the daily howler

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 4, 2025 

...and Andrew Duehren has done it: It's been several decades since we declared that some reporter was, in fact, "the man."

Way back then, it was Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post. He went on to become that newspaper's long-standing Fact-Checker. 

On this very day, we're stunned by the clarity of a report in the New York Times. On the basis of that clear exposition, we're prepared to announce that Andrew Duehren, formerly of the Wall Street Journal, joins Kessler as "the man."

Duehren's report s deals with a pair of entities which are not the same thing. (Neither one is an "object.") We refer to the entities known as "deficit" and "debt." 

In the process, we're also referring to a distinct pair of terms which have come to be used almost interchangeably

The deficit isn't the debt! In fact, they're very different "abstract objects," though you'd have a hard time knowing that from the slapdash way the current GOP budget bill is being reported all over the mainstream press, cable news included.

What's the likely shape of the fiscal future if the GOP budget bill passes in something like its current form? In his new report for the Times, Duehren makes it look easy—which, just to be perfectly honest, it pretty much basically is:

Republican Policy Bill Would Add $2.4 Trillion to Debt, Budget Office Says

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday that the broad Republican bill to cut taxes and slash some federal programs would add $2.4 trillion to the already soaring national debt over the next decade, in an analysis that was all but certain to inflame concerns that President Trump’s domestic agenda would lead to excessive government borrowing.

[...]

The United States government currently has roughly $29 trillion in public debt, and C.B.O. had previously forecast that it would grow by roughly $21 trillion over the next decade, reaching nearly $50 trillion in 2034, as a growing share of Americans take advantage of government retirement support. With a roughly $3.8 trillion tax cut at its core, the Republican bill had long been expected to significantly add to that debt and make a precarious situation worse.

We're not completely in love with that headline. But let's take a look at the text of Duehren's report:

Duehren is reporting basic numbers from the CBO. These involve the CBO's (imperfect) projections for "the next decade," a time frame he quickly reports.

In the second paragraph we have posted—the fourth paragraph of his report—Duehren offers the basic background information. This information is constantly being omitted in mainstream press reports. 

This is extremely basic information. It's amazingly easy to state. It should never be left out:

The United States government currently has roughly $29 trillion in public debt. The CBO has previously forecast that it would grow by roughly $21 trillion over the next decade, reaching nearly $50 trillion in 2034.

It isn't hard to report those facts. Those facts should never be left out. 

When the CBO estimates that provisions of the proposed budget bill will "add $2.4 trillion to the already soaring national debt," they're saying that it will add an additional $2.4 trillion to that presupposed $50 trillion in debt. That additional $2.4 trillion in debt will be added onto that presupposed $50 trillion.

Fo our money, Duehren could have spelled that last part out even more clearly. That said, a graphic between his first and second paragraphs makes this fandango remarkably clear, especially as judged by modern press corps standards.

Let's run through this again:

We already have a $29 trillion national debt. According to CBO projections, that will rise to $50 trillion by the year 2034.

The GOP bill in its current form would add an additional $2.4 trillion to that presupposed $50 trillion in debt. It isn't hard to lay this out. Our journalists infrequently do.

(As we noted last week, Paul Krugman has said that this situation is "unsustainable." We don't plan to argue with him!)

Here's the part you can't leave out if you're telling this story:

We already have a $29 trillion national debt. According to CBO projections, that will rise to $50 trillion by the year 2034, even if the GOP bill doesn't pass.

These journalists today! They omit that part of the tale all the time! Announcing himself to be "the man," Duehren gets it right!

For extra credit only: What would the Democrats propose with respect to those existing debt projections?

We haven't seen a word about that. Neither, we'll guess, have you.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 4, 2025 

Delusion's possible faces: This morning, at the Washington Post, we encountered an intriguing report about President Trump's prodigious acts of messaging.

There's nothing wrong with this sort of messaging—until such time as there is. The Post report starts as shown, headline included:

Tallying Trump’s online posting frenzy: 2,262 ‘truths’ in 132 days

President Donald Trump is posting on the internet with a velocity and ferocity far beyond that of his first term, surprising aides with predawn messages fired off at a blistering pace.

As of Sunday, Trump had posted 2,262 times to his company’s social network Truth Social in the 132 days since his inauguration, a Washington Post analysis has found—more than three times the number of tweets he sent during the same period of his first presidency...

[...]

His prolific posts also allow him to communicate directly to his fans, without any filtering from media outlets.

At 7:22 a.m. on Memorial Day, he commemorated the day of mourning for American service members killed in the line of duty with a 172-word stem-winder written in all capital letters: “Happy Memorial Day to all, including the scum that spent the last four years trying to destroy our country through warped radical left minds, who allowed 21,000,000 million people to illegally enter our country, many of them being criminals and the mentally insane.”

And on Saturday night, he reposted an outrageous item to his nearly 10 million followers saying former president Joe Biden had been executed in 2020 and replaced by a “soulless mindless” robotic clone.

Uh-oh! On Memorial Day, he offered an all-caps post wishing a happy day to all—even including THE SCUM. Then came that deeply peculiar repost, in which he passed along the claim that President Biden—remember him?—has been killed and replaced with a clone.

What can you say about a Truth Social message like unfolds like that? Today, the Post bumps its assessment of that report up to "outrageous." (With unintended comical effect, some other major news orgs scored the statement as "false!")

When we first read about that repost, we wondered if the post might involve a hint of delusion. For that reason, we started to google.

Full disclosure! As Mother Gump used to say, delusional is as delusional does. We'll briefly return to Professor Quine, a good decent person, with this passage from Word and Object, perhaps his most famous book:

CHAPTER SEVEN
Ontic Decision

§48. NOMINALISM AND REALISM
One finds or can imagine disagreement on whether there are wombats, unicorns, angels, neutrinos, classes, points, miles, propositions. Philosophy and the special sciences afford infinite scope for disagreement on what there is. One such issue that has traditionally divided philosophers is whether there are abstract objects. Nominalists have held that there are not; realists (in a special sense of the word), or Platonists (as they have been called to avoid the troubles of 'realist’), have held that there are.

General definition of the term ‘abstract’, or ‘universal’, and its opposite ‘concrete’, or ‘particular’, need not detain us. No matter if there are things whose status under the dichotomy remains enigmatic—“abstract particulars” such as the Equator and the North Pole, for instance; for no capital will be made of the dichotomy as such. It will suffice for now to cite classes, attributes, propositions, numbers, relations, and functions as typical abstract objects, and physical objects as concrete objects par excellence, and to consider the ontological issue as it touches such typical cases.

Say what? A person can imagine disagreement "on whether there are miles?" 

Fellow inhabitants of the planet, do you have even the slightest idea what that formulation might mean? And with that, we're back to those "abstract objects" again, whatever they might be.

As the passage continues, we seem to be told that the North Pole isn't an abstract object—instead, it's an abstract particular! That said, numbers are typical "abstract objects," whatever that might be taken to mean.

Question: Is the number 2 really an "abstract object?" In what sense can the number 2 be described an "object" at all? 

Also, might Mother Gump perhaps have imagined that a type of "delusion" is at work here? As we've noted in the past, Professor Horwich attributed this analysis to the later Wittgenstein with respect to such "philosophical" musings:

Was Wittgenstein Right?

[...]

Philosophy is respected, even exalted, for its promise to provide fundamental insights into the human condition and the ultimate character of the universe, leading to vital conclusions about how we are to arrange our lives. It’s taken for granted that there is deep understanding to be obtained of the nature of consciousness, of how knowledge of the external world is possible, of whether our decisions can be truly free, of the structure of any just society, and so on—and that philosophy’s job is to provide such understanding. Isn’t that why we are so fascinated by it?

If so, then we are duped and bound to be disappointed, says Wittgenstein. For these are mere pseudo-problems, the misbegotten products of linguistic illusion and muddled thinking...“What we are destroying is nothing but houses of cards and we are clearing up the ground of language on which they stand."

So said the later Wittgenstein concerning this type of discourse. Or at least, that's what Horwich says.

In fairness, the key term in that passage is "illusion," not delusion. The key term is linguistic illusion, but we think it comes close enough for journalistic work.

In truth, disordered cogitation is quite widespread within our human family. Imaginably, that could even be true in the case of the late Professor Quine, a good and decent person who was voted the fifth most important analytical philosopher of the past two hundred years.

Back to the text-in-itself! We've suggested that writing like that helps explain why you can't name a single important academic philosopher of the past however many years—why you can't identify any contribution such logicians or ethicists, or even such students of ontic decision, have ever made to the planet's actual public discourse. 

Was Professor Quine a bit "delusional?" Presumably, you can teach it flat or round! But then we come to President Trump, and to his endless supply of very strange statements, not excluding last Saturday's bizarre repost about the execution of President Biden—but also including his other claims, so hotly advanced:

His claim that no one was actually present at Candidate Harris' rally in Detroit last summer. His repeated insistence that Haitian immigrants were eating our nation's cats and dogs.

His dogged insistence about who actually pays the bill when a tariff is implemented. Perhaps most consequential of all, his endless, unexplained claim that the 2020 election was stolen in some unexplained way. 

His claim, made over and over again in his famous phone call to Georgia, that he actually won that state by 100,000 votes.

On this campus, we actually listened to the tape of that hour-long phone call. Along the way, we'll have to admit that it sounded to us like President Trump really believed that claim.

Did he believe the unsupported claim he was insistently making, in a phone call he didn't know was being reported? In the end, we can't tell you that— but it sounded like he maybe possibly did!

(Later, the Washington Post published a lengthy report in which many associates of the former president, including many who has turned NeverTrump, said that they themselves weren't sure whether he believed his delusional claim that the election was stolen.)

After his latest peculiar post— his post about the cloning of President Biden— we found ourselves wondering, once again, if some measure of "delusion" might have its grips on the president.

We began to google around in such of a fuller understanding— and sure enough! According to the leading authority on the topic, "delusion" is a clinical term as well as familiar part of everyday speech which is merely colloquial.

Here's what the authority says:

Delusion

A delusion is a fixed belief that is not amenable to change in light of conflicting evidence. As a pathology, it is distinct from a belief based on false or incomplete information, confabulation, dogma, illusion, hallucination, or some other misleading effects of perception, as individuals with those beliefs are able to change or readjust their beliefs upon reviewing the evidence. 

[...]

Delusions have been found to occur in the context of many pathological states (both general physical and mental) and are of particular diagnostic importance in psychotic disorders including schizophrenia, paraphrenia, manic episodes of bipolar disorder, and psychotic depression.

Persecutory delusions are the most common type of delusions and involve the theme of being followed, harassed, cheated, poisoned or drugged, conspired against, spied on, attacked, or otherwise obstructed in the pursuit of goals. Persecutory delusions are a condition in which the affected person wrongly believes that they are being persecuted. 

[...]

According to the DSM-IV-TR, persecutory delusions are the most common form of delusions in schizophrenia, where the person believes they are "being tormented, followed, sabotaged, tricked, spied on, or ridiculed." In the DSM-IV-TR, persecutory delusions are the main feature of the persecutory type of delusional disorder. When the focus is to remedy some injustice by legal action, they are sometimes called "querulous paranoia."

Within the realm of schizophrenia, persecutory delusions are the most common type! Those would be the types of delusion in which the (clinically) afflicted party believes that he's being harassed, cheated, conspired against, spied on, attacked, or otherwise obstructed in the pursuit of his goals. 

Legal action will sometimes be taken to address such delusions! Does any of that sound like President Trump? 

In fairness, we quickly note this:

As the leading authority notes, a delusion almost surely isn't a delusion if the beliefs in question are true. In the matter of President Trump, supporters could perhaps reasonably say that some of the president's claims of persecution may perhaps possess the germ of possibly being accurate.

Also, let's be fair! DSM-IV is the previous DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual). Medical science has now moved on what's known as the DSM-5. 

The DSM-5 now rules the roost. According to this web site, "this is how delusions are described in the DSM-5 (Schizophrenia Spectrum and Other Psychotic Disorders):"

Delusions are fixed beliefs that are not amenable to change in light of conflicting evidence. Their content may include a variety of themes (e.g. persecutory, referential, somatic, religious, grandiose).[…] Delusions are deemed bizarre if they are clearly implausible and not understandable to same-culture peers and do not derive from ordinary life experiences. […] The distinction between a delusion and a strongly held idea is sometimes difficult to make and depends in part on the degree of conviction with which the belief is held despite clear or reasonable contradictory evidence regarding its veracity.

Does any of that sound like President Trump? Remember, we're looking for a way to understand the stranger claims the gentleman makes, often late at night and with a high degree of conviction. Stating the unmistakable, some of those claims seem to involve the types of "fixed beliefs that are not amenable to change in light of conflicting evidence."

We're speaking here of diagnosable elements of modern medical science. Moving along to a further discussion, the leading authority offers this overview of what seems to be one type of a (clinical) personality disorder:

Delusional disorder

Delusional disorder, traditionally synonymous with paranoia, is a mental illness in which a person has delusions, but with no accompanying prominent hallucinations, thought disorder, mood disorder, or significant flattening of affect. Delusions are a specific symptom of psychosis. Delusions can be bizarre or non-bizarre in content; non-bizarre delusions are fixed false beliefs that involve situations that could occur in real life, such as being harmed or poisoned. Apart from their delusion or delusions, people with delusional disorder may continue to socialize and function in a normal manner and their behavior does not necessarily seem odd. However, the preoccupation with delusional ideas can be disruptive to their overall lives.

For the diagnosis to be made, auditory and visual hallucinations cannot be prominent, though olfactory or tactile hallucinations related to the content of the delusion may be present. The delusions cannot be due to the effects of a drug, medication, or general medical condition, and delusional disorder cannot be diagnosed in an individual previously properly diagnosed with schizophrenia. A person with delusional disorder may be high functioning in daily life. Recent and comprehensive meta-analyses of scientific studies point to an association with a deterioration in aspects of IQ in psychotic patients, in particular perceptual reasoning, although, the between-group differences were small.

"For the diagnosis to be made, the delusions cannot be due to the effects of a drug?" That may disqualify Elon Musk, despite his endless weird claims.

On the other hand, does any of that sound like the current sitting president? For the record, "a person with delusional disorder may be high functioning in daily life," the leading authority says.

Where do these ruminations lead us? It's always possible that someone will end up "telling this with a sigh / Somewhere ages and ages hence." 

Imaginably, that could happen! But as we all understand, no one within our contemporary "mainstream press corps" will be telling any version of this story today.

There will be no attempt to explore the reasons for the kind of strange behavior the president unloosed last Saturday night—for the kinds of strange behavior, connected to various fixed beliefs, he has exhibited again and again since getting involved in politics.

We've long recommended empathy for people afflicted with clinical disorders—even "pity for the poor [metaphorical] immigrant." In the case of President Trump, we've even advised you to "pity the child," even as you try to limit the ability of the adult to cause societal harm.

Very few people will take that advice; we humans don't seem to be wired for that sort of behavior. We will remind you of what the sitting president's niece wrote about her powerful uncle in a recent best-selling book:

 A case could be made that he also meets the criteria for antisocial personality disorder, which in its most severe form is generally considered sociopathy... 

The fact is, Donald’s pathologies are so complex and his behaviors so often inexplicable that coming up with an accurate and comprehensive diagnosis would require a full battery of psychological and neuropsychological tests that he’ll never sit for.

The lady in question is a doctorate-holding clinical psychologist. That doesn't mean that her assessments are correct, though it may suggest that they could be.

Professor Quine believed that the number 2 is some type of "object." He thought that disagreements could arise as to whether "there are miles," whatever that could possibly mean.

Disorder is quite widespread within our human family. Is it a form of disorder when the men and women of our upper-end press agree not to ask the world's most obvious questions about our commander in chief?

Tomorrow: 2 + 2, the sitting president said

For extra credit only: While we're at it, what the heck does "ontic" mean?

TUESDAY, JUNE 3, 2025

As always, it depends: Mohamed Sabry Soliman was apprehended on the spot. It seems that he has confessed to—or perhaps, "has taken credit for"—the vicious assaults in Boulder. 

In that sense, he seems to remain a "suspect" in name only. That said, a lot is still unknown about this now-famous man. 

Let's start with an obvious question—what was his legal status? As with almost everything else, that partly depends on your tolerance for our society's endless complexifications. 

Needless to say, it also depends on where you go for your information, or for what passes for same.

What was Soliman's legal status? It depends on where you get your news. For starters, consider this part of this New York Times news report:

Attack Suspect Appeared to Live a Low-Key Life in Colorado Springs

[...]

According to the Department of Homeland Security, Mr. Soliman had come to the United States in August 2022 on a tourist visa and overstayed it. He had also applied for asylum and received a work permit that later expired.

Should he have left the country when his work permit expired, even though his asylum request hadn't been resolved? The Times report didn't say.

Few readers will know how to answer that question. By way of contrast, here's what the Washington Post said in this top-of-the-website report:

Suspect in Colorado attack on Israeli hostage event charged with hate crime

[...]

Based on DHS’s information, Soliman didn’t have legal status but was also lawfully present in the U.S., said Muzaffar Chishti, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute. “This is a semantics issue at some level,” Chishti said. “He didn’t have legal status, but he was not removable because he was an asylum applicant.”

According to the Post, Soliman didn't have legal status, but he was lawfully present! It's partly a matter of semantics, the migration specialist said!

Meanwhile, on this morning's Fox & Friends, the friends were delivering the mail. Right at the start of the 6 o'clock hour, newsreader Madeleine Rivera told Red America this:

RIVERA (6/3/25): DHS says he's an Egyptian national who was in the country illegally. He entered the country on a tourist visa in 2022 and applied for asylum the next month. He was given work authorization in March 2023 under the Biden administration but that has since expired

On Fox, Soliman "was in the country illegally." Once Rivera ended her brief report, the friends took over from there.

Such complexifications dog every part of modern American governance. When no one really understands how any part of our "system" works, that can encourage some people to seek the relative simplicity of rule under the direction of one strong and trusted leader.

What was Soliman's legal status? It seems you can take your pick!  Meanwhile, on Fox & Friends, the grievance mongering was instant. Here was Rachel Campos-Duffy, bashing the Boulder police in the mandated way at 6:04 a.m.:

CAMPOS-DUFFY (6/3/25): The interesting thing is, the local police are saying, "Well, we're going to wait and figure out what this actually is," when he—as you said—yelled out what his political motives were. We just saw two innocent people die in Washington, D.C., that beautiful couple, for the same reason.

Campos-Duffy was pimping the instant grievance according to which the Boulder police are just so "woke" that they refuse to come to terms with the obvious.

She was still selling that mandated grievance this morning—but how strange! Last night, in the 7 o'clock hour, we had seen the Boulder chief of police tell Erin Burnett this:

BURNETT (6/2/25): Out front now, Boulder Police Chief Stephen Redfearn. And Chief Redfearn, I really appreciate your time tonight.

We're learning a lot more now about the planning that went into this attack. I mean, what are you able to share about the planning and how much worse, frankly, this incident was intended to be?

CHIEF REDFEARN: Yeah. So, we know now that this suspect planned this terror attack for over a year. And of concern is, as you might have heard in the press conference, he attempted to purchase a firearm. I am so grateful that that didn't happen. I cant imagine how much worse this would be if he was able to do that. And so, it's very clear he was intent on harming people. And I'm just glad that we were able to get there relatively quickly and contain this before it was worse.

[...]

BURNETT: In your press conference right after the attack, I know you said that you're not calling it a terror attack at this point. Those were your words, Chief.

Now that you know more about the motive, right, you've got more information. Are you comfortable calling this a terror attack?

REDFEARN: Absolutely. And I just want to say to that, you know, we did that press briefing very early on. There were so many moving parts. I was not comfortable in that initial briefing, even though we had a really good idea that it was going to be called terrorism. It was, it was a targeted terrorist attack. 

We were being very careful at that point because at that point, we were still interviewing the suspect, interviewing multiple victims and witnesses, and we did not want to put out something that was inaccurate. 

We were being very cautious at that. And obviously that changed the later press conference in the evening. We were very clear that we believe this was indeed terrorism. And I still stand with that.

In the initial briefing, he "didn't want to put out something that was inaccurate." Such scruples rarely get in the way of the corporate mission on programs like Fox & Friends.

Two final points:

Last evening, on the Gutfeld! show, the pleasing claim was being floated that "the media" were disappearing this event. When we arose this morning, news reports about this event topped the web sites of the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Sadly, also this:

For whatever reason, last night's Gutfeld! was rank with slimy, old school gay bashing. As always. Governor Walz was just another simpering, unmanly gay guy. So was Senator Booker.

So is Barack Obama, of course. Meanwhile, his wife (and many other liberal women) are just way too much like men. On The View, the women they are all too fat, like horses, cattle, hogs

Last night's show was especially slimy on the purse-lipped, simpering gay stereotype front. Each night, at 10 p.m. Suzanne Scott pries the lid off the can and this is what slithers out.

Blue America has agreed not to notice or mention any of this. Simply put, but unmistakably, this is the failure to serve our Blue elites have chosen.

TUESDAY, JUNE 3, 2025 

But why did the candidate say that? President Biden dropped out of the race on July 21, 2024

As of that day, he was no longer running for re-election. By early August, it was clear that Vice President Harris was going to be the Democratic Party's nominee for president.

She ended up losing the nationwide popular vote by a rather narrow margin—by just under 1.5 points. (In the language of President Trump and the shock troops of the Fox News Channel, this is now described as "a landslide."). 

Along the way, it seemed entirely possible that Candidate Harris might actually win the election. That brings us to the very strange thing that Candidate Trump did on August 11 of that very year. 

Also, it leaves us banging up against the (unexplored) possibility of (clinical) "delusion." We refer to the clinical / medical use of that term, not to colloquial speech. 

On August 11 of that year, the person who is now this country's sitting president did something extremely strange. Here's how the insanity went down:

Four days earlier, Candidate Harris had held a rally inside an airport hangar in Detroit. A large crowd had turned out for that rally. Lage crowds had appeared at other Harris-Walz rallies that week. 

Reporters had been on the scene to see the large crowd in Detroit. But four days later, Candidate Trump took to Truth Social and advanced this rather strange, rant-adjacent claim:

Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump

Has anyone noticed that Kamala CHEATED at the airport? There was nobody at the plane, and she “A.I.’d” it, and showed a massive “crowd” of so-called followers, BUT THEY DIDN’T EXIST! She was turned in by a maintenance worker at the airport when he noticed the fake crowd picture, but there was nobody there, later confirmed by the reflection of the mirror like finish on the Vice Presidential Plane. She’s a CHEATER. She had NOBODY waiting, and the “crowd” looked like 10,000 people! Same thing is happening with her fake “crowds” at her speeches. This is the way the Democrats win Elections, by CHEATING - And they’re even worse at the Ballot Box. She should be disqualified because the creation of a fake image is ELECTION INTERFERENCE. Anyone who does that will cheat at ANYTHING!

So the former president rather crazily said.

In reality, yes, Virginia! A large crowd actually had turned out for the airport rally in Detroit. But four days later, Candidate Trump, in a pair of Truth Social posts, said the alleged crowd actually DIDN'T EXIST.

(To see the initial post in which this claim was made, you can just click here. The text of that first, brief post said this: Look, we caught her with a fake “crowd.” There was nobody there!)

A large crowd had turned out to see Candidate Harris. Four days later, Candidate Trump was saying that no one had been present—that those people DIDN'T EXIST.  

In that second, longer post, he went on and on about this CHEATING—about this ELECETION INTERFERENCE. About the fact that, when Candidate Harris arrived at the airport, she had NOBODY waiting. 

About the fact that all those people—all those people that every reporter saw—simply DIDN'T EXIST.

That was an extremely strange claim delivered in the form of a rant. To read the AP's (accurate) report of this peculiar incident, you can just click here.

On August 14, NPR published an appraisal of the peculiar incident. In its report, NPR included Candidate Trump's reaction when he was later asked to explain why he'd made this very strange claim.

Here's how the appraisal started:

Why false claims that a picture of a Kamala Harris rally was AI-generated matter

At a Detroit aircraft hangar last week, the Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Harris, and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, stepped off Air Force Two and were greeted by thousands of supporters. NPR's Tamara Keith was there to see it.

There were 15,000 people at the rally, according to the Harris campaign. Photos and videos by attendees and media organizations captured the crowd from many angles.

But former President Donald Trump and his supporters have falsely claimed that the crowd seen in a photo of the rally in front of Harris' plane was a product of generative artificial intelligence. On Sunday, Trump made the nonsensical claim that the very real crowd at the event was a fabrication.

"Has anyone noticed that Kamala CHEATED at the airport?" reads one of his posts on Truth Social. "There was nobody at the plane, and she 'A.I.'d' it, and showed a massive 'crowd' of so-called followers, BUT THEY DIDN'T EXIST!"

When a reporter asked him Wednesday [August 14] about why he made the claim given that it was proved false, Trump did not acknowledge that his claim had been untrue. "Well I can't say what was there, who was there," responded Trump in an exchange that was televised by Fox News. "I can tell you about ours—we have the biggest crowds ever in the history of politics."

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

As usual, "the Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment." 

In its headline, NPR had described Candidate Trump's peculiar claim as "false."  In the body of her report, NPR's Jude Joffe-Block had used the term "nonsensical." 

(Later, she'd also written this: "The refusal to accept basic, verifiable facts has some observers concerned about a repeat of 2020 false claims of a stolen election if Trump loses.")

As we noted yesterday, the person who is now President Trump had gone "nonsensical" all over again. Aa Lawrence O'Donnell noted at length on last evening's Last Word, the sitting president of the United  States had rather strangely reposted a tweet in which an apparent nutcase had crazily claimed this:

President Biden was executed in 2020. He was then replaced by a clone.

An apparent nutcase had posted that claim—and President Trump reposted it. To see President Trump's unexplained repost of that claim, you can just click here.

Why did President Trump repost that claim—the claim that President Biden was executed and was then replaced by a clone? 

We can't tell you that. For us, it recalled the nutty claim from last year—the claim that NO ONE WAS PRESENT at Candidate Harris' rally. Also, it caused us to wonder about the clinical diagnosis known as "Delusional disorder."

Full disclosure! President Trump makes so many bogus claims that it's virtually impossible to keep up. There was also last year's claim—insistently repeated at his debate with Candidate Harris—that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio were eating that town's dogs and cats.

Some of these claims are simply false. By way of contrast, some of these claims may seem to pass over into the realm of the crazy.

Why in the world does our president make them? It seems to us that our nation's press corps has chosen to make virtually no attempt to ask.

Is it possible that President Trump believes his various claims? Over the weekend, we began clicking around in search of a greater understanding of the (clinical) concept of "delusion." 

The term is often used colloquially, as a matter of everyday speech. But it's also a diagnostic clinical term, a part of medical science.

Tomorrow, we'll show you some of what we encountered when President Trump's latest crazy semi-claim sent us to the Google machine. Before the week is done, desperate for a larger context, we also hope to find a way to return to this:

Quine–Putnam indispensability argument

The Quine–Putnam indispensability argument is an argument in the philosophy of mathematics for the existence of abstract mathematical objects such as numbers and sets, a position known as mathematical platonism. It was named after the philosophers Willard Van Orman Quine and Hilary Putnam, and is one of the most important arguments in the philosophy of mathematics.

Although elements of the indispensability argument may have originated with thinkers such as Gottlob Frege and Kurt Gödel, Quine's development of the argument was unique for introducing to it a number of his philosophical positions such as naturalism, confirmational holism, and the criterion of ontological commitment. Putnam gave Quine's argument its first detailed formulation in his 1971 book Philosophy of Logic. He later came to disagree with various aspects of Quine's thinking, however, and formulated his own indispensability argument.

[...]

Nominalists, philosophers who reject the existence of abstract objects, have argued against both premises of this argument. 

As we noted yesterday, we took courses from each of those professors back in the street-fighting days of the late 1960s. 

For whatever it may be worth, the late Professor Quine is generally described as having held "conservative" political views. The late Professor Putnam was about as far "left" as you could get during that era. He was even PLP (Progressive Labor Party) for a couple of years!

Each was a good, decent person. Also, in one of the most important arguments in the philosophy of mathematics, it's said that they argued for the existence of numbers, whatever that could possibly mean. 

Other "philosophers," we're also told, reject the existence of such "abstract objects"—but what could an abstract object be? As the later Wittgenstein might have murkily suggested, were certain types of delusion also floating around in this extremely high-level, exalted academic stew?

The woods are lovely, dark and deep. Our rapidly failing society is currently lost within them.

Man [sic] is the rational animal? What ever made us think that?

Tomorrow: Harvard is teaching 2 + 2, the sitting president said

MONDAY, JUNE 2, 2025 

Her lord and savior approves: Death panels started with former governor Sarah Palin in the year 2009.

Last weekend, Senator Ernst brought the death panels back, though in a different form.

Back then, it was Obamacare which was said to be cutting costs down thanks to the fiendish panels. This weekend, Senator Ernst (R-Iowa) accepted the blame on behalf of her own GOP!

This morning, Joe Scarborough said it was political malpractice on the part of Senator Ernst. We aren't entirely sure. 

In this news report, the Washington Post provides the basic background. Believe it or croak, this is the way it started:

Ernst posts snarky reply after telling town hall ‘we all are going to die’

Sen. Joni Ernst, an Iowa Republican facing reelection in 2026, flippantly dismissed voters’ concerns in recent days that people could die if Republicans cut Medicaid as they’ve promised to do in President Donald Trump’s sprawling immigration and tax package.

Speaking at a town hall in Butler County, Iowa, on Friday, Ernst was explaining how the bill would affect Medicaid eligibility when one audience member yelled out that individuals who lost coverage because of the cuts could die.

“Well, we all are going to die,” Ernst replied as the crowd groaned. “So, for heaven’s sakes. For heaven’s sakes, folks.”

You can pay me now or pay me later, a flippant bromide says. Senator Ernst had offered a modernized version of that bromide to a roomful of Iowa voters:

You're all going to die in the end, so why not do it now?

To watch the tape of that exchange, you can just click here.

Some people thought her remarks that day were strange! And so, on Saturday, the very next day, she turned up in an Iowa cemetery and doubled down on what she had said/

The Post's report continues:

While outrage at Ernst’s glib comment was immediate, on Saturday, the senator doubled down with a sarcastic response shared on Instagram.

“I made an incorrect assumption that everyone in the auditorium understood that, yes, we are all going to perish from this earth,” she said in a video filmed in what appeared to be a cemetery. “So I apologize, and I’m really, really glad that I did not have to bring up the subject of the tooth fairy as well.”

She then added: “For those that would like to see eternal and everlasting life, I encourage you to embrace my Lord and savior Jesus Christ.”

Remarkably, that's what she said. To watch that presentation, you can click this. 

Watching the statement, we'd say that Senator Ernst moved past mere sarcasm to an undisguised expression of something approaching contempt. (The mileage of others may differ.)

We aren't religious ourselves, but most of the world's people are. Obviously, there's nothing "wrong" with being a Christian. It's also true that this seems like one of the strangest political performances seen in recent times.

On this morning's Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough advanced an obvious thought, one which may well turn out to be accurate. Paraphrasing:

Judged by all traditional norms, this looks like an excellent way to lose a race for re-election.

On its face, that makes perfect sense, but we aren't super-sure that it's right. We're thinking about the desire to return to a sweeping societal religiosity which seems to be playing an increasing role on Red America's side of the aisle, where a whole lot of people live.

As we watched Ernst's remarkably sarcastic performance, we thought back to what happened on Fox & Friends Weekend on the day after then-Candidate Trump was shot during a rally in Butler, Pa.

As we noted at the time, three of the four friends on the set came out of a type of journalistic closet as they discussed the event. Each of the three explicitly thanked "our lord and savior, Jesus Christ" for the way he'd allegedly intervened to spare the candidate's life. 

(As we noted at the time, only Will Cain didn't do that.)

Within the norms of contemporary journalism, that was a highly unusual bit of behavior on the part of the three friends. Within the norms of contemporary American government, so was this May 21 event, as reported in the New York Times and ignored almost everywhere else:

Pete Hegseth Leads Christian Prayer Service in the Pentagon

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth led a Christian prayer service in the Pentagon’s auditorium on Wednesday morning, during working hours, in which President Trump was praised as a divinely appointed leader.

The event, billed as the “Secretary of Defense Christian Prayer & Worship Service,” was standing room only and ran for about 30 minutes, with Brooks Potteiger, the pastor of Mr. Hegseth’s church in Tennessee, as the main speaker.

Mr. Hegseth said he intended that the prayer service become a monthly event.

It is unclear whether the Defense Department has hosted similar religious events outside of the Pentagon’s chapel, which was added after the 9/11 attack, but the service is part of an increasing infusion of overt Christian evangelization in official government events during Mr. Trump’s second term.

[...]

“This is precisely where I need to be, and I think exactly where we need to be as a nation, at this moment,” Mr. Hegseth, standing at a lectern bearing the seal of the Defense Department, said in his opening remarks: “in prayer, on bended knee recognizing the providence of our lord and savior Jesus Christ.” He added, “Knowing that there’s an author in heaven overseeing all of this, who’s underwritten all of it, for us, on the cross, gives me the strength to proceed.”

Within the norms of American culture, there is absolutely nothing "wrong" with Secretary Hegseth's religious beliefs. On the other hand, this event does represent a long step away from long-standing norms of governance.

Now for the rest of the story:

As you may recall, Secretary Hegseth was one of the friends who praised his lord and savior for allegedly saving the candidate's life on Fox & Friends Weekend that day. That was a departure from journalistic norms. The May 21 prayer event was a different type of departure.

Here's more from that Times report about that Pentagon service:

“King Jesus, we come humbly before you, seeking your face, seeking your grace, in humble obedience to your law and to your word,” Mr. Hegseth prayed after asking attendees to bow their heads. “We come as sinners saved only by that grace, seeking your providence in our lives and in our nation. Lord God, we ask for the wisdom to see what is right and in each and every day, in each and every circumstance, the courage to do what is right in obedience to your will. It is in the name of our lord and savior, Jesus Christ, that we pray. And all God’s people say amen.”

The assembled worshipers, including at least one general, repeated “Amen.”

Tami Radabaugh, a deputy assistant to Mr. Hegseth who attended the service, wrote on X, “Grateful to have a @POTUS @realDonaldTrump @SecDef and administration who love the Lord as I do.”

Mr. Potteiger’s church, the Pilgrim Hill Reformed Fellowship in Goodlettsville, Tenn., is a member of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches—the governing documents of which say that church leadership roles are reserved for men, that homosexuality is “unbiblical” and that women should not participate in combat. Mr. Hegseth said in a podcast appearance before his nomination to lead the Pentagon that women have no place in military combat units, but appeared to soften that stance during his confirmation hearing in January.

In his sermon, the pastor said, “We pray for our leaders who you have sovereignly appointed—for President Trump, thank you for the way that you have used him to bring stability and moral clarity to our land. And we pray that you would continue to protect him, bless him, give him great wisdom.”

President Trump was "sovereignly appointed" by God, attendees were told. Millions of people share such beliefs. They vastly dislike the world our own Blue America has built—and in all fairness, again and again, such folks have the germ of a point.

We Blues may not fully understand the way we're viewed by many Reds. This morning, Scarborough said that Senator Ernst will almost surely be shedding votes. Remarkable though we take her conduct to be, we're not super-sure about that.

Ernst has brought the death panels back! This time, it's almost like we're supposed to think the panels are something good!

MONDAY, JUNE 2, 2025 

So says President Trump: On Saturday night, as the midnight hour approached, there he went again.

In this case, the New York Times actually reported the sitting president's presentation. His post appeared on Truth Social on Saturday night as the witching hour drew near.

More accurately, if only colloquially, it was the sitting president's latest crazy presentation. The New York Times was somewhat slow to report what he'd done. But here's the heart of its (remarkably brief) news report about this latest event:

Trump Amplifies Another Outlandish Conspiracy Theory: Biden Is a Robotic Clone

President Trump shared an outlandish conspiracy theory on social media on Saturday night saying former President Joseph R. Biden had been “executed in 2020” and replaced by a robotic clone, the latest example of the president amplifying dark, false material to his millions of followers.

Mr. Trump reposted a fringe rant that another user had made on the president’s social media platform, Truth Social, just after 10 p.m. on Saturday. The White House did not respond to requests for comment on the post about Mr. Biden, whom Mr. Trump has targeted for criticism almost daily since the start of his second term.

The president has blamed Mr. Biden for all manner of societal ills and assailed his mental acuity, including with the specious theory that Mr. Biden’s aides used an autopen to enact policies and issue pardons without Mr. Biden’s knowledge. (Mr. Trump has acknowledged that his administration uses the autopen system on occasion.)

Mr. Trump has long had a penchant for sharing debunked or baseless theories online, but his embrace of conspiracies is not limited to social media. He has also elevated false claims inside the White House and surrounded himself with cabinet officials promoting such theories.

That's the way the remarkably brief report started. We don't know why the Times used the term "specious" in the way it did, but let's not wander off track.

Yes, he actually did it! As the midnight hour drew near, the sitting president of the United States— the most powerful person in the world—reposted another "fringe" claim.

We're not sure why the Times used the term "fringe," but here's what the president reposted:

President Biden was executed in 2020. He was then replaced by a clone!

So the sitting president has said, or has at least seemed to say. It's obvious where this takes us:

That figure you saw in that famous debate back in June 2024? That wasn't President Biden at all, according to the powerful person who now sits in the White House. 

That wasn't President Biden at all! That was just a clone! So President Trump has now said. And yes, that's what he reposted on Saturday night. That's what he thereby said.

For journalists, an obvious problem arises in the course of reporting this matter. The question goes like this:

What sort of word should a journalist use to describe this astounding behavior? It isn't the first time Trump has done something like this—but what sorts of words should be used?

As you can see, the Times went with the term "outlandish" in its opening paragraph, and also in its headline. As the body of its short report proceeded, it used a few other terms, including such comically odd understatements as "false" and also "baseless."

Other news orgs chose stronger terms to describe the president's post. Below, you see some of the words which appeared in the headlines as other news orgs struggled to find a way to report what this person has done:

Trump Spreads Bizarre Conspiracy Theory That Biden Was Executed and Replaced by a Robot Clone

Trump Shares Unhinged Conspiracy Theory That Biden Is a Robot Clone 

Trump Amplifies Bonkers Conspiracy Theory That Biden Was ‘Executed’ in 2020 and Replaced By Clones

Mediaite went with "bonkers." Rolling Stone selected "bizarre;" The Daily Beast chose "unhinged."

Comically, Newsweek settled for the kinder-and-gentler "baseless;" USA Today went with "false."  But when Fox News reported what Trump had done, this was the headline that outspoken news org chose:

Trump shares post saying Biden was executed, replaced with clones

Just the facts, some editor said. In its headline and in its report, Fox News simply reported what Trump had (inferentially) said. Fox reported, then let readers decide.

While we're at it, let's add this:

This very morning, as we type, the Washington Post doesn't seem to have reported this latest behavior at all. Nothing to look at, the paper is saying. As in the past, to too now:

Nothing to see here! Just move along!

Various orgs chose various words to describe what this person had done. None of them chose the clinical (and colloquial) term which may take us to the heart of the matter:

Noen of them chose the clinical term in which the sitting president, once again, had advanced a "delusional" statement.

"Delusional!" The word is widely used in colloquial speech, but it's also a clinical term. 

It's right there in the DSM. As the leading authority on such matters notes, there is a clinical diagnosis known as "Delusional disorder." You can start to ponder the syndrome simply by clicking here.

We'll discuss such matters as the week proceeds— and any such clinical disorder is of course a human tragedy.  For today, let's say this:

Like the citizens of a famous realm whose emperor had a new suit of clothes, our major news orgs have worked very hard, for all these years, to avoid seeing what has often seemed to be sitting right there before them.

That avoidance of apparent reality isn't going to change today. Almost surely, it will never change at all. This is the way we humans are wired. This is the way we're built.

That said, we ourselves will spend the week discussing the (clinical) concepts of "Delusion" and "Delusional disorder."  Because there the president went again, this past Saturday night.

Meanwhile, also this:

Over Memorial Day weekend, battling a touch of the labyrinthitis, we headed off tin search of something more interesting that "all this now too much for us."

During our junior year in college, we took Deductive Logic from the late Professor Quine, Philosophy of Science from the late Professor Putnam. Aa far as we've ever known, each man was a thoroughly good and decent person.

Over that weekend, we learned something we'd never known before. We learned that Professors Quine and Putnam had collaborated on this at a later point in time:

Quine–Putnam indispensability argument

The Quine–Putnam indispensability argument is an argument in the philosophy of mathematics for the existence of abstract mathematical objects such as numbers and sets, a position known as mathematical platonism. It was named after the philosophers Willard Van Orman Quine and Hilary Putnam, and is one of the most important arguments in the philosophy of mathematics.

On its face, too funny! At least as described by the leading authority, this is what those highly regarded logicians had done:

In one of the most important arguments in the philosophy of mathematics, they had crested an argument for the existence of numbers! Or so the authority says!

Was that conduct delusional too? Is this just more of the way we humans are wired? Also, does this explain why our failing public discourse has received so little guidance from our greatest logicians and ethicists—from our greatest "philosophers?"

(From an earlier profile on Wikipedia: "A 2009 poll conducted among analytic philosophers named Quine as the fifth most important philosopher of the past two centuries.")

We'll throw those questions in as the week proceeds. For now, let's stick with this:

BREAKING! President Biden was executed in 2020! After he was executed, he was replaced by a clone! 

So said President Trump, last Saturday night. And, as many of those news orgs said:

The White House did not respond to requests for comment.

We wonder why that is.

Is something wrong with President Trump? If so, that would of course represent a tragic loss of human capability. The same was true of President Biden's apparent loss of cognitive capacity during his time in the White House, though possibly starting earlier.

Also this:

Is something wrong with the august journalists who still refuse—who are always going to refuse—to investigate or describe what's seems to be right there before them? 

Who still insist, in various ways, that there's nothing to look at there? That we should keep moving along?

Tomorrow: 2 + 2, the sitting president said