The longer Republicans and legacy media pretend Donald Trump is sane, the worse it will get. NBC: “President Donald Trump said he was joking when he offered the job of White House press secretary to Dana White, the CEO and president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, putting an end to more than 24 hours of speculation about whether the announcement was serious.” He has no sense of humor and never kids; this is another humiliating retreat from a demented idea from an addled mind.
An appallingly inept Trump interview by CBS’s Ross Douthat. The right-wing former columnist couldn’t manage a question on the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti or a follow up on why, if Trump said his deportation policy was “too tough,” he appointed the architect of ethnic cleansing as his chief of staff.
Also a shame 60 Minutes didn’t have a qualified economic reporter. Forbes’s Dan Alexander explained that Trump’s $3 billion in graft is vastly underestimated. “In fact, almost none of Trump’s $3B in gains from the fall of 2024 to the fall of 2025 came from stock.” Read his excellent summary of the crypto and other shady deals.
Look who’s in disarray now. The Hill: “Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) obtained the five signatures he needs from GOP colleagues to request a meeting of the broader Senate Republican Conference to discuss postponing their leadership election. … Johnson argues that the result of Tuesday’s elections ‘was a stunning defeat’ for Republicans that needs to be more carefully discussed and examined before voting to re-elect [South Dakota Sen. John] Thune and other GOP leaders.” And at least one Republican congressman is calling on Trump to fire Stephen Miller.
South Carolina recriminations. “In public and private, Republican operatives, aides and elected officials have torn into each other over who is at fault for the election of the state’s first Democratic senator since 1998,” the New York Times reported. “Some Republicans have pointed fingers at President Trump, who said he felt ‘very badly’ about the outcome and thought Ms. Graham would do better, but took no responsibility for her defeat.” He never does, but Republicans never oppose him either.
Elections have consequences. A breath of fresh air from Texas Gov.-elect Gina Hinojosa: “It is not that I hate data centers. I hate the way they are taking advantage of Texas, and that stops when I’m governor. … So the difference is, we will have laws to protect Texans, and we need to stop what we are doing with data centers until we have those protections. We can have a strong economy, strong industry and protections for the people.”
Good advice for Los Angeles Mayor-elect Nithya Raman. “Be bolder” is good advice for all Democrats: “Angelenos yearn for safer streets, an end to homelessness, a renewal of the dreamland that the city has represented for more than a century. They want less of the bureaucracy that has slowed down rebuilding in Pacific Palisades and made running a small business more of a punishment than a reward. They don’t want someone beholden to any ideology other than that the City of Angels needs to be heaven again. ... Above all, Raman needs to be bold enough to not become another Karen Bass.”
Coming to our senses. The Economist: “It turns out that voters do not much like a president who is elected on a promise to lower prices and stay out of wars, but who then goes on to launch a tariff crusade and attack Iran—thereby driving up prices. And they hate it if that president’s relentless self-glorification and enrichment of his family and friends mocks their own hardship.”
The Israeli opposition gets the first crack at forming a government. Now the hard part: “[Gadi] Eisenkot’s path to a governing coalition is far from straightforward. Hawkish members of his bloc are publicly opposed to any reliance on the Arab-led Ra’am and Joint List, while many bloc members campaigned on the need to send both Netanyahu and the ultra-Orthodox parties to the opposition. While Yashar said on Saturday night that ‘Likud and its friends’ could potentially join an Eisenkot-led coalition, it did not extend that offer to Netanyahu.”
Sen.-elect Abdul El-Sayed put it best. Trump “decides to hire the most broken man to continue to run the most dysfunctional White House we’ve seen,” El-Sayed said on ABC This Week. “I don’t know what Stephen Miller has actually contributed to our culture, our society, in any real way, except to make us more angry and stoke the worst kind of fear and vitriol.” But Miller does perfectly embody the Republican Party.
The presumptive speaker has listened to the voters, it seems. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said, “There’s not going to be an opportunity, certainly, to work with Stephen Miller and what he represents. And we’re committed to forcefully pushing back against the extremism that they may try to continue to unleash on the American people.” Bonus: “I’m a hard yes on the Hegseth [impeachment] resolution. The so-called secretary of defense has abused his power, undermined our national security, and engineered this reckless and costly war of choice in Iran, which has skyrocketed prices on the American people and made the country less safe. Pete Hegseth has got to go.”
I think most reasonable people would be for firing Stephen Miller and impeaching Hegseth and firing RFK Jr.
Hurray for Hakeem (so far). But I have to tell you, Nithya Raman is not Abdul El-Sayed. She's more like Francesca Hong. She doesn't seem to know who she is, and that's a problem. She accepted endorsement from a local pro-Israel organization but then next time around she didn't -- after the DSA censured her. When asked if she supports DSA, she usually hedges -- and likewise when asked if she supports pretty much anything. LA Progressives decided not to endorse her for this recent election. DSA did, but reluctantly. Raman usually ends interviews by saying she's not really this and not really that because she's "just herself." Okay, but people find they can't work with her. She makes enemies when she doesn't need to. She says she knows what LA needs because she knows Hollywood. But I have to say, Los Angeles is a lot, lot more than Hollywood. Granted, Karen Bass was sort of the person who tried to please everyone but ended up accomplishing not much. But I'm more than a bit worried that Raman will please no one and end up giving Democrats a bad name in LA. We don't need that, folks.