Trump at the funeral.

President Trump whips out Tic Tacs and hands them out at Lindsey Graham’s funeral: pic.twitter.com/yYhDG1mAoh

— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) July 28, 2026

Trump takes issue with the Lindsey Graham eulogy he's reading: "Virtually everyone liked Lindsey. Well, not everybody. But it sounds good. I have to be honest. I have to veer from this for a second." pic.twitter.com/L5JwAXxWi0

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 28, 2026

"I recommended, to Governor Henry McMaster, Lindsey Graham’s wonderful sister, Darline, to serve as interim Senator from the Great State of South Carolina."

"This would be a fabulous tribute to Lindsey, who loved her dearly!"

Signed President DONALD J. TRUMP, at Truth Social.

UPDATE: At the time Trump posted, McMaster had already offered Darline Graham Nordone the position and she had accepted, according to the NYT:

Mr. McMaster said that he has asked Ms. Nordone to fill the seat after they spoke “in the wee hours of Sunday morning” following Mr. Graham’s death, and that she accepted, “through tears.” 

“I called the president afterwards, and he thought that it was a great idea,” Mr. McMaster said.

Trump's post went up at 9:43 a.m. today.

Also: "There is a long history in American politics of having the widowed wives of men who die in office finish out their terms. Mr. Graham, who never married, joked when he ran for president that, if he won, maybe his sister would take on the duties of first lady."

"We don’t need presidents who have weird obsessions."

Said Kamala Harris, back in October 2020, blogged at the time, here.

I know that at the time I thought I bet all the Presidents have had a weird obsession. I know because I said that in a podcast at the time. 

That post and podcast predated access to Grok, so I didn't have the chance to use this prompt: Accept the hypothesis that every U.S. President had a weird obsession and to list all the Presidents with their weird obsession. I did use it today, though. Some of my favorites:

I saw a young woman with magenta hair bicycling in Madison, Wisconsin, a tote bag slung over one shoulder.

What was the slogan on the tote bag? "NOW MORE THAN EVER." What?! A Nixon fan?!!

What slogans of today will lose the association with a particular political cause or candidate and — half a century or so in the future — become usable for other causes by people who would hate that cause or candidate if they knew what the hell he/she/it was?

Yes We Can... Stronger Together... Change We Can Believe In... Make America Great Again...

There's background on Nixon's slogan in a WaPo article dated March 15, 2017: "Now, more than ever, ‘now more than ever’ needs to go/The phrase's resurgence is historically inappropriate":

"I can call anyone about anything."

He CALLED FIFA 🤣 pic.twitter.com/hp1DObdnFv

— Baby News Network (@BabyNetworkNews) July 6, 2026

"And beneath the bluster, Trump’s limited view of the American Revolution is very familiar..."

"... it reflects, like so much else about him, the mainstream culture of the Cold War era, when museums and films did indeed tell a relentlessly upbeat story of American accomplishment — in vivid contrast to the plodding drudgery of communism. The leftist radicals of the 1960s and 1970s dissented noisily from this cosy view, but the majority accepted it unquestioningly. Since then a more extreme view has taken root: those who see the revolution not as the start of an unfinished project but as a fixed source of authority, a 250-year-old set of final answers. But as the US blows out its birthday candles, does it still have the capacity it once had for political renewal, while retaining its founding principles? It is always easier to start revolutions than to end them. This is why so many Americans have believed theirs was superior to others: it had been brought to an elegant conclusion by the constitution of 1787. Americans, it seemed, had escaped the spirals of radicalism and authoritarianism that beset France, or Latin American republics...."

From "Happy birthday USA. But is America’s revolution unravelling? When the USA turned 200, the nation came together as one. Fifty years on, what are the chances of the same thing happening under Donald Trump? A special series from The Sunday Times Magazine is dedicated to the 250th anniversary of the USA."

That's the London Times. The view from the losing side.

Why do people read this illustration to represent Trump depicted as Jesus rather than Trump with the miraculous power of the laying on of hands?

 

Trump shared this image, then took it down when he was attacked. The image was said to represent him as Jesus. He denied that he had seen it that way. He said the image showed him as "a doctor making people better and I do make people a lot better." Many observers hooted "Doctor!" What kind of doctor wears a robe and applies small orbs of light to the patient's forehead!?

But what is Jesus-y about handheld balls of light? What is Jesus-y about an American flag, the Statue of Liberty, the Lincoln Memorial, a bald eagle, fighter jets, soldiers ascending upward, and a medical worker with a stethoscope?

You can see what you want here, and maybe if you're genuinely concerned about blasphemy you'll want to err on the side of not jumbling up worldly images with things that might be sacred. But is there any serious Christian iconography there? I see nothing other than the white tunic and red mantle. What about the healing itself? But healing with the laying on of hands is not something limited to Jesus. Whether it is effective or not, it has been a widespread practice through human history, and it is a way to express the idea of profound healing.

There is healing through the laying on of hands in the Old Testament and, in the New Testament, it is not limited to Jesus. And in Western history, there was also the "royal touch" — "a form of laying on of hands, whereby French and English monarchs touched their subjects... with the intent to cure them of various diseases and conditions."

American Presidents are frequently portrayed as healers — spiritual healers — and the use of exalted imagery is common, not some freakish new thing special to Trump. It might be a bad idea — because it's trashy art, because politics and religion should be kept strictly separated, or because propaganda is deceptive and distracting — whatever. That image may be bullshit, but the outrage over it is also bullshit. When I think of all the times Barack Obama was portrayed as a Christ figure! Ridiculous. Grow up. 

And here are The Thompson Twins:

Oh, lay your hands on me/(Lay your hands) woo-hoo/(Ooh, lay your hands) oh, lay your hands on me/(Lay your hands) oh, oh-oh-oh....

"In a chapter entitled 'He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not,' Dr. Fauci described how Mr. Trump repeatedly told him he 'loved' him while at the same time..."

"... excoriating him with tirades flecked with four-letter words. 'The president was irate, saying that I could not keep doing this to him,' Dr. Fauci wrote. 'He said he loved me, but the country was in trouble, and I was making it worse. He added that the stock market went up only 600 points in response to the positive Phase 1 vaccine news, and it should have gone up 1,000 points, and so I cost the country "one trillion dollars."' (The president added an expletive.)..."

From "Fauci Speaks His Mind on Trump’s Rages and Their ‘Complicated’ Relationship/In a new book, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci recounts a career advising seven presidents. The chapter about Donald J. Trump is titled 'He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not'" (NYT).

"Did you hear Trump's take on the JFK assassination? Why he didn't release the files?"

"He said that if you knew what I know, you wouldn't tell people either. Which is crazy. What does that mean?"

Joe Rogan asked Tucker Carlson, toward the end of a 3-hour conversation.

Carlson answered:

"Cities are no longer filling with vaulting, flowing, gooey, non-orthogonal buildings engineered through advanced computing power."

"Architecture has been hit by a new sobriety. Tradition, apparently, is back.The reaction against ultramodern architecture arrived slowly at first, but accelerated with the financial crash of 2008, as the world economy and many political systems became increasingly unsteady. Amid this apparent chaos, the stability of neoclassical architecture was advocated from the very top. In 2020, the United States president Donald Trump signed an executive order advocating 'classical' architecture, including 'beautiful' traditional styles such as Greek Revival, Gothic, Georgian and neoclassical. This followed the British Conservative government appointing the late philosopher Roger Scruton to head a 2018 commission ensuring that new housing would be 'built beautiful,' which Scruton made clear meant 'traditional.' Even earlier, in 2014, the Chinese president Xi Jinping issued an edict demanding an end to 'weird architecture' in China.... And in the European Union, particularly Germany and Poland, projects of historical reconstruction – the kind that, in a previous decade, might have involved ultramodern non-orthogonal CGI-optimised arts centres – now feature new traditional-style buildings with gables and pitched roofs, set along winding lanes...."

Writes Owen Hatherley, in "The new architecture wars/Traditionalist and modernist architecture are both mass-produced, industrial and international. Is there an alternative?" (Aeon).

"I would pay a lot of money to sit down with that 51 percent of respondents and ask them to tell me five things Trump accomplished in office."

"I’d even spot them the first four: a tax cut; the appointment of three SCOTUS judges; the killing of Qasem Soleimani; Operation Warp Speed."

Writes Jonathan Last, reacting to a Wall Street Journal poll asking whether Trump or Biden had a better record of accomplishments — 51% said Trump, 40% said Biden — in "America’s Authoritarian Exceptionalism/Demagogues usually arise in times of chaos and privation. In America, our demagogues have become powerful during a period of peace and prosperity" (Bulwark).

So Last is offering "a lot of money" to name one more Trump accomplishment. I'm sure he'll want the power to deny that any particular thing deserves the designation "accomplishment" — e.g., Trump's efforts to secure the southern border.

ADDED: I'll name one that liberals are practically compelled to view as an accomplishment: the First Step Act.

"President Biden’s nearly two-year-old German shepherd Commander bit seven people in a four-month period after former first dog Major was ousted from the White House over similar aggressive behavior..."

"... according to internal Secret Service communications reviewed by The Post.... In the most serious documented incident involving Commander, the White House physician’s office on Nov. 3, 2022, referred a bitten Secret Service uniformed officer to a local hospital for treatment after the dog clamped down on their arm and thigh... Records show Commander broke the skin of a different Secret Service member’s hand and arm weeks later after the president unleashed him outside the White House following a family movie night — and the following month, Commander bit the back of a security technician at Biden’s Wilmington, Del., home.... Biden, 80, has reportedly expressed doubts about the honesty of a Secret Service member who reported being bitten on the leg by his prior dog Major, also a German shepherd.... Behind the scenes, agents described alarming series of incidents...."

I'm reading "Biden’s dog Commander sent Secret Service officer to hospital, bit 6 others after replacing first pooch Major" (NY Post). 

Two aggressive, uncontrollable dogs? Clearly, the fault of the humans.

Remember when Trump was criticized just for not having a dog? ("I wouldn't mind having one honestly, but I don't have time. How would I look walking a dog on the White House lawn?... Feels a little phony to me. People say, Oh, you should get a dog. Why? It's good politically. I said, That's not the relationship I have with my people.")

ADDED: Harry Truman famously said, "If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog." Joe Biden got 2 dogs in Washington and both were enemies.

"The assassination was 60 years ago. What national security secrets could possibly be at risk? What are they hiding?"

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. tweets.

It’s not about conspiracy – it is about transparency. In a midnight Friday night announcement the White House has delivered the bad news that President Biden will be maintaining secrecy indefinitely on some JFK assassination related records.... 

"What, for his part, did Trump really think of his vice president? In one unintentionally revealing anecdote..."

"... Pence relates how he attended the musical 'Hamilton' and, at the curtain, heard one of the cast members issue a statement on behalf of the show expressing anxiety and alarm over the administration’s lack of commitment to protecting a diverse America. 'I wasn’t offended by anything he said,' Pence writes, but Trump 'was outraged — mostly as a New Yorker. "Broadway is almost like going to church," he told me.' When Pence declined to turn the episode into culture-war point-scoring, Trump 'good-naturedly' admonished him: 'You took the high road. I never take the high road.' Somehow one doubts that Trump intended that as a compliment."

From "Mike Pence highlights his heroic hour, and sidesteps the rest/In his memoir, 'So Help Me God,' the former vice president writes of his outrage at the Capitol invasion but is generally soft on President Trump" (WaPo).

Here's my blog post from the time. I was mainly concerned that Mike Pence was put in physical danger.

In Great Britain, they say "coffin" and regard a 6-hour car "journey" as something that would challenge anyone's resolve.

10:23am, the Queen’s coffin passes through her local village of Ballater.
Our colleague @PeterAdamSmith was told yesterday: “The country has lost a Monarch, we have lost a neighbour”.#QueenElizabeth pic.twitter.com/Bh4mU1Js1c

— Chris Ship (@chrisshipitv) September 11, 2022

All the British news reports I'm seeing about moving the Queen's body from Scotland to London are using the word "coffin."

I think it's a word we Americans tend to use when talking about horror movies or Halloween or old cemeteries.

It is also used in America to generate outrage about the stark reality of death. Let me give 2 examples from the NYT:

1. From 2004: "The Bush administration's policy of barring news photographs of the flag-covered coffins of service members killed in Iraq won the backing of the Republican-controlled Senate on Monday, when lawmakers defeated a Democratic measure to instruct the Pentagon to allow pictures."

2. From 2018: "As Senator John McCain’s coffin was being loaded onto a military plane bound for Washington on Thursday afternoon, cameras from major American TV networks beamed the coverage around the world, allowing a rapt public to witness the next leg of his four-day funeral. Back at the White House, President Trump aggressively tried to wrestle back the attention. 'Throwback Thursday!' the president exclaimed on Twitter, posting a video of celebratory Fox News clips of his unlikely route to the presidency just as Mr. McCain’s coffin was heading for Washington, where it will lie in state in the United States Capitol on Friday." (Remember when we were "rapt" at the transportation of a dead Senator's body and the President was a lout not to devote himself 100% to national mourning?)

If you attempt to research the American preference for the word "casket," you'll be swamped with funeral-industry doctrine restricting "coffin" to containers that are wider at the shoulders and narrower at the feet. ‚ so "coffins" really are those horror movie/Halloween props and what we picture buried in very old cemeteries. The modern rectangular box, we're told, is called a "casket." This is a denial that "casket" is a euphemism for "coffin."

In America, at least. In the U.K., it seems, "coffin" is the most reverent and respectful word — expressive of rectitude and rectangularity. 

"We want to prove that being nonpartisan is actually the more successful positioning."

Said Mathias Döpfner, quoted in "Politico’s new German owner has a ‘contrarian’ plan for American media/Mathias Döpfner has global ambitions for what he calls a more ‘nonpartisan’ kind of journalism — even as his own politics are hard to pin down" (Washington Post).

"This was a personal problem and not for public consumption. With the exception of Ivanka, Avi, Cassidy and Mulvaney, I didn’t tell anyone at the White House — including the president."

Writes Jared Kushner, quoted in "Kushner Says He Was Treated for Thyroid Cancer While in White House/In a memoir to be published next month, former President Donald Trump’s son-in-law wrote that he wanted the diagnosis and treatment kept quiet" (NYT).

“The day before the surgery, Trump called me into the Oval Office and motioned for his team to close the door. ‘Are you nervous about the surgery?’ he asked,” Mr. Kushner wrote. 

“How do you know about it?” Mr. Kushner responded. 

“I’m the president,” Mr. Trump replied, according to Mr. Kushner. “I know everything. I understand that you want to keep these things quiet. I like to keep things like this to myself as well. You’ll be just fine. Don’t worry about anything with work. We have everything covered here.”

I’m the president... I know everything. 

"Glad to see you finally know what a woman is," the 3-star general replied to Jill Biden's tweet.

Her tweet was: "For nearly 50 years, women have had the right to make our own decisions about our bodies. Today, that right was stolen from us."

So he loaded down her tweeted speech about abortion rights with his snark that relates to recent discourse about transgenderism. 

The Guardian reports: "US army general suspended for mocking Jill Biden’s support of abortion rights/Gary Volesky, three-star general who took on lucrative consulting role, suspended over Twitter post that appeared under his name." 

I don't think he was "mocking Jill Biden’s support of abortion rights." I think he was observing her use of "women" in the abortion context and tying it to this separate "What is a woman?" issue. It's annoying when someone uses your social media speech to give visibility to something they want to say about a different topic.

It was a special time, we had a President who was crazy, and General Milley's behavior must be understood in that context.

I'm paraphrasing the pro-Milley argument to be found in "Press Secretary Jen Psaki White House Press Conference Transcript September 15":

Jonathan: ... A new book reports that near the end of the Trump presidency, Chairman Milley had two conversations with his Chinese counterpart promising the countries would not go to war and that he would give an early warning if something were to happen. In a statement just minutes ago, Chairman Milley did not dispute this account. On this, does the president feel that these calls were appropriate? Does he have confidence in the chairman? And some Republican senators have called for Chairman Milley to be dismissed. Is he going to keep his job? 

"Donald Trump tried to make law and order a defining issue in 2020, but the rioting he so forcefully denounced was, in most places, too transitory to become an overwhelming issue."

"He was also in the awkward position of trying to run against disorder as an incumbent rather than a challenger, and his chaotic governing style wasn’t a good match for a message of orderliness. But now, more than a year into a serious crime wave, Democrats should beware—they are fooling themselves if they think they won’t be blamed for a rise in violence in Democratic-run cities that clearly, at some level, is a result of police forces feeling beleaguered and overwhelmed."

Writes Rich Lowry in "Democrats Ignore the Crime Spike at Their Own Peril/The issue of public safety may be about to play its most significant role in our politics since the mid-1990s" (Politico).