A DRUNK AND AN IDIOT IN CHARGE

 

TRUMP IS A DEMENTED FOOL, A CONVICTED CRIMINAL, AND A PUTIN PUPPET

 

NEIL STEINBERG

 

'The worst of the worst'

This is the Golden Age of Stupidity. Or is it the Renaissance of Ruthlessness? The Heyday of Hypocrisy? No reason it can't be all three, with an unhinged, jabbering dupe of a president, served by a growing army of craven underlings, hand-picked for their servility. Unfettered by the counterbalances and restraints the Founders intended to keep a president in check. Having himself fomented the worst act of rebellion since the Civil War, he dares fling out the word "treason" like spittle off the lips of someone having a seizure. Just one drop of venality in a continual downpour.

No matter. It's still good to say it, loudly and clearly, from time to time. Not because doing so represents anything new. Or does any good, except remind ourselves that, no matter how accepted it has become to many, despite the silent chorus of shrugs, this is all still unacceptable. Still very wrong. This is a continuing, grotesque abuse and departure from cherished American norms. Not just another Tuesday.

Particularly the ICE kidnappings — less prominent in Chicago the past few weeks, true, but still growing, as more masked thugs are hired, more detention camps built. Lives are being upended, parents torn from children, hard-working immigrants exiled even as they try to follow the law. 

 Yes, as the months grind on, it becomes difficult — first because one has to wonder, "What is the point?" — to find new ways to convey the venality, the gaslighting, the cruelty, the hypocrisy, the lies, the incompetence, the self-dealing, the corruption.

 Not that I am alone here. I'm blessed with smart, well-spoken readers, in the main. Yes, there are the denizens of the spam folder, vomiting back whatever Fox News told them last night — they care very much about the letter of the law, when it comes to immigrants, but when you wonder why that love of legality doesn't translate to their beloved leader's constant, blatant criminality, they flutter away. I spend little time reading their outpouring, less reacting to it, though occasionally I'll toss out a canned, "The scorn of traitors is praise to a patriot" or "It might come as a shock, but the low opinion of a dupe in thrall to a traitor doesn't carry the sting you seem to imagine it might."

But the bulk reflects the unease, pain, despair, insight of intelligent people confronting a nation gone mad. One cogent blog reader left this comment, anonymously, and in case you missed it, I want to highlight it today, because it has truth and brevity.

I don’t really know the ‘crime’ business…but, I’m guessing that anyone who is good at it … you know, the worst of the worst … they’re probably not out mowing lawns or shoveling show. I don’t know…it’s just a guess.

That's it, right? No more need be said. Today anyway. As for tomorrow...

HEATHER - 11-28-25

 

November 28, 2025 Heather Cox Richardson Nov 29 As Trump’s popularity continues to drop, the MAGA coalition shows signs of cracking, and Trump’s mental acuity slips, there is a frantic feel to the administration, as if Trump’s people are trying to grab all they can, while they can. A source has told The Telegraph that Trump is sending special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner to Moscow to offer Russia’s president Vladimir Putin U.S. recognition of Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea and most of the other four eastern oblasts of Ukraine: Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia. This is the territory covered in the “Mariupol Plan” in which Russian operatives told Trump’s 2016 campaign manager, Paul Manafort, they would help Trump win the election in exchange for his looking the other way as Russia took control of the region. Ten days ago, Barak Ravid and Dave Lawler of Axios reported on a 28-point plan that the U.S. was allegedly working on to end Russia’s war on Ukraine. Quickly, though, it became clear that the plan was actually a Russian plan that offered Russia everything it wanted—including giving Crimea and most of the four oblasts to Russia while forbidding Ukraine to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and limiting the size of its military—and offered Ukraine virtually nothing. Trump was demanding that Ukraine sign onto the plan by Thanksgiving. Then it turned out that the U.S. State Department had had nothing to do with the plan; it appeared to be the work of Witkoff, Kushner, and Kirill Dmitriev, an ally of Russian president Vladimir Putin who is under U.S. sanctions. Meanwhile, according to Dan De Luce, Courtney Kube, and Abigail Williams of NBC News, Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll delivered the plan to Ukraine and warned Ukrainian leaders they were losing the war and must settle. Diplomatic negotiations are not a normal role for a U.S. Army secretary, who is the top civilian official within the U.S. Department of Defense, responsible for manpower, personnel, equipment, finances, and so on in the U.S. Army. Driscoll is a close ally of Vice President J.D. Vance and seems to be gaining power as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth loses it. Neither Ukrainians nor Europeans had been consulted on the plan, and their leaders worked frantically to shift U.S. support back toward Ukraine, consistent with Washington’s formal position. Over the course of last week, Jeanna Smialek, Christopher F. Schuetze, and Lara Jakes of the New York Times reported, European and Ukrainian leaders persuaded Secretary of State Marco Rubio to include European nations and Ukraine in negotiations. Then, on Tuesday, November 25, 2025, Bloomberg published the transcript of an October 14 phone call between Witkoff and Russian foreign-policy advisor Yuri Ushakov, in which Witkoff acknowledged that a peace deal would involve Ukrainian land concessions and coached Ushakov on how to flatter Trump to get the peace deal the men wanted. It also published a transcript of an October 29 call between Ushakov and Dmitriev in which Dmitriev told Ushakov that a U.S. “peace” plan would be as close “as possible” to Russia’s demands. It is unclear who leaked the recordings to Bloomberg, but Shaun Walker of The Guardian reported speculation that the leak came from a source in U.S. intelligence who opposed the U.S. push to reward Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. The Independent reports that Putin is refusing to give up any of his demands for an end to the war, although Russia’s central bank has begun to sell gold reserves to shore up its faltering economy. Putin told reporters in Kyrgyzstan that Russia will continue to attack Ukraine “until the last Ukrainian dies” in order to gain control of Ukraine’s industrial east. A source told The Telegraph that the Trump administration is ready to make its own deal to recognize Russia’s control of that region. “It’s increasingly clear the Americans don’t care about the European position,” a source told The Telegraph. “They say the Europeans can do whatever they want.” Russia said it assumes it is negotiating with the U.S. alone. Tonight, Drew Hinshaw, Benoit Faucon, Rebecca Ballhaus, Thomas Grove, and Joe Parkinson of the Wall Street Journal dropped a bombshell report that Witkoff, Kushner, and Dmitriev designed their plan to bypass U.S. national security officials and create opportunities for U.S. businessmen to win multibillion-dollar deals to develop energy and rare-earth minerals in Russia, Ukraine, and the Arctic. “By dangling multibillion-dollar rare-earth and energy deals,” the journalists report, “Moscow could reshape the economic map of Europe—while driving a wedge between America and its traditional allies.” Meanwhile, for the past day, Trump’s social media account has been posting screeds against immigrants, using the Wednesday shooting of two members of the West Virginia National Guard stationed in Washington, D.C., as justification. As Joyce White Vance noted, a court ruled on November 20 that the deployment of the National Guard in the District of Columbia was illegal but stayed the order ending it until December 11 to permit the government to appeal. On Wednesday a suspect identified as Afghan national Rahmanullah Lakanwal shot Specialist Sarah Beckstrom, who died from her injuries, and Staff Sergeant Andrew Wolfe, who is critically injured, Lakanwal was also shot, but his injuries are reportedly not life threatening. Lakanwal worked for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency in Afghanistan, then came to the U.S. in 2021 as part of the evacuation and resettlement of Afghans after the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan. Lakanwal was granted asylum in the U.S. earlier this year. Last night—Thanksgiving—at 11:25 p.m., Trump’s social media account posted an image of an airplane packed with refugees from Afghanistan after the U.S. withdrew and the Afghan military collapsed in August 2021. The U.S. exit came from a February 29, 2020, agreement between the U.S. and the Taliban, but not the Afghan government, during the first Trump administration known as the Doha Agreement, or the “Agreement for bringing Peace to Afghanistan.” The U.S. promised to secure the release of 5,000 of the Taliban’s fighters imprisoned by the Afghan government and to withdraw U.S. troops by May 2021 in exchange for the Taliban promising to stop killing U.S. soldiers. When he took office, President Joe Biden extended the deadline until August 31 but did not reverse Trump’s commitment. As the U.S. pulled out the final 2,500 troops Trump had left in the country, the Afghan army collapsed. Disregarding both Trump’s own part in the exit from Afghanistan and Trump’s own administration’s vetting of Lakanwal for asylum, Trump’s social media post blamed “Joe Biden and his Thugs” for “the horrendous airlift from Afghanistan.” It claimed that “[h]undreds of thousands of people poured into our Country totally unvetted and unchecked,” and said: “We will fix it.” Just one minute after linking the shooting to Biden’s policies, Trump’s social media account continued: “A very Happy Thanksgiving salutation to all of our Great American Citizens and Patriots who have been so nice in allowing our Country to be divided, disrupted, carved up, murdered, beaten, mugged, and laughed at, along with certain other foolish countries throughout the World, for being ‘Politically Correct,’ and just plain STUPID, when it comes to Immigration.” What followed was a screed that sounded like it was written by white nationalist Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, who is on a crusade to expel immigrants from the U.S. It was divided into two posts, with what seemed designed to be the second post published a minute before what looked like it was supposed to be the first. In reverse order, then, the account claimed, falsely, that most immigrants are “from failed nations, or from prisons, mental institutions, gangs, or drug cartels,” and that they are supported extravagantly by taxes paid by U.S. citizens. It blamed refugees for the nation’s “[f]ailed schools, high crime, urban decay, overcrowded hospitals, housing shortages, and large deficits,” and used a slur to describe Minnesota governor Tim Walz, claiming he has done nothing to get rid of his state’s Somalian refugees. The next post blamed immigration policy for eroding the U.S. standard of living, and announced a dramatic purge of immigrants from the country: “I will permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries to allow the U.S. system to fully recover, terminate all of the millions of Biden illegal admissions, including those signed by Sleepy Joe Biden’s Autopen, and remove anyone who is not a net asset to the United States, or is incapable of loving our Country, end all Federal benefits and subsidies to noncitizens of our Country, denaturalize migrants who undermine domestic tranquility, and deport any Foreign National who is a public charge, security risk, or non-compatible with Western Civilization.” The idea of stripping some of the country’s 24.5 million naturalized citizens of their citizenship changes the nature of what it means to be an American. As Faiza Patel and Margy O’Herron of the Brennan Center noted last month, from 1990 to 2017 only about 11 people a year lost their citizenship, usually for having hidden serious criminal activity or human rights violations in applying for citizenship. In contrast, observers today note that when Hitler came to power in 1933, the German government began to strip Jews, as well as Roma and political opponents, of their German citizenship, paving the way for the confiscation of their property, their rights, and eventually their lives. Trump’s social media post went on: “These goals will be pursued with the aim of achieving a major reduction in illegal and disruptive populations, including those admitted through an unauthorized and illegal Autopen approval process. Only REVERSE MIGRATION can fully cure this situation. Other than that, HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL, except those that hate, steal, murder, and destroy everything that America stands for—You won’t be here for long!” On Tuesday, lawmakers said the counterterrorism division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has opened an investigation into the six lawmakers who made a video reminding service members that they must refuse unlawful orders and that the lawmakers would stand behind them as they did so. Trump loyalists have turned their statement on its head, insisting that since Trump has never given an unlawful order, their video encouraged service members to disregard lawful orders and thus was “sedition” punishable by death. Today, Alex Horton and Ellen Nakashima of the Washington Post reported that Defense Secretary Hegseth told a Joint Special Operations commander overseeing an attack on a small vessel carrying 11 people on September 2 to “kill everybody.” A missile strike shattered the boat and set it afire, but two men survived. A second strike fulfilled Hegseth’s order. According to Horton and Nakashima, the commander, Admiral Frank “Mitch” Bradley, said “the survivors were still legitimate targets because they could theoretically call other traffickers to retrieve them and their cargo.” In a report, the Joint Special Operations Command said the second strike was not to kill survivors, but to remove a navigation hazard. Former military lawyer Todd Huntley, who advised special operations forces for seven years, told the Washington Post journalists that the strikes against civilians amount to murder because the U.S. is not at war, while even during wartime, killing those who cannot fight back is a war crime. Representative Seth Moulton (D-MA), a Marine Corps veteran who sits on the House Armed Services Committee, said: “Mark my words: It may take some time, but Americans will be prosecuted for this, either as a war crime or outright murder.” Hegseth dismissed the story as “fake news.” The administration justifies its strikes on the Venezuelan boats by claiming to fight “narcoterrorism,” but today Trump announced a full pardon for former president of Honduras Juan Orlando Hernández, who was found guilty last year by an American jury of conspiring to import 400 tons of cocaine into the United States. He was sentenced to 45 years in federal prison. Trump announced the pardon on social media, writing “MAKE HONDURAS GREAT AGAIN!” Tonight, Andrew Desiderio of Punchbowl News reported that Senate Armed Services Committee chair Roger Wicker (R-MS) and the committee’s top Democrat, Jack Reed (D-RI), issued a statement saying: “The Committee is aware of recent news reports—and the Department of Defense’s initial response—regarding alleged follow-on strikes on suspected narcotics vessels in the SOUTHCOM area of responsibility. The Committee has directed inquiries to the Department, and we will be conducting vigorous oversight to determine the facts related to these circumstances.”

SICK DEMENTED DOG

 

The Mainstreaming of Extremism

 

The Mainstreaming of Extremism

This is how the normalization of hatred works. Not with a bang, but with a shrug.

Katie Phang Nov 29

 

Over the Thanksgiving holiday, I was privileged to be able to travel to Europe with my family. We spent a few days in Amsterdam and I fell in love with the canals, the delicious food, and the kind people. Of course, we visited the Van Gogh Museum and I marveled at being able to see priceless works of art within just feet of where I stood and to learn about the amazing life of an artist whose genius was only realized after his death.

But the most powerful and memorable moment was when we visited the Anne Frank House. I thought it was important for my 11-year-old daughter to witness first-hand what another little girl, very close to her own age, experienced at the hands of the Nazis. To feel the cramped conditions of that Secret Annex, to listen to the voice of Anne’s father, Otto Frank, as he explained the crushing darkness of losing his entire family. To re-live the life of a brave little girl who may have passed 761 days in near-silence, but whose written words fought loudly to be heard for decades after her death.

Anne Frank’s life is one of the clearest moral markers in modern history. A young girl who was just 13 years old when she was forced into hiding because hate became law. A child whose voice survived when she tragically didn’t. Her diary is a testament to what happens when bigotry stops being fringe and becomes policy. Anne’s life is a reminder that the worst chapters of history begin not with gas chambers, but with rhetoric, with excuses, and with normalization.

And that is exactly why the current platforming and soft-pedaling of a white nationalist like Nick Fuentes by major conservative media figures should set off alarms for anyone paying attention.

Anne Frank was born in 1929 in Germany, a country sliding into authoritarianism. When the Nazi Regime made antisemitism an organizing principle of its government, her family fled to Amsterdam. For a few brief years, they thought they had dodged the extremism. But hate doesn’t respect borders, and by May of 1940, the Nazis had invaded the Netherlands and imported their ideology into the region.

By 1942, the signs were unmistakable: Jews were banned from public life, forced out of schools, stripped of all of their rights, and increasingly “othered”. When a deportation notice arrived for Anne’s sister, Margot, the entire family went into hiding in the Secret Annex behind Otto Frank’s company. Eight people shared just a few cramped rooms. They lived under constant threat, dependent on the courage of others, their own discipline, and the sheer will to survive the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam.

Anne wrote in her diary because it was the only freedom she had left. She dreamt of becoming a journalist one day. Her diary captured not only the daily strain and stress of hiding, but the rapid moral decay outside of the walls of their self-imposed prison. She documented the kind of danger that grows slowly at first: a society that accepts hate as a political identity that then becomes a government that codifies bigotry into laws.

The Secret Annex was discovered in August 1944 after informants tipped off the Nazis. This was just two months after the successful landing by Allied Forces at Normandy. I visited those incredible beaches last year; if only the soldiers that fell that day knew the desperate hope those trapped under the rule of the Nazis had for their success – as captured in Anne’s diary.

Anne and her sister were first sent to Auschwitz, but then the two were transferred to another Nazi concentration camp, Bergen-Belsen, in 1945. Bergen-Belsen would be their death beds. Otto Frank was the sole survivor of the Frank family, and he published her diary because he understood its purpose: to warn the world of the dangers of looking away, or even worse, collaborating or sympathizing. And today, we need that warning more than ever.

Let’s be clear: Nick Fuentes is not a “provocateur.” He is not “edgy.” He is not “contrarian.” Fuentes is a 27-year old, self-professed white supremacist, misogynist, Holocaust denier, anti-Semite, and a man who openly praises the ideology that murdered Anne Frank and millions of others deemed inferior. His beliefs are not ambiguous; they are explicit embraced and proudly broadcast. Fuentes posts conspiracy theories on social media like “white genocide and Jewish subversion” to his more than 1 million followers on the cesspool of X.

Fuentes has said that Hitler was “really fucking cool” and has denied that the Holocaust ever happened. But, in the same breath, he has compared the genocide of millions of Jews in concentration camps to the baking of cookies. And for years, even the farthest right corners of conservative media kept him at arm’s length. But now, the wall has cracked and those cracks are fracturing fast directly from the top. In recent months, public figures like Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly have treated Fuentes not as a toxic, far-right extremist, but as someone whose presence is negotiable under the guise of “public debate.”

Sidenote: I’m often asked where I go to do research for my reporting. One of the main research tools I use is called Ground News. Ground News shows me how stories are being covered from different political perspectives, and it highlights “blindspots” where only left-wing or right-wing media is covering a story.

Ground News has been a great sponsor of my YouTube channel, and they’re now sponsoring this post as well. I worked out a deal with them: if you go to ground.news/phang, you can get 40% off Ground News’ top-tier Vantage plan, which gives you unlimited access to all the research tools I use.

Ground News is subscriber-funded, so they don’t rely on ads that could introduce bias. By subscribing, you support both our channel and their independent team working to keep the media transparent.

Now back to where I left off.

Just last month, Carlson and Fuentes hung out like old buddies on Carlson’s podcast for more than 2 hours. That interview has now been viewed by more than 6.5 million people and counting on YouTube. Carlson’s idea- and image-laundering of Fuentes included portraying him as being just another voice that deserves to be heard because the world couldn’t possibly cancel Fuentes for having a different point of view. Just like the canonization of Charlie Kirk and the reframing of many of his odious ideas as being acceptable in the arena of “political debate,” the negative reactions to Nick Fuentes’ even more odious views are now being framed as “overblown” by folks like Tucker Carlson.

Kelly herself entertained conversations with Carlson and Ben Shapiro that treat Fuentes’ extremism as a potentially political inconvenience rather than a moral disqualifier. Her recent defense of Carlson’s sit-down with Fuentes, as well as her defense of Fuentes’ right to say extremist things because of “open dialogue,” veer dangerously into the land of normalizing anti-Semitism and hate. Fuentes, who would once have been radioactive, is being publicly shuffled toward respectability, all with the help of Carlson and Kelly, who provide the permission structure for people not only to listen to Fuentes, but to consider his raging anti-Semitism to be some version of legitimate policy.

And don’t forget about Convicted Felon Donald Trump’s infamous 2022 dinner at Mar-a-Lago with not only Nick Fuentes, but Kanye West, both of whom are in a race to the bottom of the barrel when it comes to who can be the most anti-Semitic. Trump breaking bread with Fuentes and West is yet another example of the normalization of hatred.

So this isn’t about one pundit or one interview. It’s about the signal being sent to the millions of viewers and followers of Carlson and Kelly. When major conservative voices minimize Fuentes’ disgusting ideology, they shift the boundary of what counts as acceptable. They turn Holocaust denial into a topic of conversation instead of a red line that must never be crossed. They turn antisemitism and white supremacy into a matter of opinion instead of a proven existential threat.

Extremism doesn’t rise because zealots get louder. It rises because powerful people who moonlight as thought leaders decide to play footsies with dangerous ideas. Because gatekeepers stop guarding the gate and the people with platforms act as if their responsibility is optional.

Anne Frank’s story is often wrapped in sentimentality, but the reality of her murder is harsher. Anne Frank didn’t die because her world was filled with monsters. She died because enough ordinary people decided that the monsters weren’t their problem. They looked away. They adjusted their discomfort in ways that allowed the unacceptable to become the normal.

Today’s political climate may not be 1930s Europe, but it’s getting damn close because some of the mechanics are becoming disturbingly familiar: the conspiracy theories, the dehumanizing language, the minimization of hate as “just politics.” The elevation of extremists as if they deserve to be taken seriously assisted by a far-right media ecosystem willing to normalize bigotry because it drives engagement and subscribers and followers.

There is a direct line between dismissing extremist rhetoric and emboldening extremist behavior. Nick Fuentes knows this and his supporters know this. And the public figures who treat him as a political curiosity should know it, too.

The rise of Nick Fuentes tells us something troubling about where the American Right is heading. When someone who denies the Holocaust and praises Hitler is treated as someone worth platforming versus unequivocally condemning, the line between mainstream conservatism and white supremacist ideology becomes dangerously thin, if not erased. The responsibility to draw that line clearly and forcefully belongs to everyone with a platform, especially those whose voices shape public opinion.

Anne Frank wrote that she believed people were “really good at heart.” She wrote it at a time when there was zero evidence of decency left for that kind of optimism. It wasn’t naïveté on her part; it was a clear challenge to us all. If Anne’s story teaches us anything, it’s that we don’t get to be passive bystanders to the normalization of hate. We don’t get to treat extremism as a ratings opportunity. And we don’t get to forget what happens when society decides that the worst ideas deserve a seat at the table.

History has already shown us where this road ends.

 

PUTIN'S PUPPET

 

GRIFTER GRABS GIFTS

 

MAGA BENEFITS