What you’re about to see below is how *reporting* in the Oval Office takes place in the year 2025. It has never been this bad in modern history and yes I do remember Richard Nixon and Dan Rather going at it. Rather fondly, in fact. Watergate happened when I was in college. The Washington Post was a fearless organ of journalism back in that day and age, helmed by relentless crusading truth gatherer, Ben Bradlee. Nobody could anticipate that decades later it would devolve into the Bezos Bugle, owned by the fourth richest man in the world — whose agenda was anything but a free press, as we understand that term.
If you were able to listen to this thing, without wanting to rip your hair out, good for you. Trump tells the reporter, “You were guilty.” No, he was never guilty, Donald, because “guilt” is a concept in criminal law and this was a civil case. So the correct legal term of art here is “liable” — but it’s questionable that he even was that, because Trump didn’t “win” that case, or any of the other cases he references here. He settled them. Winning and settling are two very very different outcomes in a legal case.
Plus, I don’t know about anybody else, but this daily insulting of the reporters in the room is really getting old. Today it was Jonathan Karl (I think) on the hotseat. A few days ago Trump told Caitlin Collins that she worked for “fake news” and “didn’t know anything.” She knows more about the issues in your office than you do, Donald. All of these people do. It’s their job to know these things. It’s also your job but you just don’t do it.
And I frankly hate this adolescent taunting, “George Slopadopolous.” it wasn’t funny the first time. It wasn’t even shocking the first time, because it was an obvious schoolyard jibe at the host with a long Greek name. It was simply a stupid comment, made by a stupid man. And yet daily we hear Trump repeat it as if it was scintillating wit and there’s a reason for that: Trump’s out of original material. All he can do at any given moment is repeat something that he created a riff on, weeks, months, years ago. And if more of his MAGAs were present, they would laugh, hoot and howl, just to stroke his ego and don’t think it doesn’t enrage him that he’s in a quiet room, alone with “the enemy of the people.”
Here’s Maggie Reed giving us some much needed comic relief, lifted from one of these *interviews.*
Rated F for Freedom and FDT.
— Maggie Reed (@mermaidmamamaggie.bsky.social) 2025-10-25T00:28:15.520Z
And here’s a thoughtful insight from Robert Reich to bear in mind.
The richest man on earth owns X.The second richest man on earth is about to acquire TikTok and his family could soon own both Paramount and Warner Bros.The third richest man owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.The fourth richest man owns The Washington Post. See the problem here?
— Robert Reich (@rbreich.bsky.social) 2025-10-25T19:00:14.920762Z
We need to look at this with a clear eye. We do not live in normal times. Independent media is likely the only place you’re going to get the truth, because independent media outlets, including the one you’re reading right now, are devoted to culling through all the information that’s out there and showing you the under reported news items or the badly reported news items.
Just in the past 48 hours we’ve seen Canada’s Prime Minister announce the halt of economic progress forward with the United States. And we’ve seen Trump react like a total child and “terminate” all trade deals and then raise tariffs 10%, bla bla. But the real truth is that what upset Trump was Mark Carney’s speech and NOT some video of a Ronald Reagan speech which had been out in the world for almost two weeks already.
Another story flying under the radar is the victory in the Susie Wiles faction of the White House. Remember reading here about what a flake Paul Ingrassia was? And his mommy, who physically showed up in Congress to personally harass two House members who didn’t like her son and didn’t want to see him confirmed? Friday, Rick Wilson reported one his sources confirmed that Wiles persuaded John Thunes to shitcan the Ingrassia nomination.
That’s a win for Wiles and a loss for Stephen Miller. But do you think you’re going to see it reported as such? It’s these kinds of covers and smokescreens that have enabled Trump to get to power in the first place and then return to power in 2024. The press is afraid of him and with excellent reason to feel that way.
The irony of what a lot of White House reporters face is that in any normal journalistic career, to ride aboard Air Force One (an environment where after you place your first coffee order, it is remembered forever more how you take your coffee) and sit in the White House press room is the pinnacle of a career. And yet those who are in those spaces get openly berated and castigated to their faces.
Trump can’t answer anything other than a softball question, which is why each day it’s more ugliness in the Oval Office and aboard Air Force One. Trump descecrates everything he touches. And anyone he touches, whether literally or with his words, comes away soiled and worse for the experience.
No informed person voted for Trump in 2024. Anybody who voted for Trump was somebody that got deluded by right-wing propaganda and fear and felt they “had” to vote for the known factor, a case of “the Devil you know is better than the one you don’t.” No, that was a bad idea and we’re already paying. And we’re still over two months away from even the new year.
I don’t know how well a hamstrung, oligarch-owned media system can serve us. I believe the answer to that is “poorly.” So let us turn to independent media, which has always been known for its interesting insights but now is offering us the alternative between truth and lies. At least as long as Trump is in office.
And I cannot wait to see what happens with DRUNKSEC’s newest press corps in the Pentagon, helmed by the likes of InfoWars and Epoch News. Sweet Jesus on a bagel. No wonder Steve Bannon thinks he can just lawnmower over the 22nd Amendment and Trump can have a third term at will. Who can blame him for thinking that way, on these facts?
Despite all their careful construction efforts forming their own information bubbles, mainly from their own hot air ; these bubbles all eventually have to brush against reality, and burst.
One good example of this is the Epstein case, another will undoubtedly be the East Wing demolition, and the rising inflation and unemployment.
Their lies can only be sustained until reality denies them, as all lies fail in the end.
“No informed person voted for Trump in 2024.”
I know it’s probably a bit late for you to edit but you do need some kind of qualifier there since I’m pretty sure every single one of those idiots spreading the Fox “News” propaganda IS “informed”–and in pretty much every sense. And I can’t imagine you’d find a single one of them who would admit (not even if directed under oath) to voting for anyone other than Drumpf in 2024 (or 2020 or 2016–in the latter at least, not after he’d wormed his way into the GOP nomination; some of them may have voted for one of the sane, or saner, candidates during the primaries but after the nomination was clinched, I’m sure they all fell in line).
And I can’t really imagine the likes of the Muskrat or Buttzos or any of the other billionaire class could be considered “uninformed.” Every one of them knew what Drumpf was and I’d bet every one of them still went into the voting booth (more likely, cast their mail-in ballot; surely none of them would deign to mingle with the “common folk”–not even those paltry millionaires–at a “polling station”) and cast their vote for Drumpf.