NOTE: Although this entry is from after 2022, I have backdated all entries from after that year to the corresponding date in 2022.
August 11, 1984: President Ronald Reagan is preparing for his weekly Saturday morning radio address, with a remote hookup from his ranch in California. A live feed was being transmitted to radio stations around the country. Many rebroadcasters were already recording the feed, to be ready for the official transmission. Many in the media heard Reagan's impromptu remarks as he gave them, but they were not broadcast live.
Reagan, known for his sense of humor, decided to have a little fun. He said, "All right. My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes." Laughter could be heard. It's not clear who in the room was laughing.
It was shocking. The President of the United States was making a joke about starting a nuclear war that would have destroyed cities all over the world, and killed millions of people. People began to wonder if the 73-year-old Reagan was losing his mind. Within days, though, he had his Republican Convention, got renominated, and cruised to victory as everyone either forgot or "decided to forget" what he'd done.
Strange how Republican Presidents, and Presidential candidates, can get away with such things, and the Democratic equivalents can't:
October 5, 2026: Donald Trump tells a crowd of his supporters that he is willing to have America's enemy -- the enemy he started a war with, over a lie -- that he is willing to let them destroy two of America's largest cities.
And it barely registers a ripple. Because of the hold he has over the American media.
Trump had started a war with Iran 7 months earlier, because the economy was going badly, and he was implicated in the Epstein Files. The distraction backfired, as Iran caused a lot of damage to American military bases all over the Middle East. At the time, the U.S. Department of Defense (which Trump had illegally renamed the Department of War) had admitted that 19 U.S. military personnel had been killed. Given how many U.S. bases have been hit, it has been speculated that the Trump Administration is lying as usual, and covering up a much higher total.
The economy was not getting better, partly because the war was causing oil prices, and thus gasoline prices, to continue to rise. People still wanted the full Epstein Files released. And his Year 6 midterm elections were coming up. Year 6 midterms had been bad for Franklin Roosevelt in 1938, Harry Truman in 1950, Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1958, Lyndon Johnson in 1966, Gerald Ford following Richard Nixon in 1974, Ronald Reagan in 1986, George W. Bush in 2006 and Barack Obama in 2014.
And polls showed that the Democrats were going to win control of the U.S. House of Representatives. They showed that the Democrats had a good shot of winning control of the U.S. Senate. And they showed Trump with his lowest approval ratings ever, because even people who had voted for him 3 times were now admitting that inflation was hurting them personally.
So he did what he always does when things aren't going well for him: He went on a political rally tour, so he could get the approval that he has always craved, because he never got enough love from his parents, never got enough approval from other rich people in New York, and never got a majority of the popular vote in any election.
This time, though, it didn't work. In 2015, he scheduled a rally for the Mitchell Center, the 10,000-seat arena at the University of South Alabama in Mobile, but there was so much demand that it had to be moved to the 33,000-seat Ladd Peebles Stadium. In 2024, Trump had won Alabama with 64 percent of the vote, winning 55 out of 67 Counties, including Mobile County with 57 percent. You've heard the term "Deep South"? You can't get much deeper in the South than Mobile, at least geographically.
But on October 2, 2026, Trump went to the Mitchell Center, and it was only half-full. He later went on Truth Social, the social-media platform he owns, and claimed that the media was never reporting his crowds of 50,000. That's because he wasn't getting them anymore.
On October 5, Trump went to the Nebraska State Fairgrounds in Grand Island. In 2024, he won Nebraska with 59 percent of the vote, winning 91 out of 93 Counties. Grand Island is in Hall County, which he won with 68 percent of the vote.
He began his speech by bragging about having won Nebraska 3 times, which is no big deal: No Democrat has won the State since LBJ in 1964, and only he since FDR in 1936. He praised Senator Pete Ricketts, Representative Adrian Smith, and Governor Jim Pillen, all Republicans running for re-election.
He yammered on about how MAGA -- "Make America Great Again" -- was "probably the greatest movement in the history of any country." Until he interrupted himself by saying, "By the way, we're kicking Iran's ass. You do know that, right? It's going to end one way or the other. It's going to end very soon and your prices are going to come tumbling. All your prices have been tumbling down. In fact, oil is less than it was under Biden, just so you understand." In other words, he lied.
Then he lied again: "We have the greatest military in the world and I built it during my first term. I built it." He did not build it: It was built by many Presidents over 85 years, starting with FDR after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941. They may not have been willing to admit that he was lying, but they knew it.
And then, 12 minutes into the speech, he said something that makes people like me, who have called him dumb, or insane, or both, look like we've actually been understating the case. He invoked inflation, but also Iran's ability to develop a nuclear weapon, which President Barack Obama had eliminated in 2015. About the high gas prices, he said:
It's a small price to pay for keeping the world safe, keeping our country safe. They can take out a city. Let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego. This is a very small price to pay and it's going to be over with very soon. It's essentially almost over with and they might keep going a little long.
"Let them take out Los Angeles." There are about 18.5 million people in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. "Let them take out San Diego." There are about 3.3 million people in the San Diego metropolitan area. In addition, both cities are major ports, and San Diego is home to a major naval base.
Now, it could be argued that what he meant was that, if we let Iran have a nuclear weapon, they could "take out" a major city. Except they can't do that. They don't have the capability, and never did. So, at the very least, it's a stupid lie.
At the very most, it sounds like he was asking Iran to "take out" Los Angeles and San Diego. In 2024, Trump got 32 percent of the vote in Los Angeles County, where former Vice President and 2024 Democratic Presidential nominee Kamala Harris lives; and 40 percent in San Diego County, once a very conservative County.
He did not mention San Francisco, long thought of as America's ultimate liberal city, and contiguous with San Francisco County. There, Trump got 15 percent. Across the Bay, in Alameda County, where Harris lived most of her life, he got 21 percent. Even in Orange County, east of Los Angeles, where Richard Nixon was born and raised, and considered the seat of the conservative movement that got Ronald Reagan elected Governor in 1966 and put him on the path to the Presidency, he got 47 percent, to Harris' 49.
Apparently, the audience at the Fairgrounds seemed to think he was saying, "Let Iran bomb Los Angeles," because they cheered him.
Then he tried the old "Red Scare":
And now we're on the cusp of beating the communist socialists, radicalized lunatics, and villains once and for all. We're going to beat them big. This is the most important midterm election. And we need to come all this way and defeat all those dangers and all those parties and all those people, all those sickos, only to watch our country be taken over by a group of people that hate America. They hate America.
But if they win the midterms, all of the things that we've accomplished, everything we accomplished, we'll never be able to do it again. Once you get on the wrong path, I used to say, "This country will never be a socialist country," but they've actually taken it a step further. Now I change it. "This country will never be a communist," because it's not going to be a socialist country, because I like to be right about everything.
So I said, remember the State of the Union, "This country will not be a socialist country." Okay. Now I say, "This country will never be a communist country," because they've skipped socialism. They went down to the bottom of the barrel, and now I see El-Sayed in Michigan. I mean, he's a total communist.
He kept going and going, with the lies: "They gave us the dark age of America. That was two years ago. We were living in a dark age, but we quickly turned that into the golden age of America. It's the golden age. Right now we have the golden age of America. Our nation is doing better now than it's ever done before. You don't hear that from these lunatics. We are stronger. We are doing better."
He went back to lying about the economy: "You know, they're the greatest numbers in history." He mentioned that his people were telling him he was a better President than George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. That might be true, not that he is, but that they're telling him he is: They would tell him that, because he hired people based on loyalty to him.
Then he told some lies about Russia's genocidal war on Ukraine. Then he asked his new aide/suspected mistress, Natalie Harp, to come out. She didn't. Then he told a few more lies about the economy. Then he told some lies about voter fraud. Then he told some lies about transgender people.
Then he repeated his offer of $5,000 to every American citizen if the Republicans hold both houses of Congress, which is an offer of a bribe. Then he said he could pay for it because his Vice President, JD Vance, had found a lot of fraud in Obamacare. This was so big of a lie, he hadn't even been asked to do that. Trump compared Vance to Eliot Ness, who led the team of Prohibition agents in the 1920s, immortalized in the TV show The Untouchables. Then he told some more lies about immigration and the U.S.-Mexican border. Then he told some lies about his "one big beautiful bill."
"We abolished all discriminatory diversity, equity, and inclusion policies throughout the federal government." This was the truth, but it turned out to be a bad thing. "We got critical race theory and transgender insanity and mutilization out of our schools." This was a lie: Those things were never in our schools -- and the word should have been "mutilation." "We made English the official language of the United States of America." This was a lie: The Republicans have long threatened to do that, but they have never even tried.
Then he mentioned the price of eggs, supposedly a reason why he won in 2024: "We took care of it. We got eggs down lower now than even during my Administration." This was a half-truth: Egg prices did go down, but that was because the "bird flu" epidemic that had hit in 2024 ended in 2025. Trump and his Administration didn't have anything to do with it.
Then he told some lies about Dan Osborn, the independent, not a Democrat, running against Senator Ricketts there in Nebraska. Then he told some lies about Lynne Walz, the former State legislator running against Pillen for Governor. "And Jim's opponent, Lynne Walz, is a crazy relative of disgraced Minnesota Governor. Probably, and I've known some bad governors, probably the worst Governor in history, Jim Walz." Then he corrected the name, if not the record: "Tim Walz is the worst." In fact, Lynne is only related to Tim Walz, the Democratic nominee for Vice President in 2024, by marriage.
The speech lasted 1 hour and 22 minutes. Trump has always loved dictators, but when he makes a speech, the dictator he most resembles is a Communist he probably hated, Cuba's Fidel Castro.
Since he began running for President in 2015, Trump's strategy seems to have been, "Say something crazy every now and then, so that they'll forget the last crazy thing you said, and won't pay attention to the harm you're doing to them." And it's usually worked for him.
Except he's never been this crazy before. And the harm is hurting more people than ever.
Karen Bass, running for re-election as Mayor of Los Angeles, appeared on State of Play, and told host Peter Alexander, "You don't say something like that in jest. "You are the President of the United States, and your number one job is to protect and defend the American people, not to invite a foreign power to attack a city."
Todd Gloria, Mayor of San Diego, said, "San Diego is not collateral damage. We are not expendable. And we are never a 'small price to pay.' Keep our city out of your reckless war talk."
Representative Sara Jacobs, whose district encompasses San Diego, said on X (formerly Twitter), "My constituents -- including many active duty service members, veterans, and their families -- are not acceptable collateral damage in Trump's stupid war." Bass, Gloria and Jacobs are all Democrats.
Think about this: What if Bill Clinton, Barack Obama or Joe Biden had said it? Republican-controlled House would have impeached him on the spot, and the Republican-controlled Senate would have intimidated enough Democrats into joining them to remove him.
But the Republican-controlled Congress won't start the impeachment process. And his Cabinet has been chosen with the apparent specific purpose in being completely loyal to him, and never, ever invoking Section 4 of the 25th Amendment to the Constitution.
We shall see.
*
October 5, 2026 was a Monday. On ESPN Monday Night Football, the Atlanta Falcons beat their arch-rivals, the New Orleans Saints, 45-24 at the Superdome in New Orleans.
There were 2 Major League Baseball Playoff games, both of them American League Division Series:
* The Tampa Bay Rays beat the New York Yankees, 5-2 at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Florida. Cam Boosler was the winning pitcher for the Rays, but what beat the Yankees' Cam Schlittler wasn't his own pitching, it was his own defense: Errors by Ryan McMahon and Jazz Chisholm led to a run in the 1st inning. In the 5th, an error by George Lombard, and plays that probably should have been scored as errors on Lombard and Chisholm led to 4 runs. Ben Rice hit a home run for the Yankees.
* And the Chicago White Sox beat the Cleveland Guardians, 4-3 at Progressive Field in Cleveland. Braden Montgomery hit a 2-run double in the 5th to make the difference.
The NBA season hadn't started yet. There were 4 games in the NHL:
* The Ottawa Senators beat the Boston Bruins, 4-1 at the TD Garden in Boston.
* The Tampa Bay Lightning beat the Philadelphia Flyers, 4-1 at the Benchmark International Arena in Tampa.
* The Winnipeg Jets beat the Pittsburgh Penguins, 3-2 at the PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh.
* And the Dallas Stars beat the San Jose Sharks, 5-0 at the American Airlines Arena in Dallas.
