Charlie Sykes has been using his words!

THURSDAY, APRIL 18, 2024

What humans are able to do: He started out as a Democrat, then became a high-level conservative talk radio host.

At this point, he's been NeverTrump for years. By human standards, he's very bright. That helps creates the current striking example of What These Humans Today Are Still Plainly Wired To Do.

The person in question is Charlie Sykes, a major MSNBC regular. Yesterday, The Atlantic was featuring his new essay. It appeared beneath these headlines:

The New Rules of Political Journalism
In this election, the reporting strategies of the past will not be enough.

We wondered what new rules he might prescribe. Soon, though, we were reading this:

SYKES (4/18/24): And when Trump called for the execution of General Mark Milley, it didn’t have nearly the explosive effect it should have. “I had expected every website and all the cable news shows to lead with a story about Trump demanding the execution of the highest military officer in the country,” this magazine’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, told The Washington Post. “If Barack Obama or George W. Bush had done so, I’m sure [the news media] would have been all over it.”

Say what? Had Donald J. Trump actually "called for the execution of General Milley?"

We were pretty sure that the answer was no. When we clicked the link to Charlie's initial source, we found a much softer formulation from Brian Klaas, who seems to be a more advanced human.

After actually quoting the deeply stupid, irresponsible thing Donald J. Trump had actually said, Klaas offered this reaction:

KLAAS (9/25/23): And yet, none of the nation’s front pages blared “Trump Suggests That Top General Deserves Execution” or “Former President Accuses General of Treason.” Instead, the post barely made the news. Most Americans who don’t follow Trump on social media probably don’t even know it happened.

Has Donald Trump "called for" Milley's execution? In Klaas' formulation, the disordered candidate had "suggested" that Milley might deserve execution.

(Presumably, Klaas didn't compose the headline which sat atop his piece.)

Trump's actual statement was completely stupid and well outside the boundaries of good sense. That said:

As you can see in the original passage from Sykes, the editor of the Atlantic had said that Trump had "demanded" Milley's execution. That went one step beyond what the excitable Sykes had said.

At this site, we've finally reached an anthropological conclusion:

This is who and what we humans are. This is all we know how to do.

We're extremely good at using our words, though mainly in the service of spinning up new wars. Under current arrangements, people like Sykes spin culture wars, then put paychecks in their pants.

At Fox, they increasingly rush tape of these clan dwellers onto Red America's air. They seem to believe that these undisciplined, under-skilled people are actually helping Candidate Trump! We can't swear that they're wrong.

Charlie Sykes was using his words! In fact, he was employing an extremely old rule about the way this game is played.

Al Gore said he invented the Internet? Actually no, he never did, unless you were off on a jihad. 

People are dead all over the world because, over the course of more than two years, these mother frumpers wouldn't stop using their words to say that he did. With plenty of jokes thrown in!

This is who and what we are. Aside from flying to the moon, this is the shape of our skills.

There's a great deal more where this comes from. This is the actual shape of our current actual clan.

Claire McCaskill's song sung Blue!

THURSDAY, APRIL 18, 2024

Crystal Blue persuasion: On Tuesday, seven jurors were selected to serve on the "hush money" trial.

As of an hour ago, the number had been bumped back to five. Yesterday morning, the New York Times reported a widely discussed incident from Tuesday's selection session:

PROTESS ET AL (4/17/24): While of different ages and ethnicities, the chosen seven had one thing in common: They vowed to give Mr. Trump a fair shake.

[...]

Other potential jurors presented red flags for the former president. Mr. Trump’s lead lawyer, Todd Blanche, quickly sought the dismissal of several for their online activity. One woman, he noted, had heralded a court decision overturning a travel ban Mr. Trump enacted as president and had at one point written “Get him out, and lock him up.” The juror was excused.

When another potential juror was being interviewed about her old Facebook posts, Mr. Trump began to mutter and gesture, drawing a rebuke from the judge, Juan M. Merchan.

“I won’t tolerate that,” the judge said, raising his voice once the potential juror had left the room. “I will not have any jurors intimidated in this courtroom.”

According to the Times report, the defendant began to mutter and gesture when one potential juror was being interviewed. After the potential juror had left the room, Judge Merchan told the defendant and his attorneys that such conduct wouldn't be tolerated.

The timing of the admonishment had been widely reported and discussed. For a more detailed confirmation of the timing from CNBC, you can just click here. 

(“I will not tolerate that,” the judge said after that would-be juror left the courtroom. “I will not have any jurors intimidated in this courtroom. I want to make this crystal clear.”)

On Morning Joe, Willie had already described the timing, with this report from Politico offered as the source. 

("After Trump attorney Todd Blanche questioned a prospective juror and she left the room, the judge admonished Trump for muttering.")

It had been discussed a million times, but one expert had apparently skipped prep. 

There she was, on yesterday's Morning Joe, with her apparent sense of entitlement hanging out. She had a picture in her head, and that was close enough.

First, Willie embellished the reported facts about what the defendant had done. Then, he threw to his expert guest, and his expert guest said this:

EXPERT GUEST (4/17/24): Interestingly, he cautioned Trump in front of jurors [plural], instead of having the jurors leave the room and then talking to him about it. I don't think this judge is dumb enough to put Trump in jail for acting out in court because, frankly, I think that's what Donad Trump wants... 

I do think it hurts Trump, in front of the jury, to have the judge doing that. So if he keeps cautioning him in front of the jury, that might be enough to get him to stop because I know his lawyers are telling him, "This hurts you with the jury. Inside this court room, you don't want those jurors to see you as the big jerk you kind of are. 

[Chuckles]

Do you ever get tired of these lazy, privileged mother-frumpers walking through their citizenship this way? Speaking quite frankly, we do.

One hour earlier, Willie had reported the timing correctly. Knowing the basic laws of the clan, he didn't correct what his expert guest now said. 

Jonathan Lemire hurried past the misstatement too. His nickname is "The Echo." 

These expert guests today! On Tuesday afternoon, one of Nicolle Wallace's first guests didn't seem clear about the fact that Trump is required to attend this "porn star" trial. 

On that occasion, Wallace asked her expert to clarify what he'd said. When his statement was still weirdly unclear, an awkward pause occurred, and then Susanne Craig stepped in.

Do you ever get tired of the lazy, super-privileged members of this lazy, upper-class clan? Do you ever wonder if there's a chance their laziness and sense of entitlement might end up helping Trump win?

They've behaved this way for the past thirty years. At one point, they frequently tilted toward the Red. 

The ascension of Donald J. Trump has made them crystal Blue. But it hasn't changed who these democracy-frumpers are or what they're inclined to do.

CLAN: George Conway also nodded off!

THURSDAY, APRIL 18, 2024

Chris Hayes and the children's hours: At some point, George T. Conway III decided to switch his clan.

In 2001, he married Kellyanne FitzPatrick, who we'd once known the tiniest tad. Roughly seventeen years after that, the gentleman switched his clan. 

Back in the 1990s, he had started out with Ann Coulter as one of the "the elves." The secretive group was struggling to bring Bill Clinton down, largely on the basis of unverifiable sexual claims.

To read the Lyons / Conason account of the elves, you can just click here. Concerning Conway, to clip one passage:

"In his early thirties, he had made partner at New York's Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, one of the biggest and richest litigation shops in the country. His primary occupation was defending the major tobacco companies, and he reportedly made as much as $1 million a year doing it."

These are some of the ways Conway started out. But in 2018, as a somewhat belated reaction to the works of President Donald J. Trump, the Harvard College / Yale Law School graduate signed on with one of the higher-profile clans in Blue America.

This November, he's going to vote the same way we're going to vote! Yesterday afternoon, he was numbered in the first panel of guests on Deadline: White House.

At 4:07, he started to speak. Eventually, he authored a claim which the cowardly lions of Blue America have begun to sneak in the back door:

CONWAY (4/17/24): [Trump] hate-watches this network, right?

WALLACE: [Laughter]

CONWAY: He might be watching right now. And he'd probably be throwing something at the television. I don't know.

I mean, he can't—he can’t help himself but emotionally react to things. And one of the things—

He’s a narcissistic sociopath, and that’s the thing everyone has to kind of get used to. It’s the reason why you cannot normalize him. 

You cannot treat him like a normal human being because he’s not. He is unwell. And that's why he can’t follow, he’s not going to be able to follow his lawyers’ directions.

Is Trump "a narcissistic sociopath?" Is he in fact "unwell?"

We've been advancing that presumption for years. In Dr. Bandy X. Lee's best-selling but thoroughly disappeared book, thirty-seven medical specialists argued some form of that claim.

Later, Conway restated his psychiatric assessment for a delighted Wallace. In fairness, she's light-years over her head at this point in time. 

She was in her element in Campaign 2004, when she was spokesperson for George W Bush, helping him sell the war in Iraq and helping him win the state of Ohio though the ballot measure which would have banned gay marriage and thereby brought many more voters out.

(According to the leading authority: "Many political experts credit the amendment with bolstering turnout in rural Ohio, leading to many religious supporters of President George W. Bush to turnout to the polls, helping him win the state of Ohio by a narrow two-point margin.")

Since those glorious gay-trashing days, Wallace has switched her clan and Conway has switched clans too. 

At present, he alone is out there attributing Trump's ongoing behavior to a severe psychiatric disorder. For ourselves, we're inclined to assume that Conway's general assessment is correct. 

That said, people like Wallace don't have the integrity to bring medical specialists onto her show to discuss such possibilities in the cool, clear open air. In fairness, she's paid millions to do things the way she does. She does it for two hours each weekday afternoon

Back to Conway:

He's been expressly ascribing a severe psychiatric element to Trump at least since this lengthy article appeared in the Atlantic in October 2019.

Our other "journalists" and news orgs simply aren't willing to consider such possibilities. Their guild retains rules against seeking the truth. We're living in primitive times.

To our eye, Conway remains a fairly obvious lifelong nerd who has finally achieved a spot at the cool kids' table. Yesterday, speaking with Wallace and seeming to bask in his role in the fray, he offered a personal aside even before he offered his psychiatric assessment of Trump.

In doing so, he was repeating himself. He had already offered that same aside right at the start of his new essay for The Atlantic. 

To his credit, the former elf is working in the bright lights now. Dual headlines included, his new essay starts like this:

The Trump Trial’s Extraordinary Opening
The first days of the criminal case against the former president have been mundane, even boring—and that’s remarkable.

By George T. Conway III

The defendant nodded off a couple of times on Monday. And I have to confess, as a spectator in an overflow courtroom watching on closed-circuit television, so did I.

Legal proceedings can be like that. Mundane, even boring. That’s how the first couple of days of the trial in new People of the State of New York v. Donald J. Trump, Indictment No. 71543–2023, felt much of the time. 

Did Donald J. Trump nod off in court? Apparently, George Conway nodded off too!

We can't swear that he actually did. But it made for an amusing open, and he instantly made the same claim when he spoke with Wallace.

In his essay and also with Wallace, Conway went on to offer some underwhelming thoughts about what the "mundane" court session suggests. He said it means that our nation's much-maligned court system is actually working.

Astoundingly, it seemed to us that Judge Jeanine Pirro had a much stronger point of view at the start of yesterday's broadcast of The Five. She argued that the trial should have been moved to a jurisdiction where voter sentiment is roughly 50/50 Red America versus Blue, as opposed to the massive Democratic / Blue America majority sentiment which will likely prevail among the jurors selected for the "hush money" trial.

All day yesterday, then last night, we thought we saw our own tribe's journalistic elite finally crash and burn. It culminated with the first 18 minutes of All In With Chris Hayes, an embarrassing spectacle presided over by someone who once seemed too smart to us for us to believe he's all in.

How much is Hayes paid to do with he currently does? We aren't allowed to know such things, but we'll once again tell you this:

As a political matter, we don't have the slightest idea how this will work in November. We regard this as an election in which, by normal standards, each candidate is unelectable.

That said, we pray that very few undecided voters are watching Wallace and Hayes and their dear friends as they chuckle and clown and play the fool for their millions of viewers and dollars.

Even yesterday—two full days later!—the corporate children who feed our tribe were still opening their broadcasts with jokes about Donald J. Trump nodding off in court. We've finally drawn a deep conclusion:

This is actually all they have. Believe it or not, this is the best they can do!

 They really aren't capable of anything more. Our best guess would be this:

These children have no freaking idea how they look to the people who aren't members of our own clan. They have no idea how much sympathy they may engender for the hotly pursued Orange Man.

(Will they engender such sympathy? We have no idea. But we recall the way Bill Clinton gained in the polls when Kenneth Starr emerged from the realm of the elves and overplayed his hand. Also, there's Pretty Boy Floyd.)

"Man [sic] is the rational animal," Aristotle is said to have said.

As that statement is understood, it's surely true up to a point. But to a much larger extent, we humans are, as a matter of basic fact "the deeply immature animal which tends to run in clans."

Blue America is now being serviced by a gang of corporate hirelings who are tasked with keep ratings and profits up.

At present, they're devoted to wasting your time with jokes about Trump nodding off. 

George Conway now says that he nodded off too! In our view, nodding off amid the tedium of that court session may be a sign of high intelligence, especially right after lunch.

The analysts sat and watched the clowning as Hayes and his guests simpered through last evening's first segment.

The segment ran a full eighteen minutes. In our view, Hayes is basically faking it now, even if his guests are not.

We began to see the sheer futility of the search for an American public discourse. When the commercial break finally came, one of the analysts rose and declaimed:

"People are dying all over the world, and that's what these *ssholes are doing?"

One irate analyst stood and declaimed. We didn't quite know what to tell her.

Tomorrow: We still hope to discuss that $93 million

This afternoon: Acyn rides again, or possibly Charlie Sykes

Alicia doesn't agree with Uri!

 WEDNESDAY, APRIL 17, 2024

Except when she constantly does: Uri Berliner has been suspended, for a week, from his job at NPR.

There's no obvious reason why he shouldn't have been. It sounds like he broke some basic rules when he wrote a widely discussed critique of his long-time employer for The Free Press.

Yesterday afternoon, Alicia Montgomery wrote a second critique for Slate—a critique of Berliner's critique. Montgomery is a former, long-time NPT staffer. Her fascinating essay appears beneath these headlines:

The Real Story Behind NPR’s Current Problems
Yes, the broadcaster is a mess. But “wokeness” isn’t the issue. 

Montgomery agrees that NPR is a mess. She disagrees with Berliner in that one key respect.

"Wokeness" isn't the issue, she says, paraphrasing Berliner's critique. That said, the problem is this:

When Montgomery offers her own account of what she's seen happen at NPR, she seems to be agreeing with Berliner on point after point after point.

She attributes the many specific failures she describes to a slightly more complex set of motivations. But on issue after issue, topic after topic, her detailed account of behavior at NPR seems to align with Berliner's account.

In Montgomery's account, the woods at NPR are unlovely, dark and deep. Oddly though, and by our method of reckoning, she and Berliner pretty much seem to be on the same darn page.

We'll offer examples tomorrow. For today, we'll offer this:

In our principal reports for this week, we're focusing on the concept of the (self-contained) clan. Once again, we'll repeat the part of Berliner's original essay which was most specific, and which pretty much leaped off the page:

BERLINER (4/9/24): Concerned by the lack of viewpoint diversity, I looked at voter registration for our newsroom. In D.C., where NPR is headquartered and many of us live, I found 87 registered Democrats working in editorial positions and zero Republicans. None. 

So on May 3, 2021, I presented the findings at an all-hands editorial staff meeting. When I suggested we had a diversity problem with a score of 87 Democrats and zero Republicans, the response wasn’t hostile. It was worse. It was met with profound indifference. I got a few messages from surprised, curious colleagues. But the messages were of the “oh wow, that’s weird” variety, as if the lopsided tally was a random anomaly rather than a critical failure of our diversity North Star. 

We can't vouch for the accuracy of those numbers, but they do leap off the page. There could always be "innocent" explanations—today's Republicans don't want to work for NPR, to offer one obvious possibility—but they do suggest the possibility of a problem at a major news org which has the word "national" right there in its name.

Eighty-seven Democrats, compared to zero Rs! That would almost start to define the concept of a clan. 

That said:

Montgomery doesn't mention those statistics in her essay for Slate. Also this:

To date, Kevin Drum's sensible post about Berliner's essay has drawn 111 comments from readers. None of the commenters mentioned those numbers. Neither did Kevin himself.

We're living in two Americas now. We live and love within our clans. No one seems surprised by this fact. No one seems to be concerned. 

We're living in two (self-contained) Americas now. As an intriguing matter of fact, nobody seems to notice!

Montgomery has written a detailed, intriguing piece. Excerpts on the morrow.

CLAN: Two legal clans have taken the field!

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 17, 2024

These two clans never meet: In yesterday's time-altered report, we mentioned Pretty Boy Floyd.

The leading authority on his short career thumbnails him as shown:

Pretty Boy Floyd

Charles Arthur Floyd (1904–1934), nicknamed Pretty Boy Floyd, was an American bank robber. He operated in the West and Central states, and his criminal exploits gained widespread press coverage in the 1930s. He was seen positively by the public because it was believed that during robberies he burned mortgage documents, freeing many people from their debts. He was pursued and killed by a group of Bureau of Investigation (BOI, later renamed FBI) agents...

Floyd has continued to be a familiar figure in American popular culture, sometimes seen as notorious, other times portrayed as a tragic figure, even a victim of the hard times of the Great Depression in the United States.

According to Woody Guthrie, "Oklahoma knew him well." We've thought of this lyric from Guthrie's famous song about Floyd as we've watched Donald J. Trump frog-marched into a Gotham courtroom in chains:

Yes, he took to the trees and timber
To live a life of shame;
Every crime in Oklahoma
Was added to his name.

Every crime in Oklahoma was added to his name! Within Red America's legal clans, so it's said about Donald J. Trump with respect to his Gotham trial.

Needless to say, a clan is not "the Klan." That said, two such legal clans are now active in the field, discussing the "hush money" which was paid to a woman who wasn't Trump's wife.

These legal clans are now describing the trial on a daily basis. Below, we'll call a partial roll on the gathering of these armies:

Fox News Channel (Red America)
Gregg Jarrett
Alan Dershowitz
Jonathan Turley

MSNBC (Blue America)
Andrew Weissmann
Neil Katyal
Joyce Vance
Barbara McQuade
Lisa Rubin
Chuck Rosenberg
Glenn Kirschner
Kristy Greenberg

One of these legal armies may be slightly larger, though we're leaving out names on each side.

Disagreement almost never occurs within these rival clans. Also though, the pair of rival clans almost never agree with each other about the current trial. 

The one clan tends to describe the charges against Trump in this particular case as a scam. The other clan does its best to explain the charges, though a great deal of complexity seems to be involved. 

Within the larger realm of Blue America, non-legal personnel may seem to struggle with the content at times. Full disclosure: 

The fact that a criminal charge is complex doesn't necessarily mean that the charge is bogus or wrong.

Can we learn to see ourselves more clearly through the works of the western literary canon? The clan is a long-established part of human history. Back at the dawn of the west, Nestor, the seasoned charioteer, advised Agamemnon in the manner shown, right in Book Two of the Iliad:

But you, my King, be on your guard yourself. Come,
listen well to another man. Here's some advice,
not to be tossed aside, and I will tell it clearly.
Range your men by tribes, even by clans, Agamemnon,
so clan fights by the side of clan, tribe by tribe.
Fight this way, if the Argives still obey you...

Various clans were laying siege to Troy. Nestor advised Agamemnon to arrange them side by side.

As part of basic human nature, few people want to be "lost to the clan." For ourselves, we always vote in November in the way the Blue clan votes. That doesn't mean that we automatically believe everything our Blue tribe's votaries tell us.

Good grief! Yesterday afternoon, it seemed to us that Nicolle Wallace was having a very hard time explaining the nature of the felony with which Donald J. Trump stands charged. But when she threw to a new legal adept named Tristan Snell, a bit of weirdness occurred.

Snell offered the requisite remarks about Trump allegedly dozing off in court. He described the way Judge Merchan had admonished trump at one point during that day's court session.

So far, it was fairly standard stuff. A slightly awkward moment arose when Snell offered this:

SNELL (4/16/24): If I'm his team, I'm just sitting there being like, "Oh god, like how can we get him through this without him making a mess of everything?" 

But why is he there?  He's there because he wants to show that he's being persecuted. It's a way for him to raise money off his base. That's why he comes to all of these trials in New York. There is no good reason for him to be at most of these.

Say what? On the one hand, the statement seemed to parse. On the other hand, it almost sounded like it didn't.

Apparently speaking about the current trial, Snell seemed to be asking why Trump was showing up. 

"He's there because he wants to show that he's being persecuted," the adept said. "It's a way for him to raise money."

That first part of what Snell said sounded just a bit odd.  Wallace quickly sought clarification, receiving the answer shown:

WALLACE (continuing directly): Doesn't he have to be in this one?

SNELL: He has to be in some of these things, but like he keeps coming, though, He was there for the civil trial. He was there for the trial with E. Jean Carroll. Like, he doesn't need to be here for every single moment of these things, and he keeps coming because he's trying to raise money off of it.

With respect to the current trial, it still sounded weirdly imprecise. After an awkward pause, Susanne Craig stepped in:

CRAIG (continuing directly): He has to be there, and the judge warned him the other day, if he fails to appear, a warrant will be issued for his arrest...He has to be there every day.

In real time, Snell's statements sounded odd to us—but also to Wallace and Craig. On this morning's Morning Joe, this phenomenon became a bit worse.

We can't link you at this point, but Claire McCaskill went on, at some length, about the surprising way Judge Merchan had chastised Trump, right in front of the jurors (plural), about his conduct during yesterday's session.

By that time, we'd seen it reported a million times that Merchan had only chastised Trump after the (one) juror in question had left the room. McCaskill was advancing the clan's preferred line, but it seemed that she possibly hadn't been following the basic facts of this case in a fully assiduous manner.

Yesterday afternoon, Wallace and Craig questioned Snell, then clarified what he said. No one seemed to have the heart to perform that task this morning.

McCaskill's error was obvious and a bit startling; it was also perfectly obvious. That said, few people seek war within the clan, and that's especially true in present day cable news.

Willie and Lemire were conducting the interview with McCaskill. They just let her misstatements go.  

Snell has come on as a legal expert. McCaskill, a former prosecutor and United States senator, is operating more broadly as a political commentator. 

Their apparent errors—conducted as experts—were relatively trivial. That said, the two legal clans we've listed above typically offer vastly different analyses of this "historic" trial. 

They cite different allegedly relevant facts. They cite different allegedly relevant statutes. And because the fighting is being conducted under rules in which these legal clans will never meet, a viewer will hear only one set of alleged facts and only one set of allegedly relevant statutes.

Under prevailing rules of the road, viewers never see the dueling claims of these dueling clans being tested in battle.

Assertions made by the Red legal clan will not be tested by the Blue legal clan. Assertions made by the Blue legal clan won't be tested by the Red.

In all candor, there have been times when we have wondered if relevant information is being withheld as we watch our Blue legal clan in action. We've wondered what would have happened if claims made by Dershowitz or Turley were encountered by Weissmann or Katyal.

In the Iliad, various clans from the Argive world fought side by side. With respect to the current legal war, members of the two legal clans—Red and Blue—only appear among their own, to whom they're inclined to be loyal.

In the process, voters who live in Red America are taught to see this trial one way. Voters who live in Blue America are schooled in a whole different set of views.

Does the felony charge against Donald J. Trump make sense? We can't exactly answer that question at this point in time.

Two legal clans are out in the field. They fight alongside their own flesh and blood, 

They're true to the views of their legal clan. Red voters see the Red legal clan and we Blue voters see our own. The clans are loyal to their ilk, but no interaction occurs.

As for Pretty Boy Floyd, every crime in Oklahoma was added to his name!

Has an ersatz crime been concocted for Trump? One group of voters is handed a yes. Over here in Blue America, we're exposed to a rather complex version of no.

Tomorrow: The $93 million question

CLAN: Did Maddow read the New York Times?

TUESDAY, APRIL 16, 2024

Pretty Boy Floyd nods off: We're guessing that Rachel Maddow read yesterday's New York Times, though then again possibly not. (She surely read this lengthy piece from the April 7 Sunday edition.)

We refer to one particular part of what had seemed to be a front-page report in yesterday's Today's Paper listing—a report about the now-active criminal trial of the leader of one of the clans.

The trial involves a 2016 "hush-money deal" with a woman who wasn't Trump's wife. In the New York Times report, the woman who still isn't his wife is identified as "a porn star, Stormy Daniels."

Below, you see the part of the New York Times report to which we have referred:

The Other Hush-Money Deals

Although the [criminal] charges relate to the payment to Ms. Daniels, [District Attorney] Bragg’s office is expected to highlight two other deals. Both involve the National Enquirer, which has longstanding ties to Mr. Trump.

In the first deal, the tabloid paid $30,000 to a former doorman employed by the Trump Organization who had heard that Mr. Trump had fathered a child out of wedlock, a rumor that turned out to be false. The publication later determined the claim to be untrue.

In the other deal, the National Enquirer paid Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model who wanted to sell her story of an affair with Mr. Trump. She reached a $150,000 agreement with the tabloid, which bought the rights to her story in order to suppress it—a practice known as “catch and kill.”

Prosecutors say the hush-money deals show that Mr. Trump orchestrated a wide-ranging scheme to influence the 2016 presidential election by keeping damaging stories under wraps.

If we understand that last passage correctly, a corporate associate of the candidate tried to keep certain types of stories about the candidate out of public view. 

At this point, we'll quickly note that some such "stories" may turn out to be untrue.

That said, we direct your attention to the $30,000 paid to the former doorman. According to this New York Times report, the "rumor" he'd heard "turned out to be false."

In real time, he was threatening to spread it all about not knowing if it was true. According to D.A. Bragg's indictment, he went to the National Enquirer in the fall of 2015 seeking cash, and he was duly rewarded.

(Further note: This rumor dated to the 1980s! It concerned the candidate as a much younger person! Though also, the rumor was false.)

Presumably, the candidate would have known that the story was false—but everyone knows that now. Everyone, that is, except Rachel Maddow, whose instincts concerning such matters we've sometimes discussed in the past.

(For the record, no one's perfect.)

By now, everyone knows that the forty-year-old "story" is false. In a less imperfect world, that knowledge might serve as a journalistic reminder of this very key point:

Some things which get said may turn out to be untrue.

According to the New York Times, the 40-year-old rumor turned out to be false. Unless you were listening to an embarrassing hour on MSNBC last night, with Ari Melber serving as shepherd and host.

Melber is a legal analyst, except on the night of a trial. Last night, he assembled the rest of the clan and they spent the first many minutes of his (renamed) 6 o'clock program clucking about the claim that the defendant, one Donald J. Trump, may have dozed off briefly—right after lunch!—during yesterday's long and tedious session.

Melber's guests took turns clucking and chuckling about that perhaps unconfirmed report. First, though, Melber had thrown to Maddow on remote.

As you can see by clicking this link, Maddow fashioned skillful jibes about Trump being rocked-to-sleep. Via Yahoo News, The Daily Beast offers this summary:

Trump’s courtroom activities—or lack thereof—were the subject of several observations on MSNBC. Rachel Maddow, for instance, drew off of an ancient yet often quoted saying.

“We did finally get here. The wheels of justice grind slowly. I did not think they would grind so slowly that they would rock the defendant apparently to sleep at the defense table today,” she quipped, with the added implication of Trump resembling an infant.

“I was not there. I do not know if he was asleep. It was possible he was, you know, meditating,” she continued, drawing another laugh from her colleagues.

“But those headlines…that Trump appeared to fall asleep on the first day of his trial—those are going to stick,” she said, emphasizing the relevancy of Trump’s attacks on Biden for his age. Trump, she added, is “fundamentally buffoonish,” and said this trial—and what transpired Monday—are a reminder of that.

Maddow's colleagues—a type of clan—rewarded her with laughs. As to whether such headlines are going to stick, a different thought popped into our heads:

Be careful what you pimp for! Voter reaction to this kind of behavior by an upper-class clan might stick in a different direction.

Eventually, Maddow's comedy stylings were finished—and then the doorman appeared. This is what the cable star said. If we were in charge of her career, she'd be at home for a while:

MADDOW (4/15/24): I mean, it's insane. It's also a reminder of, however scary and somber and important this is, we're also dealing with a guy who is fundamentally buffoonish, and this will be as much a reminder of that as it is of all the more serious things here that are at stake. 

This is a guy—we have had mentions today of the one alleged mistress and the other alleged mistress, and the doorman who is making the allegations about the alleged love child with the third alleged mistress...I mean, this really is a fundamentally buffoonish person, and this will be in the minds of the American people.

Calchas could read the flight of birds Members of political and journalistic clans can read the minds of the people.

At any rate:

If we were in charge of Maddow's career, she would have been down the stairs and out the door right there. That said, in "her performance of the Rachel figure" (Janet Malcolm), she's tilted that way a long while.

Citizens, listen up:

At present, there is no allegation about a third alleged mistress. There is no allegation about an alleged love child.

More specifically, there is no doorman making such allegations. In point of fact, all that doorman ever said was that he would spread a rumor around unless he was handed some cash.

His rumor, which turned out to be false, dated all the way back to the 1980s. Maddow told her jokes and got her laughs, then created the present tense.

People may treat you poorly at times, even when they've been sold to you as someone you can trust. If we had been her supervisor, she would have been out the door.

Concerning what might stick with whom, we'll close today with the closing lyrics to Pretty Boy Floyd, as written by Woody Guthrie:

As through this world I've wandered
I've seen lots of funny men.
Some rob you with a six-gun,
Some with a fountain pen.

As through your life you travel,
As through your life you roam,
You'll never see an outlaw
Drive a family from their home.

In Guthrie's telling, Pretty Boy Floyd had gained the sympathy of many people as the laws tried to chase him down. As history shows us, such sympathy can be very strong all through the ranks of the people.

Final point:

When we switched briefly to Laura Ingraham last night, she was playing tape from that MSNBC show. She apparently thought our clan's clowning conduct might score points for Trump! 

Many people have mountains of empathy for the aggressively pursued. That may be especially true when a former Rhodes scholar, misstating elementary facts, calls a former president a buffoon.

(For ourselves, we've said that the candidate in question strikes us as fundamentally disordered. We've also noted that tens of millions of neighbors and friends disagree with that view.)

Could our own's clan's clowning behavior really score points for Trump? We have no earthly way of knowing, but if that's what Ingraham suspects, we can't really say that she's wrong.

The doorman quit a long time ago. Also, his "story" was false. 

Last night, though, the doorman was back! During the 8 o'clock hour, Jen Psaki was slippery with the doorman too. 

Journalistically, the doorman provides an important reminder:

Certain things which get bruited about are, in fact, untrue!

In the stirring language of Nestor, real journalists would want to "drive that matter home." It's very important to understand—you can't always believe the various things you're told!

That said, whose clan was perhaps more clannish last night? Tomorrow, we expect to venture back to the very start of this instructive if perhaps embarrassing journalistic affair. 

It's anthropology all the way down! It may even suggest what we humans are actually like. 

DELAY: A fascinating time!

TUESDAY, APRIL 16, 2024

Which clan is currently worse? Quite possibly just until 11 a.m., we're on an excursion to Medical Land. For that reason, we won't be posting until this afternoon.

That said, rejoice in interesting times! Has there ever been a more fascinating subject than the Trump "hush money" trial? 

(We refer to the trial concerning "a woman who wasn't his wife" or more pleasurably concerning "a porn star.")

We hadn't planned to start this way, but a comment last evening altered our framework. We'll be starting today with that cash-seeking Gotham doorman and with the old, bogus rumor about Donald J. Trump—the bogus rumor which dated all the way back to the 1980s, though the New York Times keeps forgetting to include that date.

Last evening, Rachel Maddow mentioned the doorman during the 6 o'clock hour. We decided to switch our framework based on what she said.

Regarding loyalty to the clan, Nestor said it best, in Book Nine of the Iliad. In council, he spoke to the headstrong young Diomedes after the tide of battle had turned against the Achaeans:

How young you are—why, you could be my son,
my youngest-born at that, though you urge our kings
with cool clear sense: what you've said is right.
But it's my turn now, Diomedes,
I think I can claim to have some years on you.
So I must speak up and drive the matter home.
And no one will heap contempt on what I say,
not even mighty Agamemnon. Lost to the clan,
lost to the hearth, lost to the old ways, that one
who lusts for all the horrors of war with his own people.
But now, I say, let us give way to the dark night,
set out the evening meal...

Nestor was speaking about lusting for war within the "clan," not against some rival clan. That said, which of our current media clans is more embarrassing in its approach to the "hush money" trial?

We'll be examining that question this week. We'll only say that the Gutfeld! program was more serious in its choices of subject matter than our own programs last night!

Sociology? Anthropology? Basic human psychology?

What are we humans actually like? This trial creates a golden age for that delayed examination!

First it was Helen, now it is this, with various stops along the way. If we agree to squint a bit, we can perhaps and possibly see it. 

What are we humans actually like? How can we humans get better?