"It's long past time for all Americans and the media to confront the fact that violence and murder are the tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree day after day, year after year..."

"... in the most hateful and despicable way possible. For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world's worst mass murderers and criminals. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we're seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now.... Radical left political violence has hurt too many innocent people and taken too many lives. Tonight, I ask all Americans to commit themselves to the American values for which Charlie Kirk lived and died — the values of free speech, citizenship, the rule of law, and the patriotic devotion and love of God.... Today, because of this heinous act, Charlie's voice has become bigger and grander than ever before, and it's not even close...."

Said Trump in an address from the Oval Office last night.

My attention was called to that by this Maggie Haberman piece in the NYT: "At the White House, Trump’s Grief and Shock Turn to Rage Over Charlie Kirk/President Trump asked for updates and met with advisers in the Oval Office before recording a four-minute video in which he blamed rhetoric from the 'radical left' for the killing."

The headline prompts us to question Trump's basis for purporting to know what motivated the killer. Maybe we ought to wait until we learn more, and maybe the hateful rhetoric is coming from both sides, and maybe there are leftwing targets of violence. I'm imagining those on the left scurrying to prevent Trump and his allies from controlling the narrative.

I wrote that last paragraph based on the headline and drawing on my own expectations. Then I read the article and did not find what I'd thought I'd find. It is more of a straightforward description of the scene at the White House yesterday. We're told "the corridors... were quiet, as staff there absorbed news," and "Televisions affixed to walls in different rooms blared minute-to-minute coverage.... Some staff members appeared to have been crying."

The last sentence of the article makes me jerk my head to check the calendar icon in the sidebar of my computer: "The president was still on track for a visit to New York on the anniversary of the last significant event to unite nearly all Americans across parties: the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks."

It's a very somber day, not a day to strain to find a way to advantage your side. And yet, there is Trump in that video, forthrightly blaming the radical left. He didn't take a day or 2 off for reflection and what either is or looks like prayer. And that's a temptation to all on the left and all those pumping for Democrats to assert that the right is also responsible for the violence. Yield to that temptation and you might be the next Matthew Dowd.

See "Matthew Dowd Fired From MSNBC for Charlie Kirk Comments" (Variety). What Dowd said, probably feeling this was measured, accurate, and smart: "[Charlie Kirk] is constantly sort of pushing this sort of hate speech or sort of aimed at certain groups. And I always go back to, hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions. And I think that is the environment we are in. You can’t stop with these sort of awful thoughts you have and then saying these awful words and not expect awful actions to take place. And that’s the unfortunate environment we are in."

Why doesn't the phrase "Special Government Employee" appear in the NYT article about Musk's "distancing" himself from Trump?

I've been trying to read "A Disillusioned Musk, Distanced From Trump, Says He’s Exiting Washington/The billionaire has made clear he is frustrated with the obstacles he encountered as he tried to upend the federal bureaucracy."

That piece in the NYT has 5 authors: Tyler Pager, Maggie Haberman,Theodore Schleifer, Jonathan Swan, and Ryan Mac.

In the midst of my struggle to absorb their message, I stumbled upon this easy-to-read tweet (which was re-tweeted by Elon Musk):

In the coming days, legacy media will try to convince you that President Trump and Elon Musk are no longer friends and that’s why Musk left.

What they won’t tell you is that Elon was a Special Government Employee, limited to 130 days of service and that term ends tomorrow. pic.twitter.com/blNzVm9Gnd

— DogeDesigner (@cb_doge) May 29, 2025

From the NYT article:

Mr. Musk did not respond to a request for comment. In a post on X, his social media site, on Wednesday night, he officially confirmed for the first time that his stint as a government employee was coming to an end and thanked Mr. Trump “for the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending.”

So, instead of the phrase "Special Government Employee" — which appears at the post the NYT links — the Times makes it "government employee." And instead of noting the 130-day time limit built into the status of "Special Government Employee," the Times just says "his stint" is "coming to an end." And it adds the phrase "he officially confirmed for the first time" which makes it sound like a new development or something he'd previously kept under wraps. But the time limit was there from the start and official all along, so why did it matter that he "officially confirmed" it. Was it ever in question?

Perhaps the Times had previously cast doubt on whether Musk would leave when the 130 days ran out. 

Ah, yes, here's a NYT article from April 23 — "A Subdued Musk Backs Away From Washington, but His Project Remains" — that ends: "By dialing back the number of days he spends working for the White House, Mr. Musk can also potentially stretch out the 130 days he is allotted as a 'special government employee.'" And here, on April 18 — in "Head of I.R.S. Is Ousted in Treasury’s Power Struggle With Elon Musk"— "As a special government employee, Mr. Musk is allotted 130 days of time on the job. But if he works part time, he may be able to extend his time in government."

The names Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan are on both of those.

"Inside Musk’s Aggressive Incursion Into the Federal Government/The billionaire is creating major upheaval as his team sweeps through agencies, in what has been an extraordinary flexing of power by a private individual."

This is an important NYT article — with 6 authors (including Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman) — and I've been trying to force myself to blog it since yesterday evening. I'd read the article and thought of some idea of how to present it. 

"Aggressive Incursion" — was I going meditate on the meaning of "incursion" and the avoidance of its thesaurus roommate "coup"?

Now, I've delayed so long I'm tempted to just drop this and run...

Fraud in the federal government is closer to 10% of disbursements, so more like ~$700 billion per year.

Outright waste is at least 15%, so another trillion+ dollars.

Anyone who works in government knows this. https://t.co/P0622Wr2Y6

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 4, 2025

... but I'll go on. I'll find my way back to where I was going. Ah, yes. It was this:

"This article is based on interviews with nearly a dozen people who have direct knowledge of how and why Mr. Trump salvaged Mr. Hegseth’s bid, at least for now."

I'm reading "Power, Intimidation and the Resurrection of Trump’s Support for Hegseth/The president-elect became convinced that letting Pete Hegseth fail would set off a feeding frenzy among senators. What followed was a MAGA swarm that helped salvage his bid, at least for now," by Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman in the NYT.

I'm giving you a free-access link so you can judge the quality of the sources, the likelihood of a senatorial "feeding frenzy," and the meaning of "MAGA swarm."

We're told that Pete Hegseth went "from dead man walking to a man with a real shot of being confirmed by the Senate" in what was "a test case of power and intimidation," where Trump demonstrated his "ability to summon an online swarm, even while spending minimal personal capital of his own."

"[Trump] has found the change disorienting, those who interact with him say. Mr. Trump had grown comfortable campaigning against an 81-year-old incumbent..."

"... who struggled to navigate stairs, thoughts and sentences.... The people around Mr. Trump see a candidate knocked off his bearings... At the Aug. 2 dinner, Mr. Trump told donors that the news media had been incorrectly suggesting that he had mellowed since the assassination attempt. 'I’m not nicer,' he said, according to one person in attendance. Another said Mr. Trump described himself as 'angry' because 'they' — unspecified adversaries that the attendee took to mean Democrats — had first tried to bankrupt him and then to kill him.... He had been on a glide path to an all but certain victory. Now, he needs to work for it. But Mr. Trump has also been whipsawed by a seven-week roller-coaster-ride of events: an attempt on his life, the selection of a running mate, a nominating convention, his opponent’s withdrawal from the race, the entry of a galvanizing new rival, a potential Iranian assassination threat against him and new layers of security that have brought a bunker-like feel to his properties...."

Write Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, in "Inside the Worst Three Weeks of Donald Trump’s 2024 Campaign/People around the former and would-be president see a candidate knocked off his bearings, disoriented by his new contest with Kamala Harris and unsure of how to take her on" (NYT).

"Todd Blanche, the defense lawyer, says his closing argument will take about two and a half hours, and..."

"... Joshua Steinglass, the prosecutor, responds that his will be between four and four and a half hours. The judge says that means we may or may not finish at 4:30, and that he will ask the jurors if they can stay late in order to finish closing arguments if necessary."

From the live updates of the Trump trial in the NYT. That's a free-access link — my last gift link to give until next month, so use it well.

UPDATE: "Todd Blanche is focusing on the 34 documents that led to the 34 felony charges. He sounded as if he was getting close to making a legal argument about 'intent to defraud.' The jurors would have to find that Trump acted with intent to defraud when he directed the falsification of the documents in order to find him guilty. Justice Merchan appeared to glare at Blanche as he came close to commenting on the law. But the defense lawyer moved away, and the judge said nothing."

UPDATE 2: "Todd Blanche is now walking a very thin line as he seeks to convince the jurors that there was no intent by Trump to defraud — a legal concept at the heart of the case — without trespassing into the judge’s territory. Every time Blanche says the phrase 'intent to defraud,' the judge stares over at him — but thus far, Justice Merchan has not said anything."

UPDATE 3: "Todd Blanche just offered quite a quote — and take — on the nature of American politics, saying that it didn’t matter if there was 'a conspriacy [sic] to win an election.' He adds: 'Every campaign in this country is a conspiracy' to elect a candidate. He continues to hammer this idea home, saying: 'This is the campaign, this is an election, this is not a crime.'"

UPDATE 4: "We have no idea what the jurors are thinking and facial expressions are notoriously hard to read. But I thought I saw the foreperson — who sits close to the gallery and has had a skeptical, slightly amused expression on all day — flash a look of disbelief as Blanche argued that the 'Access Hollywood' tape was just another difficult day in a campaign full of them."

"If the past is any guide, even with a full acquittal, Mr. Trump will be angry and vengeful, and will direct attacks..."

"... against everyone he perceives to be responsible for the Manhattan district attorney’s prosecution.... Some of Mr. Trump’s former staff members who spent time with him after his previous investigations said that he was in no mood to celebrate after these purported victories but instead sought retribution.... And after surviving his first impeachment, in early 2020, for trying to pressure President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine into investigating Mr. Biden and his son Hunter, Mr. Trump was in a mood so foul that it surprised some of his aides who were relieved the episode was over. He sat in his private dining room adjoining the Oval Office, scowling at the television and spewing expletives, according to a person with direct knowledge of the events.... The verdict of this trial will land in the middle of a presidential campaign, which gives the aftermath a new dynamic, especially if Mr. Trump is acquitted, said John R. Bolton, Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser.... 'He will display the sense of injury that he had to put up with it at all because if they couldn’t follow through with it then there was nothing there,' Mr. Bolton said...."

Write Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman, in "Trump’s Post-Verdict Playbook: Anger and Retribution, Regardless of the Outcome/Former President Donald J. Trump has a history of attacking investigators, blaming President Biden and seeking vengeance on those who cross him" (NYT).

Message to jurors: Don't think that by by acquitting Trump you can expunge the depredations of the prosecutor and the judge... (and Biden?).... 

"Stormy Daniels is talking about going to the bathroom in Trump’s hotel suite... Daniels keeps chuckling as she describes the scene, as if she's giving an interview."

Writes Maggie Haberman at the NYT.

I think "keeps chuckling... as if she's giving an interview" reveals Haberman's opinion that Daniels is not a good witness.

Then there's this from Jonah Bromwich, one of the other NYT reporters watching the trial:

"G.O.P. Officials, Once Critical, Stand by Trump After NATO Comments."

Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan explain, in The New York Times. (free access at the link).

Key quotes:

Lindsey Graham: "Give me a break — I mean, it’s Trump. All I can say is while Trump was president nobody invaded anybody. I think the point here is to, in his way, to get people to pay."

Marco Rubio: "He told the story about how he used leverage to get people to step up to the plate and become more active in NATO... I have zero concern, because he’s been president before. I know exactly what he has done and will do with the NATO alliance. But there has to be an alliance. It’s not America’s defense with a bunch of small junior partners."

Trump decries "a red haired weirdo."

Here's the NYT story: "A President, a Billionaire and Questions About Access and National Security/Anthony Pratt, one of Australia’s wealthiest men, made his way into Donald Trump’s inner circle with money and flattery. What he heard there has become of interest to federal prosecutors."

In his interviews with prosecutors [in the classified documents case), Mr. Pratt recounted how Mr. Trump once revealed to him sensitive information about American nuclear submarines, an episode that Mr. Trump denies....

Here's Trump's response on Truth Social:

The Failing New York Times story, leaked by Deranged Jack Smith and the Biden “Political Opponent Abuser” DOJ, about a red haired weirdo from Australia, named Anthony Pratt, is Fake News. I never spoke to him about Submarines, but I did speak to him about creating jobs in Ohio and Pennsylvania, because that’s what I’m all about.... Maggie Hagerman and the Misfits never called me for a comment. Why would they, they just write anything they want. Whether it’s correct or not is of ZERO importance to them. “All the News That’s Unfit To Print.” That’s why we call it the Fake News!

Should Trump be calling a man "a red haired weirdo"?

Trump seems to be contemplating whether what he sees in Pratt is what other people see in Trump — red haired weirdness.

"On some nights when Mr. Giuliani was overserved, an associate discreetly signaled the rest of the club, tipping back his empty hand in a drinking motion..."

"... out of the former mayor’s line of sight, in case others preferred to keep their distance. Some allies, watching Mr. Giuliani down Scotch before leaving for Fox News interviews, would slip away to find a television, clenching through his rickety defenses of Mr. Trump.... In interviews with friends, associates and former aides, the consensus was that, more than wholly transforming Mr. Giuliani, his drinking had accelerated a change in his existing alchemy, amplifying qualities that had long burbled within him: conspiracism, gullibility, a weakness for grandeur...."

Write Matt Flegenheimer and Maggie Haberman, in "Giuliani’s Drinking, Long a Fraught Subject, Has Trump Prosecutors’ Attention/The former mayor’s drinking has become an investigative subplot in Donald Trump’s federal case over 2020 election interference. But long before that, friends had grown deeply concerned" (NYT).

You see where this is going: 

Now, prosecutors in the federal election case against Mr. Trump have shown an interest in the drinking habits of Mr. Giuliani — and whether the former president ignored what his aides described as the plain inebriation of the former mayor referred to in court documents as 'Co-Conspirator 1.'... 

What Flegenheimer and Haberman are strongly suggesting: Trump should not be able to argue that he relied on the advice of his attorney, when that attorney was Giuliani, a notorious, conspicuous drunk.

"The indictment also showcased the bedrock elements of the former president’s personality: his sense of bombast and vengeance..."

"... his belief that everything he touches belongs to him and his admiration of people for their underhanded craftiness and gamesmanship with the authorities. It recounts, for instance, how Mr. Trump had only praise for an unnamed aide to Hillary Clinton who — at least in his narration of the story — helped Mrs. Clinton destroy tens of thousands of emails from a private server. 'He did a great job,' the indictment quotes Mr. Trump as telling one of his lawyers. Why? Because, in Mr. Trump’s account, the aide ensured that Mrs. Clinton 'didn’t get in any trouble.'"

Write Alan Feuer and Maggie Haberman in "Indictment Presents Evidence Trump’s Actions Were More Blatant Than Known/The accounts in the 49-page indictment provide compelling evidence of a shocking indifference toward some of the country’s most sensitive secrets" (NYT).

"And, for all Haberman’s success in demystifying Trump, at times she seems to vest him with eerie power."

"In interviews, she has often invoked the children’s book 'Harold and the Purple Crayon' to illustrate Trump’s peculiar blurring of fact and fantasy. The tale concerns a boy named Harold who goes for a walk in the evening and draws things from his imagination, including an entire city, with his enchanted crayon. 'What Trump tries to do,' Haberman told me, 'is create realities for himself and everyone else.'... Toward the end of our meeting, Haberman told me that she is superstitious. She was wearing an evil-eye bracelet. Another evil eye was in her pocket. 'I just have totems,' she said..."

From "Maggie Haberman, the Confidence Man’s Chronicler/During the Trump era, Haberman became an avatar of journalism’s promise as well as of its failures. She sees herself as a demystifier" by Katy Waldman (The New Yorker).

"Even taking at face value Mr. Trump’s protestation that he knew nothing of [Nick] Fuentes, the apparent ease with which Mr. Fuentes arrived at the home of [the] former president..."

"... underscores the undisciplined, uncontrolled nature of Mr. Trump’s post-presidency just 10 days into his third campaign for the White House. A handful of Republicans, including at least one close ally of Mr. Trump’s, castigated him over meeting both Mr. Fuentes and Mr. West.... Mr. Fuentes... is best known for running a white nationalist youth organization known as America First, whose adherents call themselves groypers or the Groyper Army. In the wake of Mr. Trump’s defeat in 2020, Mr. Fuentes and the groypers were involved in a series of public events supporting the former president. At a so-called 'Stop the Steal' rally in Washington in November 2020, Mr. Fuentes urged his followers to 'storm every state capitol until Jan. 20, 2021, until President Trump is inaugurated for four more years.'... On Jan. 6, 2021, Mr. Fuentes led a large group of groypers to the Capitol where they rallied outside in support of Mr. Trump. The next day, Mr. Fuentes wrote on Twitter that the assault on the Capitol was 'awesome and I’m not going to pretend it wasn’t.'"

Writes Maggie Haberman, in "Trump’s Latest Dinner Guest: Nick Fuentes, White Supremacist/The former president’s table for four at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday also included Kanye West, whose antisemitic statements have made him an entertainment-industry outcast" (NYT).

Haberman never explains the term "groypers," which I don't remember seeing before. There's a Wikipedia article "Groypers":

"Trump is said to have told some allies that the idea of a special counsel infuriated him, given his experience with the length of the Mueller investigation."

"He believes it could hang over him for months. Nonetheless, it might make a prosecution more distant."

Writes Maggie Haberman, in "Live Updates: Garland Names Special Counsel for Trump Inquiries/The attorney general announced his decision to name Jack Smith, the former head of the Justice Department’s public integrity section, to to job just days after former President Donald J. Trump announced that he would seek the White House again in 2024" (NYT).

ADDED: Let me connect that with this WaPo piece from 4 days ago: 

"Can you imagine Jared and his skinny ass camping? It’d be like something out of 'Deliverance.'"

Said Donald Trump, who proceeded to imitate the "Deliverance" the banjo music, quoted in "Donald Trump Belittled Jared Kushner In Front Of Aides With ‘Deliverance' Jibe: Book/It was one of a series of disparaging comments the then-president made about his son-in-law, according to New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman" (HuffPo). 

The topic was a proposed RV camping trip for Jared and Ivanka, and we're told that Jared was in the room. I can't tell how "belittling" the remark was without understanding the larger context. Did Jared mock Trump too? What's their relationship? Did both men laugh about remarks about skinniness and fatness? Was Trump also self-deprecating, saying, perhaps, he'd never go camping — and he's afraid of rapists?

Who knows? The remark belongs somewhere on a continuum between just plain nasty and the funniest thing ever, or I guess that's more of a matrix than a continuum.

Anyway, Haberman was choosing how to present the nuggets she gathered, and I wouldn't trust her to recreate the real feelings of the human beings involved. 

And this anecdote does present the old problem of not taking the rape seriously when the victim is male.

Trump, in a 2016 practice debate, purportedly drew a "blank stare" from "the group," when he said "Cocked or decocked?"

From a Daily Beast article, based on the forthcoming Maggie Haberman’s book "Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America"

According to an excerpt obtained by The Daily Beast, a week before the second debate unfolded in St. Louis in 2016, Trump’s close adviser at the time, Reince Priebus, presented the aspiring political figure with a question on same-sex bathrooms. 

In playing the role of a female transgender student, Priebus asked Trump whether this hypothetical student could still use the girl’s bathroom. 

Without missing a beat, Trump said he had a question. “Cocked or decocked?” Trump asked. 

If true, she shouldn't have saved it. Is it false, or is Haberman guilty of withholding vital information for her own commercial purposes?

Or is there some gray middle ground where it only sounds important as it's used to hawk a book but isn't really substantial, just Trump being idly emotive?

Trump: "I'm just not going to leave."

Oh good, another fact, vital to the safety and continuation of the nation, that @maggieNYT withheld from the public for many months if not a year-and-a-half so she could put it in her fucking book https://t.co/fOwd2io4kX

— Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) September 12, 2022

"I’m nowhere near as crazed as I was. It’s a lot easier now. I feel like I can hear the thoughts in my own head again."

Said NYT reporter Maggie Haberman, answering the question how her days have changed now that Trump isn't President anymore. 

Quoted in "Maggie Haberman on life after Trump and the one question she regrets not asking" (Forward).

The question she regrets not asking isn't really one question but a line of inquiry:

One question that I think is sort of an open one is he has said very little about what he expected the federal government to be like when he came in. Remember, you are talking about somebody who was never in government before, and we forget how strange that is — that we had a president who had never won an election before and never served at any level before. His understanding of what government was going to be, I believe, was very different than the way the federal government actually works.

She had 4 years. Why did she never get around to it? I have to suspect that she didn't want to get inside his head and see things from his point of view and with empathy. What if his understanding of "what government was going to be" had value? He was coming in from the outside, with all his observations and powers — what could he offer? 

Why assume it was all bad and "the way the federal government actually works" right now is the way it should be? Ironically, it's the very definition of conservatism to believe that the working system already in operation is the way it is for good reason and that ideas about transforming it are dangerous.

"Meandering Performance by Defense Lawyers Enrages Trump/The former president was particularly angry at Bruce L. Castor Jr., one of his lawyers, for acknowledging the effectiveness of the House Democrats’ presentation."

Maggie Haberman reports (at the NYT). 

Mr. Castor, the first to speak, delivered a rambling, almost somnambulant defense of the former president for nearly an hour. Mr. Trump, who often leaves the television on in the background even when he is holding meetings, was furious, people familiar with his reaction said. On a scale of one to 10, with 10 being the angriest, Mr. Trump “was an eight,” one person familiar with his reaction said.... 

None of the lawyers from the first impeachment trial who defended Mr. Trump returned for the second round. And most of the team he initially hired abruptly parted ways with him days before the trial began.... 

Senator Bill Cassidy, a Republican from Louisiana, castigated Mr. Trump’s defense lawyers in explaining why he voted “yes” on the question of whether the Senate has jurisdiction in the case even though Mr. Trump is out of office. Asked why he believed they did poorly, Mr. Cassidy replied to reporters, “Did you listen to it?” “It was disorganized, random — they talked about many things, but they didn’t talk about the issue at hand,” he said.

It is painful to watch a legal proceeding where one side has far, far better legal representation than the other. Castor is a former prosecutor, so perhaps he's used to being on the side that is much better represented and has skills honed through encounters with overworked, underprepared criminal defense lawyers. I don't know if I want to feel sorry for Trump for his lack of representation, when there are so many people struggling with insufficient legal assistance. It's easy to ignore such people. They're not in the spotlight. 

ADDED: Trump is a conspicuous victim of poor representation. But I do feel bad about it. I want to see a fair fight. Yet perhaps it is his fault for trying to dictate what his lawyers must argue and leaving them in the position where their only alternative was to walk away, leaving Trump to scramble for someone, anyone who will represent him, and those are the characters who are struggling to hold up Trump's end of the fight. It's a grisly spectacle, but Trump has responsibility for it.