A SOCIAL MEDIA MOB IS STILL COMING FOR CORNELL'S JANE DOE

My first problem with the New York Times story about online efforts to doxx Jane Doe involves verb tenses. Here's the headline:

When a Social Media Mob Came for Cornell’s Jane Doe

After a former student named seven men in a lawsuit saying they had sexually assaulted her, a movement gained steam online to reveal her identity.

The verbs here are in the past tense. Reading this, you might imagine that the campaign to doxx Jane Doe was a toxic online moment, but it's over now. It wasn't, and it isn't.

The Times story makes clear that the first key figure in this doxxing campaign was a real dirtbag, but it suggests that his efforts belong to the recent past.

The online campaign to unmask Jane Doe began with pleas on X.

“Please help me discover the Cornell girl,” Aidan Thompson, a 23-year-old man who regularly praises Hitler and disparages women on the social media platform, wrote in one of the first posts. “I have a good lead, but I need your help.”

Within hours of Mr. Thompson’s post, another user had offered a bounty of $5,000 for the name and photos of the woman who had sued Cornell University under the pseudonym, claiming she had been gang raped at a fraternity party. Within a day, commenters were circulating a woman’s name and images of her from a social media account....

A little more than a week after Mr. Thompson’s post about the former Cornell student, more than 11,000 accounts had made almost 25,000 posts that purported to name her, according to an analysis by an online analytics company, Gudea, conducted at the request of The New York Times.

Aidan Thompson's tweet (which I won't link) was posted on September 29 -- two and a half weeks ago. I don't know why the Times reporters -- five of them share a byline -- didn't get a more up-to-date analysis of the doxxing traffic. Again, note the verb tense: "more than 11,000 accounts had made almost 25,000 posts that purported to name her." It's easy to read this as a rapid online flare-up that's already burned itself out. That's not the case. I know the name that's circulating. I count 46 new tweets using the name in reference to the Cornell rape since midnight Eastern time.

The Times reporters tell us:

On the fringes of the internet, bigots, attention-seekers and trolls have long seized on polarizing legal cases to air anger and disgust at women — and boost their following.

Now they were coming for Jane Doe.

Why use the phrase "On the fringes of the internet" when this particular doxxing campaign began, and largely spread, on the massive social media platform owned by the world's richest man? (One of today's 46 tweets using the unearthed name is from a prominent right-wing commentator who has written for the Times, Richard Hanania.)

Thompson reveals a name, and we get the tiniest suggestion that this is an ongoing problem:

Fifteen hours after sending the call out for Jane Doe’s identity, he shared a woman’s name and photos, calling it “BREAKING NEWS.”

“They have a right to face their accuser,” he wrote of the seven men, “and we have a right to publish her identity if we discover it.”

This time, his post ricocheted across X, shared by users and amplified by the platform’s own recommendation algorithm. It has since accumulated more than 19 million views.

The phrase "It has since accumulated" quietly makes clear that the post is still up, and is still getting views. If I were editing this story, I'd want to make that explicit. I'd also want to make clear that posts purporting to identify Jane Doe are all over X right now.

I'd especially want to do this because the story directs our attention to several online takedowns, like this one:

One series of posts on X included not only a name, but also an address, phone numbers and information about the woman’s apparent relatives. The posts, which violated X’s rules on sharing private information, racked up more than 1.4 million views, before being removed a few days later.

And this one:

Savanah Hernandez, a commentator for Turning Point USA, who has more than 700,000 followers on X, shared a woman’s name and photo and wrote that the accuser “was so embarrassed about everyone at Cornell knowing she was such a huge HOE.”

She deleted the post not long after....

Hernandez didn't just share "a woman's name" -- she shared the name everyone else in this doxxing campaign shared. (I found the text of her deleted tweet at a gun forum.)

And we're told that the most well-known doxxer took his post down as well:

Soon after Mr. Thompson claimed to have unmasked Jane Doe, Michael Tracey, an independent journalist with more than 350,000 followers on X, was preparing a post of his own.

Mr. Tracey, who had earlier gained notoriety for questioning the veracity of a prominent Jeffrey Epstein accuser, had recently fixated on people who file anonymous legal complaints making what he called “reputation-destroying claims” about others.

By Oct. 2, Mr. Tracey announced to his followers on X that he, too, had confirmed Jane Doe’s identity.

His post on X listed the name and photo of the woman Mr. Thompson had identified.

Separately, on Substack, Mr. Tracey posted a screenshot he said had come from a state court website that also listed the name in relation to the Jane Doe case....

But it appeared Mr. Tracey had been duped.

The site he referred to had no connection to the New York State court system. Instead, registration records show, it appeared to have been created by a 33-year-old man in Michigan who described himself on social media as a “digital creator.” That man did not respond to requests for comment, and the site is now offline.

Amid cascading criticism, Mr. Tracey deleted the posts with the woman’s name later on Oct. 2, arguing that “the principle has been served.”

And beyond that, we're told:

On Instagram, the same name was soon automatically labeled a “popular” search subject.

A spokeswoman for Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, said such posts were prohibited by company policy and that the social network had removed some of the material. The company also removed the name from the ranked results on the platform’s search function.

YouTube, too, took down videos that claimed to identify the woman, saying they violated its harassment policies, a spokesman said.

I think it would be easy to read all this and imagine that the virus has been largely quarantined. It hasn't. The name and images said to be Jane Doe are still all over X. Meta may say that posts doxxing Jane Doe are "prohibited by company policy," but a quick Google search for the widely circulated name and "threads" will lead you to many posts on Meta's Threads that include the widely circulated name and images.

The story ends with a report of a swatting incident against Jane Doe and her family, along with a reference to an additional swatting attempt. But this is prefaced with a weird sentence:

As the online furor mounted, it appeared that at least some people on the internet had indeed learned Jane Doe’s true identity.

It's as if we're being told that the widespread dissemination of Jane Doe's purported name and image might have had nothing to do with the swatting. Hey, wasn't Michael Tracey "duped"? Maybe the name and identifying information he (and 11,000 other people) posted was false, and the swatting happened through some other means!

But that would be an equally horrifying story -- an 11,000-strong mob identifying (and slut-shaming) a person who had nothing to do with the incident. Do the five authors of this story believe that's possible? If so, there's the story: a person has been exposed who either is Jane Doe, which is appalling, or isn't, which is appalling in a different way.

The mob settled on one person. That person's privacy is being violated anew every single day, even now. This isn't over, and that's what the story should have made clear.

THE WHITE HOUSE CARES ABOUT ELECTION-FRAUD VIBES, NOT ELECTION FRAUD

Even if you believe that there's massive, persistent, election-altering Democratic voter fraud, what the Trump administration is doing in California makes no sense:

The Trump administration on Thursday sued the state of California and a Los Angeles County official, seeking to temporarily block the state from counting mail ballots submitted by voters it suspects are noncitizens.

The suit ... would apply to some 20,000 people in the state the administration has cast as “likely noncitizens” ...

The administration has escalated its fight with California over the last week.

Days earlier, federal authorities sent a thumb drive of roughly 20,000 names they suspected were noncitizens registered to vote in California to election officials in Los Angeles County, demanding they act within 48 hours.

Data security is the Trump administration's passion:

The LA County Clerk separately said in a statement they would refuse to access contents of the thumb drive -- which was delivered to the office with a password attached on a sticky note -- "because doing so would conflict with established data privacy and information security protocols."

"We do not consider the device a secure medium," LA County Clerk Dean Logan said in the statement.

(Emphasis added.)

This figure of 20,000 is quite a comedown from the administration's previous claims:

California Attorney General Rob Bonta said at [a] press conference Thursday morning that ... the administration's alleged number of noncitizens on the state's voter rolls had dropped from the 190,000 flagged over the summer by the Department of Homeland Security to the 20,000 noted by the Justice Department.

"What happened to those 170,000? They just got those wrong," Bonta said.

And the administration is probably wrong about all or nearly all of the 20,000:

Similar past claims of thousands of illegal voters have fallen apart under scrutiny. Last month, election officials in Nevada said that they had examined a list provided by homeland security officials of 185 names of supposed noncitizens who had been improperly registered to vote, and found that every person on the list was a lawful citizen.

But for the sake of argument, let's assume that the administration is right. Let's assume that 20,000 voters are on the rolls in California who shouldn't be. And let's assume, as Republicans always do, that these real or imaginary illegal voters will all vote, and will all vote Democratic.

Would that even tip the midterms in the GOP's favor? Nope. California does have 52 seats in the House of Representatives, most of which will be Democratic. But it has few genuinely contested seats. Contested seats are all over the country, but not really in California.

The administration says California is letting 20,000 non-citizens vote in California. Do you know how many Californians cast House votes in the last midterms, in 2022? More than 10 million. Twenty thousand is 0.2% of 10 million. Very few elections are won by 0.2% or less.

The administration sent that thumb drive with the password attached on a sticky note to Los Angeles County. Let's assume that all of those 20,000 real or imaginary non-citizen voters are in L.A. County -- a massive county with a population of more than 9 million. How likely is it that these allegedly illegal votes will tip a House race?

Not very. There are 18 congressional districts that are wholly or partly in L.A. County -- districts 23, 26 through 32, 34 through 38, and 41 through 45. Every one of these is ranked as "solid D" by the Cook Political Report, with the exception of CA-23 ("solid R") and CA-45 ("likely D"). Not one of these is a swing district -- in fact, California has only three swing districts, all outside L.A. County.

So in a year when Democrats are likely to win the House by far more than three seats, it's next to impossible that 20,000 votes, distributed across a massive county or a massive state (it's not clear which), would decide the House, even in the unlikely event that the administration is right about the eligibility of those voters. (Beyond that, the state has no Senate race this year, the marquee mayor's race in Los Angeles is between two Democrats, and polls show that the Democratic gubernatorial candidate is leading the Republican candidate by more than 20 points.)

But this isn't about preventing voter fraud. It's about giving Fox News addicts -- including President Trump -- a vibes-based reason to believe there's fraud. The Trumpers wanted to give California and L.A. County an absurdly brief period to deal with this, 48 hours, in the hope that there'd be no response and they could say, "See? A cover-up!" They're suing even though, as The New York Times notes, "Over the past 18 months, the Trump administration has sued California and other states over voter rolls, and has lost resoundingly in court." The late filing suggests that they actually hope to be rebuffed -- again, so they can say the system is rigged against them.

David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research and a former DOJ voting rights attorney ... said that timing made it appear DOJ was “almost seeming to try to set California up,” particularly because federal law restricts systematic voter-list maintenance during the 90 days immediately preceding a federal election.

Think about this. The government is supposed to do things for the public. You might not always like the way the government goes about this -- for instance, the Trump administration is fighting a war, imposing tariffs, and pursuing a heavy-handed and frequently brutal immigration crackdown in ways that are broadly unpopular -- but at least these are policy pursuits.

What the administration is doing in California isn't an attempt to crack down on (real or imagined) electoral fraud. It's an attempt to generate content for the right-wing media. It's designed to make right-leaning voters angry enough to vote Republican. It's also designed to please the president, who, when he thinks voter fraud, thinks Hispanic immigrants and Democratic states, and thus California.

The administration is making unlawful demands on California for the same reason it's targeting Ilhan Omar rather than, say, immigrant drug gangs -- because California and Omar make Fox viewers, and specifically the president, extremely angry. It's not governance -- it's taxpayer-funded ragebait.

NO, TRUMP WON'T BURN IT ALL DOWN (BUT WHAT HE'LL DO WON'T BE MUCH BETTER)

Paul Krugman looks at the downfall of Adolf Hitler and wonders whether it's a portent of Donald Trump's future:

By the middle of March 1945 even Adolf Hitler knew that the war was lost. Soviet forces were within 45 miles of Berlin. American forces had crossed the Rhine and were well on their way to encircling the remaining German defenders. But Hitler didn’t believe that he had failed. He believed that he had been failed by the German people.

So on March 19 he issued the “Decree concerning demolitions in the Reich territory,” which has come to be known as the Nerobefehl or Nero decree. It ordered the destruction of Germany’s own infrastructure — supposedly to deny that infrastructure to the Allies, but the obvious purpose was to punish his own country.

Fortunately, Albert Speer and other Nazi officials didn’t carry out the order....

Why am I recounting this history? Obviously because I’m thinking about what will happen after the midterms.

Actually, as Berlin's Deutschlandmuseum points out, some destruction did take place in response to Hitler's order: "almost all of the Rhine bridges from Switzerland to the North Sea were destroyed – and only a lack of time prevented even more destruction." The museum explains Hitler's thinking:

All transport, industrial or supply facilities that could benefit the Allies were to be destroyed before they fell into enemy hands. Hitler told Albert Speer that the needs of the German civilian population were unimportant. As the “best Germans” had already died, those who were set to survive the war would be of no value to the life of the German nation.

It's hard to imagine Trump thinking like Hitler after the midterms. Trump wouldn't seek to punish the American people because he has no interest in the American people one way or another, except to the extent that they provide him with love and fuel his narcissism. Hitler, as Krugman notes, knew he was defeated, but Trump won't believe he lost even if there's a blue tsunami and Democrats win all the close races. He'll tell himself (and his fan base) that the voting was rigged, the polls were rigged, the courts are rigged, the media is rigged, and even so, Republicans would have won if only he'd been on the ballot. Americans still love him!

Trump has an unshakable belief in the Power of Positive Thinking.

TRUST IN TRUMP. "Just sit back and relax, it will all work out well in the end - It always does!" - President Donald J. Trump. 🇺🇸 https://t.co/CAjU4jM8Jy

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) June 1, 2026

And, of course, Trump, unlike Hitler, won't have to choose between death and surrender. Krugman says that Trump "will retain immense capacity to inflict destruction on America, not to mention America’s allies." I agree that he'll "retain immense capacity," thanks to the Supreme Court, the Senate filibuster, and America's Framers, who gave us a constitution that was unsuited to a nation with a two-party system, with its requirement of a two-thirds vote to convict in the Senate after a president or other official is impeached. Trump will still have a lot of power, and he'll use it, narcissistically.

Krugman thinks he's already raining destruction on America's allies.

Over the past few days, according to President Zelenskyy, Ukraine has received no warning from the West about impending Russian missile strikes. This could reflect technical problems. But anyone dismissing the possibility that Trump is trying to punish Ukraine for daring to deny victory to his friend Vladimir Putin must have slept through the past two years.

But Trump doesn't see Ukraine as America's ally. Trump sees Russia as Amerca's ally.

In domestic matters, Krugman notes this:

At home, Trump officials suddenly cut down hundreds of trees at a public golf course in Washington. Trump has long wanted to remake that golf course to his own taste, but that’s unlikely to happen given the political winds, and in any case there was no need to rush the destruction. This was almost surely an act of spite, of deliberate act vandalism, undertaken precisely because Trump knows he won’t get his way.

But Trump doesn't regard that as destruction. Trump doesn't like nature. He's never shown the slightest appreciation for it. Trump likes golf courses -- that's the only kind of greenery he appreciates. He likes patios, and built a replica of the one at Mar-a-Lago in place of the White House Rose Garden. Trump doesn't think that's destruction. Trump thinks that's beautification. (And he undoubtedly believes he'll get to build that golf course one way or another.)

Krugman is right about this:

Think of the Kennedy Center, a national icon that Trump is destroying because he can’t put his own name on it, as the model for what is all too likely to happen to America over the next two years.

But he'd rather rebuild it, in his own gaudy, tacky way, and with his name on the building. Maybe he'll tear it down after the midterms, but if he does, he'll begin the process of replacing it with something gaudy and tacky and bearing his name.

Trump won't issue a Nero decree. Just the opposite: He'll keep trying to build grandiose crap and force it all on the rest of us. That's better, but not by much.

THE MEDIA COVERS ELON MUSK LIKE BLIND MEN DESCRIBING AN ELEPHANT

You probably know the parable of the blind men who tried to describe an elephant:

The first blind man put out his hand and touched the side of the elephant. “How smooth! An elephant is like a wall.” The second blind man put out his hand and touched the trunk of the elephant. “How round! An elephant is like a snake.” The third blind man put out his hand and touched the tusk of the elephant. “How sharp! An elephant is like a spear.” The fourth blind man put out his hand and touched the leg of the elephant. “How tall! An elephant is like a tree.” The fifth blind man reached out his hand and touched the ear of the elephant. “How wide! An elephant is like a fan.” The sixth blind man put out his hand and touched the tail of the elephant. “How thin! An elephant is like a rope.”

An argument ensued, each blind man thinking his own perception of the elephant was the correct one. The Rajah, awakened by the commotion, called out from the balcony. “The elephant is a big animal,” he said. “Each man touched only one part. You must put all the parts together to find out what an elephant is like.”

Enlightened by the Rajah’s wisdom, the blind men reached agreement. “Each one of us knows only a part. To find out the whole truth we must put all the parts together.”

I'm thinking about this as I read The New York Times today and see reports on Elon Musk's handiwork. In her "On Politics" newsletter, Jess Bidgood tells us about Musk's campaign spending on behalf of Republicans:

For Republicans, Christmas came in July.

That’s when Elon Musk began funneling more than $276 million into the party’s efforts to save its majorities in Congress, my colleague Teddy Schleifer has learned.

It is a stonkingly large amount of money, and it includes, in sum, one of the biggest political donations in history: $158 million to Senate Republicans’ main super PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund.

It means that when we talk about the Republicans’ considerable outside spending advantage over Democrats in this midterm, we are talking, in large part, about Musk’s personal contributions.

And it means that a mercurial figure who once backed off political spending is back in the game.

The ensuing conversation is all about Musk the Republican donor -- how much he's giving, the fact that he's not personally on the campaign trail, how little he's tweeting about politics. The rest of Musk's life seems almost irrelevant to Bidgood and Schleifer. In the linked story by Schleifer, we're told about Musk's get-out-the-vote efforts, the issues that motivate him (trans people), and the specifics of his spending. Again, the rest of his life is treated as irrelevant, apart from this passage, which is more concerned about his relationship with Donald Trump:

Mr. Musk, who oversees a vast business empire that has benefited from enormous federal contracts, is famously unpredictable and often jumps from one project to another. He has been far quieter about his political work since his dramatic blowup with Mr. Trump last year. After months of wielding vast influence inside the White House and overseeing Mr. Trump’s government cost-cutting project, he raged against the president’s major domestic policy bill and floated threats to start a third party.

But the two men have warmed back up, appearing together at three events in the last two weeks and praising each other.

Meanwhile, we have this story today about the war between Russia and Ukraine:

Ukraine said that its military, with no warning, had lost partial access to Starlink, a pillar of its battlefield communications. Kyiv relies on a militarized version of the wireless internet network paid for by the Pentagon. That led Ukrainian officials and analysts to surmise that the restrictions had come from Washington, as President Trump is locked in his latest feud with Ukraine’s leadership....

The Starlink development was interpreted in Ukraine as part of a Trump administration pressure campaign to limit Ukraine’s ability to fight. Mr. Trump is pushing Kyiv to stop attacking oil refineries so that Russia can pump more diesel onto global markets as high prices threaten the prospects of Mr. Trump’s Republican Party in the midterm elections.

The head of Starlink is mentioned only briefly.

SpaceX, which operates Starlink, and its chief executive, Elon Musk, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

And there's an op-ed about the Ebola crisis in Africa, written by Heather Kerr, the International Rescue Committee's country director for Congo. Kerr writes:

I have worked in humanitarian health in this region for decades and helped lead responses to several Ebola outbreaks. I have never seen one get this far ahead of us.

One reason:

Before 2025, U.S. government funding supported disease surveillance, outbreak preparedness and treatment programs run by humanitarian organizations across eastern Congo. That funding was sharply reduced as part of broader cuts last year. Budget reductions forced my organization, the International Rescue Committee, to cut funding to the health facilities focused on primary care in the Ituri Province, where this outbreak began.

In clinics in Ituri, the funding cuts have meant going without the surveillance tools needed to flag Ebola symptoms early, allowing the virus to spread before we can catch up.

Kerr never mentions Elon Musk by name. She doesn't mention DOGE. I don't blame her -- Musk and Trump can be extremely vindictive, and it's best not to risk further assaults on foreign aid to Africa. But this yet another depiction of Musk that feels like one blind person's hand on an elephant.

Last month, the Times reported that child sexual abuse material continues to appear on Musk's X:

A review by the Canadian Center for Child Protection found that the site’s own artificial intelligence chatbot, Grok, responded to requests from users by creating dozens of sexualized and sometimes sexually explicit photos of children, including victims previously known to law enforcement, at the beginning of the year. The images included children in sexualized poses with partially exposed genitals, in states of undress and with fluid on their faces.

A separate analysis by The New York Times found that during the first half of the year, users on X posted child sexual abuse material previously flagged by authorities, including some of the most egregious content that the site attempts to block using automated filters.

But this never seems to come up in mainstream-media stories about Musk as a high-rolling Republican donor, or about Musk as a government contractor, or about Musk doing Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump's bidding with Starlink.

And what the Times told us in June about Musk's role in European racist unrest also doesn't come up in these stories:

On Tuesday and Wednesday, protesters in Belfast who were furious about an attack by a Sudanese refugee set fire to cars and property and hurled objects at the police. That followed a night of angry rioting in Southampton last week after new video was released in the murder in December of an 18-year-old college student who was falsely accused by his attacker of having perpetrated a racist assault.

“There’s a playbook,” said Ciarán O’Connor, a senior analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, which researches extremism, hate and disinformation globally. “An incident of violence like this is identified and rapidly amplified by not just a domestic but a global, transnational, far-right ecosystem who use such incidents to absorb them into their own kind of international narrative.”

... Britain is especially vulnerable because it shares the English language with the United States, which she said makes it easier for right-wing groups there to use the American-based social media companies to stoke anger from afar.

That was the case on Tuesday, when Elon Musk, the owner of X, called for people to “REPEATEDLY and LOUDLY” protest in Belfast. He highlighted an image that listed protest locations distributed by Tommy Robinson, an anti-Muslim agitator in Britain with multiple criminal convictions....

Ed Davey, the leader of the Liberal Democrats Party in Britain, denounced what he called a pattern in which a brutal crime “makes us all feel immense pain and anger, and then extremists who exploit that grief and anger to spread hatred and violence, aided and abetted by social media barons like Elon Musk.”

Why is a fomentor of global racist agitation, publisher of computer-generated child porn, and ally of Moscow's dictator discussed as just another rich Republican donor, even as the budget cuts he oversaw during his first stint in government cause widespread death? Because our media covers all of these aspects of Musk's life in isolation. Every story is siloed. Every reporter is a blind man feeling an elephant.

Jamelle Bouie is right to ask this:

is there anyone thinking/writing about the actual mechanics of disentangling the US government from elon musk?

— jamelle (@jamellebouie.net) October 11, 2026 at 8:44 PM

The ansswer appears to be no. I think that's largely because our political culture is terrified of offending rich people and doesn't want to report on Elon Musk in full, because then we'd see him for what he rzeally is, a full-spectrum criminal, racist, and sociopath. We're never supposed to see the whole elephant.

THE RIGHT'S NEW LINE ON TALARICO AND FLU-GHAZI: OUR COMPLETELY FABRICATED RUMORS WERE FAKE BUT ACCURATE

The non-Republican media believes that the GOP's disinformation about James Talarico's absence from the campaign trail is a disaster for the disinformationists. The San Antonio Current's headline is "Conspiracy Claim About James Talarico Mental Breakdown Blows Up in Right-Wingers’ Faces." The Daily Beast says, "MAGA’s Conspiracy About Dem Star Dealt Humiliating Blow." Rolling Stone says, "The Right’s Desperate Conspiracy Theory About James Talarico Goes Up in Flames."

But right-wingers don't believe they failed -- and in their vacuum-sealed information bubble, they didn't. They know we can read what they're saying, and they know that the facts disprove their rumor of a secret stay at an Ohio mental facility (both The New York Times and CBS News have examined images from a home security system and report that the images prove Talarico was at home during the period of his alleged stay in Ohio), so they're acknowledging that, yeah, their story was fake news. But they insist that the campaign-trail absence proves that something is fishy about this Talarico fellow.

In an overheated post that runs nearly four thousand words, the Daily Wire's Matt Walsh acknowledges much of the evidence that debunks the rumormongers, including the Ohio facility's assertion that Talarico was never a patient.

Representative James Talarico has never received treatment from Lindner Center of Hope.

— Lindner Center HOPE (@LindnerCtrHope) October 11, 2026

Walsh concedes that the story was fake.

So that’s a pretty definitive statement. For his part, Talarico then responded to the post from the facility, saying he’s never even been to Ohio.

Which is true.

I’ve never even been to Ohio 😂

— James Talarico (@jamestalarico) October 12, 2026

But, Walsh says, doesn't it seem as if the story was ... fake but accurate?

A couple of things about this. Number one — it’s very possible Talarico and his campaign are hiding something. But we do have to concede that, as for the mental health institution in Ohio, this looks like a fraudulent story that was planted by GOP operatives. Maybe they were right “directionally,” as people like to say. There are reasons to think there’s something strange going on here.

And what are the "reasons"? What's Walsh's evidence that "there’s something strange going on"? Well ... just look at Talarico! He obviously didn't have a bad flu -- and he's obviously a psycho!

On September 30, Talarico was scheduled to participate in an in-person interview with the CEO of the United States Hispanic Business Council. He attended via Zoom instead, claiming he had the flu — even though, as the event moderator pointed out, he looked fine.

No one has ever had a bad flu while appearing to be healthy! Everyone knows that!

... putting aside the question of his health, it needs to be said that this has to be one of the most patronizing and phony candidates to ever run for office in this country.

Just by looking at him, you can tell that if he thought it would help him win this race, James Talarico would not hesitate to sacrifice your elderly grandmother to the gods, Aztec-style. No one is buying the idea that this guy decided out of the goodness of his heart to self-quarantine just a couple of weeks before early voting begins in one of the most important elections of the year. But we’re supposed to believe that he “couldn’t live with himself” if he infected a random person with — what, a head cold?

Walsh, who is not a doctor and who has apparently never had a bad flu or met someone who has a bad flu, continues his expert diagnosis:

That’s the other problem here. On Zoom, he comes across as someone who’s mildly congested. Whatever “fever” he has, it’s obviously a very mild one. The interview lasted an hour, and he was answering questions without any issues whatsoever.

This is why he felt the need to explicitly state that he’s very sick, and that he’s trying to protect innocent men, women, and children from his horrific illness. If he didn’t spell it out for everyone, no one would have any idea he’s sick. Even the event moderator seemed confused by the whole thing. And then he claims he’s “at his most contagious” during the virtual event, which means he shouldn’t be much sicker than he currently is. That should be the point where the fever breaks, and things begin to return to normal in a couple of days.

Walsh writes:

What we can say with certainty is that it’s extremely unusual for a candidate — who, at all appearances, was not seriously ill — to disappear from the campaign trail at a pivotal moment, for nearly two weeks.

And then, once he'd gotten better, he looked ... better! Isn't that suspicious?

Talarico finally appeared for an interview on Sunday with a local news station to explain what had happened. And he didn’t help matters.

Everything about this interview — his demeanor and his answers — makes it seem much, much more likely that he’s lying. Right off the bat, he looks perfectly healthy. If you just spent two weeks battling the flu — an illness that left you bedridden and unable to campaign for the most important election of your life, or even speak on a Zoom call — then you simply don’t look this healthy and normal when you go out in public. His weight hasn’t changed at all. It’s bizarre.

It was ... the flu! He should be scarred for life! Am I right?

Walsh isn't the only Republican propagandist who's arguing that Flu-ghazi still looks suspicious, even though the mental facility story was obviously false. Here's longtime GOP attack dog Mary Katherine Ham on X:

And here's Fox's Liz Peek:

His disappearance gave rise to a whirlwind of apparently erroneous rumors. Because Talarico has voiced some wacky ideas in the past, like believing there are six genders or that God is non-binary — which he has been forced to walk back — some voters are primed to believe such rumors....

Undoubtedly, Talarico’s progressive young base will not be deterred by his peculiar walk-about, but his lengthy absence from the campaign trail casts a cloud over his run.

Let me tell you what's going to happen to this narrative on the right. It won't be abandoned, any more that "Trump won the 2020 election" has been abandoned -- and, for that matter, any more than "Michelle Obama is a man" has been abandoned. At minimum, it will be a shibboleth, an in-joke to be shared with the like-minded, especially if Talarico becomes a senator. Any time there's a negative story about him, or even a trivial health story about him, Republicans will snigger among themselves at the frail little soyboy (even though, by that time, he will be the frail little soyboy who beat them like a rented mule). They'll all continue to believe that something was wrong, and therefore it doesn't matter that their master narrative was completely fraudulent. They'll keep pulling at the few remaining loose threads (though the only one I know of that's still unexplained is the fact that Talarico said once that he went to urgent care and later said he saw his primary care physician). They'll insist they were right for as long as Talarico is in public life, because the truth means nothing to them. The prime directive is: never apologize and stay on offense. They're all Roy Cohn.

YOU WANTED CHEAPER DIESEL, YOU'RE GETTING LAWFARE AGAINST ILHAN OMAR

Disillusioned Donald Trump voters want cheaper groceries, cheaper gas, and cheaper diesel. Here's what Trump is giving them instead:

Federal agents searched Democratic U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar’s home on Monday as part of a criminal investigation, according to two people familiar with the matter....

The Justice Department said in a statement Monday that HSI [Homeland Security Investigations] agents executed a judicially authorized search warrant secured by the department in the Washington, D.C., area but provided no other details.

You do this kind of thing early on a Monday morning when you want it to dominate the news cycle, preferably for days. You do it on the second Monday in October when you want it to tip the upcoming elections.

The White House openly proclaims (via Fox News and the New York Post) that this is about alleged immigration irregularities for which Omar herself can't be blamed. From Fox:

Two sources close to the investigation say the search stems from a criminal fraud investigation into the Somali-born congresswoman's immigration paperwork, which was filled out by her late father when she was a child.

And from the Post:

Two sources close to the investigation told [Fox News] that the raid is part of an investigation into the left-wing Democrat’s immigration documents, which were filled out by her late father when she was a child.

I don't know why the GOP mouthpieces in the Murdoch media want to emphasize this. Are they just wallowing in the cruelty of punishing an immigrant for actions taken on her behalf when she was a child? Are they hoping Democrats will rally to her defense, which will cause their own disaffected base voters to rally to Republican candidates? (I don't think very many Democrats will speak up on Omar's behalf. I think they'll leave her to defend herself.)

This raid happened shortly after Lisa Needham of Public Notice published a post in response to Trump's efforts to stir up racist anger against Minnesota Somalis.

Trump tries to start a race war: "The once Great State of Minnesota is being taken over by Somali Immigrants ... The Somalians should not be allowed to get away with what they are doing. They view you as weak and stupid people. Fight back Minnesota, fight back!"

[image or embed]

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) October 8, 2026 at 4:34 PM

Needham thinks this is about elections in Minnesota:

Minnesota has been reliably blue for years. The last time the Republicans won a statewide race was 2006. The best chance the GOP has is to ride a wave of racist hatred all the way to the ballot box.

But I think it's about elections nationwide. Omar is probably the most hated elected official among the MAGA/Fox/GOP rank-and-file, now that Barack Obama is long retired and Nancy Pelosi is a lame-duck congresswoman no longer in leadership. She's probably rivaled only by Anthony Fauci in the pantheon of right-wing hate targets. I can't completely rule out the possibility that this raid will motivate a few disaffected Republican voters, though my guess is that everyone who's exultant about this now is a ride-or-die Republican who was already certain to vote the straight party line.

An alternate theory is that this isn't really about the election at all -- like other things we've seen during this campaign season (the Trump-is-awesome taxpayer-funded ads, for instance), it's an attempt to please the boss, who apparently can't tell the difference between political moves that satisfy his cravings (for flattery, for racism) and political moves that help Republicans win. He might believe that this will really move the electoral needle nationwide because it pleases him so much.

In any event, it's clear that the administration wants to denaturalize and deport Omar. If the White House had anything, the denaturalization process would be well underway. They're fishing for evidence of a deportation-worthy irregularity because nothing else they have will hold up in court.

THE ANTI-TALARICO RUMORMONGERS SEEM A LITTLE DESPERATE (updated)

James Talarico spent nearly two weeks off the campaign trail, sidelined, the candidate says, by a really bad flu. On Friday he returned to the campaign trail, making an appearance at the Austin City Limits music festival.

Talarico's absence from the campaign trail didn't interrupt his string of positive polling -- even the right-leaning Trafalgar Group says he's winning the race by 3 points -- but it did lead to some right-wing rumormongering, though not in the form I would have expected:

Talarico’s return comes after right-wing talking heads, including failed Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt, cited anonymous sources insisting the Austin-area state rep was locked away in a mental health facility after a breakdown.

One Twitter account even baselessly speculated that Talarico had attempted suicide.

Pratt -- who still hasn't made good on his promise in June to release damaging audio about one of the remaining L.A. mayoral candidates -- tried to make this about strength and weakness:

"You want to win these fights on the battlefield of ideas, not the minefield of poor health." But Talarico is winning -- unlike you, Mr. Allegedly Healthy Loser.

That's a tack also taken by Talarico's Republican opponent:

Jimmy appears to be having a full-blown mental Tala-freak-out on the national stage. My campaign has a simple request: proof of life. https://t.co/pzCXWmpbdN

— Attorney General Ken Paxton (@KenPaxtonTX) October 8, 2026

"Talarico is mentally fragile, easily overwhelmed, and prone to illness." That's the message here -- that Talarico is weak and therefore unelectable.

But will that be effective at all? Talarico leads this race even though he can't out-macho the Republicans and isn't trying to. They call him gay. They call him a vegan. I'm sure that the people who won't vote for him believe both of those things, and despise him as a result. This is more of the same. But are there any voters who were planning to vote for him and now won't because of this rumor? Are there any voters who were planning to stay home, but now will turn out for Paxton? If months of "Talafreako" talk haven't gotten the job done for Paxton, why would this?

The rumormongers have a very elaborate narrative. They claim to have identified a private plane, presumably carrying Talarico, that traveled to Austin from Ohio, not far from the Lindner Center of Hope, a mental health facility where Harris County judge Lina Hidalgo, a Democrat, received seven weeks of treatment for depression back in 2023.

It appears to be very likely that James Talarico flew to Ohio to seek mental treatment at the same facility Lina Hidalgo went to back in 2023 during her meltdowns. He flew back this morning to attend a music festival. This confirms my theory--he was sick two weeks ago, but there is no middle ground for any "flu" of that magnitude to impact a diabetic with a flu shot for two weeks without requiring full hospitalization. Something came up in between that caused this, and I have a feeling we are going to find out what that is next week. (And no, I am not suicidal)

— Red Eagle Politics (@RedEaglePatriot) October 10, 2026

Even if it's true, would Talarico's voters care? In 2022, John Fetterman struggled through debates after a powerful stroke and still won his Senate election. I'm not convinced that even a mental health crisis would necessarily slow Talarico's momentum. (And his explanation still remains plausible -- he is a Type 1 diabetic, and there are some powerful virus out there in the Age of RFK Jr.)

I think Talarico's haters can't believe that their efforts to dehumanize him and sink his campaign aren't enough. Maybe this will work! I don't think it will. There are voters who fall for this kind of he-man chest-thumping and they're likely to be Paxton voters, and then there are normal people, people who understand that human beings can have physical and mental health issues sometimes. I think there are enough of those for Talarico to win.

*****

UPDATE: The idiots are claiming they have proof of Talarico's stay at Lindner.

🚨 BREAKING EXCLUSIVE: Ohio mental hospital CONFIRMS James Talarico was discharged from the facility earlier this week The “flu” thing was a BIG FAT LIE Following reporting by @SaraGonzalesTX and @CarolineWren, a hospital employee told @RheinAmacher and I that Talarico had in fact been a patient at the Lindner Center of Hope near Cincinnati, Ohio, which specializes in around-the-clock mental health treatment. While I sympathize with those dealing with mental health crises, this man is CLEARLY not suited to become a US Senator representing over 30 MILLION TEXANS. The job doesn’t get easier after being elected — it only gets MORE stressful. And Talarico clearly can’t handle it. I pray he gets the help he needs, but Texans need a real representative they can rely on.

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) October 11, 2026

The call is being debunked as AI-generated, and X is intervening to suppress that debunking:

Elon immediately suspended this account that showed Nick Sortor’s recorded call to the mental health facility was AI generated and is preventing community notes on the Sortor post. It’s all hands on deck trying to make the fake Talarico story stick https://t.co/ZA9bdpc0b5

— Laura Bassett (@LEBassett) October 11, 2026

Folks, I'm 67 years old, which means I have a few medical issues. Therefore, I know a fair amount about our healthcare system, and I don't need AI analysis to know that the phone call is bullshit.

I know it's bullshit because no employee of any medical facility would release confidential information about a patient this way. They wouldn't even release information about a patient who had an innocuous medical problem -- say, a sprained wrist. They wouldn't acknowledge the patient by name or reveal that the patient had been treated. They damn well wouldn't tell a caller the name and release date of a patient at a mental health facility. That's a firing offense.

Al Camino posted analyses of the Sortor clip and a clip posted on X by Brian Krassenstein, in which a Lindner employee says what I'm telling you here -- that no such information would ever be released. The analyses say that the Krassenstein clip seems legit and the Sortor clip doesn't. What Camino posted has been preserved in slides 2 and 3 of this Reddit post. But anyone who knows the healthcare system knows that this information would never be released by an employee. These people have nothing.

READ SOME BREITBART COMMENTS ON THE UPCOMING EXECUTION AND LOSE YOUR FAITH IN HUMANITY

Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter, will die in December in a livestreamed execution. If you don't believe that America is two irreconcilable nations, I think the right-wing response to this execution might change your mind.

Here's a reaction to the planned livestream that I found in a Breitbart comments section:

This won't be any surprise to those who know that lynchings often became joyous public spectacles in twentieth-century America.

I think there'll be quite a few watch parties in America. Most will be voluntary and celebratory, but I also think some institutions -- red-state prisons, religious-right private schools -- will make viewing of the execution compulsory.

(The Breitbart commenter says that his church is an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist church in middle Tennessee. Another commenter says, "My kids and I will be cheering from our church pew. Pastor is going to put it on the projector!")

The comment thread I'm quoting is in response to a Breitbart story about J.D. Vance's assertion that if the execution is "ultimately live-streamed, I’m not going to be watching it." I'm surprised he's taking this position when he has Republican primaries to win two years from now, but I guess he's calculating that this will be acceptable to some of the base, and will make him seem like a "reasonable" conservative to middle-of-the-road general-election voters.

Some of the commenters call Vance a "soyboy," and many say that his reluctance to watch the video makes Marco Rubio look like a better presidential pick.

Rubio is so much of a tougher SOB than JD

****

As for JD Vance...man up cupcake. Marco Rubio is looking far better than you in 2028 anyway. Go ahead and go away like Pence.

****

Can Vance watch a firefight that matters? Can Vance order an action that needs doing?

I am afraid Vance looks at the world through "Neville Chamberlain" glasses.

But most aren't interested in Vance. They just see the story as an excuse to vent their bigotry, bloodlust, and (of course) hatred of Democrats.

The Demonrats have their tail feathers in a knot over one of their admired terrorists being publicly executed.

****

They're trying to make us feel uncomfortable about it and they're so far from doing that.

****

He is an evil man on his way down into hell.

They want Hasan's body desecrated.

I don't mind if it's a public execution but i may not watch.
All i want is, to see that NASTY Islamist Muslim POS get executed!

Then before he is berried with a tombstone saying he is a nasty Islamist Muslim traitor...they put a BIG pork sausage in his you know what.

****

Show some class...bury him with bacon.

****

Why waste perfectly good bacon, pork fat will do the trick.

****

Only after the whole pig roast celebration !

****

I’m going to visit Fort hood that day and deliver Hasan an emotional support pig to keep him company.

****

Make his burial spot a roadside urinary relief station where you let it go right into the soil he’s buried in.

****

If they bury him make sure it’s an unmarked grave and he is wrapped in a pig skin.

****

I would still put a crucifix on his chest ... in case he saw the light before his soul goes forever into the decent into the maelstrom of Hell.

****

Agreed. Maybe remove his head and drive a stake into his heart just for fun. I’m cool with that.

****

I agree in live streaming the event and in lieu of a firing-squad I would suggest the guillotine with a dozen camera angles to include looking down into the basket. I want to see him wink.

****

May I suggest using a wood chipper feet first ? That would be very entertaining !

****

Make him dance too while shooting at his feet.

(Hasan was shot by law enforcement during the Fort Hood attack and is a paraplegic.)

There are the usual "72 virgins" jokes.

I hope that his 72 virgins are all transvestites

****

In Nidal Hasan's case he has 72 goats waiting on him. LOL

****

No not goats please - they are sweet creatures like dogs. How about 72 rattlesnakes or polar bears?

Also, this is fine because Charlie Kirk.

We had public executions for most of our history. You just don't like the fact that it's your buddy getting 86d. You losers celebrated Charlie Kirk's public execution. Reap what you sow, terrorist.

****

Charlie Kirk's assassination and the demoncrats cheered.

****

Charlie Kirk never murdered anyone, and the satanic left loved watching and cheering for his death.

****

Charlie Kirk was executed live on camera. Democrats laughed and cheered. Spare me the tears.

****

Yep. And the execution of that health insurance CEO was also streamed and all the leftists threw huge parties and celebrated it too.

****

And wanted to **** the shooter. And wanted to **** the Boston terrorist. The leftist men are really lacking to have their women that desperate.

And what about abortion?

It’s barbaric! Barbaric, I tell you!

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to get a partial birth abortion.

****

Maybe abortions should be live streamed. I think it would make many people know just how brutal it is. At least this azz-clown is just going to be shot. Not torn to little pieces by a vacuum cleaner.

****

Agreed. No sane person would approve of abortion if they were to watch the murder scene with the fake surgeon and other evil MFs (nurses, anesthesiologists, other trash) participating in the Devil Worship Ceremony.

And then there's this:

For approximately 24 hours after the Charlie Kirk murder, we could see the entire assassination in real time online on multiple channels. After the first 24 hours Globalists and other Leftist trash ordered the videos to be butchered, downsized, or removed. Charlie lost 4 pints of blood before he hit the floor. Our goal is to make all Leftists lose 5 pints of blood before they hit the floor. Everyone needs to see the violence Globalists and their minions have unleashed on Western Civilization. We want to see videos of ferals abducting, slashing, raping, and murdering modern humans. It is the only way to wake citizens up to the assaults the Left is using to destroy the USA and Europe.

MAGA

I don't know what to say in response to that.

I assume it will be easy to find clips of this execution after the fact, though not everywhere. The Washington Post reports:

Meta, the owner of Instagram and Facebook, has prohibited the live-streaming of capital punishment on its platforms since 2019. A TikTok spokesperson referred to its policy on violent content, which says depicting “the moment of someone’s death” is not allowed on the video-sharing service.

Meta, YouTube and X did not respond to questions about how they would apply their policies to streams or subsequent clips of Hasan’s execution.

My guess is that Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, and Reddit will take down videos depicting the moment of Hasan's death. X will leave them up, as will Truth Social. And that will be the new normal. We'll see if pressure from the White House or threatened right-wing boycotts motivate Meta, TikTok, and YouTube to change their policies.

SOMEWHERE IN HELL, CHARLIE KIRK IS CHEERING ON PETE HEGSETH

I'm sure you know this:

The firing squad execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan will be livestreamed, the Pentagon said Thursday....

[Defense Secretary Pete] Hegseth, speaking to the conservative TV outlet Real America’s Voice on Wednesday, said, “We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public.” Officials in the Pentagon clarified Thursday that the execution would be livestreamed and that more details would follow.

Predictably, Hegseth was almost gleeful as he announced this to his interviewer, Jack Posobiec.

Hegseth on Nidal Hasan: "He's gonna get a firing squad of soldiers. As it should be. We'll make sure that people are able to watch it. That it's public. Because people need to understand that there's serious consequences for these types of things."

[image or embed]

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) October 8, 2026 at 2:36 PM

I'm pleased that there's some pushback among Republicans. I don't mean outgoing senator Thom Tillis, who tweeted,

Hasan should face the death penalty, but making his execution public and streaming it? Beyond disgusting. Public executions are what oppressive dictatorships like Iran and Afghanistan do. It should not be happening in America.

Tillis doesn't impress me because he just a published a book called How to Lose Friends and Antagonize Presidents: The Trouble with Sycophants, Courage Outsourcing, and Partisan Groupthink, which he's promoting primarily in the non-conservative media. He may be in search of a job as a professional apostate Republican on CNN or MS NOW, if he hasn't already lined a position up. He's no longer a Republican in good standing.

I'm somewhat more impressed by the denunciation from libertarian Robby Soave, who tweeted:

I sympathize with the thirst for vengeance, and Nidal Hasan certainly deserves to die for what he did… but a public execution is giving a terrorist exactly what he wants: publicity. They fantasize about being martyred like this, in front of a crowd (and a live TV audience???). It’s ISIS recruitment slop.

Soave still some credibility on the right, as do Kathryn Jean Lopez and Erick Erickson, who denounce Hegseth's plan on religious grounds. Between them, they quote the Bible, St. Francis Xavier, and St. Augustine to explain their disgust.

But Erickson also knows he's at odds with the current right-wing zeitgeist:

Over to you, random internet dude who claims to be a committed Christian in the Presbyterian Church in America:

I don't want to overpraise Erick Erickson. He's a right-wing attack dog who sometimes goes through phases of heterodoxy that make him appear reasonable, thoughtful, and moral. It won't last. But it's good to see that there's some room for doubt about this on the right.

But probably not much. Donald Trump was proposing the release of execution videos back in 2023, according to Rolling Stone:

“What do you think of firing squads?”

That’s the question Donald Trump repeatedly asked some close associates in the run-up to the 2024 presidential campaign, three people familiar with the situation tell Rolling Stone....

Specifically, Trump has talked about bringing back death by firing squad, by hanging, and, according to two of the sources, possibly even by guillotine....

In at least one instance late last year, according to the third source, who has direct knowledge of the matter, Trump privately mused about the possibility of creating a flashy, government-backed video-ad campaign that would accompany a federal revival of these execution methods. In Trump’s vision, these videos would include footage from these new executions, if not from the exact moments of death.

Last month, CNN reported that the most zeitgeist-y Republican in America, Texas railroad commissioner candidate Bo French, repeatedly called for the execution of political figures he doesn't like, including Barack Obama and Adam Schiff; French repeatedly used the hashtag #HangEmHigh. Also:

... February 2025 tweets include multiple calls for executions against government officials he said were exposed by DOGE....

French wrote at the time that DOGE, which was an acronym of Department of Government Efficiency, should actually stand for “Dangle Officials Gallows Expeditiously,” adding in other tweets he wanted “more than perp walks” and “public executions,” for government officials he said were exposed by DOGE.

And then there was the time in 2024 that Charlie Kirk practiced politics the right way by calling for public executions and recommending that children watch them:

On his weekly panel discussion, "ThoughtCrime," Kirk was discussing death penalties....

"Death penalties should be public, should be quick, it should be televised. I think at a certain age, its an initiation...What age should you start to see public executions?" Kirk asked.

Kirk, along with his co-hosts Jack Posobiec, Tyler Bowyer and Blake Neff, continued to discuss at what age should children watch the public executions, with one co-host pointing out as young as 12 years old.

"I think maybe age 12, sixth grade or so when you are old enough... " Neff said.

While Bowyer pointed out that it should be at an age when someone "can embrace the meaning" of the execution.

*****

Why is Hegseth doing this? There might be some truth to this:

Hegseth wants to livestream a public execution for the same reason ISIS livestreamed/posted their public executions: to radicalize & recruit the same demographic of downwardly-mobile, low IQ, credulous 17-27 year old males that ISIS snuff films attracted.

— Mark Ames (@MarkAmesExiled) October 9, 2026

But I think it's more about cruelty, and about creating compelling television in a Fox News way. (Hegseth is the purest product of Fox News in a Fox-saturated administration.)

I also think we're seeing the right's usual craving for an easy, lazy fix. In the Rolling Stone story about Trump, a source says, of Trump's proposed release of execution videos, “The [former] president believes this would help put the fear of God into violent criminals.” Kirk and his posse agreed:

... Kirk asked whether crime would go up or down if children were to watch public executions, "Here's a question for anyone that might be not persuaded. Would crime go up or down?"

Bowyer said, "It would go way down," with Kirk then asking, "So why is this even a question?"

Republicans believe that their own cruelty is virtuous, and that most problems can be easily solved with the swift applcation of that cruelty. That's why they liked torture in the George W. Bush years. That's why they like ICE brutality and Stephen Miller's deliberately cruel concentration camps. That's why they thought Alligator Alcatraz was an awesome idea.

I think Republicans -- in the reddest states and also in the Trump administration in its waning days -- will execute more prisoners publicly after this execution. I don't think even widespread condemnation from liberals and centrists will stop grandstanding Republicans. And as a country, we might just get used to it.

A POSSIBLE TRUMP OCTOBER SURPRISE IS ALREADY FAILING

I don't know what else President Trump is planning in order to prevent a Republican bloodbath in the midterms, but if all his schemes are as ill-conceived as the one reported by The Atlantic yesterday, we don't have much to worry about.

The White House has asked the Pentagon to develop strike options against Iranian targets that could be exercised ahead of the midterms, according to two administration officials.

How do we know this is intended to be a midterm October surprise? Because White House insiders say it is.

The planning underscores just how much the president wants to reduce gas prices and demonstrate progress in the conflict before the vote, administration officials told us.

... those in favor believe that further action after months of uneasy peace could allow Trump to demonstrate strength and potentially declare some sort of victory, giving Republicans much-needed momentum heading into the election. “It would make the president look like he got a win and that gas prices would start going down,” a Republican familiar with the deliberations told us....

But gas prices wouldn't start going down. In fact, the mere possibility that Trump might do this appears to be raising oil prices right now. NBC News reports:

The price of oil jumped sharply Thursday, as President Donald Trump weighs whether to resume large-scale U.S. military operations against Iran in the coming weeks.

Brent crude oil rose more than 5% to more than $105 per barrel in early trading, while U.S. crude oil rose almost 5% to nearly $93 per barrel. Benchmark diesel futures jumped 4.5% in European trading. Heating oil, a proxy for jet fuel, rose more than 4%.

(Heating oil isn't just "a proxy for jet fuel." It's still a primary fuel for heating in the Northeast. Half of Maine residents use oil heat, and they were already expected to pay an average of more than $1,260 per family for heating this winter.)

More from NBC:

The move higher in oil prices also pushed up bond yields. The 10-year Treasury yield, which heavily influences consumer borrowing rates, jumped to 5.35%....

U.S. stock futures dropped in response. S&P 500 futures fell 0.6% and Nasdaq 100 futures slid 0.8%. Futures for the Russell 2000, which tracks small and medium-sized companies, fell 1%.

So this is a disaster and it hasn't even happened yet.

Trump simply doesn't understand that war is a process that has costs even for the winner. Venezuela lulled him into believing that he could simply attack Iran and score a win with little or no cost to America. Boom -- victory! You might imagine that the last seven months were a learning experience for Trump, but Trump doesn't learn. He now thinks he can do Boom -- electoral victory! He can't.

I don't know if the other October surprises Trump is considering, such as the seizure of voting machines, will be similarly ill-conceived, but we can hope. It's quite possible that Trump will try to seize voting machines in locales where the government is likely to push back hardest, both legislatively and in court. There's a good chance that he'll focus on states that get on his nerves, like California, rather than states where key races are taking place. Because Trump is still angry about 2020, he might go after Georgia, where Jon Ossoff is likely to win by such a comfortable margin that Trump's cries of "Fraud!" will be especially implausible, while ignoring other states (Iowa? Maine?) with much tighter races.

I don't want to rule out the possibility that Trump's efforts will be effective, but he often doesn't know how to use the power our system has ceded to him in an effective way. Let's hope that's true in this election season.

WAS MEGYN KELLY EVER ON WOMEN'S SIDE?

Megyn Kelly has concluded that taking the pro-rapist side in the Cornell 7 case is a good career move. First, she body-shamed and slandered the accuser in the case on her podcast Monday:

No one will even consider the possibility that this woman made a decision to get it on with four men total, not seven, and enjoyed it because — I'm just going to be honest, she's not the most attractive gal. She's extremely beefy in her arms and her legs. She has a whole video online talking about her cankles. And she possibly enjoyed being admired. This is how women make these mistakes. Admired, wanted, some women even foolishly say loved by these guys at Cornell. But this is probably a first for her. She's probably thrilled to be so admired because she clearly didn't grow up the incredibly beautiful one.

(Not that it matters, but I've been to X and seen pictures of the woman who's been identified as Jane Doe, the same pictures Kelly has presumably seen. The woman in the pictures I've seen is not "extremely beefy in her arms and her legs." You need to have the twisted grooming standards of Hollywood, Fox News, and Mar-a-Lago to believe that.)

Kelly also said this:

Following Olivia Rodrigo’s statement in support of the Jane Doe at the center of the Cornell 7 lawsuit on Sunday, Megyn Kelly is firing off at the singer, calling her a “know-nothing moron” who should “sit down and be quiet.”

“Olivia, in sum, you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. Shut up and stick to singing,” Kelly said on a Monday episode of her YouTube show. “I liked you better when you were in front of a microphone singing your weird little depressing songs.” She continued: “It’s better to keep your mouth shut and let people suspect you’re an idiot than to open it and prove them right. Ever hear that saying? It applies to you, sweetheart... We don’t need the participation of know-nothing morons who have been auto-tuned into fame and suddenly think they have something profound to say on the culture wars.”

Needless to say, Kelly's insistence that entertainers should just shut up and sing is situational, as we saw after the Kid Rock halftime show that served as counterprogramming during Bad Bunny's performance at the Super Bowl:

Congratulations @TPUSA, I am in tears at that BEAUTIFUL half time show. Everyone did a spectacular job - it was perfect. THANK YOU!

— Megyn Kelly (@megynkelly) February 9, 2026

Kid Rock sings the final song, Cody Johnson’s ‘Til You Can’t, under his real name Robert Ritchie, adding a verse in honor of Charlie Kirk and delivering a stunningly powerful performance. Wow.

— Megyn Kelly (@megynkelly) February 9, 2026

Kelly has also offered to bankroll a lawsuit from Riley Gaines, a college swimmer who has turned one competition against a trans swimmer into a career as a right-wing activist.

It's no surprise that Kelly is a hypocrite. But wasn't she more of a feminist once? Isn't her most famous TV moment an attack on Donald Trump during an August 2015 debate?

“You’ve called women you don’t like fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals,” Kelly began her question....

“Only Rosie O’Donnell,” Trump interrupted with a sneer, earning cheers from the crowd....

“For the record, it was way beyond Rosie O’Donnell,” Kelly said – before launching into a laundry list Trump’s most misogynistic moments:

Your Twitter account has several disparaging comments about women’s looks. You once told a contestant on the Celebrity Apprentice it would be a pretty picture to see her on her knees. Does that sound to you like the temperament of a man we should elect as president? And how do you answer the charge from Hillary Clinton – that you are part of the war on women?

Trump, unchastened, responded with a misdirect: “I think the big problem this country has is being politically correct.”

But Kelly was doing what Rupert Murdoch wanted her to do. Remember, Kelly was answerable to Roger Ailes, but both of them had to do what Murdoch wanted. In his biography of Roger Ailes, Gabriel Sherman wrote:

Murdoch was not a fan of Trump and especially did not like his stance on immigration.... A few days before the first GOP debater on Fox in August 2015, Murdoch called Ailes at home. "This has gone on long enough," Murdoch said, according to a person briefed on the conversation. Murdoch told Ailes he wanted Fox's debate moderators -- Kelly, Bret Baier, and Chris Wallace -- to hammer Trump on a variety of issues.

Ailes already believed Trump would win the nomination, Sherman writes, but "he didn't fight Murdoch on the debate directive."

We know Murdoch didn't like Trump because it was right there in his Twitter feed:

When is Donald Trump going to stop embarrassing his friends, let alone the whole country?

— Rupert Murdoch (@rupertmurdoch) July 19, 2015

Mexican immigrants, as with all immigrants, have much lower crime rates than native born. Eg El Paso safest city in U.S. Trump wrong.

— Rupert Murdoch (@rupertmurdoch) July 12, 2015

But after Republican voters responded positively to Trump's replies to Kelly, and to his subsequent attacks on her ("you could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever"), she went to Trump Tower to kiss his ring and lobby him for interview. She got the interview, but, as Sherman writes, "the rating were terrible and reviewers panned her generally sycophantic questions."

I give Kelly more credit for helping to expose Ailes's sexual predation, though, as Wonkette's Robyn Pennacchia notes, Kelly didn't speak up for years and is now attacking Cornell's Jane Doe because she didn't speak up for weeks.

“I'm sorry, but three weeks ...” [Kelly] said on a recent broadcast of The Megyn Kelly Show. “If you were violently gang raped repeatedly over the course of an evening, do you think it would take you three weeks to call the campus police? And do you think you'd call the campus police at all?”

... There are also women out there who take a decade to come forward about something like sexual harassment, and sometimes those women are Megyn Kelly.

Kelly joined Fox in 2004. She said her sexual harassment by Ailes happened "when she was just 12 months into her career at Fox News and working in the network's Washington, D.C., bureau," according to an ABC News story published in 2016, which was when she reported the harassment.

Kelly spoke up after another Fox on-air host, Gretchen Carlson, accused Ailes of sexual misconduct and filed a lawsuit. Other women followed. Sherman, in his book, says that Kelly was "the third or fourth woman to speak to the lawyers."

Sherman says that Kelly had the backing of Rupert Murdoch's sons James and Lachlan, who "both encouraged her to speak" to the lawyers investigating the harassment. I'd still say that it took courage for Kelly to speak up, but it took a lot more courage for Jane Doe to stand up to Cornell because she didn't have powerful allies.

Sherman, in his book, is somewhat cynical about Kelly's motives:

... Carlson's lawsuit presented an opportunity. Kelly could bust up the boys' club at Fox, put herself on the right side of a snowballing media story, and rid herself of a boss who was no longer supportive of her -- all while maximizing her leverage in a contract negotiation.

I'll give Kelly a bit more credit than that. She occasionally does the right thing, though generally it's out of pure self-interest or careerism. And her remarks in the Cornell case make clear that, in the final analysis, she's a garbage person.

APOCALYPSE NOW'S CHILD MUTILATORS HAVE A KINDRED SPIRIT IN KEN PAXTON

Many Republicans are critical of vaccines these days, but the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton, is treating childhood vaccinations as potential crimes. The New York Times reports:

Mr. Paxton has ... implicated the nation’s largest organization of pediatricians, the American Academy of Pediatrics, in [an] alleged conspiracy over the workaday task of protecting children from polio, measles, meningitis and more than a dozen other dangerous and sometimes life-threatening diseases.

“I will ensure that Big Pharma and Big Insurance don’t bribe medical providers to pressure parents to jab their kids with vaccines they feel aren’t safe or necessary,” he said when announcing the investigation in January....

As the Times notes, he's legally harassing individual pediatricians, like a doctor the paper identifies by her middle name only, as Dr. Rachel:

Until recently, she had planned to continue her practice for years to come. But this year, she has begun to reconsider amid the stress and legal costs of defending herself in a statewide investigation by Ken Paxton, the attorney general of Texas and Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, who has accused doctors, drug companies and insurers of conspiring to push parents into vaccinating children....

In December, Dr. Rachel received a letter from the attorney general’s Consumer Protection Division demanding her vaccine purchase records over the past 10 years. “The division believes that you are in possession, custody or control” of material, “involving potential misleading or deceptive acts regarding incentives associated with the administration of childhood vaccines,” it said, adding that such acts could be in violation of the state’s deceptive trade practices law.

The letter also requested her practice’s vaccine policy, and said that it would not be sufficient to cite the childhood vaccine schedule recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

... Dr. Rachel said she did not know why the attorney general’s office targeted her tiny practice in an inquiry that he announced as directed toward the state’s “largest medical providers,” vaccine makers and health insurers. She said that responding to the demand for her records had so far cost her nearly $15,000 in legal fees, and sent her digging for receipts for $18 vaccines given a decade ago.

... She supplied information in response to Mr. Paxton’s office’s request for every “reward, financial benefit, bonus, discount, return, rebate or other consideration” from a vaccine maker, giving details that included a $40 batch of cookies a vaccine maker’s representative brought to her office. She said her most significant discounts were small reductions vaccine makers gave her for paying a bill promptly.

Paxton, the Times tells us, is a pioneer.

So far, Mr. Paxton is the only attorney general to investigate pediatricians for vaccinating children.

How depraved has the Republican Party become when this statement has to be preceded by the phrase "So far"?

The Times is unsure why Paxton would do this.

It is unclear why he opened this investigation, though some people in Texas have speculated that he began it to court Mr. Trump’s endorsement in a competitive primary race (which he eventually received) or to appeal to vaccine-skeptical Texas voters.

“I think aligning himself with Kennedy helped him get an endorsement from President Trump, which then allowed him to win the Senate primary here in Texas,” said Dr. Heidi Russell, a pediatrician and director of the Center for Health Policy at Rice University in Houston.

This is Robert Kennedy Jr.'s pet issue, but it's not Trump's, even though he's vaccine-skeptical. I don't think this mattered to Trump one way or the other when he was deciding which candidate to endorse. It's far more likely that Paxton was in a tight primary with John Cornyn and was looking to appeal to anti-vaccine Republicans in (because this is Texas) the most punitive, heavy-handed way possible. I'm sure he also believes that the anti-vaxx crowd doesn't inevitably vote Republican, and he could add anti-vaxx independents and even Democrats to his coalition if his anti-vaccine crusade was sufficiently high-profile.

This is a sick, sociopathic way to try to win an election.

In the past, I've talked about a horrific scene in Apocalypse Now in which Marlon Brando, as Colonel Kurtz, recounts a Viet Cong response to an American vaccination drive. (This was, fortunately, a screenwriter's invention.)

I remember when I was with Special Forces. Seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a camp to inoculate the children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn’t see. We went back there and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms. And I remember... I... I... I cried. I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it. I never want to forget. And then I realized... like I was shot... like I was shot with a diamond... a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought: My God... the genius of that. The genius. The will to do that. Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we. Because they could stand that these were not monsters. These were men... trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love... but they had the strength... the strength... to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral... and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling... without passion... without judgment... without judgment. Because it’s judgment that defeats us.

Ken Paxton isn't chopping children's arms off, but that's a difference of degree only. He's making childhood vaccination in Texas perilous for pediatricians because the Cause -- Republican domination of politcs forever, as well as the advancement of his own career -- is more important than protecting children from contagious and often deadly diseases.

Ken Paxton is a moral monster, but the Republican Party as a whole is morally monstrous, so this story comes as no surprise. It will probably take a disease outbreak far more horrible than anything we've experienced in the second Trump presidency to arouse the level of outrage this anti-science zealotry deserves. Meanwhile, for this and many other reasons, Paxton's political career needs to end right now.