Althouse

Writes Trump, just now, on his place called Truth.

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).

It's not "fake news," because it's not even news:

"Orwell’s proposal that totalitarianism demands the rejection of objective truth and the alteration of the past is perhaps the most original idea in 'Nineteen Eighty-Four.'... 'The empirical method of thought, on which all the scientific achievements of the past were founded, is opposed to the most fundamental principles of Ingsoc [English socialism]. And even technological progress only happens when its products can in some way be used for the diminution of human liberty. In all the useful arts, the world is either standing still or going backwards.' And the very medium of thought, in Orwell’s reckoning, language, would be crippled. Winston’s co-worker, employed in the project, explains: 'Do you know that Newspeak is the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year? … In the end we will make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.' What actually happened?... This logarithmic graph shows that in 1948, the Encyclopaedia Britannica was about 29,000 pages. Its final printed edition, in 2010, had 33,000. Today most of us rely on Wikipedia (despite its occasional errors and editing wars), which as of last year had the equivalent of 3.2 million Britannica pages, a hundredfold increase...."

"They tell stories, invent alternative facts, enact daily dramas, construct show trials and reinvent religions — they build a world. In their world, the people who felt humiliated are now dominant and doing the humiliating. Russia felt humiliated by the West in the 1990s. Many working-class American voters have felt humiliated by coastal elites for decades. In this alternative world, the snobs suffer. People support an authoritarian not because they like this or that policy but because they embrace the authoritarian’s artistic vision. Performance artists like Trump and Putin can be dishonest, offensive and outrageous, but there is one rule: They must never be boring."

"... 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."

New talking point directive just issued #AntifaDoesntExist pic.twitter.com/1BbAe8ql0q

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) October 10, 2025

"... that we’re taking away valuable information from our citizens who visit this park, and that we are trying to dumb everyone down and pretend real weather events don’t happen by not letting you read a simple sign."

Said Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine), quoted in "National parks remove signs about climate, slavery and Japanese detention/The removals come after President Donald Trump issued an executive order in March seeking to remove 'improper partisan ideology' from federal institutions."

"... and you are so lacking in self-awareness you cannot see that you are precisely what you pretend to hate."

Said JK Rowling, at X.

"... on Thursday, one week after announcing that eight of the institution’s museums must submit their current wall text and future exhibition plans for a comprehensive review. The list borrows heavily from a recent article in The Federalist that objected to portrayals at several museums. It argued that the National Museum of American History promoted homosexuality by hanging a pride flag; overemphasized Benjamin Franklin’s relationship to slavery in its programming; and supported open borders by depicting migrants watching fireworks 'through an opening in the U.S.-Mexico border wall.'...:

I'm reading "White House Lists Smithsonian Exhibits It Finds Objectionable/The Trump administration highlighted material dealing with topics like sexuality, slavery and immigration" (NYT).

"Among his supporters and those who voted for his rival? Biden doesn’t have the benefit of having been out of office for years. And while he has been on a redemption tour of sorts, only history can define his presidency. Nostalgia hasn’t had a chance to cast him in a warm glow. The scars of a political dogfight haven’t even begun to scab over. The old ones are still raw and weeping, even as the country accumulates new ones. Vice President JD Vance argued that it was possible to have two thoughts about Biden at once: to wish him good health while also, essentially, calling him a terrible president in the same breath."

"... that was never in you in the first place? I'm not saying that we shouldn't be upset. We definitely should be upset. But why are we-- we can't be upset at people that it was never in them in the first place to even care about somebody else."

Said a black woman, heard in episode 857 of "This American Life," "Museum of Now."

Read the text of his "Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Restores Truth and Sanity to American History."  Excerpts:

I'm listening to his podcast with Adam Curry (who invented podcasting). Scroll to 2:49:39 for this part, which comes after some discussion of the role of the CIA in the field of arts (Abstract Expressionism) and entertainment (the music of Laurel Canyon):

ROGAN: The real kooky people probably think you're my handler or something. Because you created podcasting. Because there's that thought that... there's a whole financed and backed right-wing ecosystem that's created these podcasts.... This is just stupidity. This is the problem where when you look at some conspiracies, you think, oh, well that applies to all things.... There's actually some things that are organic for some weird reason.

Funding for racist baby training is canceled https://t.co/M7H1ks4Vbr

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 15, 2025

pic.twitter.com/4M5uNd6U0l

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 10, 2025

I watched the Super Bowl last night because I fell prey to the rumor that Elon Musk had spent $40 million of his own money on several pro-DOGE commercials that would air. That didn't happen, and I spent the evening viewing the actual commercials, which, by the way, were terrible.

Donald Trump is all-caps-ing — at Truth Social — about the biggest scandal of them all:

LOOKS LIKE BILLIONS OF DOLLARS HAVE BEEN STOLLEN AT USAID, AND OTHER AGENCIES, MUCH OF IT GOING TO THE FAKE NEWS MEDIA AS A “PAYOFF” FOR CREATING GOOD STORIES ABOUT THE DEMOCRATS. THE LEFT WING “RAG,” KNOWN AS “POLITICO,” SEEMS TO HAVE RECEIVED $8,000,000. Did the New York Times receive money??? Who else did??? THIS COULD BE THE BIGGEST SCANDAL OF THEM ALL, PERHAPS THE BIGGEST IN HISTORY! THE DEMOCRATS CAN’T HIDE FROM THIS ONE. TOO BIG, TOO DIRTY!

ADDED: I don't know what's been going on lately, but I blogged this on September 6, 2022: 

"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).

Writes Megan McArdle (at WaPo)(free-access link).

From Bret Weinstein, at X:

These attacks are connected to each other through Fort Bragg, and to the NJ drones, which are connected to gravity manipulation, which connects it all to UAPs for the alien inclined. And it’s all happening between the election and inauguration. It’s clearly designed to be irresistible to “conspiracy theorists.” The smart money is on the Deep State and its partners preparing to vacate their offices and switch modes. They want us chasing our tails, and we are obliging them. We should instead be figuring out what they’re trying to distract us from with all this conspiracy catnip.

"... Professor Stone wrote in a 2019 law review article.... 'In the 18th century, bookstores in the American colonies carried an extraordinary array of erotica... and there were no statutes forbidding obscenity during the entire colonial era. To the contrary, throughout this period, the distribution, exhibition and possession of pornographic material was simply not thought to be any of the state’s business.' Indeed, Professor Stone wrote... Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin collected such works...."

From "What Would the Founders Have Thought About TikTok and Online Porn?/The Supreme Court will hear arguments next month in First Amendment challenges to laws banning the app and shielding minors from sexual materials on the internet" (NYT).
How does that connect to the TikTok problem?