Interesting for Hegseth and Trump railing about “political correctness” after the admin spent two weeks policing what people can and can’t say about Charlie Kirk

Trump shared a seemingly AI-generated video that included a deep-fake version of himself promoting a nonexistent product related to the broader QAnon conspiracy theory known as “MedBed,” fictional health care technology that supposedly heals the ailments of any individual who lays in it.

I wonder how many people fully appreciate that Trump just falsely declared the blue state of Oregon to be in a state of Rebellion against the United States so he could deploy active-duty military from the Department of War to kill American citizens Meanwhile, he *pardoned* the January 6 terrorists

Left: we want the Epstein files Right: we also want the Epstein files Trump: best I can do for you is the Amelia Earhart files

Ezra Klein conducted a good interview with Corey Robin, about which I have some thoughts. The first is that Ezra's opening claim that the Reichstag fire analogy is "wrong" suggests a zero sum view that does not do justice to how most historians think about analogy.

Yes let’s lower the flag for this person.

Oh ffs.🙄 As far as I'm concerned this was a success. A prosecutor refused to indict because there wasn't any evidence. That is not a failure, it's the way it's supposed to happen.

You cannot celebrate Charlie Kirk as a advocate of free speech as well as Trump using the FCC to silence his critics. Pick a lane, stupids.

Wouldn’t it be wild if Kimmel ended up becoming our Zelenskyy

I hate the New York Times’ use of the word “success“ in this headline. It’s not a sports contest. His “success” is our country’s disaster.

We've only moved deeper into the pattern of excusing polite racism, so I'll just repost this piece from the weekend: campaign-trails.ghost.io/the-white-ci...

🧵Fear Factory Turning Point isn't a Debate Organization, its a Conflict Machine Charlie Kirk didn’t invent conflict entrepreneurship, but he sure helped to perfect it. open.substack.com/pub/thecycle...

I recommend everyone watches this

Really?

When Nancy Mace thought the killer was trans, she wanted them dead. Now that she knows the killer is white, straight, and a Trump supporter, she just wants harmless prayers.

It’s a deliberate information warfare strategy. There is a first mover advantage to putting out a narrative. Media is afraid to contest bc if that narrative is correct, they will be accused of bias. If IT’s wrong, they shift blame anyway (“leftist professors”). No accountability, win-win for MAGA

The authorization of racial profiling from the Supreme Court.

I'm taking a required course on how to responsibly perform federally-funded research and it feels like taking a bootlegging course right after the 21st amendment was ratified

I wonder what percentage of Fox viewers know that Fox paid $787.5 million for spreading lies about the 2020 election. I'll bet it's a low number. They don't know because they watch Fox.

Trump isn’t coming to the rescue… 📌 Hundreds of Arkansas farmers are begging the federal government for emergency aid as their farm economy collapses. They’re on the edge of bankruptcy. Watch until the end. Wow!

A scoop: Connor Clegg, former Charlie Kirk employee who was ousted as student body president over his racist social media posts, is working at the EEOC talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/fo...

Who in the real world would actually say out loud that they were an untrustworthy person? Did he confuse the CDC head with Littlefinger from Game of Thrones?!

Needed this today.

As always Trump turns subtext into text. He knows his base. (Goes on to say "I'm not a dictator," etc. but this is a classic way he floats ideas he wants to normalize.)

Personality cult watch

One week. One week!

Explicitly illegal and unconstitutional

Watch and weep for our country.

Authoritarian regimes frequently struggle to govern effectively because accurate information doesn't reach the leadership. Trump is basically designing a system to create this problem.

Has anyone read one (1) history book? A chapter?

Watching JD Vance lie about the Biden and Trump Justice Departments and FBI investigations in @kristenwelker.bsky.social makes it clear that every word out of his mouth, including a and the, is a lie.

Krugman: AI is increasing demand for electricity while Trump is decreasing supply. I vaguely remember from an Econ class what happens in that situation

Sure, they are openly using federal agencies to investigate and potentially prosecute their opponents, but maybe someone filled out a form wrong?

EEOC charge vs. Harvard "backs [its claim] up almost exclusively by showing a demographic shift and not how that shift occurred...effectively relying on a...legal theory known as disparate impact." But "Trump signed an executive order in April that prohibited federal agencies from using the theory."

Brazil, India and South Africa are three of the most influential and important countries in the world. Trump is systematically alienating all three of them, thereby driving them into the arms of their BRICS partners China and Russia. This is strategic malpractice. wapo.st/41HUrMf

Earned?

Q: “Are you going to make sure that all the [immigrants detained]…have due process" Indiana Lt. Gov. Beckwith: “They don't have a right to see a judge…When the Japanese were bombing Pearl Harbor, did we give them due process?” Read more about it in Morning Shots: www.thebulwark.com/p/drinks-app...

Thomas Massey pointing out Republican hypocrisy

For all of his successes and considerations as a "boy genius" and "prodigy," no one with significant influence on him had enough sense to keep him away from people like Musk and Thiel, a level of morality that could have attained had he not not been allowed to skate through every level of schooling.

Trump’s assault on truth is right out of the authoritarian playbook. Learn to spot the tactics in my book, Attack from Within: How Disinformation is Sabotaging America.” www.nytimes.com/2025/08/03/u...

The autocrat's playbook

And we're officially at the end of being able to trust the jobs numbers in this country ever again.

This is how democracies die.

"They looked like vigilantes. They acted like vigilantes. They were dressed like vigilantes."

There are people in this administration who are truly morons and others who believe they need to act like morons to stay in the leader's good favor, and at a certain point it doesn't matter which group they're in

The never-ending parade of Trump drama previously seemed to immunize him from classic scandal politics (my 2017 column www.nytimes.com/2017/01/12/u...). But the Epstein controversy is one of the first he's faced with normal scandal dynamics. My research on these bpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/sites.dartmo...

Yup