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As an experiment, I decided to experience the State of the Union as if I were an undecided swing state voter: I didn’t watch it. That effort took some strategic time-killing and attention-distracting moves for a news addict faced with a buzzy event that was streaming everywhere and lasted long enough to qualify as a miniseries. Shortly before show time, my wife offered to take an Uber to catch a flight. No, I exclaimed. I’m your loving husband. Please, please let me drive you to the airport. Sadly, traffic was lighter than I had hoped. So I stopped by one of my favorite burrito places that was completely out of the way, and where I knew parking would be a challenge. And it was. But not challenging enough. When I finally made it home, Trump was still going. I peeked at my social media accounts, where I saw this quote: “I believe the tariffs, paid for by foreign countries, will, like in the past, substantially replace the modern-day system of income tax, taking a great financial burden off the people that I love.” Oh god, why did I look? This was crazier than I thought. I finally understood why Elvis shot TVs. My sanity was at stake. Happily, there was a Warriors game to distract me. Sadly, my home team was down by double digits to the lowly Pelicans. Ugh, too painful to watch. Drastic times called for drastic measures. I turned off all my screens and sat in silence and quietly hummed (with all the screens off, I wanted to give my beagles some sign that I was still alive). Since the start of the speech, an hour had passed, an hour ten minutes, an hour twenty, an hour thirty. Every now and then, I’d pop on the TV to see if the coast was clear, but he was still talking and his Stockholm syndrome-suffering sycophants kept cheering (Guys, if your genuflection lasts more than four hours, call 911...). I started mumbling to myself, This SOTU shall pass, this SOTU shall pass. But, after a while, I didn’t know if it would. Speeches need term limits. At long last, the fili-bluster ended. Because I’m required to report back to you, I started watching and reading the analysis, and man, did that make me wish I was back stuck in traffic, looking for parking, or humming quietly to my dogs. It didn’t take long to realize that I actually hadn’t missed a newsworthy event at all. What we got was more of the same: Lies, divisiveness, hate ... even with polls nose-diving and his own midterm-challenged party in desperate need of the plot twist, the big show was just another re-run.
+ “The longest State of the Union in modern history is now over. Donald Trump held court in the House of Representatives and said little of substance, but substance wasn’t the point. This year, he intended to put on a show, with an array of guest stars and special appearances. He was happy because he was playing the roles he clearly loves: game-show host, ringmaster, emcee, beneficent granter of wishes—and, where the Democrats were concerned, a self-righteous inquisitor. Trump did his usual rote lying about the economy—pity the fact-checkers who tried to keep up even in the first 10 minutes or so of the speech—along with some of his other greatest hits, including the many wars he stopped and the magic of tariffs.” Tom Nichols in The Atlantic(Gift Article): President Trump’s State of the Union Variety Show. “The only thing Trump did not do was explain his policies—especially about war and peace—to Congress or the American people.”
+ David Frum in The Atlantic (Gift Article): The State of the Union Revealed a Sad Reality. “President Trump’s State of the Union address last night was very like the man who delivered it: divisive, abusive, and childish. The speech turned reality on its head in many ways. The president who has enriched himself and his family by more than a billion dollars in his first year in office called on Congress to clean up its corruption. The president who has collected about $175 billion in illegal tariffs from the American people falsely told them that he had given them a great big tax cut. The president solemnly condemned political violence—the same president who ended his first term by inciting a mob to sack Congress and overturn an election. Maybe most shocking, Trump demanded that members of Congress rise to agree that it’s the first duty of government to protect American citizens—even as his own government by its brutal police methods has shot American citizens dead on the streets and then tried to deceive the country about how those Americans had been killed and why. Then of course there were the many misstatements of fact about the economy, about crime, and about wars and peace—many of which look like deliberate decisions to deceive the public watching on television.”
+ CNN: Trump’s 2026 State of the Union address, annotated and fact-checked. (I won’t be surprised if CNN fact checkers offer to pick my wife up at the airport when she gets back...)
2
Redact Naturally
“The materials are F.B.I. memos summarizing interviews the bureau did in connection to claims made in 2019 by a woman who came forward after Mr. Epstein’s arrest to say she had been sexually assaulted by both Mr. Trump and the financier decades earlier, when she was a minor.” Here’s a headline that is not surprising, but is highly disturbing (and one that Trump definitely didn’t want the morning after his SOTU). Epstein Files Are Missing Records About Woman Who Made Claim Against Trump.
+ The fallout from the Epstein files continues. Larry Summers will resign from teaching at Harvard during review of Epstein ties. Leader of Columbia Brain Institute Quits Over Friendship With Epstein. Bill Gates Apologizes to Foundation Staff Over Epstein Ties.
3
Iran’s Crackdown
“The hospital corridors were full of bloodied people. All the hallways and walls were covered in blood” ... “A 7-year-old girl died in my own hands. She had been hit by live military ammunition” ... “One of our experienced colleagues, after helping a large number of injured people, was temporarily detained and interrogated. After that, he was placed under surveillance and his communication channels were monitored.” NYT (Gift Article) talked to doctors and nurses about the thousands of protesters killed by Iranian officials. “As street protests spread across Iran in early January, the authorities turned off the internet. Most of the world didn’t see the bloody crackdown that followed. But Iran’s doctors and nurses did.”
4
Do You Like to Watch?
“Over the past decade a seismic shift has created a growing demand for watch repair—and, in turn, for competent repair people. A historic stock market run (and a new-moneyed class of crypto capitalists) minted a contemporary order of very rich people, and when the pandemic briefly turned off many of the ways those people spend money, a lot of them got into watches. It’s estimated Rolex now sells over a million watches a year for the first time in its history (while pulling off the remarkable trick in the luxury business of making its product seem rare). Meanwhile, the secondary watch market is flourishing thanks to improving e-commerce platforms and a growing hobbyist culture. Yet there are fewer than 2,000 watchmakers in America capable of mending a timepiece, let alone a luxury one.” GQ: Rolex Opened a College—and It’s as Selective as Harvard. (Alt link here.) I’m guessing that being late to class is frowned upon...
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Extra, Extra
Putin’s War: Putin thought he could take Ukraine in a matter of days or weeks. Here we are, four years of destruction and defiance later. Photos: Four Years of War in Ukraine.
+ Super v Powers: NYT (Gift Article): F.B.I. Raids Los Angeles Schools Chief’s Home and District Headquarters. “The investigation’s target was unclear. The school district is the nation’s second largest, and as superintendent, Alberto Carvalho has one of the highest-profile jobs in K-12 education.”
+ Soft Power: “In 2023, Anthropic committed to never train an AI system unless it could guarantee in advance that the company’s safety measures were adequate. For years, its leaders touted that promise—the central pillar of their Responsible Scaling Policy (RSP)—as evidence that they are a responsible company that would withstand market incentives to rush to develop a potentially dangerous technology.” But we are in a race without rules, and self-regulation doesn’t stand a chance. Anthropic Drops Flagship Safety Pledge. Meanwhile, the company is being strong-armed by the Pentagon to remove all restrictions on the use of its AI. “Anthropic has long stated that it doesn’t want its technology used for mass surveillance of Americans or for fully autonomous weapons.” Will this position hold?