INDIGNITY MORNING PODCAST

EASY LISTENING DEP’T.: In the abstract, in principle, this isn't a terrible way for a mainstream publication to express skepticism toward official claims, but to politely and firmly rebut the claims put forward yesterday, to rationalize them into a new step toward reframing autism, is to miss the entire tenor of the thing. The story then tries to dig in. “The briefing at the White House,” the Times continues, “featured often unsubstantiated medical advice from Mr. reminiscent of his first term when he encouraged Americans to try unproven treatments for COVID. The president on Monday repeatedly issued strong warnings that flew in the face of the recommendations of leading medical groups. ‘Don't take Tylenol. Don't take it. Fight like hell not to take it.’ He urged pregnant women to ‘tough it out’ when in pain, except in rare instances such as a dangerously high fever.” After the jump, the story also says “Mr. Trump mentioned that he and Mr. Kennedy had long discussed the possibility of a vaccine link to autism. He also amplified Mr. Kennedy's views, saying that the childhood immunization schedule loads up children with too many vaccines. The president said without evidence that babies are given as many as 80 shots at once.” Writing “the president said without evidence that babies are being given as many as 80 shots at once,” sounds like you are really holding the president's feet to the fire. But the words that came out of the mouth of the president of the United States on this subject, or at least some of the words, were actually, “it's too much liquid. Too many different things are going into that baby at too big a number. The size of this thing when you look at it. It's like 80 different vaccines and beyond vaccines. 80. You give that to a little kid.”

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EASY LISTENING DEP’T.: Jeremy W. Peters' nonsense, flattering as it does the sensibilities and sensitivities of the people who run the paper, gets page one, and again, a straight news story package, whereas Adam Liptak, writing about how the actual removal of Jimmy Kimmel from the airwaves, as the Trump administration threatened to use its regulatory powers against ABC, was intentioned with the conventional understanding of what the constitution allows, lands on page A18 with a NEWS ANALYSIS tag on it.

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EASY LISTENING DEP’T.: Knowing that the Senate went ahead and jammed through Kimberly Guilfoyle's appointment to be an ambassador at the expense of longstanding procedural rules just affirms the already established situation of the Senate. Framing it as a steady erosion of John Thune's values as an institutionalist is kind of funny, but likewise not super revealing about what it means to be a Republican at the moment.

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EASY LISTENING DEP’T.: Before we get to the larger news, we're going to start with something very small, or at least something petty, that turns out astonishingly and yet obviously, to be of world historic import. It's in a passage by Ben Smith writing for Semafor. “The Trump administration,” Smith writes, “from the president down to the middle levels of obscure cabinet departments is populated by people whose defining experiences in public life involved being silenced by social platforms. This predates the social media wars of the late 2010s.” Smith continues. “One Trump appointee told me that a radicalizing experience was being booted out of the Gawker comments section way back in the day.” Of course it was. Of course the vicious dullards and bigots who are running the country into ruin are the same people who were being dullards and bigots in the comment section back in the day. From Trump on down, and laterally out through the titans of Silicon Valley and their fascist enthusiasms, this is a political movement built on profoundly unpleasant and unlikable people being furious that they can't make other people like them or respect them.

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EASY LISTENING DEP’T.: Hamstringing the FBI's ability to investigate financial fraud doesn't seem like things backfiring for the Trump administration exactly. Seems more like one of their more successful integrated policy initiatives.

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EASY LISTENING DEP’T.: The administration may have accused Venezuelan cartels of bringing fentanyl into the United States, but the New York Times has reported that Venezuela plays essentially no role in the fentanyl trade. The story does return to the fact that there is no legal basis for these killings, but it mostly slides past the fact that the extralegal basis doesn't hold up either. Mostly though, the question is when an unrepentant killer racks up new victims, does that make the overall story smaller or bigger? Is the Times here to tell us the story of an out-of-control killing spree or the story of business as usual?

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EASY LISTENING DEP’T.: It's one thing to ruin the lives of civil servants, it's quite another to inconvenience Bayer.

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EASY LISTENING DEP’T.: The Times writes, “Mr. Kirk would arrive at colleges ready for rhetorical combat, willing to engage on the thorniest topics from abortion rights to race. the topic of race.” Ah, that “topic” of race. Right. His opinion on the "topic" of race was that black people were inherently mentally inferior to white people and only owed their current position in society to organized efforts to disadvantage white people. The Times writes, “his campus visits regularly provoked impassioned protests from students who disagreed with Mr. Kirk's stances, like his criticism of transgender rights and endorsement of the so-called Great Replacement Theory, which claims that non-white immigrants will displace white Americans.” Yes, that would be the Great Replacement Theory that has inspired multiple massacres. But you know, the important thing is the healthy exchange of opinions.

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EASY LISTENING DEP’T.: Shooting a retreating unarmed vessel and then making sure to massacre any survivors, would be absolutely illegal in a war, which again, is not what this was.

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EASY LISTENING DEP’T.: Donald Trump's participation in Jeffrey Epstein's sleazy birthday book makes its way onto the front page in a NEWS ANALYSIS piece. “Epstein Revelations Hindering Trump’s Attempts to Turn Page.” It's illustrated with an infographic, “Signature With a Characteristic Flourish. The president has denied signing a birthday message to Jeffrey Epstein, but his signatures from that time are close matches.” It features six annotated copies of the name Donald, one from the Epstein birthday book and five others from authenticated Trump signatures. They're completely identical.

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