Today's topics: The sick glorification of a murderer. 'Time' can't avoid picking Trump. The media bungles J6 IG report. My new column in The Hill.
By Gary Abernathy
The shamefulness of glorifying a cowardly murderer
It’s one thing when random idiots with internet access make positive comments about Luigi Mangione, the man accused of murdering UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. It’s another thing when media stars, whether of the news or entertainment variety, and politicians chime in with similar comments.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren said that violence is never the answer “but people can be pushed only so far. This is a warning that if you push people hard enough, they lose faith in the ability of their government to make change, lose faith in the ability of the people who are providing the health care to make change, and start to take matters into their own hands in ways that will ultimately be a threat to everyone.”
Unbelievable.
In his typical snarky fashion, Jimmy Kimmel cracked jokes about how his staff thinks that Mangione is attractive and likeable. “There’s a huge wave of horny washing over us right now," Kimmel said. "So many women and so many men are going nuts over how good-looking this killer is.” He then read texts from staffers expressing how obsessed they are over the murderer.
Remember how Kimmel cried and angrily lectured everyone over the recent election of Donald Trump? By contrast, he thinks a cold-blooded, cowardly murderer is fodder for light-hearted jokes.
Sadly, even some Fox News personalities adopted a similar attitude. On “The Five,” the panel discussed Mangione’s “hotness,” with Jesse Watters saying, “Women like the fact that the guy had a mission, that the guy stood for something, because in this society, all these guys walking around, they don’t care about anything.” Watters added that he doesn’t understand it, but that didn’t stop him from devoting way too much time to leading a discussion on the killer’s charisma factor. Watters took a similar approach on his own show later in the evening.
Do we have to state the obvious here? Based on what police and video evidence say, Luigi Mangione is a punk. He’s a coward. Disguised under a hoodie and cloaking his face behind a mask, Mangione hid behind a car, waited on Thompson to emerge from his hotel, and then jumped out and shot him several times in the back, murdering an innocent man in cold blood.
Stop and imagine for a minute that the victim was your son or daughter, or your mom or dad, or your sister or brother, or your husband or wife. Would you find anything humorous about it? Would you enjoy hearing lighthearted banter on national television or online about how attractive the killer is, or how committing such a murder was understandable under the circumstances?
Thompson is universally described as a humble man from a working-class family in Minnesota and a devoted husband and dad. It’s completely shameful for anyone to make light of this brazen, cold-blooded, cowardly murder, or attempt to make a hero or martyr out of Luigi Mangione. But in today’s society it’s a safe bet that such attitudes and commentary will only grow.
Time can’t avoid making Trump its top ‘Person’
So astounding and decisive was Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election that Time magazine had little choice but to name him its 2024 “Person of the Year,” an honor that was announced Thursday. The politically correct “person” denotation replaced the “Man of the Year” starting in 1999. Time had also begun naming a “Woman of the Year” for a few years before changing everything to “Person.”
Time emphasizes that its “Person of the Year” choice does not necessarily connotate positive achievement. It’s someone who “has done the most to influence the events of the year.” Still, most of the time it’s considered an honor.
It’s well understood that for any Republican or conservative in the U.S. to win honors such as the Time “Person of the Year,” the Nobel Peace Prize, a Pulitzer for journalism and literature — all decided by political liberals — their accomplishments or impact must far exceed those of any Democrat, progressive or foreign leader who might be under consideration. For instance, Soviet leader and devoted communist Mikhail Gorbachev was named "Man of the Decade” by Time for the 1980s rather than conservative Republican Ronald Reagan, whose forceful leadership opposing the Soviets, uncompromising advocacy for democracy and actions to force change led to whatever accomplishments Gorbachev may have claimed.
Trump’s achievement in coming back from the shambles of 2020 to reclaim the presidency in convincing fashion made his selection unavoidable. To choose anyone else would have cost Time all credibility.
Time’s cover photo of Trump was actually serious and flattering, and its story was well done, offering an in-depth and balanced analysis of his winning campaign, his transition, and his plans for the future.
“He has realigned American politics, remaking the GOP and leaving Democrats reckoning with what went awry,” the story by Eric Cortellessa accurately notes.
‘We don’t know how to make a damn truck’ admits company hired thru Biden bill to make post office trucks
Here’s a project for Donald Trump to either fix or kill when he takes office. The Washington Post reports:
A multibillion-dollar program to buy electric vehicles for the U.S. Postal Service is far behind its original schedule, plagued by manufacturing mishaps and supplier infighting that threaten a cornerstone of outgoing President Joe Biden’s fight against climate change.
The Postal Service is slated to purchase 60,000 “Next Generation Delivery Vehicles,” or NGDVs — mostly electric — from defense contractor Oshkosh, which has a long history of producing military and heavy industrial vehicles, but not postal trucks. Congress provided $3 billion for the nearly $10 billion project in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, one of Biden’s chief legislative accomplishments.
But as of November, the Postal Service had received only 93 of the Oshkosh trucks, the agency told The Washington Post — far fewer than the 3,000 originally expected by now. Significant manufacturing difficulties that were not disclosed to the Postal Service for more than a year have stymied production, according to internal company records and four people with knowledge of the events, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid professional reprisals. …
… “This is the bottom line: We don’t know how to make a damn truck,” said one person involved in production.
Like most things that cost a fortune in the name of battling “climate change,” no one really has any idea what they’re doing.
“Climate change” is the catch-all phrase designed to blame any variation in weather patterns on manmade activity. It used to be “global warming” until its advocates realized that sometimes things were getting colder, contrary to predictions.
Too cold? Blame modern society. Too hot? Blame modern society. A drought? Blame modern society. Too much rain? Blame modern society.
The solution? Shut down our most effective heating and cooling fuel sources and cost everyone a fortune to replace them with inefficient solar and wind technologies funded by taxpayers because they aren’t self-sufficient.
The fact is, the weather changes. The climate changes, sometimes dramatically. We had an ice age once, long before we had any factories or emissions.
Thank goodness we have an incoming president who is not a member of the Church of Climatology.
Some media spin IG’s J6 probe findings to defend the FBI
I have never been one to share the theory that anything that happened in regard to the U.S. Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, was planned or encouraged by the FBI or any other official agency. I also don’t believe that President Trump instigated it, although he could have done more to calm the situation.
But this week’s report by the inspector general leaves a few questions. And frankly, the way his report was touted by some major media outlets explains once again why so much of the news media is not trusted by millions of Americans.
For instance, the Washington Post divided its coverage into several headlines throughout the piece, with one headline reading, “IG report on Jan. 6 debunks claim that FBI agents were among rioters.” In fact, the report does no such thing, and it could be argued that it actually does the opposite.
The Post story leads off, “The inspector general’s report debunks the widely circulated claim that FBI agents participated in the protest or entered the Capitol undercover on Jan. 6, 2021.”
But the same story goes on to report that the FBI asked three “confidential sources” to travel to D.C. on Jan. 6 to gather intelligence on domestic terrorism subjects. It also adds that “23 other confidential sources were in Washington that day” on their own accord and apparently participated to different degrees in the events that unfolded.
But “none of the sources were authorized or encouraged to enter the Capitol or any restricted area ‘or to otherwise break the law,’ the report states,” according to the story.
So the Post is making a distinction between “FBI agents” and FBI “confidential sources” to come up with a headline saying the IG report “debunks” the claim that FBI agents were involved.
Average Americans, including those who were present at the D.C. rally and subsequent riot on Jan. 6, likely make little to no distinction between FBI agents and FBI confidential sources. They both work for the FBI in some capacity. And while it may be technically true to say no “FBI agents” were officially involved, the belief among many Americans that the FBI was present and participating to some degree in the riot is hardly debunked when the IG finds that more than 20 people connected to the FBI were there and involved, whether authorized or not.
A better, and more honest, way to report the findings would have been something like, “While the IG report did not find that the FBI had stationed agents at the Capitol to participate in or encourage the riot, it did find that many confidential FBI sources were present and participating to various degrees — some officially, others unofficially — which almost assuredly fueled suspicions that the FBI was connected to the events that unfolded.”
And “debunked” should not have been used in describing the report’s findings regarding suspicions of FBI involvement.
There is a troubling but consistent pattern of our legacy news outlets working overtime to protect the same government bureaucracy that Trump is devoted to reforming. Once upon a time, the news media could be counted on to be skeptical of government agencies. Somewhere along the way, much of the news media became those agencies’ unofficial mouthpieces and defenders.
My new column on Trump’s 2nd chance featured in The Hill
I have a new column published Friday in The Hill headlined, “Voters have given Trump a second chance to rise to the occasion. Will he?" Follow the link to check it out.
For Christmas, give ‘MAGA Republicans Are Already Normal’ — a perfect gift for Trump supporters and for friends and loved ones confused about the election
“MAGA Republicans Are Already Normal — And Other Shocking Notions” is the perfect Christmas gift for Trump supporters. It might also help friends and loved ones make sense of the 2024 election results who just don’t get it. It’s available on Amazon. Buy it here.
The book (actually much thicker than the illustrations above indicate — the hardcover and paperback are each 453 pages) is a compilation of many of the columns I wrote for The Washington Post from 2017 to 2023, and covers a variety of topics, but it particularly focuses on Trump’s rise to political prominence and helps explain his appeal.
Here’s a link to a website dedicated to the book.
Sign up or share this newsletter
Please sign up to receive this newsletter directly into your inbox or, if you are already a subscriber and reading this by email, share with a friend using the convenient button below. Thank you.