P.A. McTiernan

Writer and editor interested in health, medicine, food, fitness, writing, and random other things. Repeat jaywalker. She/her.

[Maria Shriver @mariashriver]

I’ve been thinking a lot about the extraordinary outbursts of the President of the United States against female journalists... well, actually against journalists in general and journalism. But it feels like he saves his most childlike behavior and irrational language for female reporters, calling them all kinds of names that kids in kindergarten are given times out for. It’s stunning to me to witness such behavior from any leader, any CEO, any person of influence or importance. I’ve never witnessed someone like this raging, this weekend with @meetthepress host @kwelkernbc, just last week in the Oval Office with @cnn’s @kaitlancollins, calling women stupid or piggy, telling them to “smile”, calling them darling, demeaning their credibility. Every good man should denounce this behavior. Every person should be able to stand up for their colleagues and say “No more.”

Imagine this man screaming like this at your daughter, your wife, your sister, your mother... would you stand for it? No, you wouldn’t! And neither should any of us. It’s unacceptable and undignified. Period. End of story.

[P.A. McTiernan @AceMct]

@WhiteHouse @MeetThePress @nbc Trump is such a liar and a bully, Welker should have walked out on him.

[P.A. McTiernan @AceMct]

@kwelkernbc @NBCNews @MeetThePress I wish you had walked out on him! He is nothing but a liar. Congrats for holding up as well as you did.

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

This is really stupid, and it’s not getting enough attention.

The Trump administration is pulling a working $368 million ocean monitoring system out of the water, equipment taxpayers already bought, built, and sank into the deep ocean.

And they are doing it right when the oceans are behaving in ways that alarm the scientists who study them.

Record-breaking temperatures.

A system of Atlantic currents that may be lurching toward collapse.

The response?

Yank out the instruments and walk away.

That is not budgeting. That is smashing the gauges while the engine is on fire and calling it efficiency.

For what? The Trump administration dressed it up as a “nimbler approach” and “smart lifecycle management,” which is fancy nonsense for “we shut it off and hoped nobody would ask why.” There is no return-on-investment analysis. They cannot show taxpayers save a dime, because the gear is already paid for and the science it produces protects real money and real lives.

The kicker: the same people killing the monitors want to mine the deep sea for minerals. So they are destroying the only tools that could measure what that mining does. That is not an accident.

That is the point. You cannot see the damage if you break the instruments first.
https://t.co/MzE4AW1QBv

[Hunter Biden @HunterBiden]

I see your profile picture. That’s Johnny Cash. My hero too. Arrested seven times. Smuggled 668 amphetamines across the Mexican border in 1965. Took every drug there was and drank like I did. Cheated on his first wife. Slept with more woman than I ever did. Hit bottom in a cave in Tennessee in 1968 trying to crawl off and die. And then he got up. He got clean. He spent the rest of his life singing for prisoners and addicts and the people the country threw away because he knew he was one of them.

That was the whole point of the Man in Black. He wore it for the poor and the beaten down. He wore it for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime. He wore it for the ones who never heard a word of Jesus. He wore it for the addicted and the dying. He wore it as a standing witness that no one is past saving.

You picked his picture. You did not pick his message. Try listening to the words.

[Andrea Junker @Strandjunker]

On this 82nd anniversary of D-Day, remember: The way we wonder why Germans didn’t stop Hitler is exactly how the rest of the world views Americans and Trump today.

[Norman Ornstein @NormOrnstein]

The intense media focus on Graham Platner is understandable. He is an unknown in a crucial Senate race with a lot of baggage. Less understandable is the lack of coverage of Ken Paxton, whose sins are far worse. That it is “old news” is no excuse. Most voters have no clue.

[Marlene Robertson🇨🇦 @marlene4719]

Comparing a pool that is horizontal to skyscrapers that are vertical is peak insanity.

Why are Republicans allowing this demented clown to embarrass your country like this?

[Senator Reverend Raphael Warnock @SenatorWarnock]

Multiple judges ruled that Alabama’s maps discriminated based on race. Yet the Supreme Court is bending over backwards to let them stand.

This court will do anything to help Republicans stay in power. No matter the cost.

They have lost all semblance of impartiality.

[P.A. McTiernan @AceMct]

@ddale8 Thank you for your tireless work!

[Daniel Dale @ddale8]

Here’s a fact check of some of President Trump’s claims, including a bunch of long-debunked lies, from a single softball New York Post interview released this morning.

Claim: “We're the only country in the world that has mail-in ballots.” Truth: Dozens of countries have mail-in ballots, including Canada, the UK, Australia, Germany, and Switzerland.

Claim: The 2020 election was “rigged” and has “been proven to be rigged.” Truth: Not rigged, there’s no proof for Trump’s assertion more than five years later, and he lost fair and square.

Claim: Trump won “three” presidential elections. Truth: He won in 2016 and 2024, lost in 2020.

Claim: In the 2024 election, “There were areas that were just rigged…rigged against me.” Truth: Nonsense again; he won that election fair and square but lost some areas of the country fair and square.

Claim: Democrats “could not win” “if they didn’t cheat.” Truth: Democrats, like Republicans, clearly win various elections legitimately.

Claim: California mails out “38 million ballots," and while "some people get three, four, five ballots," "Republicans get, oftentimes, none.” Truth: California mails a ballot to all active registered voters, of which there are 23 million, not the “38 million” figure Trump has used repeatedly; while there are occasional errors by county elections offices and the postal service, there's no general anti-Republican bias in ballot-mailing in the state.

Claim: “I inherited the highest inflation in the history of our country…Biden had like 9, 10% inflation. And I inherited that, and we have it way down.” Truth: The inflation rate the month Trump returned to office was 3.0%, lower than the most recent rate of 3.8%; Biden-era inflation did peak at 9.1%, but that was in mid-2022, and it wasn’t close to the all-time record of 23.7%. Regardless, it had fallen substantially before Trump’s inauguration.

Claim: “We have $18 trillion being invested in the country in just 11 months.” Truth: This is a completely fictional figure. The White House’s own website says there have been $10.6 trillion in “major investment announcements” this term, and even that’s a massive exaggeration that counts vague pledges, not-even-pledges, and pledges that are about mutual trade rather than investments in the US.

Claim: Trump had gas prices at “$1.85 in Iowa” on the day he visited there in January. Truth: The Iowa average gas price that day was $2.57 per gallon, per AAA; GasBuddy found four stations in the state out of 2,036 selling for $1.97 that day, none at $1.85; the station outside the venue where he spoke was at $2.69. (Ethanol-gas blend E85 was around $1.85, but that can only be used in a small percentage of cars, and he didn’t say that was what he was talking about.)

Claim: Democratic Texas Senate candidate James Talarico was still wearing a mask “a couple of months ago.” Truth: I've found no evidence for this; the Talarico video many Republicans have mocked shows Talarico wearing a mask in 2022, not 2026.

Claim: Mitch McConnell was “losing by a lot” in the 2020 Senate election in Kentucky but then Trump endorsed him and got him elected. Truth: McConnell, running in a state that hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1992, led in all but one public poll in that race, and that one exception was a poll conducted for a pro-term-limits group in which he trailed by just one point; he was always the overwhelming favorite.

Claim: The Jan. 6 attack was “nonsense” in which “the FBI said, ‘Go in. Go in.’” Truth: That was a riot perpetrated by Trump supporters, and there's no evidence the FBI ever told rioters to illegally enter the Capitol. DOJ’s inspector general found the FBI had zero undercover agents at the riot…and Trump was president at the time and had personally appointed the FBI director.

Claim: Former VP Harris “was the border czar” but “never went.” Truth: She went to the border twice as VP, and the Biden administration repeatedly emphasized she was never “border czar” but had a narrower assignment focused on the “root causes” of migration from Central America.

Claim: Under Biden, “25 million people” poured over the border. Truth: This is a further exaggeration from the wildly exaggerated “21 million” figure Trump used to use; even counting “gotaways,” it’s not even close to correct.

Claim: Democrats are so dumb that “we had 11,888 murderers, most of whom committed more than one murder, allowed into our country.” Truth: The federal data it appears Trump is referring to is about people who entered the US over the course of multiple decades, *including during Trump’s own first administration.*

Claim: Under Biden, countries emptied their jail populations into the US – “the whole jail was emptied into our country.” Trump and his team have never substantiated this claim even though he’s made it for years, and experts on global prison policy and on the countries he has previously identified as the supposed culprits have told me they’ve seen no evidence for it.

More details: https://t.co/NtFk7PUfwN

[Mark Warner @MarkWarner]

It seems there is an entirely different set of rules for Republicans and Democrats.

[P.A. McTiernan @AceMct]

@FBI_Response @FBIDirectorKash Oh, just stop. Trump PARDONED the J6 insurrections who beat cops and threatened the lives of Congresspeople and the VP. We haven’t forgotten. We will never forget.

[Senator Mark Kelly @SenMarkKelly]

The Director of National Intelligence is a critical job to keeping Americans safe.

Bill Pulte wasn't chosen for his qualifications. He was chosen for his loyalty to the President, which he's demonstrated by using his position at the Federal Housing Finance Agency to target the President's political opponents.

As a real estate developer, Pulte has no relevant national security experience — which is a requirement for the job. Putting someone this unqualified in charge of U.S. intelligence isn't just absurd. It's reckless.

[Sen. Elissa Slotkin @SenatorSlotkin]

As someone who helped set up the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, I oppose elevating Bill Pulte to Acting Director. He has no experience. Zero. And he is the wrong choice to help keep us safe.

Mr. Pulte has weaponized his current agency against the President's critics, he's fired federal watchdogs looking into his allies and he is under active investigation by the Government Accountability Office.

This all makes him an incredibly dangerous choice to be in charge of ODNI and have access to the tools of this office.

As someone who has had the government weaponized against me, I cannot in good conscience support his elevation to such a sensitive post.

The President should choose a serious nominee.

[Bill Kristol @BillKristol]

Hegseth is purging the military, and in the course of doing so is breaking Pentagon rules and basically lying about it. A danger and a disgrace.

https://t.co/NzcGSFgl5i

[Andrew Weinstein @Weinsteinlaw]

Every member of Congress who remains silent on Bill Pulte’s appointment as director of national intelligence is actively choosing personal political survival over the literal safety of the United States.

[Senator Patty Murray @PattyMurray]

Bill Pulte is a proven crook who will target anyone Trump considers an enemy.

He isn't qualified for his current job, and he would pose an actual threat to our national security as Acting Director of National Intelligence.

Every Senator should demand he be fired immediately.

[P.A. McTiernan @AceMct]

@JDVance Oh just stop already. Pulte is not even remotely qualified for that job and you know it. Oh, and this: 👇

[P.A. McTiernan @AceMct]

@TomCottonAR @SenRickScott When will you and your colleagues do something about Hegseth pulling names from promotion lists? This is reprehensible. https://t.co/EXcgZ5PLxe