Mort Report is a labor of love by old-style correspondents with lifetimes on the road and young ones with fresh eyes. Our philosophy is simple: we report at first hand with analysis based on non-alternative fact, not opinion. If we get something wrong, we fix it.
WILD OLIVES, France — Sorting through notes after six months in America, I happened upon this typical Trump tweet: “We are the only Country in the World STUPID enough to allow ‘Birthright’ Citizenship!” The man is semi-literate and impervious to truth.
In at least 35 countries, including Canada and Mexico, anyone born within their borders is a citizen. The United States alone was "STUPID" enough to give a corrupt, delusional, racist megalomaniac a second term to devastate so much of our imperiled planet.
As expected, Europeans pepper me with questions about America's wannabe god-king who so many laughed off at first but now view with seething contempt.
The problem, I think, is less stupidity than cupidity. A wealthy few manage to convince workaday families that soaring bills and hardships are not the president's fault. Too many Americans simply ignore real-world crises their leaders make steadily worse.
And although Trump's poll numbers plummet, he still has an ace in the hole, which he exploits with shameless blood libel: baseless fear of the off-white Other.
Rich countries need border controls as desperate families flee climate collapse and conflict. But America, with its wide-open spaces, depends heavily on fresh skills and scutwork labor. Slammed doors only shorten the fuse on a global human timebomb.
Ineffable poverty and simmering hatreds grow exponentially as Trump's fossil-fuel backers poison Earth's atmosphere. The millions he lets die because of slashed foreign aid leave behind survivors who swell the ranks of terrorist groups and criminal gangs.
Balloting in November will reveal whether enough Americans are ready to protect their own progeny from unbearable heat, rising polluted seas and freak violent storms as well as unstoppable military conflict and increasing demagogy.
It will be the most crucial election ever, anywhere, in a wider world badly in need of American wherewithal to confront common challenges. In a dis-United States, it will amount to a national referendumb.
TUCSON — With his signature grace, Donald Trump deigned to reign over the upcoming White House Correspondents Association dinner for the first time since Barack Obama and stand-up comedian hosts roasted him like a plucked turkey.
"...Because the Press was extraordinarily bad to me, FAKE NEWS ALL, right from the beginning of my First Term, I boycotted the event, and never went as Honoree," he wrote in March on his personal truth-free, anti-social feed.
And the first part of his long post reflected a monarch so thin-skinned that he yells "Off with their heads!" at court jesters, like that mad queen down Alice's rabbit hole:
"The fact that these "Correspondents" now admit that I am truly one of the Greatest Presidents in the History of our Country, the G.O.A.T, according to many, it will be my Honor to accept their invitation, and work to make it the GREATEST, HOTTEST, and MOST SPECTACULAR DINNER OF ANY KIND, EVER!"
G.O.A.T, as you likely know, means Greatest of All Time. Hardly, considering Lincoln and Washington, or Franklin Roosevelt and other oath-keeping presidents at the annual event since 1926. But what a bullshit pulpit for a self-enamored fool who loves to gloat.
For Trump, it will be sweet revenge. In 2011, he sat stone-faced as Obama and a young Seth Meyers lobbed stinging one-liners at him to howls of laughter. That appears to be when he decided to toss a red cap into the ring.
On a big screen, Obama showed a mockup of what a Trump-themed White House would look like, uncannily evocative of what is planned today.
Rather than a traditional comedian to exchange jibes with a sitting president, the dinner's host is a mentalist, Oz Pearlman. Logical, Jimmy Kimmel quipped. Trump is a mental case.
The three-day extravaganza begins Friday with lavish sideshow events, the black-tie gala evening and afterparties, some hosted by faux-journalists, lobbyists, big business and foreign governments.
During Ronald Reagan's time, Mark Hertsgaard's classic book, "On Bended Knee," details how so many major news organizations were "subservient to state authority."
These days, the best reporters are better than ever, with new tools and technology. But the worst of them descend lower than their knees. The old Spanish term, chupamedias, describes them. Literally, sock-suckers.
