"He was much less stoked to be assigned by Tina Brown, then editor of The New Yorker, to profile Mr. Trump in 1997."

"Observing him over several months on construction sites, in his Trump Tower office and on a private plane, Mr. Singer concluded that Mr. Trump, in the period before he became a reality TV star, was a man 'who had aspired to and achieved the ultimate luxury, an existence unmolested by the rumbling of a soul.' 'That profile,' [said David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker], 'got everything about Trump 20 years before he ran for president: the vanity, the casual cruelty, the outsized selfishness. It was all there.'... [After a NYT piece mentioned it], Mr. Trump wrote a letter to the editor attacking Mr. Singer as 'not born with great writing ability.' Mr. Singer sent a mock thank you to Mr. Trump for the publicity, which apparently bumped his book higher on the Amazon book charts. He also enclosed a check for $37.82, 'a small token of my enormous gratitude,' he wrote. Mr. Trump returned the letter with an all-caps note at the bottom, reading, in part, 'MARK — YOU ARE A TOTAL LOSER.' Mr. Trump also cashed the $37.82 check, Mr. Singer later said. Mr. Singer framed a photocopy of it for his apartment."

From "Mark Singer, Longtime Writer for The New Yorker, Dies at 75/He joined the magazine’s staff at 23. Among the subjects of his profiles were the magician Ricky Jay and a pre-politics Donald Trump" (NYT).

I'm sorry to hear that Mark Singer has died. You can click on my tag "Mark Singer" to see how he's come up here over the years. What a distinction to have Trump's "YOU ARE A TOTAL LOSER" in your NYT obituary. To continue the all-caps — RIP.

UPDATE: Upon publishing, I clicked my tag. I'm sorry to say that Trump is in every post.

"Please! I traveled all the way to Wisconsin!... Listen, we traveled all the way to Wisconsin for this interview"

News companies know women like this are tanking their ratings. If one of these Sunday broadcasts brought in a non ideological White Man their ratings would double. However, they still choose to loose money, just to promote the views of the ownership. Trump is right. pic.twitter.com/Un33VHNqro

— Nate P. Hall (@Nate_PHall) June 8, 2026

Wouldn't it have been funny if the all-the-way-to-Wisconsin plea had worked? Oh, yeah, poor you, going to Wisconsin, let me sit back down and yammer on with you, because you endured the ordeal of coming to Wisconsin.

How many times has Trump traveled to Wisconsin in his political career? 40? 60? He's put in the hard work of demonstrating to Wisconsin that we matter, and here's Kristen Welker obviously irked to have had to touch down in a flyover state. I can't believe I came to this hellhole for you!

ADDED: I love the set with the hay bales and tractors. I was hoping Welker and Trump would jump up and do his old "Green Acres" routine:

"Because it was raining, I got a little bit angry at them. I was not happy with them. But we had a good time."

Said Trump, quoted at the end of "Trump walks out of 'Meet the Press' interview when challenged over false claims/When pressed by host Kristen Welker, the president cited no evidence for claims about Jan. 6 and elections he said were 'rigged'" (WaPo)(gift link).

I was watching that live, but I fell asleep. I heard the loud rain that was adding stress and discontinuity to the interchange, but I'm sorry I missed witnessing the big falling out as it happened. It's easy to catch up:

Trump and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week.

The top left corner of The NYT right now:

It's like a children's taunt: You act like you're so big but you're not.

"This was an event dedicated to freedom of speech that was supposed to bring together members of both parties with members of the press. And in a certain way it did..."

"I saw a room that was totally unified. It was in one way very beautiful — a very beautiful thing to see."

Said President Trump, in an impromptu press conference at the White House, 2 hours after the incident at the Correspondents' Dinner. 

I hope that shared experience brings people together. Perhaps there will be a reset and love will steer the stars: "In light of this evening's events, I ask that all Americans recommit with their hearts to resolving our differences peacefully. We have to resolve our differences. You had Republicans, Democrats, independents, conservatives, liberals, and progressives in that room — a big crowd, record-setting crowd. There was a tremendous amount of love and coming together." Come together, right now, over me.

Trump saw the opportunity to promote his ballroom: "We looked at all of the conditions that took place tonight. It's not a particularly secure building. I didn't want to say this, but this is why we have to have all of the attributes of what we're planning at the White House. It's actually a larger room and it's much more secure. It's got drone-proof and bulletproof glass. We need the ballroom."

Trump framed the incident as an assassination attempt: "This is not the first time in the past couple of years that our republic has been attacked by a would-be assassin. In Butler, Pennsylvania, less than two years ago — you all know that story. And in Palm Beach, Florida, a few months after that, we came close again. We had some great work done by law enforcement."

Trump expressed pride in himself as the target of multiple assassination attempts. Asked "Why do you think this keeps happening to you?," he said "I've studied assassinations. The most impactful people, the people that do the most, are the ones they go after. Abraham Lincoln, the big names. I hate to say I'm honored by that, but we've done a lot. We've changed this country. There are a lot of people that are not happy about that."

"Donald Trump will launch a 'revenge' attack on the White House media when he confronts them in person at a Washington dinner on Saturday night—then flee before there can be revenge...."

"Trump will leave the White House Correspondents’ Association event after making his speech, so he will miss the presentation of press awards—one of which would be certain to embarrass him. He has told aides he has no intention of still being in the International Ballroom at the Washington Hilton when the Wall Street Journal is honored with the Katherine Graham award for its scoop about a bawdy letter Trump allegedly wrote for Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday card.... Mentalist Oz Pearlman is performing this year, replacing the usual comedian and avoiding a potential Trump roast...."

From "Trump’s Plans for ‘Mic-Drop’ Media Confrontation Are Leaked/The president is planning a rage-fueled moment at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner" (Daily Beast).

"Donald Trump will launch a 'revenge' attack" — why is "revenge" in quotes? The article doesn't have Trump or anybody else using that word.

They've replaced the comedian with a mentalist?

"It is unclear whether one particular photo — or the sum total of the day’s shots — led to consternation among Hegseth’s staff."

From "Pentagon bars press photographers over ‘unflattering’ Hegseth photos/Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s staff took issue with images taken in a rare briefing last week and decided to shut out photographers from two subsequent news conferences" (WaPo).

"President Trump Gaggles with Press on Air Force One En Route Palm Beach, FL, Jan. 31, 2026."

I'm going to pick through the transcript and will update in about an hour. Meantime, you can pick over the text and pull out your favorite highlights

ADDED: From the YouTube transcript:

"How can you succeed when you say things like that?"

Somehow, I never tire of these old montages. When I monitor the news these days, I wonder what is going to end up looking this foolish in some future montage. 

With stacks of papers as props, Trump endeavors to prove to the press that the first year of his second term was jam-packed with amazing accomplishments.

I watched the entire thing, and you can too. If you don't already agree that it's been a great year, I don't think he can ever prove it to you, but he has to do this, because, he says, no one else is going to do it for him.

"As you know, this is the anniversary, first anniversary, January 20th. And it's been an amazing period of time. We have a book that I'm not going to read to you, but these are the accomplishments of what we've produced. Page after page after page, individual things. I could stand here and read it for a week and we wouldn't be finished, but we've done more than any other administration has done by far. And terms of military, in terms of ending wars, in terms of completing wars, nobody's really seen very much like it...."

On and on, for 2 hours.

When it gets to the Q&A, he gives short answers. The best example of that is, asked "How far are you willing to go to acquire Greenland?," he said, "You'll find out."

That answer called to mind something Chief Justice Rehnquist said in 2005 when he was asked if he was going to retire: "That's for me to know and for you to find out."  I reacted, blogging, "How near death can he be if he's horsing around like that?" He died less than 2 months later.

"In a wide-ranging conversation with four Times reporters, President Trump talked about the Minneapolis ICE shooting, immigration, Venezuela and even his plans for further White House renovations."

I see "Trump Sits Down With Times Reporters for Two-Hour Interview," the headline in the NYT.

There's no substance, just an announcement:

The Times’s coverage of the president’s remarks will include stories, newsletters and videos over the coming days, as well as an episode of The Daily on Friday. A transcript of the interview will be published.

Very bold of Trump to give all that access — and right in the middle of a week packed with quickly unfolding action and with only the full transcript to protect him. I like that the Times is breaking out the material in separate bits.

The first bit is: "We Pressed Trump on His Conclusion About the ICE Shooting. Here’s What He Said. The exchange was a glimpse into the president’s reflexive defense of his federal crackdown on immigration." It could have been a much more reflexive defense of the ICE agents. His first take was balanced: "I want to see nobody get shot. I want to see nobody screaming and trying to run over policemen either." And later, he says: "She behaved horribly. And then she ran him over. She didn’t try to run him over" — I would say that's a reflexive defense of the woman. How does he know she didn't try to run the agent over? 

Also, the NYT writes "When we pressed Mr. Trump on his conclusion that the victim, Renee Nicole Good, tried to run over the agent," but technically, the first quote is not a statement that she tried to run anyone over. It's a distanced, abstract statement: "I want to see nobody get shot. I want to see nobody screaming and trying to run over policemen either." I'm not seeing the follow-up question quoted, but I think it shouldn't have been "Why are you concluding that Good tried to run over the agent?" but "Are you saying you've determined that Good tried to run over the agent?" [Or better, to avoid ambiguity: "Are you saying you've determined that Good intended to run over the agent?"]

The second article based on the interview is "Trump Says U.S. Oversight of Venezuela Could Last for Years/In a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times on Wednesday, President Trump said 'only time will tell' when it comes to how long the United States aims to control the country" (NYT).

The Washington Post Editorial Board lists "25 Good Things That Happened in 2025" and not one thing is attributed to Trump.

The name Trump doesn't even appear — see for yourself here (gift link) — though "capitalism gets a favorable mention* and two of the items are educational policies associated with the conservatives.**

_____________

* "Bolivian voters elected centrist Rodrigo Paz as president, ending two decades of socialist misrule. The economist campaigned on the slogan 'capitalism for all.'"

** School choice and phonics (though phonics is associated not with conservatives but with "advocates of the science of reading").

"In a little while, you’ll be seeing I’m suing the BBC for putting words in my mouth. Literally, they put words in my mouth."

"They had me saying things that I never said coming out. I guess they used AI or something. So we’ll be bringing that lawsuit. A lot of people were asking, ‘When are you bringing that lawsuit?’ Even the media can’t believe that one. They actually put terrible words in my mouth having to do with January 6 that I didn’t say and the beautiful words that I said … talking about patriotism and all of the good things that I said, they didn’t say that but they put terrible words. They actually have me speaking with words that I never said and they got caught because I believe somebody at BBC said, 'This is so bad, it has to be reported.' That’s called fake news."

Said Trump, yesterday, quoted in "Trump sues BBC for $10bn over ‘fake news’/The broadcaster has apologised for a misleading edit of the president’s speech before the Capitol riot, which Trump said put ‘terrible words in my mouth'" (London Times).

From the complaint filed in the Southern District of Florida:

"60 Minutes," wisely, makes the extended version of its interview with Trump available on YouTube.

Who would want to watch the edited version... other than to launch an investigation of the editing process? Presumably, it was a condition of Trump's participation that the unedited version would need to be posted. Also, "60 Minutes" is now under the watchful eye of Bari Weiss. That should make Trump more trustful and perhaps he wants to help Weiss succeed... if she plays the game his way and helps him succeed... which may consist merely of playing it fair.

I've listened to part of this interview, and I did notice that O'Donnell was interrupting Trump with repeated little jabs early on in his answers. I do not think O'Donnell would do that to, say, Joe Biden or Kamala Harris, even though Biden and Harris are far more likely to babble nonresponsively and run out the clock. But Trump is great at taking whatever energy is thrown his way and turning it into something that works for him.

O'Donnell would say things like "Have some of these [ICE] raids gone too far?"

"Trump joins a long list of presidents who have left their imprint on the White House. Theodore Roosevelt replaced greenhouses to construct the West Wing."

"William Howard Taft constructed the first Oval Office in 1909. Richard M. Nixon converted a swimming pool into the press briefing room in 1970. The modern East Wing wasn’t even built until World War II to cover up an underground bunker. Harry S. Truman gutted the White House interior and added the balcony that bears his name. Purists decried it. Now it’s a hallmark. The White House cannot simply be a museum to the past. Like America, it must evolve with the times to maintain its greatness. Strong leaders reject calcification. In that way, Trump’s undertaking is a shot across the bow at NIMBYs everywhere."

Writes The Editorial Board of The Washington Post, in "In defense of the White House ballroom Donald Trump vs. the NIMBYs."

And let me just put this here. Some members of the press would like a bigger White House briefing room:

Things happen so fast with Trump. He's always dropping one distracting thing or another.

It's hard to keep track of the things you really ought to worry about.

Chomping a wall off the East Wing of the White House? That's so distracting that it must be intended as the distraction. Why do it this week and not next month? Because there's something else that's harder to see, and I'm certainly not seeing it.

"Demanding that the Justice Department pay him about $230 million in compensation for the federal investigations into him" — that's something "people familiar with the matter" fed to the New York Times but it's not at the top of the front page anymore.

It's below the story about how dogs are peeing: 

It's down there on a level with Springsteen's "Nebraska," which came out in 1982 and is the focus of a new biopic that already been in the news for weeks.

The dog piss is fresher. 

The top story on the Times front page seems like another throwback: "Trump Empowers Election Deniers, Still Fixated on 2020 Grievances."

They're still fixated. We're still fixated. It's all about paying attention. Are we dangerously attached to our fixations? Or are we distracted by the latest thing? There's something that's neither of those 2 things and it's what I'm afraid we're not doing.

CORRECTION: There are 2 headlines about the $230 million and I see now that one of them is higher than Bruce and at the level of the second half of the bit about dogs peeing. Sorry. I should have paid better attention. But my point remains and is, perhaps, underscored: We're caught up in a game of paying attention.

It reminds me of the time LBJ saw a portrait of himself and said "That's the ugliest thing I ever saw."

Trump on Truth Social: "Time Magazine wrote a relatively good story about me, but the picture may be the Worst of All Time. They 'disappeared' my hair, and then had something floating on top of my head that looked like a floating crown, but an extremely small one. Really weird! I never liked taking pictures from underneath angles, but this is a super bad picture, and deserves to be called out. What are they doing, and why?"

Quoted in "President Trump accuses Time magazine of deliberately using the worst photo ‘of all time’ on a cover praising his peace deal" (NY Post).

As for that LBJ portrait, you can see it at "The Presidential Portrait That Was the ‘Ugliest Thing’ L.B.J. Ever Saw" (Smithsonian).

As for Trump's question, "What are they doing, and why?" I think he answered it, they were going for an artistic effect — "a floating crown, but an extremely small one."

"Today, I have the Great Honor of bringing a $15 Billion Dollar Defamation and Libel Lawsuit against The New York Times..."

"... one of the worst and most degenerate newspapers in the History of our Country, becoming a virtual 'mouthpiece' for the Radical Left Democrat Party. I view it as the single largest illegal Campaign contribution, EVER. Their Endorsement of Kamala Harris was actually put dead center on the front page of The New York Times, something heretofore UNHEARD OF! The 'Times' has engaged in a decades long method of lying about your Favorite President (ME!), my family, business, the America First Movement, MAGA, and our Nation as a whole. I am PROUD to hold this once respected 'rag' responsible, as we are doing with the Fake News Networks such as our successful litigation against George Slopadopoulos/ABC/Disney, and 60 Minutes/CBS/Paramount, who knew that they were falsely 'smearing' me through a highly sophisticated system of document and visual alteration, which was, in effect, a malicious form of defamation, and thus, settled for record amounts. They practiced this longterm INTENT and pattern of abuse, which is both unacceptable and illegal. The New York Times has been allowed to freely lie, smear, and defame me for far too long, and that stops, NOW! The suit is being brought in the Great State of Florida. Thank you for your attention to this matter. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!"

Writes Trump, on Truth Social.

If your idea of America greatness doesn't include freedom of speech, it's not worth much.

And if you think the NYT is making an "illegal Campaign contribution" when it speaks about political candidates, you must want Citizens United overruled. 

"If all this comes to pass, it will cement [Bari] Weiss as a key figure in shaping the national news environment, just five years after her much publicized resignation from the New York Times..."

"... over what she characterized as a censorious and hostile workplace. This came in the wake of the resignation of the editorial page editor, James Bennet, after a staff uproar over the publication of Senator Tom Cotton’s opinion piece calling for military intervention against Black Lives Matter protesters.... If Paramount’s acquisition of the Free Press goes through, Weiss will probably be in a position to recruit a network of snitches and rightwing thought police, both from within existing CBS staff and from her own publication, ensconced throughout one of the four largest US media conglomerates. CBS staffers are reportedly 'apoplectic' at the news of her impending role.... When Trump first ran for office, Weiss positioned herself as a 'Never Trumper'.... [Later] she saw the left’s 'overzealous, out-of-touch, hysterical reaction to him' as 'extraordinarily authoritarian and totalitarian in its impulses'.... ... Trump could never operate in the kinds of spaces where Weiss has been able to flourish.... [S]he is uniquely well-suited to champion the prerogatives of those in academia, media, publishing and similar sectors who feel threatened by progressive social movements."

From "Disgruntled NYT journalist to ‘anti-woke’ power grab: how far can Bari Weiss go?/After leaving the New York Times, she turned her Substack into an unshakable pro-Israel voice. Now as Paramount eyes acquisition of her company, Weiss is poised to become Trump’s ally among media elites" (Guardian).

The Wall Street Journal's aggressive effort to get Trump with the Big Bawdy Birthday Letter backfired, according to the NYT.

I'm reading "How Trump Deflected MAGA’s Wrath Over Epstein, at Least for Now/By tapping into other grievances, President Trump managed to turn one of the most fractious moments for his base into a unifying one."

That's an amazingly pro-Trump headline for the NYT. Let's read:

Mr. Trump turned one of the most fractious moments for his base into one of the most unifying by tapping into other MAGA grievances: the deep mistrust of mainstream media, the disdain for Rupert Murdoch and the belief that the president had been unfairly persecuted by his political foes.... 

Stephen K. Bannon, a former White House adviser to Mr. Trump and influential leader of the MAGA base, said that the dynamics were shifting in part because the reporting in the story seemed “phony,” and because the paper decided not to show Mr. Trump a copy of the letter.

“The Murdochs’ bizarre assault on the president galvanized his base because of both content and process,” Mr. Bannon said. “Now we are united as Trump goes on offense — against the Murdochs, the courts and the deep state.”...

It seems less a matter of Trump managing to turn things around as the press behaving badly and suffering the predictable consequence.