MONDAY: Senator Paul seemed to stretch the truth!

MONDAY, JUNE 16, 2025

Then along came Senator Schiff: We offer a brief update concerning Mike Lee's astonishing pair of tweets, one of which went like this:

Nightmare on Waltz Street

The weirdly humorous remark was appended to photographs of Vance Boelter. For obvious reasons, it has been widely assumed that the Utah senator had simply misspelled the last name of Minnesota's Governor Tim Walz.

Given the overall nature of Lee's tweets, is it somehow possible that he was referring to former National Security Adviser Mike Waltz? We can't imagine what the reasoning would have been, but we offer that apparently far-fetched possibility as a hedge against snap judgement.

With that, we turn to the dueling presentations of two senators on yesterday's Meet the Press. At the end of a longer interview, Senator Paul (R-Ky.) told Kristen Welker this:

WELKER (6/15/25): Senator, very quickly, let me get your reaction to Senator Alex Padilla, who interrupted a press conference that was being held by DHS Secretary Kristi Noem. He was handcuffed, wrestled to the ground. The House Speaker says he should be censured. Do you agree? Should he be censured for that?

SENATOR PAUL: You know, I don't like the images of him on the ground, of being handcuffed, but I also didn't like the images of moms at school board meetings being handcuffed. I didn't like the images of peaceful January 6th protesters, or people assembled there, being taken to the ground at airports and handcuffed. So that I don't like. 

But at the same time, the other side to it is: Can you rush a stage? Can you rush into a press conference? And I think they honestly didn't recognize him. He rushed the stage. There was sort of a physical tussle. I think it could have ended without, without the handcuffs. But also, I don't think there's a complete get out of jail free that, you know, there's no repercussions for rushing the stage, and there's no criticism for rushing the stage. So I think it's a complicated story, and I think we can do a better job. But I'm not about to say it's all on one side or the other.

WELKER: So you wouldn't be for censuring him? You're a no on censuring him, Senator?

SENATOR PAUL: No, no, no. I'm not for censuring him. I think that's crazy. I'm not for that at all.

Four times, Senator Paul said that Senator Padilla had "rushed the stage" at the Noem press event. He also said that Padilla had "rushed into" the press conference itself.

From the available videotapes, we see no sign that Padilla "rushed into the press conference." More to the point, we see no sign that Senator Padilla ever "rushed the stage."

Paul batted the idea of censure aside, describing the notion as "crazy." But before doing so, he kept reinforcing the talking point in which Padilla "rushed the stage."

After that, along came Senator Adam Schiff (D-Cal.). We were disappointed, but perhaps enlightened, when we saw him say this:

WELKER: I'll pick up with you on where I ended with Senator Rand Paul—the fact that your colleague, Senator Alex Padilla, was basically tussled to the ground, handcuffed after he had approached the podium of DHS Secretary Kristi Noem. He was forcibly removed. Secretary Noem called this "political theater." 

As I just said, Speaker Johnson called for him to be censured. What say you to that argument that this was nothing more than political theater?

SENATOR SCHIFF: Well, first of all, I think it's important for people to realize that he was escorted into that press conference. The door was open. He was escorted in by law enforcement. He identified himself. He tried to ask the secretary a question, a secretary who clearly doesn't want to answer questions about the lawless acts of the Department of Homeland Security that we are seeing in Los Angeles. So he had every right to do so. That's part of his oversight responsibilities. 

And to be treated that way, and to be responded to by saying, "Oh, we didn't know who you are," when it was literally written on his shirt or his jacket, when he was proclaiming who he is, I don't buy it. And for those of us that know Alex—and you would be hard pressed to find a more beloved senator on either side of the aisle, respected by members on both sides of the aisle, you know, for his intellect, for his demeanor—this is not some rabble-rouser. 

And to see him mistreated that way, and tackled to the ground and shackled that way, and in the midst of what we're seeing more broadly in Los Angeles, is just atrocious. 

As far as we know, Senator Padilla was, in fact, "escorted into the room." We'd refer to what follows that accurate statement by Senator Schiff as misinformation-adjacent.

It's true! Senator Padilla did "identify himself," but Schiff seems to have turned the chronology around. As far as we know, Senator Padilla identified himself only after he was grabbed by security agents, not before he started "trying to ask a question."

Schiff forget to mention the fact that Padilla was actually interrupting Noem's prepared remarks when he "tried to ask a question." Along the way, did the relevant people actually "know who he was?"

His status as a United States senator actually was "literally written on his shirt." But as best we can tell from the available videotapes, the black windbreaker jacket he was wearing obscured the writing on his shirt. We know of no reason to assume that the security agents in question actually knew who he was when he started to interrupt Noem. 

Did Senator Padilla "have every right" to interrupt Noem "as part of his oversight responsibilities" when he "tried to ask a question?"  Schiff's presentation to Welker struck us as perhaps less than obsessively honest. Unfortunately, that seems to be a constant part of the tribalized world we all currently live in.

Welker followed with this question. We don't think it was an especially good one:

WELKER: Very quickly, Senator, do you think he could have been more effective if he had, for example, asked for a meeting with Secretary Noem? Do you support the way he went about this?

SENATOR SCHIFF: Oh, I think he has asked for meetings, and he has asked for briefings. And of course we don't see any kind of responsiveness of the administration.

That struck us as an imitation of a useful question. What might Senator Schiff have said if Welker instead asked this?

WELKER REVISED: Very quickly, Senator, do you think he could have been more effective if he had simply waited for the Q-and-A session that day, instead of interrupting Noem in the middle of her prepared remarks? 

What would Senator Schiff have said to that? Because the question wasn't asked, no answer was ever delivered.

Facts get sifted in our world. Those facts get sifted by the players in each of our two warring tribes—in each of our warring nations.

REVOLUTION: Say you want a revolution?

MONDAY, JUNE 16, 2025

Remarkably, it's already here: We hadn't heard about Mike Lee's tweets until this very morning!

Shortly after 6:30 Eastern, his tweets were mentioned—and were aggressively assailed—on today's Morning Joe. Amazingly but perhaps predictably, a google search seems to show that Blue America's major news orgs are largely failing to report what the solon has done.

Other Blue orgs seem to be having a hard time finding the language with which to describe what he's done. Also, with which to describe the aggressive reaction his behavior has occasioned.

Mike Lee (R-Utah) is the senior United States senator from the state in question. According to the leading authority on the basic facts of his life, he started out as a child of substantial advantage. 

He now seems to be an adult of a peculiar type of moral / intellectual ruin:

Mike Lee

Michael Shumway Lee (born 1971) is an American lawyer and politician serving as the senior United States senator from Utah, a seat he has held since 2011. A member of the Republican Party, Lee became Utah's senior senator in 2019, when Orrin Hatch retired, and the dean of Utah's congressional delegation in 2021, when Representative Rob Bishop retired.

The son of U.S. Solicitor General Rex E. Lee and brother of Utah Supreme Court justice Thomas Rex Lee, Lee began his career as a clerk for the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah before clerking for Samuel Alito, who was then a judge on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. From 2002 to 2005, Lee was an assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Utah. He joined the administration of Utah governor Jon Huntsman Jr., serving as the general counsel in the governor's office from 2005 to 2006. Lee again clerked for Alito after he was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In the 2010 U.S. Senate election in Utah, Lee defeated incumbent senator Bob Bennett in the Republican primary, and won the general election.

Although he refused to endorse Donald Trump during the 2016 Republican presidential primaries and voted for Evan McMullin in the general election, Lee eventually became a Trump ally. He endorsed Trump in the 2020 and 2024 elections and supported the Trump administration's efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, although he ultimately voted to certify the outcome.

Lee has been reelected twice, in 2016 and 2022, the latter victory over McMullin.

Early life and education

Lee was born in Mesa, Arizona on June 4, 1971, the son of Janet and Rex E. Lee, who was solicitor general under President Ronald Reagan. Lee's older brother Thomas Rex Lee is a former justice of the Utah Supreme Court.

Lee's family moved to Provo, Utah, one year later, when his father became the founding dean of Brigham Young University's J. Reuben Clark Law School. While Lee spent about half of his childhood years in Utah, he spent the other half in McLean, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, D.C. His father served first as the assistant U.S. attorney general for the civil division of the U.S. Department of Justice from 1975 to 1976, and then as the solicitor general of the United States from 1981 to 1985. 

So the background goes. Lee was once seen as a fairly moderate Republican voice, but some sort of evolution has occurred. Although, to borrow from the language of Lincoln, we're probably looking at "a result [more] fundamental and astounding" than that.

Concerning the senator's pair of tweets:

You may have heard about the recent murders and attempted murders in Minnesota, one of the fifty states. Over the weekend, as the assailant remained on the loose, Senator Lee took to X to mock the victims of these assaults, but also to mislead the public.

Concerning the flow of public information, please consider this:

Yesterday morning, we were surprised by callers to C-Span's Washington Journal who seemed to think that the apparent killer was a Democrat—who seemed to think that the "No Kings" fliers found in his car meant that the apparent killer was a supporter of that protest movement.

In Minnesota, that wasn't what state and federal authorities seemed to have deduced. But that's what several callers seemed to believe during yesterday morning's 7 o'clock hour.

Watching yesterday's Fox & Friends Weekend, we began to see how people might have gained that impression. Watching last evening's astonishing performance of The Big Weekend Show, the picture became a bit more clear.

Stating the obvious, those are two of the most fraudulent programs in the history of broadcast news. But until this very morning, we didn't know that Elon Musk seems to be part of the latest fruit of the ongoing revolution in American values and procedures.

As usual, Blue America's major orgs are currently staying away from what Senator Lee has done. That said, here's the start of a report from The Daily Beast—a report which, in our view, is searching for the appropriate language with which to describe his conduct:

MAGA Sen. Mocked for Absurdly Calling Dem Assassin ‘Marxist’

Republican Senator Mike Lee faced ridicule for calling the suspect of fatal shootings in Minnesota a “Marxist.”

“This is what happens ... When Marxists don’t get their way,” the Utah senator captioned a photo of alleged gunman Vance Boelter wearing a latex face mask.

The Utah senator also shared another post of Boelter with the caption, “Nightmare on Waltz [sic] Street.”

Other MAGA figures, including Elon Musk, have also portrayed Boelter as a violent leftist.

So read the start of this report. And so read Lee's two tweets. 

According to The Daily Beast (no paywall), Musk has been "portray[ing] Boelter as a violent leftist." That may help explain yesterday's phone calls to Washington Journal. 

Also, it may help explain what we saw on the Fox News Channel yesterday morning, then again yesterday evening, as this truly ridiculous ship of fools swabbed the decks of The Big Weekend Show:

The Big Weekend Show: Sunday, 6/15/25
Griff Jenkins: co-anchor, FOX News Live
Lydia Hu: correspondent, FOX Business Network
Taylor Riggs: co-host, The Big Money Show
Dr. Marc Siegel: senior medical analyst for Fox News

In our view, the conduct of that group was astounding—and their group recitations persisted for the entirety of their two-hour broadcast.

"Say you want a revolution?" Way back in 1968, that's what the Beatles asked.

Today, the revolution has already happened. But as we've told you again and again, Blue America's biggest news orgs seem to be working hard to avoid reporting or discussing that blindingly obvious fact.

In this instance, the orgs which have reported Lee's tweets seem to have had a difficult time finding the language with which to describe what the solon has done. They also softened their account of the way the solon has been assailed for the astonishing pair of tweets.

"Carrying pictures of Chairman Mao," Senator Lee, rather plainly, seems to have been mocking the dead and the brutally wounded. 

For ourselves, we still aren't sure that we (or the Daily Beast) correctly understand what he meant by his tweet about the Marxists. But so you'll know, these are the astonishing messages Lee somehow chose to deliver:

Mike Lee speaks:
First tweet: “This is what happens when Marxists don’t get their way.” 

As the Daily Beast reported, that comment was appended to a photograph of the apparent assailant—a photo taken by doorbell cam moments before one of his murderous assaults.

Second tweet: “Nightmare on Waltz [sic] Street.” 

That entertaining comment was appended to another photo of the apparent assailant. To Lee, it was just good solid fun!

Mike Lee seemed to think this whole thing was amusing. He also seems to think the American discourse, or what it left of same, is a very large joke.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk was involved in this, or so the Daily Beast reports. We can guarantee you of one additional fact:

The players dragged out yesterday by the Fox News Channel were deeply involved in keeping Red America's "cable news" viewers misinformed, and under-informed, about the events in question.

"Say you want a revolution?" Back in 1968, the Beatles said, No thanks.

Today, the revolution is in place. But across the sweep of Blue America, major news orgs don't seem to want to report or discuss the way this revolution in values and procedures continues to be brought on.

Dearest darlings, use your heads! As we've told you many times:

It simply isn't done!

Tomorrow: During yesterday morning's 8 o'clock hour, the Fox News Channel's Johnny Joey Jones almost seemed to pretend to conduct an interview about the murderous assaults. 

He almost seemed to pretend to ask a bunch of key questions. He asked nine (9) such questions in all. You can review them here. 

For right now, also this: Here's a second report, this time from HuffPost, about the senator's tweets.

As with the Beast, so too here. It seems to us that this report wasn't quite willing to speak directly about what Senator Lee had done, or about the online response his conduct has occasioned. We see a lot of softened language about both parts of the deal.

SATURDAY: What has been happening out in L.A.?

SATURDAY, JUNE 14, 2025

Campos-Duffy "explains:" What has been happening out in Los Angeles over the course of the past nine days?

In this June 11 report, we told you that it isn't easy to answer a question like that. In today's print editions of the New York Times, Fausset and Dwyer give it a try.

It isn't all one thing or the other! Or at least, so the two journalists claim:

In L.A., the Divide Between Peace and Violence Is in the Eye of the Beholder

[...]

In Los Angeles this week, many protesters have marched peacefully. Others have thrown objects at the police, set cars ablaze and looted stores and restaurants. Police have responded aggressively, intimidating protesters with earsplitting explosives and mounted patrols, hitting them with batons, deploying tear gas and firing foam projectiles and rubber bullets into crowds.

The question of which side is justified, and which side is not, seems to have divided the country as much as the immigration issue. And Los Angeles has been transformed into a stage for a debate over the nature and meaning of American protest.

This week, the line separating peaceful protest from violent protest differed in the eyes of the beholder. Was Los Angeles a city in chaos, when many in the sprawling metropolis went about their day untouched by drama that was confined to scattered blocks? What was the appropriate language to accurately describe nights in which many protesters...have been lawful, but others, who have often shown up after sundown, have decided to loot, smash and burn?

So went their overview. But do these jokers actually know what they're talking about? 

According to the Times, Fausset and Dwyer "spent hours in Los Angeles interviewing protesters and documenting the police response." When they penned their overview, they included this challenging passage:

Some protesters said that the recent vandalism and property damage did not bother them, because it brought attention to the crisis affecting their friends and family. “They’re terrorizing our community,” [Alfonso] Santoyo said of the immigration officers. “A couple of cars on fire means nothing to me.”

Aylan Francesco Mello, 33, a tech worker and Southern California native, watched from Gloria Molina Grand Park, a block-wide green space that extends northwest from City Hall and that had also begun to fill with protesters. He said his mother came to the U.S. illegally from Guatemala, and his father came legally from Brazil.

“This feels like a very personal thing to me,” Mr. Francesco Mello said. “I see myself in a lot of the people who are being persecuted.”

But he did not identify with the non-peaceful street crowds, which have often caused trouble after the peaceful protesters have gone home. “There’s very little overlap between the looters, the opportunists, and the protesters,” he said. “I feel like we’re almost talking about two different subjects.”

Why do we say that report is "challenging?" We say that for this reason:

It challenges us to understand that the many people in a large crowd almost surely aren't all the same person! It challenges us to stop creating simplified fairy tales which are tribally pleasing—the kinds of assault on the American discourse at which one "cable news" star excels.

Early this morning, she was at it again, as she co-hosted the gruesome Fox & Friends Weekend "cable news" TV show. 

As we've noted in the past, Rachel Campos-Duffy is remarkably genial—among her own. She's also a born propagandist, as our despondent, extremely young analysts learned for the ten millionth time today at 6:32 a.m.

It was 6:32 a.m. Emerging from a commercial break, Campos-Duffy—true to form—started things off with this:

CAMPOS-DUFFY (6/14/25): Well, immigration is in the spotlight as Democrats continue to support anti-ICE rioters in Los Angeles and other Blue cities.

Really? Have "Democrats" really been "supporting anti-ICE rioters?" 

Have all "Democrats" been doing that? Would Campos-Duffy go on to name even one?

Those questions went unaddressed as the latest gruesome segment unspooled on the propaganda channel in question. But that's what the genial cable star said as she started her program's new segment.

That's what the genial star said! Below her, on the screen, a Fox News chyron said this:

DEMS CONTINUE TO STAND BY RIOTERS AS L.A. BURNS

Instantly, it occurred to us that this program's account of recent events might not be fully nuanced.

Campos-Duffy is a genial presence—when speaking with her own. When she speaks about the others, it emerges that she's also a born propagandist.

She works for a propaganda-driven corporation on one of its "cable news" programs. As with MSNBC, so too here:

You aren't allowed to know how much she's paid for providing her services. But just like that, Campos-Duffy was speaking to Katie Zacharia, who seems to be one of her own. 

Stating the obvious, people have every right to their religious beliefs and to their religious views. That said, Campos-Duffy has long struck us as a religionist. It seems that Zacharia holds a similar (unstated) view of the world, as is her perfect right.

Zacharia got busy! She quickly said that Governor Newsom "is unwilling to put the police force, the National Guard, on the streets to help with the riots. It's really a disgrace."

"The police force, the National Guard?" Yes, that's what Zacharia said, as you can see right here.

We don't know what that conflation was supposed to mean—but Campos-Duffy knew where to go next. For what it's worth, her description of events in L.A. seems to be a bit less nuanced than that in the New York Times:

CAMPOS-DUFFY: You know, Katie, it's a disgrace, but it's also very elitist. Because the violence is happening in working-class neighborhoods. He would never allow this to happen in Brentwood or Beverly Hills. But it's OK to burn down and ruin the neighborhoods of the working class.

Really? Which neighborhoods of the working class have been "burned down and ruined?" Campos-Duffy forgot to say. In this morning's report, the New York Times isn't reporting destruction on any such scale as that.

Before the pair of messengers were done, Campos-Duffy noted a flicker of hope. This is what she said:

CAMPOS-DUFFY: So you also talked to me, off-camera, about the possibility of—because there are some normal people like you in California—about California turning red. Talk to me about that.

There are some normal people in California, the born propagandist said. Was Campos-Duffy speaking ironically? You'll have to inspect the tape yourself. We'd say it's not clear that she was.

Campos-Duffy is extremely genial—but only among the people who are normal. The others all support the riots, which have burned neighborhoods down.

This goes on all day and all night on the Fox News Channel. As it does, Blue America's elites avert their gaze. 

Nothing to look at, they seem to say. There's nothing to report or discuss!

At any rate, working-class neighborhoods have been ruined. Democrats support the riots which have produced that effect.

By the way: Mayor Bass is a Communist. Campos-Duffy told us that on last Sunday's Fox & Friends Weekend, as we noted in this report.

Can a very large modern nation expect to survive a regime like this? We'd say the answer is far from clear.

Nothing to look at—keep moving along! our Blue orgs seem to say.

FRIDAY: What viewers were told on the Fox News Channel!

FRIDAY, JUNE 13, 2025

Martha MacCallum speaks: Should Senator Padilla have interrupted Secretary Noem?

In our view, the answer is no. Luckily, the word "interrupted" was banned from use on MSNBC programs. On that cable news channel, the solon hadn't interrupted Noem. He had simply tried to ask a question in the course of doing his oversight. All in all, it was No Upbeat Claim Left Behind.

On the Fox News Channel, things tilted a different way. During yesterday's three o'clock hour, Martha MacCallum interviewed a pair of Fox News contributors—one a Democrat, one a Republican—about the incident in question. 

Later, speaking with Noem herself, this is what MacCallum said the pair had said:

MACCALLUM (6/12/25): We just had a Democrat and a Republican panelist, and both sides agreed that they felt that this was unbecoming behavior of a United States senator.

MacCallum may have thought that's what the two panelists said. If so, it seems to us that she misunderstood what the Democratic panelist said.

That panelist was the calm, mild-mannered Kevin Walling. Here's the bulk of what he said:

WALLING: Well obviously, we're seeing a response from [Senator Padilla's] colleagues in the Senate, Republicans and Democrats. You know, Lisa Murkowski I think just released a statement saying, you know, it was shocking and horrifying and not what she believes in America.

I think once you saw the senator identify himself—he's the senior senator of the most populous state, the state where this public press conference was happening—this kind of behavior should not have happened.

MacCallum apparently thought that was a criticism of Senator Padilla. On balance, we'd be inclined to say that she apparently heard Walling's statement wrong.

The Republican panelist was Marc Thiessen. After Walling spoke, MacCallum turned to Thiessen with a classic leading question. Inevitably, she was rewarded with the classic approved tribal answer:

MACCALLUM: I mean it's clear, Marc, that he wanted to make apolitical statement with this outburst, right?

THIESSEN: It's not a very smart one. Democrats are in the process of committing political suicide.

That's the way the fellow started. Continuing, he now said this:

THIESSEN (continuing directly): You've got Democratic congressmen storming an ICE facility filled with criminal aliens who have felony records and child—you know, rape and murder and all the rest, and now you've got a Democratic senator storming a press conference with the DHS secretary, getting into a scuffle with law enforcement? What's wrong with these people? You don't behave like this. This isn't how a senator is supposed to behave...

And so on, irately, from there.

For the record, we know of no reason to claim that Senator Badilla "stormed" yesterday's event. He did loudly interrupt Noem. We don't think he should have done that.

With respect to Thiessen's companion complaint, it's abundantly clear that the three Democratic congressmen to whom he refers did not "storm the ICE [detention center in Newark]" during the month-old event in question.

Sorry, that just didn't happen! But pleasing tribal claims of that type never die or grow old on Fox.

Claims like that enjoy eternal life on Fox. With respect to yesterday's event, MacCallum soon said that each of her guests had been criticizing Senator Padilla.

If that's what MacCallum thought she heard, we think she heard it wrong.

THE TROOPS: Secretary Noem does it again!

FRIDAY, JUNE 13, 2025

Blue America's troops gone wild: Yesterday, in the City of Angels, Kristi Noem did it again.

At the start of a press event, she made her latest (extremely) strange remark. Here's the transcript of what she was saying when the cameras swiveled around to a different part of the room:

NOEM (6/12/25): ...The Department of Homeland Security and the officers and the agencies and the departments and the military people that are working on this operation will continue to sustain and increase our operations in this city. We are not going away. We are staying here to liberate this city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor had placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into this city.

So I want to say thank you to every single person that has been able to do this. Also, I want to talk specifically to the rioters and to the politicians in Los Angeles.

[PAUSES]

I also want to talk specifically about how many of our agents have been doxxed for doing their duty. How they have been targeted and how their families have been put in jeopardy and that we're not going to allow that any more as well, that those individuals who are purposely endangering our ICE agents and our law enforcement officers and their families will be prosecuted for what they are doing as far as perpetuating violence on them.

As a general matter, people who purposely endanger law enforcement officers should be stopped from doing that. That said, we start with the remarkable statement we've highlighted above.

Noem has said and done a wide assortment of strange things in her current post. "Suck it," she thoughtfully wrote on May 22, commenting on a lawsuit against her department which had been dismissed. 

Los Angeles is really "a city of criminals," she pathetically stated last week.

Cricket is gone, but this person remains! Yesterday, she made this amazing remark:

We [ICE] are not going away. We are staying here to liberate this city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor had placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into this city.

Secretary Noem to the rescue! Her federal agency will stay in L.A. "to liberate it from the leadership" its mayor, and the governor of its state, have placed upon that realm.

Also, no socialists allowed! For the record, that wasn't a clumsy offhand remark. That was actually part of the secretary's prepared text.

As presented, the quoted remark doesn't quite parse, but Noem may have been distracted at that point. By the time of that remark, voices could be heard from elsewhere in the room. 

She briefly paused, at the indicated point, as a brief bit of turmoil played out. We now switch our attention to Senator Padilla (D-CA), an impressive person whose personal history reminds us of a very important point:

Talent emerges from all locales! The leading authority speaks:

Alex Padilla

Alejandro Padilla (born March 22, 1973) is an American politician serving as the senior United States senator from California, a seat he has held since 2021. A member of the Democratic Party, Padilla served as the 30th secretary of state of California from 2015 to 2021 and was a member of the California State Senate and the Los Angeles City Council.

[...]

Padilla is one of three children of Santos and Lupe Padilla, both of whom moved from Mexico, specifically Jalisco and Chihuahua, before meeting and marrying in Los Angeles, where he was born. He grew up in Pacoima, Los Angeles, and graduated from San Fernando High School in the northeast San Fernando Valley. He earned a degree in mechanical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1994. 

After graduation, Padilla moved back to Pacoima and briefly worked as an engineer for Hughes Aircraft, where he wrote software for satellite systems.

Padilla is a former member of the governing board of MIT...

His father worked as a short-order cook, his mother as a housekeeper. Their son emerged with an engineering degree from MIT, reminding us of the remarkable fact that talent can emerge from anywhere on the dial.

(In the case of President Lincoln, it emerged, in an inexplicable way, from the nation's backcountry, In the case of the Presidents Roosevelt, it emerged from the nation's highest salons.)

People swear by the character of Senator Padilla. We'd be strongly inclined to assume that those people have it right.

That said, it seems to us that he submitted to a bit of imperfect judgment yesterday. 

In this morning's news report, the New York Times offers an instant summary.  We'll highlight an important word which has been widely disappeared:

Calif. Senator Forcibly Removed and Handcuffed After Interrupting Noem

Senator Alex Padilla, Democrat of California, was forcibly removed on Thursday from a news conference being held by Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, and handcuffed after he interrupted Ms. Noem at a federal building in West Los Angeles.

“Sir! Sir! Hands off!” Mr. Padilla, 52, shouted as federal agents tried to muscle him out of the room inside a government office building about 15 miles west of downtown Los Angeles where Ms. Noem was speaking. “I am Senator Alex Padilla. I have a question for the secretary.”

[...]

In the tense hyperpartisanship of the moment, the episode quickly swelled into a cause célèbre for both parties...

The key word is "interrupted." That word appears in the first paragraph of the Times report, but also in the headline.

Yesterday, the corporate stars of Blue America disappeared that word. If you're a denizen of Blue America, you should be very unhappy about the way these less than fully impressive people, along with their less than fully impressive predecessors, have served your interests over the past (let's say) 33 years.

People swear by Senator Padilla's character; we don't doubt that assessment. But in our view, he displayed a bit of imperfect judgment during yesterday event.

In our view, so did Nicolle Wallace and the standard assortment of Blue American corporate hacks on MSNBC's succession of programs. Instantly, they started feeding us cable news viewers the kind of porridge which leaves us well-fed and glad. 

They kept forgetting to mention the fact that Senator Padilla had suddenly interrupted Secretary Noem as she tried to make her (remarkable) opening statement. No, you're not supposed to do that—and Senator Padilla, who is said to be mild-mannered, seemed remarkably exercised when security tried to make him stop. 

The senator is much larger than those agents were. He kept shoving back against them and attempting to interrupt further. 

In our view, he shouldn't have done that. Lincoln also made mistakes at points along the way.

No, Virginia! Senator Padilla wasn't simply "doing his oversight" when he tried to interrupt, as Blue America's pundits quickly agreed to say. And when Wallace came on the air at 4 p.m., she repeatedly said that Noem had lied lied lied lied lied lied lied in an earlier appearance on Fox.

She dropped the L-bomb a hundred times. Meanwhile, Senator Padilla was perhaps less than fully descriptive when he made this statement, not long after he'd been shoved out of the room and roughly handcuffed:

SENATOR PADILLA (6/12/25): I came to the press conference to see what she had to say, to see if I could learn any new information, and at one point I had a question. And let me emphasize this as we've emphasized the right for people to peacefully protest and to stand up for their First Amendment rights.

I was there peacefully, and at one point I had a question, and so I began to ask a question. I was almost immediately forcibly removed from the room. I was forced to the ground, and I was handcuffed.

I was not arrested. I was not detained. I will say this—if this is how this administration responds to a senator with a question, if this is how the Department of Homeland Security responds to a senator with a question, you can only imagine what they're doing to farmworkers, to cooks, to day laborers out in the Los Angeles community and throughout California.

"At one point, I had a question," he said, two separate times. "And so I began to ask a question." 

All that is true! He omitted the fact that Noem was delivering her opening remarks when he loudly interrupted so he could ask his question.

He failed to say that he loudly interrupted the person in question. The word "interrupted" was then widely disappeared all through the rest of the day on the corporate cable news channel which services Blue America.

No, Virgina! You aren't supposed to show up at a press event and loudly interrupt. You aren't "doing your oversight" when you do that, and you may even find yourself being removed from the room.

We don't know why Senator Padilla staged that interruption. We don't know why he seemed to be so exercised as the agents in question removed him from the room

Did those agents behave correctly? This very morning, on Morning Joe, one Blue American pundit explicitly said that they did. 

(Maria Teresa Kumar: "The Secret Service were doing their job.") 

Kumar quickly pivoted to a rather tortured criticism of Noem herself. Yesterday, on the less deceptive CNN, security correspondent Josh Campbell offered an assessment in which he largely, though not completely, agreed with Kumar's initial assessment. 

Campbell is a former special agent with the FBI—and no, he isn't pro-Trump.

Kumar quickly pivoted to a criticism of Noem.  More specifically, she pivoted to the claim that "a more talented politician" would have intervened from the podium to remedy the situation. 

As always, everything's possible! In our view, that was classic tribal novelization—novelization all the way down.

Did Noem understand what was happening during this brief event? Did she know that it was Senator Padilla who was trying to interrupt?

From the available videotapes, we see no proof that she did. 

Was she lying lying lying during her subsequent appearance on Fox? Given her recent awful record, we don't doubt that she'd be willing to do so, but we see no obvious proof that she did.

Starting at 4 o'clock Eastern, we did see a succession of pundits standing in line to toe Blue America's (corporate) line. These people have served Blue America's interests very poorly during the past many years.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep—but those of us in Blue America aren't the moral and intellectual giants we've long presumed ourselves to be. We're gifted with imperfect judgment, a bit like everyone else.

Our lizard brains will want to say that our remarks just have to be wrong. Unfortunately, our lizard brains have often served us very poorly since President Trump came down the escalator in June 2015.

So have our corporate pundits! All through the Biden years, their shaky judgment helped create the world in which President Trump made his way back to the White House.

They swore there was nothing wrong at the southern border. Until they could say it no more, they swore there was nothing wrong with President Biden himself.

They swore that inflation was all in the dumb voters' heads. They spent years trying to get Trump locked up, in the (pleasing) course of which they likely helped him get elected.

(They kept saying that we voters needed to know if Candidate Trump, on one occasion, had had sex with Stormy Daniels ten years before. No, you can't get dumber than that—but our stars were willing to try.)

In our view, Senator Padilla—a good and decent, remarkable person—submitted to a bit of imperfect judgment yesterday. 

He could have let the secretary speak, then tried to raise his question at the more appropriate time. Instead, he rose to loudly interrupt. Sometimes, if not for all the imperfect judgment, there would be no judgment at all!

Blue America's corporate pundits largely took things from there. "In the tense hyperpartisanship of the moment," they invented a whole new set of ways to put their thumbs on the scale.

Noem made her latest very strange statement. We Blues took over from there!

THURSDAY: Memorializing Leavitt's latest!

THURSDAY, JUNE 12, 2025

And yes, she said it out loud: On the one hand, the behavior was fairly typical, coming from Karoline Leavitt.

Karoline Leavitt, 27, is President Trump's press spokesperson. She's widely said to speak fluent Trump. We'll quickly make this point:

Leavitt didn't appoint herself to her current position. It isn't her doing, or her fault, that she holds her current job.

That said, one bit of behavior from Leavitt was so striking this week that it deserves to be memorialized. We refer to the way she reacted to a question from a reporter—a question which was basically sensible, given a peculiar earlier statement by the president himself.

In fairness, let's quickly be fair:

You can't really fault the sitting president for being annoyed at this time. Given ongoing events in Los Angeles, he may have to move some military assets from his birthday party out to the west coast!

Still, this led to an unusual statement by the commander in chief. On Tuesday, he made these comments in response to a question at an Oval Office event:

PRESIDENT TRUMP (6/10/25): I just think it's amazing. We’re going to have a fantastic June 14th parade, Flag Day. It’s going to be an amazing day. 

We have tanks, we have planes, we have all sorts of things, and I think it is going to be great. We're going to celebrate our country for a change.

[..]

And if there's any protestor wants to come out, they will be met with very big force, by the way. And for those people that want to protest, they’re going to be met with very big force—and I haven’t even heard about a protest.

But, you know, this is people that hate our country. But they will be met with a very heavy force.

You can see the tape of his full statement here. At any rate, no more of this "American carnage" stuff. We're going to celebrate the country for once!

The president said he hadn't heard about any plans for protests. But if anyone does show up to protest, he said that they'll be met with a very big, very heavy force. He said it three separate times!

Given the fact that non-violent protest has long been alleged to be legal, that was a slightly odd statement. You could write it off as a clumsy remark—or you could ask Leavitt about it.

On Wednesday, Jasmine Wright chose the perilous latter approach. We probably wouldn't have bothered, but this was the initial result:

WRIGHT (6/11/25): Thank you, Karoline.

The president warned that any protest at Saturday's event would be met with force. Can you clarify what kind of protest President Trump does support, or find acceptable?

LEAVITT: The president absolutely supports peaceful protests. He supports the First Amendment. He supports the right of Americans to make their voices heard. He does not support violence of any kind. He does not support assaulting law enforcement officers who are simply trying to do their job. 

It’s very clear for the president what he supports and what he does not. Unfortunately for Democrats, that line has not been made clear and they've allowed this unrest and this violence to continue. and the president has had to step in.

We almost surely would have left it right there. That said, Wright wanted to nail things down. Here's the thanks she received:

WRIGHT (continuing directly): One question. So if there were peaceful protests on Saturday for the military parade, President Trump would allow that?

LEAVITT: Of course, the president supports peaceful protests! What a stupid question.

"What a stupid question," the youngster said. And yes—she said it out loud!  (For the videotape, click here.)

We thought it should be memorialized. Memorialization done!

THE TROOPS: President Trump addresses the troops!

THURSDAY, JUNE 12, 2025

On Fox, the troops can't be wrong: President Trump was in his element, standing before the troops.

He was addressing the troops at Fort Bragg—rather, at what was once Fort Bragg. In fact, it's now Fort Bragg again, though it isn't that Fort Bragg.

More on that ride in the clown car tomorrow. For now, we turn to the insights of the commander in chief, given voice this Tuesday afternoon as he addresses the troops.

He was explaining current events in L.A. For current purposes, we'll suggest that you ignore the partisanship of his oration, in what would previously would have viewed as non-political terrain.

We'll suggest that you look past that. We'll suggest that you focus on this.

Apparently unable to help himself, there he went again:

PRESIDENT TRUMP (6/10/25): The agitators are throwing firebombs, Molotov cocktails, lighting vehicles ablaze, you saw all the cars that were burning, mobbing police officers and ICE officers, who are the toughest people you'll ever meet and they love our country and they're getting really—they want to stomp on them, but they're too tough, they don't allow it, and attempting to infiltrate and occupy federal buildings wearing armor and face shields—the best money can buy. Somebody's financing it. We're going to find out through Pam Bondi and Department of Justice who it is.

They're already on it. Who's financing all this equipment? Very professional! 

Under the Trump administration, this anarchy will not stand. We will not allow federal agents to be attacked, and we will not allow an American city to be invaded and conquered by a foreign enemy, and that's what they are. 

A lot of those people were let in here by the Biden administration. They just poured right in. They came from prisons, they came from jails from all over the world, they came from mental institutions, they were the leaders of gangs, they were drug lords. Allowed to come into our country. Their countries threw them out.

Their countries would bus them or drive them right to our border and say, "Go in there. You ever come back, we're going to kill you." And we got them, and we're getting them out of here. 

I want to applaud the courage and the strength of the incredible troops who are right now standing guard to protect federal property and personnel and uphold the supremacy of federal law. That's what they're doing, they're protecting our ICE agents, they're protecting the police in Los Angeles. 

The head of the police in Los Angeles, a good man, I hear a good man, but he was actually saying, "We really did need this help." It had gotten away from them. It had long gotten away, and we gave it to them.

Thanks to the invaluable Rev, you can peruse a transcript and watch the tape simply by clicking here. If only there were other such sites!

At any rate, as the president addressed one set of troops. he praised a second set. None of this is a commentary on either set of troops. It's a commentary on the commander himself—possibly on his delusions, on his fixed ideas.

Thee the gentleman went again, with his familiar claims! From all around the world, foreign countries had loaded their prisoners into vehicles, along with those who were mentally ill. They'd then proceeded to bus those people right to our southern border! 

To his credit, he didn't mention Congo this time—until, moments later, the commander actually did:

PRESIDENT TRUMP: In other words, they came in here illegally. Many of them came out of prisons and jails, the most heinous people, they came from all over the world. 

They came from the Congo in Africa, they came from Asia, they came from the prisons of these places. They were put into the United States and allowed to stay here because we had a grossly, grossly unfit president who listened to whoever was operating the autopen, and they allowed these people to stay. 

And by the way, I've known this guy for a long time, he was never the sharpest bulb. But you know what he was? He wasn't a radical left lunatic, he never dreamt about open borders, he never said that when he was of sound mind, which actually was a very long time ago. So sad, what they've done to our country.

For whatever reason, he can't stop talking about President Biden, even in this former nation's most plainly non-partisan setting. Also, he can't stop saying that nations like "the Congo"—formally, The Democratic Republic of the Congo—loaded their criminals and their mental patients into buses and drove them to San Diego, or possibly straight to L.A., and then proceeded to make them get out, threatening to kill them if they dared to refuse.

is it possible that something is actually wrong with this man? The commander can't seem to stop making these ludicrous claims—and Blue America's useless elites can't stop ignoring his conduct. Elsewhere, the creepy crawlers on the Fox news Channel are even willing to play the margarita card—but then again, so did the astonishing Secretary Noem, the one who shot Cricket, her puppy.

(After that, she proceeded to shoot a goat, if only to further establish her point. According to Secretary Noem's recent book, the goat had "a wretched smell.")

Back to the buses and limousines which kept pulling up to the southern border under the previous president. Today, we ask the question which will never be asked under current tribal arrangements:

Why does this very powerful person insist on making such ludicrous statements? What drives him to say such things, even as he addresses the troops at the base which is now Fort Bragg again, though it's no longer that Fort Bragg.

Why does he keep saying these things? Blue America's timorous elites have long since agreed that they must never ask. If they ever dared to ask, they'd have to take such questions to medical specialists—and conduct like that just isn't allowed inside their unhelpful guild.

That was the commander in chief, instructing the actual troops. Last night, a different set of troops crawled out when the CEO of the Fox News Channel pried the lid off the can.

The Gutfeld! program was now underway! As always, it started with two or three minutes of jokes, then moved to a full hour of ludicrous pseudo-discussions.

Those pseudo-discussions cannot be discussed! Our Blue elites agree.

The program's host delivers the opening handful of jokes. Last evening, he ended in a familiar place at 10:03 p.m. Eastern. 

It was 7:03 p.m. out on the west coast:

GUTFELD (6/11/25): And finally, according to scientists, humpback whales are trying to send messages to humans. 

Yeah! And it turns out they even have their own TV show.

[PHOTO: The five women of The View]

AUDIENCE: Cheers and applause

GUTFELD: Oh, you saw it coming! You saw it coming!

In fact, everyone who has ever watched this brain-damaged TV show had seen it coming as soon as he said the word "whales." The misogyny is undisguised on this braindead propaganda program. 

The pseudo-discussions came next. 

All in all, new winds of freedom are blowing through the land. They could be felt as the commander-in-chief repeated his crazy fixed ideas, but also as the host of that primetime "cable news" show pimped his favorite themes.

As that breeze blows through the land, the cherished elites of Blue America politely maintain their silence:

No one asks if something might perhaps be wrong, perhaps in some significant way, with a person who goes to Fort Bragg and repeats those claims about those bus rides from the Congo. Also, everyone agrees that the garbage spewed on the Fox News Channel must never be reported and therefore can't be discussed.

As a former nation splits into a pair of nations, a mighty wind is met by a mighty silence. We're so old that we can remember when of Blue America's troops assailed George W. Bush for an alleged lack of curiosity. 

Which segment of the two Americas is displaying that lack today?

The president was addressing one set of troops. The remarkably peculiar Greg Gutfeld is a key member of a second set of troops—the corporate troops who crawl on the land from morning till night on the Fox News Channel. 

Last night, this battalion had been assembled:

Gutfeld!: Wednesday, June 11, 2025
Tom Shillue: current D-list comedian
Chris Craighead: former special service soldier, British army
Emily Compagno: former head cheerleader, Oakland Raiders
Tyrus: former professional "wrestler"

Craighead (not his real name) was making his first appearance. At 10:14, he was hailed by one and all when he dropped his first F-bomb on national TV!

(Craighead: There's a whole generation of scumbags out there who don't understand, "[BLEEP] around and find out." Audience: Cheers and applause.)

It was a magical moment. To see the intros, just click here. So it goes with this set of troops.

Alas, the Fox News Channel! The channel has been losing some of its top performers of late. Pete Hegseth, Judge Jeanine, even Tammy Bruce? All three have been called away to a higher form of service.

The channel is struggling forward, trying to replace this talent. In the meantime, the pseudo-discussions continue apace—broadcast to Red America around the clock, unknown to everyone else.

We Blues! Our elites won't inquire about President Trump. They won't report what happens on the Fox News Channel—and no matter how inane that channel's pseudo-discussions get, its troops can never be totally wrong.

It can never be a long time ago, Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote as she ended the first of her famous nine books. 

On Fox, The troops can never be totally wrong. Tomorrow, we'll show you why.

Tomorrow: These troops can never be wrong

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.