Looking at TIME’s 100 Best Podcasts of All Time is like stepping back in time, or at least stepping back inside the bubble of the Left. No one should be surprised that the writer who chose the bulk of the podcasts is this woman:

Dockterman chose 61 of the podcasts, with the remaining 100 divided among Rachel Brodsky (10), Shannon Carlin (10), Jake Kring-Schreifels (13), Rachel Sonis (2), Rebecca Schneid (2), and Sean Gregory (2).

They couldn’t find one person to name Joe Rogan, or any voices outside the left-wing bubble? No. They could not. You can view the list here.

Their list is as one would expect — buttoned up, intersectional, and woke. There are a few good ones they dug up, like Welcome to Night Vale, In the Dark, and You Must Remember This. But for the most part, vanilla all the way down the line. And just like that, TIME becomes irrelevant and a thing of the past, at least where podcasts are concerned.

It appears to me that they simply selected the ones they listened to, and in that case, the list will only be as interesting as the people making it.

Dockterman is your typical Democratic base voter and is, to my mind, everything that’s wrong with American culture. I don’t mean to blame her specifically, it’s just the vibe of a certain kind of millennial’s taste that is often too gentle, overly fragile, always playing it safe for fear of offending. My Gen-X sensibilities crave more true grit.

I am not a Joe Rogan listener. I’ll listen on occasion if I like the guest. I appreciate his long-form format and his willingness to discuss any topic. Do I always agree with him or like what he says? No. But there is no question he didn’t just change the game. He revolutionized it.

American culture has been fundamentally altered by podcasts, but especially those that broke out of the Left’s grip on culture. They allowed voices to speak out that the mainstream media would never dare. The TIME list exists inside that suffocating world of groupthink.

Here is just one example of the kinds of podcasts that changed the conversation and broke new ground:

I can’t help but think the mainstream media and culture in general are missing a whole new counterculture that’s passing them by.

South Park mocks Trump, The Left Celebrates

From Wired:

IN AN INTERVIEW with Vanity Fair in September, South Parkcreators Trey Parker and Matt Stone all but swore off satirizing Donald Trump, with Parker noting, “I don’t know what more we could possibly say.”

We found out what more they could say yesterday, in brutal fashion. The same day Paramount announced a five-year streaming deal with South Park, including 50 new episodes, the show’s 27th season premiere mercilessly mocked both President Trump and the network for capitulating to his demands, settling with him over the 60 Minutes lawsuit, and canceling The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. The episode, called “Sermon on the ’Mount,” did not hold back on crass jokes aimed at Trump, showing him with a “teeny tiny” penis both in animation and as a deepfake and portraying him as Satan’s lover in a style reminiscent of the gay Saddam Hussein character from the 1999 movie South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut.

You can watch their unfunny video here.

It was obvious to me upon viewing the video that they were clinging to their cred among their base. If they are in any way shown to be backing off from Trump, there would be endless columns about it from the bloviators in journalism. They would say they sold out. They’re no longer relevant. Going after Trump wins them necessary points and keeps the whole thing on track.

While it’s irritating watching Chris Hayes and Pod Save America take a victory lap, one can take solace in knowing that Matt and Try just showed how afraid they were and exactly who they were afraid of, and it isn’t Trump.

Now, they can safely go after the Left, and no one can call them Trump supporters. Did anyone think they wouldn’t mock Trump? They want to prove they still got it. The only problem is that it isn’t funny.

The problem is that Trump has been mocked and mocked and mocked and mocked for ten years. It’s not funny. They’ve made the Satan jokes. They’ve made the dick jokes. They have said it and done it, and it isn’t funny. The only good joke in it is that Trump mixes up Iraq and Iran. Otherwise, YAWN.

The hive mind will play along and pretend there was any courage in any of this. There wasn’t. Courage would be mocking the culturally powerful, aka the Left.

Russiagate and Watergate

This is a fascinating interview between Hugh Hewitt and Geoff Shepard, who wrote The Nixon Conspiracy, discussing the parallels between uncovering Obama’s involvement in Russiagate and Watergate. I thought you might find it interesting.

I agree with Hugh Hewitt, who says at the end he does not believe charges should be brought against President Obama because it is bad for the country to persecute a former president. I agree with that, which is half the reason I voted for Trump. If the Democrats are the only side that persecutes their political rivals, then they’re the dictators.

I think Shepard is saying that Nixon wasn’t really guilty, but I don’t think that’s what he’s saying now about Obama. You decide.

And just for fun, the babies do Hunter Biden.

I’m working on a longer piece, but thought I’d send these your way.

This is the very thing Trump warned Americans about during his second campaign for the presidency and the very thing he was condemned as a racist for saying — AGAIN.

What he claimed about border crossers has been true - there have been rapes, murders, gang takeovers of buildings and now, terrorism. Something tells me this is only the beginning of what’s to come.

The media’s hesitation in calling out terrorism, even the literal definition of it that just occurred in Boulder, speaks volumes about the fanatics that have captured nearly all of them. They know many of their readers will call them racists the minute they use that word.

What’s funny about it is how comfortable all of them have been for ten years now, but especially after January 6th, calling MAGA “domestic extremists” and terrorists. Imagine if Trump supporters had done what these “Free Palestine” extremists did.

The “Free Palestine” movement has been simmering through Generation Woke for decades. I know because my daughter told me way back when Wonder Woman came out that her social justice friends did not want to see it because Gal Gadot was Israeli.

Israel vs. Palestine feeds into the oppressor/oppressed mindset perfectly because they can separate “Zionist” from “Jewish.” Hatred of Zionists is where the far Left and the far Right horseshoe into each other, along with Gen-Z, and just like that, acts of extremists are to be muted in the press. And it doesn’t matter if a person is a Zionist or a Jew. Some things never change.

The virtue signal, “Free Palestine,” has become the rallying cry of a wide range of people, from Woketopians to White Supremacists.

I stay away from it because I see both sides and understand why people feel the way they do on both sides. Not that I defend Hamas, but just that I understand why people would be concerned with that kind of killing and bloodshed. They should be concerned, no matter where it takes place.

War is hell, but Hamas started the war. Israel fought back. No one fights a war to lose. There will always be bloodshed. There will always be carnage. No, it is not “genocide.” It’s war, and that’s bad enough. There’s nothing worse.

The point of the attack by Hamas was to kill and torture Jews. It wasn’t to fight for Palestine’s freedom. There were better ways to do that. At the same time, Israel has gone so far that, with the entire world’s media apparatus turned against them, they’ve lost the PR war, and that is why there is terrorism against Jews here.

Jews have been dehumanized to the point where some psycho could burn people alive in broad daylight, and the press won’t call it terrorism.

A quick search for “Boulder, terrorism” yields these headlines.

Only Fox News tells it like it is - it was terrorism by an illegal border crosser who came to the US under the Biden free-for-all. The ugly truth is the direct result of what Democrats are now fighting to protect. They should all hang their heads in shame today.

Lie until you get caught, and if you get caught, like about getting caught. Lie about what you knew and when you knew it, what you thought and when you thought it, and if you do all of that, you will be accepted and embraced inside utopia.

Resistance-cringe is unbearable to people like me because nothing is more loathsome than the self one has outgrown. Or maybe Stephen Colbert puckering up and smooching James Comey’s behind is more loathsome. But Comey can’t sell his book if he doesn’t surf the resistance-cringe.

Next up will be THE BOSS hitting all the talk shows because he has a new biopic coming out, and this is Return of the King, or so he believes. He will hit Colbert and get his resistance-cringe applause.

What else do they have to sell by now? How do the equivalent of New York high society in the Gilded Age feel “important” and “useful”!? They need absolution for their sins of wealth and privilege, not to mention WHITENESS. What else do they have except to cling to a movement so over it has slipped into the realm of cringe we’ve shed long ago, like “You go, girl” and “feel the burn” (or “feel the Bern”).

So they plan to bury this story and pivot as fast as they can back to Trump and his administration, to hold the powerful to account, even though they haven’t done that for the past TEN YEARS. But they must because the resistance (cringe) must live on.

Here is Bill O’Reilly incredulous that “semi-hot brother to the disgraced/important one” Chris Cuomo doesn’t care if Biden had cancer or not, as the sitting president.

Does it matter if Biden had cancer? Of course, it matters. Well, not if you’re a swamp creature whose entire life has been spent in politics, going back to the 1970s. Then, you can tell the FBI to deep-six the laptop, censor speech, and hide cognitive decline. It is like Chinatown — he owns the police.

The message at the end of that movie — brilliant as it was and we lament Hollywood will never be that brilliant ever again — forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.

And in a way, that rings true now. The corruption is so deep, the complicity so broad, it almost feels hopeless even to care anymore.

Watching them all pivot away, even as Megyn Kelly rips Jake Tapper a new one on her show, tells you everything. It reminds me of that great scene in The Insider when Sixty Minutes is caught pandering to Big Corporate and selling out their source.

“The cat, totally out of the bag…”

Their elitism cost them their credibility. But if their credibility is lost and none of them are around to see or hear it, did it happen at all?

They can’t even manage the little things, like why they have crapped all over Conservative media for so long, building their house of straw instead of bricks. It’s easy. They just say, Oh, our house mostly stood the strength of that storm. The dining room table is still intact.

Resistance-cringe is the best thing about watching Marco Rubio filet the Senate Democrats, especially poor, sad Chris Van Hollen:

They lost because their deception and lying are easy to expose, and if cameras are on them, they can only hide so much. Rubio lapped them at every turn. But turn on CBS News or Rachel Maddow, and you’ll see their comfortable pivot, their denial of reality. Rinse, repeat.

The Democrats will die on the hill of turning Abrego Garcia into a martyr, even though he smacked his wife around so hard and so relentlessly that she feared for her life, just as they ignored good ol’ Doug Emhoff smacking his girlfriend so hard she turned around (allegedly).

They have no clue as to why Trump defeated them, and they don’t even care, not really. In their minds, they are temporarily out of power. To preserve their “resistance,” they have abandoned the American people, the normies, all of us.

Meanwhile, Trump’s poll numbers are climbing, and who will buy that Springsteen record? I can’t even imagine it. Sitting there, rocking out to Thunder Road and hearing his garbled caw about Trump and feeling like yeah, that’s STICKING IT TO THE MAN! It’s cringe, is what it is.

I would prefer that the investigation into Biden’s cognitive decline delve into the Afghanistan withdrawal, yet no one talks about that. Could his impairment mean he botched that operation so badly that it killed 13 American soldiers and likely sparked two wars? It’s a question worth asking, yet no one will ask it.

I will be reading the Jake Tapper/Alex Thompson book and report back with a review.

Rock Springs, WY

His hit piece on Matt Taibbi, whom he says he has “respect” for and calls a friend, before launching into a tirade about how Matt has sold out, is a victim of audience capture and has only Conservative and MAGA readers.

That, plus another takedown in the form of a book, was enough to inspire a lengthy and well-deserved smackdown from Matt on Racket called Ode to Scum, which now has over 1,600 likes and over 1,000 comments.

The first of these says:

It’s a great piece, illustrative of Matt’s talent as a writer:

I’m absolutely against throwing Öztürk in ICE detention over an op-ed, but similarly against using contempt of Congress to throw Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon in jail, a bullying tactic not used since McCarthy. I was against incarcerating hundreds of J6 protesters based on the same concept now offered by Rubio against visa-holders alleged to be harboring terroristic ideas, intent on a “ruckus.” The Bannon episode was upsetting because it was so clearly about shutting down a media voice for what Lincoln Project jackass Rick Wilson called “four vital months.” That was in addition to the five million indictments prosecutors dropped on Trump (after raiding his attorney’s office in a nod to the 6th Amendment), as well as the fact he was nearly assassinated and would likely be in jail if it were not for an election.

It’s my impression (in part through reporting) that the Trump White House feels itself in a fight for its life and is advertising its willingness to color outside constitutional lines to bring down its targets. That leaves us staring at a protracted battle between two powerful rule-breaking camps, an unprecedented situation and one I haven’t been sure how to think about. Apparently this hesitation is not genuine. Woodhouse and others who’ve raced back into the TDS camp are certain that though I was right to resist media pile-ons before, “that was then, and this is now,” because “if there’s a suffocating, hegemonic political monoculture today, it’s MAGA.”

MAGA is hegemonic? Really? Exactly the same people consider it exactly as disreputable (more, even). Google search runs in reverse now? Wikipedia bars mainstream sources? NPR isn’t still humming? Harvard isn’t still teaching “Sexual Life of Colonialism?” The unfairly accused have all received apologies? Shit Pulitzers have been given back and newspapers wrote ten billion corrections? When it’s all taken back we can talk. Trump’s in the White House, but his power base is still mostly all voters, and I’m not sure his people are wrong to think they’ve got maybe a year to smash big law, academia, the media, the DC nomenklatura, the EU, and everything else on their shit list before those entities send the hammer right back. They’re probably also right that if Trump fails, we’ll be back to where we were at the moment of the record scratch seven months ago, staring at a more organized and cynical effort at authoritarianism, with more sophisticated plans for higher “guardrails.”

That’s my personal opinion. I could be wrong, but it’s what I think. Or, it’s not what I think, but I owe Jim Jordan a favor and I’m trembling before a massive MAGA readership that a conga line of self-righteous not-at-all cunts apparently knows better than me. Ugh, fuck these people. Fuck them hard. Let’s just be straight with each other. Why does it need to be complicated?

Now, Woodhouse has written a response:

And:

He questioned his integrity because his integrity is questionable. It is? Based on what? He doesn’t write enough about the war in Gaza? He doesn’t scream about Trump being “just as bad” as the Biden administration?

“Gonzo” style, by the way, is called style. It’s called talent. It’s called the man can write, and that’s why people read him now and always have. Is he using his large platform to do what Leighton Woodhouse and Glenn Greenwald are doing? Not really. There is room for all different kinds of voices in alternative media. That’s what is great about it.

I don’t agree with everything Glenn or Matt says, and don’t need to agree with them. I trust them to tell me the truth about what they think. I think hit pieces are destructive and creepy, especially when they pretend to know the subject’s mind, as this one does.

I come from a world of deception and delusion, where we all functioned as one mind and were never allowed to disagree or dissent. I was a good soldier for the Democrats. I attacked Glenn, Matt, and other free thinkers every day online. I saw them as “the enemy.”

It was the truth I sought as I tumbled out of the Left, and the lantern dropped from the sky. I was lost.

I decided I wouldn’t draw a partisan line and would no longer separate myself between “us and them.” It didn’t matter to me how someone voted, just so long as they were willing to speak out in a time of delusion and deception.

What we lived through in the Trump era, starting with spying on his campaign, through Russiagate and the four indictments, two impeachments, non-stop attacks, is unprecedented in American history. The Twitter Files was a story on par with Watergate, even if the establishment press would never notice or care.

Now, there is an attempt to rewrite history and pretend none of it ever happened, that the FBI wasn’t working with social media to rehearse suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop, that the Democrats weren’t in constant contact with Twitter and Facebook to censor thought and speech.

That there wasn’t an army of fanatics pointing fingers, accusing people, and purging them from utopia, aided by powerful corporations happy to throw people under the bus to save themselves. It did happen. We lived through it, and no, Trump is not “just as bad.” He doesn’t have that kind of power.

The beauty of the American system is freedom of the press, too. But over the past ten years, we watched one political party capture the press in ways we’ve never seen. There was no such thing as holding the powerful to account. There was only one objective: get Trump. There is nothing like that in place now.

Trump is being challenged at every turn, from the mainstream media to activist judges to online power players, and on and on it goes. That is the very definition of holding the powerful to account.

To say Matt’s readers are only Conservatives and MAGA is to betray your ignorance about the thriving ecosystem that exists outside the mainstream. If you don’t know that world, you can’t correctly assess it. Are there plenty of MAGA readers there, like there are on my Substack? Sure. There are also plenty of other kinds of readers, lapsed Leftists like me. It’s the quality of his work that draws readers.

They come for Matt, I think, because they can’t stand that he doesn’t draw the line between “us and them.” They believe they can define “evil” and need other smart people to agree and validate it. If they do not agree, there must be something wrong with them; their integrity is questionable, and they’re doing it for the money. What else could explain it?

I am not here to judge Leighton Woodhouse’s motives. He seems like a decent and honest person to me. I had not heard of him until he wrote a hit piece about Matt. He did, for whatever reason, block me on Twitter. I made him angry enough at one point to do that, though I have no memory of it.

The problem is that I don’t think he reads much of Matt's writing or listens to America This Week. If he did, I don’t think he would have been able to conclude Matt’s critics “have a point.” They don’t. They just want him on their side.

Scipio, Utah

Finally, I had to accept that the guy singing those songs about going down to the river or driving muscle cars didn’t exist. It was a character Springsteen made up to become the famous rock star he wanted to be.

Bruce Springsteen sits on a pile of money because he pretended to speak to and for the working class. He lied about who he was and made great music in the meantime.

I was such a fan. I knew every word to every song, so much that I couldn’t listen to the studio recordings. I could only listen to bootlegs.

That wasn’t unusual. Bob Dylan played around with various identities to become somebody, from the Woody Guthrie folk singer to a cool, detached rock star. But Bob Dylan was a genius. Bruce Springsteen is not. That’s why he had to sell himself as an average Joe hidin’ on the backstreets.

Now, when I listen to those songs, I hear a phony. He was a great performer until he began to think too highly of himself as someone “important.” That happens to the best of them. Once your basic needs are met and you have everything you could have ever wanted, your problems become existential.

Springsteen can no longer speak to or for the working class. His songs ring hollow because he has shown who he really is: the guy in the mansion on the hill, on the yacht with the Obamas.

A Springsteen biopic called Deliver Me From Nowhere is coming out this year. That explains why he’s causing such a stir now. He knows how to give the sycophantic press exactly what they want to turn him into a hero, just as his movie is coming out.

Springsteen was on the set of that movie every single day, watching everything. His fingerprints will be all over it. Whenever a subject is that close to the project, it spells doom. Not that the elite side of this country won’t slobber all over it. They will. There will be awards and tributes.

I was looking forward to Deliver Me From Nowhere, or at least trying to make myself want to watch it, but now, as Springsteen does what everyone on the Left has done for the past ten years—tell half the country they aren’t welcome at his shows or to listen to his music—I have lost any interest in even watching it.

But that’s as good a reason as any as to why suddenly brave oppressed warrior Bruce is coming out from the shadows to SPEAK OUT!

From a USA Today article:

“Tonight, we ask all who believe in democracy and the best of our American spirit to rise with us, raise your voices and stand with us against authoritarianism and let freedom ring,” said Springsteen, according to a livestream of the show.

“There's some very weird, strange, and dangerous (expletive) going on out there right now,” said Springsteen during both shows. “In America, they are persecuting people for using their right to free speech and voicing their dissent. This is happening now.”

Springsteen doesn’t even know what democracy means. It’s a big word he throws around that he does not understand, like “authoritarianism.” Needless to say, Trump won because more people voted for him, which is the very definition of democracy.

Bruce is obviously watching too much MSNBC and isn’t the first mind to be ruined by Rachel Maddow’s well-played sincerity.

When you hear Springsteen cosplay oppression, you do understand why Trump won. He is the only person from wealth and privilege who dares to attack them.

And then, he gives Springsteen and all of the richest and most powerful people in the world, more fuel for their oppression cosplay - why, Trump, why? Now we have to watch the media turn Bruce Springsteen’s fake oppression into a story. We have to watch the press turn him into a hero just so his dumb movie can do well at the Oscars — see, we’re important!

The movie, however, will be about a guy who was more of a snake-oil salesman, good at writing songs and performing them. I fell for it. I believed in him. It resonated deeply with so many of us who had a notion, a notion deep inside that it ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive.

I wonder if he’ll come clean in this movie and paint himself as the lying hypocrite he really is. I doubt it; unlike Bob Dylan, he cannot examine himself critically. He has no gift of satire. He has no shame.

He is among those who aligned with Obama and began to see themselves as gods - that kind of power must be intoxicating. But the twilight of his career sounds like a crybaby temper tantrum because things didn’t go his way.

Now he’s gone and ruined one of his all-time greatest songs, The Land of Hope and Dreams.

It says:

This Train
Carries whores and gamblers
This Train
Carries lost souls
This Train
Dreams will not be thwarted
This Train
Faith will be rewarded
This Train
Hear the steel wheels singin'
This Train
Bells of freedom ringin'
This Train
Carries broken-hearted
This Train
Thieves and sweet souls departed
This Train
Carries fools and kings
This Train
All aboard

He’s using it as his screaming anthem against Trump without realizing that is not the song’s message. For many in this country, Trump led them to their land of hope and dreams. If Springsteen had even an ounce of humility and gratitude for those who brung him, he’d welcome them back to his shows.

Instead, he’s walled himself off from his fans, joined the rest of the special people in their castle in the sky, and told all those who aren’t board with the status quo that they aren’t welcome.

Watching the fall of an empire is hard. Springsteen can’t speak to any of us now. He can only speak to our memories of him, which are fading fast.

I’ll still occasionally listen to his music, but it will never do to me what it used to. I know too much now. How the mighty have fallen.

On the road,

Barstow, CA

It seems highly unlikely the President of the United States would have cancer growing in his body that went undetected. As with everything else we’ve seen - from the cocaine found in the White House to Trump’s bad security detail when he was almost shot in the head - either something else is going on, or we have the single most incompetent government in the Western world.

This was sent as a signal far and wide to ix-nay on the cognitive decline story out of respect for the family. I predict that the major network news stations will take that path. Why? Because they realize that the other story is big enough to bring down the entire Democratic Party (which was already in a state of collapse).

If Biden was hiding it, why would he? Because I think he was chasing his legacy, to be someone important. He was credited with “saving democracy” in 2020 but wanted more. He figured he could win again in 2024 and then step aside to make history with Kamala Harris. That’s my guess, and it was back in February of 2024 when I wrote this:

In it, I wrote:

Is that true? We’ll probably never know. For Biden, he would be known as the guy who put the first Black woman on the Supreme Court and was the bridge to put Kamala Harris, someone who cannot win, in power, thus topping even his former boss, Barack Obama.

Biden slipped too far so that the media could no longer cover for him once the public saw him debate Trump. Had Trump gone on the attack as he did during their first debate back in 2020, Biden could likely have come out semi-clean. But Trump didn’t do that. Instead, he let Biden talk. And chaos ensued.

If I were Kamala Harris, I would not have supported the coup. I would have allowed Biden to run and lose. It made her look craven, and she lost anyway. The “big switch” exposed their corruption, along with the media that covered for them.

The Democrats are hoping the cancer news will take some of the heat off the Jake Tapper book, which blames Biden and his family for hiding his cognitive decline. However, this has never been a story about what Joe Biden was hiding, but rather, what the media covered up for Joe Biden’s sake.

I wish the best for Joe Biden and his family. His final chapter has been challenging for a man whose life reflects a relentless pursuit of greatness, yet that ultimate goal has remained just out of reach.

On the Road
Barstow, CA

A part of me would think that this was a sign I’d done something wrong or she didn’t really think about me. I know that isn’t true because I know her. She’ll punish herself all day for forgetting to send something on time. I will tell her not to worry. It’s part of becoming an adult.

Then I will tell her that, here I am, a lifetime older than she is and my present to my mother, hand-made soap purchased on Etsy, won’t arrive until after Mother’s Day either. It is what it is. We’ve never been the most organized people in my family.

The frustrating thing about being a parent is how fast children grow up. It isn’t that they should live forever, but just that time moves too fast. The older you get, the faster it speeds by. Weeks feel days. Years feel like weeks. We try hard not to think about that part of it. We feel lucky, all of us, to wake up at all.

My mom had four kids before the age of 25, which mostly meant she never really had a chance to live her life because she had to survive, and somehow, we all made it through (that is how she sees it, anyway). It wasn’t easy, but I give her credit for everything she’s built in the years after we grew up, and how generous and giving she has been to her children.

It makes sense for all of us to gather for dinner to celebrate and so we will.

Back in the 1990s, when everyone on the Left was getting into therapy, we’d all seen Robert Redford’s Ordinary People and the idea was to hold your parents accountable for crimes against you in childhood. In the 1970s, there were lots of crimes against children, both real crimes and things many of us would grow up to resent later, hence the therapy.

My generation spent decades blaming our parents because what else were we going to do? We were encouraged to leave our bad parents behind or confront them and make them explain themselves — how could you do this to me, I was just a kid.

In my mom’s case, she was practically a kid herself. My daughter is older now than my mom was when she had all of us. I’m sure she wouldn’t be the perfect parent either, no one is.

That “holding our parents accountable” thing is what ultimately led to crippling cancel culture. At some point, we have to learn how to live in the moment and not in the past. And most of all, how to forgive others for who they are and what they believe.

I will spend the day working, as always, and hope to post a podcast tonight. Happy Mother’s Day to all of the moms out there. You are loved, whether your present arrived in time or not.

It means, save the transgender people. Why dolls, I do not know, but that only means the Democrats can’t now rebrand “Protect the Dolls.” They can, however, use “Save the Dolls.” Who knows if they can get it together to do something like that, but why hand them such an easy reach-around?

Having grown up rich, Trump might not know that poor people like to feel rich. Remember what John Steinbeck wrote in "A Primer on the '30s." Esquire (June 1960), p. 85-93:

"Except for the field organizers of strikes, who were pretty tough monkeys and devoted, most of the so-called Communists I met were middle-class, middle-aged people playing a game of dreams. I remember a woman in easy circumstances saying to another even more affluent: 'After the revolution even we will have more, won't we, dear?' Then there was another lover of proletarians who used to raise hell with Sunday picknickers on her property.

"I guess the trouble was that we didn't have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist. Maybe the Communists so closely questioned by the investigation committees were a danger to America, but the ones I knew — at least they claimed to be Communists — couldn't have disrupted a Sunday-school picnic. Besides they were too busy fighting among themselves."

That’s the American Dream in a nutshell. We all wake up in our country, hoping we’ll become rich. This is one of the main reasons Socialism is not exactly popular (except among Gen Z).

The devious plot of the free trade scam was that the very poor could buy lots of stuff from Walmart, making the Walton family extremely wealthy, enriching China, but dooming our working class, who still liked to shop as if they were not struggling.

I know this firsthand. I grew up among those poor people and was one of them for much of my life, and shopping was a big deal in my family. A few of us emerged as penny pinchers, but my grandmother, who lived through the Depression, did nothing with her later years except shop.

There is a great line in Citizen Kane which goes something like this:

“You know Charles, you never used money to make investments, you always used money to…”
”Buy things.”

I don’t know what the solution is to a no-win situation. Fooling the people works for a while, numbing them out with consumerism distracts them with temporary happiness, I suppose.

But as a mother who raised a baby working odd jobs, even as a janitor, I was still happy I could buy her whatever she wanted on Christmas because I could find affordable items, especially dolls. She had every Teletubby and every My Little Pony. I even bought her a way too expensive American Girl doll.

The tragedy of the American Girl doll?

• Early Production: The first American Girl dolls were made in Germany by the Gotz company, particularly the historical character line featuring dolls like Kirsten, Samantha, and Molly.

• Shift to China: In 2003, production of most American Girl dolls began to shift to China.

• Current Production: The majority of American Girl dolls are now made in China.

Don’t that beat all? These dolls are not cheap. But if I had to do it all over again and not buy dolls for my kid because of Trump’s tariffs well, that’s an easy way to lose a voter (not that I would ever vote Democrat now).

Telling parents to buy fewer dolls takes you into Herbert Hoover meets Marie Antoinette territory. Americans should not have to suffer, especially those at the very bottom of the food chain, especially children, to fix the problem caused by greedy millionaires and monopolies.

Even if true!

Remember what a disaster that was for Jimmy Carter and his malaise speech? Was it the truth? Probably. Was it an electoral loser? Absolutely. American exceptionalism is that you boost morale even if you have to tell pretty lies.

As the anchor says, “It makes the stakes too high for comfort.”

I know the Left will adopt a sudden desire for cheap crap made in China to be sold and then dumped in landfills because they know it will be a winning issue come election time with a tough economy like we’re wading through. Handing them that gift seems politically unwise, to put it mildly.

Trump hates immigrants!
Trump is a fascist!
Trump is destroying movies!
Trump is trying to take away your dolls!

The true Left, the Left I once knew, does not want junk filling up landfills, especially Gen-Z. They’re all about the minimalist movement and ending “fast fashion.” All the crap they buy has to be “sustainable” and “responsibly sourced.” That truth will fly out the window when it comes time for campaign ads.

But that’s because wealth and power have shifted leftwards, and what they care more about is their image as “good people.” The majority in this country does not think that way.

Don’t punish the poor or make them feel shame for not having enough money to buy dolls for their children at Christmas.

Just saying.

I can hear the bloviating from a mile away. It’s bad enough that someone just openly called for Trump to be killed over it.

I think of that line by Hooper in Steven Spielberg’s Jaws, “You got any better suggestions?” Well, do they? No. As with everything else, all they have is panic, fear, and outrage.

These are the same people who pretend that nothing is wrong with Hollywood lately, that movies aren’t dying, and that almost no one watches anything Hollywood puts out now because they can see the agenda coming from a mile away.

It used to be that movies had to be good because Hollywood listened to the free market. The people mattered because the box office mattered. What we’ve seen this past week with Ryan Coogler’s brilliant vampire movie, Sinners, is what movies used to do every week back in the 1990s and earlier, but not anymore.

I’m working on a separate piece about Sinners right now on Hollywood Woketopia, so I won’t say too much about it except that, as with Top Gun Maverick and Oppenheimer, it is a sign that audiences will turn out if the movie is good enough and word of mouth travels.

But without that box office return, without a profit model, production companies can’t afford to pay the unions. Imagine how expensive it is now to make a movie here with “intimacy coordinators” and insurance against a lawsuit, not to mention all of the other pressures to adhere to DEI standards. They can’t make movies that cost them more than they will make back.

There is no doubt this is a problem. It’s an “extinction-level event,” according to a producer cited in this story in the New York Times from just a few weeks ago:

In the past few years, as labor costs have grown after two strikes, producers of reality shows, scrappy indie movies, and blockbuster films have increasingly turned away from Los Angeles to filming locations overseas.

Those business decisions have considerable consequences for the industry’s thousands of middle-class workers: the camera operators, set decorators and lighting technicians who make movies and television happen. Frustration has reached a boiling point, according to more than two dozen people who make their living in the entertainment industry. They say that nothing short of Hollywood, as we know it, is at stake.

The story continues:

“This is an existential crisis — it’s an extinction event,” said Beau Flynn, a producer of big-budget movies like “San Andreas,” which despite being about an earthquake in California was filmed mostly in Australia. “These are real things. I am not a dramatist, even though I’m in the drama field.”

Productions have been filmed outside the United States for decades, but rarely has Hollywood work been so bustling overseas at a time when work in Hollywood itself has been so scant. Studios in European countries are bursting at the seams, industry workers say. And film and television production in Los Angeles is down by more than one-third over the past 10 years, according to FilmLA data.

The rest of the story paints a grim picture of Hollywood's future. And all of that before you even get to the fast-evolving technology of AI, which will soon replace many workers in various industries.

The solution, I believe, is to make better movies. The box office collapsed because Hollywood only made movies for people who read the Atlantic or graduate from Oberlin College. What a disaster that’s been for them and for us. We all should be invited to sit under the same roof and watch a story together as one audience and one people. That doesn’t happen anymore, and maybe it never will again.

At least Trump is trying to do something about the problem, as opposed to Hollywood’s approach, which is to put its head in the sand and not talk about the elephant in the room.

Hollywood is now fused with the Democrats. The same problems plague both of them. They’ve lost touch with the American people. They serve only the elites. They are living in a bubble. They can’t solve a problem they can’t even name. They have no leadership anywhere, not among the Democrats and not in Hollywood.

They need a DOGE to go in and fire everyone, then bring in all new talent that can write the best scripts, hire the best actors and actresses (hot men, sexy women), and try to revive the corpse. Will they? No.

Just as the line in Citizen Kane goes, “You’re going to need more than one lesson. And you’re going to get more than one lesson.” Speaking of great movies…

A Counter Culture is the Answer

One of America’s best writers, David Mamet, has a new movie coming out this week called Henry Johnson. But because Hollywood has exiled Mamet for voting for Trump, no production company would touch the movie. Instead, it is being released online and in one theater in Los Angeles.

I’ve seen and loved it, though it is a brain twister; you have to pay close attention to understand it. It is based on a play of the same name and is about how a weak mind can be manipulated. It’s all dialogue with strong performances by the entire cast.

When you’ve built an industry that no longer welcomes David Mamet, you know you are doing something very, very wrong. He isn’t the only one. The gulags are full of talent Hollywood won’t touch. It is their loss, and ours. They built their house of moral outrage and puritanism, and look where it has gotten them.

Like many Americans, I no longer look forward to movies or television shows now. Within the first five minutes, I know if they’re pushing an agenda or have cast it in such a way as to genuflect to the cult. I usually turn it off after ten minutes.

So I stick with the movies I desperately love, and I watch them over and over again to remind myself that yes, Hollywood did once make movies. That really did happen. I didn’t just dream it.

They made movies like No Country for Old Men:

Like Fargo:

Like Se7en:

And yes, Jaws.

I could go on. Even the worst movies from the past are better than almost anything we see now. Now, we wait for one movie like Sinners to come along and remind us that there is still such a thing as a great movie. They are too few and far between.

And yet, there is fertile ground for rebuilding anew. I have to believe that. Art will find a way. It is as essential to our species as breathing. Trump’s ideas are worth a shot. It can’t possibly get any worse.

How it started:

How it’s going:

Luigi Mangione shot a CEO point-blank on the streets of New York, allegedly. Karmelo Anthony allegedly stabbed and killed a young student over a seat at a high school in Texas, allegedly. His family claimed self-defense. And then, money was raised on Give Send Go to the tune of $500+.

In any sane world, most people wonder how that could happen. How can that much money flood in for the murderer and not the victim? How did we end up here? How can everyone have lost their moral compass?

Until now, the moral high ground in this case would go to the not crazy side, the Right. But the Right said, Hold my beer.

How do you manage to do something even worse than raising money for murderers? Why, raising money for racists, of course.

This video was posted two days ago.

Now, she’s raised over $600K.

The guy who recorded her, according to that video, is a charged and convicted sex offender. So yeah, great all around!

It does seem almost too good to be true, doesn’t it? Almost like this is a set-up? Can it really be that the perfect situation emerged where the villain would be so clear-cut and the victim a Black kid with a disability? A man with a cell phone just happened to be right there to catch it and then film her?

None of it has ever felt authentic to me in any way. But it is what it is. The job of the MAGA movement should be to resist falling into this obvious trap, whether it was a set-up or it really happened.

“Shiloh” wrote the following:

My name is Shiloh and I have been put into a very dire situation. I recently had a kid steal from my 18month old sons diaper bag at a park. I called the kid out for what he was. Another man, who we recently found out has had a history with law enforcement, proceeded to record me and follow me to my car. He then posted these videos online which has caused my family, and myself, great turmoil. My SSN has been leaked. My address, and phone number have been given out freely. My family members are being attacked. My eldest child may not be going back to school. Even where I exercise has been exposed.

“I called the kid out for what he was,” she says.

I’m guessing once the fundraiser went up, plenty of people on the Left were there with their clicking fingers ready to drive up the donations to even higher than Karmelo Anthony’s. They want America to see all of MAGA as on the side of Shiloh, just as many on the Right see all of America on the side of Karmelo.

The top donations are:

$1,000 from anonymous
$ 2500 from Ariann Pentza (betting a fake name)
$2025 from N
$2005 from I
$2004 from Anon
$2003 from Anon
$2002 from Anon
$2001 from Manfred von Richtofen
$2000 from Anon
$1776 from Anon
$1488 from “Average White Man”
$1488 from White Lives matter

Like, who has that kind of money to throw around?

Then there are smaller donations with overtly racist names that conveniently repeat, which I won’t repeat here, but you can see for yourself on the donation page.

Granted, many white people on the Right are sick of everything being about race and blamed for everything because of the color of their skin. And stealing is wrong too. But so? Using the “n-word” is only something you would do if you harbored hate in your heart for Black people. I would never use that word. I would never even think of using that word.

It reminds me of that scene in Bull Durham where the ref tells Kevin Costner that if he calls him a c*cksucker he’ll be thrown out of the game. He taunts and he taunts and he taunts and finally, Costner snaps.

I get it that there is an impulse to use a slur no one is allowed to use when angry - that is what slurs are for. That is why our brain calls them up in times of extreme stress.

But it is still wrong. It is wrong because it is the one word that does cause harm when said by a white person to a Black person (even if they say it all the time).

The rise of the real racists on the Right is the downside of Elon Musk buying Twitter. Now, they have a voice too. They will be working hard every day to gain prominence. Those who use the app must hold fast and true to their own principles to resist it.

The Woke Right

I can’t stand the term “woke Right.” The word “woke” is already stretched beyond its usefulness by now. I suppose what those who use it mean is that many on the Right are living up to the stereotype by allowing themselves to be influenced or manipulated by evil.

Here are some of the comments to Rikki’s tweet that are now allowed on X where they would not have been on Twitter.

I have spent the last five years making the case that the MAGA movement is not driven by racism. I don’t believe it is. I know too many non-white people in the movement, and never have I seen overt racism at a MAGA rally or in a Trump speech.

If this becomes the MAGA movement, will they allow it to become the dominant ideology or groupthink? Stick a fork in it. The war is over. The Left will win.

If this makes you mad and you want to unsub, you can do so in the top right under “manage subscription.” If you want to cancel your paid subscription, you can do that also by scrolling all the way down to the bottom.

I believe most people, on the Left and the Right, are decent. We must wrestle with our better angels every day. In a time of chaos like this one, authoritarianism will rise, as it did in the 1930s. Back then, moderates could not hold back the stronger threats of Communism (Stalin) and Fascism (Hitler).

We’re not a species designed for chaos. We like leadership. We need structure. But that power can’t fall into the wrong hands. Don’t prove them right. Don’t validate all of their madness of the past ten years.

Just as with the Karmelo Anthony and the Luigi Mangione cases, there is a clear right and a clear wrong here. Stealing from a child’s diaper bag is wrong, but that does not come close to using the worst racial slur anyone can use in modern-day America, especially in this Civil War.

A friend of mine told me that once Trump won, it would bring back all of the slurs and hate speech that the Left overpoliced. A while back, she called me and said, “See, I told you so.” I didn’t agree with her example of people calling out the fire chief in Los Angeles for being a DEI hire.

But this? This is Checkmate. Don’t fall for it, MAGA, no matter how mad you are at the Left.

People like me hover in nomad land without a real place to call home. We are the ones the Left is trying to convince to come back to the party. All they need is an easy way to say, “See, I told you so.”

He wrote: “FIRST OF ALL. This is the opposite of funny.”

It is funny. Trump is funny. This is undeniable.

He wrote: “The president of the United States should have more important things to do than post dumb shit like this, wouldn't you agree?”

I think it’s important for Trump to connect to his supporters in ways they find funny, and it should be for any politician. You might not agree with it, but the world has changed. I’m not sure anyone can get elected now if they don’t have a strong social media game.

Trump’s game is so good, he has posted a “Lo-Fi video” in the language of Gen-Z about his accomplishments streaming on the White House site. That is pure genius, speaking to a generation in a language they understand.

He wrote: “How are we feeling about him defunding NPR and PBS? If Biden or anyone besides Trump tried that you would be devoting several pages of that in your blog.”

Unfortunately, I gave up on NPR long ago. I would prefer not to defund PBS, but I understand why the Trump administration wants to do it.

I think Trump knows they’ll block him from accomplishing it, but to call out NPR and PBS, to expose them, to light up the room so that people know what they are watching and listening to instead of assuming it comes with the authority of the government.

NPR and PBS mostly reflect the perspective of only one side, the side that just lost the election. Some of what they produce is neutral, and I appreciate that. But their target audience is undoubtedly the people who donate, usually wealthy white Liberals. And that means they suffer from audience capture. They must give them what they want.

I have always loved the nature shows:

But even that has become overtly political because it pleases the subscribers and the donors, while also making a statement:

Take these two background videos on Trump vs. Kamala Harris:

The spin for Harris will be positive, we already know that. The spin for Trump will be negative. We know that, too.

I wondered what their coverage of the transgender issue was — and of course, as with NPR, it has offered only one side of the issue, going on a decade:

As with NPR, there is no representation for what half of this country voted for or voted out. Zero. None. There is no discussion of women fighting for their rights to play fairly in sports or stories about detransitioners. They can’t, because their audience will throw a fit and unsubscribe.

If PBS and NPR gave the Right any major presence or voice, the Left would demand that they not only be defunded but that they be shut down.

The argument seems to be that defunding PBS and NPR over viewpoint discrimination violates the First Amendment. So they say the quiet part out loud. They must now acknowledge that their content reflects just one point of view.

But does it violate the First Amendment? Here are two sides of the debate:

All of that said, an Executive Order doesn’t mean it will actually happen. I imagine judges will block the order. I think Trump knows that, but he’s making a point about their bias. Some will hear it, some won’t.

Does it bother me? Not as much as a publicly funded outlet that has never given children of America a fighting chance to escape a dangerous cult. So, no, not really. I don’t find that helpful or truthful.

Ultimately, I voted for Trump because I believe the Left is more dangerous for this country. I voted for him to end the madness of “gender affirming care.” I realized he would do things I disagreed with or did not support. I went in with my eyes open, and I have no regrets.

I hope that clears it up.

I began using Twitter back in 2007. I remember how it changed when the blue-checks were rolled out and how thrilled I was to get one. If you didn’t have one, you languished in obscurity. If you had one, you were a somebody, you were important.

Under the rule of the high-status blue-checks, Twitter decided what we should all think, what could be said, and what couldn’t. The Tom Cotton episode would not have been possible without the power of the Blue-Checks. It was one hell of a mind-control machine, and the Democrats took full control of it.

Because I was a lifer on Twitter, I was part of the Obama coalition. Last time I checked, he still followed me on my [at] awards daily account, along with many other high-profile Democrats who had no idea they were still following me.

Twitter wasn’t as powerful before 2016, but it became our main battleground after Trump won because he was such a heavy Twitter user. That’s why taking control of it for the Democrats was such a big deal.

The Democrats and our government used Twitter as a censorship tool, which meant their ideology would be pushed, and acceptance would be mandated. It was both ground zero for “cancel culture” and a method of pushing their ideology - and forcing everyone to go along with it, either through fear, public humiliation, or censorship.

Elon does not spend much time bragging about his achievements. I don’t know if anyone will ever tell the story of how he changed Twitter for the better. I’m not sure that book will ever be written. It’s up to us all to remember and pass the story down.

As with everything else, he took a hit. He was threatened many times as monopolists tried to ruin him financially. The answer was always the same - “go f*ck yourselves.”

I never figured they’d go all the way to calling him a Nazi, and have it echoed throughout mainstream media. That lie led to fanatical leftists keying and firebombing Teslas, shaming people out of buying them, forcing them to put on stickers that denounce Elon Musk.

Their hissy fits worked. Tesla’s profits dropped. They claimed a scalp. But it came at a cost. They exposed their true nature - people who never gave a damn about climate change. Turns out it was all empty virtue signaling, like everything else. Now we know.

Anti-free speech has-been Neil Young doesn’t care about climate change. No one should ever listen to a word he says ever again.

Elon could have been a submissive coward like Neil Young. He could have sided with the power in this country. But instead, he sided with the people, with the powerless.

Today, Trump gave Elon a send-off and thanked him for his work on DOGE. He walks away a hero to me, and millions of voices that would have been silenced with the Democrats in power.

I will never stop saying thank you—not just for buying Twitter and giving MAGA a voice or for helping Trump win, but for nearly losing everything to fight for what was right, even if it didn’t always land perfectly. The effort and the attempt were appreciated.

I still see the dream. I hope for the future. Thank you, Elon.

Working on a podcast but had to get this out…

Here are ten things that happened…

1. Trump wore a blue suit to the Pope’s funeral.

2. Media gives itself awards.

The White House Correspondents’ dinner gave a prize to the one guy who dared to tell the truth about Biden’s cognitive decline (on the Left, the Right was all over the story).

Dave Marcus says it best.

3. Trump nodded off at the Pope’s funeral.

4. Trump met with Zelensky at the Vatican.

5. Media reports that Trump’s approval ratings are “lowest for any president in 80 years”

5. “A Moral Moment” — Cory Booker and Hakeem Jeffries sit on Capitol steps, and a camera miraculously appears.

6. Resistance Cosplay Escalates inside the Doomsday Bunker.

Byron York has his answer:

7. I was on the Adam Carolla Show, in case you missed it. CLICK HERE.

I was also on ’s podcast, if you’re interested.

"Random Minds" by Katherine Brodsky

Sasha Stone: What happened to culture?

Sasha Stone is a fellow Substacker whom I’ve first encountered a long time ago on Twitter due to our mutual interest in film—a topic she (like me) has covered for many years for her own website, AwardsDaily.com…

Listen now

a year ago · 16 likes · 3 comments · Katherine Brodsky and Sasha Stone

8. “Free Luigi”

9. A Very Good Film Essay on the Plight of Men in Media

10. A Reality Check

Hope you are having a nice Sunday.

I keep seeing headlines, TikToks, and various social media postings showing Trump supporters regretting their vote. Bill Maher even suggested that Trump voters won’t admit they’re “disappointed” in Trump’s first 100 days. I think that’s wishful thinking. All they want is for Trump supporters to turn on him, a ten-year odyssey of frustration.

From the New York Post:

“Let’s talk about what it is for the other side, for the MAGA people, because I think they’re disappointed, even though they may not say it out loud,” Maher later said.

“I think they thought when they were voting for Trump that, ‘okay, you know, job losses over the last many decades, and wage stagnation, and the system is just corrupt and broken.”

It isn’t that we won’t admit it, or that we’re secretly and quietly disappointed. It’s that we know what awaits us on the other side. This would be like getting in the lifeboats as the Titanic sinks and complaining because the seats aren’t comfortable, or there aren’t enough blankets or food.

Or like eventually reaching the RMS Carpathia and complaining because the food wasn’t good. On the contrary, most of us say in a hushed whisper, “Imagine if Kamala Harris had won.”

The Democrats believe they’re so close to taking back power that Trump’s two wins were just temporary setbacks. They’ll get their country back, and in the meantime, they’ll keep treating Trump and MAGA like they are not welcome. But somehow, just when it seems like the “walls are closing in” and Trump is on the ropes, he survives, and they move on to the next thing.

I didn’t vote for Trump, support him, or stand behind him, because I thought I was getting an ordinary politician. I voted for the guy the Democrats tried to put in jail, a guy who was almost assassinated twice. A guy who, after a bullet went through his ear, walked onto a stage about a week later and gave a 90-minute speech.

I voted for the guy who heard us loudly and clearly and said, "I will fight for you." And he did.

He’s done more in his first 100 days than most presidents have done in my lifetime. He’s done big things. He took on the dirty job of confronting the madness that has infected the Left. He’s trying to save our kids from a cult-like ideology that has seeped into all of our public schools and institutions, not to mention Hollywood.

Trump is trying to rebuild the working class, revive patriotism, extend a hand to the forgotten men the Left decided were “toxic, " and build a movement made of people they threw away like human garbage. He’s trying to reduce the government’s bloat, strengthen the military, and close the border — all of the things his voters asked of him.

Why would they regret it now? Meet the new mass hysteria, same as the old mass hysteria.

Trump can’t fix everything; of course, he’ll make mistakes—sometimes big ones. But he’ll make them, as Teddy Roosevelt once said, daring greatly.

Trump is the Man in the Arena.

Sure, there are people like Candace Owens and others who are mad about Columbia, mad about Israel, mad about some of the deportations. The rich people are probably angry that Trump isn’t helping to make them richer. Overall, though, as Batya Unger-Sargon says, the “base” is happy.

I sometimes think Trump was a warrior for truth and reality, and truth and reality won. He beat them all. He beat Hollywood’s eight years of “resistance.” He beat the biased, propaganda press that went to war on him every day and is still at war with him. He beat the weaponized DOJ.

For those who supported Trump and needed him to prevail, there was nothing better, nothing sweeter, nothing more memorable than watching them lose to Trump. Again.

I wasn’t always MAGA, or a Trump supporter. However, one thing I always knew about them was that they had Trump’s back because had theirs. He was the guy who went to rally after rally after rally in places most people who vote blue no matter who don’t even know exist. Tucker Carlson said it best: “They love Trump because nobody else loved them.”

Do you really think that they are so fickle as to walk away from him now? And that’s not fear or blind allegiance to their cult leader. It’s that they, we, know what things used to be like, and we’re not going back.

So, if you’re waiting for people like me to regret my vote, you’ll have to ask the question differently. Do I regret not staying on the Titanic as the band played on? Not for one minute, not for 100 days.

She knows it’s bullshit. She knows it doesn’t represent the most influential people, and it is a game of virtue signaling, publicists, and corporate monopolies.

At the same time, she has much to be proud of, so why not rub their noses in it? They kicked her to the curb by punishing her for saying what everyone was thinking, but no one in the media had the nerve to say. After the mob went on the attack, NBC threw her under the bus.

Too bad suckers. She rose like a phoenix from the ashes as their numbers and popularity cratered.

Megyn now has one of the most popular podcasts on YouTube, almost 4 million followers, and hundreds of thousands of people hear her voice daily or watch her videos. No wonder they wanted her there, and honestly, no wonder she wanted to go.

Who wouldn’t want to walk in there, looking like that, with Doug Brundt on her arm as a total winner in every possible way?

I can’t post any photos, but here is a search result for an image sampling on Getty Images:

As you can see, she is photographed with Demi Moore, the only celebrity to take a picture with her. You can see all of the photos by clicking here.

The whole thing reminded me of the movie Baby Boom, in which Diane Keaton plays The Tiger Lady, a career-hungry yuppie who is kicked to the curb after she inherits a baby. She moves to Vermont and starts a business; eventually, she’s so successful that her former company wants her back. She turns them down but also has the pleasure of taking a victory lap.

Unlike most of the TIME 100 - a truly embarrassing array of people who only matter to those who thought Katy Perry and Gayle King in space was a good idea — Megyn Kelly is actually influential. Her support of Donald Trump made a difference in his campaign. Her stance on protecting women in sports, against “gender-affirming care,” driving support for the MAHA movement, and even helping to bring home a hostage held in Russia. Her voice matters.

So, congratulations to Megyn for being one of the few people who deserves to be called one of the 100 most influential people in America.

Some red carpet clips:

And on Blake Lively:

Speaking of George Clooney…

Clooney should also be on TIME’s 100, though probably not because he’d like to be. Clooney was arguably the most important figure in the 2024 election for the Democrats. He sealed their fate. And his own. He might have destroyed his credibility, if he ever had any.

George Clooney isn’t a journalist, but he plays one on Broadway.

Recently, he took a swipe at Megyn, bragging about himself being more of a journalist than she is. Not smart.

He went after her because she has been reporting on him for a while now, starting with his Biden op-ed.

From nine months ago:

1 month ago:

Two weeks ago:

The Least Influential…

Like the Democrats, the legacy press still behaves as though they didn’t just get their asses handed to them by the American people who voted for Trump a second time.

If the election proved anything, it was that the legacy press no longer has the kind of influence it once had to scare voters away from Trump. At least not enough to cover for the Democrats’ failures. Their Correspondents Dinner this weekend should be called TIME’s LEAST influential people.

During their conversation, Megyn Kelly and Mark Halperin discussed the Correspondents Dinner this weekend and how the media continues to lose its mind over Trump.

Megyn also announced a new show, Next Up with Mark Halperin, starting April 29th.

I'm working on a longer piece to post soon, so I won’t take up too much of your time. I hope you have a great weekend.

When I was growing up, Easter meant a new dress. We were hippies who lived atop a mountain in Topanga, California. We spent every day outside, barefoot, playing in the dirt, running our fingers through different kinds of wildflowers, and pinching milkweed dry. We rode our ponies. We milked goats. We hung around with chickens. But when Easter came, we were bathed, our hair brushed and sometimes curled, and we’d put on our Easter dress.

For us, Easter meant frilly dresses and patent leather shoes. It meant candy and coloring Easter eggs and hiding them. It meant the Easter Bunny. We didn’t understand its deeper meaning, but we celebrated it anyway. For me, it was always a happy day. I know for many reading this, Easter means He is Risen!

I wanted to write something profound and meaningful today, offering some kind of message of hope and renewal. But while researching for a podcast I will post later tonight, I came upon this video on TikTok that I woke up thinking about instead of Easter:

Then, I checked Real Clear Politics as I do every morning, and there it was. A headline by a guy I used to know a little bit online, Andrew O’Hehir, who wrote the following:

He wrote this without the self-awareness to know that if the fascist moment were indeed here, he couldn’t even write that as a headline. He could not write a piece about Rümeysa Öztürk, or any of those deported, detained, or arrested. He could not post it on social media.

If you Google her name, you’ll see endless pieces echoing the same sentiment, the usual cosplay of oppression and resistance, “disappeared off the street.” Freedom of speech and freedom of the press are alive and well under the Trump administration.

His pitch in the piece is to wake up Democrats to the seriousness of this moment, as if he himself can understand it. Spoiler alert: he can’t. No one inside the Doomsday Bunker can. They are following an unreliable narrator.

They have lost all perspective and are flying high on mass hysteria and magical thinking. He can’t just make the point clearly. He knows no one will click on it. But whatever valid points he might be making are lost in a sea of hyperbole.

I personally don’t think that we should be punishing people for their thought crimes. I am not comfortable with that particular policy, but so what? That doesn’t mean the “Fascist moment in here.”

Rubio and the Trump administration are on the defense here, with a massive media apparatus attacking them every day for every single decision they make over every single issue now and during his first term. THAT is the opposite of fascism.

And they’ll never stop to think that they are so free they can even call for the assassination of their “fascist dictator.”

They were there already. In 2015, there were violent attacks against Trump supporters because of Trump’s stance on immigration:

Look at what that fascist dictator allowed during his first term, back when Andrew O’Hehir and others were sounding the alarm.

Trump won an election and a mandate. If the people don’t like it, they can vote him out. Oh wait, they already did, and you’ll never believe what happened next!

The Biden regime did what all good fascists do. They used all of that collective fear to weaponize the DOJ. “Cancel Culture” spread to government. Once accused, forever guilty. The good old days!

The Biden regime policed thought and speech via social media. Remember how the FBI worked with Twitter and Facebook to deep-six the Hunter Biden laptop because that’s not fascist at all.

Remember the FBI bursting through the door of a guy who wrote something on Facebook and him getting shot on the spot? Remember the FBI “investigating” parents at school board meetings?

And if that weren’t enough, our culture had become totalitarian in its demands that all of us go along with increasingly insane rules. OR ELSE. All of us now know which side we were afraid of. AND STILL ARE.

Dogma and propaganda have polluted every corner of culture from movies to TV shows to comedy to journalism. A mono-culture driven by radical, puritanical, totalitarians who now wonder what they’re do with all of those “MAGA people” once they regain power because that’s not scary at all.

Under Biden, we could not say things because we would lose everything — even after Trump won, even after Elon bought Twitter and turned it into X, my entire career went up in flames overnight just for a joke I made on the app. Will the real fascists please stand up?

And because of your ongoing phantasmagoria about immigration, Biden sent out a message to all countries that come on in, the border is open. Venezuelan gangs took over apartment buildings, women were raped and murdered. All so what, Nancy Pelosi could bring in slave labor to pick fruit in Florida? Do you think that was something Americans wanted?

And that’s all before we even get to 2020, the year so many of us realized we’d been misled at best, lied to and manipulated at worst. They were the dogs that caught the car. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

I used to believe people like Andrew O’Hehir. I respected them. I thought they told me the truth. But there is no telling the truth from inside the Doomsday Bunker. For them, it’s been a ten-year war on the working class, only they don’t realize it. They need their oppressed symbols of virtue because their Pool of Narcissus reminds them that they are the good people doing good things.

Americans chose Trump because he was the less crazy side. The Democrats now could at least try to prove they are the less crazy side - but so far, it seems that they can’t find their way back to sanity. If Hitler is their baseline, what is coming next? I don’t know, let’s ask a crazy lady:

Happy Easter, dear readers. Happy Easter to the bravest people I’ve ever known. You refused to accept the definition of who you are by the mob, the administrative state, and its propaganda press. Fascism might not be here, but totalitarianism almost was. There but for the Grace of God…

I hope your day is filled with love, light, and all good things. I’ll be posting a podcast later tonight.

Here was her appearance:

It worked. The press was forced to cover her story:

So great, right? Well, not so fast. Here is how David Sanger at the New York Times covered the story — mostly as a publicity stunt or a way to deflect from the Trump admin potentially being held in contempt:

Just hours after a federal judge threatened a contempt-of-court investigation over the Trump administration’s deportation flights, the White House sought to freeze the legal debate by reminding Americans of a heartbreaking case of a mother killed by an unauthorized immigrant.

Sanger goes on with what looks more like an op-ed than a news story:

White House officials called a special briefing on Wednesday in the press room to bring Patty Morin, the mother of Rachel Morin, who was killed while jogging on a trail in Maryland in 2023, to the podium. She recounted in detail how her daughter, a 37-year-old mother of five, was seized, raped and bashed in the head with rocks and ultimately strangled. Members of her family also appeared at the Republican National Convention last July.

An immigrant from El Salvador, Victor Martinez-Hernandez, was convicted in the case this week.

The story was a tragic one, and it has fueled Mr. Trump’s arguments about dangers posed by migrants and a debate about capital punishment. Nonetheless, the invitation of Ms. Morin seemed a somewhat transparent effort to suspend the arguments about whether the administration could lawfully send migrants to El Salvador with no due process, and whether it can defy the orders of district judges who order the flights halted.

And then we get the typical blather, “Statistics show…”:

Statistics show that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes on American soil than American citizens, and Mr. Trump’s claims of a wave of violent crime committed by immigrants have not been supported by police or court data. But it is a popular talking point among Mr. Trump’s base of supporters, and he often brought out family members of victims during his presidential campaign.

If even one woman, one child, one girl is brutally murdered or assaulted by migrants who crossed the border illegally (aka, already broke the law, which makes them criminals already), under the watch of the United States government who did NOTHING to protect them, or even warn them, with the media pretending there is no problem, you bet the public has a right to be upset.

On the Left, they need constant fuel to drive their ideology, their religion. Kilmar Abrego Garcia gives them that. He can be accused of beating his wife, even, and it won’t matter to them, just as whatever George Floyd was guilty of didn’t matter. Just as transgender sex offenders don’t matter. Identity is all.

But it does go against the general public’s opinions, as this poll proves:

Chris Cillizza understands and is begging the Democrats not to make this their biggest story:

Sorry, Chris. This story is here to stay. It fills up the Left with everything they need to keep fighting for what they believe in. They believe in open borders AND universal healthcare. They believe in no biological difference between men and women. They believe in abortion as easy and common as getting your ears pierced. They believe in sending every last dollar to Ukraine. It is what it is.

Maryland’s Senator Chris Van Hollen flew to El Salvador himself to try to talk to Garcia and bring him “home.”

And the inevitable calls to impeach:

The story is covered in more detail in Megyn Kelly’s Morning Update:

Meanwhile, the Go Fund Me donations for Garcia are up to $212K.

I’m working on a longer piece about how there is no such thing as a “normal” Democrat, but I thought I’d get this in under the wire.