I worry that the debate about whether or not he personally was a gang member of obscures the larger point, which is that even gang members deserve due process. Trump often works obscures the real issue in just this way.
True. Even gang members are entitled to due process. But, if we can shift our attention to Trump for a moment, what does it say about the judgment of the man in the Oval Office who is obsessed with people around him defer to his fantasies?
Why isn't Moran getting the obvious criticisms that you an other media critics point out regularly: That Moran was more interested in "moving on" than actually pinning Trump down on a single point of "truth". Moran owed it to his audience to fully hash out this issue that Trump continually lied about and determine what the truth was: Was this a real tattoo or did Trump misinform the people? I'm befuddled that Moran didn't want to settle that issue before "moving on". Dan, you've advocated the same thing in the past.
From this interview and many others it should be obvious that Trump is impossible to pin down on a single point of truth. If some hardy soul tries to do that, the interview will either go off the rails or Trump will petulantly terminate it.
Then so be it. There is a third possibility, based on past experiences. Often when Trump gets caught in a lie (because the reporter asks the required follow up questions) he says something like, "Gee, I don't know who took the photo? You'd have to ask the person who took the photo about that. I don't know anything about that". (Follow up question: If you don't know anything about that, why did you post the photo? Ya, being a bit of an A-Hole USED to be in the job description)
Either way, it once again reenforces the TRUTH and minimize Trump's absurd excuses. Having Trump having a full meltdown about how reality does not comport with his fake world just reenforces the truth and that's a goo thing.
I agree that if a reporter keeps pushing it may not get at the truth from Trump (because what could) but it CAN show that getting at the truth is the goal, whether he likes it or not.
But he's also stupid, and this is one of those cases where it's possible he didn't understand that the MS-13 on the image was added later as a (bullshit) interpretation, rather than being physically on his hand.
I watched some of the clip. My reaction is hardly proof, but his reaction to being told it was photoshopped looked to me like someone who actually believed what he was saying.
He's the president of the United States, and during his first term he told 30,573 lies. The first rule of Dunning Kruger Club is that you don't know you're a member of Dunning Kruger club. If only Trump had access to commonly known information and had the capacity to know that tattoos are not photoshopped in place by typewriters. https://imgur.com/gallery/first-rule-of-dunning-kruger-club-as6cJ
Re: Fentanyl seizures...Bondi may have taken the net weight of seized product, divided by amount needed for a fatal overdose, and came up with her figure...which assumes, of course, that there are 280,000,000 real or potential Fentanyl users in the US
Yep. When it comes to Bondi's claim about saving hundreds of millions of lives, Occam demands that we accept the simplest explanation. They figured out how many people that amount of fentanyl could kill and then used that as "lives saved."
I notice she didn't say "American lives," so she's got 8 billion potential consumers in her fantasy world. The DEA website is still using 119 million as their figure of imaginary lives saved.
But Bondi succeeded in distracting commenters from focusing on the fact that almost none of fentanyl seizures came from undocumented immigrants crossing illegally into the US, but at ports of call and lawful border crossings. Carried mostly by American citizens, I might add.
"According to a 2023 report from the Department of Homeland Security, most fentanyl is primarily found and seized from vehicles driven by US citizens at official ports of entry. Between January and February 2025, 92% of all confiscated fentanyl was intercepted at these official entry points." — https://usafacts.org/answers/how-much-fentanyl-is-seized-at-us-borders/country/united-states/
PS: She and lots of law enforcement goofs pronounce "fentanyl" as "fentanol." Is that just another poke in the eye from them to us citizens?
119 million is 36% of the US population. There are not that many opioid addicts in the country. It’s an utterly made up number. There’s no way to know how many people would die from using fentanyl based on quantity seized.
It’s the same sort of dog-and-pony show bullshit DEA pulled back in the ‘70s when the put a value on pot seized: use the price for the smallest amount typically sold and multiply that by the amount.
Moran should have dug in and asked to see photo from trump. He could have presented actual recent photos and he should have exposed the lie, then asked are you trying to manipulate me or are you being manipulated by your staff. Because that’s the nut of it all.
I agree that the reporting on this issue had not been great but I think the routine things journalists have been doing for years are even more damaging. For example I just read an article in a mainstream news mag about the massive amounts of tax dollars that weren’t collected from corporations because “Congress” — not Republicans — had defunded the IRS. It is this kind of mealy-mouthed, neutral descriptions that does the real damage to Democrats.
I am seeing a lot of journalists reporting on the damage that Trump is doing to the economy without being explicit that it is the extremely strong Biden economy that Trump is wrecking. As Mr. Froomkin has written the media refused to report on the strength of the Biden economy before the election which gave voters the idea that the US economy was in bad shape, not the strongest in the world post-covid. Post election polls showed that the majority of those swing voters who chose Trump said they did so because of the bad economy.
One exception to that has been Morning Joe (hated by liberals) which regularly reported on the achievements of Biden’s economy, frequently with detailed reports by Steve Rattner and his charts. In fact as I am writing this Joe is making it clear that Trump is destroying the gains made by the Biden economy saying it was the best economy in 50 years. However for decades most of the media has refused to give Democrats the credit they deserve on the economy — or on anything else. Doing that would destroy their favorite bothsidesing “a pox on both their houses” storyline.
The biggest question, of course, is why anyone in our wealthy media class is talking about anything else today. Of course the fact that he showed everyone a Photoshopped picture in the first place went by with barely a peep, so ...
Well first in the picture I thought that was Pete Hegseth’s arm with all his tattoos white nationalist and such. Who knows maybe Trump has tattoos on his face that he covers with the orange makeup.
Kinda like Trump is negotiating tariffs with 200 countries when there are only 195 countries in the world, unless you count that island that only has penguins. But that would still only make 196.
Bondi's lives saved are imaginary, like McCarthy's slip-sliding precise numbers of Communists in the federal government, delightfully nailed at "57" in "The Manchurian Candidate," with the help of a ketchup bottle label.
Why, oh Why should legitimate media give any airtime to a full time propaganda spewing maniac? Trump will never back off. He just uses the media appearance to reinforce his MAGA brand and their warped view of reality. Take the oxygen away. The man's a psycho.
I worry that the debate about whether or not he personally was a gang member of obscures the larger point, which is that even gang members deserve due process. Trump often works obscures the real issue in just this way.
True. Even gang members are entitled to due process. But, if we can shift our attention to Trump for a moment, what does it say about the judgment of the man in the Oval Office who is obsessed with people around him defer to his fantasies?
Why isn't Moran getting the obvious criticisms that you an other media critics point out regularly: That Moran was more interested in "moving on" than actually pinning Trump down on a single point of "truth". Moran owed it to his audience to fully hash out this issue that Trump continually lied about and determine what the truth was: Was this a real tattoo or did Trump misinform the people? I'm befuddled that Moran didn't want to settle that issue before "moving on". Dan, you've advocated the same thing in the past.
From this interview and many others it should be obvious that Trump is impossible to pin down on a single point of truth. If some hardy soul tries to do that, the interview will either go off the rails or Trump will petulantly terminate it.
Then so be it. There is a third possibility, based on past experiences. Often when Trump gets caught in a lie (because the reporter asks the required follow up questions) he says something like, "Gee, I don't know who took the photo? You'd have to ask the person who took the photo about that. I don't know anything about that". (Follow up question: If you don't know anything about that, why did you post the photo? Ya, being a bit of an A-Hole USED to be in the job description)
Either way, it once again reenforces the TRUTH and minimize Trump's absurd excuses. Having Trump having a full meltdown about how reality does not comport with his fake world just reenforces the truth and that's a goo thing.
I agree that if a reporter keeps pushing it may not get at the truth from Trump (because what could) but it CAN show that getting at the truth is the goal, whether he likes it or not.
"(Moran, for his part, kept trying to change the subject rather than asking the obvious follow-up questions, which was a big mistake.)"
As in: Are you going to use that phone to bring him back? Then we can all see his fingers.
Could be that the felon's handlers picked Moran because they knew he didn't have the courage to dig deeper.
"He could be lying"? Seriously, Dan? It's Trump. We know he's lying.
In many cases, we do indeed know he's lying.
But he's also stupid, and this is one of those cases where it's possible he didn't understand that the MS-13 on the image was added later as a (bullshit) interpretation, rather than being physically on his hand.
I watched some of the clip. My reaction is hardly proof, but his reaction to being told it was photoshopped looked to me like someone who actually believed what he was saying.
He's the president of the United States, and during his first term he told 30,573 lies. The first rule of Dunning Kruger Club is that you don't know you're a member of Dunning Kruger club. If only Trump had access to commonly known information and had the capacity to know that tattoos are not photoshopped in place by typewriters. https://imgur.com/gallery/first-rule-of-dunning-kruger-club-as6cJ
Re: Fentanyl seizures...Bondi may have taken the net weight of seized product, divided by amount needed for a fatal overdose, and came up with her figure...which assumes, of course, that there are 280,000,000 real or potential Fentanyl users in the US
Yep. When it comes to Bondi's claim about saving hundreds of millions of lives, Occam demands that we accept the simplest explanation. They figured out how many people that amount of fentanyl could kill and then used that as "lives saved."
I notice she didn't say "American lives," so she's got 8 billion potential consumers in her fantasy world. The DEA website is still using 119 million as their figure of imaginary lives saved.
But Bondi succeeded in distracting commenters from focusing on the fact that almost none of fentanyl seizures came from undocumented immigrants crossing illegally into the US, but at ports of call and lawful border crossings. Carried mostly by American citizens, I might add.
"According to a 2023 report from the Department of Homeland Security, most fentanyl is primarily found and seized from vehicles driven by US citizens at official ports of entry. Between January and February 2025, 92% of all confiscated fentanyl was intercepted at these official entry points." — https://usafacts.org/answers/how-much-fentanyl-is-seized-at-us-borders/country/united-states/
PS: She and lots of law enforcement goofs pronounce "fentanyl" as "fentanol." Is that just another poke in the eye from them to us citizens?
119 million is 36% of the US population. There are not that many opioid addicts in the country. It’s an utterly made up number. There’s no way to know how many people would die from using fentanyl based on quantity seized.
It’s the same sort of dog-and-pony show bullshit DEA pulled back in the ‘70s when the put a value on pot seized: use the price for the smallest amount typically sold and multiply that by the amount.
Moran should have dug in and asked to see photo from trump. He could have presented actual recent photos and he should have exposed the lie, then asked are you trying to manipulate me or are you being manipulated by your staff. Because that’s the nut of it all.
Dan, under Big Brother, and suitably conditioned, we were supposed to believe 2+2 = 5.
I'd say this is an example of that.
I agree that the reporting on this issue had not been great but I think the routine things journalists have been doing for years are even more damaging. For example I just read an article in a mainstream news mag about the massive amounts of tax dollars that weren’t collected from corporations because “Congress” — not Republicans — had defunded the IRS. It is this kind of mealy-mouthed, neutral descriptions that does the real damage to Democrats.
I am seeing a lot of journalists reporting on the damage that Trump is doing to the economy without being explicit that it is the extremely strong Biden economy that Trump is wrecking. As Mr. Froomkin has written the media refused to report on the strength of the Biden economy before the election which gave voters the idea that the US economy was in bad shape, not the strongest in the world post-covid. Post election polls showed that the majority of those swing voters who chose Trump said they did so because of the bad economy.
One exception to that has been Morning Joe (hated by liberals) which regularly reported on the achievements of Biden’s economy, frequently with detailed reports by Steve Rattner and his charts. In fact as I am writing this Joe is making it clear that Trump is destroying the gains made by the Biden economy saying it was the best economy in 50 years. However for decades most of the media has refused to give Democrats the credit they deserve on the economy — or on anything else. Doing that would destroy their favorite bothsidesing “a pox on both their houses” storyline.
Of course, there is another explanation and it’s called dementia/Alzheimers.
The biggest question, of course, is why anyone in our wealthy media class is talking about anything else today. Of course the fact that he showed everyone a Photoshopped picture in the first place went by with barely a peep, so ...
This reminds me of so many scenes from The Death of Stalin
Well first in the picture I thought that was Pete Hegseth’s arm with all his tattoos white nationalist and such. Who knows maybe Trump has tattoos on his face that he covers with the orange makeup.
Kinda like Trump is negotiating tariffs with 200 countries when there are only 195 countries in the world, unless you count that island that only has penguins. But that would still only make 196.
Bondi's lives saved are imaginary, like McCarthy's slip-sliding precise numbers of Communists in the federal government, delightfully nailed at "57" in "The Manchurian Candidate," with the help of a ketchup bottle label.
Pam Bondi’s absurd fentanyl lie SHOULD rate at least Topic C at Leavitt’s next show time. But honestly, it won’t even get a mention.
Why, oh Why should legitimate media give any airtime to a full time propaganda spewing maniac? Trump will never back off. He just uses the media appearance to reinforce his MAGA brand and their warped view of reality. Take the oxygen away. The man's a psycho.
Jesus Christ , who gives a shit how Moran reacted . Trump looked like a bumbling idiot. He dug his own grave. Moran handled it fine.