November 22, 2025

Friday Talking Points -- Impaired Waterfowl?

The political term for physically-challenged waterfowl has been appearing with increasing regularity in the media this week, to describe the president. But is Donald Trump really a "lame duck" yet? Or is he more of a duck that happened to sprain an ankle or perhaps stub a toe (do ducks technically have ankles... or toes? I must admit, I have no idea...)?

Etymological/metaphorical/biological amusements aside, though, the question is a bigger one than pinning down the exact nature of this particular waterfowl's infirmity. Because the articles using the term are really asking whether Trump's iron-fisted grip on the Republican Party (and/or his MAGA supporters) is slipping -- and if so, by how much. Here's just one example of the question being discussed:

This isn't the only place the term has been popping up. Articles are appearing with headlines such as: "7 Signs Trump Is Losing His Groove," and: "The MAGA Crackup Might Finally Be Here," and: "Is President Trump's Power Over The Republican Party Waning?" Here's one more example (which notes in the second paragraph: "as the first signs of his lame duck status emerge" ), which adds an important caveat:



That last bit is important, as Trump (much more than any other politician the label has been applied to) has metaphorically been coated with Teflon ever since he entered politics. Nothing has diminished his hold over the party, to date. So all these diagnoses of lameness might be premature, for this particular duck.

Even so, it's been a rather jaw-dropping week for Trump. He lost a vote in Congress that he had been dead-set against -- by a combined total of 527 votes to one. Well, admittedly that doesn't tell the full story, since at the very last minute Trump flip-flopped by announcing he was now for the measure that he had been fighting tooth and nail against all year long. Just last week he was still trying to strong-arm the Republicans who were supporting the resolution (to release the Epstein files) and bully them into switching their position. This failed, so Trump had to pretend he was switching his position. If he hadn't, he would have been seen as a huge loser, but this way he can claim to be on the winning side of the vote.

Which is patently ridiculous, for anyone who didn't just emerge from a years-long coma this week. The bill Congress voted on will force Trump to do something he didn't want to do, period. He lost this vote, plain and simple. Trump could have released the Epstein files at any time, without Congress having to get involved at all. He didn't. He fought the effort to force him to, and lost. Then he had to pretend to be celebrating the bill's passage somehow, even though it was a bill forcing him to do something he didn't want to do. How does that make any sense?

But getting back to the lame-duckery in the media, the Epstein vote (527-1!) wasn't the only indication that Trump is losing his grip. During the shutdown fight, Trump leaned heavily on Senate Republicans to abolish the filibuster and just ignore the Democrats -- and the GOP senators refused to do so. Trump has been leaning on red states to redistrict, to improve the GOP's chances of hanging onto control in the House in next year's midterms, but three state Republican legislatures defied him and refused to do so (Indiana, Kansas, and Nebraska). Trump said he would "welcome" foreign workers in an interview this week, which seriously annoyed his own MAGA base. Some Republicans have been raising questions about Trump using the U.S. military to blow up any boat he feels like, since declaring war is the purview of Congress. Other Republicans in Congress have not been impressed with Trump's idea of just sending out $2,000 checks to everyone in America, in the hopes that they won't notice the rising prices in the grocery store quite so much. And both the House and Senate seem to be moving forward to pass a bill that would slap Russia with heavy sanctions -- a bill that Trump has not expressly supported.

Plus, Trump's poll numbers are way down. One poll this week showed a huge advantage in the "generic ballot" (where pollsters ask people whether they'd support a Democrat or Republican in the next election, without specifying any names) for Democrats -- by a whopping 55-41 margin. To be fair, this poll is probably an outlier (other polls don't show the gap as being nearly as wide), but it should be a red flag for Republicans in Congress who are running for re-election next year.

Trump flip-flopped on one other big issue in the past week, as he sullenly announced that he was removing all tariffs (even on countries who hadn't struck a trade deal with America yet) on a long list of food products, some of which can't be grown here at home (like coffee). This didn't get as much media attention as the Epstein vote, but it's just as damaging for Trump's brand. Trump has insisted all along that tariffs aren't actually "taxes" and that American consumers simply would not see any increase in prices due to higher tariffs. So if that's true, then why did Trump just remove a bunch of tariffs? The only answer is that he is worried about the fact that anywhere from two-thirds to three-fourths of the public thinks his tariffs have made prices worse and inflation go up (both of which are true).

Trump is caught in a trap of his own making, here. Which is why it would be nice if the media pressed him on the inherent contradiction. To use another bird-based metaphor, Trump's answer to the looming problem of inflation, the economy, and affordability is to stick his head in the sand. As far as Trump is concerned, "affordability" is some sort of "Democrat hoax" that doesn't exist. According to him, prices on everything -- everything! -- are down. Way down! Prices were much higher when Joe Biden was running the country... and by the way, anything that is not perfect is still Biden's fault (even a full ten months in to Trump's second term).

Trump can't have it both ways, of course. If his delusions were true, then the voters wouldn't be so angry. If prices have risen, then tariffs are almost certainly a big reason -- meaning it is Trump's fault. Since, to Trump, nothing is ever his fault, he'll never admit any of this. But sticking your head in the sand by insisting that there simply is no problem is not exactly a smart position for the Republican Party to take right now. To put it mildly. As we've said before: "Just ask Joe Biden how that worked out for him."

We're starting to get economic numbers once again, as the Bureau of Labor Statistics ramps back up post-shutdown. The unemployment rate ticked up in September, to 4.4 percent -- the highest it has been in almost four years. They've now announced they're going to skip October's numbers and instead concentrate on this month, but the November numbers will be delayed until the second week of December. But it's not the jobs numbers which might be seriously bad news for Trump -- it's the inflation rate. The last reported official rate was 3.0 percent. If it continues to go upward (as many economists are predicting), it will be higher than at any time since Trump took office again. Trump has also been ignoring this figure, insisting that "there is no inflation" or that it's down to "incredibly low levels" (neither of which, obviously, is true). If the number keeps going up, Trump will have to address it somehow -- and chances are good that he'll do so by continuing to insist that there's no problem and that gas is somehow magically selling for two bucks a gallon everywhere (which also isn't true -- it's higher than that everywhere).

Republicans in Congress will be watching all this. At some point, their instincts for self-preservation are going to kick in, one would assume. Following Trump down the head-in-the-sand denial path seems almost guaranteed to produce a blowout blue-wave midterm election. So there's going to have to be some sort of break with Trump for any of them to attempt to tell their voters that they are actually trying to address the affordability crisis.

This could become apparent as soon as next month. The one thing the Senate Democrats who voted with the Republicans to end the shutdown got in exchange for crossing the aisle was a promise that the Senate would vote on a bill (of the Democrats' choosing) to extend the Obamacare subsidies that are going to turn into a pumpkin on New Year's day. Ever since then, Republicans have been scrambling around trying to come up with some sort of gimmick so they can tell their voters they voted for cheaper healthcare costs, without actually lowering healthcare costs for the people affected by the end of the subsidies. Trump himself weighed in on this, with (as usual) a half-baked idea. Trump is now insisting that any money has to be handed directly to the people, instead of going to an insurance company. This is laughably unworkable and won't do much of anything to lower anyone's costs, but Trump doesn't care. He drew this line in the sand, and some Republicans in Congress dutifully cobbled together some legislation that would do what Trump wants.

However, there are other Republicans who know full well that this isn't going to solve the problem at all. So discussions continue between Democrats and Republicans, with the latest proposal being an extension of the subsidies for two years (with a few GOP ideas tossed in to fight non-existent "massive fraud" ). Other Republicans are holding firm that the subsidies should just expire, period.

If enough Republicans get on board with some sort of compromise worked out with the Democrats, then such a bill might actually pass before the year-end deadline. But Trump has already drawn a line in the sand, vowing to veto any bill that doesn't send all the money directly to the consumers. But would he really veto a bipartisan bill that would avoid premiums doubling or tripling for tens of millions of Americans? Remember: Trump is already politically weak on the whole affordability crisis issue, so this would be a monumentally stupid thing for him to do.

He might be forced to flip-flop, once again.

Which would be one further indication that he has now achieved impaired-waterfowl status. So the entire debate will be very interesting to watch, over the course of the next few weeks.





We have a six-way tie this week.

Two Democratic senators and four Democratic House members collaborated on a video this week that caused Donald Trump to go ballistic. The Democrats are (with their own descriptions of their previous military or intelligence experience), in the order they appear in the video:

Senator Elissa Slotkin ("Former C.I.A. officer" ), Senator Mark Kelly ("Captain in the United States Navy" ), Representative Chris Deluzio ("Former Navy" ), Representative Maggie Goodlander ("Former intelligence officer" ), Representative Chrissy Houlahan ("Former Air Force" ), and Representative Jason Crow ("Former paratrooper and Army Ranger" ).

The video runs for ninety seconds. In it, these former members of the intelligence community and military issue a warning to those still serving. The warning consists of restating current United States military law, which reaffirms the world's decision in the Nuremburg trials that "I was just following orders" is not a valid excuse to commit crimes. If given an illegal order, soldiers must refuse those orders. Which is what the video reminds them of.

Here is the text of the video, after all the members of Congress have introduced themselves [Editorial Note: the punctuation was lightly edited, since at a few points the same line is repeated by multiple people and the captioning's punctuation seemed to get a little confusing at the end -- but none of the text has been edited at all]:



You'll note that Donald Trump is not named anywhere and that at no point do they tell servicemembers to refuse legal orders from anybody. All they are doing is restating what the Uniform Code of Military Justice says.

As mentioned, when he heard about this video, Trump absolutely lost it. He started sending out ominous messages online: "It's called SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL. Each one of these traitors to our Country should be ARRESTED AND PUT ON TRIAL. Their words cannot be allowed to stand - We won't have a Country anymore!!! An example MUST BE SET." He followed this screed up with: "SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!" Trump also reposted one message that said: "HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD !!"

This isn't the first time Trump has flipped out at Democrats reminding people of the law, or their rights under it. Earlier, Democrats had been reminding undocumented people of their rights under U.S. laws and the Constitution, which Trump also considered treasonous behavior.

We also have a Honorable Mention for Senator Chris Murphy as well, who posted his own video in response to Trump's dangerous words. In it, he says:



With the president convinced he can bomb any boat he chooses, on his say-so alone, without any authorization from Congress to do so and without us being at war with anyone, the reminder the Democrats posted is certainly timely. With the president also convinced he can send any military troops anywhere in our own country -- again, on his say-so alone -- such a reminder is particularly apt.

For bravely standing up and doing so, and for showing the country how unhinged Trump has truly now become, all six Democrats who made the original video are easily the winners of this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award.

[Congratulate Senator Elissa Slotkin on her Senate contact page, Senator Mark Kelly on his Senate contact page, Representative Chris Deluzio on his House contact page, Representative Maggie Goodlander on her House contact page, Representative Chrissy Houlahan on her House contact page, and Representative Jason Crow on his House contact page, to let them know you appreciate their efforts and their service to our country.]





The House went through a spasm of measures to rebuke their own members this week, which led to Representative Chuy Garcia getting a "vote of formal disapproval" from all Republicans and 23 Democrats this week -- in a measure instigated by Democratic Representative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez -- for essentially locking in his chosen successor for his seat. Garcia played it cute with the filing deadline, by waiting to announce he was not running for re-election until the day after the filing deadline closed. The only Democrat who had filed paperwork to run next year was his own chief of staff. He tried to say he had just suddenly made the decision for personal and family reasons, but this is simply not believable (Garcia's own signature was the first on the paperwork his chief of staff filed, showing he was fully aware of what he was doing).

It's this type of thing that makes voters hate politicians and politics in general, which is why we're awarding Garcia our own (Dis-)Honorable Mention award.

But this week's Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week has now been charged with something much worse. Here's the story:



Of course, as always, Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, but things don't look especially good for her. She has now stepped down from her committee assignments, but she is currently running for re-election.

So for now (contingent upon the result of her trial), we have to award her this week's Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week. Stealing money directed to COVID-19 vaccination money is a pretty shameful thing to do, after all.

[Contact Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick on her House contact page, to let her know what you think of her actions.]




Volume 821 (11/21/25)

We begin with a program note: there will (obviously) be no column next week. Hope everyone has a happy turkey day!

You might detect a theme running through this week's talking points [picture one hand making a big "L" while pressed against forehead, here...].



Trump is losing it

This one should be condemned by all, in the strongest possible language.

"Donald Trump is losing it. He called for Democratic members of Congress to be put to death this week, for the supposed 'crime' of explaining what the law says. Remember all that Kumbaya stuff after the assassination of Charlie Kirk? Well, all that has gone right out the window, as we all knew it would. I shouldn't have to say this, but because Trump is losing it I guess I do: the president of the United States of America should never call for the death of his political opponents. Period."



Trump lost 527-1

He can try to spin it all he wants, but this was a stunning loss for him.

"Donald Trump has been fighting tooth and nail against releasing all the Epstein files. His henchman Mike Johnson tried every trick in the book to prevent a vote on a bill to force Trump to do so in the House. But when Trump realized he was about to lose this vote -- badly -- he changed his tune and said he was for the bill. This fooled precisely no one. In the end, Congress voted 527-to-one against Trump. If Trump truly had been for this, he could have released these files at any point in time, but instead he fought it. And he lost -- bigly."



Trump is losing his grip on the GOP

More and more Republicans are finding the backbone to say "No" to Trump, which is good to see.

"Trump is losing his grip over his own party, obviously. Rather than rolling over and doing anything he wants them to do, Republicans have shown they can occasionally stand up to Trump. They did so on the Epstein files vote, and more than one very red state has refused Trump's order to redistrict to stack the deck for next year's midterm elections. Donald Trump is a lame duck -- he's never going to run for anything ever again. But the rest of the Republicans are going to try to get re-elected, and my guess is that as time goes on more and more of them will break with Trump in an effort to save their own political careers. Trump's grip on the GOP is slipping, and it's probably only going to get weaker and weaker as time goes on."



Trump is losing his grip on reality

Hammer this one home, hard.

"Every time someone brings up the fact that everything is getting more expensive, Trump shows that he's completely lost his grip on reality -- if he ever had one to begin with. He insists that prices are all way down -- when everyone can see that they're not. He tells everyone the economy is wonderful and there's no inflation, but people see it every week at the grocery store. The more Trump spirals down his delusion that everything's hunky-dory for everyone, the more people will wake up and realize that Trump has completely lost whatever grip on reality he once had."



Trump has lost his built-in excuse

This one's getting old indeed....

"Trump is losing his go-to built-in excuse for why things might not be going the way he wants them to. He's been in office ten whole months now, and he's still blaming Joe Biden for anything bad anyone asks him about. His tariffs have made everything more expensive, but Trump insists that it was worse under Biden and that it's all Biden's fault. You know, this excuse has a built-in shelf-life and it's already way past its expiration date. How many more months is Trump going to attempt to blame things on Biden? Let's see... how many more months does he have left in office?"



Trump is losing in court

Always worth pointing out.

"Trump is losing in court, every time you turn around. Judges have barred him from using the National Guard in two more cities -- Memphis and Washington D.C. -- and in the biggest legal loss of the week, other judges ruled that the new Texas redistricting map is probably illegal and needs to be thrown out. While the Supreme Court may be in Trump's back pocket, it's good to see other judges out there willing to draw the line on Trump's overreach."



Experts agree: Trump is a pig

We would have used "male chauvinist pig" here, but we felt the phrase would tend to date us, so we just went generic instead.

"Donald Trump is a pig. Think that's disrespectful? This week, Trump wagged his finger at a female journalist asking him a question and told her: 'Quiet, Piggy.' So, quite obviously, he is due precisely zero respect himself. The rest of the world is horrified that America's president is no more than an elementary-school bully, each and every time he embarrasses himself in this way. Which is why we have to conclude that 'experts agree: Trump is a pig.' After all, if he can't bring himself to avoid using such disgraceful language, then why should anyone else restrain themselves?"




Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com

November 15, 2025

Friday Talking Points -- Distractions Abound

So the longest federal government shutdown in American history ended last weekend, not with a bang but a whimper. Seven Democrat senators and one Independent voted with the Republicans to reopen the government without securing the goal that Democrats had been fighting for. This has outraged many other Democrats, since it was seen as "pulling defeat out of the jaws of victory," once again.

Donald Trump essentially ignored the entire shutdown, while he threw lavish parties and visited foreign countries (and demolished one-third of the White House, to boot). But Trump's minions were ratcheting up the pressure on Democrats, by limiting how many flights could take off from major airports and going to the Supreme Court -- twice! -- to demand that they had the power to refuse to feed hungry children. All around, Trump is appearing more and more like a cartoonish supervillain.

Speaking of supervillains, the Epstein files scandal returned to the fore, as Democrats released emails showing what Jeffrey Epstein truly thought of Donald Trump ("evil beyond belief" and "i have met some very bad people ,, none as bad as trump. not one decent cell in his body... dangerous." ) -- which is rather remarkable, when you consider how evil Epstein was.

Trump's response, as usual, was to flood the zone with distractions. He sicced his Justice Department on any Democrats mentioned in the newly-released Epstein files, and of course Attorney General Pam Bondi immediately did her master's bidding.

The White House also tried to strongarm at least two of the House Republicans who have signed the discharge petition to force the release of all the Epstein files in the Justice Department, even going so far as to bring in Representative Lauren Boebert to the White House Situation Room. This ultra-secure room is usually used for the most serious decisions presidents make, but instead Boebert faced Bondi and the head of the F.B.I., Kash Patel, who both tried to force her to withdraw her signature from the discharge petition. None of it worked -- all four Republicans kept their names on it, and because the House is back in session again (after a seven-week paid holiday), Adelita Grijalva was finally sworn in. The first thing she did afterwards was to provide the pivotal 218th signature on the petition, which is now going to force Speaker Mike Johnson to hold a vote on it next week. Interesting wonky factoid: now that the discharge petition is complete, no representative is allowed to withdraw their name from it. So that vote will happen no matter what.

Even if it does, it probably isn't going to work (other than to ramp up the political pressure on Trump). Even if it passes the House, it's still got to get through the Senate (which is doubtful) and then Trump could just veto it in the end. But holding the vote in the House will guarantee that the story will be front-and-center next week.

Unless Trump starts a war with Venezuela, that is. Which he is apparently now seriously considering, after earlier lying to Congress about whether they were planning to invade or not.

Meanwhile, someone in the White House apparently got the wake-up call from the 2025 elections (which Democrats impressively swept) and there is a scramble now on to figure out how Trump can attempt to claim to be fighting for "affordability" (since the Democrats used the issue so successfully against him). Trump, of course, prominently ran on the issue himself, promising to wave a magic wand and fix everything on "Day One." Affordability (getting inflation down and prices down) was one of his two biggest issues, in fact (the other was immigration). But since he's taken office, all he's done has made things worse. His tariff spree has increased prices on all kinds of things Americans buy, so the White House is finally attempting some damage control on the issue (since they are obviously fearful that Democrats will use it just as successfully in next year's midterms).

Trump being Trump, though, his efforts are scattershot (at best) and will doubtlessly be ineffective. Except for one thing -- they're announcing that tariffs on foods that don't grow in America (like coffee and bananas) will be rolled back. Coffee prices have skyrocketed this year, but Trump will deserve exactly zero credit for "fixing" the problem. He's like a guy who sets fire to your house and then puts it out and wants to be congratulated for dousing the fire -- that he himself lit.

Other ideas Trump has been floating are all over the map:

But he's got a long way to go to convince anyone:



Trump's poll numbers in general have taken a notable downturn, and his average is now roughly 12-to-14 points underwater in job approval polling. His numbers are even worse in polling on the economy and inflation. Trump even went to a pro football game last week and got [link:ttps://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-commanders-game-boo_n_69112d21e4b05694e6ae4d4b?origin=home-zone-d-unit|soundly booed] by the crowd. He has also lost one notable member of his own party, as Marjorie Taylor Greene continues to rip into Trump on affordability, saying in a recent interview:



However, denial and gaslighting are Trump's favorite go-to moves. He continues to insist that everything is wonderful, prices are down on everything, and that gasoline is selling for two bucks a gallon. None of that is true, but that's never mattered to Trump. However, this time Trump seems to be losing support even among his own voters:



It's hard to say for certain, but it certainly feels like Trump's talent for flooding the zone with lies has slipped. Many have noted that he seems to be falling into the same "out of touch" trap that Joe Biden did -- talking up the economy while millions of people are hurting. Even MAGA supporters hear Trump tell them how wonderfully low all the prices for everything is, but then they have to confront the reality at the checkout stand every week. They know prices aren't down.

They're also still waiting to see those Epstein files in full, too. And they're probably not going to be very impressed if Trump decides to invade Venezuela, either.





We have a few Honorable Mention awards to hand out before getting to the main one. The first of these goes to Senator Elizabeth Warren, who wrote a letter to Trump demanding he explain the difference between the lies he's been telling and the actual data that his own administration has put out. She goes through a short list of questions, on economic claims Trump has recently made. Here is just one of them (the others, on affordability, energy costs, and grocery costs are similar):



This is what Democrats should be doing -- hit Trump (in public, if possible) on the reality of the situation versus his gaslighting, with details.

The other awards-winners are all from the election (as close races are finally settled). Honorable Mention awards go out to a group of progressive candidates (who ran as a bloc) in Aurora, Colorado, who defeated enough members of their city council to give Democrats control. Some of the Republicans who were ousted went along with Donald Trump during the campaign last year as he lied about immigrant gangs being in control of the whole city, so it was a welcome comeuppance indeed.

But the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week this week is the woman who won the mayor's race in Seattle (in a very close race). Here's her story:



Here's a more in-depth look at the new mayor-elect as well:



For decades now, Republicans have used "Socialist!" as a scare word, applying it to any Democrat who dared to suggest rich people might need to pay more taxes. But it seems increasingly likely that the smear word has lost its power, as more and more voters actually hear what Democratic Socialists have to say about their agenda and conclude, "That sounds like a good idea!" This is especially true among younger voters.

These are just mayor's races, to be sure. But then again Bernie Sanders started out his political career as a mayor, so it can indeed lead to bigger things. For deepening the progressive bench and for running on economic populism, Katie Wilson is our Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week this week. We'll be just as interested to see how successful she is at her new job as watching the career of Zohran Mamdani. For now: Congratulations and well done!

[You'll have to wait to congratulate Seattle Mayor-Elect Katie Wilson until she is sworn into office, as our standing rule here is not to provide contact information to campaign websites, sorry.]





There are nine candidates for the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week, but we've decided to only hand it out to eight of them.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer only gets a (Dis-)Honorable Mention award, since he did vote against caving on the shutdown, but also because he couldn't keep his caucus together, even after a romp of a victory in the 2025 elections. Schumer is getting plenty of grief for his handling of the situation, including calls from fellow Democrats (although none in the Senate, so far) for him to step down from his leadership position.

But the seven Democratic senators (and one Independent) who did cave certainly deserve this week's MDDOTW award. The ignoble eight are:

• Catherine Cortez Masto


• Dick Durbin


• John Fetterman


• Maggie Hassan


• Tim Kaine


• Angus King [Independent]


• Jackie Rosen


• Jeanne Shaheen

This group certainly didn't manage to get much from the Republicans -- they essentially agreed to what the Republicans had been offering all along. A Senate vote will be held in December on a Democratic bill to extend the Obamacare subsidies. It will likely fail. Even if it does pass, the House may just ignore it. And even if through some miracle it passed both houses, Trump would almost certainly veto it.

Republicans are now scrambling around trying to come up with something to pass in its place, with some sort of gimmick so they can claim they solved the problem (while campaigning for the midterms, next year). But even that is in no way guaranteed -- the easiest thing for them to do would be "nothing" (which they are quite good at doing, in general).

The issue could come back to haunt the Republicans, however, in a big way. If nothing passes, then Democrats will have a second bite at the apple at the end of January -- they could shut the government down again. And next time around, SNAP benefits will be fully funded for the rest of the year, so it won't be available as a bargaining chip for the Republicans (this was included in the bill they passed to end the shutdown).

But let's just say everything Democrats attempt fails. If the Obamacare subsidies do go away, then Democrats will hammer the issue all year long out on the campaign trail. Fighting for affordability is emerging as the centerpiece for Democrats to run on, and this will fit very nicely into that theme. So by failing to fix the problem now, Democrats may actually increase their chances of winning back at least the House in the midterms.

Even so, this week was disappointing (and that's an understatement). So all the Democrats (and one Independent) who caved and got virtually nothing out of the deal certainly deserve their own Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week award.

[Contact Senator Catherine Cortez Masto on her Senate contact page, Senator Dick Durbin on his Senate contact page, Senator John Fetterman on his Senate contact page, Senator Maggie Hassan on her Senate contact page, Senator Tim Kaine on his Senate contact page, Senator Angus King on his Senate contact page, Senator Jackie Rosen on her Senate contact page, and Senator Jeanne Shaheen on her Senate contact page, to let them know what you think of their actions.]




Volume 820 (11/14/25)

We are pre-empting our usual talking points this week in order to present excerpts from a very powerful letter. It was written by U.S. District Court Judge Mark L. Wolf as a public resignation letter. Wolf is stepping down from the bench because he is so disgusted at what Donald Trump and his administration are doing. The rules of judicial conduct have prevented him from saying all of this until now. But by resigning, he is now free to speak out.

The letter was originally published in The Atlantic, but their site is behind a paywall, so here's another link to it (published by AOL, with no paywall) if you'd like to read the letter in full.

This is one of the best condemnations of Trump and his minions that we have ever read. Which is why we're pre-empting our talking points this week to bring you Judge Wolf's resignation letter instead.





[Note: due to editorial restrictions here on reposting articles, all we could excerpt was the beginning of this letter. We strongly encourage everyone to follow the link and read the whole thing for yourself -- it's definitely worth your time.]




Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com

November 8, 2025

Friday Talking Points -- A Time For Boldness

This week, a major vibe shift took place in American politics. For the first time in an entire year, Democrats got up off the mat. Or maybe: they now have the wind at their backs. There are plenty of other metaphors to choose from, but the reality is that Democrats emerged stronger from the first major election since Donald Trump started his second term, and both Trump and his Republicans emerged weaker.

This sea-change isn't all-encompassing, of course. There just aren't that many offices up for grabs in the odd-numbered off-off-year elections which follow a presidential election. But next year there will be, as the midterms will determine the makeup of the entire House of Representatives and one-third of the United States Senate.

Of course, the standard caveat applies -- a year is an eternity in politics, especially in the Trumpian era. Anything could happen in the meantime. What next year's election hinges upon might be something that nobody sees coming right now.

But if things continue as they have been, then the economy is going to be the big issue that could determine how the midterms turn out -- and Democrats just proved that they've got a winning message while Republicans are stuck with nothing but gaslighting and other bald-faced lies.

Many have pointed out the irony, since Donald Trump now appears stuck in the same trap that ensnared Joe Biden. Biden strove to convince people that the economy wasn't really all that bad -- that things were getting better, according to the numbers. But people didn't feel it. They didn't feel it at the grocery store, they didn't feel it when paying their rent, and they didn't feel it when paying their energy bills. So Biden (and, later, Kamala Harris) lost the argument and appeared out of touch to the voters struggling to make ends meet.

Donald Trump won in large part because he made sweeping promises to fix all of that "on Day One." To be blunt: he hasn't. Almost everything he's done as president has actually made things worse -- and, just like with Biden, people are feeling the pain. And blaming Trump.

Much ink has been spilled over the ideological disparity between the biggest victors from Tuesday night. Two rather moderate Democrats won the governors' offices in New Jersey and Virginia, while a Democratic Socialist won the mayor's office in New York City. But what was striking to us was that all three ran on various flavors of the same issue: affordability. And they offered up (to a varying degree) some very solid ideas for how they were going to deal with the problem.

Which is what the big takeaway from the election was, in our humble opinion. It's not "progressive versus moderate" -- no matter how much that divide is hyped by the pundits. It's not even generational. It is instead boldness versus timidity. That is the real divide within the Democratic Party, and the sooner they realize it the better off they will be.

In New York City, Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani was demonized by his opponents -- some of them from within his own party. He was called every fearmongering name in the book. But the voters weighed all of that against his actual agenda, which was quite bold and forward-looking. Mamdani ran on four big ideas: a rent freeze for rent-controlled apartments. Free and faster bus service. Free child care for every child from six weeks of age up to five years old. And building government-run grocery stores (as a pilot program, which would be very limited at first). To pay for them all, Mamdani wants to (gasp!) tax rich people and corporations a wee bit more.

You can call those ideas "Socialist" or "Marxist" or "Communist" until you are red in the face, but the voters looked at them and weighed them and decided, "That doesn't sound like such a bad idea!" Because Mamdani didn't just promise some gauzy "I will fight for you every day!" future, he instead offered up concrete real-world ideas. He will be judged on the success or failure of those ideas, but they are tangible things that could (if implemented well) actually help people's lives out, in a big way.

Mamdani wasn't the only one. In New Jersey, Governor-Elect Mikie Sherrill promised to tackle high energy prices (which have skyrocketed in the state recently) by freezing the rate the utilities are allowed to charge. Will this work? It's hard to say. Will she even be able to make good on her campaign promise? That remains to be seen. But once again it is a genuine big idea. It is something concrete that she can be judged on later (depending on its success or failure), instead of just some vague politician-speak about "fighting to bring prices down."

That was the real lesson from this election. Part of the big problem the Democratic Party's brand is having right now is that most voters don't know what they stand for. Democrats have been defined by their opponents, and they have largely failed to counter the impression (of being too "woke," for instance) with their own solid political agenda full of big ideas that could help millions of people out right away.

Personally, we think Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin bear a lot of the blame for this. Democrats had a golden chance, during Biden's first two years in office, to implement the same sort of sweeping improvements to government programs that would have been a real sea-change for tens of millions of American families. Biden worked together with Bernie Sanders to come up with this plan, which would have guaranteed free (or affordable) child care and preschool for all of America's children, free college tuition (at least for two-year community colleges), free elder care, and a raft of other programs designed to make people's lives tangibly better. Manchin and Sinema balked, and so the bill had to be watered down (again and again, in fact) so that they'd vote for it. What Biden wound up with was still impressive -- but not nearly as far-reaching as it could have been.

The pundits (and the Republicans) keep insisting that attempting to do these things is somehow "radical" and "far-left" and "too progressive." And the Democratic Party establishment buys into this framing and cowers. Which is precisely what the voters hate -- timidity in the face of big problems. Incremental plans that take forever to be implemented and don't really solve the problem but merely tinker around the edges of it.

In fact, the Democratic establishment -- which is so timid it balked at even supporting their own party's nominee for mayor in New York City -- now resembles nothing so much as what the Republican Party looked like right before Trump launched his hostile takeover. They are floundering around trying to figure out why voters don't like them any more, but they keep retreating into timidity and thoughts of "maybe we should move to the right -- to the center -- and become Republican-lite... maybe that will fix our problems!" They focus-group every single thing that comes out of an establishment Democrat's mouth to the point where they become experts at saying absolutely nothing while turning people off with their stilted mealymouthed vagueness.

Then along comes someone with genuine authenticity and shows them politics is supposed to be done. Like Mamdani.

If Bernie Sanders were perhaps 20 years younger, he might be in a prime position to effectuate the same sort of takeover of the Democratic Party that Donald Trump managed on the other side. Nobody's more authentic than Bernie, after all. But even he realizes he's now too old to be the standard-bearer in 2028.

But the Democrats seem ripe for somebody to achieve this. They are largely rudderless and in dire need of a leader to follow, and that doesn't necessarily mean someone with similar politics as Bernie. But ideally it should be someone with authenticity. Someone who can speak like a normal person, instead of endlessly regurgitating focus-group-speak and platitudes. Someone with a concrete platform that promises: "These are the things that I will get done! Maybe not all of them will work perfectly, but it's certainly worth trying something new, don't you think?"

Such an agenda should be centered around affordability. This is a new way of saying what "It's the economy, stupid" meant, back in the 1990s. The cost of living is crushing American families, and neither party seems all that interested in doing much of anything about it. Donald Trump made sweeping promises, but once he got into office he forgot all about them. While on the campaign trail, Trump promised to lower energy costs by half during his first year in office. While gas prices have recently come down very slightly (after spending the first half of the year almost exactly where they were when Trump took office), the same is not true for electricity prices. Meanwhile, Trump just lies about it. He either confidently tells people that gas is selling for two bucks a gallon in multiple states (spoiler: it isn't), or that we'll all be paying that magic price real soon now.

On grocery prices, Trump is completely incoherent. He apparently just learned the word "groceries" last year, during his campaign, which is astonishing enough -- but not for someone who has lived his entire life in the lap of luxury. He still insists (he repeated it this week) that you have to show a photo I.D. to buy a loaf of bread in a grocery store (spoiler: this is not true and never was). He is, in a word, completely clueless about the process of buying food in a grocery store, likely because he has never actually done so for himself in his entire life. And now he is trying to pull the wool over the eyes of even his own supporters who complain about high prices. Here he is on Fox News, answering a woman who voted for Trump three times and who wrote in a letter stating: "[S]omething has to be done fast. I don't see the best economy right now. Wall Street numbers do not reflect my Main Street money. Please do something, President Trump."

Trump responded by flat-out lying to the woman:

Here is Trump attempting the same gaslighting, from an interview aired last weekend:



Two years ago, polling showed Republicans with a 20-point edge on the economy. Now they are tied with Democrats on the issue. For Trump, the problem is even worse:



Trump is vulnerable on the issue, since he has either done nothing or made things worse (with his trade war tariffs). He is underwater in the polls, according to Nate Silver, by an average of over 17 points on both the economy and trade. And he is down a whopping 30 points on inflation. The polling on inflation is all pretty close to being 2-to-1 against Trump on the issue. That is an enormous vulnerability, and that is precisely why Democrats concentrating on affordability is so potent right now. And Trump is so tone-deaf and out of touch on the issue it's almost cartoonish:



Today, Trump filed an emergency appeal so that he could go ahead with his plan to starve over 40 million poor Americans who get SNAP food aid -- because a judge ruled that he had to pay the benefits in full, even with the government shutdown. As we said, this is all so blatant it is downright cartoonish -- all Trump needs is a thin little villain's mustache to twirl, really.

Some Republicans, after Tuesday night's Democratic blowout, are beginning to realize the pickle Trump has now put them in. By all rights, we should be reading headlines screaming "Republicans In Disarray!" (but of course, we aren't). Trump is either ignoring affordability issues or actively making them worse, while living in a delusional fantasyland where "groceries" is some old-fashioned word that nobody ever uses anymore and prices have gone way, way down (just because he is president). He's never going to admit he was wrong (about his tariffs, for instance), and he's never going to face the reality of life for millions of his own supporters. Republicans have to somehow thread the needle of addressing the biggest issue Democrats have right now without angering Trump or coming up with any policies that contradict what he's been doing. That's a pretty tough needle to thread, you have to admit. Here's an immediate example, from today's news:



So look for Republicans to start echoing the word "affordability" -- without offering anything tangible that could possibly contradict Donald Trump. Good luck with that!

And hopefully (oh, please, please, please... hopefully!) Democrats will counter with not just "I will fight for you every day" nonsense, but with actual, concrete, and very bold plans to improve daily life for millions of Americans. Because, as we just saw Tuesday night, that is the winning ticket for them, period.





We have two Honorable Mention awards to hand out before we get to the main one this week.

Representative and Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi announced this week that she would not be seeking re-election next year. This was monumental news in San Francisco, since Pelosi has been an institution there for over four decades now. But after being instrumental in convincing Joe Biden to abandon his bid for re-election due to his advanced age, it would have been hypocritical of Pelosi to follow in the footsteps of Senator Dianne Feinstein, who stayed in office long past when she should have, and never stepped down at all (she died while in office). Pelosi, who is 85 years old, would have been 88 by the time the next congressional term ended, so it was definitely time for her to think about retirement.

Pelosi will be missed, of course, and will go down in American political history as one of the strongest and most effective speakers of the House ever. The only question remaining is whether her daughter Christine will attempt to run for her mother's seat, which would not just continue the Pelosi dynasty, but continue a political dynasty that reaches back to her father, Thomas D'Alesandro in Baltimore, Maryland. But whomever takes Pelosi's seat will have some awfully big stiletto heels to step into (so to speak).

Also worth an Honorable Mention is Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who has done a fairly admirable job of holding his caucus together throughout the government shutdown, and today countered Republicans with an offer to solve the crisis with his own plan (which would extend the Obamacare subsidies for another year, among other things). Schumer isn't the most animated politician around, but he has done a good job leading the Democrats through this whole crisis and deserves recognition for that alone.

But our Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week goes to all the big winners of this week's off-off-year elections: New Jersey Governor-Elect Mikie Sherrill (who beat expectations that it would be a close race and won by an impressive 13 points), Virginia Governor-Elect Abigail Spanberger (who also chalked up a better-than-expected 14-point victory), and of course New York City Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani (who got just over 50 percent, so he can claim a solid mandate from the voters). California Governor Gavin Newsom wasn't on the ballot himself in the Golden State, but his brainchild ballot initiative to redistrict the state to counter Texas doing so mid-decade passed in an absolute landslide, so he deserves the award for taking the political risk (and for levelling the playing field in a big way for the midterm House races).

Democrats had a great night Tuesday. It was a blowout all around. They improved their margins from past elections (both the 2024 presidential election and the past gubernatorial elections) in dramatic ways -- especially (in New Jersey) among Latinos. This is what is putting the wind at all other Democrats' backs, heading into the midterm campaign season.

Well done all around, with a shoutout to every voter everywhere who was part of such a spectacular Election Day for Democrats. For the first time in a year, a shining ray of optimism is beaming down on the Democratic Party once again. It's hard to even overstate how meaningful that is and is going to be for the next year.

[It'd probably be best to wait until all of these folks are sworn into office, so you can congratulate them on their new official webpages, to let them know you appreciate their efforts. Or you can look up their campaign sites (which we do not link to as a general rule here, sorry).]





We have to hand out two Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week awards this week, both for exactly the same reason.

Neither one of New York's senators -- Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand -- wound up endorsing Zohran Mamdani. That is pathetic. Mamdani won the Democratic primary and by doing so routed the comeback attempt of another political dynasty, as he soundly defeated Andrew Cuomo. Then Mamdani went ahead and soundly defeated Cuomo again in the general election.

In doing so, Mamdani energized young voters and disaffected voters and progressive voters in a huge way. He won two-thirds of voters under 45, for example. His campaign centered on some very blue-collar issues, as is evidenced by the impressive victory speech he gave (where he talked about their concerns almost exclusively).

Not to put too fine a point on it, but these are exactly the demographic groups that Democrats need to do better with, if they want to regain power in Washington. So it was indeed pathetic that neither Gillibrand nor Schumer could bring themselves to endorse the nominee of their own party for New York City mayor.

[Contact Senator Chuck Schumer on his Senate contact page, and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand on her Senate contact page, to let them know what you think of their actions.]




Volume 819 (11/7/25)

Some of these talking points are directed not so much at the public as at Democratic politicians. Because with a blowout election at their backs, perhaps a few of them can be convinced that being bold is a lot more effective than being timid. Hey, it's worth a try, right?



It's going to happen anyway...

Sound advice for all Democrats, really.

"You know what? Far too many Democrats are far too afraid of being called a 'socialist' or 'Marxist' or whatever rightwingers use as their go-to demonization word. But it really doesn't matter what Democrats stand for or run on because they are going to do this anyway. You can be timid and hope that the mean ol' Republicans don't call you a name, or you can be bold and support new and creative ideas to help people out, but either way they're still going to call you the same names. So here's an idea -- stop being so afraid of it! If you give voters solid ideas to vote for, they're not going to care what labels the opposition uses, they're going to support you at the ballot box. That's a key takeaway from Tuesday's election."



Universal free child care sounds pretty good

Case in point...

"Democrats should be championing bold ideas that actually help average Americans, and they shouldn't do so in some half-assed incrementalist fashion. Run on universal free child care! It not only worked for Zohran Mamdani, but the entire state of New Mexico just implemented free child care for everyone -- and you know what? The sky did not fall! This is an enormous financial burden for parents everywhere, and lifting that burden will change tens of millions of families' lives for the better. Republicans will say it's too expensive, but they never seem to say that when offering trillions of dollars in tax cuts to rich people, do they? It's just a matter of getting your priorities straight, and for Democrats, removing the burden of having to pay enormous amounts for child care from struggling parents is a much higher priority than saving rich folks some tax money."



Welcome back, Latino voters!

This is already making some Republicans quake in their boots -- and it should.

"You know what the biggest demographic shift was in Tuesday's elections? Latino voters coming back to the Democratic Party. Donald Trump managed to convince a lot of Latinos to vote for him last time around, but a whole bunch of them are disgusted with what he's done in office. Trump said he'd fix inflation and price hikes -- and he has only made things worse. He said he'd only deport murderers and rapists and violent criminals, but instead he is rounding up every brown person he can find -- including abuelas and school children and gardeners and mechanics and construction workers who are not criminals at all. And now Latino voters are saying to themselves: 'This is not what we voted for!' Latino voters may very well be the key to winning next year's midterms, so as a Democrat I'd like to say: 'Welcome back!' The Republicans from Trump on down have shown how little they care for you and your families, and how every brown person they see equals some sort of criminal to them. Democrats don't see Latinos this way, which is why so many of them are now having second thoughts."



Trump is making electricity prices soar

Hit this one hard.

"As you and your family see your electricity prices keep going up and up and up, think to yourself which would be the smarter thing to do: build more electricity-generating facilities or build fewer? Because Donald Trump is waging a war on solar and wind energy projects and cancelling them left and right. Why? I have no idea. But you better believe that this is only going to make things worse in the future, because all that generating capacity will not be coming online to help get prices back down. Trump is aiding and abetting a shortage of electrical production for no reason at all. It's really the stupidest possible thing he could do, and you should remember that every time you look at your monthly power bill. Instead of making things better, Trump is actively making the situation worse."



Clueless!

Again, hit Trump hard, because he deserves it so much.

"Donald Trump is trying the old 'Who do you believe, me or your lying eyes?' bit, when it comes to inflation. He keeps insisting that prices have come way down, just like he promised. But he's lying to you! How would he know what paying grocery bills is like? He only learned the word 'groceries' about a year ago, and he still has no clue -- the man has probably never been in a grocery store in his entire life! He has no idea what all his tariffs and trade wars are doing to the price of coffee... or beef... or anything else families have to buy to survive. Every time he swears that prices are way, way down he just proves how clueless and out of touch he truly is. So you know what? I'm going to believe my own eyes at the checkout stand instead of listening to Trump's lies -- because he either just does not know what the reality is for people like you and me, or he just doesn't care."



Trump sinking in the polls

This one is specifically designed to make other Republicans worry.

"It's no wonder that Donald Trump is sinking in the polls. His job approval rating is dipping below 40 percent in poll after poll, and that's not even the worst of his numbers. He's below water on just about every individual issue there is -- even immigration. And now fully two-thirds of Americans disapprove of how he is making inflation worse. Trump keeps insisting that the fantasyland in his head is true -- where his poll numbers are 'higher than ever' -- but in the real world more and more people are turning away from him in disgust. Sooner or later other Republican politicians are going to have a choice to make: either tie yourself to Trump's sinking approval ratings, or flee the sinking ship and start standing up to Trump -- for their own political survival."



Point-blank range!

And we saved the best one for last....

"Did you see that the 'sandwich guy' was found not guilty this week? Trump's Justice Department is being run by people who play lawyers on television, and that's going about as well as you'd expect it to. A man protesting the militarization of the streets of Washington D.C. by throwing his salami sandwich at one of the full-battle-gear federal agents had his trial this week. The Justice Department raided his apartment with a huge 20-person goon squad -- which was totally unnecessary and only happened to make a video so Trump could brag about it -- and then the made-for-teevee federal attorney tried to convince a grand jury to bring him up on felony assault charges. They refused to. So they brought him up on misdemeanor charges instead. During his trial the Justice Department laughably said they were prosecuting him because 'he was recorded throwing a sandwich at a federal officer at point-blank range.' A sandwich! I had no idea there was such a thing as 'point-blank range' for a sandwich, did you? Thankfully, the jury in the trail quickly brought back a strong 'not guilty' verdict, and the sandwich guy went free. The entire episode was nothing more than a bad episode of the Keystone Kops, folks. And a gigantic waste of your tax dollars, to boot."




Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com

October 25, 2025

Friday Talking Points -- Ballroom Blitz

So, let's review, shall we? Last weekend, seven million Americans took to the streets to protest Donald Trump, in the biggest political protest this country has ever seen. The theme of the protest was: "No Kings!" So this week, Trump responded by acting in what can only be described as kingly fashion, in as many ways as he could dream up -- including a rushed demolition of one-third of the White House, without consulting anyone or even attempting to get anyone's permission. He sent the demolition crews in, and within a few days the entire East Wing was nothing more than a pile of rubble. All because a royal decree had been issued.

Trump also demanded $230 million in personal tribute money, to be paid to him by the Department of Justice, using (of course) taxpayer dollars. The reason the public should hand him almost a quarter-billion dollars? Because his feelings were hurt when the justice system tried to hold him accountable for his many crimes. So now, according to the king, the public must pay fealty to him in a very tangible way.

Meanwhile, a U.S. aircraft carrier is heading to the Caribbean, so that Trump can kill whomever he wishes with more ease. Think that's an overstatement? Think only a king would do something like that? Here is Trump, after being asked whether he was going to ask Congress to approve of such actions: "I think we're just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country, OK? We're going to kill them, you know? They're going to be like, dead."

Oh, and the Marines apparently shelled Interstate 5 in California, while putting on a big show for the vice president. Coincidence?

In trade news, Trump hit the ceiling when a Canadian politician dared to run an ad in America criticizing tariffs, using clips from an old speech by Ronald Reagan. So Trump immediately declared he had halted all trade negotiations with Canada.

That's all just from the past week, mind you. There are plenty of other examples of Trump's royal inclinations, but at least a few of these must have been spurred by the fact that seven million Americans took to the streets to protest what he is doing to our country. The best commentary that we read on the protests (and Trump's regal offenses) reached back to our own founding document, the Declaration of Independence. The document was, for the most part, a huge list of reasons why Americans had decided to break ties with their sovereign. It listed all the complaints we had, in very specific terms. And more than a few of them ring true today:

Not to mention destroying one-third of "The People's House" without any permission at all. With apologies to the rock band Sweet, this "ballroom blitz" took everyone by surprise ("It's, it's a ballroom blitz!" ). Previously, Trump had sworn that his plans for a new ballroom would not even touch the existing White House structure. There would be no damage or changes to the building at all, he promised. This week, however, the demolition machines appeared without warning and starting ripping down the East Wing. At first, it was just reported that "the facade" would be torn down, but within days it was revealed that the entire East Wing had been completely destroyed -- reduced to a pile of rubble. Congress was not consulted, and neither were any of the groups who are supposed to approve changes to federal building or are interested in preservation of historic Washington architecture. Trump just decided to rip it down before anyone could stop him. He was obviously embarrassed about it, since the White House took pains to block any possible sightline to the destruction, to limit the scenes from appearing on the news.

Trump then announced that the pricetag for his palatial palace of tackiness had risen to $300 million, but (not to worry!) there had been plenty of people and companies willing to offer him tribute money to cover the costs. They even released a list of donors, which included some very familiar corporate names, including: Amazon, Apple, Comcast, Google, HP, Meta, Microsoft, T-Mobile, and even (for some reason) Hard Rock International. These are the corporate titans who are financing this destruction and desecration of the White House, folks.

The new ballroom will occupy a stunning 90,000 square feet -- much bigger than the footprint of the White House itself. It will loom over the entire complex, and the interior is just as tasteless and kitschy and tacky as you would imagine, since Trump approved it all. Everything will be gold-plated, of course. So that Trump can hold parties for 999 of his closest friends.

Our initial reaction to this behemoth was to dearly hope that the next Democrat who runs for president makes a campaign promise to tear this palace of tastelessness down and to restore the East Wing to its previous sedate existence. Tear down the giant new flagpoles, too, while you're at it. And strip the walls of the Oval Office of all that gold bric-a-brac, since America was founded specifically against kings in palaces.

One can dream, right?

Getting back to the protest rallies and marches from last weekend, though. While the Republicans tried to smear the entire effort as "Hate America" rallies, there was no violence or disruption, and the people who attended were fiercely defending the America they saw being dismantled before their eyes. As Bernie Sanders said in a speech to the Washington rally, the attendees weren't there because they hated America, but because they love America.

Trump, true to form, responded by posting a disgustingly scatological fake video of him, wearing a crown (because why not?), flying a military jet, and bombing the protesters with crap. He has sunk to the level of basic primatology, because apes and monkeys will often express their displeasure by flinging their own poo in a blind rage. Which was literally what that video depicted -- the president of the United States of America taking a big ol' dump on citizens who had the temerity to protest him. Such is the world we now live in, folks.

On the world stage, Trump went through a bout of flip-floppiness that was so abrupt it caused whiplash. Last week, Trump mused about providing Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine to strike deep into Russian territory, then Vladimir Putin called Trump up and talked him out of it, one day before he met with the Ukrainian leader (who was mightily hoping for those Tomahawks). Trump, acting on Putin's orders, denied the missiles to Volodymyr Zelenskyy, because Putin had dangled another summit meeting in front of Trump. This week, Putin bombed a preschool in Ukraine and informed the White House that he was simply not interested in the ceasefire proposal Trump was now pushing, so the summit plans fell apart. Trump then completely reversed course and instituted the first sanctions (on two of Russia's biggest oil companies) that he has in his entire nine months in office. But (alas!) Zelenskyy still didn't get any Tomahawks.

In other foreign policy news, Trump has now flown off to a tour of Asia, where the hope is he will meet with China's leader and somehow fend off the escalation in the trade war we're having with them. Trump has threatened a new 100 percent tariff on Chinese goods, but who knows whether he'll follow through on the threat or not?

One group of Americans who would like to see the trade war resolved (even partially) are soybean farmers. Democrats have a real opportunity here, because Trump seems to be going out of his way to annoy a whole bunch of people who faithfully voted for him. He bailed out Argentina to the tune of $20 billion, but so far has yet to bail out any American farmers. This is galling, since China is now refusing to buy any American soybeans, so Argentina lowered its own trade barriers so that China could buy up their entire crop of soybeans. This, understandably, has left some American farmers seriously annoyed. And now Trump has announced he will be massively increasing the importation of beef from Argentina, since beef prices have skyrocketed for American consumers. This is a slap in the face to all the ranchers who voted for Trump. As I said, this leaves a clear opening for Democrats out in rural America, if they are smart enough to take it.

Let's see... what else has been happening? The government shutdown continues with no end in sight, and the speaker of the House continues to refuse to allow his chamber to meet, even though there is no rule or law preventing them from doing so (they're all still getting paid, it bears mentioning).

Obamacare insurance premium price hikes are starting to be published, and if the Democrats don't win the shutdown battle and restore the expanded subsidies, millions of families are going to be priced out of the marketplace.

FEMA has quietly been refusing to provide aid to disaster-struck areas, including those with plenty of Trump voters (such as North Carolina and Western Maryland). This likely won't become big news until a major disaster hits America and FEMA completely falls down on the job, but the warning signs are there for anyone paying attention. Speaking of paying attention, even though the government stopped tracking the data (since according to Trump, it's not a problem) but climate change continues to threaten us all -- through the first six months of this year, disasters caused more than $100 billion damage, which is the most expensive start to any year on record.

Trump used his pardon power to free two buddies this week, a crypto criminal and none other than George Santos -- because (as Trump explained) he always voted Republican. Trump commuted both the sentence Santos had been serving and any requirement to pay back the victims he scammed.

A Republican Vermont state senator finally resigned, after being caught on an extremely racist chat with a bunch of other Republicans. Even better news was that a Trump nominee had to withdraw from consideration because of his own racist "Nazi streak" (his words) and this proved to be too much for even the sycophantic Republican Senate to take.

In other "Republicans actually doing the right thing" news, Indiana will not be redistricting to gerrymander more Republican House seats because there aren't enough votes in the legislature to do so (despite it being overwhelmingly Republican).

But that's enough of a wrap-up for this week, instead let's move right along to the awards section of the program, shall we?





If we had an award for a "not very impressive" Democrat, this week House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries would have won it. He finally (finally!) gave his half-hearted endorsement to the Democratic nominee in the New York City mayor's race, Zohran Mamdani. But he waited until the absolute last minute to do so (just before early voting begins), and it wasn't exactly a ringing endorsement of Mamdani. Maybe it'll help him defeat Andrew Cuomo, but Mamdani looks on track to do that anyway. So we have nothing but an ironic slow-clap for Jeffries this week.

We do have a few Honorable Mention awards to hand out this week, though:

To California Governor Gavin Newsom, for his latest "get under Trump's skin" gimmick -- he says he's going to send signed kneepads to all the CEOs of corporations and leaders of prestigious universities who have "bent the knee" to Trump.

To the Virginia legislature's Democrats, for pushing a new measure to redistrict the state to provide more safe seats for Democrats, in response to all the redistricting red states are doing.

To both the attorney general of Arizona and to Representative-Elect Adelita Grijalva, who have filed a joint lawsuit against House Speaker Mike Johnson, to try to force him to swear her in and let her take her duly-elected seat. Johnson has refused to do so for over a month now, so Grijalva is suing to either force him to swear her in or allow her to be sworn in by any judge anywhere, so she can assume the office the voters in her district elected her to.

And to former President Barack Obama, who -- even though he has been fighting to make redistricting fairer and nonpartisan for years -- this week endorsed the Proposition 50 effort in California and cut an ad urging California voters to vote for it. Desperate times call for desperate measures is essentially Obama's message in the ad, and we couldn't agree more at this point.

But we have to give the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award to every single one of the seven million people who turned out last weekend to show their displeasure with King Donald. Never in the history of this country have more people taken to the streets in protest, or "to petition their government for redress of grievances."

It is heartening to know that so many Americans are not just outraged by what Trump has been doing but so outraged that they showed up to send the message in person. We have no doubt that these protests will continue (although probably not until the weather warms next spring), and they are an important indicator that Trump is a very unpopular president, no matter how much he deludes himself to the contrary.

The best thing about the events was that they were universally peaceful demonstrations. This is important, because Republicans tried to paint the whole thing as some sort of violent "hate America" uprising, but the reality was far different. As all of America could see. So to each and every person who made the effort and stood up for what they believed, please share this group Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award, with our gratitude.





Sadly, this one was an easy call.

A Democratic candidate (who is an ex-Marine) in the running to unseat Senator Susan Collins of Maine had to do some serious damage control this week, after it was revealed that he had a tattoo on his chest of an abhorrent Nazi image.

Here's the basic story, from Slate (note: emphasis in original):



Good question. Platner has now done so -- he has altered the tattoo to now display a Celtic knot instead. But the tattoo wasn't the only scandal he faced this week, as several very questionable old internet postings were also released to the media.

We will see if the voters of Maine choose to accept his explanations and apologies, but for now at the very least Graham Palmer deserves this week's Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week award.

[Graham Platner is a private citizen, and it is our blanket policy not to link to campaign websites, so you'll have to seek our his contact information yourself if you'd like to let him know what you think of his actions.]




Volume 818 (10/24/25)

Before we begin, we have a quick program note. Next Friday is All Hallows' Eve.

Now, we can't actually promise that we're going to go out and carve pumpkins and write new tales of horror from right and left, but we do promise we will be celebrating Hallowe'en in some fashion or another, which will pre-empt next week's Talking Points column, just to warn everyone in advance.



Where is the outrage?

Democrats don't quite have the equivalent of Fox News and the rightwing media echo chamber, but even so -- where is the outrage? Where are the Democrats who will express their anger authentically? Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries don't quite fill this bill, but you'd expect more from at least some Democrats.

"Let's just imagine for one tiny moment what the Republicans would have said if Barack Obama had -- without consulting anyone, without asking any permission at all -- just torn down one-third of the White House. Can you even imagine the apoplexy? Can you imagine the scathing language Republicans would have used to condemn Obama? So where is the outrage from Democrats over the travesty that just happened? Every Republican I have seen on the news has meekly approved of what Donald Trump just did to desecrate The People's House, but they need some serious pushback and they need it now. In fact, I would highly suggest that any Democrat who is now considering running for president in 2028 get out there and vent their anger to any news outlet they can find. Our party needs a new litmus test -- the 2028 candidate should have to pledge to tear down the Trump monstrosity and rebuild the East Wing back to something the people of America can be proud of. I don't know about you, but I'm not willing to vote for any candidate who doesn't make such a promise, personally."



J'accuse!

Let's just make sure we also lay the blame squarely where it belongs.

"Trump says his ballroom will be entirely paid for by donors, and he even helpfully released a list of them. So if you are disgusted by this desecration of the White House, now you know precisely who is to blame. Consumers should make their disgust known by writing to the CEOs of these companies -- which include: Amazon, Apple, Comcast, Google, HP, Meta, Microsoft, and T-Mobile -- and let them know you do not appreciate them bending the knee to Trump and handing over millions upon millions of dollars so he could destroy one-third of the White House. Without such craven behavior by these corporations, this might not have even been possible for Trump to do. But because they all just threw money at Trump, there's a big ugly pile of rubble where the East Wing of the White House used to be. For shame!"



Inflation heads up again

Don't forget to keep banging this drum, because it is what voters care about more than anything else.

"Remember what Trump actually got elected promising to do? Because it sure wasn't 'bomb some boats in the Caribbean and destroy a major part of the White House.' While Trump distracts everyone, the official inflation rate went up to three percent. And that's if we can even trust such a number, after Trump got so petulant about economic numbers he didn't like that he fired the head of the bureau that produces them. I don't know about you, but it feels like prices have gone up a lot more than three percent this year -- after Trump took office and started a trade war with the rest of the planet. Have you bought beef recently? Or coffee? Or back-to-school supplies for your kids? Those prices are all up a whole lot more than three points, that's for sure. So whatever Trump is doing to distract us all, the real question that he needs to be asked is: 'When are you going to do something about inflation?' Personally, I don't think he's got an answer to that one."



There is not enough money for you

This one's a two-fer. We found these quotes in an article up on HuffPost and couldn't decide which one we liked better, so we're just going to run both of them. They both link the bailout money to other issues quite well. The first one is from Senator Jeanne Shaheen:



And the second one is from Senator Brian Schatz:





Is this what you voted for?

Or you could make a more direct case, to rural Trump supporters.

"Donald Trump is sending $20 billion to Argentina to bail out their struggling economy. Why? Because he's buddies with the leader of the country. He also allowed Argentina to drop all their tariffs and sell their entire soybean crop to China, because China is refusing to buy any American soybeans. Trump also just announced he'd be importing a whole lot of beef from Argentina as well. Is this really what American farmers and ranchers voted for? Trump hasn't lifted a finger to bail out any American farmers who are getting slammed by his tariffs and his global trade war. He hasn't provided $20 billion to farmers here at home. Is that really 'America first'? I mean, I know a lot of farmers, but not one of them is willing to say 'Yes, this is what I voted for -- to bankrupt American farmers while bailing out some foreign country who is a direct competitor to our farmers and ranchers.' Because this is not what they voted for, plain and simple."



No dick-tators

This had to have been the most egregious arrest at any of the No Kings! rallies, which is why it deserves a mention.

"Three police officers in Alabama tackled a 61-year-old woman who was not being violent in any way but merely exercising her First Amendment rights to protest Donald Trump last weekend. Her crime, according to the police? 'Disorderly conduct and resisting arrest.' The video of it is worth watching, though, because it shows the real reason the cops took her down: she was dressed in a giant penis costume, and holding a sign that said 'No dick-tator.' According to the police, this was 'deemed obscene in a public setting.' That's amusing, since Donald Trump does things that are more obscene on a daily basis -- just take a look at his video response to the No Kings! protests. Seeing a giant dick on the side of the road is no worse than being subjected to one behind the desk of the Oval Office, as far as I am concerned."



Couldn't have picked a better piece of music if I tried....

This one wasn't at the rallies, but rather stemmed from a one-man protest of the militarization of the streets of America.

"A man is suing the Ohio National Guard and D.C. police after he was handcuffed and detained for having the temerity to play a piece of music on his phone while walking behind some of the soldiers who now patrol Washington D.C. streets. The man pulled out his phone and set it to play 'The Imperial March' from the Star Wars franchise -- which is better known as 'Darth Vader's Theme.' The soldiers warned him to stop, which he refused to -- why should he, since he was merely exercising his First Amendment rights? He was then tightly handcuffed and detained, before being released. Even so, his constitutional rights were clearly violated and I hope he wins his court case. I would also hope that this becomes a meme and thousands of other people start playing exactly the same tune whenever they see soldiers on American city streets. Because for the life of me, I couldn't have picked a better piece of music if I had tried...."




Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com

October 18, 2025

Friday Talking Points -- No Kings!

Tomorrow could be the biggest day of mass protest America has ever experienced. The "No Kings" rallies planned for Saturday could, collectively, add up to more than the five million who turned out earlier this year for the same reason: to protest that America was founded on the idea that we do not want to be ruled by a king who holds himself above the law, but instead by laws that all people -- even the country's highest leaders -- have to follow. That's a pretty basic premise, really. And the organizers of the rallies have reportedly gotten a much larger signup than occurred at their earlier rally, so the signs are pointing to tomorrow breaking records as well. There will be over 2,500 locations of these rallies across all 50 states, so go to their site and check out where the closest one to you is!

The funniest commentary about this protest movement we have yet seen came in the form of a political cartoon. It shows the bottom of the Declaration of Independence, with John Hancock and all the rest of the signatures, and it has a small caption at the bottom which reads: "NO KINGS PROTEST (original version)" -- which sums it all up very nicely. America was founded on the concept of "no kings."

Of course, that's not what Republicans are saying about the movement. They latched onto the talking point that the protests will be a "hate-America rally." Maybe they are unaware of the country's founding history? One can only surmise....

Some Republicans are even echoing Donald Trump's paranoid thinking that any rally from the left can only be due to all the participants somehow being "paid agitators." In their paranoid minds, George Soros is somewhere signing checks for each and every one of the millions of Americans who will show up, since (as far as they are concerned) that is the only reason anyone would bother to protest Donald Trump. The ridiculousness of this is patently obvious to anyone outside the rightwing echo chamber that is Fox News (and all its even-farther-right imitators).

Since Republicans started their "hate-America rally" demonization, signups for the rallies (which are not necessary -- anyone can show up and will be welcomed, it is worth pointing out) have reportedly doubled -- meaning the entire smear effort from the GOP has already spectacularly backfired. All it did was to provide a whole bunch of free media exposure for the rallies, and spread the word that they will be happening.

In reality, of course, there are indeed millions upon millions of Americans who are disgusted and angry at seeing American democracy being dismantled before their very eyes, on a daily basis. No monetary enticement is needed for these people to exercise their First Amendment rights to use their freedom of speech to "peaceably assemble and petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

What Donald Trump is doing to this country is not only unprecedented, it is dangerous. Cleaning up this mess is going to be a Herculean task, on the order of cleaning all the horsepoop out of the Augean stables. Governmental departments and programs are going to have to be painstakingly rebuilt, person by person. The loss of esteem and prestige worldwide is going to take a long time to counter. The politics of hatred and division that Trump has wielded so successfully is going to have to be overcome. Healing and reconciliation is not going to happen overnight. We've all got a very long road ahead of us, in other words.

But the first steps on that road are to get out there and raise your voices in protest so they can be heard loud and clear. We have to show America and the rest of the world that not everyone here agrees with our continuing slide into authoritarianism. We have to loudly denounce morphing the American democratic experiment from the intent of the Founders into a personality cult slavishly devoted to one single man. Or, to put it more succinctly: No kings! Not here! No way! If millions upon millions of people show up with this simple message, it will be a profound political statement.

Tomorrow's protest isn't the only one that has been happening spontaneously around the country. Signs have appeared in Washington D.C. stating "ICE kidnapping happened here" (or similar messages). Chicago is fighting back against the militarism Trump has brought to their city. The Pentagon press corps walked out en masse this week, after refusing to sign Pete Hegseth's loyalty oath (even Fox News and other rightwing media outlets didn't sign!). Even coal miners are now protesting Trump, in fact. And Portland, Oregon has come up with perhaps the most brilliant tactic yet: dancing frogs.

No, really! The protesters in Portland have switched from the all-black outfit they used to favor into a much more powerful image: people wearing colorful and zany inflatable costumes portraying frogs. Dancing to the music. Call it the theater of the absurd, writ large. The first person who donned such a costume (and went viral when ICE officers pepper-sprayed him through a vent in the uniform) said that "he did not intend to take back the frog as a political symbol when he bought his $30 costume on Amazon several weeks into the Portland protests." He just wanted to "make the president and the feds look dumb. There was no higher point beyond that, other than I just really like frogs."

But now the idea has grown. It's not just an army of frogs anymore (which happens to be the technical term for a group of the amphibians), but now also includes: rainbow-bedecked unicorns, dinosaurs, squirrels, bears, sharks, ostriches, chickens, cows, raccoons, South Park characters, a capybara, and an entire menagerie of other amusing costumes. Jordy (who for obvious reasons declined to provide a last name), one of the people behind the effort (dubbed "Operation Inflation" ) to provide these costumes for free to any protester willing to don one, summed it up as: "It's the most Portland thing I've ever seen next to the naked bike ride," referencing another amusing Portland tradition (an Emergency Naked Bike Ride was held in protest last weekend and it drew 1,000 people, despite it being 53 degrees out and raining, just for the record).

Pure silliness? Well... yes. But sometimes silliness is precisely what is called for. Because one of the best ways to stand up to a bully (or a leader with dictatorial ambitions) is to make fun of him. Ridicule can be a very powerful tool and a very poignant message, especially when the president is calling your city "war-ravaged." The best response is: "War-ravaged? All I see are dancing frogs...." As we said, the theater of the absurd.

Here is how Pam Bondi, the highest-ranking law enforcement officer in the nation, talks about Portland, by way of contrast:



So much for the First Amendment, as far as Bondi is concerned. If having pre-made political signs that match is some sort of crime, then every single person at every single Republican and Democratic national convention ever held would be in jail. Which is pretty ridiculous. So Bondi threatening to round up and charge "all of these people who are causing this chaos" is a very serious thing. In fact, it is a thing that any American who reveres the U.S. Constitution should get out and loudly protest.

Perhaps in a frog costume. Or maybe a unicorn?

Of course, other things have been happening this week in the world of politics, but we find we don't have the stomach to list them all item-by-item. As just one example of our lack of intestinal fortitude to catalog this stuff, some Young Republicans were exposed this week for using vile and offensive language (which can only be characterized as: racist, homophobic, antisemitic, misogynistic, and homicidally violent) in a group chat that lasted months. Here are just a few examples, to turn your stomach: "I love Hitler," and "Can we fix the showers? Gas chambers don't fit the Hitler aesthetic," and "I'm ready to watch people burn now." There were over 250 of the worst slurs imaginable, as well as plenty of other free-floating bigotry. Rape was referred to as "epic." And these are supposed to be the up-and-coming new leaders of the Republican Party, folks.

But we close today with two instances of personal protest, to return to our theme of the week. The first was an essay written by a former high-ranking ICE official who is downright disgusted at what his former agency has morphed into:



He ends his essay with: "This plan is underway. The question now is if the rest of us will keep pretending this is law and order."

The other essay loudly ringing an alarm bell in protest was from a colonel in the United States Marine Corps who just quit his job in disgust at what his commander in chief and his Pentagon henchmen have been doing to the country's military. This was written in response to the speeches Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth gave to the highest-ranking generals and admirals in the Pentagon a few weeks ago.

He begins by recounting how he swore an oath to defend the Constitution "without mental reservation or purpose of evasion" under five different presidents, starting with Bill Clinton. He points out that each of these had their own failures, but "I continued to serve despite all that because I believed the Constitution brought the country more success than failure, and I believed our presidents took their oaths to it seriously." He then continues: "With President Trump, I no longer believe that.... I could not swear without reservation to follow a commander in chief who seemed so willing to disregard the Constitution."

It is a powerful essay by a man walking away from a career of 24 years of serving this country in uniform. So we end today with his conclusion, which is a powerful statement of protest in its own right:







Um... Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, for winning $1.4 million playing blackjack in Vegas? He's going to donate it all to charity, too, since he really doesn't need the money.

OK, we were just kidding about that, but we had to give at least one Honorable Mention to Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who had the perfect response to the White House press secretary saying that Democrats' "main constituency are made up of Hamas terrorists, illegal aliens and violent criminals." Walz wasn't having any of that sort of nonsense, and replied back on social media:



A little wordy for a No Kings protest sign (unless you are very careful with your layout and lettering), but a nice burn nonetheless.

But we have multiple winners of the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award this week, all for making their protests meaningful and newsworthy at the same time.

The first goes to Ben Cohen (of "Ben and Jerry's" fame) and two artists, Nora Ligorano and Marshall Reese. Ben commissioned a bit of performance art from the two, who have created a series of similar sculptures. They created an installation on the National Mall with an ice sculpture of 5-foot-tall letters spelling out "DEMOCRACY," which spent the day melting in the sunshine. We wrote about this earlier in the week, in case you missed it. This is a brilliant piece of performance art, as visitors to the Mall and the U.S. Capitol could see democracy melting away before their very eyes.

The second goes to Seth Todd, the Portland guy who began the trend of amusing inflatable costumes with his frog outfit. After getting pepper-sprayed for his peaceful protest, he responded: "It tasted like peppermint," and: "I've definitely had spicier tamales." Todd will share the award with "Jordy" and "Brooks," who out of their own pockets rented "75 to 100" inflatable costumes which they then provided to any protester for free. By their actions, all three have completely flipped the script of a "war-ravaged" Portland to making the ICE officers look absolutely ridiculous (as one commenter joked: "I don't know; the rainbow unicorn looks pretty violent" ). Well done! The art of political protest at its finest!

And finally our final MIDOTW award goes to the coalition of groups (including MoveOn, the A.C.L.U., the League of Women Voters, S.E.I.U., and the American Federation of Teachers -- and about 200 more such organizations) who are organizing this mass protest movement behind the scenes.

There is nothing more powerful that millions of people taking to the streets to protest a government gone rogue. As one of the signs at a previous No Kings rally put it: "Tyrants hate dissent."

We strongly encourage everyone to show up tomorrow, at whatever local protest you can find. As Graham Nash said, in one of the best protest songs ever written ("Chicago" ): "No one else can take your place.... We can change the world."

[Once again, here is the link to the No Kings site that allows you to find the nearest protest to wherever you happen to live. "Show your face!"]





It's too important a week for petty nonsense, so we're once again retiring the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week award to the shelf until next week.




Volume 817 (10/17/25)

We are going to dispense with our limit of only seven talking points this week to present a review of our favorite protest signs from the previous No Kings rallies. But before we get to that, we have one talking point in particular to highlight, from Senator Bernie Sanders, who was responding to Mike Johnson's claim that it was all a "hate-America rally." Because, as usual, Bernie put it best:



You tell 'em, Bernie!

Moving right along, we found a few really good sources of photographs of previous No Kings rally signs that are worth checking out if you are planning on attending and are staring at a blank piece of poster board, wondering what to write on it. Or search for "No Kings signs images" to see plenty more good ideas.

This first one wouldn't really work as well tomorrow, but it was worth noting anyway. It referenced the fact that the earlier No Kings rally happened on the same day as Trump's laughable birthday parade of the military through the streets of Washington. This wouldn't be as pertinent without the juxtaposition of the parade and the rally, obviously:



We start with a nod to the guy in Portland who started the craze of the inflatable costumes, who held a sign next to his outfit stating:



Here is the rest of our own list of the signs that caught our eye, either because they were poignant or funny or summed up the rage perfectly, in no particular order:



Two which had the same basic idea:



Here are several that went with a different basic theme:



And finally, two of the ones we liked best. The first assumes you will know the historical reference:



And the second, just because it made us laugh:






Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com

October 11, 2025

Friday Talking Points -- No Prize For Trump

Donald Trump actually achieved something worthwhile this week. A ceasefire deal that will result in all the hostages being released was hammered out between Israel and Hamas, and the guns have gone silent in Gaza. Whether this results in a long-lasting peace deal remain to be seen (there are a lot of details that are still "to be determined" in the deal), but progress has definitely been made. However, Trump did not achieve what he really wanted in all this, as the Nobel Peace Prize was announced today -- for someone else. Maybe he'll be considered next year, but so far the petulance and anger from the MAGA crowd has already begun.

It was impossible not to read between the lines of the Nobel citation, which stated in part:

So at least the Nobel Committee did mention Trump, in a way, since that list seems awfully familiar, these days.

In other news, the government shutdown plowed through its second week, with no end in sight. The Senate won't be back in session until next Tuesday, and the House speaker has said he won't call his chamber back from vacation until the shutdown is over. So far, Democrats seem to still largely be united, but cracks are appearing on the Republican side. None other than Marjorie Taylor Greene broke ranks this week and started making the Democrats' case, since it seems her own family will be affected if the Republicans refuse to extend the Obamacare subsidies that will expire at the end of this year. Here's just some of what she had to say:



Another fractious issue for Republicans is the fact that if they don't act on a standalone funding bill, America's troops are all going to miss a paycheck next week. Democrats tried to move legislation to pay them, but the Republicans blocked it. This has led to a few other Republicans breaking ranks:



Some Republicans are even calling on Mike Johnson to relent and call the House back into session as well.

Johnson isn't just refusing to allow a vote on pay for the troops, he's also refusing to seat a duly-elected Democrat, after she won a special election in Arizona. This is quite likely because she will become the final signature necessary to force a House vote on a bill to release all the Epstein files, which Johnson is strongly against. This led to a shouting match outside his office this week, as the two Democratic senators from Arizona confronted him over the issue (we wrote about this situation earlier this week in more detail).

Today, the Trump administration followed through on its threat to fire as many government workers as possible, which is not required during a shutdown (but Trump doesn't care). All other federal workers were warned that they may not actually get their back pay whenever the shutdown ends as well. As time goes on, the fallout from the shutdown is going to start affecting more and more people in more and more areas, of course. This week we've already seen air traffic controllers deciding it is a fine time to call in sick, which has led to airport towers being completely unstaffed.

Trump's obsession with unleashing retribution on his political enemies continued this week, as James Comey appeared in court (to plead "not guilty" ) while Letitia James was charged with a very dubious mortgage fraud indictment. Stephen Miller summed up exactly what Trump's authoritarian regime is aiming for, saying of Trump's political enemies: "We will not live in fear, but you will live in exile, because the power of law enforcement under President Trump's leadership will be used to find you, will be used to take away your money, take away your power, and if you have broken the law, to take away your freedom." This is banana republic stuff, folks, and it's right out in the open now.

Meanwhile, Trump got dealt a few setbacks in his plans to wage war on Chicago and Portland, Oregon, as two federal judges (one appointed by him!) ruled that Trump had no right to send in National Guard troops to the two cities. Trump initially tried to send the states' own National Guard, but when that didn't work tried an end-run around the judges by sending other states' troops in instead (California National Guard troops in Oregon, and Texas National Guard troops in Illinois). These moves were also blocked by the judges -- but who knows what will happen when the appeals get all the way to the Supreme Court?

The Trump-appointed judge used some pretty scathing language in her ruling:



Trump, frustrated by the federal judges, is now openly musing about perhaps using the Insurrection Act to send in the troops. To American cities. Where no rebellion or insurrection exists.

In Chicago, ICE troops staged a siege on an apartment building that was downright shocking in the tactics that were used:



Got that? Rappelling from a Black Hawk helicopter. To an apartment building. This used to be a country where we condemned such tactics in other countries run by strongmen, but this is Trump's America now.

If Trump truly does want to be in the running for next year's Nobel Peace Prize, the best way to do so would be to stop waging war here at home, just to state the obvious.





As Donald Trump makes moves to occupy Chicago with federal troops, the state's governor has not been shy about fighting back. Which is why Governor JB Pritzker is our Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week this week.

Here's just a sampling of what Pritzker has been saying this week about Donald Trump:



In a separate comment, Pritzker was asked why Trump was sending the National Guard into blue cities. He replied in a similar vein: "Aside from the fact that he's out of his mind and has dementia?" Pritzker also said of Trump this week: "This guy's unhinged, he's insecure. He's a wannabe dictator."

When Trump threatened that both Pritzker and the mayor of Chicago "should be in jail for failing to protect Ice Officers," Pritzker responded: "If you come for my people, you come through me. So come and get me."

Pritzker is pretty obviously considering a run for president in 2028, and from where we sit it seems like he's doing a good job so far. And he issued a call for other Democrats to join him in fighting back:



That's a frightening thing to even contemplate, but Pritzker is right to raise such an alarm. With Trump pitting the military against blue cities, even to the point of using National Guard troops from red states to do so, it certainly isn't that farfetched to think this is all a prelude to seeing this sort of thing all over the place, roughly one year from now.

For sounding the alarm, for calling out Trump in language even he can understand, and for refusing to back down, JB Pritzker is the winner of this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award.

[Congratulate Illinois Governor JB Pritzker on his official contact page, to let him know you appreciate his efforts.]





Some media outlets tried to make a very big deal out of some video clips featuring Katie Porter this week, but both instances (getting testy with a reporter and getting testy with a staffer) seemed more molehill than mountain, at least to us. Porter has pulled out to an early lead in the governor's race in California, but seeing as how the election won't be for over a year, we seriously doubt anyone's going to have this at the top of their minds when voting.

In fact, this week the choice for Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week was pretty easy, sadly enough. The candidate running for attorney general of Virginia, Jay Jones, is the clear winner of the MDDOTW, for a series of texts he sent awhile ago to a Republican colleague. This included calling for the then-leader of the Virginia legislature's lower chamber to be shot in the head, with two bullets.

We wrote about this in detail yesterday, in an article where we called on Jones to withdraw from the race -- even though early voting has begun and it would likely mean the Republican candidate would win. But there are some things that just cannot be forgotten or forgiven, and this seems to be one of them. Not only did Jones state that he would "go to their funerals to piss on their graves" to "send them out awash in something" about his political opponents, he singled one out (Todd Gilbert) in absolutely unacceptable language, saying: "Three people, two bullets: Gilbert, hitler, and pol pot. Gilbert gets two bullets to the head. Spoiler: put Gilbert in the crew with the two worst people you know and he receives both bullets every time."

He also, for good measure, said he wished Gilbert's wife had to watch her own child die in her arms, in order to make Gilbert change his political views.

As we said, this is absolutely unacceptable for any politician, much less one running for the top law enforcement office in the state. Such language should be universally condemned, but a few Democrats are trying to ignore it and move on, since they really want Jones to win his election.

This is reprehensible. Jones should drop out of the race, period. For now, we are doing what we can to urge him to do so by handing him the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week award.

[We do not, as a rule, link to candidates' websites, so you'll have to search for contact information for Jay Jones on your own, if you'd like to let him know what you think, sorry.]




Volume 816 (10/10/25)

We have a very mixed bag of talking points this week. As always, use responsibly!




Social Security disability payments to be cut?

This one flew under the radar this week, but it deserves to be talked about.

"Donald Trump apparently wants to cut Social Security funds for disabled Americans. Hundreds of thousands of disabled Americans would lose their access to benefits under this plan, which makes me wonder why nobody seems to be talking about it. People should be outraged that Trump is trying to save money by cutting funding to the most vulnerable people in the country! This is beyond heartless, it is just cruel. Democrats need to fight this move with everything they've got, and make sure people know what Trump is planning on doing. Most Americans would be outraged if they knew about this plan, and we will fight Trump to make sure elderly disabled people don't see their incomes drastically reduced."



Comedy special?

This needs a correction, obviously.

"Speaker Mike Johnson apparently wanted to try his hand at stand-up comedy this week, when he said during an interview: 'Let me look right into the camera and tell you clearly: Republicans are the ones concerned about healthcare. Republicans are the party working around the clock to fix healthcare.' This is pretty laughable, you've got to admit. Here, Mike, let me fix that for you: 'Republicans are the party working around the clock to make healthcare more expensive for all and much harder to obtain.' Because to suggest otherwise is nothing more than a bad joke."



Speaking of healthcare...

Questions should be asked.

"Remember when Republicans were in a tizzy over Joe Biden's medical problems? And how they declared that anyone in his administration who saw any signs of decline in Biden should have told the public about it? Well, I'd like to hear what those around Donald Trump have to say now about his mental and physical fitness, personally. Why is Trump going in for a second 'annual' checkup in one year's time? What's the problem? Of course, if Trump were suffering from dementia it'd be hard to tell the difference, since he has always had problems with the English language and completing a coherent thought, but if he's getting worse then the American people deserve to know about it."



Yeah, that'll solve the problem!

Fire them all! That's the ticket!

"America has a serious shortage of air traffic controllers, which stretches back decades. The people who do this critical work are understaffed and overworked already. During the government shutdown, many have been calling in sick. Already some air traffic control towers have had to shut down because there's no one to do the job. So the secretary of Transportation had a brilliant idea -- he's just going to fire all the 'problem children' (his words) because 'I can't have people not showing up to work.' Because that'll fix the staffing shortage problems! Sure! Just fire a bunch of them, and everything will be fine, as far as Sean Duffy is concerned. He seems blissfully unaware of the fact that doing so would make the problem a lot worse, not better."



Farm bailout delayed

This is becoming a bigger and bigger problem by the day, even if the media aren't covering it all that much.

"America's farmers are hurting because of Trump's trade war. With all the tariffs Trump has imposed, countries are no longer interested in buying what America's farmers grow. A massive wave of farm bankruptcies is just around the corner, in fact. So Trump is going to take taxpayer money and use it to bail the farmers out, to fix a problem that he created. He was all set to make a big announcement about it this week, but couldn't because the government is still shut down. Whenever it happens, though, please remember two things -- this wouldn't have been necessary if Trump hadn't started his trade war, and bailouts aren't going to be enough to save every farmer in the country. Some will have to sell their family farm, because Trump plays politics with their livelihoods."



Make Argentina great again!

This one grates, for soybean farmers.

"I'm sorry, but I seem to have missed Donald Trump running on the slogan 'Make Argentina great again!' -- does anyone else remember when he would yell this at his rallies? Well, whether he said it or not, that's what he is attempting to do, to the tune of $20 billion in American taxpayers' money. He's just forking out that enormous amount of cash to Argentina, even though their farmers are doing great because now China is buying all their soybeans from them, not America. So it's really a double-whammy for American farmers. Not only has their main customer disappeared, but Trump is helping Argentinian farmers sell their soybean crop to China. Which is why I must have missed it when Trump used 'Make Argentina great again' as a rallying cry."



Make China great again!

Don't recall this slogan being used, either.

"Everything Trump has done that makes America smaller and less respected on the world stage seems to wind up helping China. Trump wages war on solar panels and wind energy and electric cars, which cripples those industries here while China benefits by growing their world market share in these industries of the future. Trump's trade war with China means more and more countries want to trade with them -- tariff-free -- and increasingly see the United States as an unreliable partner. Crippling solar and wind is also driving up energy prices here, which helps China as they try to take the lead in the emerging technology of artificial intelligence. China leads the world in robotic tech, while Trump wages an ideological war on America's top universities and makes it harder and harder for foreign students to study here and then work for American companies. China is more than willing to take up this slack, too. While Trump is destroying American competitiveness, China just laughs and laughs. Because in the end, what Trump is doing is nothing short of making China great again."




Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com

October 4, 2025

Friday Talking Points -- Democrats Holding Firm, For Now

Normally, on a Friday following the end of a month, we would all be talking about the new jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics right about now. We can't do that today, because the report didn't appear on schedule. This was due to the government being shut down, of course.

Economists who closely watch such things (and track them using their own data) weren't expecting the numbers to be very good:

Hopefully, the official numbers will eventually be released, when the shutdown ends. And for the time being, they can probably still be trusted. Donald Trump threw a tantrum earlier this year when a bad jobs report was released and fired the head of the B.L.S., but his pick to run the bureau had to be confirmed by the Senate, so the acting head is now still a B.L.S. employee with experience who essentially got a temporary promotion to the top spot. And there was some other good news on this front this week, as Trump decided to pull his initial nominee from consideration, likely after Republican senators balked at confirming him due to his lack of experience (to say nothing of his ideological bias).

But of course this is all a sideshow to the main political story of the week, which was the shutdown itself. Senate Democrats, after being roundly criticized earlier this year for allowing Republicans to pass a continuing resolution to keep funding the government without getting anything in return, are showing some fight this time around. Unlike back then, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is digging in his heels and is in complete agreement with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (who had argued for a shutdown in the earlier confrontation). They worked together to create a strategy and they have been uniting their Democratic caucuses to an admirable degree in the standoff.

The stakes they chose -- the line in the sand for them -- was healthcare. Specifically, preventing people from losing their healthcare due to Republicans slashing funding for it. This is pretty solid ground for Democrats, as it is an issue that the public trusts Democrats a whole lot more than Republicans (for obvious reasons). Their initial demand had two big parts to it: extending higher Obamacare subsidies past the first of January (when they will expire, if Congress does nothing), and reversing the Republican plan to slash Medicaid spending by a trillion dollars (which was passed in their big, ugly GOP budget bill earlier this year).

These are both reasonable things to demand, since achieving these goals would mean 15 million Americans will not be kicked off Medicaid, and people who buy health insurance on the Obamacare exchanges won't see their premiums go up by 75 or 100 percent (or even more) when the new year dawns.

There are some who are second-guessing this strategy, bemoaning the fact that Democrats didn't pick a different set of issues to fight for. Trump is trampling on the Constitution in all kinds of seriously offensive and dangerous ways, they say, so Democrats should have fought back on some of it. However, doing so would have seriously lessened the chances of any kind of successful outcome, since it is virtually impossible to picture Democrats getting some sort of bill passed reining in Trump's dictatorial impulses through both Republican-controlled chambers of Congress. Even if that impossibility somehow came to pass, there is precisely zero chance that Trump would either sign such a bill or abide by it. It would be a losing battle for Democrats all around.

Instead, they chose an issue that even some Republicans will likely wind up supporting. The massive premium hikes due next year have been worrying vulnerable Republicans in swing districts, because they know that voters who see their health insurance rates go through the roof may very well blame them at the ballot box next November in the midterm elections. These Republicans have already proposed fixing the problem in some vague way, but without coming to any agreement on how to go about doing so or producing any legislative language or bill. With the clock ticking and insurance companies about to set new rates (at the beginning of November), there is a real urgency to tackle the issue now.

Personally, though, we think reversing the Medicaid cuts is going to be too big an ask, at least at this point. It would mean adding a trillion dollars of spending, instead of a few hundred billion, for one. And the Medicaid cuts are not as immediate, since they were designed to all take place after the midterm elections.

As with any shutdown crisis, the blame game is the important thing to the politicians. So far, it appears Democrats are winning with the public. The Washington Post released a poll showing that while 30 percent of the public blames "Democrats in Congress" for the shutdown, a much higher 47 percent lays the blame at the feet of "Trump and Republicans in Congress."

The Republicans are kind of all over the map on their spin on the shutdown. The White House has gone full-on racist (no surprise there) by just flat-out lying. JD Vance is claiming that Democrats have shut the government down to demand that "$1 trillion" be spent giving "free health care" to "illegal aliens." This is laughably wrong -- it's not even on the same planet as the truth. Undocumented immigrants are barred from being enrolled in Medicaid or signing up for insurance through Obamacare, and what the Democrats are fighting for would not change that in any way at all, period.

But the Vance and Trump simply don't care. They are not just lying about the issue, they are also putting out A.I.-generated deepfake videos that can only be described as offensive and racist, showing Hakeem Jeffries in a giant cartoon sombrero with a cartoon moustache (and mariachi music playing in the background, for good measure). When called on this, Vance excused it by saying Trump was just "joking" and "we're having a good time." Vance then doubled down on the racism:



So what's next, JD? A new cartoon of Jeffries as Little Black Sambo? The only thing believable in that statement is: "I honestly don't even know" what "racist" means. That much, we can believe.

For good measure, the White House put their racist caricatures on an endless loop playing on all the television screens in the White House press office.

Please remember, this is racism based on a complete lie.

But back to the shutdown. Trump is gleefully threatening to make the shutdown as painful as possible -- for Democrats only. He is threatening to fire massive amounts of federal workers, while cancelling funding for projects in blue states. Various branches of the government seem to be blatantly violating (or at least openly defying) the Hatch Act by changing their websites and/or email boilerplate to specifically blame "Radical Left Democrats" for the shutdown.

So far, at least, Trump's threats of massive layoffs have not materialized. This could be due to pushback from the people running the agencies of the federal government, or it could be a legal hurdle that is standing in their way (offering severance pay to an employee while firing them is not authorized during a shutdown, since it counts as new spending). Either way, the threats have shrunk (the current threat is only to fire 16,000 people, which is way down from what the initial threats were).

As with all government shutdowns, the longer it goes on the more people are going to feel it, as checks don't go out and money doesn't get spent and people sit at home rather than going to work. Then question, as always, is which side is going to blink first. So far, Democrats are strongly sticking together, and are actually (for once) doing a pretty good job of explaining their position to the public. But as things stand right now, it would only take five Democrats in the Senate to cave to allow the Republicans to end the shutdown on their terms, so we will see. Week Two is going to be a lot more intense than this week, one way or another -- that seems like a pretty safe bet.

One group that is already hurting from all this (and the Trump trade war) is farmers. Half of the Department of Agriculture is on furlough right now, which has meant farmers cannot talk to anyone right in the middle of harvest season. We should mention that we wrote about the plight of farmers under Trump's policies yesterday, if anyone's interested in more details.

In non-shutdown news, the week began by Trump and his telegenic secretary of Defense giving purely political speeches to an unprecedented gathering (called with no warning, just a few days prior) of 800 of the top generals and admirals in the U.S. armed forces. They were yanked in without explanation from their posts around the globe, all so Pete Hegseth could lecture them on grooming standards and call them fat. You just can't make this stuff up, folks.

Trump got wind of the event and shoehorned a speech of his own into it, which was partly just his standard grievance-list ramble, but also ventured into dangerous territory, as he informed the nation's top brass that United States cities should be considered "training ground" for our troops now. He spoke of an "enemy within" the country, which included "civil disturbances." He went on: "That's a war too. It's a war from within.... We should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military." Again, we wrote about this at more length when it happened.

We're also now (according to Trump) officially "at war" with drug cartels. If true (legally-speaking), this would mean that any cartel member could be shot on sight by any member of the U.S. military. To hammer the point home, Trump released video of a fourth known boat being blown to smithereens without warning on the open seas.

One judge issued a ruling this week that was notable, because it so scathingly ripped into what Trump and his henchmen have been doing to foreign college students who are not 100 percent pro-Israel. This includes tactics that can only be described as something you'd expect in a dictatorship, as the Washington Post exposed this week. But back to the judge -- here is what he had to say in his ruling:



This week, even the Pope chimed in by condemning the Trump administration's "inhuman" treatment of immigrants.

But back to legal news -- there was one ray of hope from the Supreme Court this week, as they allowed the Federal Reserve board member to keep her seat until her case that she was wrongfully terminated by Trump is heard (which likely won't happen until next year).

Let's see... what else is going on... Bad Bunny was announced as the halftime performer for the Super Bowl, which caused a whole bunch of MAGA heads to explode in fury.

Donald Trump apparently got taken in by a fake (A.I.-generated) clip of him promising: "Every American will soon receive their own MedBed card." We admit we had to look this up, as we had never heard of it before, but apparently it originated as a QAnon conspiracy theory: "MedBeds" are supposed to be alien (as in "extraterrestrial," instead of how Republicans use that term) technology that can keep Americans alive forever and cure all diseases, and (for good measure) immediately grow back amputated limbs and stuff! Woo hoo! Currently this technology is only being used by the elite, which is why promising "MedBed cards for all" would be big news.

If it weren't so ridiculously laughable, that is. In fact, it was so embarrassing that Trump even deleted the post later that day -- something he almost never does.

And we close on a cheerful note -- three instances of Trump being mercilessly mocked. The first was on the world stage, at a summit of world leaders:



For the record, Albanian and Azerbaijan are over a thousand miles apart. So: no, they weren't at war with each other.

Secondly, some good news has come from the government shutdown -- the "best friends" statue of Donald Trump holding hands with Jeffrey Epstein is back on the National Mall! Even though they had a permit for the art installation, the statue was rudely torn down almost immediately (in the middle of the night) by the cops. Well, the artists finally got the statues back and reapplied for a permit. Because of a loophole in the rules, permits that are stamped as being turned in are automatically granted after 24 hours if they are not explicitly denied by the U.S. Park Service. Because everyone was furloughed, the permit was not denied, so the artists reinstalled the statues on the National Mall. Truly a clever use of the vagaries of a shutdown!

And finally, we mark the passing of primatologist Jane Goodall this week, by doing our bit to make one particular interview with her (from three years ago) go viral.

In it, Goodall is asked to compare video clips of Donald Trump to "chimpanzee aggressive tactics." Goodall responds after watching the clips that she saw "the same sort of behavior as a male chimpanzee will show when he is competing for dominance with another.... They're upright, they swagger, they project themselves as really more large and aggressive than they may actually be in order to intimidate their rivals."

Requiescat In Pace.





We begin with an Honorable Mention this week for someone from the entertainment industry (and no, we do not mean Taylor Swift, sorry...). Here's the story, in case you missed it:



So far over 800 celebrities have signed on to the effort (as of this writing -- that number can be expected to continue growing), including such luminaries as: "Barbra Streisand, Billie Eilish, Ben Stiller, Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Keaton, Natalie Portman, Pedro Pascal, Spike Lee and Whoopi Goldberg."

The original anti-McCarthy group included not only Jane's dad Henry but also stars such as: Lucille Ball, Judy Garland, Humphrey Bogart, Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Ava Gardner, and Katharine Hepburn.

This is how you fight back against authoritarians, folks. We'll have more on this effort later, in the talking points part of the program.

We also should give Honorable Mention awards to both Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer for: being on the same page on the shutdown, formulating a strategy before the crisis actually hit, keeping most Democrats on board with this strategy, and for holding firm all week long. This is a noticeable improvement from what happened earlier this year, and it is a development that millions of Democratic voters have welcomed.

But our winner of this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week was Senator Elizabeth Warren. Warren has been making the rounds of the news media, laying out the Democratic case and (more importantly) pushing back in the strongest possible way against the lies Republicans have been telling.

We're also going to make you wait until the talking points to see why Warren won this week's MIDOTW award, though (sorry).

For now, let's just say Warren is showing other Democrats exactly how they should be pushing back on the moosepoop Republicans have been desperately trying to shovel down the American public's throat.

[Congratulate Senator Elizabeth Warren on her Senate contact page, to let her know you appreciate her efforts.]





Sadly, in the votes that have taken place so far -- Senate Republicans trying to pass their bill to keep the government open without any of the Democratic demands -- there have been two Democratic senators and one Independent (who caucuses with the Democrats) who have already crossed the aisle.

Democrats John Fetterman and Catherine Cortez Masto both voted with the Republicans, as did Maine's Independent Angus King.

There's really not a whole lot else to say. The reason they all deserve the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week award is pretty self-evident.

We should mention, as a footnote, that since Republican Rand Paul voted against the Republican bill (Paul always votes against continuing resolutions, as a general rule), this all means that Republicans still need to entice five more Democratic senators across the aisle (for those keeping score at home).

[Contact Senator John Fetterman on his Senate contact page, Senator Angus King on his Senate contact page, and Senator Catherine Cortez Masto on her Senate contact page, to let them know what you think of their actions.]




Volume 815 (10/3/25)

We're not going to do individual talking points this week, in part because Democrats are (so far) actually doing a pretty good job of explaining their position in the shutdown showdown to the public.

Instead, we wanted to highlight one Democrat for showing exactly how to call out Republicans during an interview, followed by a very dangerous development that didn't get anywhere near the attention it deserved and finishing with a bold call to action from Hollywood.

First, Elizabeth Warren shows Democrats how it should be done. During an interview with CBS yesterday, Warren absolutely "refused to put up with a single second of misinformation" when presented with the Republican argument that somehow Democrats were solely fighting for undocumented immigrants to get "free healthcare." Here's how it began:



The host tried again to spout Republican lies, but Warren wasn't having any of it:



This is the way to fight back against vicious lies: call them lies, immediately and forcefully. Don't use diplomatic language about "falsehoods" or "misrepresentations" or any of the other mealy-mouthed words that (sadly) journalists have adopted so they don't hurt any feelings on the Republican side. Call a lie a lie, instead. More Democrats should adopt this straightforward way of speaking, because it would certainly help them make their case.

And that's before you even get to the subject of the racist videos now being vomited up by the White House.

Speaking of things being vomited up by the White House, the attacks on free speech just keep getting worse. A new document was just rolled out, which is supposed to entice colleges to adopt conservative ideas with the carrot of increased funding. This is so counter to the concept of campuses being able to teach what they want without government interference it is downright disgusting. And it follows Trump extorting colleges across the country to squelch speech that he doesn't approve of, which is even worse. Academic freedom is a big part of free speech, whether Trump likes it or not.

But this wasn't even the worst or most dangerous assaults on free speech from the White House this week. Following up on declaring "Antifa" to be a terrorist organization (when it doesn't even exist as an organization), the White House released a new memo directing the whole federal government to combat what it calls "domestic terrorism" (which doesn't even exist, as a matter of U.S. law). This is a direct assault on any organization which funds any progressive or lefty causes, and is just stunning in how unconstitutional it is. It would tie any speech or funding from such organization with any lone-wolf shooter or protester the administration identifies. This is all an effort to destroy nonprofits that the president doesn't approve of, which is a chilling attack on free speech. Here are a few reactions to this memo:



Don't believe this? Read the memo for yourself and decide. It's pretty egregiously blatant in its anti-free-speech language.

Which brings us to our final item. With all this neo-McCarthyism happening, one group of Americans has decided to fight back, following in the footsteps of those who actually did stand up to Joe McCarthy and his Red Scare.

Jane Fonda's new effort launched this week with an open letter to all, explaining what the group is, where it came from, and what it intends to fight. It is a very strong statement and so we close today by reproducing their statement in full:






Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com

September 27, 2025

Friday Talking Points -- Going Bananas

The United States of America now seems to have officially become a banana republic. That's really the only conclusion one can draw, after the events of the past week (and the past eight months, for good measure).

The president is now openly using the Department of Justice as his own private law firm and police force. They will go after anyone Trump doesn't like, for whatever reason. Donald Trump gave a speech at the United Nations reminiscent of the days of Fidel Castro, where he spent most of the time patting himself on the back. He also told all the other nations on the planet that they were going to Hell. It was so bad one foreign diplomat texted a Washington Post reporter: "This man is stark, raving mad. Do Americans not see how embarrassing this is?"

Well, some of us do. Others, not so much. Over on the right, they were decrying the conspiracy of "sabotage" at the U.N., after Trump's escalator and TelePrompTer malfunctioned. On Fox News, this was called "an insurrection" that demanded a stern response: "What we need to do is either leave the U.N. or we need to bomb it." Which, of course is a very banana republic sort of thing to say.

The brightest news of the week came when a giant media company actually stood up to the Dear Leader and put a late-night comedian back on the airwaves. But the fact that the federal government used mob-boss tactics to have him initially suspended was exactly the sort of thing you'd expect in a country run by a thin-skinned autocrat.

Trump wants to dictate who is allowed on television and what they are allowed to say. If journalists report bad stories about him, "that's really illegal," as far as Trump is concerned. The Pentagon is now attempting to force journalists who work there to sign a loyalty pledge that they won't report on anything except what they are told to report on. Press credentials will be revoked for anyone who gathers any information -- even unclassified -- that isn't contained in a press release. They've already brought back the name "War Department," so we're just a short step away from them granting the title of "generalissimo" to Trump, really. Because that's the sort of thing banana republics do.

Remember when Trump attempted to "solve" the COVID pandemic by just halting all testing? As far as he was concerned, the problem was the news was reporting the numbers (of people infected and people who had died), which were making him look bad (after he began the crisis insisting that the numbers would go to "zero" very quickly). So the answer was obvious -- no testing, no numbers. Problem solved!

Trump didn't succeed in this tactic, back then. But he learned his lesson. The U.S.D.A. has now been ordered to cease publishing their data on hunger in America -- just before all the massive cuts to food stamps passed in the Republicans' big ugly bill start to make everything worse. Because if there's no numbers, then there's no problem, right?

The E.P.A. is ordering its scientists to stop publishing research. Tulsi Gabbard has halted the publication of the "Global Trends" intelligence assessment, since it had the temerity to actually mention climate change as a threat to this country. National parks are removing signs about climate change, slavery, and Japanese detention. They also dismantled a peace vigil across the street from the White House which has existed for decades -- because Trump didn't like it. The Smithsonian museums are also pulling exhibits on slavery.

The State Department is now going to comb through every visa holder's social media, to see whether they said anything bad about Charlie Kirk (a private citizen, not even a member of the government). Anyone who has said anything bad will have their visas cancelled. Meanwhile, the D.E.A. wants to bomb Mexico.

The Department of Justice halted an investigation into Tom Homan -- Trump's "border czar" -- even though he was caught on audio tape accepting a bag with a $50,000 cash bribe in it from an undercover agent. Instead, Trump is leaning hard on the department to go after his enemies. This led to a prosecutor being ousted and one of Trump's personal lawyers being installed, who immediately indicted James Comey. Trump was delighted by all this and is darkly warning that Comey is just the first -- there will be others. He's now threatening big Democratic donors with prosecution for racketeering and terrorism.

This week, a writer who fled Russia to protect his family wrote an article titled: "This Is The Feeling Of Losing A Country. I Know It Well," which contained the best comment we have seen in a while: "President Trump is remaking the country in his image: crude, harsh, gratuitously mean."

The Washington Post reported this week that the head of FEMA was completely incommunicado for the first 24 hours of the recent flooding in Texas, which contributed to a 72-hour delay in getting search and rescue teams on the ground. He was apparently on a vacation with his family. Despite having "top security clearance phones from the White House," he was completely out of touch as the disaster unfolded. The White House had what can only be called an Orwellian response to criticism for this dereliction of duty:

Tell that to the flood victims.

Meanwhile, Trump announced that in his expert medical opinion, pregnant women should stop taking Tylenol. Well, at first he tried to tell them to stop taking acetaminophen, but he couldn't manage to pronounce it (this is at a news conference specifically called to discuss the matter -- it wasn't like some reporter surprised him with the subject or anything). Our Dear Leader had wise words of counsel for everyone while making this announcement: "Nothing bad can happen. It can only good happen. But with Tylenol, don't take it. Don't take it!" If Joe Biden or Barack Obama or any other Democrat under the sun had said: "It can only good happen," it would be the top story on Fox News for weeks on end. But because we are a banana republic now, nobody even blinks at Trump mangling the English language.

A statue appeared on the National Mall this week, part of a series by an anonymous artist (or artists). It was a statue of Donald Trump holding hands with a statue of Jeffrey Epstein. The art installation had a permit, but the park service tore it down in the dead of night (destroying the statues in the process), obviously because the Dear Leader didn't like it.

Pete Hegseth has called a gigantic meeting of all top generals and admirals, but nobody really knows why. Will he demand a loyalty oath from them, and fire the ones that don't swear fealty to the Dear Leader? At this point, that seems eminently possible.

This is all just one week's worth of news, and it doesn't even cover everything that is happening (just the low points). At this point, we only have one thing to say to sum it all up: pass us a banana.





Jimmy Kimmel certainly deserves some sort of award, but seeing as how he is an entertainer there'll be other awards for him from his own industry, one imagines. Over 400 Hollywood stars signed a letter from the A.C.L.U. supporting Jimmy, so at this point it seems inevitable that he'll get at least an Emmy out of it.

Kimmel's return to ABC this Tuesday was beyond impressive, though. He didn't back down one inch, and will not be "toned down," as many had feared. His entire monologue is well worth watching, if you haven't already, or you can read the transcript of what Kimmel had to say. Today, the two holdout conglomerates of affiliates followed ABC's lead and will be returning Kimmel's show to the airwaves on the local stations they own.

Donald Trump responded in predictable fashion, by issuing blunt threats towards ABC. Because of course he did.

South Park also deserves some credit, for also returning to the airwaves without backing down one inch. Political comedy is a crucial part of free speech, so it is worth celebrating that some are still taking advantage of the First Amendment (while it still exists).

One other impressive effort worth mentioning that is not eligible for this award is the group "Home of the Brave" (which includes prominent anti-Trump Republicans such as George Conway and former federal judge J. Michael Luttig), which is now airing an ad with "the manosphere" as its target. It consists of podcast heavyweights sounding off on Trump's attacks on free speech and the Jimmy Kimmel situation. It quotes Joe Rogan saying: "I definitely don't think that the government should be involved, ever, in dictating what a comedian can or cannot say.... That's fucking crazy." The ad will run on YouTube channels that skew male, such as football games.

But this award is for Democrats, so let's take a look at which of them were impressive this week.

California Governor Gavin Newsom continues to mercilessly troll Trump and his minions, after making an appearance on Stephen Colbert's late-night show that virtually nobody watched (because it happened to fall on the same day Kimmel returned). His best social media posts of the week included taunting Tom Homan after signing a new California law which bans all police officers (of any kind) from wearing masks while doing their duties. Homan responded "Good luck with that," to which Newsom replied: "What if we give you another $50,000 in a paper bag?"

But Newsom's best quip of the week came after Trump's disastrous U.N. visit, which Newsom reacted to by posting (using Trump's own signature style):



Next week we're all going to be consumed with the government shutdown showdown, and for once it actually appears Democrats are winning the battle for hearts and minds (otherwise known as "the blame game" ). They are [link:|actively running ads] hammering Republicans on healthcare and tariffs, while the GOP seems splintered and unsure of what message to use. Also, Republicans have a battle brewing in their own ranks over the healthcare issue, as the anti-abortion faction flexes its political muscles.

But that'll be next week's news. This week, the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week was Adelita Grijalva, who won a special election in Arizona to fill the seat left open by the death, earlier this year, of her father Raúl.

It was a pretty safe Democratic seat, so her victory wasn't really the most impressive thing. The House is not currently in session, but when it returns next month, Grijalva will be sworn in. She has promised that on her first day she will sign the discharge petition to force a vote on the measure that will force the Department of Justice to release all their remaining Epstein files within 30 days. And hers will be the 218th signature on the petition, which will hopefully mean that sometime next month the House will be forced to vote on the measure.

For being the pivotal signature, and for winning her dad's House seat, Adelita Grijalva is this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week.

[Unfortunately, because she has not been sworn in as of this writing, Representative-Elect Adelita Grijalva does not yet have an official contact page at the House of Representatives site (there is just a [link:xxx|placeholder page] that shows the office is vacant), so you'll have to wait until the House returns to contact her to let her know you appreciate her efforts.]





We're happy to report that no Democrats disappointed us in a major way this week, so we're going to put the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week award back on the shelf, for now.




Volume 814 (9/26/25)

We begin this week with a few comments both from and about Jimmy Fallon. Then the next few talking points deal with how Trump is ruining the economy, and we close on the talking point of the week -- for next week, when the government shutdown fight will happen.



Dangerously un-American

Our first two talking points are from Jimmy Kimmel. On his first night back, Kimmel issued a warning about the seriousness of what had happened to him and the dangers of allowing such things to happen in this country.





Call him what he is

On his second night back, Kimmel had a few jokes about Donald Trump -- as he almost always does -- and he called Trump exactly what he is.





Stand up to the bully!

Which leaves us with a pretty obvious conclusion.

"The best way to defeat a bully is to stand up to him and to laugh at him. Bullies hate that. Bullies are incredibly insecure people, and they can't stand it when people laugh at them. The most effective way to deal with Trump is the way that Jimmy Kimmel and the show South Park are doing -- ridicule him, since Trump is such a ridiculous person. And when Trump tries to silence the voices of people like Kimmel, the rest of us need to stand up and show our support for them too. And because people did so, Disney backed down. After seeing their stock take a big hit and seeing a wave of cancellations of their streaming service, Disney decided that it would be better for their company if they did the right thing. Which they did, to their credit. Because when someone stands up to a bully and laughs in his face, the rest of us need to stand behind them and cheer them on."



Trump is hurting farmers

We're going to turn now to the economy, since this is truly Trump's weakest point. Democrats should be hammering Trump on the economy every single day, in fact, from now until the midterm elections.

"Donald Trump's trade war is hurting farmers. China stopped buying soybeans from American farmers due to Trump's tariffs, which has been devastating for soybean farmers. And it's not just the tariffs, either. Trump's crackdown on immigration is beginning to be a deep problem for farmers as well, since there's going to be no workforce ready to harvest the crops. Dairy farmers are being forced to sell off all their cows, because they don't have enough workers to milk them. Even Trump has realized that he's probably going to need to do some sort of bailout for the farmers, which would have been completely unnecessary without Trump's trade war. If you want to know the impact of Trump's tariff tantrums, go ask a farmer -- they'll give you an earful."



Inflation hurting everyone

This one is easy, because people already feel it, every trip to the store.

"Consumers are getting hit hard by Trump wrecking the economy too. I don't have to explain that, since all of you know it every time you get the sticker shock at the grocery store checkout. Ground beef is up 13 percent. Eggs cost 11 percent more than they did last year. Coffee prices are through the roof. The only thing that has come down is consumer confidence. Rent is more expensive, electricity is more expensive, and pretty much everything Trump does just makes it all worse. So what did he do this week? Slapped a huge tariff on prescription drugs. That's going to make all your prescription costs go through the roof. You know, I've talked to a lot of Trump voters and none of them have told me that this is what they voted for -- they thought Trump was going to fix things, not make everything worse."



Longterm unemployment spiking

The labor market is rough these days, too.

"The numbers of unemployed workers who have been out of work for half a year or more is spiking dramatically. In fact, it is hitting post-pandemic highs, with 1.9 million Americans out of work for six months or more in August. That's double what it was in 2023, folks. As any parent of a recent college graduate already knows, the job market is pretty brutal. And that's before artificial intelligence wipes out whole sectors of jobs Americans do."



Republican healthcare crisis

This seems to be the official Democratic talking point for next week, so we thought we'd highlight it here at the end.

"Republicans are willing to shut the government down rather than hold negotiations with Democrats. So what are Democrats asking for? It's simple. We want to avert a crisis. As things stand, we're all heading straight for a Republican healthcare crisis in this country. At the start of next year, insurance subsidies will be slashed, which will hike Americans' health insurance costs by 75 percent or even more. Then the Republican Medicaid cuts are going to take place, which is going to cause rural hospitals to close all over America. Not only will rural residents have to pay a lot more for insurance, but when they need to use it they'll have to drive hours just to get to a hospital. But you know what? This is all an avoidable crisis. We don't have to suffer through the Republican healthcare crisis at all! And that is precisely what Democrats are asking for in the budget negotiations. Because we will fight hard to stop Trump and his Republicans from causing a healthcare crisis that doesn't need to happen."




Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com

September 20, 2025

Friday Talking Points -- They'll Be Calling You A Radical

[Program Note: Once again, we are pre-empting the entire format of this column due to the seriousness of the situation America now finds itself in. Most weeks, we strive to rise above the firehose of distractions from Donald Trump and his administration, to focus instead on things which truly matter -- which, this week, include Trump once again rolling over for Vladimir Putin while he invades another NATO country's airspace, as well as Trump blowing up boats in international waters just because he feels like it. But this week the distraction truly was what really mattered. Because this week we had a direct assault on the freedom of speech and the freedom of the press in a way not seen since Joe McCarthy trod the halls of the U.S. Capitol. So we had to write an extended rant instead of our usual column, just to warn everyone in advance.]



Our subtitle this week is meant to honor the passing of Rick Davies, one of the founding members of the musical group Supertramp, who passed away less than two weeks ago. In one of their biggest hits ("The Logical Song" ), one lyric seems to sum up where we now stand as a nation:

We follow this up with a quote often misattributed to Voltaire (the pen-name of François-Marie Arouet), but was actually written much later by S.G. Tallentyre (the pen-name of historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall), who was describing an incident from Voltaire's life. She wrote the line as being a thought within Voltaire's head, after he had denounced the official political condemnation of a work written by the French philosopher Claude-Adrien Hevétius. Voltaire wasn't a big fan of the work, but he defended it on the principle of free speech with the attitude of (as interpreted by Tallentyre):



This is a powerful message, and a powerful stand to take on principle. It lives on today, as evidenced by a recent politician rewording it a bit:



That wasn't actually the full quote, though. It was delivered during a speech (on the sanctity of free speech) given earlier this year, as the speaker was castigating a foreign government for what he saw as their efforts to censor political speech. The speaker was Vice President JD Vance. Here is the full quote:



Donald Trump himself entered office promising to restore free speech to all. He signed an executive order on it on his first day in office, and bragged that "free speech is back" during his first address to Congress. In fact, there are plenty of examples of Trump, Vance, and other administration officials and Trump supporters lauding free speech and promising that it would flourish if Trump was re-elected.

But it turns out (surprise, surprise!) it was all hypocrisy. Because the only free speech Trump and Vance and all their followers are interested in protecting is speech with which they agree. When they disagree or disapprove of a speaker's views, then they feel fully justified to use any means necessary to cancel and censor such speech entirely. As we've seen, time after time.

They are following the playbook of autocrats and dictators, plain and simple. Here's a rather succinct summary of what this has meant so far:



That really just scratches the surface. Trump (aided by Elon Musk and other henchmen) instituted a purge of anyone in the executive branch who ever said a single negative thing against Trump, or did anything in either their official capacity or their private lives that Trump didn't like. He has attacked universities and tried to both extort them of enormous sums of money and threatened them with all sorts of official punishments if they don't change their rules and curriculum to reflect what Trump thinks they should be teaching. Law firms were also targeted and extorted in similar fashion, for having the temerity to file lawsuits Trump didn't like. Media companies have had to pay what can only be called tribute money (used in the feudal sense of that term) to Trump, if they want to survive (although some have fought back, as evidenced by Trump's $15 billion lawsuit against the New York Times for saying mean things about him now having been laughed out of court by the judge). But, sadly, precious few of them have fought back. Most have just paid the tribute and bended the knee. Trump has gone after immigrants, foreign students, and Americans both individually and collectively, with dire threats of punishment if they say things he doesn't want to hear. He has demanded the Smithsonian and the National Park System only portray the parts of history that he wants to see. He has demanded the Kennedy Center only produce artistic events that he approves of.

This is not free speech. This is not the American ideal. This is not constitutional.

America has always had political parties that disagree with each other. In the very beginning, they weren't called parties but "factions," and there were two big ones: the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists. Contrary to the way the term is used today, the Federalists were for a strong central government -- as strong as possible. This was when the U.S. Constitution was written, after the failed Articles of Confederation had proven to be unworkable. So the Federalists wrote the Constitution and tried to get all the states to ratify it.

Several states were strongly Anti-Federalist, however. They demanded changes. The biggest complaint was that while the Constitution laid out what the federal government could do, there was little or nothing in it that said what the government could not do. So the Anti-Federalists proposed their changes. Ten of these would become the Bill of Rights (there were twelve of them, originally). That was the price of admission -- the Anti-Federalist states would only ratify the Constitution if the Bill of Rights was also passed and sent to the states for ratification. The Bill of Rights is, for the most part, a list of things the federal government can never do. The first of these amendments barred the federal government from ever infringing upon (among other things) the freedom of speech and the freedom of the press.

Free speech has a long history in this country, but like many other things in American history, it has a checkered past. It has not always been upheld as an absolute principle. For over a century, the courts interpreted the First Amendment as only applying to the federal government -- leaving state governments free to pass and enforce anti-free-speech laws. Even one of the most monumental free speech cases in our history was a complete travesty, as while it did give us two stirring phrases ("falsely shouting 'Fire!' in a theater," and "clear and present danger" ), the Supreme Court decision was just flat-out wrong, since it allowed the imprisonment of a person who was just passing out a rather benign anti-war leaflet (we wrote a long article on Schenck v. U.S. a while back, if anyone's interested).

And then, of course, there was McCarthyism. And the "House Committee on Un-American Activities." As noted, free speech has a checkered past in America.

But we are now at a historical moment when free speech is under attack in precisely the same fashion as McCarthyism, except now it is not limited to being some anti-communist crusade but instead is based entirely on the whims of one man. Donald Trump has made no secret of how he'd like to see things work. Anybody who writes or says or does anything he doesn't like should be chucked in jail, plain and simple. It ought to be illegal to say anything negative about him, period. He isn't shy about admitting this, either. As far as he's concerned, the government should use every tool at its disposal to police everyone's speech and come down like a ton of bricks on anything Trump doesn't like.

This pivotal moment came after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, a conservative activist. Kirk is being lauded to the skies by conservatives now as if he were not only a strong proponent of free speech but some sort of saintly speaker of Christian and conservative truth on college campuses.

He wasn't. He was a racist and a misogynist and he celebrated his insensitivity towards others. Here are just a few of his quotes:



In response to the collision of a commercial aircraft and a military helicopter over the Potomac River, Kirk's immediate response (while knowing absolutely none of the facts of who was responsible for the collision) was:



There simply is no other word for such sentiments other than racism.

As for him being some sort of Christian paragon, can you imagine what Jesus Christ would have to say about Kirk's take on caring about others? Here you go:



So much for all that hippy-dippy "love your neighbor" stuff, eh? And the quote that has been repeated the most recently, since it was so eerily fitting after his death by an assassin's bullet:



So to logically mark Kirk's death in the way he would have wanted would be to not feel any empathy towards him or his wife and children, but instead just shrug and chalk it up as "unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year" and celebrate your Second Amendment rights. By his own words, that seems to be what he would have wanted us all to do. This is the man who is being lauded as some sort of Christian martyr, or at the very least a martyr to free speech.

Even though he espoused racist sentiments, last weekend almost every NFL stadium flew their flags at half-mast in his honor. Trump ordered government flags be flown at half-mast as well -- something he didn't bother doing a few months back, when two Democratic politicians in Minnesota were shot by a right-wing assassin (one died, one survived). Trump didn't even bother calling the governor of the state after that one.

Trump and those around him have pounced on the Kirk assassination as the launching point for attacking the left. They are issuing dire threats about what they're going to do to people who say anything negative about Charlie Kirk (or anything positive about his assassination) -- all the way up to the attorney general, who this week stated that "hate speech" is illegal (spoiler alert: it is not). And they're just flat-out threatening people and groups with prosecution just for their opinions -- which is exactly what the First Amendment is supposed to protect against:



This week, Trump declared that "Antifa" is a terrorist organization. This is worrisome for multiple reasons, folks. In the first place Antifa isn't even an organization at all -- it is an unorganized belief (it stands for "anti-fascism" ). It's like "feminism" or being "anti-abortion." It is a belief, not a formal organized group. The second thing wrong with this is that there simply is no legal way to designate a domestic terrorism group (even under the PATRIOT ACT). Foreign groups may be designated terrorist organizations, but these laws do not include any category for purely domestic organizations. Thirdly, since it is merely a belief system and not an organization, this leaves Trump and his minions free to define it however they want -- and apply the label to any actual organization or group they wish. Earlier, Trump had called for George Soros's foundation to be prosecuted under RICO laws (which were put in place to fight mobsters and other organized crime), but it won't be long before he'll be accusing them of being terrorists, too.

As far as Trump is concerned, each and every protester from the left is being paid by some mastermind who directs all such lefty protests in this country. He simply cannot conceive of people protesting for any other reason than getting paid, as evidenced by his reaction to some people who vented their feelings when Trump made a recent visit to a Washington D.C. restaurant:



Trump and his henchmen insist all the while that political violence is purely a phenomenon on the left. He brushes aside any mention of rightwing political violence, which should surprise exactly nobody after he pardoned all the violent January 6th insurrectionists who attacked police officers while trying to storm the U.S. Capitol.

Meanwhile, the Department of Justice tossed down the memory hole an inconvenient report that had been on their own website. This report categorized how rightwing political violence is a much bigger problem in this country than violence from the left, so of course it had to disappear.



Which all brings us, in a very roundabout way, to a pivotal moment that happened this week. Jimmy Kimmel, in his late-night show on ABC, made some jokes this Monday about what had been happening since Charlie Kirk's assassination. One of the things he said -- the bit that has been held up as the most offensive -- was:



That's it. He was not mocking or in any way celebrating the death of Charlie Kirk, he was trying to point out the political opportunism that had been happening ever since. Which absolutely enraged the MAGA folks, who then proved Kimmel's point by opportunistically using his words to not only "cancel" him (in the sense of the "cancel culture" the right used to denounce in the strongest possible terms) but to use the might of the federal government to remove him from the airwaves.

This is a double-standard. Recently, a host on a Fox News show expressed the desire on the air that all homeless people be forcibly given lethal injections. Just kill them all -- that would solve the problem, right? This is not only reprehensible and inhuman, it could be seen as inciting violence against the homeless. He was allowed to make a weak on-air apology and kept his job. This is in stark comparison to what happened to Kimmel.

The chair of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, issued what can only be seen as a threat a mob boss would be proud of, on Wednesday. Carr, just like all the other Trump minions, used to extol free speech to the skies, mind you. Here he is from 2019:



Here's more of what he used to profess to believe:



Now, he is leaning into exactly what he once condemned. In a big way. Speaking of Kimmel and ABC and their corporate owner Disney on a podcast this week, Carr warned:



He also, for good measure, called Kimmel's comments "truly sick." But did you catch that no-so-subtle threat in there? "We can do this the easy way or the hard way." This is mobster-speak. It is a direct threat, along with: "there is going to be additional work for the FCC ahead." Governing by such threats might be called "thugocracy" -- and it is exactly what Carr used to swear he was against.

Within hours, a company which owns ABC affiliates pressured Disney into immediately yanking Jimmy Kimmel from the airwaves. This company just happens to have a pending merger before the FCC, it bears mentioning. Just like Paramount did, when it earlier cancelled Stephen Colbert's late-night show.

Reaction was swift, and is still growing. Here is just a sampling of what people have been saying:



Democrats have been just as outraged. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer responded forcefully: "I can't think of a greater threat to free speech than Carr in many, many years. He's despicable. He's anti-American. He ought to resign and Trump ought to fire him."

Barack Obama was just as scathing:



Kamala Harris was also pretty direct: "What we are witnessing is an outright abuse of power. We cannot dare to be silent or complacent in the face of this frontal assault on free speech."

Here are a few more reactions from Democrats:



Even a few brave Republicans are protesting that this is very wrong. Even Ted Cruz (of all people) warned his fellow Republicans that this would be a very dangerous precedent to set:



Cruz then played Carr's words and reacted to them:



When things get too thuggish for Ted Cruz, you know they've gone too far. But we have to say we fully agree with him, and his warning to conservatives: Someday the shoe will be on the other foot. If you support what Carr is doing now, then some future Democratic administration could very easily do exactly the same thing to conservatives, and you would have no leg to stand on to protest it.

The Constitution's guarantee of free speech was created to protect speech which you do not like. Period. It was not created to protect only speech which the government in power approves of. This basic concept has always been tested, and at times the government (Congress, the president, and the Supreme Court) have fallen woefully short of the ideal enshrined within the Bill of Rights.

This has always been true. In 1797, Benjamin Franklin Bache (grandson of Benjamin Franklin) published in his newspaper Aurora his glee at seeing George Washington leave office. Here is part of what he wrote, on Washington's final day in office:



A group of Washington supporters then broke into the offices of the Aurora and "threw its type into the street, and almost demolished the inside of that newspaper establishment." A man who was officially convicted of assaulting Bache was named by President John Adams to a diplomatic post -- before he had even served out his sentence (sound familiar?). Bache responded to this by stating the Adams administration was "giving direct encouragement to assassination, and setting a price upon my head." Congress then passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, which Thomas Jefferson wrote was designed for the "suppression of the Whig presses. Bache's particularly has been named." Abigail Adams urged Bache be arrested. Even before the Acts were passed, Bache was arrested (for "seditious libel" ). He posted bail, however, and died from yellow fever before his case came to trial.

The freedom of political speech has been attacked multiple times throughout America's history. Sometimes, the government succeeds in repressing political speech it doesn't like. And sometimes the courts step in and uphold the First Amendment.

We are now in one of those times. Trump and his henchmen have zero respect for the rule of law and zero respect for any part of the Constitution. This has been proven in many ways. This week, they are directly attacking the freedom of speech and the freedom of the press. And they don't seem inclined to slow down or stop these attacks any time soon.

Late-night comedians are the historical analogue of court jesters. In Medieval times, court jesters could get away with saying outrageous things directly to those in power, as comic relief for the overlords. But occasionally they'd go too far and wind up in a dungeon or on the gallows. This is precisely why the First Amendment exists -- to ensure that this never happens in America to anyone who questions authority or makes statements (or jokes) that offend the people in power. Carr himself used to even defend this principle, saying political satire was "one of the oldest and most important forms of political speech," because it "challenges those in power." He's singing a different tune these days, however.

In conclusion, the chorus to Supertramp's "The Logical Song" asks a question that needs to be slightly broadened:



That last line, to fit our current situation, should really read: "Please tell me who we are?" The First Amendment is a bedrock part of who we are as a country, and it is under attack. Stephen Colbert gave the answer to that question on his own show, last night: "We are all Jimmy Kimmel."


Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com