"[I]t is entirely possible that we will run a repeat of 2020, when the outcome of a narrow election was clouded by accusations of fraud, and MAGA was hellbent on retaining control."

"In 2026, however, we face a president who has surrounded himself with sycophants and yes men, with years left in a term that has already been marked by grotesque lawlessness and abuses of power."

Writes David French, in "This Is What’s Keeping Me Up at Night" (NYT gift link).

"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:

"The Trump administration’s $1.776 billion 'anti-weaponization' fund could be a boon for GOP senators targeted by a Biden-era investigation..."

"... but some say they still do not want the taxpayer payout. Settlements for those the Justice Department deems were victims of 'lawfare and weaponization' under past administrations is the latest attempt to provide financial compensation to Republican senators whose phone records were tapped in the 'Arctic Frost' investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election...."

The Washington Examiner reports.

When late-night comedians found censorship deeply seductive.

The Late Night show hosts were so giddy and celebratory after Trump was banned from social media.

They absolutely LOVE censorship until someone accusing one of them of crossing the line. Then they become supporters of free speech.pic.twitter.com/7igDcNzvXn

— MAZE (@mazemoore) May 2, 2026

"The two charges stem from a photo that Comey posted online showing seashells on a beach that were arranged to write out '86 47.'"

"Trump is the 47th president; '86' can mean banning or removing someone, but it can also be slang for killing a person. Comey quickly removed the post after receiving criticism that the phrase could be used to communicate the threat of violence."

From "James Comey indicted over 2025 social media post allegedly threatening Trump/The former FBI director issued a video statement maintaining his innocence and criticizing the current Justice Department" (WaPo).

Here's the post I wrote last year when Comey purported not to "realize some folks associate those numbers with violence": "James Comey purports not to have known that 86 means to get rid of (after he posted a picture of rocks in the form 8647 (47 being easily read as a reference to Trump)). Is Comey credible?"

The post title was a Grok prompt. Additional prompts: "Compare that to how Trump was treated for telling protesters on January 6th, 2021 to walk 'peacefully and patriotically' to the Capitol" and "I'm interested in the difference in seeing violence in words and consider that Comey, like Trump, has loyalists who might hear direction and take it."

Why is Gallup suddenly giving up on presidential-approval polling?

I'm reading "Gallup to stop tracking presidential approval ratings after 88 years/Public opinion polling agency says decision 'solely based on Gallup’s research goals and priorities'" (The Guardian).

The company said on Wednesday that it would stop measuring the favorability rating of individual political figures, which “reflects an evolution in how Gallup focuses its public research and thought leadership,” after 88 years. “Our commitment is to long-term, methodologically sound research on issues and conditions that shape people’s lives”....

Do we believe that? I should take a poll, but my polls are not methodologically sound research. Are Gallup's? I can't help suspecting that Gallup has been trying to undermine Trump and it's worried about being called to account.

As The Guardian notes, Trump is litigious. Just last month he wrote: "The Times Siena Poll, which is always tremendously negative to me, especially just before the Election of 2024, where I won in a Landslide, will be added to my lawsuit against The Failing New York Times."

The threat of litigation alone may have cowed Gallup, but the threat is particularly scary if you really have been rigging the polls. To quit your long practice — 88 years! — of polling on presidential popularity makes you look as though you don't believe in the soundness of your own methods. Another possibility is that you're finding sound methods impossible, perhaps because people who like Trump don't talk to pollsters too much anymore.

Ponderous performance.

A fake candlelight vigil for a made-up holy day. And then they sang...this is the modern Democrat party. pic.twitter.com/jvbzutnRqn

— Kira (@Kiradavis) January 7, 2026

"All warfare is based on deception and the American people have had war declared on them."

Said Jake Angeli — AKA Jacob Chansley AKA the QAnon Shaman — to the London Times, which, like other news outlets, is looking for a way to commemorate January 6th — AKA today.

From the home page of the London Times:

Who cares what this guy thinks? But:  "What I’ve come to understand more than anything, dude, is that the Trump administration just lies, bro, because they’re Israel First, just like the Biden administration just lied because they were Israel First. We don’t have our own government."

"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:

"The BBC 'doctored' a Donald Trump speech by making him appear to encourage the Capitol Hill riot..."

"... according to an internal whistleblowing memo seen by The Telegraph. A Panorama programme, broadcast a week before the US election, 'completely misled' viewers by showing the president telling supporters he was going to walk to the Capitol with them to 'fight like hell,' when in fact he said he would walk with them 'to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard."

A Telegraph TikTok, below the fold (or read the Telegraph article: "BBC ‘doctored’ Trump speech, internal report reveals"):

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.

"I was there to see it all. Total Scum!!! President DJT."

Wrote Trump, on Truth Social, just now.

That intense outburst is presented as a reaction to the NY Post article: "FBI surveilled Rep. Scott Perry before seizing his cell phone as part of ‘Arctic Frost’ probe into 2020 election."

"The FBI under former President Biden launched a sweeping investigation called 'Arctic Frost' that included major Republican organizations and conservative groups..."

"... according to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA). Grassley revealed whistleblower evidence at a Senate Judiciary hearing showing the probe, which began with 2020 election challenges, later expanded to 92 Republican targets such as the RNC, the Republican Attorneys General Association, and Turning Point USA. 'Arctic Frost wasn't just a case to politically investigate Trump,' Grassley said. 'It was the vehicle by which partisan FBI agents and Department of Justice prosecutors could achieve their partisan ends and improperly investigate the entire Republican political apparatus."

From "FBI's 'Arctic Frost' probe into Jan. 6 investigated Charlie Kirk's Turning Point USA" (Yahoo, republishing Snopes, quoting the Facebook page The Federalist Papers).

"The wheels of justice turn slowly, but weak cases can do grave damage in the meantime."

"Look no further than the collapse on Tuesday of Michigan’s 'fake electors' prosecution against supporters of President Donald Trump for their actions after the 2020 election...."

So says The Editorial Board of The Washington Post, in "The collapse of Democratic lawfare in Michigan/Dismissal of 'fake electors' charges bodes ill for cases in Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin and Georgia."

The wheels of justice turn slowly? I've always heard Justice delayed is justice denied. Those "wheels" are not justice wheels if they turn that slowly. There's every reason to suspect that the slow turning of the wheel is intentional punishment. Torture wheels.

And what about the wheels of editorial opinion? Why has it taken The Washington Post so long to condemn the "fake electors" case? The last paragraph of the editorial gives away the game:

Democrats tried to use prosecutions as an adjunct to their political strategy in the run-up to the 2024 election. That has backfired spectacularly. There are growing signs that Republicans might be attempting the same destructive strategy by selectively pursuing criminal investigations against their opponents. They would deserve the same result.

And what if it hadn't backfired? What if it had worked spectacularly and the Democrats had won the 2024 election? Would The Washington Post be cheering the Democrats' staunch adherence to the "rule of law," it's tenacious pursuit of the principle that no one is above the law? 

"A Michigan judge dismissed criminal charges Tuesday against a group of people who were accused of attempting to falsely certifying President Donald Trump as the winner of the 2020 election..."

"... in the battleground state, a major blow to prosecutors as similar cases in four other states have been muddied with setbacks. District Court Judge Kristen D. Simmons... said she saw no intent to commit fraud in the defendants’ actions. Whether they were 'right, wrong or indifferent,' they 'seriously believed' there were problems with the election, the judge said. 'I believe they were executing their constitutional right to seek redress,' Simmons said."

AP reports.

"I think the NYT has framed men as a problem. They're not thriving, they're not aspiring. We need to figure out what's wrong with them..."

"... maybe even empathize with them, because, after all, we do need them to function."

So I said, in the previous post. And one reason I said it was because I'd already opened a tab for a second article on the home page of the NYT today: "Where Have All My Deep Male Friendships Gone? I have many guy friends. Why don’t we hang out more?"

This is a long piece in the NYT Magazine, by Sam Graham-Felsen, and like the article discussed in the previous post, it assures us that there's nothing gay going on here: "I never had sexual feelings for Rob, but there was an intensity to our connection that can only be described as love. I thought about him all the time, and cared, deeply, about what he thought of me. We got jealous and mad at each other, and often argued like a bitter married couple — but eventually, like a successful married couple, we’d always find a way to talk things out."

Graham-Felsen has had many other close male friends — "nearly a dozen other dudes — dudes I spent thousands of accumulated hours with; dudes I shared my most shame-inducing secrets with; dudes I built incredibly intricate, ever-evolving inside jokes with; dudes I loved and needed, and who loved and needed me...." 

But he doesn't have dudes like that anymore. Is that because he's older, and his contemporaries are absorbed in family and work, or is it because American men in general "are getting significantly worse at friendship"?

"It is often said that the fact that Trump was not seen to have won in 2020 was a blessing in disguise."

"Why? Because had he been allowed to take office in January 2021, he would have still been surrounded by swamp creatures. His great liability when he first took office was that he did not understand how Washington worked. ... how deeply embedded... the self-serving, globalist, neo-con mentality really was. It took his rustication in 2020 and the unhinged, unremitting tsunami of lawfare that washed over him for four years to school him in the ways of official Washington.... Impeachments, indictments, subpoenas, trials, convictions, and fines.... When none of that worked and he was on course to seal the GOP nomination, they tried to kill him—literally.... He learned how the octopus moved. He got to know what made the swamp habitable. He mastered its strategies, its tactics, and its weapons.... My main question at this point is when a large-scale Gestalt shift will take place.... I predict he will end his days as one of the most celebrated presidents in American history."

Writes Roger Kimball, in "Trump in Riyadh: A Rejection of the Globalist Gospel/Trump’s Riyadh speech rejected nation-building and globalist dogma, marking him as a bold champion of sovereignty over interventionism."

"James Comey purports not to have known that 86 means to get rid of (after he posted a picture of rocks in the form 8647 (47 being easily read as a reference to Trump)). Is Comey credible?"

For the annals of Things I Asked Grok.

Follow-up prompts: "Compare that to how Trump was treated for telling protesters on January 6th, 2021 to walk 'peacefully and patriotically' to the Capitol" and "I'm interested in the difference in seeing violence in words and consider that Comey, like Trump, has loyalists who might hear direction and take it." And: "Detail Comey's 'history of cryptic social media posts.'"

Grok's responses: here.

AND: Here's the article in WaPo: "Comey under investigation for ‘86 47’ social media post, Trump team says/The Trump administration accused the former FBI director of insinuating a call to violence in his Instagram post, which he denied" (free-access link).

"Look, it would be easy for me not to just respond, when you say that, and I could just let you go on. But I’m a very honest person."

Said Donald Trump when The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg asked him why he doesn't quit saying he won the 2020 election.

Trump continued: "I believe—I don’t believe; I know the election was rigged. Biden didn’t get 80 million votes. And he didn’t beat Barack Hussein Obama with the Black vote in the swing states—only in the swing states; it’s interesting. We have lots of other things. I mean, we have so much information, from the 51 agents—that was so crooked—to the laptop from hell, to all of these different things. So it would be easier as you say that to just let you go on. But I’m a very honest person —

Talk about Trump's third term goes on.

I'm seeing this at the moment:

Clicking around, I think what fired up this topic again was Trump's Michigan rally the other day. The crowd was chanting "Three!" Trump's response: "Well, we actually already served three, if you count. But remember, I like the victories, I like the three victories which we absolutely had. I just don't like the results of the middle term."

ADDED: There's also the Atlantic interview with Trump, which was published on the 28th and am just noticing now, even though I've been reading the news continuously: