New York is going wild for Game Three of the NBA Finals with tickets going for eight to ten thousand dollars apiece, and that’s in the upper deck. New York has fallen in love with their basketball team, the Knicks. There were plans for a huge rally outside Madison Square Garden for those who couldn’t afford those prices, but Donald Trump reigned on that rally by attending the game, and therefore Secret Service said you can’t have that rally.

Two bits of advice for the Donald, stay off the ‘Jumbotron’, or Trump, you will get the biggest Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan boo’s you have ever heard.

And Bill Bradley, a Knicks legend on the last championship team fifty-three years ago, cautioned Trump that he will not be the center of attention tonight. The center of attention will be the Knicks. Bradley, NBA royalty, and using mild mannered, added, I don’t give a shit what Trump does.

What I care about is what the team does.

You know, there’s so many lies coming out of the Trump White House. This might seem minor, but I think there are grounds to doubt Trump’s most recent medical report. One, what Trump released was less comprehensive than the medical reports released by Presidents Biden and Obama. Why?

Doctors like Jonathan Reiner, a leading cardiologist at George Washington Hospital questioned both the lack of full transparency and said the attempts to explain away Trump’s bruised hands and swollen ankles are unconvincing. Trump’s repeated claims that he aced the Montreal cognitive assessment test, demonstrating his high intelligence, are wrong. This test is a screening for dementia, not intelligence. And are there any eyewitnesses to Trump actually taking the test?

And I also suspect they’re lying about Trump’s height, which the White House says is six foot three inches. When you see him next to anybody, either slightly shorter or taller than that, it’s pretty obvious he is not six three. Maybe six one, six two. Now now now why does that matter? Because he weighs two hundred and thirty eight pounds. And at six three he barely avoids the obese lit label. If he were six two, which I think would be a more honest reading, he would be clinically obese.

With his ego, he couldn’t stand being known as pudgy. So anyway, as far as I’m concerned, pudgy, you gotta release it all.

60 minutes, the most successful broadcast television program, good, hard hitting journalism, huge audience is being torn apart, or in the words of correspondent Scott Pelley, it’s being murdered. Pelley was fired, as were two other top correspondents, ⁓ Sharon Alphonse and Cecilia Veger, and a number of executives, and Henderson Cooper just left.

Barry Wise, the relatively new and over her head president of CBS News, is driven by ideology against what she sees as woke Democrats and unwavering support for Israel, and a desire to please her bosses, the Ellisons, big pals of Donald Trump. Everything she has touched has failed. The CBS Evening News is in the tank since she reshaped it.

She allowed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to choose which correspondent was to interview him. Now she has her sights on sixty minutes. She chose some guy named Nick Bolton with no television experience to take over Sixty Minutes. He explained the reason, after a contentious meeting, the reason that Pelle, a CBS veteran, who has covered wars, the White House, anchored the evening news, where his audience rose in contrast to the Weiss area.

And for years done great work on sixty minutes. He was fired because he was disrespectful to Bolton. Ms. Bolton, in journalism, I I just want to tell you, respect is something you earn. And that’s that’s something that neither you nor Miss Wise deserve. It’s just so tragic what’s happened to a great television news program.

Sunday evening I had a moment of real inspiration and hope, a moment of brightness, which if you live in Washington is rare these days. This was in Boston, the Profile in Courage Awards at the John F. Kennedy Library. The late president’s daughter Caroline and her son Jack presented the Courage Awards to two perfect recipients, the citizens of Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Jay Powell who was chair of the Federal Reserve Board.

At great risk, they both stood up to brutality and to bullies. These Minnesota citizens stood up to ice thugs trying to take over the city, resolute even when their fellow citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, were murdered. Ultimately they prevailed. Most ice got out of town. In a far different environment

Jay Powell showed the same sort of courage. He stood up to the bullying of Donald Trump’s lawless efforts to ride roughshod over the statutory independence of the Federal Reserve. Powell was even threatened with a baseless criminal charge. He too never wavered. Citizens from the streets of Minnesota to the boardroom of the Federal Reserve showed why courage was matters.

It was a great moment. Now back to the darkness.

You know, I don’t agree with many of Georgia Governor Brian Kemp’s policies, but I really respect the Georgia Republican as a pretty honest conservative. He’s not running this year, and the leading candidate that seems to win a june sixteenth Republican runoff is Burt Jones. Let me tell you a little bit about Burt Jones. Other than the R label, he is everything, Kemp is not.

He was not only an election denier and remains ones to this day, he was a leader in the effort to steal the legitimate twenty twenty election outcome. The now infamous Rudy Giuliani, found guilty of lying and smearing Georgia election poll workers, said he was relying on information provided by Jones.

Man, it is not easy to get to the dark side of Rudy Giuliani.

The twenty twenty election was totally legitimate, as every research study, lawsuit suit, recount, analysis, even from Trump’s own homeland security expert shows Joe Biden won, Trump was a loser. To claim otherwise is not just trafficking in a deranged conspiracy, it’s outright lying. Georgia has weathered some terrible governors in the past. I’m old enough to remember Lester Maddox.

But Jones, who Trump says is quote in my pocket, end quote, would disgrace a good state.

When it comes to Trump and corruption, I made a stupid mistake. With the cryptocurrency shakedowns or the Qatar’s gift of 747 airplane to him or the scams of his son-in-law and sons, I thought, well, it can’t get worse. How naive.

Then this week, he and his former criminal attorney and new Pet Rock Attorney General Todd Blanch launched a $1.776 billion slush fund to be doled out any way they want to those supposedly quote, victimized and quote by the previous administration, which of course they weren’t. Whatever it claims, you know Trump will get his cut because he always does.

Maybe he’ll use some of that slush fund to create his own security army. Any hang gives. There are no limits. There are no disclosure requirements. It really is even worse because the ruse to create this slush fund was it was established in exchange for Trump withdrawing his $10 billion suit against the Internal Revenue Service for the leak of his pre-2021 tax returns.

Most everything about that suit was a fraud like most of his suits. The suit was filed after the statute of limitations expired and with the absurd notion the president suing an agency, the IRS, that he controlled, a judge was probably on the verge of tossing it out. So they pivoted very cleverly and very disingenuously and gave up nothing in launching this obscene slush fight.

It really is sleazy. In the 2016, let’s remember, this is the context, Trump promised to release his tax returns as every other president has done for the past 40 years. He reneged, not a surprise. And some of those returns later were leaked. Now we still haven’t seen the returns for the past five years, which he could put out any time he wanted to if he ever wanted to keep his word, but don’t hold your breath.

The focus now should be on challenging the Trump slush fund which will be overseen by the acting Attorney General Blanche, the quintessential apparatchik. There is no transparency required in this order. If Congress won’t do its job, which it should, and block this rape of taxpayers, then let the leaks begin.

The Cleveland suburbs offer a microcosm of what Donald Trump has done to the Republican party. Prior to the 2022 election, they were represented by Anthony Gonzalez, son of Cuban immigrants, star football player for Ohio State, professionally played for the Indianapolis Colts. He got an MBA from Stanford and was a successful small businessman and then a principled moderate and conservative in Congress. It was the whole package. Gonzalez looked like the Republican Party future, but a man of conscience, he voted for impeachment after Trump instigated the deathly January 6 riot at the Capitol. That was it. He was verbally attacked, physically threatened, and he decided to get out.

He was replaced by a small time Trump flunky, Max Miller, who parlayed his wealthy father’s political connections. Miller had a history of disorderly conduct and some years ago, and in the White House, he dated press secretary Stephanie Grisham, who later described a physically abusive relationship with him. Winning a congressional seat, Miller married the daughter of Ohio Republican big shot, Bernie Marino, now a Senator.

They shortly divorced and she has accused him of domestic violence, including throwing boiling water at her in front of their child. You know, he’s a bully, a serial abuser. Legislatively, he’s an obedient Trump follower with a higher than usual absentee rate.

I bring all this up, which the larger point is to go from Anthony Gonzalez to Max Miller from a star to a sleaze is a dramatic decline in caliber and character and says so much about what Trump is doing to the Republican Party.

One of the greatest reporters I have ever known is CBS’s Lesley Stahl starting with her historic coverage of Watergate as one of the youngest and few women on that story. For more than 35 years, she has been a journalistic superstar on 60 Minutes, the highest rated news program on television for decades and decades.

She had been working on an interview with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when the pro-BB boss of CBS News, Bari Weiss interfered and sidelined her and handpicked Major Garrett to interview Netanyahu instead. Now I have nothing against Garrett. It wasn’t a bad interview, but he is not in Lesley Stahl’s league.

He allowed himself to be used as Bari Weiss’s poodle. Wise, who had no broadcast experience before she took the top job at CBS News. And it’s been an opinion writer and editor, albeit a successful one, but not a news journalist in any sense. In pursuing her personal and ideological agenda, the CBS News already is cratering. Now she has her sights on destroying the gold standard, 60 minutes.

In addition to the outrageous sidelining of Lesley Stahl, she’s sandbagging the legacy of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite.

In columns and on our podcast, I refer not just to the Supreme Court, but rather to the Republican Supreme Court. Some institutionalists object, sorry. The latest illustration was gutting the Voting Rights Act, but they made it worse, waiving the usual 30 to 32 day waiting period before a decision takes effect.

That’s very unusual, only in times of great crises over time is of the essence. Bush v. Gore in 2000, the little rock desegregation cases in the 50s. The reason that they did it this time, the Republicans, was so Louisiana and maybe a few other states would have time to eliminate black house seats, which under this decision they can do, and replacing them with Republican dominated districts, a gift for their party.

When Justice Katanji Brown Jackson objected to this blatant political move to help fellow Republicans, Justice Alito, joined by Gorsuch and Thomas, went ballistic, attacking her objection as quote, insulting, end quote, and irresponsible. Imagine calling these justices for what they are, part of the Republican Supreme Court.

Let’s take a look at Justice Trump style. The FBI, it’s reliably reported, has launched a criminal investigation of the Atlantic reporter who wrote the story about Director Cash Patel’s drinking and other misbehavior. Now this same Justice Department is trying to intervene to help Donald Trump’s appeal of a defamation suit won by the woman from a jury who found he sexually assaulted her. The judge said it really was tantamount to rape. But this is a private matter. Well, of course, the acting attorney was also his personal attorney.

The Justice Department also is investigating financial issues involving Virginia Democratic State Senator Louise Lucas, who led the Democratic gerrymandering effort in Virginia.

Simultaneously, the criminal case against Tennessee Republican right-winger Andy Ogles, who’s introduced a resolution allowing Trump to run for a third term, career prosecutors and the House Ethics Committee believe that he engaged in campaign finance fraud, but that investigation is being dropped. Let’s compare that to Louise Lucas.

At Trump’s order, we know the Justice Department ⁓ indicted former FBI director, James Comey, quick glance at what conservatives, just conservatives and Republicans have said about Todd Blanch’s approved indictment of James Comey.

Ty Cobb, Trump’s counsel in the first term called it a case of quote, classic revenge. Andrew Napolitano, a retired conservative federal judge and Fox News analyst called it a quote, blatant political vendetta. RepublicansTom Tillis, United States Senator from North Carolina called it quote, vindictive. Peter Kisler, former acting attorney general for George W. Bush said it was quote, a personal attack that undercut the Department of Justice. In a national review, very conservative organ, columnists said the Justice Department quote, simply fabricated a crime. That’s your Justice Department these days, sadly.

We talk about the pervasive corruption of the Trump administration, but the big stuff seems so complex, it’s hard to explain. It is. Read George Packer’s piece in The Atlantic. The focus is on the Silicon billionaire David Sachs, until recently Trump’s main man on cryptocurrency and AI. He and his fellow tech billionaires are with Trump for one reason.

Money, big money and no check on them. Democracy can be a nuisance to them and inequality they think can only be solved by innovation from an unbridled tech industry. Memo to government from them, get the hell out of the way unless we need you to protect us. On foreign policy, Saxe, I suppose not surprisingly, is less sympathetic to Ukraine, a democracy, and more to Russia and Putin.

The war, he claims, is all the fault of the Russian hoax, which of course was not a hoax. Sachs, who recently stepped aside, for now at least, was, George Packer writes, in a corrupt clown show, one where it’s quote, impossible to distinguish public policy from private venality. One expert, Council Packer, don’t talk about or write about conflicts of interest.

It’s so much bigger than that. It is.

The danger of appointing an unqualified FOX TV host with a sordid past as defense secretary was on shocking display this week as defense secretary Hegseth testified before the House and Senate committees. He’s testifying as I record this right now before the Senate, but let’s just focus on the House yesterday. He began by declaring that the greatest adversary facing the United States. It’s not Iran, it’s not Russia, it’s not China, but it’s the, and I’m quoting him, reckless, feckless, defeatist Democrats and a few Republicans.

Just imagine George Catlin Marshall or Colin Powell or Leon Panetta saying that to a congressional committee. He was ill-prepared and he was schooled, especially by some of the younger members, many of them veterans. Congresswoman Chrissy Houlihan in exasperation after he dissembled called him immature. That was kind.

In response to sharp questions from Jason Crow, he couldn’t answer whether one of his advisors also is lobbying perhaps even for foreign interests. Hexeth told Ro Khanna that asking how much this, the Iran war was costing Americans in higher gas or food prices is a gotcha question. the voters out in Dubuque Iowa will find that interesting.

Chris D’Aluzio, Pat Ryan, Seth Moulton, and others just turned the ill-informed secretary inside out. I felt badly for General Cain, head of the Joint Chiefs, who was sitting next to Hegseth and looked like he’d rather be anywhere, anywhere else than there. Hegseth, of course, doesn’t care what congressional Democrats or even the public thinks about him. He has an audience of one, Donald Trump.

You might have noticed how nervous and evasive he became when asked about Army Secretary Driscoll, who was angling for his job. All Hegseth has to do, he figures, is just please the Donald.

You could have predicted that Donald Trump and lackeys like little Lindsey Graham would use the shooting at the White House Correspondents Dinner for political purposes. At Trump’s behest, Graham is now pushing a bill to fund the proposed White House ballroom on national security grounds, noting it would then be unnecessary to hold events like Saturday night’s dinner at a less secure hotel.

There is so much fiction to unpack here. First is the security protection he’s talking about actually is in a bunker at the White House. That can be further hardened or ⁓ other improvements can be made. It works pretty well now, but that has almost nothing to do with the big gaudy ballroom that Trump has proposed, which is really about tribute to his massive ego.

And the idea of holding a lot of events at the White House ballroom, “the coat hanger is convention will be Thursday night in the White House ballroom”, is laughable. Especially egregious is the suggestion to hold the White House correspondence dinner there. First, how would you get 2,600 guests into a ballroom designed to seat 1,000? Don’t tell Trump, he might want to increase the size of this monstrosity.

The White House Correspondents’ Dinner is supposed to be an event honoring the First Amendment. To be held at the White House, no matter who is president, is just stupid, as is Lindsey Graham’s idea to have the ballroom picked up by the taxpayer.

Law enforcement, the Secret Service and DC police did a great job in apprehending an armed gunman that tried to break into the White House correspondent’s dinner Saturday night. But let’s knock off this stuff that the dinner was about freedom of the press and the First Amendment.

Now there are really important organizations and dinners that honor the First Amendment and a free press like the Committee to Protect Journalists and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. Take a look at them, maybe even contribute. The White House Correspondents’ by contrast today, is not one. Their guest of honor was Donald Trump, who has labeled the press the enemy of the people, filed ridiculous suits to intimidate the media, and barred reporters from events for political reasons.

Worse, Paramount’s David Ellison, who’s waiting for government approval to acquire Warner Brothers, which also includes CNN and who already owns CBS, threw a dinner two nights before Saturday honoring Trump, this is a guy who was in the news business, that may be a small part of his business, but honoring the most anti-First Amendment President in history is proving a disaster for CBS, once the gold standard of broadcast news.

After Saturday’s dinner was cut short, then the chatter began about freedom of the press and we must, as Trump insists, reschedule that dinner. No, we shouldn’t. There might be a dinner honoring those brave cops who protected everyone Saturday night. That would really be worth going to. But let’s not pretend this is a dinner about the First Amendment.

Hasan Piker, a left-wing podcaster and influencer, has a huge following. Some Democrats say, hey, maybe he’s our Joe Rogan. No, No!

Piker defends Hamas, which he says is far preferable to Israel. Now, there’s a lot to criticize about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who imperils America’s long bipartisan support for the state of Israel.

But to declare Hamas terrorist, far preferable to a democratic state, is just unacceptable. He also once said America deserves the 9-11 attack and suggested if you care about Medicare fraud, you would kill Florida Republican Senator Rick Scott.

Now I am close to a free speech absolutist. I think he has every right to say all that and I don’t think he should be banned from any sites or any locations or any venues. But in a critical election, Democrats really don’t want to be associated with any of these views.

Donald Trump brags about so many unprecedented achievements it’s hard to follow. He boasts about all the wars he ended. I’ll bet you didn’t know until he told us he was able to finally end the Polyponnesian Wars. You know, there may be one legitimate record. The most and quickest cabinet departures. Already Kristi Noem and Pam Bondi have been given their walking papers.

On deck may be Laurie Chavez de Rimer, the Labor Secretary, under internal investigations for creating a toxic workplace for expense violations and an alleged affair with one of her security detail. And Kash Patel, the ethically and intellectually challenged FBI director, it was reported by the Atlantic is often MIA and seems to be a heavy boozer. Not exactly what you want with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Morale at the Bureau seems to be lower than ever according to reports. Army Secretary Driscoll, no doubt to beach himself, has turned his sights on Fox TV host, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s job.

Now instead of dumping National Intelligence Chief Tulsi Gabbard she simply ignored. You know, let me just put something in context. In the last three administrations, pre-Trump, Bush, Obama, and Biden, there were no cabinet departures in the first year and a half. You know, this should not be a surprise.

Trump intentionally surrounded himself with people whose only loyalty was to himself, to him, thus, he got incompetent third-raters who are failing at their jobs. Its that’s simple.

Whatever you think of the politics, Washington aesthetically is a beautiful city. Flying into Reagan Airport on a clear day or even better, a clear evening and seeing the Lincoln Memorial, Arlington Cemetery, the Jefferson Memorial, the Washington Monument stretching down past the beautifully manicured lawns of the mall to the United States Capitol is breathtaking, inspiring.

It won’t be if Trump gets his way and puts up a big gaudy 250 foot monumental arch on the Virginia side of the Potomac River in front of Arlington Cemetery. It’s offensive in size and design. It blocks the Lincoln Monument’s sweeping view of the majestic Arlington Cemetery, the resting place for so many courageous Americans. This is opposed by many architects, even the original proponent of an arch and veterans groups offended that it will diminish the sacred grounds of Arlington.

My wife whose television station is across the Potomac in Virginia has driven across the Memorial Bridge with that awesome setting thousands of times. I somehow don’t think she’s looking for an arch. Trump has said that the monumental arch again 250 feet is for him. Okay, fine. Build it in Mar-a-Lago where it’ll fit in.

A judge threw out Donald Trump’s $10 billion suit against the Wall Street Journal, which had reported that Trump sent ⁓ Epstein a 50th birthday message drawing of a naked woman with Trump’s signature. The federal judge in Florida found the article was not published with quote, actual malice and quote, the standard for defamation. Actually, when a copy of the birthday book was released by the House Oversight Committee, guess what? There was the Trump letter to Jeffrey Epstein with the drawing of the naked woman.

Now Trump is a bully and he believes that he can bully law firms, universities, media companies, reporters into submission. Sadly, this has worked too often. Looking at you, New York law firms, CBS, ABC. Not because there was merit to his charges, but the fear he would use the power of government aided by his ethically challenged FCC chair to punish them.

But those that stand up to a bully and stand up to this bully, like the Journal, the New York Times, the Des Moines Register, Washington law firms like Wilmer Cutler and Harvard invariably win. That’s what you do with a bully.

Three cheers from my alma mater, The Wall Street Journal.

Donald Trump is really not happy unless he’s in a fight viciously attacking someone. There’s so many targets. latest, now listen to me, you’re not gonna believe this if you don’t know it at first, his latest Pope Leo, the first American Pope. Trump says the Pope is weak on crime and nuclear weapons. He can source with losers of the left. And then he says the only reason this Pope was elected, first American Pope was in order to get along with Donald Trump.

In other words, that conclave over in Rome was all about Trump. Now I have never been to a conclave, quite clearly, but I think I can guarantee the one topic that was not a factor in the election of Pope Leo was somebody who Trump will like.

More stunning, Trump then put out this AI-generated image of him Trump as Jesus tending to the sick. I thought, who could this be? Who could this man so full of hate? Who could he be comforting? Then I got it. Viktor Orban, the right-wing corrupt pro-Putin Hungarian autocrat who got trounced yesterday. Despite the all-out support of Trump world, starting with the president, he even sent his boys Marco Rubio and J.D. Vance over there to campaign for Orban.

The result was a landslide. The autocrat lost. Now back to the Pope and the president. I just wonder if we’ll hear from the Catholics in this administration over the president’s personal attacks on the Holy Father. You know, where are you? What do you have to say Marco Rubio, J.D. Vance, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Melania Trump? I suspect what they have to say will basically be silence.

If you had any doubt that yesterday was April Fool’s Day, I hope you saw Donald Trump’s speech from the White House last night. It may go down in history as one of the worst presidential addresses ever. America has been at war now for over a month and the President of the United States has never explained why. Actually, he’s offered multiple, often conflicting, rationales.

He had a chance last night to level with the American people on where we are in this war and where he expects to go. He abysmally failed. He simply wasted 19 minutes of prime time television with the same contradictions and lies. As an aside, he said inflation is over. No, it’s not, Mr. President. Iran has not had any regime change despite what he says. They’ve just promoted the taxi squad when the first team was killed.

He has not, as promised ended their missile capacity. Missiles were being fired as he was giving his speech. He distorted Obama’s deal with the Iranians some years ago. The money he talked about giving them actually was Iranian frozen assets and the nuclear deal negotiated back then by all accounts was working. On Tuesday, the Straits of Hormuz, which 20 % of the world’s oil supplies flow, he said had to be reopened by Wednesday, it’s no big deal. Let’s remember the Straits were open before Trump went to war.

He still won’t tell us why American blood or treasure should be lost in a region where Saudi Arabia and Israel have far more assets than Iran. What Trump really displayed again last night, he is a commander in chief who has no idea how or what to command.