Humor can be a great asset for politicians when they use it effectively. But it also can be miserable when they don’t know how to do it. And that’s what we saw Friday night at the White House Correspondence Dinner with Donald Trump, who is a total stranger to effective humor. Previous presidents have used that occasion to poke fun at themselves or with real humor go after their opponents.

JFK in nineteen sixty two made fun of reporters’ expense accounts. I assure you, that’s a very, very sensitive subject. he also said that he was now convinced that there was a groundswell of support for Barry Goldwater in the 1964 Republican presidential nomination. He said that after he spent a weekend in Palm Beach, Florida.

Ronald Reagan in nineteen eighty six or eighty seven, I believe it was talked about Mario Cuomo from New York, who was widely considered likely to run for president in nineteen eighty eight, seeking a Democratic nomination. And Reagan said, I’ve got good and bad news. He said, the good news is, Governor, there’s a real surge of support for an Italian nominee. But it’s for Lee Iacoca.

Clinton, Obama, and both Bush presidents used good humor at that dinner and people came away, you know, generally feeling good, despite what I think is a dinner that’s over that no longer serves a purpose.

But Trump is a man who is incapable of real humor and he’s incapable of self-deprecation because he’s too insecure. And instead, on Friday night, what he did, he engaged in mean spirited insults. He went after Caitlin Collins, the star CNN journalist who has a temerity to be a good and a tough reporter, and he made fun of fat people he didn’t like. That was ironic coming from the most obese president since William Taft in nineteen twelve. I think this dinner has outlived its useful usefulness. It certainly outlived its usefulness with Donald Trump there.

Donald Trump unsurprisingly says he’s the greatest and most knowledgeable sports fan to ever occupy the White House. Now he certainly does know a lot about golf. He plays it all the time, and he was a multiple winner of his club championship. However, what might have happened if someone said, Sorry, I beat you, you finished second in your club championship? I wouldn’t have been around for long.

He inappropriately pressured the soccer executives during the World Cup to overturn a decision against a U.S. player. Other countries are now bringing a formal complaint. The New York Knicks players sure don’t want him back as he when he awkwardly attended the one game they lost in the finals. In contrast, President Ford was an acclaimed football star at the University of Michigan. President George H.W. Bush was a pretty good first baseman at Yale.

And his son owned a Major League Baseball team. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were deeply, deeply knowledgeable basketball fans. Obama even played ⁓ pickup games during his presidency. Trump is much less informed than any of those on football, baseball, or basketball. He does know a lot about ultimate fighting. That’s the one whose CEO, Dana White, is a big pal of the accused sexual assaulter, Andrew Tate.

Trump had an ultimate fighting championship at the champions rather at the White House for July fourth when one of them viciously criticized former first lady Michelle Obama and Trump of course said nothing.

So when it comes to presidential sports fans, let’s talk about the big ones and I’ll take Ford, Bush, Clinton, or Obama.

Michael Cohen, once Trump’s lawyer and legal hitman who turned ⁓ against Trump, now is back in the fold. There is one consistency. Michael Cohen was a sleazy thug when he worked for Trump for twelve years up until 2018 Then he faced legal charges, and assuming Trump may be in the decline, but the best way to beat it was to turn state’s witness against his boss.

He still then was a sleazy thug. Now he sees the president seemingly riding higher again, he has flipped once more and is in Trump’s corner. Like his earlier stints, Michael Cohen still is a sleazy thug.

As a semi related aside, Trump yesterday was booed as he tried to hog the spotlight at the World Soccer Championships. This is the second time in the last month that Trump has been booed at a major sporting event. When he attended the New York Knicks Championship Finals game against the Spurs, the only one they lost by the way, he was booed at Madison Square Garden. So the only connection here is Donald Trump and Michael Cohen are together again.

They deserve each other, and they deserve the accompanying boo’s.

This isn’t Germany or Italy in the nineteen thirties, but the word police state does leap to mind considering an evening last weekend, four New York Times reporters had a knock on the door and were served with a subpoena to appear in court this week about their story on why Trump’s new airplane did not possess the sufficient security protections to fly out of Ankara last week. He had to switch to his previous plane.

Now here’s why this story has just an awful ring to it. One, the new plane was a gift from Qatar. If not for the Supreme Court, that would seem to be a violation of the emoluments cause. Two, it is the public’s right to know if a plane used as Air Force One by the president and where taxpayers have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to upgrade it, the people have a right to know if it’s not ready. Three, Trump lied about why he was switching planes. He said he wanted to show the new aircraft off to troops.

It is responsibility then of the news media to tell the truth. What was this really all about? Four, usually before any news media is questioned in an investigation, there has been investigations of others taking place to try to set the predicate. None of that has occurred. Five FBI Director Cash Patel has taken charge of this investigation. That’s unusual. But if it were previous FBI directors like William Webster or Bob Muller or Christopher Wray, you’d say, okay, maybe it’s maybe it’s acceptable.

But with this free drinking, rule violating, partisan little hit man, this is just nothing but an absolute political hit job. Questions arise also about the role of the Manhattan U.S. attorney Jay Clayton, slated to be director of national intelligence, who was the one that issued the subpoena to the Times reporters. This case is about political embarrassment. Trump celebrated new plane, at least as of now, is a dud and it’s a cover up.

Maybe it’s exaggerated, but you know it does have a little bit of a Gestapo ring about it.

ICE is lying about the murder of a decent hardworking family man, Lorenzo Artura, in Houston this week. Why do I believe that? Habit. Over the last year they have been caught in lies in Minneapolis, New Jersey, and Chicago and elsewhere about acts they’ve committed. Arturo had been here for thirty five years from Mexico. He was in the process of trying to get a work permit, a legal work permit. He had a small construction operation and worked hard, sent three kids to college, owned his own home. It’s kind of called the American dream.

On the way to pick up his work crew the ear the other morning, ICE attacked him in unmarked cars. They claim he used his car as a weapon to ram them, so they had to shoot and kill him. Given his character and history, I simply don’t believe that.

More likely, ICE agents could perhaps ill trained as others have been, panicked and shot and killed a really good man. Markwayne Mullin the new head of Homeland Security, vowed to change the out of control thuggage behavior and deception of the immigration agency over the past year and a half. Houston affords an opportunity to see if he’s serious and will tell the truth.

We’re waiting to hear from you, mister Mullin

I’ve never been a soccer fan, dating back to the games when my seven and and eight-year-old kids were playing. They had little interest in the game. But I’ve enjoyed an epiphany this week, marveling at Paraguay’s tenth shootout to defeat European power Germany, or the incredible drama of Cape Verde. Population 500,000, playing defending champion Argentina evenly for a hundred and ten minutes, losing in overtime to the team led by Lionel Messi, the Michael Jordan of soccer.

My grandson Kai has adopted his favorite team, Norway. I got hooked earlier by the Scottish fans during their stay in Boston when they charmed and miraculously outdrank the locals. Amid all this, however, a stigma. A US player, Folarin Balogun was suspended.

I don’t know enough to say whether that was justified or not, but those are the rules until Donald Trump and his disreputable commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, intervened with a corrupt head of FIFA, Gianni Infantino, who undid the suspension. Now I’m still probably gonna cheer for the American team, but that’s cheating. And if that decision is upheld.

Any victory will have an asterisk. However, let’s not let several sleazy characters and actions undercut a fabulous World Cup. Go Norway.

Almost as repulsive as Trump’s unprecedented use of the presidency to enrich himself, he raked in at least two point two billion dollars since taking over in January of twenty twenty five, and he’s cut other deals with foreign governments and other nefarious sources to ⁓ keep the money spigot flowing in the future.

But almost as repulsive is the lies he spins to justify his corruption. He says everyone is getting richer because of the great economy he’s created. Actually, the last 17 months of the Biden presidency generated a stronger economy and more jobs, and inflation was the same. He says, well, everybody’s cashing in now. I’m just cashing in because I’ve got a lot of lot more money than most. Well, try telling that to the welder in Chillicothe, Ohio, whose real wages have barely stayed ab above water the last 17 months. Or to the nurse in Augusta, Georgia, who hasn’t seen a ring increase in real wages at all during this Trump presidency.

As for the claim, this is normal for presidents. All presidents come to the White House to enrich themselves. Jefferson died in debt. Ulysses S. Grant had to write his memos his ⁓ his memoirs while suffering from a painful throat cancer to make sure his family would be okay.

And they say, well, how about Obama? Look, he’s gotten rich. Well, Obama’s major growth in his worth during his presidency, but profits from an earlier autobiography, which he wrote himself. That’s not an option that that Trump has. Trump and his family view the presidency primarily as a rip off vehicle thanks to clueless taxpayers.

I tell you, people are wising up to this corruption and he’s gonna get in real trouble.

William McRaven is a genuine American hero, a decorated, retired four-star admiral. He was the commander of U.S. Special Operations, and he planned and led the incredibly difficult operation that killed nine eleven mastermind Osama bin Laden.

All should read his piece in The Atlantic, that America deserves answers from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on his dismissal of some of the country’s best generals and admirals. McRaven notes that when President Lincoln dismissed General McClellan for lack of aggression, he explained it. As did President Truman in firing Douglas MacArthur, and as did Defense Secretary Gates in ousting two top Air Force officers. From Hegseth nothing on his dismissal or downgrading of dozens of prominent officers disproportionately blacks and women.

Most recently he forced out General Chris Donahue as commander of U.S. Army Europe. Top military people say Donohue may be the most respected officer in the Army. A warrior, strategically brilliant, courageous, and loyal to his troops. Hegeseth has given no reason for any of this. The strong suspicion is that the morally challenged, unqualified defense secretary, like his boss, only wants to be surrounded by politically correct sycophants. Admiral McRaven wrote, Hag says getting rid of senior leaders that he could he, McRaven considers among the very best generals and admirals, may leave America, quote, without the experienced voices they need to make the best decisions, and that the Congress and the public should demand answers.

The Admiral wrote, as, quote, our national security depends on it.

You know, there is one vote, one action that will determine American values more than any other over the next couple months, and that is the nomination of Todd Blanch to be attorney general. If Blanche is confirmed, it’s a validation of all the lawless acts of the past year and a half. Critics are making a mistake if they focus primarily on the slush fund for Trump’s allies, including the January 6th criminals.

That was outrageous and grounds not to confirm him, but Blanche will elude or lie his way out of that. The same with Blanche’s mishandling of the Epstein scandal, desperately trying to protect Trump and giving special treatment to Epstein’s convicted accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell. But these are only the tip of the iceberg. The case is much bigger than that. The Justice Department’s lawlessness under Blanche, who’s run the department.

The Trump ordered political prosecutions of James Comey and Letitia James, the mayor of Newark, the corrupt deal he cut with New York City’s former mayor, Eric Adams, in return for playing ball with Trump on immigration, the unprecedented number of grand juries that have rejected in d indictments sought by Blanche’s Justice Department, the political litmus test established for the FBI and the Justice Department, and the departure of thousands of Justice Department employees, including the best prosecutors, national security and civil rights attorneys.

If Blanche is confirmed, it’s a vote to continue all of these dreadful practices and the total politicalization of a lawless department of justice.

Antisemitism is a growing and grave concern in the United States and Europe. But the United States ambassador to France is the wrong person to deliver that message.

It’s Charles Kushner, an ex con, who got the job only because he’s Trump’s daughter’s father in law. he was convicted of fraud and witness tampering some years ago. His post in Paris is a disgrace to the legacy of our great ambassadors to France, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Up thru, Sergeant Shriver, among many others. Kushner was convicted of trying to dissuade his brother in law from testifying against him and he then went and set him up secretly with a prostitute, videotaped it, and sent it to his wife.

Chris Christie, who prosecuted him, called it one of the most loathsome and disgusting crimes he saw. Kushner has no right to be in Paris, he certainly is not the right person to raise a moral issue.

Alani Bankhead, who won the Montana Democratic primary for the United States Senate, is it is is impressive. Air Force veteran and good enough candidate to beat more experienced aspirants in the primary. In addition ⁓ to a Republican, also running is Scott Bodner, a former president of the University of Montana, top of his class at West Point, Rhodes Scholar and Green Beret command.

There’s you know a couple realities here, Bodner would have a chance in a head to head race against this very mediocre Republican. No chance really in a three-way race. Bankhead has no chance as a Democratic brand is too toxic. Two of the best Montana Democrats since Mike Mansfield retired a half century ago, three time U.S. Senator John Tester and two time Governor Steve Bullock, both were trounced in the most recent Senate contests. The D brand is just too toxic.

Bankhead has every right to stay in the race, but that would be tantamount to electing a MAGA-type Republican, who got the nomination actually under rather dubious circumstances. Or she could bow out with a bright future ahead and help Montana have a shot at electing an Angus King type to the U.S. Senate.

We’ll talk later this week about Trump’s Iranian deal, which looks like he got taken. And I never want to talk about the tacky and tasteless UFC fighting match on the White House South Lawn last night. It is a good day to talk about the incredible New York Knicks championship run. They brought the Big Apple its first NBA title in fifty three years in classic fashion.

Even our British producer, no fan of American sports got hooked on this team. After the final game, I emailed Bill Bradley, one of the Knicks greats in the championship teams in the nineteen seventies. I said I was blown away by Jalen Brunson, the MVP. Bradley replied yes to Brunson while noting it was the whole team, unselfish, disciplined, and resilient, like all champions. It was a team for the ages and it also was a wonderful escape from the Washington I work in.

Thank you, New York Knicks.

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.