"Adam Schiff falls right into Bill Maher’s trap..."

Adam Schiff falls right into Bill Maher’s trap as he criticizes a statement he thought was from Trump but was actually from Obama.

MAHER: “This statement from the administration: ‘The president had the constitutional authority to direct the use of military force because he could… pic.twitter.com/5jg3wpdAQZ

— Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) March 7, 2026

And earlier in last night's show:

Bill Maher apologizes to his liberal audience as he delivers this take on the “Iran war”:

“This week, war. Did you hear about that thing?”

“We bombed Iran, and it’s going on now. If you expected me to say I hate it, I don’t. Sorry.”

“Sorry. And you cannot name one horrible… pic.twitter.com/rHnGhMpK2g

— Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) March 7, 2026

Complicated business.

We found it. We declassified it.

Now Congress can see how classified info was leaked to shape political narratives - and decide if our institutions were weaponized against the American people. pic.twitter.com/PCpLFLuPmI

— FBI Director Kash Patel (@FBIDirectorKash) August 12, 2025

AI is maddening, but also fascinating. This previously would’ve taken days of work, but Grok just did it in less than three minutes. pic.twitter.com/OH8wSqmrbH

— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) August 12, 2025

"CBS canceled Colbert’s show just THREE DAYS after Colbert called out CBS parent company Paramount for its $16M settlement with Trump..."

"... a deal that looks like bribery. America deserves to know if his show was canceled for political reasons."

Tweets Elizabeth Warren, showing us this clip of Colbert critiquing the $16 million deal:

CBS canceled Colbert’s show just THREE DAYS after Colbert called out CBS parent company Paramount for its $16M settlement with Trump – a deal that looks like bribery.

America deserves to know if his show was canceled for political reasons.

Watch and share his message. pic.twitter.com/Rz7HcWFLYM

— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) July 18, 2025

AND: From last night's show:

"If film and if film and TV productions continue to move out of California due to tax incentives in other states what might the future look for Los Angeles? Is there a risk of it becoming the next Detroit."

That's a question from the audience, and Bill Maher snaps, "Well, there's no need to shit on Detroit in the question! Detroit's a fine city. Detroit!"

That was Friday night, but here's a headline that appeared in the London Times earlier the same day: "Why Hollywood could be the new Detroit/It’s a town built on one industry. So what happens when everyone realises it’s cheaper and easier to film in Hertfordshire?"

So you can see the need to "shit" on Detroit. It's a city with one iconic industry, and it lost it and went into severe decline. It pithily expresses the threat to L.A.

In that Bill Maher/"Overtime" clip, Adam Schiff says that because the movie industry is a "prize economic and cultural driver of the United States" — and he loves movies — the U.S. needs to offer tax incentives.

The other guest, Bret Stephens asks: "But why should it just be for Hollywood? It should be for normal people. It should be for any kind of entrepreneur, not just celebrities... whose pictures and whose faces you know.... It shouldn't just simply be a favorite industry — Oh, we can't lose our our movie stars!"

It's Super Tuesday, and the only interesting thing seems to be whether the California Senate race will be between Adam Schiff and Katie Porter or Adam Schiff and Steve Garvey.

I'm reading "Schiff’s insider support trumps Porter’s outsider appeal/Polling shows Rep. Katie Porter running in third place, behind fellow Rep. Adam Schiff and a Republican he helped boost" (WaPo).

The two popular Democrats [Schiff and Porter], who are both prodigious fundraisers, had long been viewed as the probable victors Tuesday in California’s jungle primary, in which the top two vote-getters will advance to the general election regardless of party.

"Jungle primary"? There's some outmoded slang.

But with Schiff, Porter and their Democratic colleague, Rep. Barbara Lee, splitting their party’s vote, Schiff has wielded his enormous war chest to boost support for their top Republican rival, former Major League Baseball player Steve Garvey.

Oh? So Garvey's success has been Schiff's shifty doing?

I don't see how "Steve Garvey became a punchline."

I'm reading "How Steve Garvey became a punchline at the first California Senate debate/The Republican and former Dodger was an easy target for House Democrats on Monday night" at Politico.

And I'm watching the full debate....

I don't see anything to laugh at. Start at 36:34 to see Adam Schiff pressure him to say whether he'll vote for Donald Trump. Garvey stays perfectly calm and speaks rationally, even as he deprives his opponents of a video clip of him saying that he'll vote for Trump. And notice how the moderator breaks in repeatedly as he's answering. He never loses his cool. He seems to have studied and adopted the demeanor of Ronald Reagan. 

By the way, Politico credits Katie Porter with delivering a "zinger," when she said "What they say is true: Once a Dodger, always a Dodger." But Dodger fans won't want to hear their team name used as an insult. Anyway, there were lots of references to baseball, including from Garvey. 

"Advisers to the governor... said that Mr. Newsom’s spur-of-the-moment pledges to name a Black woman as an interim replacement put him in a quandary."

"Black women are a key constituency in the Democratic Party.... But California’s electorate features a dizzying array of political and ethnic groups that lobby hard for representation, and satisfying one faction inevitably means upsetting several others. Only about 5 percent of California’s population is Black, a far smaller share than those of Latino, white or Asian American residents. To many Black leaders, including the Congressional Black Caucus, Mr. Newsom’s choice was clear: He had to appoint Ms. Lee, a longtime icon in the Black community. But Mr. Newsom had internal Democratic Party politics to consider as well, and naming Ms. Lee would have given her a significant advantage in the 2024 Senate race. Mr. Schiff, who led the investigation of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, was the choice of Ms. Pelosi...."

From "On Senate Choice, Newsom Was in a Box of His Own Making/Gov. Gavin Newsom of California’s choice of a successor to Dianne Feinstein was complicated by two television interviews that attracted political pressure from many sides" (NYT).

Look how impetuously Newsom made that pledge to pick a black woman — video clip. He was put on the spot by Joy Reid. It seems as though he was just thinking short term, not daring to hesitate and utterly incapable of calculating the broader factors. That makes him seem like a reckless lightweight.

Because Newsom wouldn't pick Lee, that made other black women not want the job:

Gavin Newsom fulfills his promise and names a black woman — Laphonza Butler — to replace Dianne Feinstein.

The NYT reports.

Butler, the president of Emily’s List, "has been a fixture in California politics for nearly 15 years as a former leader of the state’s largest labor union and an adviser to Vice President Kamala Harris."

Newsom didn't pick Barbara Lee, who is a black woman and who is running to win that Senate seat in the 2024 election. He'd said he didn't want to have an impact on that race. Presumably, Laphonza Butler is committed to completing Feinstein's term and not attempting reelection. Lee is behind in the polls, so by declining to boost Lee, Newsom helped Adam Schiff, who's been leading.

"Shame" chant in Congress echoes the "Shame!" chants heard in Wisconsin in 2011.

Democrats throw a 5 minute temper tantrum in the well of the House chamber as the vote to censure Adam Schiff passes, yelling "shame" at Kevin McCarthy and refusing to allow him to finish reading the resolution. pic.twitter.com/kqQocSoZPi

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) June 21, 2023

I want to remind the world that the "shame" chant was a major feature of the Wisconsin protests of 2011 — the so-called "uprising" — as documented on this blog at "Protesters chant 'Shame! Shame!' after Gov. Walker reads the MLK Day proclamation" and "Weary Wisconsin Democrats surprised by late-night vote, rush at the Republicans "pumping their fists and shouting 'Shame!' and 'Cowards!'", and "Next to the meat, concern for the fish... and for fraud... chanting 'shame'... yelling 'Koch suckers!' at a 14-year-old girl... laughing at Andrew Breitbart's 'Go to Hell!'" 

From that last link:

I've clipped out the "Shame!" chant. There's much more on the video I recorded and edited, and the highlights are identified in the post. To hear the voice of Andrew Breitbart, scroll to 3:36.

Speaker McCarthy pithily states why Schiff and Swalwell will no longer serve on the House Intel Committee.

 

The questioner tries to make it about Santos — a ridiculous distraction that McCarthy rebuffs: the lies of Schiff and Swalwell are more relevant and consequential. McCarthy doesn't get sucked into trying to minimize Santos's lies. He just maximizes Schiff and Swalwell's lies. Maximizes or right-sizes.

"The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol will hold its last public meeting on Monday afternoon..."

"The panel is... expected to vote on referring Mr. Trump to the Justice Department on charges of insurrection, obstruction of an official proceeding of Congress and conspiracy to defraud the United States.... Referrals against Mr. Trump would not carry any legal weight or compel the Justice Department to take any action, but they would send a powerful signal.... In a statement, Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, dismissed the committee’s planned actions on Monday as those of a 'kangaroo court' that held 'show trials by Never Trump partisans who are a stain on this country’s history.'...

The NYT reports.

"And just so you know, because all Biden does is talks about COVID. Right? He doesn’t call it the China virus. You know why?"

"Because China has him paid off. He can’t use that term. They gave his son one and a half billion to manage. He makes millions of dollars a year, I assume. Right?... He walked in, he walked out with one and a half billion. Hey, maybe he’s not so stupid after all. Right? That’s the only thing. I thought he was so dumb. Maybe he’s not as dumb as we think.... The biggest story, no, the second biggest story, the worst was when they spied on my campaign and they got caught. That’s the biggest political corruption story in the history of our country, but this could very well be second. And we have what’s called the laptop from hell, the laptop from hell. From what I’ve understood, you only have seen a tiny portion of it, but you know what the press is now doing? They’re blaming Russia. It’s Russia did it. Russia is the one that created the laptop. And Russia brought it into that little shop to have it fixed. Russia. I think Russia’s looking at us, they’re saying, 'Those people are stone cold crazy. This is…' No, it was Russia’s fault. They said it. Loud and clear. It was Russia, Russia, Russia. Aren’t we tired of this crap? I saw a Schiff the other day, two days ago, watermelon, he looks like a watermelon head. Right?"

Just a little sample of what your President said in Tampa, Florida yesterday.

Do the people understand that kind of talk? It made me think of that sentence from a New Yorker article about French poets that I saw fit to quote for you yesterday: "Rimbaud’s 'A Season In Hell' gave the idea that poetry should be, first of all, a journey into extreme experience, evidenced not by a coherent evocation of a story but by subversive images and sensual evocations that subvert logic and language itself."

Trump's Tampa speech gave the idea that politics should be, first of all, a journey into extreme experience, evidenced not by a coherent evocation of a story but by subversive images and sensual evocations that subvert logic and language itself.

Me, I get it. It's thoroughly poetic.

"I will have gold: I will be idle and brutal. Women nurse those fierce invalids, home from hot countries. I’ll be mixed up in politics. Saved. Now I am an outcast.... Forward! The march, the burden and the desert, weariness and anger. To whom shall I hire myself out? What beast should I adore? What holy image is attacked? What hearts shall I break? What lies should I uphold? In what blood tread?" — Arthur Rimbaud, "A Season in Hell." 

Replacing Justice Ginsburg — an assortment of tweets.

Yes, we should probably turn over the appointment of a Supreme Court justice, whose job it is to uphold the Constitution, to a group of people threatening to pack the court, impeach for pure politics, and add states willy-nilly. Can't see the downside.

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) September 21, 2020

Morning shows conveniently ignored these clips today... pic.twitter.com/kSDaRiER4D

— Jason Miller (@JasonMillerinDC) September 21, 2020

Mr. President, this is low. Even for you.

No, I didn’t write Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dying wish to a nation she served so well, and spent her whole life making a more perfect union.

But I am going to fight like hell to make it come true.

No confirmation before inauguration. https://t.co/QgwPCUK5n7

— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) September 21, 2020

“Boy, y’all want power. God, I hope you never get it.” pic.twitter.com/HEXjR7cpU6

— Jake Schneider (@jacobkschneider) September 21, 2020

Greenwald: "The abuse of power... by the CIA, the FBI, and the NSA... is a vastly more serious scandal than 'Russiagate' ever could dream of being."

The abuse of power during the 2016 election by the CIA, the FBI, and the NSA -- and the subsequent Schiff-led lies repeatedly disseminated in the media to justify that abuse -- is a vastly more serious scandal than "Russiagate" ever could dream of being: https://t.co/hOF0K1F44E

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) May 9, 2020

"President Donald Trump has fired the intelligence community’s chief watchdog, Michael Atkinson, who was the first to sound the alarm to Congress last September..."

"... about an 'urgent' complaint he received from an intelligence official involving Trump’s communications with Ukraine’s president. Atkinson's decision set in motion the congressional probe that culminated in Trump's impeachment and ultimate acquittal in a bruising political and legal drama that consumed Washington for months.... House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) described the firing as 'retribution' coming in the 'dead of night' and called it 'yet another blatant attempt by the president to gut the independence of the intelligence community and retaliate against those who dare to expose presidential wrongdoing.'"

Politico reports.

"Oh, I liked Dukakis. I like Buttigieg. I've finally lived long enough to realize I don't want a President I like."

Said Meade, just now. We'd been talking about the impeachment.

I'd read out an NPR headline, "Trump Impeachment Process Was 'Absolutely Worth It,' Schiff Says" — because I thought it was funny — so the subject was how the Democratic Party reacts after it focuses hate on a Republican President.

Meade and I lived through the Nixon hate fest in the 1970s. What did the Democratic Party give us after the hated Nixon withdrew from the scene? We got Jimmy Carter as a President, a notorious failure, and then 2 candidates who failed to win the presidency — Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis.

I said "I liked Dukakis," and I really did at the time. I offered that Buttigieg reminds me of Dukakis. Something about his manner and his voice and style of speech. All of that was made to order for my taste.

Meade said: "Oh, I liked Dukakis. I like Buttigieg. I've finally lived long enough to realize I don't want a President I like."

If you're thinking of trying to top Meade's line by saying "I want a President who likes me," Meade already said that too, but I think "I don't want a President I like" is the more important concept here.

ADDED: From a PBS webpage:



The "other guy" was President Ronald Reagan. Neither Meade nor I liked Ronald Reagan. [CORRECTION: The other guy was George H.W. Bush. Meade and I did not like him either. Meade still doesn't like him: "He wasn't good enough."]

Michael Dukakis was Governor of Massachusetts. He was succeeded in office by William Weld, who's running for President right now, in the Republican primaries, challenging Donald Trump. The next elected Governor of Massachusetts was none other than Mitt Romney. After Mitt Romney came Deval Patrick, and he's running in the Democratic Party primaries right now.

Somehow, Governors of Massachusetts keep thinking they should be our President. There's a funny old NYT column about that. Hang on a second.

AND: How many newspaper columns stick in your mind for 30+ years? Here it is, "Well, if It Isn't the Governor of Massachusetts" by Veronica Geng (Sept. 22, 1988).

My boyfriend, Ed, has authorized me to tell this personal story about us, because it bears on the Presidential campaign. A few years ago I developed an infatuation with someone else, and then it fizzled out - mainly because of the shrewd way Ed handled the situation. He just began referring to this other guy, whose name he knew perfectly well, as ''the Governor of Massachusetts'' (which he wasn't). I'd come home on cloud nine, and Ed would say, ''So, did you have fun with the Governor of Massachusetts?'' This would deflate me....

"Jerry. Jerry. Jerry."

Nadler ripped final argument away from Schiff, thinks Shifty did a terrible job. They are fighting big time! https://t.co/L2qTV9pWiL

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 31, 2020

"Imagine looking out at a class full of Schiffs."

I say out loud as I'm overhearing MSNBC where somebody's interviewing Laurence Tribe and saying "Adam Schiff was a student of yours."

I need to get up to speed on the "head on a pike" story.

I'm trying to read "Schiff refers to CBS 'head on pike' story, infuriating GOP: 'Every one of us knows it is not true'" (Fox News), "Schiff sparks blowback with head on a 'pike' line" (The Hill), "GOP senators incensed by Schiff’s ‘head on a pike’ remark" (AP).

Did Adam Schiff make up another quote?!

At CNN ("See tense moment that left key GOP senator shaking her head"):



After he says "vote against the President and your head will be on a pike," he touches his nose — a tell? — and pauses. He hears murmurs of objection from the Senators and starts talking about "irony" and how he hopes it's not true. The irony he finds is in his own argument that Trump is making himself into a king and putting heads on pikes is a method of governance associated with kings. So if someone associated with Trump said "head on a pike," it would be more support for Schiff's argument that Trump is acting like a king. He made all that up and delivers it in his ultra-serious closing argument to the Senators who are required to sit still and silent and take it.

From the Fox News article:

"I thought he was doing fine with [talking about] moral courage until he got to the 'head on a pike.' That's where he lost me,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, who has said she might be open to calling witnesses in the trial, told reporters. “He's a good orator. ... It was just unnecessary.”...

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, considered another key Republican vote, agreed with Murkowski. “Not only have I never heard the ‘head on the pike’ line but also I know of no Republican senator who has been threatened in any way by anyone in the administration," she told reporters.

And here's how The Washington Post presents the story: "Adam Schiff delivered a detailed, hour-long summary of the Democrats’ impeachment case. Some Republicans dismissed it because of one line." Oh! Poor Adam Schiff! He spoke for so long and they focused on one line:

The reference came from a CBS News report that had gone viral earlier Friday, quoting an anonymous Trump confidant claiming that senators were warned that “your head will be on a pike” if they vote against the president on impeachment. The report did not say who had delivered the threat or which senators had been so warned.

“I don’t know if that’s true,” Schiff (D-Calif.) said. “I hope it’s not true. But I’m struck by the irony of the idea, when we’re talking about a president who would make himself a monarch, that whoever that was would use the terminology of a penalty that was imposed by a monarch — a head on a pike.”

Schiff sandwiched the reference between an anecdote about his father trying to get into the military with bad eyes and a flat feet during World War II, succeeding on the third attempt, and a tribute to the late representative Thomas F. Railsback (R-Ill.), who worked to build bipartisan support for President Richard M. Nixon’s impeachment. 

Oh! He sandwiched it. Well, then. So unfair to Schiff not to give him credit for the bread around that nasty filling. That was a shit sandwich on Railsback and flat-footed Dad.

ADDED: What is the history of heads on pikes? Wikipedia says:

Placing a severed head on a spike (or pike or pole) is a custom used sometimes in human history and in culture. The symbolic value may change over time. It may give a warning to spectators. The head may be a human head or an animal head.

The all-time most famous head on a pike was Oliver Cromwell:

It's not just monarchs who do heads on pikes. The French revolutionaries did it:

And Hollywood did it to George W. Bush:

"not to get panglossian but I think..."

not to get panglossian but I think these hearings are helping the Ds become the party of wholesomeness and patriotism and the Rs the party of grievance and pettiness. that would be a disaster watershed moment for the party of Reagan.

— Harry Litman (@harrylitman) November 19, 2019

Who's Litman? His Twitter profile says: "Washington Post columnist. Former US Attorney, DOJ official.Teach con law at UCSD and UCLA. Practice law @CCWhistleblower. Exec. prod. & host, @talkingfedspod."

This tweet is such a perfect example of cocooned liberal self-love. If there is one thing that has given me energy from Day 1 of this blog, it is my aversion to cocooned liberal self-love.

The word in that tweet that really gets me is "wholesomeness." Imagine staring at Adam Schiff for hours thinking, oh, that is so reassuring, he's so gosh-darn wholesome.

I like the "panglossian," and not just because I'm elite-educated enough to know what it means. Click my Voltaire tag to check my credibility. But I looked up "panglossian" in the OED anyway, in the hope of finding some good quotes. The best one is from Thomas Hardy (1922): "Should anything of this sort in the following adumbrations seem ‘queer’—should any of them seem to good Panglossians to embody strange and disrespectful conceptions of this best of all possible worlds, I apologize; but cannot help it."

Absorbed in the OED, I looked up "cocoon." When did the silky larva-spun case break out into the butterfly of figurative usage? The OED says1865 (D. Masson Recent Brit. Philos.): "That power of thinking which has involved itself in such a vast cocoon of wonders." And 1870 (J. R. Lowell My Study Windows): "The mind can weave itself warmly in the cocoon of its own thoughts."

ADDED: I clicked on my Voltaire tag and noticed this drawing of a bust of Voltaire (which I scrawled many years ago at the Louvre and blogged in the first year of blogging):



And I got something out of this previously blogged Voltaire quote: "To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize." I don't know if that's patriotic and wholesome, but it's great support for the proposition that Donald Trump does not rule over us. You can totally criticize that guy as much as you want. It's strongly encouraged!