Tom Nichols

WATTERS: The president keep says Jon Husted has a great ass. What's up with that? JD VANCE: I'm jealous. The president has never said that about me

“You are disgusting. Put yourself in shape. You look like hell.” — 😳 a demented Trump snaps at a reporter who asks him if he’s too unwell to go to Kansas on Saturday

Generals? What Generals? The bar for becoming a general officer is in the fucking basement. You can see a trend in my posts as of late. I've gone full bluntness on this topic since nothing else seems to work. We spent twenty years losing wars while rewarding the people who learned how to survive the system that was losing them. Strategic failure became “complexity.” No victory became “persistent engagement.” Nobody got fired, everyone got another star, and the bureaucracy learned the oldest trick in Washington: rename failure until it sounds like expertise. Then came the cultural surrender. The same generals who couldn't produce victory abroad stood almost mute while the formation was carved up at home by race, sex, identity, extremism stand downs, demographic targets, and an expanding DEI bureaucracy. They watched warfighting institutions absorb the language and priorities of academia and HR, then called the corrosion “leadership.” That's the stunning indictment nobody wants to touch: a general is supposed to protect the formation from threats outside it and rot inside it. Too many did neither. We promoted custodians of decline and called them strategic leaders. I'm sick and tired of having to pretend the system isn't absolutely cracked in half by people who serve themselves over the nation. No more.

While I share my friend John's general dismay with the TOP (Trumpy Old Party), and agree that the R's suck because they sound like D's, some pushback is warranted, e.g. 1) Trump may appoint hacks to the bench but no question his appointees are far, far better than any conceivable D's. 2) Trump talked ending the filibuster, but was basically ignored. As far as I can tell, ending filibuster is now mainstream D policy. This is the path to radicalism. 3) Trump is gone in 2 years, 3 mos. Basically everything he did is reversible. What D's are cooking up is unknown but is perhaps irreversible. We should believe them when they say they want to radically change the system.

Election Night: Join @HannaRosin, @AdamHSays, and multiple Atlantic staff writers as they analyze the ideas animating this election, and discuss what’s next for American democracy. Stream on X or TheAtlantic.com starting at 9 p.m. ET. Subscribers can also watch on our app.

Here’s another clip of a woman reading Trump’s words verbatim from a recent rally in Mississippi that puts a giant magnifying glass over how gone he is cognitively and unfit he is for office.

Noteworthy differences between this statement and the anonymous first one from the Pentagon: 1) It alludes to the leak of "sensitive national security information," not classified information. They are different, both legally and practically. 2) It does not name Lt. Gen. Sylvia by name. 3) It does not directly accuse Sylvia of leaking classified information. These are significant legal differences.

Fox: Why are you here this morning? Trump rally attendee: Well, in the late 70s, I was a little too young to go to South America for the Jonestown Massacre. But this is as close as I'll ever get, so that's why I'm here. There's nothing like seeing a cult right up front.