Oh, the Former Duke of York
“Donald Trump is Worried That We’re About to Flip Texas”
The Colbert-Talarico Interview That CBS Would not Broadcast
Valentine’s Day
“Well, Karoline, I Think Americans Do Care That Your Boss is a Racist and is Off His Rocker”
Maureen Dowd (N.Y. Times), Trump’s Obama Derangement Syndrome (really good stuff in bold face):
It seems etymologically, metaphysically, geologically and ethically impossible that President Trump could reach a new low. But he has.
Every Friday, when I’m planning my column, I find fresh evidence that the president is unfit for his office. He taunts his foes in crude, creepy ways and tries to tattoo his name on everything.
Late Thursday night, a vile clip appeared on Truth Social, depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes in a jungle cartoon, to the Tokens’ “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” It was at the end of a video filled with baseless conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. The man who pushed the despicable “birther” conspiracy is still at it, using a racist meme from a far-right Pepe-the-frog-loving acolyte.
Like many of Trump’s actions, it was both shocking and predictable.
As The Times reported, Trump has a “history of making degrading remarks about people of color, women and immigrants,” and the Obamas in particular, with “the White House, Labor Department and Homeland Security Department all having promoted posts that echo white supremacist messaging” in his current term.
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, offered a pathetic defense for our pathological president: “This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the king of the jungle and Democrats as characters from ‘The Lion King.’ Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.”
Well, Karoline, I think Americans do care that your boss is a racist and off his rocker.
“His presidency is enclosed in a bubble wrap of darkness and hatred and resentment,” Rahm Emanuel, who served as Obama’s chief of staff, told me.
Once the White House realized the outrage was real, the post was deleted. Officials blamed a staffer, though you know Trump was in on it. On Wednesday, he said he does “retruth”conspiracy theories himself.
He went so far that even a few Republicans in Congress, looking down the barrel of the midterms, objected.
On X, Tim Scott of South Carolina, the only Black Republican in the Senate, called it “the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House.”
Senator Katie Britt, an Alabama Republican who has been increasingly put off by some of Trump’s offensive actions, said on X, “This content was rightfully removed, should have never been posted to begin with, and is not who we are as a nation.”
Trump had a Dostoyevsky-esque moment on Thursday at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, when he confessed that his ego would not let him lose the 2020 race.
“You know, they rigged the second election,” he said. “I had to win it, had to win it. I needed it for my own ego. I would have had a bad ego for the rest of my life. Now I really have a big ego, though.”
He was admitting that our ginned-up election integrity crisis was simply an exercise in bending the truth to his bottomless vanity. “His ego could not handle the fact that he lost, so he had to pretend there was a voting crisis,” David Axelrod told me. “The world is still paying for that.”
(Trump also confessed to the religious gathering that he gets annoyed when Speaker Mike Johnson asks to pray before meals. Trump dryly noted: “I say, ‘Excuse me? We’re having lunch in the Oval.’”)
After obscenely slapping his name on everything from the Kennedy Center to a gold card for rich aspiring immigrants to warships, and planning a gargantuan triumphal arch and an outsize White House ballroom as reflections of his bloated ego, Trump is now trying to strong-arm Congress into naming more things after him by holding congressionally approved funds hostage.
The administration tried extortion tactics on Chuck Schumer, threatening not to unfreeze billions for a new railroad tunnel under the Hudson River unless he helped rename Penn Station in New York and Washington Dulles International Airport after Trump.
Trump’s dragging his own name and America’s name in the muck. The word “Trump” is an epithet in many circles. But in a bizarre manifestation of insecurity, the president still wants to stamp his moniker everywhere, just as he did when he was a New York businessman prone to bankruptcy.
Trump had another quintessential Trump moment on Tuesday when he lambasted CNN’s Kaitlan Collins for not smiling as she asked him, in light of the latest release of Jeffrey Epstein filth, what he would say to the pedophile’s survivors “who feel like they haven’t gotten justice.”
He told her that it was time to move on — the latest deflection from the fact that he has never come clean about his association with the odious Epstein.
Like a shuddersome image of worms slithering from underneath a rock, a bunch of powerful and formerly respected people in America and beyond have been exposed by the Epstein files.
Many of the ultra-elite who insisted they did not know the truth about Epstein’s depravity have been unmasked as liars. Instead, as The Wall Street Journal wrote, prominent people from Noam Chomsky to Stanley Pottinger to Peter Mandelson to Michael Wolff “actively consoled him, cast him as a victim and in some cases offered advice on how to rehabilitate his image.”
And the shoes keep dropping. CNN reported on Friday that Navy Secretary John Phelan was listed as a passenger on Epstein’s private plane in 2006.
As The Times’s David Fahrenthold told CNN, the louche role of some tech billionaires in the Epstein scandal is particularly chilling because our lives in the coming years will be defined by these billionaires.
Once we saw the lords of the cloud as heroic — young geniuses who would improve our lives. Now, as Fahrenthold said, the personal failings, insecurities and midlife crises of these men are dictating the way they run their companies. We were, he said, “a little bit misplaced in sort of putting our hopes in these folks.”
They are not keeping hope alive.
The Stolen Election
The Boss Sings “Streets of Minneapolis”
The Marsh Family Sings “If You’re Going to Minnesota”
It’s a Small World After All
Thanks to international readers in January from Bahrain, Canada, Colombia, China, Germany, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Japan, New Zealand, Peru, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Turkey, UAE, UK, and Vietnam.
We love you all, but we especially love Canada.
My message to you: yes, I know very well that we’re acting crazy over here. I know very well that Humpty Dumpty has fallen, and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men can’t put Humpty together again. I know that we Americans don’t really know where we’re going, and we don’t know how to get there. But I believe in the core of my being that we will ultimately survive, flourish once again, and once again act like good neighbors.
In the United States, WordPress is telling me that my readers come from Ashburn VA, Atlanta GA (no surprise there), Boston and Cambridge (maybe MA, but could be lots of others), Council Bluffs IO, Kansas City (don’t know which one), Jonesboro AR, Los Angeles CA, New York NY, North Bergen NJ, Quay (don’t know which one), Seattle WA, Tucker GA, and Tuscaloosa AL.
And now, my American brethren and sistern, please rise with me in body or in spirit and join in singing
“I do not yet know what UUCA will be asked to risk”: A Pastoral Message from the Senior Sabbatical Minister of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta
Dear Members of the UU Congregation of Atlanta,
Yesterday, in broad daylight, Alex Pretti was executed.
Let’s be clear. What killed this poor man was not law enforcement. It was lawlessness.
The problem is not whether or how Alex Pretti complied with the law.
The problem is that federal agents, sent to sow chaos, are out of compliance with our Constitution.
Are out of compliance with the scope of their role. And are out of compliance with principles of public safety.
So, the question I’m asking is why don’t these agents comply with the law?
Any narrative that suggests that Alex Pretti was anything other than innocent is pure fabrication. The Administration is lying. But you can trust your friends. You can believe your own eyes.
What happened is horrifying. And, of course, it’s not new. This country has a long memory of Jim Crow terror, night patrols, and violence carried out with the blessing—or the silence—of those in power.
Still, many of good conscience this weekend are rightly feeling heartbroken, furious, helpless, and confused.
If you are scared, that makes sense.
If you are angry, you have a right to be.
If you are not sure what to do next, you are not alone.
I’m deeply grateful for, and inspired by, UUCA Associate Minister Rev. EN Hill, who stood in the cold in Minneapolis this past week, alongside hundreds of clergy, representing the body of holy love in the streets. Church people know simple, ancient good things–like that showing up matters. Especially when so much is at risk and the stakes are so high.
We are now in a moment when political violence is being normalized. When cruelty is defended as order. When fear is being weaponized in American streets. Today, it is Minneapolis. Tomorrow, it could be Atlanta. That is sobering to say out loud. It is also necessary.
I do not know what the future holds. I do not know how all of this will unfold. I do not yet know what UUCA will be asked to risk, or where solidarity will require us to stand. I do not know what our most vulnerable neighbors will need, or how they will call on us for protection and partnership.
But here is what I do know.
UUCA is not a bystander congregation.
UUCA is not a silent congregation.
And UUCA is held and fueled by a Love that our Universalist ancestors claimed never quit and left nobody out!
UUCA, you are powerful beyond measure—because of your history, your relationships, your commitments, and your hard-won wisdom. You have not been caught off-guard. You have been watching. You’ve been strengthening networks and joining Signal groups. You’ve been weaving strategic ties across difference. You have been preparing.
And you are not alone. You have neighbors. Partners. Shoulder-to-shoulder companions.
With strong UUCA Board leadership, with long-time movement veterans among you, with the boundlessly deep resource of music and joy, with Rev. EN’s steady courage, and with Rev. Taryn returning next week, this congregation is well-resourced—not only spiritually, but strategically.
We are a people of tenacious hope. Of stubborn, resilient love. We won’t back down. Nor will we be hardened or embittered or cornered. We will sing. We will rest. We will rise.
Let me say this, my sibling Unitarian Universalists: this engagement, ahead of us, is going to cost something. It may cost comfort. It may cost convenience. It may cost reputation. It may cost time and money and the illusion that someone else will handle it.
And still, we are called.
Some of you will offer care and compassion.
Some will show up on front lines.
Some will make sure things at home are steady and strong so others can do what they need to do on the streets.
All of it matters.
In the coming days, there will be opportunities to gather, to pray, to listen, and to discern concrete next steps together. Watch for those invitations. Bring your whole self. Feel it all.
Thank you for the discernment you are already doing about the part you will play.
Thank you for the preparation you are undertaking for UUCA to be a force for the Beloved Community—not in abstraction or in theory, but in neighborhoods, households, and in real lives.
Gratefully, mournfully, and with resolve,
Rev. Jake Morrill
Senior Sabbatical Minister
UU Congregation of Atlanta
Facing MAGA 