Greetings! Song of the week: R.E.M.’s It’s the End of the World as We Know It…Last week’s upside down crash landing of the Delta plane in Toronto is the perfect metaphor for the first month of Donald Trump 2.0…Just askin’: Anyone planning a National Park summer vacation sojourn amidst the DOGE-created bureaucratic chaos that’s shattered nature’s promise of serenity? Also, questioning whether planning a trip to  the Canadian Rockies or to the verdant countryside of any NATO European country is a wise move these days...Time magazine has published a just-the-facts-mam recap of the professional journey through the right wing fever swamps of newly-minted  FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino…Breitbart went overboard gushing about the Dolce & Gabbana tux Melania Trump wore to the National Governors Association Evening White House soiree. Fourteen  photos  of the First Lady are posted on Breitbart. OK, we get the point. She’s great looking presidential arm candy….Foul ball! Real TV journos who collected checks to play themselves in the Netflix political thriller Zero Day did themselves reputational harm.  I’m looking at you Wolf Blitzer, Savannah Guthrie, and Nicolle Wallace.  The six-part series, starring Robert De Niro, centers on a deadly cyberattack that paralyzes a deeply divided nation that has many parallels to the U.S. today.  And therein lies the problem.  TV news stars have had small roles before in movies and series, but never in a show that is similar to situations which they cover on a  daily basis.  To have high-profile news personalities go Hollywood and  play themselves in  “Zero Day” blurs the line between fact and fiction. It damages their credibility in these most serious of times…If you keep reading, I’ll keep Righting. Howard

Greetings! Another week, another horror. Last night, Donald Trump named flame-throwing ultra-right-wing podcast superstar Dan Bongino as the #2 person at the FBI.  It feels like Trump is casting a reality show with telegenic and loquacious characters instead of staffing an administration facing serious challenges home and abroad. An ex-police officer and Secret Service veteran, Bongino’s conspiracy-laden hit podcast ranks #3 on TheRighting’s exclusive list of right wing podcasts. My guess is that the program goes dark while Bongino handles his day job at the FBI chasing down the opposition to Trump’s administration.  But in the upside-down world of MAGA, it’s possible that Bongino retains his powerful podcast platform…RFK Jr. keeps getting slammed by the conservative op-ed  pages of Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal and NY Post.  This weekend, the Journal noted with some alarm that the newly-minted director of the Dept. of Health and Human Services is already advancing his anti-vaccine agenda.  And last week, a column by NY Post’s Doug Harsanyl blasted the conspiracy-spewing Kennedy in an op-ed with the headline: “Misinformation Alert – RFK Jr. Keeps Peddling His Detestable Autism Lies"…A new book about Trump from best-selling scribe Michael Wolff drops tomorrow. Judging from this weekend’s rave NY Times review, it sounds like another Wolff  must-read.  All or Nothing is “undeniably gripping,” writes Times reviewer  Nicholas Niarchos, “a veritable harvest of slime, sycophancy and sleaze that tells the story of Trump 2.0"…If you keep reading, I’ll keep Righting. Howard