WEDNESDAY: More than a half million deportations!

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 21, 2026

Plus, almost two million more: Based on captured comments at Mediaite, the idea that President Trump is experiencing some sort of cognitive decline is gaining a bit of traction around the dial—generally among people who aren't American journalists.

Mediaite has recorded comments by former Trump lawyer Ty Cobb, by former Trump assistant Stephanie Grisham, and by Whoopi Goldberg on The View. Very few American journalists seem to know how to handle this topic—and there's much, much more to say about the way such issues are assessed within the context of our frequently underwhelming and unimpressive high-end American journalism.

We expect to return to that general topic tomorrow. For today, we thought we'd call attention to a report by the New York Times about the vast number of deportations being carried out at this time.

The report appeared as a "Special Section" in Sunday's print editions. It tells a remarkable story—one which also strikes us as remarkably murky. Headline included, the lengthy retrospective report starts like this:

A Year Into Trump’s War on Immigration, Images of an Altered America

In just 11 months, about 500,000 people would be deported in an unrelenting campaign celebrated by those who saw it as long overdue and lamented by those who saw it as inhumane.

Over the year, the deportations forced Americans, even those who welcomed the stepped-up enforcement, to reckon with the human consequences of rounding up and expelling people from their streets.

Homes were emptied. Families were splintered. Neighborhoods were subdued...

From there, the report offered several capsule accounts of specific situations in which specific people have been deported. Soon, the authors offered this overview of the ongoing state of play:

Mr. Trump, catapulted back to the White House by voters whose views had shifted sharply against illegal immigration, was making good on his campaign promise to enforce immigration laws to their fullest extent.

Americans were confronted with a swelling deportation force that, under pressure to meet arrest quotas, traded targeted raids for sweeps that critics saw as indiscriminate and supporters as vital.

Protesters clashed with armed agents as the dragnet widened, sweeping up recent and longtime immigrants, those with criminal records and many without.

The all-of-government effort was stunning, an abrupt pendulum swing for a country that had just absorbed a record influx of migrants during the Biden era, overwhelming cities, souring voters and fueling Mr. Trump’s hard-line agenda.

For decades, a fragile, tacit understanding had allowed millions of undocumented immigrants to build lives here, largely without fear of deportation, so long as they worked hard and stayed out of trouble.

In less than a year, that status quo was upended.

According to the Times report, something like a half million people had been deported in the first eleven months of President Trump's second term. On the slightly over hand:

As of December 10, 2025, DHS had set the number at "more than 605,000," with "1.9 million illegal aliens [also having] voluntarily self-deported."

It seems to us that the remarkable size of this operation tends to go un- or under-reported. Much attention may go to the occasional individual case, with the massive size of the operation possibly being ignored.

We'll note one other question which frequently comes to mind:

To what extent could those half million or 600,000 people be "the worst of the worst?" On Fox News Channel programs, viewers are often told about specific alleged murderers, rapists and child molesters who have allegedly been arrested and deported. 

On the other hand, we Blue American often read about such real and potential deportations as this, as reported online, this very Monday, by the New York Times:

To Their Shock, Cubans in Florida Are Being Deported in Record Numbers

[...]

“I am scared of everything,” said Javier González, a 36-year-old salesman in the heavily Cuban city of Hialeah, northwest of Miami.

Mr. González and his family crossed the United States-Mexico border in February 2022, fleeing what he described as a threat to his life in Cuba, where he was a political dissident.

Mr. González and his wife, like hundreds of thousands of recent Cuban migrants, were released under what is known as conditional parole. That does not allow them to apply for residency under the Cuban Adjustment Act, a law that Congress passed in 1966, and leaves them vulnerable to deportation.

But Mr. González and his wife legally obtained Social Security numbers, work permits and driver’s licenses. He applied for political asylum and has a pending court date in 2028. He found work as an HVAC technician. Mr. Trump’s campaign promise to deport criminals seemed sound to him.

Then early last year, ICE officers, during regular check-ins in South Florida, started detaining Cubans with conditional parole. Now, to avoid immigration sweeps, Mr. González said he avoided unnecessary car rides and local Hispanic supermarkets. He cannot fathom the repression he might face in Cuba were he to return as a former dissident.

“Sometimes I tell myself, ‘Why do you have to feel as if you were a criminal when you are an upstanding person?’” Mr. González said. But, he added, “They can grab you and do whatever they want.”

Javier Gonzalez doesn't sound like the worst of the worst. It may seem odd to think that people allowed to apply for asylum are being deported in spite of that ongoing legal process.

The zone is being flooded on an hourly basis these days—but yes, President Trump actually was, for better or worse, "catapulted back to the White House by voters whose views had shifted sharply against illegal immigration."

Is the gentleman actually doing what he was elected to do? But in the larger sense, also this:

Is this overall situation "now too much for us?" The madness seems to be everywhere, along with the inability to keep track of what is happening in various arenas as the flooding continues.

According to DHS, 2.5 million people had already left the country as of December 10. In all honesty, the sheer size and complexity of this operation may simply be too much to cover—and the president is stumbling ahead, covered by journalists who don't seem to know how to discuss what seems to be sitting right there before them.

(That's been true for the past fifteen years.)

There's been a cognitive decline, some people have now said. There's also been a giant change in the huma landscape—not to mention a threat to wage war on the city of Nuuk in the days, weeks or months still ahead!

COGNITION(S): Applebaum takes it up a notch!

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 21, 2026

Her latest suggestion ignored: Yesterday, on Deadline: White House, the Atlantic's Anne Applebaum kept floating a general notion.

She seemed to be floating a general notion concerning President Trump. To our ear, she went beyond her previous attempts at hinting / suggesting / but not quite saying what she now rather plainly seemed to imply.

"I think the story of this, today's madness starts a few days ago," she said at 4:06 p.m. With that, she initiated a lengthy discussion involving Nicolle Wallace and two other high-profile panelists. 

Applebaum's use of "madness" seemed to be colloquial there. But soon, a new level of hinting took shape. 

As Applebaum continued, she directly cited President Trump's peculiar text to the Norwegian PM. In that text, the president had strangely said that his failure to win the Nobel Peace Prize had possibly created a bit of a new world order.

According to Applebaum, "the text blamed Norway for not giving him the Nobel Peace Prize. It said, now that he hadn't won the prize, he wasn't going to be so interested in peace anymore. And he implied that this was a justification to invade Greenland." 

It's as we've noted in the past two days. On Monday, Applebaum had cited this same peculiar text in this essay for the Atlantic. On Tuesday morning's Morning Joe, she had discussed the same peculiar behavior by President Trump. 

Now, a mere ten hours later, her hinting / suggesting went well beyond the hinting / suggesting which had been lodged in those earlier efforts. Here's the start of what she told Wallace as two other panelists listened:

APPLEBAUM (1/20/26): Many other crazy things have happened, but this was so strange, and so off-the-wall, and it was so clearly detached from reality...that I think people are finally beginning to see that there's something very wrong. 

Something is "very wrong," Applebaum flatly said. The president's text had been "so off-the-wall" that people "were finally beginning to see" it.

Things the president said in that letter were "clearly detached from reality!"  She had used similar language before, but now she added this:

APPLEBAUM: I mean, Trump is living in his own world. I'm not going to make a medical diagnosis. I don't think there's any point in doing that at this point, but he has his own world, his own rules. He's not practicing normal diplomacy. He's not seeing the world in a normal way. And that is, of course, since he controls the U.S. military, very dangerous.

Could there be a violent invasion of Greenland? Yes there could.

With that, her presentation ended. Plainly, she felt she was describing a situation which involves great danger.

"I'm not going to make a medical diagnosis," Applebaum now said. This went well beyond the hints and suggestions she'd previously lodged—but as the long discussion unfolded, neither Wallace nor either of the other two panelists reacted to the plain insinuation lodged in that new formulation.

"I'm not going to make a medical diagnosis," Applebaum had now said. Since she isn't a medical professional, it wasn't obvious how she possibly could have made some such diagnosis, even in a provisional way—and she herself quickly backed away from her own newest hint. 

"I don't think there's any point in doing that at this point," she said, without explanation. 

Still, despite that instant walk-back, an obvious line had been crossed. We think of the passage from Camus' allegorical novel, The Plague, in which this finally occurs:

CAMUS (page 36): The word “plague” had just been uttered for the first time. At this stage of the narrative, with Dr. Bernard Rieux standing at his window, the narrator may, perhaps, be allowed to justify the doctor’s uncertainty and surprise—since, with very slight differences, his reaction was the same as that of the great majority of our townfolk. 

As it turned out, the citizens of the fictional Oran still weren't ready to confront the idea that they may have been hit by a plague. But now, the word had been uttered for the first time—and events would move on from there.

Applebaum had moved her hinting and her suggesting up another notch. The term "medical diagnosis" had been uttered for the first time—but reluctance being what it is among our imperfect species, the same old avoidance occurred

Given his "off-the-wall" behavior—given his clear "detachment from reality"—should someone be seeking a provisional medical diagnosis of the president's possible condition? 

The possibility had now been floated. But no one returned to this overt suggestion in the course of the ensuing lengthy discussion.

Ever so slowly they turn! It has long been a rule within the guild—simply put, you absolutely don't go there! You don't discuss the possibility that there could be some problem with the cognition, or with the mental health, of a major political figure.

As with many rules, this rule had been a very good rule—until such time as it wasn't. 

Yesterday afternoon, with Applebaum moving her hinting up a notch, Wallace, Bassin and Professor McFaul all plowed blindly ahead. In the course of a long discussion, they gave no indication that they had heard what Applebaum had just said. 

Wallace quickly offered a murky parable, but then she went with this:

"Again, we don't know why he acts this way. But let's just say it—he acts like a bleeping lunatic."

Like many others, Wallace has been "just saying" that sort of thing for a very long time. But with that, we were back to simple insults of the colloquial kind. No one was prepared to suggest that it might be time to ask actual medical specialists how this strange behavior by the president might possibly look to them:

Is something medically wrong with President Trump? Could it be a form of cognitive decline? Could it be a serious "personality disorder" (a form of what is still called a "mental illness")? 

Could it be a cognitive decline layered on top of some such unfortunate condition?

Applebaum has been hinting for the past several days that the answer is some form of yes. She keeps ratcheting up her suggestions, but she doesn't seem ready to make the recommendation herself.

Earlier that very day, Colby Hall had been forthright enough to describe the type of cognitive decline he thought he saw right before him. No one was willing to enter any such realm on yesterday's Deadline: White House.

In theory, journalists should investigate what they think they see, often by seeking the views of highly qualified specialists. Again and again, then again and again, our journalists and major pundits may not always choose to do that.

More from The Plague: In Camus' famous allegorical novel, The word “plague” had just been uttered for the first time.

For a slightly longer passage, you can just click here. In what ways might our own foot-dragging modern journalists resemble the folk in Oran?

TUESDAY: We've been recalling an Oscar winner!

TUESDAY, JANUARY 20, 2026

But first, three cheers for Hall: We've been thinking today about Driving Miss Daisy. It was awarded the Oscar for Best Picture way back in 1990.

Some progressives had objections. First, though, let us say this:

Three cheers for Colby Hall!

Hall was founding editor of Mediaite, a site at which he's been taking a more active role of late. We remain puzzled by his astounding claim that Greg Gutfeld, the "Fox News prankster," presents a brand of "smart, fun, non-lecturey comedy" on his gruesome "cable news" show.

We're still astounded by that assessment! But that was January 2025, and what you see here is right now:

Opinion
Trump’s Bizarre Behavior Has a Clinical Name: Disinhibition

One of the earliest and most underreported warning signs of certain forms of dementia is not memory loss. It is disinhibition—a deterioration of impulse control, judgment, and social restraint that often manifests as reckless behavior, inappropriate speech, and diminished concern for consequences. By the time forgetfulness becomes obvious, the disease process is often well underway.

That framework matters because it closely tracks what President Donald Trump has been displaying with increasing frequency.

In the wee hours of Tuesday morning, Trump posted private messages from confused European leaders, publicly criticized the United Kingdom’s national security posture, and shared a fabricated image depicting the United States in control of Greenland, Canada, Venezuela, and Cuba. This was the sitting president of the United States conducting foreign policy online, overnight, as allies scrambled to contain diplomatic fallout from his threats to “take” Greenland.

[...]

I am not a medical professional, but I have watched close friends and family endure the slow, painful experience of cognitive decline. Disinhibition is familiar to anyone who has lived through it. The tell is not temperament, but change from baseline...

And so on from there.

Meanwhile, it's true! As far as we know, Hall isn't a medical professional. Neither are we, and we aren't prepared to assume that his assessment here is correct.

It's also true that, in this opinion piece, Hall is discussing "cognitive decline," the safer (and more familiar) of the two conditions with which the president may be afflicted. For ourselves, we would wonder if some version of cognitive decline is now being layered atop a pre-existing "personality disorder," or atop a set of some such conditions. 

We'll also quickly take this guess:

As a general matter, people afflicted with serious "personality disorders" didn't choose to be so diminished. As we've noted in the past, antisocial personality disorder—colloquially, sociopathy—is believed to be partly heritable. 

The president's niece has joined other medical specialists in suggesting that the president may have suffered from that variety of "mental illness" all along. If that possible diagnosis is actually accurate, the condition of which we're speaking may have been bred in the bone.

We aren't assuming that Hall's suggestion today is right. On the other hand, we definitely aren't assuming that his suggestion is wrong. We offer three cheers for Hall today because he was willing to get off his aspic and offer some serious thoughts about what may seem to be right there before us. 

Along the way, he cites three people who may—or may not—have been trying to do the same thing:

That shift [in Trump's behavior] helps explain why concern is coming from voices that once defended or accommodated Trump. Sen. Ruben Gallego described Trump as “insane” on CNN...Even Trump’s own former deputy spokesperson, Sarah Matthews, believes Trump’s pursuit of Greenland is “mentally ill” and “deranged.” And CNN medical analyst Dr. Jonathan Reiner has called for a bipartisan congressional inquiry into Trump’s mental fitness, citing the behavioral pattern rather than ideology.

Offhand, we can't say that Senator Gallego ever "accommodated" President Trump. Beyond that, we've edited out a pair of voices who don't seem to fit Hall's stated framework. 

Nor is it clear what Gallego was trying to say when he said the things he said. As for Matthews, to see the remark in which she uses the term "mentally ill," you can just click here.

(We'd say that her statement is a bit hard to parse. She says the president has done "a medically-ill, deranged thing." Does the concept of "mental illness" actually work like that?)

Hall's statement today does parse—though no, he isn't a medical specialist. The president's recent behavior has seemed to be increasingly strange—and, in total truth, the president's endless and constant misstatements of fact have been completely unacceptable, dating all the way back to 2011 when he started making himself king of the birthers.

It was hard to get the Times to speak about that misconduct back then! For something resembling fifteen years, our journalists have insisted on refusing to discuss what seemed to be right there before them. 

As we noted in this morning's report, the whole gang on today's Morning Joe were sunk in a familiar brand of avoidance. That's long been a cognitive trait of Blue America's mainstream press.

Today, Hall has explicitly chosen to speak. He has spoken in a clear-cut way which can be clearly understood. This may help others find ways to speak about a possibility which could, of course, be extremely dangerous.

There's much more to say about all this, but we'll quit today with those three cheers—looking ahead to some possible thoughts about what happens in Driving Miss Daisy.

In closing, holy cow:

"Smart, fun comedy"—from the Fox News Channel's Gutfeld?  How on earth did today's honored trailblazer ever come up with that?

COGNITION(S): He's "off his rocker," Anne Applebaum said!

TUESDAY, JANUARY 20, 2026

When she said it, nobody heard: Let the word go forth to the nations! We aren't afraid to offer this assessment:

Anne Applebaum is the real deal.

Her background exceeds that of the mere cable talker, as valuable as some such player may be. You'll have to read the whole profile yourself, but here are a few of the basics:

Anne Applebaum

Anne Elizabeth Applebaum (born July 25, 1964) is an American journalist and historian. She has written about the history of Communism and the development of civil society in Central and Eastern Europe...

...She won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 2004 for Gulag: A History. She is a staff writer for The Atlantic magazine.

[...]

In July 2020, her book Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism was published. Partly a memoir and partly political analysis, it was on the bestseller lists of Der Spiegel magazine and The New York Times. Also in July 2020, Applebaum was one of 153 signers of the "Harper's Letter" (also known as "A Letter on Justice and Open Debate"); this expressed concern that "the free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted."

In November 2022, Applebaum was one of 200 US citizens sanctioned by Russia for "promotion of the Russophobic campaign and support for the regime in Kiev."

You can read the whole profile yourself. Today, Applebaum is a high-profile writer at the high-profile Atlantic. That doesn't mean she's always right, but she seemed to be floating a certain type of suggestion with yesterday's essay for the Atlantic. 

She seemed to be saying, and yet not saying, a certain forbidden thing: Headline included, this the way she started:

Trump’s Letter to Norway Should Be the Last Straw

Let me begin by quoting, in full, a letter that the president of the United States of America sent yesterday to the prime minister of Norway, Jonas Gahr Støre. The text was forwarded by the White House National Security Council to ambassadors in Washington, and was clearly intended to be widely shared. Here it it:

At that point, Applebaum published the text of the deeply strange letter President Trump sent to Norway's PM. In the letter, the president seemed to say that he was pursuing ownership of Greenland, possibly by military means, in part or largely because the Norwegian government had failed to award him that coveted Nobel Peace Prize!

For the record, the Norwegian government doesn't make such selections. Also, it wasn't clear what Norway has to do with Denmark's refusal to hand Greenland over to the United States—or perhaps to President Trump as some sort of tribute or prize.

In her Atlantic essay, Applebaum posted the text of that missive, as we did in yesterday's report. After that, she seemed to be saying, but not quite saying, something our Blue American elites are not permitted to say:

One could observe many things about this document. One is the childish grammar, including the strange capitalizations (“Complete and Total Control”). Another is the loose grasp of history...

Yet what matters isn’t the specific phrases, but the overall message: Donald Trump now genuinely lives in a different reality, one in which neither grammar nor history nor the normal rules of human interaction now affect him. Also, he really is maniacally, unhealthily obsessive about the Nobel Prize. The Norwegian Nobel Committee, not the Norwegian government and certainly not the Danish government, determines the winner of that prize. Yet Trump now not only blames Norway for failing to give it to him, but is using it as a justification for an invasion of Greenland.

[...]

For the past year, American allies around the world have tried very hard to find a theory that explains Trump’s behavior. Isolationism, neo-imperialism, and patrimonialism are all words that have been thrown around. But in the end, the president himself defeats all attempts to describe a “Trump doctrine.” He is locked into a world of his own...

Was Applebaum hinting at a type of assessment she wasn't willing to state? That's the way it seemed to us—and this morning, at the start of the 6 o'clock hour, there she was on Morning Joe, where—or so it seemed to us—her quixotic mission accelerated.

At 6:08 this very morning, Mika Brzezinski read excerpts from Applebaum's short essay. As she did, she omitted the claim that President Trump "now genuinely lives in a different reality" and is "locked in a world of his own."

She skipped the passage in which Applebaum said that President Trump is "maniacally obsessive" about the Nobel Prize. Applebaum had flirted with a medical term in that statement. Brzezinski didn't read that part of what Applebaum had written.

For the record, we aren't saying that Brzezinski was wrong in those omissions; we're just noting what she did. Then she threw to Applebaum, who made such statements as these:

As she started, Applebaum said that President Trump is exhibiting "a degree of separation from reality that I think is new." 

President Trump "really seems to be living in an alternate reality," she quickly added 

She said the president is on "a strange and increasingly weird ego trip—I don't know how to describe it—a narcissistic fantasy." Strikingly, she finisher her brief presentation with this:

"This makes the United States appear crazy, their president off his rocker."

Please note! Applebaum didn't say that President Trump actually is "off his rocker." She merely said that his "degree of separation from reality"—his "narcissistic fantasy"—is making it look that way.

Was Applebaum trying to tell us something without explicitly doing so? The following phrases had been included in her brief presentation to the Morning Joe group:

"A degree of separation from reality that I think is new" 
"He really seems to be living in an alternate reality"
 "A strange and increasingly weird ego trip"
"A narcissistic fantasy"
"Crazy"
"Off his rocker"

To our ear, Applebaum, like Lassie of old, was trying to tell us something! Joe and Mika proceeded from there, along with Lemire and two other guests, as if they hadn't heard.

We've told you several things about the possible topic at hand. We've told you such things as these:

We've told you that our journalists are forbidden, by long-established rules of the guild, from saying or suggesting that a serious problem of mental health may be affecting or afflicting a major political leader. 

We've also said that our journalists probably wouldn't know how to present and discuss such a forbidden idea even if they chose to go there. That inability to know how to speak about these possible medical situations seemed to afflict an exchange on CNN last evening, as reported by Mediaite:

Senator Thinks Trump Is Literally ‘Insane’: ‘He Is a Madman’

Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) told CNN host Anderson Cooper on Monday that he believed President Donald Trump is literally “insane.”

Asked on Anderson Cooper 360 whether there was any hope for European leaders to “de-escalate” and “reason with the president” over his repeated threats to annex Greenland, Gallego said, “No, and I’ve been very clear. He is a madman. He is insane. He’s only thinking about himself.”

“You really think he’s insane?” pressed Cooper [interrupting Gallego].

“Yes! I’m sorry, where are we at this moment where we don’t understand what’s happening in this country?” Gallego responded...

For the (sometimes inaccurate) CNN transcript, you can just click here.

For the record, Gallego didn't explicitly say that the president is literally insane, whatever that statement might have meant. ("Insane" is not a technical / medical / diagnostic term.) 

Gallego didn't make that explicit statement. What was he trying to say?

What was Gallego trying to say? Inevitably, Cooper didn't ask and Gallego didn't tell. Instead, Cooper quickly interrupted and challenged Gallego's statement in the manner described above. 

Cooper then ended the segment. Gallego's statement remained unexplained and undiscussed.

As most adults understand, serious cognitive decline is a well-known, tragic phenomenon in American life. It's also true that many adult Americans are diagnosable with such medical conditions—with such "mental disorders" (technical term)—as "antisocial personality disorder," the clinical term which is generally taken to correspond to the colloquial term "sociopath."

According to widely accepted studies, something like five percent of American men are diagnosable with antisocial personality disorder. (We presume there are stronger and weaker cases, but we don't really know.) 

Based on what we've read, narcissistic personality disorder is diagnosable with less frequency. For the record, you're hearing about this from us because our journalists and cable talkers refuse to interview the medical specialists who could presumably offer extensive information about such deeply significant matters.

Even at a time like this, our journalists are unwilling to discuss this part of our human world—this part of our medical science. Also, they probably wouldn't know how to conduct such discussions if they wanted to give it a try.

The president seems to be "off his rocker," a major scholar said. She said the president "really seems to be living in a alternate reality," that he's "exhibiting a degree of separation from reality that I think is new" 

To our ear, she seemed to be trying to tell us something, or at least to float a suggestion. Joe and Mika and their guests all chose to let it go. 

First, Joe stated his own view on the Greenland matter. Then he threw to David French, then on to Katty Kay in Davos.

No one asked Applebaum to speak with clarity about her rather striking remarks. Like the fictional people of Camus' Oran who couldn't believe that a plague was upon them, these stars of Blue American discourse aren't willing to discuss the things they may secretly think or believe.

Despite the praise we humans heap on ourselves, our human cognition is extremely limited. This would seem to be an example—one example of many. 

On this morning's Morning Joe, Applebaum's apparent suggestion was kicked to the curb. Full disclosure:

Within the silos of Red America, the denial and avoidance in this dangerous area are just massively worse.

Tomorrow: Whatever happens next

MONDAY: Dr. Reiner calls for inquiry!

MONDAY, JANUARY 19, 2026

Fellow citizens, we're just saying: We had planned to take the rare afternoon off—and yes, it felt very good. Then, the headline you see below leaped right off the screen. 

Just as in the days of old, your incomparable DAILY HOWLER keeps banging out those results:

CNN Medical Analyst Calls for ‘A Bipartisan Congressional Inquiry’ Into Trump’s Mental Fitness After Letter to Norway PM

CNN medical analyst Dr. Jonathan Reiner urged Congress to act following President Donald Trump’s unhinged letter to Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre blaming Norway for driving him to acquire Greenland.

Reiner posted to X on Monday, “This letter, and the fact that the president directed that it be distributed to other European countries, should trigger a bipartisan congressional inquiry into presidential fitness.”

Reiner served as a cardiologist to former Vice President Dick Cheney...

Ad so on from there. 

Yes, it's just a post to X, and Reiner has flirted with this general stance before. There will surely be no bipartisan congressional inquiry at this point in time.

That said, we'd regard his recommendation as a start, if we expected anyone else to follow "this Pilgrim way." But we pretty much basically don't.

As we've noted in the past, our journalists may not know how to talk about this type of topic. For starters, you have to exhibit sympathy and regret—and it helps if you actually mean it.

Also, you can't fashion discussion of such medical possibilities as some sort of insult. The problem with that leads back to Professor Brabender's great observation about our imperfect instincts as imperfect human beings:

"Where I come from, we only talk so long. After that, we start to hit."

We could quote at this point from Dr. King's first book, the remarkable Stride Toward Freedom. But that startling book appeared a long time ago, and it dealt with a different problem.

COGNITION(S): Cognition Red, Cognition Blue!

MONDAY, JANUARY 19, 2026

Human cognition is limited: We wish that what follows weren't the case. But at this time, at home and abroad, the dominant, dangerous point of concern is a problem whose name can't be spoken.

The dominant topic is a form of "mental disorder" (that's a technical medical term). Over the long football weekend, that apparent disorder surfaced first in a long, nutty Truth Social post.

You don't have to read the whole thing. We're simply trying to establish the historical record:

Truth Details

Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump

We have subsidized Denmark, and all of the Countries of the European Union, and others, for many years by not charging them Tariffs, or any other forms of remuneration. Now, after Centuries, it is time for Denmark to give back—World Peace is at stake! China and Russia want Greenland, and there is not a thing that Denmark can do about it. They currently have two dogsleds as protection, one added recently. Only the United States of America, under PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP, can play in this game, and very successfully, at that! Nobody will touch this sacred piece of Land, especially since the National Security of the United States, and the World at large, is at stake. On top of everything else, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, The United Kingdom, The Netherlands, and Finland have journeyed to Greenland, for purposes unknown. This is a very dangerous situation for the Safety, Security, and Survival of our Planet. These Countries, who are playing this very dangerous game, have put a level of risk in play that is not tenable or sustainable. Therefore, it is imperative that, in order to protect Global Peace and Security, strong measures be taken so that this potentially perilous situation end quickly, and without question. Starting on February 1st, 2026, all of the above mentioned Countries (Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, The United Kingdom, The Netherlands, and Finland), will be charged a 10% Tariff on any and all goods sent to the United States of America. On June 1st, 2026, the Tariff will be increased to 25%. This Tariff will be due and payable until such time as a Deal is reached for the Complete and Total purchase of Greenland. The United States has been trying to do this transaction for over 150 years. Many Presidents have tried, and for good reason, but Denmark has always refused. Now, because of The Golden Dome, and Modern Day Weapons Systems, both Offensive and Defensive, the need to ACQUIRE is especially important. Hundreds of Billions of Dollars are currently being spent on Security Programs having to do with “The Dome,” including for the possible protection of Canada, and this very brilliant, but highly complex system can only work at its maximum potential and efficiency, because of angles, metes, and bounds, if this Land is included in it. The United States of America is immediately open to negotiation with Denmark and/or any of these Countries that have put so much at risk, despite all that we have done for them, including maximum protection, over so many decades. Thank you for your attention to this matter!

Tariffs and dogsleds and DONALD J. TRUMP all in caps oh my!

That's a long post, and the post is observably nutty—in its insulting reference to those two dogsleds, but also in the bizarre decision to levy tariffs on long-standing allies unless they'll be willing to help the U.S. accomplish "the Complete and Total purchase of Greenland." If only for today, don't make us explain beyond that. 

We've shown you the text of the declaration. The report at Mediaite runs beneath this headline:

Trump Blurts Epic Saturday Morning Rant Threatening Allies—And Referencing ‘Dogsleds’—In Bid To Seize Greenland

It was indeed an epic rant, and so it went on Saturday morning—but there was more to come. Late last evening, Nick Schifrin of PBS broke the new report in a tweet.

We'll offer links to news reports below. But this is the actual missive the sitting president sent to Norway's Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, with a request that Støre should pass the missive along:

Dear Jonas: 

Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America. Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a “right of ownership” anyway? There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also. I have done more for NATO than any other person since its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United States. The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland. 

Thank you! President DJT

So disclosed Schifrin, he of PBS. The president wasn't awarded the Nobel prize, and that has made all the difference!

We'd call that overtly bizarre. 

For the record, the Norwegian government ("your Country") plays no role in deciding who will receive the various Nobel prizes. Here are links to two news report about this latest declaration:

Norway’s PM says Trump sent letter tying Nobel prize snub to Greenland ambitions
Politico. For full report, click here.

READ: Trump Warns He Has No ‘Obligation to Think Purely of Peace’ Over Greenland in Unhinged Letter
Mediaite. For full report, click here.

He wasn't awarded the Nobel Prize. Inevitably, this imagined though non-existent snub has led him to harden his stance—and no, he hasn't "stopped 8 Wars PLUS." 

Also, as everyone except him seems to know, the presidential election in 2020 wasn't rigged and stolen. That said, he keeps making the lunatic claim—and no reporter has dared to ask him why he insists on doing that.

There's much, much more to this latest development in this developing global problem. For now, we'll leave it right there—but also this:

We've told and told you, then told you again! The medical state of this powerful man is the globe's most significant issue. That said—and with this, Denmark comes back into play—our American press corps is unwilling to see what is right before us, not unlike the bedazzled citizens in this famous tale:

The Emperor's New Clothes

"The Emperor's New Clothes" is a literary folktale written by the Danish author Hans Christian Andersen, about a vain emperor who gets exposed before his subjects. The tale has been translated into over 100 languages.

"The Emperor's New Clothes" was first published with "The Little Mermaid" in Copenhagen, Denmark on 7 April 1837, as the third and final installment of Andersen's Fairy Tales Told for Children. The tale has been adapted to various media, and the story's title, the phrase "the Emperor has no clothes," and variations thereof have been adopted for use in numerous other works and as idioms.

Over a hundred languages! We assume that you're familiar with the tale's famous plot.

All over the world, people have understood that this famous tale tells us something very important about the limits of human cognition (or possibly, about the limits of human character). Yet here we sit, two hundred years later, and our biggest news orgs still refuse to report or discuss The (Apparent) Problem Which Does in Fact Have a Name.

This apparent problem is always a tragedy—but when it involves a sitting president, it's also extremely dangerous. That's one of the places where the limits of human cognition come in.

Over here in Blue America, we Blues have let the sugarplums dance in our heads—our thoughts of reclaiming the House this year, and possibly even the Senate.

Needless to say, that could happen! But the sitting president would still be the sitting president, after a humiliating election defeat. He'd still be the commander in chief—and what night he decide to do then?

We can't answer that question; neither can anyone else. But medical problems of the type in question are tragic but also very dangerous in the current circumstance.

To what medical problems do we refer? We're speaking of possible cognitive decline, possibly layered on top of one (or more) possible "personality disorders" (whatever they are). Such medical issues are always a tragedy—but in the current circumstance, they also threaten the world.

Now for some full disclosure:

Other remarkable cognitive failures are tied to this possible medical problem. We're speaking of Cognitive Failure Red, but we're also speaking about Cognitive Failure Blue.

The inability to see what's right there before us would represent an ancillary cognitive failure. Our current "national discourse" reeks of that failure. That's true among the elites of Silo Red, but also in Silo Blue.

Despite the praise we humans heap on ourselves, our human cognition is very limited. (Among other signs of this state of affairs, we humans tend to have a very hard time grasping that basic fact.)

Denial Red and Denial Blue! The failure to see what's right before us is general over the civil war which now obtains between our two Americas. 

The Reds refuse to discuss what's sitting right there. We Blues refuse to report it too.

With that, we return to the final day of our failing nation's three-day football holiday weekend. Denial and failure are all around us. The principal proof of our cognitive failure is the fact that we warring Americans, Red and Blue alike, are simply unable to see it.

Either that, or our warring elites, Red and Blue, simply refuse to speak!

Tomorrow: So many different denials in play, even among us Blues!