Release Exposes Names of at Least 43 Victims, WSJ Review Finds

The Justice Department exposed the names of dozens of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims, including many who haven’t shared their identities publicly or were minors when they were abused by the notorious sex offender.

A review of 47 victims’ full names on Sunday found that 43 of them were left unredacted in files that were made public by the government on Friday, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. Several women’s full names appeared more than 100 times in the files.

Could they really have been that inept? Or was that just the latest gesture?

Whatever the answer to that question might be, the madness has continued unabated. With respect to Rep. Omar, the president quickly returned to the practice of calling for—well, we'll let Mediaite explain:

Trump Rages At Ilhan Omar In Early Morning Rant Days After Attack—Demands Sending Her To Jail Or ‘Back’ To Africa

President Donald Trump attacked Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) in an early morning rant suggesting she be jailed or “sent back” to Africa just days after she was attacked onstage.

And so on from there. In a somewhat similar gesture, he announced, early this morning, that he may sue celebrity host Trevor Noah because of the bad thing he said:

Trump Aims Next Lawsuit at Trevor Noah Over ‘Defamatory’ Epstein Joke at Grammys: ‘Get Ready Noah, I’m Going To Have Some Fun With You!’

President Donald Trump said he is going to sue “pathetic” Trevor Noah after he made a “false and defamatory” joke about the president hanging out with dead sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein while hosting the Grammy Awards on Sunday night.

Trump went off on Noah in a Truth Social post at 1:01 a.m. on Monday.

And so on from there. 

More accurately, the president only said that he may decide to sue Noah. For the record, he returned to his "George Slopadopolus" construct in the course of this post:

Ask Little George Slopadopolus, and others, how that all worked out. Also ask CBS! Get ready Noah, I’m going to have some fun with you!

It was actually Little George Slopadopolus to whom his post referred.

Have recent events in Minneapolis damaged the president's political standing? It seems that they actually have! But after replacing Bovino with Homan, the president continued along on his rather unusual way.

Consider this surprising announcement, to cite one example:

Trump Drops Big News About His ‘Trump Kennedy Center’—It’s Closing For 2 Years

In a lengthy Truth Social post Sunday, President Donald Trump announced that his renovation plans for the Kennedy Center For The Performing Arts will involve closing the facility for a full two years.

And so on from there. Will "Kennedy" still be part of the name by the time the renovations are done? 

Regarding those naming rights, we wouldn't bet one way or the other. Meanwhile, also this construction project, according to this report in Saturday's Washington Post:

Trump wants to build a 250-foot-tall arch, dwarfing the Lincoln Memorial

The White House stands about 70 feet tall. The Lincoln Memorial, roughly 100 feet. The triumphal arch President Donald Trump wants to build would eclipse both if he gets his wish.

Trump has grown attached to the idea of a 250-foot-tall structure overlooking the Potomac River, according to two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe his comments, a scale that has alarmed some architectural experts who initially supported the idea of an arch but expected a far smaller one.

[...]

Trump has considered smaller versions of the arch, including 165-foot-high and 123-foot-high designs he shared at a dinner last year. But he has favored the largest option, arguing that its sheer size would impress visitors to Washington, and that “250 for 250” makes the most sense, the people said.

Of course! You always design the height of a project based on how many years it has been!

The president tore down the East Wing in order to build a ballroom; the ballroom just keeps getting bigger. So too, it seems, with the triumphal arch. 

And yet, the most remarkable post-Minneapolis walk-back moment would almost surely be this:

FBI Raids Georgia Election Office in Probe Related to 2020 Voter Fraud

The FBI has raided a Georgia election hub as part of an investigation into 2020 election fraud, Fox News Digital reported on Wednesday.

Agents were seen entering the Fulton County Election Hub and Operation Center just outside of Atlanta on Wednesday in an operation related to the 2020 election, the outlet reported. A law enforcement official later confirmed to Reuters that a search warrant was executed at the facility.

President Donald Trump has claimed repeatedly—and without evidence—that the 2020 election, which he lost to Joe Biden, was stolen and rigged against him.

More than five years later, this madness hasn't stopped! Tulsi Gabbard was on the scene—and also, there was this:

Trump Revives #Italygate—The Weirdest 2020 Election Conspiracy of Them All

In the middle of a late-night online posting spree on Wednesday, President Donald Trump resurrected what may be the most bizarre conspiracy theory to emerge from the aftermath of the 2020 election: the idea that the vote was stolen in a globe-spanning covert operation involving Italian military satellites, U.S. intelligence agencies, and China.

Between posts declaring former President Barack Obama a “traitor” and inaccurate claims Walmart is shutting down in California, the president reshared a screengrab of an X post to his 11.6 million followers on Truth Social alleging that “Italian officials at [defense contractor] Leonardo SpA used military satellites to help hack U.S. voting machines, flipping votes from Trump to Biden using CIA-developed tools like Hammer and Scorecard.”

“China reportedly coordinated the whole operation,” the post claimed, while “the CIA oversaw it” and “the FBI covered it up.”\

[...]

This particularly elaborate conspiracy theory, dubbed “Italygate,” is not new and was, in fact, mainlined from QAnon channels to staffers in the first Trump administration during the months between the 2020 election and former President Joe Biden’s inauguration, while Trump was pushing claims the election was “rigged.”

And so on from there. Should that post have been front-page news in the New York Times? We'd say that the answer is yes.

More than five years later, the president has returned to that peculiar claim about the Italian military. In a new column for the New York Times, David French reacts to that news as show:

This Is Not a Drill

[...]

After the F.B.I. raided the Fulton County election center, Trump demanded Obama’s arrest on social media and threatened the prosecution of election workers. He claimed, among other things, that Italian military satellites had hacked the 2020 election and that Obama had “conspired with foreign powers, not one, not two, not three, but four times to overthrow the United States government in 2016.”

The Italian satellite theory is a jolting reminder that Trump will demand that his core supporters believe almost anything he says, no matter how wild or delusional.

As Jonathan Karl reported for ABC News, this theory “was brought to the White House by a woman who went by several aliases, including ‘The Heiress,’ and was known at the Pentagon for her claimed ties to Somali pirates.”

More than five years later, that peculiar theory is suddenly back!

French delivers a frightening warning in the course of that new column. We'll summarize that warning in the days ahead.

We mention these things because of a song we thought we may have heard in several other recent columns in the New York Times. 

We've been hearing a version of that same song on MS NOW as Blue America responds to the latest startling election win. We refer to the Democratic win in a Trump-friendly district in a race for a seat in the Texas State Senate.

The "song" to which we refer is more like a storyline—a pleasing claim, proffered by many, according to which the end may finally be drawing near for the MAGA Express.

According to that storyline, it's looking worse and worse for the GOP in this year's scheduled midterm elections. That theory may turn out to be perfectly accurate—though we toss the word "scheduled" into the stew in deference to David French's extremely dire perspective.

Where were we hearing that song sung Blue? In his new column for the Times, Jamelle Bouie worked beneath this headline:

Minneapolis May Be Trump’s Gettysburg

Ezra Klein's new column was published beneath this banner:

Trump Has Overwhelmed Himself

Also, Ruth Ben-Ghiat—she's more of a (highly insightful) academic—almost seemed to be singing the same song in the course of this nuanced guest essay:

History Shows Trump’s Worst Impulses May Backfire on Him

We thought we've heard this song before, dating at least to 2015. It's rarely worked out quite right. 

French's new column stands in extremely gloomy opposition to this possible "song sung Blue." We ourselves would suggest a different perspective, one which may be less dire his.

Have we Blues returned to that upbeat song? We'll pick up here tomorrow.

Tomorrow: A major blue note from French