"You don't have to focus on the sex stuff. There's more evidence that Trump gave a seat in cabinet to a man for no good reason other than to thank him for the Epstein cover-up."
Arrant speculation. Also old news.
(cont'd)
"It's not arrant speculation that Trump's family falsified receipts to cheat the government out of hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes."
Old news.
"It'll feel like new news because you ignored it at the time."
We gave it a day.
(cont'd)
"Trump used the same trick - false records - in all his many civil frauds, and also in the hush-money case that got him convicted of 34 felony counts by a jury!"
Complicated technicalities, you're boring me.
(cont'd)
"You want simple? Someone bravely defied a non-disclosure agreement to go on the record that Trump used the most vicious racial slurs on the set of The Apprentice."
Doubtful source.
"The 'suckers and losers' quote comes from an impeccable source."
Old news.
"But Trump denied the 'suckers and losers' quote only last week during the nationally televised presidential debate. He lied to the whole country!"
Not our job to fact-check every word he says.
"But you personally know it to be a lie."
Maybe we do, maybe we don't.
(cont'd)
"Okay, look, let's do it your way. What does interest you?"
Indications of cognitive decline.
"We've got millions of examples of Trump obviously off his rocker."
Right - he says crazy things all the time. Not news.
(cont'd)
"Are you telling me that the more often a candidate for president says addled, senile, crazy things - the less newsy it is?"
Not exactly. We also need a lot of background quotes about how his party is worried. If the party is cool with his dementia, we're cool with it.
"These rules don't seem on the level."
We're not the Supreme Court.
"The Supreme Court isn't on the level either."
Oh, now you're undermining confidence in our most sacred institutions. How is that different from Trump?
"Oh for God's sake, the wives of two justices supported - and one conspired in - Trump's Big Lie. I don't understand why you sat on the story for two years.
Leave families out of it.
"Biden's family too?"
We have to cover that, Trump's made a campaign issue of it.
(cont'd)
"I give up. Talk to me like I'm eight years old. How the hell do you explain what you're doing?"
We have to report equal numbers of bad things about each side.
1) It's the law. The Department of Defense and Secretary of Defense were so named by the National Security Act amendments of 1949. Only Congress has the power to change the name. nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/28655…
2) It's commonsense. Not all national security threats take the form of outright wars. EG the US is not at war with the Houthis of Yemen, but it does defend sea traffic against Houthi terrorism. (Or anyway it tries to, if only the SecDef would quit blabbing operational details.)
While I was on CNN at 1 pm predicting that the Trump administration would use the Charlie Kirk murder as an excuse to deploy government power against peaceful and legal political competition in 2026 ...
... Vice President Vance and other Trump officials were simultaneously on Charlie Kirk's podcast vowing to use the murder as an excuse to deploy government power against peaceful and legal political competition in 2026. nytimes.com/live/2025/09/1…
1) The Trump administration is corrupt on scale almost beyond comprehending. If they lose control of Congress in 2026, they face all kinds of legal jeopardy. nytimes.com/2025/09/15/us/…
Government taking control of private companies ...
Supply shortages and price increases due to government attacks on free commercial exchange;
The government imposing huge fines on media corporations for First Amendment protected speech that displeased the president ...
Enormous tax increases imposed on Americans without any vote by Congress;
Violent convicted criminals released onto the streets because they directed their violence against persons the president targeted as his personal enemies ...
In a few minutes, @theAtlantic will release video of the episode of David Frum show featuring ex ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink. Audio is already posted on your favorite platform. (thread)
The interview with Ambassador Brink and the opening monologue were recorded before today's news of Trump cut-off of essential weapons of self-defense to Ukraine. But both were recorded in ominous awareness that Trump abandonment of Ukraine was imminent. 2/x
A point I make in opening: while Trump's Putin-subservient abandonment of Ukraine deserves as much anger and scorn as the non-Putin side of the political spectrum can muster ... a word also has to be said about Biden administration's lack of urgency to aid Ukraine in time. 3/x
The Benin artifacts previously delivered to Nigeria from UK and Germany have disappeared from public view. They are not on display in any museum. Some or all may have been sold into private markets. (Links in next tweet)
The late PJ O'Rourke had a great line: "Just as some things are too strange for fiction, other things are too true for journalism." The fate of artworks delivered to Nigeria is one of those subjects too true for journalism. Fiction and fantasy are reported as moral imperative.
In 2018, protesters against gasoline tax demonstrated in Paris. A radical few set fires near the Arc de Triomphe, creating scenes of chaos for social media platforms - like the iconic image below. (THREAD)
To the consumer of social media, it must have looked as if France hovered on the brink of revolution in 2018. Paris engulfed in flames! (2/x)
Here's how things looked to Parisians, though. Some agitator poured gasoline on a bike at a distance from the Arc, set it on fire, and then photographed the monument through the black smoke created by burning tires. (3/x)