Good morning. It is September 18th. Happy birthday to a very special listener. It is a sunny morning in New York City with the temperature supposed to make a return to the 80s, and this is your Indignity Morning Podcast. I'm your host, Tom Scocca, taking a look at the day and the news. Before we get to the larger news, we're going to start with something very small, or at least something petty, that turns out astonishingly and yet obviously, to be of world historic import. It's in a passage by Ben Smith writing for Semafor. “The Trump administration,” Smith writes, “from the president down to the middle levels of obscure cabinet departments is populated by people whose defining experiences in public life involved being silenced by social platforms. This predates the social media wars of the late 2010s.” Smith continues. “One Trump appointee told me that a radicalizing experience was being booted out of the Gawker comments section way back in the day.” Of course it was. Of course the vicious dullards and bigots who are running the country into ruin are the same people who were being dullards and bigots in the comment section back in the day. From Trump on down, and laterally out through the titans of silicon valley and their fascist enthusiasms, this is a political movement built on profoundly unpleasant and unlikable people being furious that they can't make other people like them or respect them. 

And on that point, the overall subject of Smith's article was how the FCC chairman, Brendan Carr, put pressure on local TV news conglomerates, which are owned by reactionary cranks in the first place, and are currently seeking to consolidate even further, in ways that an honest regulator focused on the public interest would never allow, to, in turn pressure ABC into taking Jimmy Kimmel off the air. 

Jimmy Kimmel's supposed offense was, like so many other people losing their jobs at the moment, a failure to treat Charlie Kirk's death with the reverence that the right-wing movement demands. The text of the remarks that got him in trouble had more to do with criticizing right-wing opportunists for trying to capitalize on Kirk's killing to punish their chosen enemies. 

But quibbling over Kimmel's words and the question of how strongly he implied, apparently and accurately, that the killer himself came from the MAGA team is all sort of pointless given that Donald Trump, back when Charlie Kirk was still alive, had responded to the cancellation of Stephen Colbert's show by saying that Jimmy Kimmel was going to be next.

Part of the whole deal here is that it's supposed to feel absurd and histrionic to say that the regime is forcing comedians who offend the leader by mocking him off the air, but that is literally and straightforwardly what happened. It's really hard to think of Jimmy Kimmel as a dissident comedian, too dangerous for the autocratic regime to tolerate. Nevertheless, that's how it is. 

Baltimore's own Sinclair Broadcast Group, the local TV news behemoth that spawned out of the UHF dial on my childhood TV, announced that its nationwide network of ABC stations will be provided with an hour-long tribute program to Charlie Kirk to broadcast tomorrow in the Kimmel Show's time slot. 

And speaking of forced programming to captive audiences, a considerably more captive audience in this case, The Verge this morning writes, “a software update rolling out to Samsung's Family Hub refrigerators in the US is putting ads on the fridges for the first time. The promotions and curated advertisements are coming despite Samsung insisting to The Verge in April that it had no plans to do so.” The story then quotes a statement that Samsung sent to Android Authority, which got the news ahead of The Verge. “Samsung is committed to innovation and enhancing everyday value for our home appliance customers. As part of our ongoing efforts to strengthen that value, we are conducting a pilot program to offer promotions and curated advertisements on certain Samsung Family Hub refrigerator models in the US market.” Sorry, it doesn't feel quite right to put that text through living human vocal cords. Let's try again. 

[APPLE SIRI READING] Samsung is committed to innovation and enhancing everyday value for our home appliance customers. As part of our ongoing efforts to strengthen that value, we are conducting a pilot program to offer promotions and curated advertisements on certain Samsung family hub refrigerator models in the U.S. market. Samsung is Samsung is Samsung is Samsung, Samsung, Samsung, Samsung, Samsung, Samsung, value, value, [SLURRING, SOUND SPEED SLOWING] value. 

Android Authority notes that Samsung's current family hub equipped lineup in the U.S. starts at $1800 and goes all the way up to $3,500. 

On the front of this morning's New York Times, there's a full-length picture of Donald Trump and Melania Trump standing in line with the King of England—I’ll never get used to that being what Charles is—and other members of the royal family. Melania is wearing her much-remarked-on, all-but-eye-obscuring, wide-brimmed plum-colored hat. The Prince of Wales is the baldest or the most honestly and openly-bald figure in the array. 

The lead news column on the right is about the former CDC director, Susan Monarez’s testimony to the Senate yesterday. “FIRED CHIEF SAYS KENNEDY ASSAILS SCIENCE AT C.D.C. / TESTIFYING TO SENATE / Paints Picture of a Health Secretary Bound Up in His Ideology. The former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,” the Times writes, “told a Senate panel on Wednesday that health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. called CDC employees ‘corrupt’ and accused them of ‘killing children’ during a tense private meeting with her the week before she was fired. In a sometimes contentious hearing before the Senate Health Committee, Dr. Susan Monarez told senators she was fired ‘for holding the line on scientific integrity.’ She said she refused Mr. Kennedy's demands to fire top CDC scientists and to sign off on vaccine recommendations issued by his handpicked advisory panel without seeing the data or science underlying them.” 

After the jump, the story says Dr. Monarez has testified that Mr. Kennedy told her that the childhood vaccine schedule would change in September and claimed that there was no science or evidence behind the existing recommendations. “Critics, including Mr. Kennedy, have called for the CDC to abandon its long-standing recommendation that infants receive Hepatitis B vaccination at birth.” The value-neutral use of “critics” doesn't really cut it there. “Anti-vaccine activists” would be a bit more precise. 

Next to that, it's “Fed Cuts Rate, But the Board Remains Split / Projections Show More Reductions Likely. The Federal Reserve lowered interest rates,” the Times writes, “by a quarter of a percentage point on Wednesday, as officials signaled that two more cuts could follow this year in light of rising risks confronting the labor market. The decision to lower borrowing costs for the first time since December shifts interest rates to a range of 4 to 4.25%. The decision was not unanimously supported. The second straight meeting that featured at least one dissent from a member of the Board of Governors.”

On the left-hand side of the page, there's a NEWS ANALYSIS column. “Trump Finds Closer Targets To Vanquish / From ‘Narco-Terrorists’ to ‘Radicals’ on the Left. The first time President Trump ordered the U.S. military to attack a small high-speed motorboat in international waters near Venezuela,” the story says, “he posted the fiery image online and said the depths of the roughly dozen people on board should be a warning to narco terrorists. Vice President J.D. Vance chimed in, telling critics who said the attack amounted to an extrajudicial killing”—which it was in every possible identifiable respect—“that ‘getting rid of cartel members who poison our fellow citizens is the highest and best use of our military.’ To drive home his point,” the Times continues, “Mr. Trump ordered an attack on a second boat on Monday and told reporters that there had been a third as well.” He did? That certainly didn't make it into the New York Times' story about his second boat massacre. It looks like this NEWS ANALYSIS piece, writing about it in tones of retrospect, is the first mention of a third killing in the Times. 

The Washington Post did pick it up, writing, “President Trump disclosed Tuesday that the U.S. government had knocked off what he said was a total of three alleged drug smuggling boats, all apparently from Venezuela, a country whose leader, his administration, is villainized while dramatically escalating the use of deadly force in a bid to disrupt the Latin American narcotics trade. The president, speaking to reporters outside the White House, offered no other details about the previously undisclosed incident.
The White House and the Pentagon declined to address questions about the third vessel, including when it was struck, where it was struck, and how many people were aboard. Trump,” the Post writes, “was responding to a question about what message the sudden spike in military activity was intended to send to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro when he informed reporters, ‘we knocked off actually three boats, not two, but you saw two.’” 

Anyway, back to the Times' analysis of Trump's activities. “He also, the Times writes, “announced on Monday that he would send National Guard troops to Memphis to crack down on crime. And he said that after the assassination of the prominent right-wing activist Charlie Kirk last week, investigations had begun into radical left groups. Some, administration officials say, may be designated domestic terrorists. Eight months into Mr. Trump's presidency, Americans and the world are learning a lot about his willingness to use military force and terrorist designations,” the Times continues as he expands his targeting of perceived enemies, foreign and domestic. It is a notably different approach from that of his first term, when Mr. Trump chafed at being held back, including in one instance when his defense secretary said that he could not shoot missiles into Mexico to attack cartel strongholds. 

The thrust of the piece, after the jump, is that rather than positioning the United States against superpowers like China and Russia, as his national security people did in his first term, Trump has now changed course. “There has,” the Times writes, “been no national security strategy published in the second term. It may be too early, and some federal officials doubt one will be written at all. But a draft of a new national defense strategy for the Pentagon, yet to be released, is reported to place Homeland Security and Defense of the Western Hemisphere at the top of the priorities of what Mr. Trump is now calling the Department of War.” 

That is the news. Thank you for listening. The Indignity Morning Podcast is edited by Joe MacLeod. The theme song is composed and performed by Mack Scocca-Ho. You, the listeners, keep us going through your paid subscriptions to Indignity and your tips. Continue sending those along if you are able. And if nothing unexpected gets in the way, we will talk again tomorrow.