The press has officially entered the “Trump did something again, and we hate that people are enjoying it” phase of its coverage.
You know the routine by now.
Trump cleans up a park, and the headline screams DICTATOR.
Trump brings a factory back to an American town, and the chyron reads DANGER TO DEMOCRACY.
Trump puts on an event that regular people line up to see, and the Sunday panel calls it a THREAT TO THE REPUBLIC.
This weekend gave us the latest example. IndyCars tore around the National Mall at close to 180 miles an hour.
The start line sat right in front of the Capitol.
The course ran down Pennsylvania Avenue, past the National Archives, past the museums, and back again. Admission was free.
The president waved the green flag.
Tens of thousands of fans packed the grandstands and lined the fences to celebrate America’s 250th birthday, and the whole thing aired live on national television.
It was the first auto race ever held in the nation’s capital.
The organizers say it was a one-time deal because the country only turns 250 once.
Kids sat on their dads’ shoulders. Families drove in from Baltimore and Virginia and Pennsylvania.
People who had never watched a race in their lives stood on the Mall and cheered.
Somewhere in a newsroom in Atlanta, a producer is still trying to work out how a checkered flag threatens democracy.
That is what is eating them alive.
Every single week brings a fresh prophecy of doom. Trump is going to destroy the country, start World War III, bankrupt the middle class, insult another monument, wreck another tradition, and probably melt the polar ice caps with his bare hands.
The experts line up on cable to explain why this time, for real, the sky is falling.
And then the actual day arrives.
Families show up with coolers and lawn chairs, companies write the checks to make it happen, the race runs on time, and Americans have a good time in their own capital city.
Nobody gets hurt. Nothing burns down.
The republic survives another weekend.
The same people predicted that the military parade would be a disaster.
It wasn’t.
They predicted the Fourth of July celebrations would fall flat. They didn’t.
They predicted the country would be too divided to enjoy its own birthday.
Then the country showed up and enjoyed it anyway.
Meanwhile the media stands in the corner of the picnic like the kid who prayed for rain, glaring at the sunshine, furious that everybody else remembered to bring potato salad.
Here is the part they will never admit. Americans like to have fun.
They like fast cars and fireworks and big crowds and a reason to wave the flag.
They do not need a cable anchor’s permission to enjoy a Sunday afternoon, and they are tired of being told that a good time is secretly a crisis.
At this point, Trump’s greatest accomplishment may be forcing the people who despise him to sit still and watch America enjoy itself.
They cannot look away, because their ratings depend on it.
So they cover the crowds, they show the cars, they run the footage of the green flag, and then they go back to the studio and try to explain why you should feel bad about it.
So what comes next? NASCAR through Times Square? A UFC card on the South Lawn?
A rodeo at the Lincoln Memorial?
Maybe a fireworks show where MSNOW has to broadcast live from a safe space? 😂😂
#KenBlackwell
The grandson of Ayatollah Khomeini just admitted in public the crushing impact the U.S. blockade and war have inflicted on the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Speaking in front of Pezeshkian government officials, Hassan Khomeini acknowledged that Iran and the IRGC is being squeezed “from every direction.”
When the founder’s own grandson tells the government that Trump's economic strangulation plan is working, you know the end is near.
At the same time, the IRGC-controlled media is attacking Pezeshkian and Ghalibaf for showing “weakness" for saying “it is better to end the war today” and Ghalibaf for warning that military power means nothing if people are hungry and the system cannot endure economically. In fact, Pezeshkian said last week that the Ayatollah wanted peace - that sent the IRGC off the deep end.
Two of the Islamic Republic’s most senior officials are publicly warning that the current path is unsustainable, and so is the grandson of the Ayatollah.
What was once contained behind closed doors is becoming an open fight over whether the regime backs down or doubles down.
Jon Ossoff decided the best way to attack President Trump was to smear a 35-year-old cancer survivor who carries a portable printer around the White House.
Natalie Harp grew up in a Christian family in San Diego County.
She earned a business degree from Point Loma Nazarene University in 2012 and an MBA from Liberty University in 2015.
That same year, while she was fighting stage II bone cancer, a nurse accidentally put sterile water into her IV line instead of saline.
The mistake left her housebound, in a wheelchair, and in constant pain. She was in her early twenties.
She failed two rounds of chemotherapy.
She was turned away from clinical trials because she was one of the youngest patients with her rare form of the disease.
By her account, her providers offered her opioids, medical marijuana, and counseling on ending her own life. She wanted none of it. She wanted to live.
Then President Trump signed the Right to Try Act in May 2018. Harp found an oncologist willing to treat her with an immunotherapy drug that had not been approved for her condition.
She credits that law, and the president who signed it, with saving her life.
She told her story in 2019, and the country took notice. President Trump invited her to speak at the Faith & Freedom Coalition and at the 2020 Republican National Convention.
She served on his campaign advisory board, hosted at One America News, and joined his team full time in 2022.
Colleagues call her the human printer because she hands the president whatever he needs on paper, wherever he is.
That is what loyalty and hard work look like in Washington, and it is rarer than it should be.
Now Ossoff is using her name as a punchline at campaign rallies, and his allies in the media are running with sleazy innuendo about a staffer who has done nothing wrong.
Even some Democrats admit he went too far.
Let’s be honest about what is happening here. Natalie Harp is an attractive young woman, and that is exactly why they think the smear will stick.
If she were plain or fat, no senator would put her name in a stump speech and no reporter would type a word of insinuation about her travel schedule.
Her looks are the whole play.
The same people who lecture the country about respecting women decided a pretty conservative was fair game.
Ossoff will not debate the record on the economy or the border, so he traffics in innuendo about a devout Christian woman who beat cancer, earned two degrees, and shows up to work every day.
Georgia deserves better than that. So does Natalie Harp.
Even a relative of James Comey has now publicly eviscerated him in texts disclosed as a court exhibit in his ongoing federal criminal case over the “86 47” seashell post. The relative told Patrice Comey: “I have held my tongue for a long time, but I just can’t do it anymore. You guys have really gone off the deep end over the years with your TDS. ‘86 47’ is a call for violence no matter how you spin it. You should be ashamed of yourselves. I am thoroughly embarrassed to have ever defended the absolute coward that is your husband. You and Jim are some of the least accepting, most hypocritical people I’ve had the displeasure of knowing. I hope Jim goes to jail for his crimes.”
This is not anonymous online noise. It is family-orbit testimony entered into the official record of United States v. Comey. It delivers a glimpse of what at least one person close enough to know them actually thinks - and it aligns precisely with the judgment many of us reached long ago.
My earlier criticisms of this sleazy figure are thereby vindicated. The same man who once wielded prosecutorial power as a U.S. Attorney and later as FBI Director - habitually wrapping himself in self-righteous importance while his actual record reeked of selective enforcement, institutional abuse, and calculated ambiguity - now stands charged as an alleged criminal. Looking at his photo while knowing he and his cohorts have put numerous innocent people in prison, driven them to bankruptcy, and ruined countless lives nearly makes me feel like vomiting. He’s a disgrace to the human race. The relative’s words strip away the last scraps of pretense. They expose Comey as the nincompoop and moral fraud his history already revealed, a man whose inflated self-regard could not even prevent those nearest him from recognizing the cowardice and hypocrisy on full display.
The mask is off. The record confirms it.
-- Joseph Fosco
August 21, 2026