Month: September 2025

Philip Bump makes a good point, here. Just who are the people who saw Kimmel’s comments anyway?

The debate over the shelving of Jimmy Kimmel’s show isn’t really a debate, as such.

Kimmel has been a target of Donald Trump’s for years, with the president predicting in July that the ABC host’s show would be next to be shut down after CBS cancelled Stephen Colbert. […]

Trump got his desired outcome. And Trump desired that outcome because he pays far more attention to television personalities and ratings than nearly anyone else in America.

Analysis from the Hollywood Reporter published last year found that ABC had a median primetime viewership age a bit lower than CBS in 2024 — 65.6 years versus 67.8. The youngest audience that tuned into ABC’s primetime lineup was for “NBA Primetime,” which enjoyed a youthful median age of 57.1 years.

Trump seeks a ban all criticism of him across the board. He’s suing newspapers and media companies and getting at least some of them to capitulate (looking at you Jeff Bezos.) But it’s been notable that it’s the broadcast TV networks that have really come crawling on their bellies, begging for forgiveness.

But the fact is that broadcast TV is dying anyway and, as you can see, (with the exception of sports) is really only watched by old people — like Trump.

Obviously, the moves by Carr are violations of the First Amendment and must be opposed at all costs. But the fact is that these people are just hastening the demise of broadcast TV. And at this point I have to say — good riddance. They are all owned by corrupt corporations willing to lay down for an authoritarian monster.

If anyone’s expecting this group of cowards to step up, think again:

At a meeting of CEOs and other executives on Wednesday convened by the Yale School of Management, dozens of America’s business leaders sounded off on their concerns about tariffs, immigration, foreign policy matters and what many described as an increasingly chaotic, hard-to-navigate business environment.

“They’re being extorted and bullied individually, but in private discourse, they’re really upset,” said Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a Yale management professor who organized the event, referring to recent deals that give the U.S. government a cut of certain Nvidia chip sales and a “golden share” in U.S. Steel.

The meeting included prominent corporate executives such as Motorola Solutions Chief Executive Officer Greg Brown, who also received an award for leadership; Booking Holdings CEO Glenn Fogel; and Ethan Allen CEO Farooq Kathwari. Other attendees included the heads of major manufacturers, consumer brands, automakers, technology companies and investment firms. Many who shared their concerns Wednesday in the confines of a private conference room didn’t want to speak publicly for fear that their companies could be targeted by the administration or that they could attract criticism from Trump.

Have the U.S. tariffs been helpful or harmful to your business?

Helpful 29%
Harmful 71%

Source: Yale CEO Caucus (Sept. 17)

Executives also said U.S. consumers and domestic importing companies were the ones bearing the brunt of the costs on tariffs, not international exporting companies or countries.

The Trump administration has made tariffs core to its economic agenda, hoping to spur a resurgence in domestic manufacturing by bringing jobs back to the U.S. from overseas. And while some companies, like Apple and pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, have announced plans to make more of their products domestically, most of the CEOs gathered Wednesday took a different view. When asked whether they planned to invest more in U.S. manufacturing and infrastructure, 62% of respondents said they didn’t plan to do so.

The reason, Yale’s Sonnenfeld said, is because tariffs, immigration policies and concerns about the economy are all weighing on leaders and preventing them from feeling confident enough today to make new investments. “They’re holding back doing anything,” he said. 

I’m pretty sure most of them voted for him. Not that it matters. It’s just one vote per person. But they probably gave him money and licked his boots enthusiastically every chance they got. They empower him at every step of the way and then whine behind closed doors that he’s killing their golden goose.

Imagine if all the Masters of the Universe stood up and said “no, we’re not going to let you destroy America.” They wouldn’t even have to make a political argument if that’s just too uncomfortable. They could just say that it’s bad for business. Clearly, they believe it is. But apparently they’d rather let it happen than stand up and tell the truth.

Foreign business leaders seem to be much braver(or they take their customers desires more seriously, anyway.) In S. Korea, the blowback from businesses for how their citizens were treated by ICE is severe and may have permanently damaged the business relationships. And anyone who exports to other countries has got to be just a little bit concerned. Those customers aren’t too keen on America these days. They can vote with their wallets too.

It’s what they’ve always done

The New York Times

BERLIN, Feb. 3, 1939—

Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels today ended the professional careers of five “Aryan” actors and cabaret announcers by expelling them from the Reich’s Chamber of Culture on the grounds that “in their public appearances they displayed a lack of any positive attitude toward National Socialism and therewith caused grave annoyance in public and especially to party comrades.” The five include perhaps the best known German stage comedians who survived previous Chamber of Culture purges and still dared to indulge in political witticisms—namely, Werner Finck, Peter Sachse and “The Three Rulands,” represented by Helmuth Buth, Wilhelm Meissner and Manfred Dlugi. Their expulsion means that they are henceforth forbidden to appear before the public in Germany.

Besides motivating this action in an official communiqué, Dr. Goebbels also publishes a long article in the Voelkischer Beobachter in which he denounces them as “brazen, impertinent, arrogant and tactless” and generally imitators and successors to Jews. Simultaneously he denounces the “society rabble that followed them with thundering applause—parasitic scum, inhabiting our luxury streets, that seems to have only the task of proving with how little brains people can get along and even acquire money and prominence.”

As regards the details of the “crimes” of which the five are accused, Dr. Goebbels mentions that they made political witticisms about the colonial problem, the Four-Year Plan and Chancellor Hitler’s monumental building program and one of them even raised the question of whether there was any humor left in Germany today.

What amused the public most, however, and presumably roiled the National Socialist authorities most—although Dr. Goebbels does not mention it—is that they deftly, but unmistakably, caricatured some gestures, poses and physical characteristics of National Socialist leaders—sometimes with bon mots that made the rounds of the country.

Dr. Goebbels says that the National Socialists proved during their struggle for power that they had a keen sense of humor that could kill opponents with ridicule. But as National Socialism proposes to remain in power 2,000 years it has neither the time nor the patience to apply that method to the “miserable literati.”

If the anti-German press of Paris, London and New York, Dr. Goebbels says, or the democratic governments in Western Europe, should now again complain about the lack of freedom of opinion in Germany it does not matter, “for after all during the last year the Fuehrer reconquered 10,000,000 Germans for the Reich.”

That is a real story. Sound familiar?

History doesn’t repeat itself exactly but sometimes it comes awfully close.

For the past decade or more, the American right has been on a crusade to end what they see as the scourge of “cancel culture.”They have railed against firing people for what they say in the classroom and boardroom or for things they posted years ago as teenagers on social media. They ranted that no one should lose a job simply for expressing an unpopular opinion, a fate which they believed was happening to conservatives throughout society. This has been a fundamental organizing principle on the MAGA right as they fulminated against leftist “woke” ideology they believed was being forced down the throats of average Americans who were intimidated into going along lest they be shunned or expelled or fired.

This was always a bit much. The right has its own very long history of “canceling” those with whom they disagree. Sen. Joseph McCarthy and the House UnAmerican Activities Committee back in the 1940s and 50s successfully ruined the lives of many people who were suspected of being members (or simply member-curious) of the Communist Party, which was not illegal. In the lead up to the Iraq war, dissenters were warned to be careful of what they said lest they be seen as terrorist sympathizers. Radio stations famously renounced the country act “The Dixie Chicks” for telling their audience they were ashamed that President George Bush was from Texas. And in recent years we’ve seen a spate of book banning and repression in the classroom by right wing school boards and politicians.

But during the grievance driven Trump era, complaints among the right reached fever pitch as cultural upheavals like “Me Too” and “Black Lives Matter” fed their resentment over social changes they believed had gone too far. And nothing exercised them more than the idea that “hate speech” could be sanctioned either informally or by the government. As the late Charlie Kirk wrote on X in May of 2024, “Hate speech does not exist legally in America. There’s ugly speech. There’s gross speech. There’s evil speech. And ALL of it is protected by the First Amendment. Keep America free.”

Ironically, in the wake of the assassination, there has been tsunami of calls and activity to shut down “hate speech” in the name of the free speech defender, Charlie Kirk. Many high profile Republicans, including the Vice President have called for people to dox those who have said negative things about Kirk on social media and contact their employees to have them fired. Even the alleged principled libertarians are calling for a crackdown.

Trump’s right hand man Stephen Miller asserts that there is a vast left wing terrorist network that is destroying everything Americans hold dear. Appearing with Vice President JD Vance who was podcasting under Kirk’s name in the White House this week, he vowed:

“With God as my witness, we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy these networks and make America safe again. For the American people, it will happen, and we will do it in Charlie’s name.”

He has plenty of company. Attorney General Pam Bondi said earlier this week that the Department of Justice plans to target people who have engaged in hate speech and she put employers on notice that they will be held legally accountable if their employees refuse to serve people who wish to valorize Charlie Kirk. She later had to walk those threats back after being schooled by MAGA influencers that the First Amendment still exists. (She’s only the top government lawyer in the country, you can’t expect her to know everything.)

Donald Trump has never really believed in all this free speech folderol. I don’t think anyone can credibly assert that he is a man of deeply held principles about liberty and justice (except as they pertain to himself.) From his first campaign in 2015 he’s often said that one person or another should not be “allowed” to say things he disapproves of and it’s only surprising that he’s held back as much as he has from abusing his power as president to clamp down on the media.

He’s not holding back any longer. He’s been leading the charge against “the left” in the wake of Kirk’s shooting, but is reserving most of his ire toward the press. Having successfully extorted $15 million from ABC and $16 million from CBS’s parent company Paramount through absurd lawsuits that legal experts say could never have won in court, he’s now taken to suing any media outfit he believes has not been properly reverent toward his personal magnificence. He sued the Wall St. Journal for $10 billion (yes with a “b”) and now, using what seems to be nothing more than an extended Truth Social post, he’s filed a defamation suit against the NY Times for $15 billion because they keep criticizing him and are failing to acknowledge his vast success. (This is a common lament from Trump these days — he’s very upset that everyone’s talking about things other than his greatness.)

The suit has to be read to be believed. It’s hard to fathom that any lawyer would put his or her name to it. In fact, it’s almost certainly nothing more than a sop to appease Trump because the NY Times, unlike the other media companies he’s blackmailed, is just a newspaper company not a huge conglomerate with business before the government so Trump doesn’t have the same leverage. They’ve said they will not settle and there’s little reason to think they would.

But Trump is on a tear, telling an Australian reporter who asked him about all the money he’s making while in office to be quiet and menacingly asserting that he’s bad for his country because Australia wants to get along with him. (Nice little country you have there…) Then he insulted ABC’s Jonathan Karl for bringing up Bondi’s promise to go after people for hate speech saying “We’ll probably go after people like you because you treat me so unfairly. You have a lot of hate in your heart. Maybe they’ll have to go after you.”

It would be easy to just write that stuff off as “crazy old Trump being Trump.” But when you put it in the context of what his entire administration has been saying for the past week it takes on a much more ominous cast. Are they all just reacting to the loss of their young leader and acting out in anger or is that event being used as a pretext to go to the next level of autocracy and use the government to punish their political opponents and the media as Stephen Miller vowed to do?

It appears to be the latter. When CBS’s Stephen Colbert was fired after Paramount completed its merger with Skydance Last July, Trump wrote on Truth Social, “I absolutely love that Colbert’ got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings… I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next. Has even less talent than Colbert!” His orders were clear.

Yesterday his FCC chairman Brendan Carr went on a podcast and claimed that Kimmel had said “the sickest thing possible” about Charlie Kirk on his show and warned, “when we see stuff like this, look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.” (Kimmel had said the “MAGA gang” was denying they had anything to do with it and was “trying to score political points” and he made mock of Trump’s behavior.)

What Carr seemed to be implying with that mob boss talk was that the FCC would not approve a big merger between some of ABC’s stations if they didn’t cancel Kimmel, a tactic they also used to extort that $16 million from Paramount. The stations immediately complied followed shortly by ABC/Disney announcing that Kimmel had been”suspended indefinitely.” Carr sent CNN’s Brian Stelter a celebration text.

As a private company, ABC has the right to fire anyone they choose but this interference by the FCC is encroaching on the First Amendment. However, the media companies have to be willing to defend themselves and so far, the only one to step up is the NY Times. They may be our last hope for preserving freedom of speech as we’ve known it.

Salon

Counterpunch with action

Listen. Silicon Valley moguls Larry Ellison and son David are close to owning Skydance Media and Paramount Global. They could soon control “CBS News, MTV, Nickelodeon, and Paramount Pictures” and the content of everything from your “children’s cartoons to nightly broadcasts.” The Financial Express adds:

Paramount Skydance is now rumoured to be weighing a $70 billion bid for Warner Bros. Discovery. That would bring DC Comics, Harry Potter, Barbie, CNN, and HBO under the Ellison umbrella…. Amid the Hollywood manoeuvring, Ellison has also resurfaced in Washington’s battle over TikTok. After U.S.-China talks in Madrid last week, President Donald Trump teased a deal that would “save” a company beloved by young Americans. A report by WSJ also suggests that the Oracle consortium is acquiring an 80% stake in TikTok in the US.

Media consolidation is on track to turn your information streams into the 21st century equivalent of Alien‘s 22nd-century “The Company,” a.k.a., the Weyland-Yutani Corporation:

In 2120, Weyland-Yutani’s sphere of influence emcompassed all of North, Central, and South America,^[1] as well as Mars and Saturn.^[3] Weyland-Yutani, along with Threshold and Dynamic, were known as the “Triumvirate” before becoming “The Five” with the addition of Lynch and Prodigy.^[4]

This is happening now. Meta, News Corp., etc. and other billionaire-controlled media outlets are on track to control what constitutes news and reality as you know it. Inconvenient facts that already exist will be memory-holed. Other data that your tax dollars once captured and archived will vanish like water down a drain.

Hang in there with me as I shift gears.

Do not squander this moment. Those of you reading about ABC and CBS axing Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert, about The Washington Post firing Karen Attiah, its last Black full-time opinion columnist, need to use this moment before it vanishes as well.

There is a lot of hostility in America about the impunity the rich enjoy in our corrupt system of economics and justice. Convicted felon Donald J. Trump, now president of the United States agaion, is the poster child for millionaire-billionaire impunity (with help from SCOTUS).

On that, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) hammered FBI Director Kash Patel on Wednesday in a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee. Patel had told a Senate hearing that there was no credible evidence that multi-millionaire Jeffrey Epstein trafficked underage girls to anyone except himself (Miami Herald):

But Massie cited files used by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York which summarize interviews with witnesses and suspects.

The lawmaker claimed those files include “one Hollywood producer worth a few 100 million dollars, one royal prince, one high-profile individual in the music industry, one very prominent banker, one high profile government official, one high profile former politician, one owner of a car company in Italy, one rock star, one magician, at least six billionaires, including a billionaire from Canada. We know these people exist in the FBI files, the files that you control.”

Americans know in their guts that the reason the Epstein files have not been made public — as Trump promised — is that there is a massive coverup to protect elite men like those Massie referenced, including Donald Trump whose name appears in them but may not have been inviolved in the trafficking. Those files will come out. Public pressure will build and you will help build it.

People are angry about how blatantly the rich flaunt flout the rules and evade accountability, including those behind media consolidation. Wednesday at drive time, I stood again at a major intersection rotating overhead a sign that reads “Grab him by the | Epstein files.

The response, especially from women, was loud and vigorous. There were not only horn toots, waves and thumbs-up aplenty. People cheered! Carloads of women cheered and applauded as they drove by. A passenger waiting at a light climbed out of his window to cheer and pump his fist over the roof of the car. A woman jogger told me all the bastards need to go, and then “the orange menace.”

They say never waste a good disaster. Don’t waste this one. Get out there and pump it up. Work the eye.

(h/t IW on my messsing up flaunt/flout. Not the first time.)

* * * * *

Have you fought dicktatorship today?

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Patriotism on the Russian plan

Let’s cut right to it. The New York Times reports:

ABC announced on Wednesday evening that it was pulling Jimmy Kimmel’s late night show “indefinitely” after conservatives accused the longtime host of inaccurately describing the politics of the man who is accused of fatally shooting the right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.

Conservatives lied. (Surprise!) They pitched yet another patented right-wing hissy fit, and ABC folded:

The decision to suspend “Jimmy Kimmel Live” was made by Robert A. Iger, Disney’s chief executive, and Dana Walden, the company’s television chief, according to a person with knowledge of the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a private process.

Nexstar Media Group, the broadcast group that carries ABC programming, fell into line as well. *

The companies caved after FCC Chairman Brendan Carr characterized Kimmel’s comments as “some of the sickest conduct possible.” Carr made a not-so-veiled threat to yank ABC’s broadcast license if the company did not suspend Kimmel. Carr alleged to extreme-right podcaster Benny Johnson that Kimmel had deliberately misled “the public by claiming Charlie Kirk’s assassin was a MAGA Conservative.” Read on and you’ll see that that is bullshit.

View on Threads

Spocko posted this Wednesday night to Mastodon:

Here is the section that supposedly lead to #ABC taking #JimmyKimmel off the air.

Listen to what Kimmel says & then see how the #Trump admin characterized it (according an NBC story https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/tv/disneys-abc-pulls-jimmy-kimmel-live-fcc-chair-blasts-hosts-charlie-kir-rcna232033 )

“During his monologue on Monday night, Kimmel raised the possibility that Tyler Robinson, the suspect in the killing, might have been a pro-Trump Republican.”
#uspol

The original story that carried that line has since been corrected to read, “During his monologue Monday night, Kimmel criticized Republicans for how they responded to Kirk’s killing.” Because that is accurate.

Here is what Kimmel actually said:

“We had some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and with everything they can to score political points from it.”

Kimmel also mocked Trump’s “grieving” process. Asked how he was holding up, Trump told reporters, “I think very good, and by the way,” he said, and immediately changed the subject to the new gilded ballroom he’s building onto the White House.

Conservatives’ opportunistic attack on Kimmel (and Stephen Colbert before him) is not just fascist behavior. It is religious fundamentalist behavior. The too are different but closely aligned here. I’ve lived in the South long enough to know.

I went to see Monty Python’s Life of Brian when it came out in 1979. Outside the theater stood two neatly dressed evangelical dudes handing out Bible tracts. They urged me not to enter because the movie “makes fun of our Lord.”

No, dudes. It pokes fun at you. You and your lord are not the same. But criticism, and especially mockery, are things fundamentalists and totalitarian regimes cannot abide. That is what Kimmel has been suspended for, not for demeaning Kirk or for celebrating his murder. But totalitarian regimes like Vladimir Putin’s Russia, for example, are loathe to allow little details like that to get in the way of purging dissidents. (Don’t stand too close to windows in tall buildings.)

John Ganz (Unpopular Front) just had a friend from Russia text him last night, “This is all feeling awfully like home.”  

Speaking of Russia, Mark Twain once wrote of American-style patriotism:

“We teach the boys to atrophy their independence. We teach them to take their patriotism at second-hand; to shout with the largest crowd without examining into the right or wrong of the matter– exactly as boys under monarchies are taught and have always been taught. We teach them to regard as traitors, and hold in aversion and contempt, such as do not shout with the crowd, & so here in our democracy we are cheering a thing which of all things is most foreign to it & out of place–the delivery of our political conscience into somebody else’s keeping. This is patriotism on the Russian plan.”

How prescient. How MAGA.

Donald Trump’s MAGA disciples especially bristle at comparisons to 1930s Germany. Just not enough to reconsider taking actions that evoke them.

First they came for the Civil Servants
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Civil Servant
Then they came for the Immigrants
And I did not speak out
Because I was not an Immigrant
Then they came for the Universities
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a University
Then they came for the Media
And I did not speak out
Because I was not the Media
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me

* It appears that Nexstar made the first move in this cascade.

* * * * *

Have you fought dicktatorship today?

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And laugh about it

Vance on Trump's strikes on boats: "I wouldn't go fishing right now in that area of the world."

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-09-17T18:17:32.390Z

Interesting. He and Trump have both suggested that they might be hitting innocent fisherman but … oh well! Funny stuff.

But when you’ve lost John Yoo:

The Trump administration is facing growing calls from former government officials — including some in Republican administrations — to offer a legal justification for President Donald Trump’s two missile strikes this month on boats allegedly piloted by members of a Venezuelan drug cartel.

Those experts say the use of such force outside of war blurs the legal distinction between law enforcement and military actions and comes amid calls on Capitol Hill to curtail Trump’s military powers.

“There has to be a line between crime and war,” said John Yoo, a former deputy assistant attorney general under President George W. Bush. “We can’t just consider anything that harms the country to be a matter for the military. Because that could potentially include every crime.”

Yoo, now a professor at the University of California Berkeley, authored the Bush administration’s legal justification for enhanced interrogation techniques against suspected al Qaeda terrorists in the early years of Bush’s war on terror. While combating terrorism did shift following the terror attack on Sept. 11, 2001, from a law enforcement concern to a military endeavor, the White House has not asked Congress to declare war on the Tren de Aragua drug cartel nor Venezuela nor has the administration made a concerted attempt to convince the public that the threat it poses to the U.S. justifies such heavy, preemptive force.

“Traditionally, we’ve treated drug crimes as a criminal justice problem,” Yoo said. “And the administration needs to make a stronger case than it’s been making so far about why the law should consider cartels to be enemies of war.”

How about admitting publicly that you might be just blowing up fishermen for shits and giggles? Might that be a problem?

Oh well, who’s going to do anything about it? Certainly not the GOP Congress and I wouldn’t hold my breath for the Supreme Court to weigh in on the side of the law and the constitution. So let the games begin!

It won’t make a bit of difference

He just wants the photo-op:

President Trump receives the royal treatment in the U.K. as he is joined by King Charles III for the Inspection of the Guard of Honor at Windsor Castle. He represents us quite well on the world stage. 🫡 pic.twitter.com/ZXKI5oayoe

— Suburban Black Man 🇺🇸 (@niceblackdude) September 17, 2025

No, actually he’s a total embarrassment. It’s very rude to walk in front of the King of England on his own turf.

Trump in the UK: walks ahead of King Charles, breaking tradition. Because of course he does. pic.twitter.com/A6PVSm3wdj

— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) September 17, 2025

He believes he’s king of world and being a cretinous moron is his prerogative. So do his followers:

The real King 👑 @POTUS

Believe it or not, Donald Trump is depicted as a king in England!!! pic.twitter.com/uaepbWHj1l

— Arzane… (@ArashIraniNJ) September 17, 2025

Yeah, not so much:

Thousands join #TrumpProtest in London's Regent Street as #TrumpVisitUK continues

Follow our coverage: https://t.co/BlLsEwC8Y6 pic.twitter.com/35VZmL4mTt

— BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) July 13, 2018

An Epstein documentary was projected on Windsor Castle last night:

While Trump is visiting the United Kingdom,there was this projection on Windsor Castle. pic.twitter.com/Moj7UdVvpr

— Richard (@ricwe123) September 17, 2025

By the way:

For Donald Trump, the priority was to avoid any distractions. But as he arrives for his second state visit to the UK – an unprecedented honour for a US president – the crisis engulfing Keir Starmer’s government threatens to overshadow the proceedings.

The circumstances of that crisis are especially awkward. Peter Mandelson was unceremoniously sacked as the UK’s ambassador to Washington on Thursday after emails were published in which he had urged his friend Jeffrey Epstein to fight for early release from prison in 2008.

For Trump, whose own friendship with Epstein has exposed him to damaging scrutiny, including from his own support base, there is no subject he wants to revisit less.

The biggest take away from Trump’s UK visit is how deeply he has broken the image of America in the world. He is mocked and reviled. He brings no agenda, no purpose. His grifter family parties through the trip. The spiral downward continues. pic.twitter.com/Or92UFTTyz

— Joe Cirincione (@Cirincione) June 7, 2019

As the Daily Beast reports:

The display left those who see Trump as a hostile force intent on dismantling the post-war settlement feeling distinctly queasy, but there was at least something honest in the absurdity.

Trump demands spectacle, and Britain provides it. He wants to be king, and, for a day, Britain is letting him.

It made up the entire ceremony from scratch from the elements of other royal spectacles.

It is, of course, traditional to have a ceremonial welcome. But this time a carriage ride around an empty Windsor Great Park was added and so was a mounted escort by the Household Cavalry. A massive gun salute was added, bigger than any before. Then another traditional element, the inspection of the guard, was tweaked to let Trump go first, as if they were his troops. This was designed to be Hail to the Chief, not a conventional royal welcome.

And in doing this flagrant fakery, the U.K. has revealed something deeply unflattering about itself—in the scramble to keep America close, it will debase itself and its values completely.

His childlike need for public bootlicking is an easy way to appease him. But it means nothing. He loves the treatment but this is a man who will break any agreement and go back on his word in a moment of pique. This will buy them nothing except embarrassment for the Royal family who are being used a puppets in a sick little pageant that denigrates everyone involved.

Pathetic.

… and apologize to that doctor lady

Oklahoma Sern. Markwayne Mullin very arrogantly called the former CDC Director a liar this morning:

SENATOR MARKWAYNE MULLIN TELLS SUSAN MONAREZ THAT THE MEETING WHERE SHE WAS FIRED BY KENNEDY WAS RECORDED.

This is one of today's best clips so far.pic.twitter.com/fkyZ6u20QW

— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) September 17, 2025

Oopsie:

“It was a recorded meeting, so you can testify one way or you can prove that you’re lying or be honest with this committee,” Mullin said. “And I’m giving you the opportunity to be honest here, because you’ve been really walking around the edges and not being truthful.”

Monarez maintained Kennedy told her he couldn’t trust her, and she said he could fire her if that was the case. Mullin pushed back, again saying she was lying.

“I tell my kids all the time, ‘You know, one thing I want from you, I can deal with any situation we walk into as long as I know you’re being 100% honest with me. The minute I can’t tell you’re being honest with me, I can’t trust you. From then on, everything you say is questioned,’” Mullin said, adding he has to question Monarez “because your personality and your answers aren’t correct.”

Mullin later clarified to reporters that he was mistaken and that Monarez and Kennedy’s meeting was not recorded. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chair Bill Cassidy, R-La., later rebuked Mullin for alleging there was a recording, saying if there is one, it should be accessible by the full committee. If there isn’t, he added, Mullin should retract his line of questioning.

Mullin owes her an apology. And the Republicans owe the American people an apology for inflicting this cretin on the country.

Mullin is in stiff competition for stupidest member of the U.S. Senate with Tommy Tuberville and Ron Johnson. I think he’s in the lead which is really saying something.

And they want to see some guts

I’ve argued for Democrats to make some real demands of the GOP this time and be willing to shut down the government if they won’t budge. It looks like I’m not alone:

Democrats have new polling to chew over as they rail against Republicans’ government funding bill. It’s unlikely to make them more eager to cave.

A new survey from the progressive firm Data for Progress and research firm Grow Progress, shared first with Semafor, shows seven in 10 Democrats support their party withholding votes unless Republicans make changes even if it risks a shutdown, while a similar share backs their party taking a “firmer stand” than they did in March.

What’s more, Democrats are arguing voters will blame the Republicans who control government for a shutdown, and the poll shows their voters share that view, 82-14. Large majorities of Democrats also think the party should fight President Donald Trump harder — even if they don’t win.

House Republicans plan to vote this week on a short-term spending bill that would extend current funding levels through Nov. 21, with the Senate following suit.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said leaders will put it on the floor as soon as they feel they have the votes. But they’ll need the support of at least some Senate Democrats for it to become law — and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Tuesday expressed vehement opposition to the proposal because it does not include any of the health care provisions they’d sought.

[…]

House Speaker Mike Johnson said there is “zero chance” GOP lawmakers agree to reverse any of their changes to the Medicaid program. He added that extending Affordable Care Act subsidies, which are set to lapse at the end of the year and hike premiums, “is a December policy issue, not a September funding issue.”

Bring it.