DL Open Thread: Tuesday, September 16, 2025

Trump Declares War On Everybody Who Disagrees With Him.  Starting, of course, during a ‘takeover’ of Charlie Kirk’s radio show:

Vice President JD Vance spent Monday hosting Charlie Kirk’s radio show, using his power to continue whitewashing the deceased conservative pundit’s record while leveling threats at President Donald Trump’s political opponents.

The White House promoted the radio appearance, hyping it up on official government-funded social media accounts. The White House’s official rapid response account live-tweeted throughout the show, which was broadcast from the White House.

As part of his radio show hosting duties, Vance invited several White House staffers to appear on the program with him. For instance, White House deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich hailed the work of Kirk’s group, Turning Point USA, which is notorious for hiring white supremacists.

Senior Trump aide Stephen Miller also appeared and revealed the administration’s plans to use Kirk’s death to attack the left.

“We are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy these networks and make America safe again for the American people. It will happen and we will do it in Charlie’s name,” Miller said in reference to progressive groups who have told the truth about Kirk, the right, and the Republican Party.

WATCHING U.S. PRESIDENT Donald Trump read stiltedly a script written for him after Charlie Kirk was murdered last Wednesday, some might conclude most assassinations in the USA were perpetrated by “the radical Left”.

Trump said:

“For years, those on the radical Left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today.”

He concluded that “radical Left political violence has hurt too many innocent people and taken too many lives”.

So, how many of the 24 perpetrators of the 31 targeted political murders or attempted murders since 2018 were from the Left? Let’s count them.

I’ll save you the trouble.  The answer is zero.  Read the article, do the countdown yourselves.

And then I wake up to this:

Donald Trump has filed a $15bn defamation lawsuit against the New York Times in his latest use of legal action targeting a major media outlet.

The US president accused it of being a “mouthpiece” for the Democratic party and of “spreading false and defamatory content” about him.

It comes after the New York Times said last week that it had been threatened with legal action by the White House, following articles about a crude birthday note given to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The note bears Trump’s signature, but the president has denied being its author.

In July he launched legal action against another big US paper, the Wall Street Journal, and its proprietor Rupert Murdoch, after it first reported the existence of the note, which also featured a lewd drawing. It has since been published, but Trump continues to deny being its author.

This is all about silencing a free press.  WHERE ARE THE DEMOCRATS?  Where is our Congressional delegation?  Are you all OK with a Fascist takeover of the United States?? 

Based upon the collective silence of our DC reps, that’s a rhetorical question.

Are You Buying The Story The Kirk Kooks Are Peddling?  Josh Marshall isn’t:

In the current environment I think it’s fair to say there’s really no reason to believe anything we’re hearing from federal law enforcement, either formally or on background to reporters.

The top executive positions at the FBI are held by hyper-partisan podcasters. Credible reports say roughly a third of the senior career leadership has been purged. Certainly the people who remain are either politically aligned with the administration or know that any straying from the company line means immediate termination. So again, things they say could be true. There’s simply no reason to assume that or even believe it’s more likely to be true than not.

In this post however I want to focus on how extremely little we actually know.

Almost everything that is currently being treated as fact comes from the Governor of Utah, Spencer Cox. He’s earned some credibility for departing from the MAGA line of demanding vengeance against Democrats. But he’s not in charge of the FBI or even local law enforcement, which is the other primary investigative agency. I don’t know how robust a state police authority they have in Utah. But there’s really no logic to Cox being the primary source of information. All the information about leftwing ideology and Tyler Robinson’s roommate allegedly being a romantic partner and transitioning comes from him.

Basically everything is from Cox or law enforcement sources speaking to right wing publications. Bear in mind that they have complete access to his apparently cooperative MAGA family, the roommate (whatever his story is) and seemingly Robinson’s fairly extensive online activities. So they should actually know quite a lot about what he was thinking and doing and saying in the lead up to this murder, and probably going back a few years.

My best guess is that Robinson’s story doesn’t line up with the one the White House wants to tell and that’s why so little information is coming out. What we’re hearing from Cox is probably wrenching the story in as favorable a direction as possible. That’s my assumption. It could be wrong. Who knows? What’s not an assumption is how little we appear to know and how vague that quasi-public statements actually are. Even if you accept the administration’s version of what happened here, an uncritical acceptance of Cox’s basic storyline, it’s remarkable just how little it’s based on. He speaks very generally. No documents are referenced, no quotes. There’s much more of a blackout on information than press accounts would suggest.

A quick technical note on ‘fair use’.  I am a contributor to Talking Points Memo.  I asked them to what extent I could excerpt from their site for DL.  They told me that, as long as I provide attribution and a link, I can share as much as I’d like.   We need resources like TPM.  Why?  Because this is what they stand for.

Israel’s Genocide Almost Complete.  Hey, why speak up now? Done deal. Amirite, Delaware delegation?:

We are living through the most dangerous period of history since World War II.  But there are fundraisers to attend.  Which is presumably why Chris Coons and his, wait for it, ilk, have no time to go on CNN any more to ‘express concern’.  I hear that Big Pharma puts out a nice spread–only the finest in antibiotic-infused beef.

At least Delaware is doing some good stuff (see articles about stifling free speech above):

Delawareans will have new protections against what are known as SLAPP lawsuits: strategic lawsuits against public participation.

Governor Matt Meyer Monday signed legislation known as the Uniform Public Expression Protection Act (Senate Bill 80). It expands existing anti-SLAPP protections and gives courts more discretion over whether such cases can proceed.

According to State Senator Spiros Mantzavinos, D-Elsmere, a SLAPP “frequently takes the form of frivolous lawsuits simply filed by someone because they don’t like what someone had to say.”

“These are lawsuits typically filed by powerful individuals, corporations or institutions not to seek justice, but to intimidate, silence and burden critics with costly legal defense until they abandon their criticism or opposition,” Representative Frank Burns, D- Pike Creek, Newark said.

Good work all around.  Also, glad to see this one signed into law.  Hey, at least Ciro Poppiti can drown his sorrows with a glass (or bottle) of robust barolo.

What do you want to talk about?