A City Without Loneliness.

An ad I'm seeing:

That's appearing at the NYT, with the article "Trump on His Presidential Library: He’ll Write His Own History/In his determination to own and control every document in his future library, the president is working to shield his administration’s inner workings from public view."

Trump's library — which might include a hotel — is in a city I'm sure has some loneliness, Miami. But let's think about Seoul, South Korea, and what it has decided to talk to us about — loneliness.

Does it just want us, over here in America, to know that it's taking care of its lonely people, with counseling and hugs from an imaginary animal? I clicked "learn more" and got "In An Age Of Loneliness, Seoul Reimagines The City As Care" which is a sponsored New York Times article. 

Seoul has a loneliness hotline, we're told. Also, "The Seoul 365 Challenge Program" — inviting residents to go outside once each day. And, my favorite, the "Mind Convenience Store," where "Anyone can step in, sit down, eat, and rest, and" — with the help of a facilitator called "Everyone's Friend"— "begin to connect."

Let's judge the architecture of The Donald J. Trump Presidential Library.

🚨 FIRST LOOK: The Donald J. Trump Presidential Library is officially here.

Over the past six months, I have poured my heart and soul into this project with my incredible team at @Trump.

This landmark on the water in Miami, Florida will stand as a lasting testament to an… pic.twitter.com/azV1hx0HG2

— Eric Trump (@EricTrump) March 31, 2026

"I’m not a journalist. I’m not in the media. This is a military headquarters for a populist revolt."

This is how we motivate people. This show is an activist show. If you watch this show, you’re a foot soldier. We call it the Army of the Awakened.... Immigration, spending — it’s the lack of confidence and self-loathing of their own civilization and their own culture. That’s the spiritual part that’s at the base. Immigration is just the manifestation of a loss of self-confidence. And it’s shocking...."

Said Steve Bannon, quoted in "My Unsettling Interview With Steve Bannon" (NYT) (free access link). 

The "me" is David Brooks, who says:

"Courts have long recognized that reporters are entitled to engage in legal and ordinary news-gathering activities without fear of tort liability — as these actions are at the very core of protected first amendment activity,."

Wrote the trial judge, Justice Robert R. Reed (State Supreme Court in Manhattan), quoted in "Judge Dismisses Trump’s Lawsuit Against The New York Times/Former President Donald J. Trump, who had sued The Times, three of its reporters and his niece over an investigation into his tax returns, was ordered to pay The Times’s legal expenses" (NYT).

Times spokesman Charlie Stadtlander said: "It is an important precedent reaffirming that the press is protected when it engages in routine news gathering to obtain information of vital importance to the public." 

Trump’s lawyer, Alina Habba, said they'd "weigh" his "options," but not specifically whether he'd appeal, and they continue to assert that the Times "went well beyond the conventional news-gathering techniques permitted by the First Amendment."

Whoa! My bad law talk alarm went off! Don't say "permitted by the First Amendment."

The Times was free to do what it did unless there's some valid law that forbids it. Trump made a claim that what the Times did was not permitted because it violated tort law. If he was wrong about that and no tort law or other law was violated, then what the Times did would be permitted, regardless of constitutional law. Fortunately, the First Amendment protects against encroachments on freedom of speech and freedom of the press that might occur if tort law limits what is permitted. If. If tort law or other law doesn't limit, then you don't need permission from the First Amendment. The First Amendment is the defense against encroachment, not the source of permission!

I like the quote from Justice Reed because it's precise about the role of the First Amendment: It relieves us of the fear of aggressive interpretations tort law.

The Washington Post Fact Checker says: "So far, Trump’s rollback of regulations can’t be blamed for Ohio train wreck."

Glenn Kessler investigated Trump's statement "I had nothing to do with it."

We decided to examine every possible regulatory change made under Trump that could be related to the accident and assess whether it could have made an impact. A preliminary report by the National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating the incident, said the Norfolk Southern crew received an alert about an overheated wheel bearing and was trying to slow the train before it came off the tracks. From our analysis, none of the regulatory changes made during the Trump administration at this point can be cited as contributing to the accident.

"For the first time in recent memory, former president Donald Trump found himself relegated this week to the outskirts of a humiliating Republican implosion...."

"In the long run-up to the race for speaker, Trump was the leading character in a bevy of political parlor games — including breathless, overhyped scenarios in which the former president would offer himself up for the gavel and speculation about whether Trump would endorse McCarthy’s bid. In the end, Trump supported McCarthy’s candidacy — and his party responded with a collective shrug. The former president and his endorsement, it seemed, were essentially irrelevant."

Write Ashley Parker and Josh Dawsey in "The House hard-liners blocking McCarthy aren’t listening to Trump/In another sign of the former president’s waning influence, his efforts to bolster McCarthy’s bid as House speaker have not persuaded 20 Republicans to drop their opposition" (WaPo).

Trump backs McCarthy.

UPDATE: Matt Gaetz responds: "Sad!" And: "This changes neither my view of McCarthy, nor Trump, nor my vote."

"Kanye West very much wanted to visit Mar-a-Lago. Our dinner meeting was intended to be Kanye and me only, but he arrived with a guest whom I had never met and knew nothing about."

Said Donald Trump, quoted in an update to a Breitbart article that is now titled "Trump Dined at Mar-a-Lago with White Nationalist, Holocaust Denier Nick Fuentes Alongside Kanye West; UPDATE – Trump Responds, ‘Had Never Met and Knew Nothing About’ Fuentes."

I can't believe Trump doesn't control who has access to him! Either he's lying or he's reckless.  

I guess Ye sets his own terms and Trump makes a calculated decision to accept (and maybe he doesn't mind signaling that he's doesn't categorically reject white nationalists). Here's how Ye presents it:

#YE24 pic.twitter.com/DyIhMU5By6

— ye (@kanyewest) November 25, 2022

Ann Coulter is trending on Twitter because of this tweet of hers.

To Trump:
You had your chance, with a Republican House and Senate. You handed domestic policy to your son-in-law and Gary Cohn. You handed foreign policy to your son-in-law and a country that gave your son-in-law $2 billion.

Shut the fuck up, forever.

— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) November 11, 2022

These 2 overinflated characters — Trump and Musk — are going down simultaneously.

I tried to get DALL-E to make a picture of how this looked in my head:

Satire? How is that satire? Stop puffing. It's simply wrong. If some people found it funny it's not because the art of satire was at play.

I'm reading a Reuters fact-check on what looked like a screenshot of a CNN report that Trump had died. It was a fake headline, and should have just been called false.

But somehow Reuters credited it as "satire."

 

How is that satire? The only levity comes from the reader's internal state of wanting to see Trump dead.

IN THE COMMENTS: Readering says: "'Cause of death autoerotic asphyxiation.' So satire. Also pathetic."

That text is in tiny print under the photo. I wrote this post without noticing that. If the Reuters fact-check had even mentioned that, I would have written a different post, but it does not. So I still reject the Reuters analysis, but I agree with Readering that it does count as satire — and that it's pathetic. Low skill, low effort, overall lowliness.

Trump's Truth Social is "a vibrant right-wing ecosystem increasingly brimming with activity."

According to a NYT piece by Stuart A. Thompson and Matthew Goldstein, "Truth Social’s Influence Grows Despite Its Business Problems/The right-wing social network faces two federal investigations and an uncertain financial future. But it has still managed to outpace its rivals." 

The site has become a key organizing platform for election deniers ahead of the midterms, stoking concerns about voter fraud and spreading rumors about problems at the polls.... Mr. Trump has used the site... to shape Republican talking points and boost candidates running in close races. And he has embraced messages and imagery from QAnon....

The real test for Truth Social may arrive in the coming months, as initial excitement around the app fades and the problems with its financing possibly come to a head. The site shows few signs of courting a wider mix of users from across the political spectrum, which would be necessary to reach lofty targets set by the company before the app launched....

ADDED: I don't think the term "election deniers" should be used until voting has been completed and the usual legal procedures of challenging and contesting elections have played out. The Times seems to be adopting this term to refer to anyone who is worried about the security and accuracy of voting — but only when the worriers are on the right. That's not a good position for the New York Times.

Is Trump coming back to Twitter?

"'J.D. is kissing my ass he wants my support so much,' the former president had said — while Mr. Vance, Marine Corps veteran and Mamaw’s grandson, stood by...."

"The reliably impolitic Mr. Trump delights in diminishing candidates aching for his benediction, especially one who once asserted that he was unfit for office — who once, in fact, wondered whether he might be America’s Hitler — but who, since entering politics, has demonstrated fervent fealty. 'The best president of my lifetime,' Mr. Vance has maintained. Still, the kisses-my-ass tag has followed Mr. Vance like a yippy dog ever since, with [Tim] Ryan gleefully invoking it again in their second debate last week. When Mr. Vance maintained that Mr. Trump’s comment was a 'joke; that riffed on what he called without explication a 'false; New York Times article — about the reluctance of some Republicans to have the former president campaign for them — one of the moderators sought clarification. 'So I get this straight,' said Bertram de Souza, a local journalist. 'When the former president said, "J.D. is kissing my ass because he wants my support," you took that as a joke?' 'I know the president very well, and he was joking about a New York Times story,' Mr. Vance said. 'That’s all he was doing. I didn’t take offense to it.'"

I'm highlighting the ass-kiss references in the NYT article "J.D. Vance’s Ambition Comes at a Price in ‘Hillbilly’ Terms/The Republican Senate candidate changed his tune on Donald Trump and now has his endorsement, but a remark by the former president about Vance’s fealty is dogging him in Ohio."

"In the most basic sense, any legal arguments seeking to get Mr. Trump off the hook would merely need to be weighty enough to produce two and a half months of litigation."

"If Republicans pick up enough seats in the midterm elections to take over the House in January, as polls suggest is likely, they are virtually certain to shut down the Jan. 6 committee, a move that would invalidate the subpoena."

From "Trump Could Harness Unresolved Legal Issues to Resist Jan. 6 Panel’s Subpoena/If the ex-president turns down the drama of testifying, his legal team could mount several constitutional and procedural arguments in court" (NYT).

The most relevant instance in history occurred in 1953, then the House Committee on Un-American Activities subpoenaed Truman. Though he "voluntarily testified before Congress on other topics, Truman refused to honor the committee’s subpoena, claiming that as a former chief executive he was immune from compelled testimony by the legislative branch." But that was that. The Committee did not litigate.

But what will Trump do? 

Aides to Mr. Trump have said that he has weighed whether to testify, but only under the condition that it be live and on television. That would deprive the committee of controlling what gets seen or from releasing only selected excerpts.

The article quotes lawprof Mark J. Rozell, author of “Executive Privilege: Presidential Power, Secrecy and Accountability”: “If Trump is going to go out there and make himself vulnerable, he’s going to do it in a public way.... It’s going to be a Trump show, and he’ll be playing to his own crowd. At that point, legal argument and nuances would be out the window.”

What would you like to see Trump do?

Testify — but only if it's live and unedited, on TV.

Testify subject to the Committee editing and presentation.

Litigate — to nail down the law or to stall until the GOP takes over the House.

Wait to see if they charge him with contempt and prosecute him, and only then raise his defenses.

 

pollcode.com free polls

"Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, long entwined, continue on vile parallel paths: They would rather destroy their countries than admit they have lost."

"They have each created a scrim of lies to justify lunatic personal ambition.... As our ancestors did, the Ukrainians are fighting an abusive overlord, against all odds, for democracy. It’s especially inspiring as a split screen with Trump and his MAGA forces trying to bulldoze democracy and rip away women’s rights. The Ukrainians are battling for a luminous ideal — unlike Trump and Putin, who are smashing a luminous ideal for their own benefit, driven by their dread of being called losers. Both thugs are getting boxed in, Trump by a bouquet of investigations into his chicanery and Putin by an angry public pushback against his bloody vanity war.... Both Putin and Trump are famous for accusing everyone else of their own sins.... It would be poetic justice to think the walls were closing in on Putin and Trump at the same time, because at some point, all this will become unsustainable...." 

Maureen Dowd, in "Solo Soulless Saboteurs" (NYT).

Would it be poetic justice for the walls to close in on Putin and Trump at the same time for the same reasons?

From Wikipedia:

This makes it sound as though Biden is attending the Queen's funeral in order to keep Trump out of it.

I'm reading "Queen’s funeral: Joe Biden caught officials off guard with plan to attend" in the London Times.

"Wait. The guy who tried to kill his own VP will be hanging in National Portrait Gallery? No. Absolutely not."

That's the second-highest-rated comment on "Smithsonian’s Trump portraits to be funded with $650K from Trump’s PAC" (WaPo).

First-highest-rated is: "They've already got the Trump as Rambo riding a dinosaur and holding a machine gun. Do they really need a new painting for any reason?"

"Donald Trump and his allies are reportedly talking about releasing Mar-a-Lago surveillance footage showing FBI agents searching the Florida resort."

"This will supposedly show jackbooted FBI thugs swarming over the former president’s home, graphically illustrating his long-running complaint of political persecution. Trump absolutely should release that footage. It would totally Own the Libs...."

WaPo's Greg Sargent snarks, in "Trump’s bizarre threat to release Mar-a-Lago footage is revealing."

"President Barack Hussein Obama kept 33 million pages of documents, much of them classified. How many of them pertained to nuclear? Word is, lots!"

That's a statement Trump put up today on his website.

And there's this at the NYT: "Trump claims he declassified all the documents at Mar-a-Lago. Even if that’s true, it probably doesn’t matter."