WEDNESDAY: Wemple explores the coverage of Biden!

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 11, 2025

The coverage of Trump gets a pass: Did "the media" engage in a cover-up of President Biden's apparent cognitive decline?

You'll hear that claim around the clock on the Fox News Channel's programs. In a fascinating report, Eric Wemple has tried to assess the claim for the Washington Post.

We'll start by noting this:

All in all, it's very hard to make valid claims about the conduct of "the media." A wide array of news orgs fit within that fuzzy rubric. Those news orgs employ a large number of journalists—and no, they aren't all the same.

That said, Wemple makes a valiant effort to explore he facts of the case. Early in his lengthy report, he cites a significant number of analysis pieces exploring the (related) question of Biden's age, starting in 2019:

Did legacy media fail in its Biden coverage? Not if you ask them!

[...]

Since Biden had announced his candidacy earlier that year, his age hovered over his prospects. He would be 78 at the time of the 2021 inaugural, then the oldest person to take the presidential oath of office in U.S. history. “Is it also incumbent on the vice president to do his best, to do better at how he speaks?” CNN host Brianna Keilar asked a Biden campaign adviser in August 2019.

In interviews with more than 50 Democratic voters and party officials, the New York Times in July 2019 found “significant unease about Mr. Biden’s ability to be a reliably crisp and effective messenger against Mr. Trump.” And there was a great deal more, including a [Washington] Post article concluding that a war story that Biden had told in public “jumbled elements of at least three actual events into one story of bravery, compassion and regret that never happened”; a CNN story by then-analyst Chris Cillizza under the headline “Is Joe Biden too old to be president?”; an Atlantic story by Edward-Isaac Dovere under the headline “Is Joe Biden ‘Too Old’?”; a Politico story pointing to Democrats’ misgivings on Biden’s age; a New York Times piece on steps considered by Biden to address voters’ concerns about his age.

There was even a story in the New Yorker headlined “JOE BIDEN’S FALTERING DEBATE PERFORMANCE RAISES BIG DOUBTS ABOUT HIS CAMPAIGN.” That debate occurred in late June … 2019.

As the scrutiny mounted, Biden issued this imperative to his doubters: “All I can say is watch me. Just watch me.”

Media outlets complied, especially conservative ones. On Fox News, commentator Steve Hilton in December 2021 called Biden “obviously senile.” Newsmax’s James Rosen, citing polling data, asked Biden in January 2022, “Why do you suppose such large segments of the American electorate have come to harbor such profound concerns about your cognitive fitness?”

"Such was the grind of Biden age coverage." Wemple writes. "Contrary to what you may have heard on X, there was a great deal of it across legacy media outlets, including those mentioned above and many others."

So far, so not so bad on the part of "the media!" At this point, we skip ahead to what happened when Wemple asked an array of major news orgs to evaluate the way they had dealt with the topic of Biden's apparent decline:

In emails to the top news organizations covering the White House, I asked this question: “There has been a lot of criticism of mainstream outlets in this coverage area. Does [media outlet] believe that it failed in any respect in this area? If so, on what aspect(s) of the story?”

The recipients weren’t all jazzed about this inquiry, considering the spotty responses: the New York Times (above), Axios (below), CNN (below), Gannett/USA Today Network (below) and the New York Post (below) issued statements; MSNBC, NBC News, ABC News, CBS News, Fox News, Reuters, the Associated Press, the Wall Street Journal and Politico issued no statement; McClatchy and NPR didn’t respond.

Most news orgs didn't reply to Wemple's inquiry. In the course of his analysis, Wemple quotes parts of the responses from most of the news orgs which did: 

We skip now to Wemple's general assessment. It strikes us as basically valid, though we'll close with a major complaint:

Whatever the grounding for the [electorate's] consensus opinion on Biden’s fitness, it tormented his political operation. According to “Original Sin,” Biden’s pollsters had determined that many voters who’d broken for the president in 2020 weren’t committing for 2024, on account of his age and inflation. “The pollsters would read about or hear of voters regularly denigrating Biden—doddering, incoherent, unable to complete sentences—in ways that the pollsters felt … were unfair,” write Tapper and Thompson. Upshot: One way or another, Biden’s age was likely to cost him a second term.

So we’re all good then, right?

If only. White House coverage must involve more than observing the president in action and writing up analysis pieces about his comings and goings. It needs to include a muckraking component detailing behind-the-scenes strategies, conflicts and debates over all manner of issues, particularly those relating to the president’s mental acuity. An adjacent question relates to whether Biden himself was fully abreast of and in charge of day-to-day decisions.

And it’s on these fronts that major media organizations fell short: Though Biden’s declining faculties were clear to all, they never ignited one of those glorious mainstream-media investigative frenzies that colonizes television and radio broadcasts. 

That assessment doesn't strike us as nutty, crazy, overwrought, unfair or insane. At one time, that would have qualified as a left-handed compliment. In the current era, those are words of the highest praise.

Wemple's lengthy piece presents a lot of food for thought. Our (extremely large) complaint would be this:

Wemple says that these major news orgs failed to go the extra mile with a muckraker's zeal. They failed to bring the question of President Biden's mental acuity center stage until the June 2024 debate turned it into an unavoidable topic.

In Wemple's view, major orgs should have "ignited one of those glorious mainstream-media investigative frenzies that colonizes television and radio broadcasts." At some point, sufficient evidence was present to trigger such an undertaking. News orgs should have made this the kind of front-page topic which couldn't be ignored.

That strikes us as a sensible critique. The glaring omission is this:

That is precisely what those orgs are failing to do at the present time with respect to the peculiar behavior of the current sitting president! As perhaps with President Biden, so too now with President Trump:

Our news orgs have adopted the attitude that there's nothing to look at there. They're refusing to "ignite one of those investigative frenzies that colonizes television and radio broadcasts." They're refusing to make the current president's endlessly peculiar conduct a stand-alone topic which can no longer be ignored.

In the case of President Biden, the question was one of "mental acuity"—possible cognitive loss. That isn't the question with President Trump. If something is wrong with President Trump, it's something different from that.

(Biden "couldn't complete a sentence?" Trump can't seem to stop doing that.)

Whatever may be wrong with President Trump, it doesn't seem to be the same thing that was apparently wrong with President Biden. It seems to be an issue of "mental health," and everyone from Wemple on down is sworn to go nowhere near a forbidden topic like that.

Wemple says our news orgs took a dive with respect to President Biden. They're also taking a dive with respect to President Trump. 

For now, we're prepared to include Wemple himself when we make that assessment. Press critic, heal thyself!

THE TROOPS: "We're overwhelmed," the police chief said!

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 11, 2025

At Fort Bragg, the president rants: What has been happening in L.A.? 

It isn't easy to say! One set of troops will say one thing. A second set will then say something different. 

In Blue America, we've largely been told that there's nothing to look at there—or at least, nothing much. That tribal (or national) storyline may seem hard to maintain at certain times—for example, when the Los Angeles chief of police is saying this, as he did on Sunday night, the third night of the event:

CHIEF MCDONNELL (6/9/25): As far as people have worried about the violence, it is violence I’ve seen that is disgusting. It has escalated now since the beginning of this incident. What we saw the first night was bad. What we've seen subsequent to that has been getting increasingly worse and more violent.

Tonight, we had individuals out there shooting commercial-grade fireworks at our officers—that can kill you. We have adapted our tactics to be able to have a chance to be able to take these people into custody and to be able to hold them accountable.

We are overwhelmed as far as the number of people out there engaged in this type of activity and the type of things that they’re doing. They’ll take backpacks, and the backpack will have a cinder block in it. They have a hammer, and they'll break up the cinderblock and use that, pass it around to throw at officers, to throw at cars and throw at other people. 

We’ve seen people with hammers, and you've broadcast it, breaking the bollards behind the federal building and taking the rocks, if you will, or pieces of concrete, and throwing them at officers. We’ve had liquids of who knows what description thrown at officers. There’s no limit to what they’re doing to our officers.

Again, as I mentioned in my statement, I can’t thank our officers and partner police officials enough for going out there and taking care of the community and trying to be able to put themselves between the threat and the overall community. They do this night in and night out. In these past couple of nights, we’ve seen it at a level that I think disgusts every good person.

"We're overwhelmed," he said at one point. For the videotape, click here.

We don't know why Chief McDonnell said those things—but on the third (3rd) evening of the event, that's what the police chief said. His remarks have been cited by news orgs aimed at Red America. Among news orgs aimed at Blue America, we'd have to say not so much.

Has there really been (little or) nothing to look at as these events have unfolded? Here are excerpts from a report in Red America's National Review, a report in which Chief McDonnell's comments were quoted (no paywall):

L.A. Police Chief Admits Officers ‘Overwhelmed’ as Thousands of Rioters Block Freeway, Torch Cars

Thousands of anti-ICE rioters descended on a major freeway in Los Angeles Sunday evening, blocking traffic in both directions, while rioters downtown set off fireworks and torched several self-driving cars.

[...]

Around 4 p.m. local time on Sunday, a crowd of at least 2,000 rioters blocked both lanes of traffic on the 101, prompting authorities in riot gear to create a line to prevent them from moving forward. They pushed the crowd onto an exit ramp, though two motorcyclists attempted to break through the skirmish line, injuring two officers.

The road was reopened around 5 p.m., but had to be shut down again around 7:30 p.m. when rioters started throwing objects and damaging police vehicles.

In downtown L.A., rioters were seen destroying self-driving Waymo taxis and spray painting anti-ICE messages on them. At least three were set on fire while protesters slashed tires and smashed windshields. Lime electric scooters were also thrown into the flames. One rioter appeared to have a makeshift flamethrower, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Those events occurred during the event's third day. Along the way, the National Review report quoted parts of what Chief McDonnell had said.

Homer's famous siege of Troy was a siege of the Late Bronze Age, fought with Bronze Age weapons. The current events are part of a war of the Information Age. The troops of the warring tribes (or warring nations) are employing the weapons of that age.

Red and Blue troops have tended to sift ongoing events in familiar ways. Then too, out went the commander in chief to perform this own aggressive acts of messaging.

With Secretary Noem eager to help, the commander drove his own messaging. Below, you see headlines from reports in Mediaite about yesterday's events—about messaging the commander performed yesterday alone. 

The commander was whipping up a storm. The headlines in question were these:

Trump Calls the Second-Largest City in Country He Governs a ‘Trash Heap’

Trump Goads Troops at Fort Bragg Into Booing the Media: ‘Look What I Have to Put Up With!’

‘They Are Animals’: Trump Attacks Los Angeles Protesters, Calls Them ‘Paid Insurrectionists’

Noem Accuses Mexico’s President of Inciting LA Protests From Oval Office: ‘I Condemn Her’

NOW: Trump Threatens to Use ‘Very Big Force’ to Put Down Any Protests At His Birthday Military Parade

DHS Secretary Noem on Los Angeles: ‘They’re a City of Criminals’

Trump Asked Why He Thinks He Can Arrest Gavin Newsom—Says He Committed ‘Crime’ of ‘Running For Governor’

Trump Says His Border Czar Should Arrest California Governor Gavin Newsom

By our reckoning, the ranting at Fort Bragg was especially inappropriate. At any rate, we haven't linked to those reports. You can find them by scrolling back through yesterday's posts at Mediaite.

We ourselves might have amended a few of those headlines, even a few of those reports. That said, we think those headlines give you the gist of what President Trump was doing yesterday as the messaging war raged on.

The war continued early this morning. On Red America's Fox News Channel, it seemed to us that the misinformation started early in the five o'clock Eastern hour. 

The broadcast day on that "cable news" channel starts at 5 a.m. At 5:02 a.m., whether knowingly or not, news reader Brook Singman was already saying this to unsuspecting viewers of Fox & Friends First:

SINGMAN (6/11/25): [Governor] Newsom claims President Trump never called him when the protest broke out. But the president is bringing in the receipts, providing a screen shot to Fox News of a 16-minute phone call between him and Newsom on Saturday.

Sad! The 16-minute phone call in question occurred early Saturday morning in D.C., late Friday night on the west coast. As part of yesterday's messaging onslaught, Trump had said that he spoke with Newsom on Monday—a claim which has apparently turned out to be false.

Having said that, so what? The commander sent "the receipts" to Fox, and John Roberts and Molly Line produced a bungled report about the matter yesterday afternoon. This very morning, at 5:02, Singman extended the bungled reporting, whether knowingly or not. 

Yesterday, Mediaite reported the bungle by Roberts and Line. We'd like to spell it out in more detail, but knowing how way leads on to way, we'll admit that we might never be coming back.

On the other hand, this:

In yesterday's report, we started calling the roll of the Fox News Channel's troops. We started by calling the roll of certain Fox News Channel programs. 

Over the course of the past few months, Line has struck us as an especially comfortable propagandist. We've received that impression from watching her as a panelist on The Big Weekend Show.

To our eye, Line seems to be unusually comfortable in the propagandist role. By our reckoning, that doesn't mean that she's a bad person; it suggests that she's a person person. We humans are strongly inclined to behave in these tribal ways. 

It's as we noted yesterday. When he started calling the roll of the troops in the siege of Troy, Homer restricted himself to calling the names of the Achaeans (the Greeks)—the furious, rage-filled aggressors.

Tomorrow, we'll start to call the names of some of the Fox News Channel troops. Full disclosure:

It's almost impossible for those Red American troops to be totally wrong in the things they say. The endless bungles of our own Blue American troops have created that sad situation.

The bungling of our own Blue nation has been a key player for years. Our bungling has taken many forms.

Does our bungling continue today? Are we Blues able to spot it?

Tomorrow: Changes among the troops

THE TROOPS: Sacred Homer named the troops!

TUESDAY, JUNE 10, 2025

Lady Bird planted flowers: "I love beauty," she frequently said, at least if memory serves.

We're thinking of Lady Bird Johnson, former first lady of the (former?) United States. In some ways, those were simpler times back then. The leading authority offers this report:

Lady Bird Johnson

Claudia Alta "Lady Bird" Johnson (1912–2007) was First Lady of the United States from 1963 to 1969 as the wife of President Lyndon B. Johnson. She had previously been Second Lady of the United States from 1961 to 1963 when her husband was vice president under John F. Kennedy.

Notably well-educated for a woman of her era, Lady Bird proved a capable manager and a successful investor. After marrying Lyndon Johnson in 1934 when he was a political hopeful in Austin, Texas, she used a modest inheritance to bankroll his congressional campaign and then ran his office while he served in the Navy.

As first lady, Johnson broke new ground by interacting directly with Congress, employing her press secretary, and making a solo electioneering tour. She advocated beautifying the nation's cities and highways. ("Where flowers bloom, so does hope.") The Highway Beautification Act was informally known as "Lady Bird's Bill."

[...]

In 1965, she took the lead in calling for passage of the Highway Beautification Act. The act called for control of outdoor advertising, including removal of certain types of signs, along the nation's growing Interstate Highway System...

Her capital beautification project turned the national capital into a showcase for the nation. It was intended to improve physical conditions in Washington, D.C., for residents and tourists by planting millions of flowers, many of them on National Park Service land along roadways around the capital. 

She said, "Where flowers bloom, so does hope."

She wanted to beautify the nation's burgeoning interstate highways. "I love beauty," we believe she occasionally said.

Johnny Appleseed planted trees—and yes, he was a real person. Mrs. Johnson planted millions of flowers. Especially at a time like this, we'll speak for the value of beauty. 

Western literature is sometimes said to have started with the Iliad, a beautifully rendered tale of furious, rage-filled, ugly behavior by furious, rage-filled men. As the famous poem begins, the Achaeans (the Greeks) have been laying siege to Troy for almost ten years. 

Two sets of troops stand opposed in the field. At the start of the poem's second book, sacred Homer calls the (nearly endless) roll of the furious Achaean troops. 

Here's the way that roll call starts, as rendered by Robert Fagles:

BOOK TWO 
The Great Gathering of Armies

[...]

First came the Boeotlan units led by Leitus and Peneleos:
Arcesilaus and Prothoenor and Clonius shared command
of the armed men who lived in Hyria, rocky Aulis,
Schoenus, Scolus and Eteonus spurred with hills,
Thespia and Graea, the dancing rings of Mycalessus,
men who lived round Harma, Ilesion and Erythrae
and those who settled Bleon, Hyle and Peteon,
Ocalea, Medeon's fortress walled and strong,
Copae, Eutresis and Thisbe thronged with doves,
fighters from Coronea, Haliartus deep in meadows,
and the men who held Plataea and lived in Glisas,
men who held the rough-hewn gates of Lower Thebes,
Onchestus the holy, Poseidon's sun-filled grove...

"Thisbe thronged with doves," and so on, at length, from there. This continues for roughly three hundred additional lines as sacred Homer names the troops, though only the troops of one tribe. 

For the record, they'd been willing to fight for almost ten years over a perceived insult based on an issue of Bronze Age sexual politics. For hundreds of years, or so we moderns are told, every Greek school child would hear those names as they'd be recited from memory.

In the present day, the troops have been gathered in L.A., but they gather each day and each night on "cable news" TV shows and in the halls of Congress. On the "cable news" channel which messages to Red America, angry assortments of aggrieved troops gather on such pseudo-discussion programs as these:

Fox News Channel programs:
Fox & Friends First (M-F, 6 a.m.)
Fox & Friends (M-F, 6 a.m., 7-10 a.m.)
Fox & Friends Weekend (Sat-Sun, 6-10 a.m.)
Outnumbered (M-F, 12 noon)
The Five (M-F, 5 p.m.)
Gutfeld! (M-5, 10 p.m.)
The Big Weekend Show (Sat-Sun, 6-8 p.m.)

Armies once fought with Bronze Age weapons. Today, armies my fight with the modern weapons of Storyline, messaging, script.

On those Fox News Channel programs, but also from within the ranks of Red America's office holders, the governor of Minnesota is now "Tampon Tim." The governor of California is "Greasy Gavin," though his last name is also "Newscum."

Mayor Bass is a Communist; Senator Van Hollen is "a scumbag." The governor of Illinois poops too much. The five women of The View are compared, on a nightly basis, to horses, cattle, pigs and cows, whale and elephants, "livestock."

Astoundingly, they even play the margarita card; they do so again and again. Just last night, one of their troops said, of what has long been known as "The City of Angels," that it's "a city of criminals" now.

It goes on and on from there within that nation's angry troops. It's much as Woody Guthrie once said:

As through this world I've traveled 
I've seen lots of funny men [sic].
Some rob you with a six gun,
Some with a fountain pen.

The troops who assemble on that particular "news channel's" shows don't play by traditional rules. That said, they're rarely totally wrong, or at least not for long, in the claims they deliver:

Unfortunately, the bungles created by Blue America's troops have endlessly let those angry troops feed on a list of "own goals."

We haven't yet named the individual Red American troops. Sadly, this:

In the last several decades, Blue America's bungle-prone troops have been handing them the material from which it's easy to eke out wins.

If only for today, we decided to drown our sorrows in one bit of language from the first great poem of war. That poem offers a beautifully rendered tale of furious, rage-filled behavior by furious, rage-filled men.

It offers a beautifully rendered tale. Years later, Lady Bird Johnson even wanted to beautify the nation's highways! Johnny Appleseed planted trees, she played millions of flowers.

She wanted to beautify the nation! From the present-day perspective, we'll suggest that she partially failed.

Tomorrow: Tarlov enrages the troops 

BREAKING: Is Los Angeles "a city of criminals?"

TUESDAY, JUNE 10, 2025

We'll be posting this afternoon: It's the fourth Tuesday in the cycle again. For that reason, we'll be losing a large chunk of time today.

We'll be taking Mary Ttump's book along to be revisited during down time. We expect to post again in the later afternoon.

Meanwhile, Los Angeles is "a city of criminals." That is (pretty much) what Kristi Noem has now said.

MONDAY: Broadway came to CNN!

MONDAY, JUNE 9, 2025

The key words were "Good luck!" We watched George Clooney's Good Night, and Good Luck on CNN last Saturday night. 

Overwhelmingly, we were struck by how irrelevant to the current situation that high-profile effort was.

Edward R. Murrow's bout with Senator Joseph McCarthy took place in the fall of 1953—more than seventy years ago.  The television industry barely existed at that point in time!

There was no internet at that time, no 24-hour "cable news." Talk radio as we came to know it in the 1980s didn't yet exist.

There were no podcasts at all, let alone podcasts manned by comedians and the like. Indeed, social media didn't exist! It wasn't easy to hear crazy ideas and nutty claims—you had to seek them out. 

Life was very different then. The nation was almost exactly as described by Laura Ingalls Wilder in the first of her "Little House" books:

Chapter 1

Once upon a time, sixty years ago, a little girl lived in the Big Woods of Wisconsin, in a little gray house made of logs.

The great, dark trees of the Big Woods stood all around the house, and beyond them were other trees and beyond them were more trees. As far as a man could go to the north in a day, or a week, or a whole month, there was nothing but woods. There were no houses. There were no roads. There were no people. There were only trees and the wild animals who had their homes among them.

Wolves lived in the Big Woods, and bears, and huge wild cats. Muskrats and mink and otter lived by the streams. Foxes had dens in the hills and deer roamed everywhere.

To the east of the little log house, and to the west, there were miles upon miles of trees, and only a few little log houses scattered far apart in the edge of the Big Woods.

So far as the little girl could see, there was only the one little house where she lived with her Father and Mother, her sister Mary and baby sister Carrie. A wagon track ran before the house, turning and twisting out of sight in the woods where the wild animals lived, but the little girl did not know where it went, nor what might be at the end of it.

According to experts, that's roughly what life in the U.S. was like when Murrow and McCarthy clashed.

Today, crazy ideas, and disinformation, come at the American citizen from every conceivable point on the dial. The disinformation starts early in the morning and continues into the night.

It was puzzling to hear the Broadway audience applauding various events portrayed in the show. The applause seemed to suggest that the events of 1953 bore some significant resemblance to the state of play which obtains today.

Sorry, Charlie! Our current situation is much more complex—and it's phantasmagorically different. Pleasing tales about a greater American past aren't likely to help us now. The fact that we're eager to swallow such bait may represent a point of concern with respect to our ability to find our way out of this mess.

For amusement purposes only: Good Night, and Good Luck started as an Oscar-nominated 2005 feature film. The leading authority on the film includes this humorous bit of trivia:

Good Night, and Good Luck

[...]

One complaint about the film among test audiences was their belief that the actor playing McCarthy was too over the top, not realizing that the film used actual archive footage of McCarthy himself.

Assuming that story is actually true, something seemed to be wrong with the guy! In those days, as perhaps in these, test audiences apparently thought that couldn't be true in real life.

THE TROOPS: Noem plays the most pitiful card of all!

MONDAY, JUNE 9, 2025

Commander battles "Newscum:" Will we be able to find a way "back out of all this now too much for us?"

We can't say the answer is clear. On Friday morning, the New York Times carried a column by David Brooks which ran beneath this headline:

The Democrats’ Problems Are Bigger Than You Think

As a general matter, it seems to us that that headline is right. And then, this morning, this second headline, straight outta Mediaite:

Trump Demands Gavin ‘Newscum’ & Mayor Bass Apologize for ‘Ongoing L.A. Riots’

Sad! As you can see in Mediaite's report, the commander has returned to his trademark disparaging nickname for Governor Newsom. As a general matter, he started playing this cartoonish "insulting nickname" game back in 2015.

Is something wrong in some way with President Trump? That question keeps getting shoved aside in the flurry of the moment. 

Last night, he went back to playing his "Newscum" card! To tens of millions of neighbors and friends, this conduct may not seem all that strange—and over on the Fox News Channel, one major set of troops will doubtless be falling in line.

Those troops are persistently ready to serve the desires of their corporate owners! As we noted in Saturday's report, one foot soldier had started the Fox & Friends Weekend program that morning by serving this remarkable porridge to Fox News Channel viewers. 

For a fuller account of what this storm trooper said, see Saturday's report:

BOOTHE (6/7/25): I would say [Dr. Fauci] is a guy who intentionally lied to the American people. It's so obvious. It's just common sense.

[...]

We had so many people couldn't say goodbye to their loved ones. We had so many businesses—he crashed the economy. He ruined lives in isolation. People committed suicide. They drank themselves to death and did drugs because they were so depressed.

So that guy, because of his lies, destroyed America for a large part—

[...]

I don't need his phone to know that he's a terrible human being. Dr. Fauci, looking at you, buddy! Anyway—OK, sorry.

HURT: Good stuff.

"Good stuff," Charlie Hurt said. Truly, that was pathetic.

That (longer) diatribe was very dangerous stuff. That said, the troops were already in the field—and it was 6:15 a.m.!

The reinvented Lisa Boothe was sitting in for Rachel Campos-Duffy that day. On Sunday, Campos-Duffy was back in her chair, and the situation in Los Angeles had now come center stage.

As far as we know, no one played the "Newscum" card on Fox & Friends Weekend that day. But bright and early, at 6:09 a.m., Campos Duffy was already selling this:

CAMPOS-DUFFY (6/8/25): You're right—the leadership matters. In that city, it's Mayor Bass. She's a Communist. And she loves this stuff.

It was only 6:09—but Mayor Bass was already a Communist! As we've noted in the past, this is standard fare from Campos-Duffy. Hurt took things from there.

Is there some way for our flailing nation to get "back out of all this"—to draw back from the wages of 1) "the democratization of media" and 2) the braindead corporate media practice known as "segregation by viewpoint?"

Is there a way to draw back from that? We can't swear that there is! Meanwhile, there was the pitiful Kristi Noem, playing the most pathetic card of them all on Saturday's Fox & Friends Weekend.

Pathetic is as pathetic does, Mother Gump always said. During that program's 8 o'clock hour, Noem was discussing the criminal charges which have now been filed against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who will presumably go on trial. 

What will we learn from some such trial? As a basic matter of theory, we're supposed to wait to see. 

Noem may not be that patient. Along the way, as she spoke with the friends, the pitiful person said this:

NOEM (6/7/25): The fact that we had Democrat politicians, and [Senator] Van Hollen down there defending him and standing beside him, buying him margaritas...It shouldn't be shocking, but it still is shocking to me, that we have people like this who go so far out on a limb just to be a big frickin' deal in a political arena.

Did Abrego Garcia "traffic children for a living?" By tradition, public officials are supposed to wait for the legal proceedings within which such allegations will be assessed.

On this day, Noem presented all the charges against Abrego Garcia as established facts. That said, the most pitiful moment came when she played the margarita card—when she said that Senator Van Hollen had been "buying Abrego Garcia margaritas" when he met with him in El Salvador, following Abrego Garcia's bungled "deportation" into that country's notorious prison system.

Van Hollen had been buying him margaritas! Yes, she actually said it!

In truth, there's nothing a trooper like Noem won't say at this tribalized point in time. For the record, the same card had been played the day before, on the Fox News Channel's The Five. 

In an angry, irrational performance, Greg Gutfeld had already referred to Senator Van Hollen as "a scumbag." (Slowly but surely, Gutfeld is importing the garbage can values of his own 10 p.m. show into the world of The Five.)

Gutfeld had already said that. When it came her time to perform, a former VJ offered this:

"KENNEDY" (6/6/25): You know, if Van Hollen is so in love with the Constitution, why didn't he take the Constitution for margaritas?

WATTERS: [Chuckles]

"KENNEDY": Why did he take a gang member?

Is Abrego Garcia a gang member? That has always been a possibility. We'd be inclined to wait to see what transpires in court.

The former VJ who clowns as "Kennedy" is perhaps a bit less patient. Having nothing of value to say, she also played the margarita card. She played that pathetic card too! 

Simply put, there's nothing so stupid that these troopers from Red America aren't going to stand up and say it:

Mayor Bass is a Communist, and Senator Van Hollen's a scumbag. Governor Newsom is actually Newscum. 

As for Noem herself, she may have been auditioning for her current job when she shot her puppy that day, several top international experts have now thoughtfully said!

That said, is there a way back out of all this—back out of the chaos which has been created by the two societal forces we've cited above?

We aren't real sure there is! And now we're forced to mention a factor which we Blues will rarely cite. We're forced to mention the rolling foolishness of the troops here in our own Blue America—the serial foolishness which has persistently enabled Red America's troops in the things they say and do.

The Democrats’ Problems Are Bigger Than You Think, that David Brooks column says. We're inclined to agree with that assessment—and one of our biggest problems is the difficulty we Blue Americans have in seeing how persistently hapless our own elites have been.

The Fox News Channel has assembled a gang of troops who are willing to say and do anything. Over here in Blue America, our own self-admiring troops have endlessly floundered and failed.

We Blues have a hard time seeing that! As the week proceeds, we'll ponder each set of tribal warfighters. We'll ponder each set of troops.

A point of some concern: The Internet Archive maintains an invaluable video collection of all "cable news" programs. 

Last fall, that archive came under a cyber attack which knocked it out of commission for a period of weeks. The archive seems to be struggling once again. 

We hope this problem passes.