RFK Jr. excoriates Dana Bash: "You're talking nonsense. You're making assertions. You can't support it. And then when I call you on them, they're you're telling me I'm arguing...."

"Do you see your job as ending vaccine hesitancy or do you see your job as telling the truth to the American people?... All you know how to do is repeat things that people told you and say trust the experts. That's what you do.... Now we know that Anthony Fauci, who was the expert, was lying about everything about masks, about social distancing, about natural immunity, about the transmission from the vaccine, about the source of COVID. He was lying. And you were punishing people for not trusting the experts. And now you're rolling out the experts again to talk about something that you have no personal knowledge of...."

"I dreamed I was on a train, the subway kind of train where you face people sitting on the other side, and Trump was right across from me. He started reading The Gettysburg Address…."

That's what I texted Meade just now, so then I pasted the statement in Grok. Didn't ask Grok to do anything with it, certainly not to write it up into a short short story, but that's what it did:

The car rattled along the elevated track, fluorescent lights flickering like a bad motel sign. I was wedged between a guy scrolling TikTok and a woman clutching a bag of oranges. Across from me sat Donald Trump—orange as the fruit, hair defying gravity, suit somehow unwrinkled despite the heat. No Secret Service. No crowd. Just him, me, and the Address. 

"The Right would say really rough things and names ... but on the Left, it was like they want me to die or that 'We're cheering for your next stroke' ... they even have a gif where they have a stroke in your head."

🚨NEW: John Fetterman *STUNS* CNN's Dana Bash by telling her how Left crueler than Right🚨

FETTERMAN: "The Right would say really rough things and names ... but on the Left, it was like they want me to die or that 'We're cheering for your next stroke' ... they even have a gif… pic.twitter.com/iMRyVTssgs

— Jason Cohen 🇺🇸 (@JasonJournoDC) November 12, 2025

Vague, vacuous, and not flustered... 2 looks at that Kamala Harris interview.

"Kamala Harris didn’t hurt herself in her interview this week with CNN’s Dana Bash. She didn’t particularly help herself, either."

Writes Bret Stephens in a NYT piece with a meaner headline: "A Vague, Vacuous TV Interview Didn’t Help Kamala Harris."

But really, absorbing that meanness, isn't vague and vacuous what they were aiming for? I'm saying "they" not because I'm rejecting the she/her pronouns Harris has announced but because I presume her performance was developed by a team.

Stephens identifies pluses and minuses. On the plus side, "she came across as warm, relatable." (Did she?) 

On the minus side, we see the basis for that headline:

She’s vague to the point of vacuous. She struggled to give straight answers to her shifting positions on fracking and border security other than to say, “my values have not changed.” Fine, but she evaded the question of why it took the Biden administration more than three years to gain better control of the border, which it ultimately did through an executive order that could have been in place years earlier. It also doesn’t answer the question of why she reversed her former policy positions — or whether she has higher values other than political expediency.

We can infer the answer easily enough. What's she supposed to do, come right out and own it? 

The Stephens reaction is paired with a reaction from another NYT opinion writer, Michelle Cottle, who says, "I think that went pretty well, don’t you?"

Since you asked, I'll answer. Yes. Expectations were low, and there's no mistake for her enemies to feast on today. There were no big silences and no memorable passsage-of-time inanities.

Cottle gives Harris credit for not "ducking" questions or "getting flustered."

Flustered! To quote something I said in 2013: "That's a word that people have traditionally used — this is my observation — to portray a woman as incapable of standing her ground and dealing with emotional turmoil."

Why are you waiting to see if a woman gets "flustered"? It feels as though you're expecting her to prove her worth by not seeming like a stereotype of a woman. 

And Cottle continues with this "flustered" business:

The not getting flustered part was as important as the answers themselves. She absolutely needed to avoid giving any opening for the MAGA trolls — who are obsessed with machismo and performative toughness — to accuse her of being overly emotional or weak or easy to rattle. Amusingly, Bash looked more flustered than Harris did for most of the interview....

Yeah, why was that amusing... to Cottle? I'd have to guess that Cottle wanted Harris to win, and Bash's terror counted toward the Harris win. How presidential Harris was! She intimidated Bash. As if that means Putin and other dictators will be intimidated by Harris. But that inference is entirely unjustified. Bash was chosen because she was thought to be most inclined to help Harris. And Bash had the complex task of helping while seeming to be tough and properly journalistic.

Cottle projects her own worries about womanly inadequacies onto "MAGA trolls." Of course, they are out there, looking for material that can be used to attack Harris: They are "are obsessed with machismo and performative toughness — to accuse her of being overly emotional or weak or easy to rattle." But that doesn't mean Harris's own supporters are free of their own doubts and sexist stereotypes.

"Harris explains in exclusive CNN interview why she’s shifted her position on key issues since her first run for president."

CNN teases, in advance of its airing of the edited, prerecorded interview.

Pressed about how she's changed many of her positions, Harris said:

“I think the most important and most significant aspect of my policy perspective and decisions is my values have not changed.... You mentioned the Green New Deal. I have always believed – and I have worked on it – that the climate crisis is real, that it is an urgent matter to which we should apply metrics that include holding ourselves to deadlines around time.”...

Are there deadlines "around" things other than time?

“My values have not changed. So that is the reality of it. And four years of being vice president, I’ll tell you, one of the aspects, to your point, is traveling the country extensively.... I believe it is important to build consensus, and it is important to find a common place of understanding of where we can actually solve problems.”

The values don't change. This is the rhetorical move to abstraction. Everything can be coordinated if you go to a high enough level of generality. There's a limit to how often you can seek refuge in unspecified "values." And you may end up in a "consensus" of nothing. 

The article presents it as significant that she agreed that she "would" when Bash brought up the prospect of choosing one Republican to serve on her cabinet. Bash also brought up "Trump’s assertion, made last month at a conference for Black journalists, that she had altered her racial identity over time." Harris brushed off the issue: "Same old, tired playbook. Next question, please."

"It’s true that the format did Biden no favors. CNN moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash avoided fact-checking..."

"... like it was the plague, which allowed Trump to steamroll an unsteady Biden with his usual stream of lies. Trump served up whoppers about abortion, his bungled covid response, Charlottesville, January 6, and more.... CNN finally ran an on-air fact-check of Trump more than an hour after the debate ended. But considering the relatively minuscule size of the audience at that late hour and the fact Trump was allowed to lie with impunity on the same network at length earlier in the evening, CNN’s belated attempt at basic journalistic accountability was worth very little."

Writes Aaron Rupar, in "Not great, Joe/Biden's debate showing stunk up the joint. But don't give up hope" (PublicNotice).

The format did Biden no favors? The format was engineered to favor Biden! Trump stepped up and did it the way Biden's people wanted. If the format chosen imposed disadvantages on Biden, it's only because his people thought other formats were more disadvantageous... unless the fix was in and the idea was to expose Biden's weaknesses.

Rupar, of course, is ridiculous. The "whopper about... Charlottesville" came from Biden. Who is still bitterly clinging to the notion that Trump said Nazis were fine people? Maybe Biden is so far gone that he actually believes it, but I don't believe Rupar believes it. I'm crediting him with rank cynicism. If the CNN moderators had been fact-checking in real time, they would have had to correct Biden on the "fine people" hoax... and on numerous other things, such as the claim that Trump told people to inject bleach into their arm. But Rupar is free to imagine that the moderators would have fact-checked in a biased way, a la Candy Crowley, and to pine about the debate that might have been.

CORRECTION: When first published, this post had a few stray sentences of Rupar's — at the bottom, after a big space — and I hope no one mistook that as mine! 

Trump at the U.N.

We commend SG @AntonioGuterres & his call for the UN to focus more on people & less on bureaucracy. #USAatUNGA #UNGA https://t.co/KVvCMznmcN pic.twitter.com/UQn6RrC9Xw

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 18, 2017

ADDED: Nikki Haley was on "State of the Union" yesterday, and the host Dana Bash played her a clip of Trump saying:

"The United Nations is not a friend of democracy. It's not a friend to freedom. It's not a friend even to the United States of America, where, as you know, it has its home. And it surely is not a friend to Israel."

Bash then paraphased that — very unfairly I think — in the question: "Will the president stick by his America-first message when he appears before the U.N. this coming week?"

Haley did not do what I'd have done with that question — say that it's just plain wrong to translate that statement of Trump's into "his America-first message." He spoke of democracy and freedom, principles that matter to all human beings, and he criticized the U.N. for its hostility to the United States and to Israel. To object to bad treatment is not to demand to be put first.

Haley avoids repeating and reinforcing Bash's phrase. Here's what she said, which you can see restates and augments what Trump said:

"What I have been hearing from sources on both sides of the aisle with regard to this FBI situation is that the more likely impact will be on the down-ballot races that some of the races..."

"Some of the races were already, especially on the Senate side, breaking more for Republicans than in the past and that this new is a reminder to people that they may want a check and balance and that that will help."

Said Dana Bash, the CNN chief political correspondent, on "State of the Union" this morning.

That is, those who want to keep Trump out of the White House but who also fear Hillary Clinton might — especially if they think Hillary is going to win — focus on keeping the Congress Republican in order to put a brake on her... or even — more aggressively — to set up an impeachment.

"Hillary Clinton is considering having multiple people play the role of Donald Trump in debate prep... and Alan Dershowitz... would love to do it."

But he says he hasn't been asked yet.

Dershowitz... said he is well-suited for the role “if they were looking for a loudmouth New Yorker. Of course I would do it if asked — I think I could do a pretty good Donald Trump impression....”

It's not like casting the role for a movie! I should think the key would be making the kinds of statements and arguments that might come up. I suppose part of it is creating the feeling of the opponent's presence, especially if there was concern that your candidate could be intimidated or provoked. But I have the feeling Hillary Clinton is so used to standing her ground and making her points and keeping her standard expression that imitating Trump's bluster is not very important.

And it could even backfire. Let's say you take somebody — Dershowitz, perhaps — who hates Trump and is disgusted by him. Now, he thinks he can embody that object of his contempt. Is he really going to create the effect that the real Trump will present on stage at that debate or will he give Hillary a false sense of her opponent as someone who can be fought in ways that won't look right when the real event happens? She might get the idea that tilting her head back and smirking and occasionally shaking her head or laughing will get us viewers on her side. But he's going to have a fake Hillary to practice with and he'll have worked out some strategies. Can Dershowitz — through the fog of contempt — perceive what these will be and provide her with an opportunity to work out an effective style?

A couple days ago, I said "Watch out for Nice Trump. What will Hillary do if Nice Trump arrives on the scene?" And in the comments Left Bank of the Charles said: "As for Hillary, I'm sure she'd love it if Nice Trump shows up for the debates. But I'd advise her to expect the rope-a-dope."

So... she might prepare for the blustery jackass of the Trump hater's fever dreams, then be surprised by a kinder, gentler Trump. But if Nice Trump arrives on the debate set, it may be a trick to lure her into debating the wrong way, and late in the debate — perhaps when she's tired (or getting too comfortable) — he may surprise her in some unpredictable way.

On CNN's "State of the Union" yesterday, Hillary Clinton's campaign manager Robby Mook said they haven't come up with someone to play Donald Trump in the mock debates. The moderator Dana Bash tried to get him to talk about the "incredibly delicate task" — which I think referred to confronting Hillary with very negative material, such as her lying and her husband's treatment of women. But Mook just used the question as an opportunity to attack Trump:

It's very hard to find someone to mimic the reckless temperament and the hateful instincts and divisive instincts of Donald Trump.... The challenge is finding someone who -- who can recreate the kind of reckless temperament, the kind of hateful language and divisive language that's become Trump's hallmark.

But it's funny that Dershowitz is eagerly waving his hand and saying me! me!

Dershowitz has a new book, "Electile Dysfunction: A Guide for Unaroused Voters." And if you enjoy that pun, let me guess: You are over 70 and not a woman. But if you are under 50 and a Hillary supporter, it might be just the thing to trigger you into thinking yes, this is the jerk who can play Trump.

ADDED: There's no reason to do a mock debate with someone acting like the Trump people won't like. If that's the Trump who shows up for the real thing, he'll hurt himself. Imagine the best Trump, the one who can win the election. That's what he's trying to do right now. You don't want to get caught flat-footed, like Obama in the first debate in 2012.

How Ted Cruz answers the no-executive-experience/aren't-you-just-like-Barack-Obama question.

What's wrong with the CNN headline "Huckabee compares being gay to drinking, swearing"?

My first post today is about my struggle with the Sunday morning talk shows. I watch to blog, so I want the transcript. I said I record 4 of the shows, and, now, getting ready to blog this CNN headline, I realizethat  there's a 5th Sunday morning show, and I never watch it. It's CNN's "State of the Union."

Fortunately, the complete transcript is available, so we can look at exactly what Mike Huckabee said and why there's something wrong with the headline:

DANA BASH: [Y]ou do write very eloquently about it being a religious conviction to oppose to -- oppose gay marriage, but then you also talk about the biblical backings of being heterosexual.  So, given that, how do you kind of square that religious conviction with being open to having gay friends?

HUCKABEE: Well, people can be my friends who have lifestyles that are not necessarily my lifestyle.

Notice that Huckabee shifted the topic from being gay to having a lifestyle.  So right there it's obvious that he's not going to be comparing "being gay to drinking, swearing" — as the headline has it. He'll be comparing acting out on homosexual desire to acting out on a desire to consume alcohol or acting out on the urge to express oneself with profanity. These are all sins in his book, but like anybody else who has friends and believes that a lot of things are sins, he's friends with sinners.