Good morning. It is September 24th. It is another muggy autumn morning in New York City. And this is your Indignity Morning Podcast. I'm your host, Tom Scocca, taking a look at the day and the news. 

In Dallas this morning, a rooftop sniper reportedly started firing at a van arriving at an ICE facility. The shooter hit three people, all of them detainees. In the chaos of breaking news, reports are varying as to whether one or two of the victims are dead. The law enforcement authorities told the press that the shooter died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. 

On the front of this morning's print edition of the New York Times, the lead story is Donald Trump's address to the United Nations yesterday. “TRUMP’S U.N. TALK LISTS GRIEVANCES THAT SPAN GLOBE / NATIONS ‘GOING TO HELL’ / Questions Body’s Role — Calls Climate Change a ‘Con Job.’” That's the one column headline stack on the right hand side next to a big picture of Trump addressing the assembly. Unlike yesterday's treatment of the president's ravings about Tylenol and vaccines, the time story about the UN appearance doesn't try to gloss it into something more coherent or rational or presidential than it was. Luke Broadwater writes, “He accused environmentalists of wanting to ‘kill all the cows.’ He personally insulted the Muslim mayor of London. He bashed allies and foes across the globe. He questioned whether the United Nations should even exist. ‘What is the purpose of the United Nations?’ President Trump asked a gathering of the UN General Assembly on Tuesday in a meandering 56 minute speech that extended nearly four times as long as his allotted time limit. ‘I’m really good at this stuff,’ Mr. Trump said. ‘Your countries are going to hell.’ In his remarks, Mr. Trump lectured the United Nations and other countries about how they were failing and aired a list of grievances, those included but were not limited to a malfunctioning escalator at the UN, his not winning a renovation contract at the United Nations during his time as a real estate developer, windmills, other countries immigration policies, which he claimed were leading them to ruin, and the way Brazil is being run. Soon after his speech, Mr. Trump made news in another forum. In a social media post, he made a stunning pivot on Ukraine, saying the country, with the support of Europe, was ‘in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form.’” This really is one of the most accurate portrayals of Trump that I can remember seeing in the Times. The great difficulty in trying to convey what happens with this president and this presidency is that Donald Trump is a profoundly addled and frivolous person who doesn't care or understand the things he says or does, but he is also the president of the United States, so that the things that he says and does are real and serious. Trying to start from the fact that he is the president and impose a kind of sanity and meaning on his behavior that isn't there while addressing his absurdity and irrationality as supplemental detail to be euphemized or paraphrased creates a perniciously false picture. What the Times did in today's paper is to frankly start with the incoherent rambling and then to assemble a sort of collage around the serious things it means. 

So elsewhere on the front page, under the picture of Trump speaking to the United Nations, is the headline, “In Shift, Trump says Ukraine Can Win War.” 

“President Trump reversed himself on one of the key foreign policy issues of his presidency on Tuesday, abandoning his assistance that Ukraine give up land to strike a peace deal with Russia and instead declaring that Ukraine, with the support of Europe, was ‘in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form.’” That is what he posted on social media. It is a meaningful geopolitical fact and needs to be covered as news. But it's also just one more thing that popped out of the president's mouth or showed up on his social media feed. “His turnabout on social media,” the Times continues, “shortly after a meeting in New York with President Vladimir Zelensky of Ukraine was a head spinning pivot. After his three hour meeting with Russia's president, Vladimir Putin in Alaska more than five weeks ago, he insisted that Mr. Zelensky would have to face reality and make a deal giving up territory to its larger and stronger neighbor. Mr. Trump provided no rationale for his stunning turnaround, though several European officials suspected that by distancing himself from the war, the president was washing his hands of a conflict that he once promised to solve in days or weeks. In his eight months in office, Mr. Trump has ricocheted from one position to another on Ukraine.” 

Then inside the paper on the jump for the main story about his speech, page A8, there's a fact check column, “a speech full of claims but lacking in evidence.” The fact checking format is not really the way to deal with Trump, it leads to items like “WHAT WAS SAID ‘I look at London, where you have a terrible mayor, terrible, terrible mayor, and it’s been so changed, so changed. Now they want to go to Shariah law.’ This lacks evidence. There is no evidence that London or its mayor, Sadiq Khan, has imposed or plans to impose Shariah, the legal and moral framework of Islam.” 

That goes on for two more paragraphs before the Times writes, about Mr. Trump's comments, “a spokesman for Mr. Khan said, ‘We are not going to dignify his appalling and bigoted comments with a response,’” which is also sort of what the Times could have done. Nevertheless, the fact check space does showcase the incredible variety of unhinged things that Donald Trump offered up to the world, as the voice of the United States, in the United Nations.

On page A10, the Times also breaks out his paranoid ravings about clean energy. “Trump warns world, particularly Europe, against green energy scam.”

“President Trump went on a rant against climate change at the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, calling it ‘the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world’ and saying that the scientific consensus on global warming was created by ‘stupid people.’ He also berated countries, including close allies of the United States, for adopting renewable energy. It added up to an extraordinary diatribe that ignored the human suffering exacted by the heat waves, wildfires and deadly floods that are aggravated by the burning of fossil fuels, and at the same time stood at odds with the rapid expansion of renewable energy all over the world.” The story continues, “he chose two targets, demonizing immigrants and green energy, and called them a ‘double-tailed monster’ that he claimed, without evidence, were destroying Europe. Both subjects play well to his base in the Republican Party, but it was remarkable that he said all this to a global audience.” 

It was remarkable, and the Times here does a pretty good job of remarking on it. The story winds up with a truly excellent kicker. “One of Mr. Trump's longer digressions,” the Times writes, “involved the idea of ‘a carbon footprint,’ the notion that individuals or groups, through their actions, produced varying amounts of greenhouse gas emissions like carbon dioxide. He called it ‘a hoax made up by people with evil intentions.’ The term,” the Times continues, “was popularized years ago by oil companies as part of a rebranding effort.” 

Beyond the UN coverage, the rest of the A section expands the collage portrayal of a presidency completely out of control even further. Those ravings about vaccines Tylenol and autism that got such deferential presidential coverage yesterday get a multi-part highly critical follow-up today. On page one, the headline is “Unproven Theories Irk Those Touched by Autism. A Depiction of a ‘Crisis’ Affected by Tylenol Instills Mistrust.” The piece talks to various people with firsthand experience or expert knowledge of autism, about how appalled they were at the president's message. 

And that story jumps to an inside spread of two pages almost entirely occupied by other follow-ups. “FDA upended process with approval of drug as treatment for autism.” The agency decided on its own to expand leucovorin's use. 

Then there's “in Trump's comments, mix of personal stories and flawed guidance.” 

Then on the facing page, the stories are “Experts alarmed by Trump's claim say Tylenol is safe in pregnancy. Some studies show possible association with autism, but none proved causation.” 

And below that, “Kenvue, the company behind Tylenol, tries to navigate a public relations crisis.” 

Back on page one in still more Trump News, the headline at the top left is “President Picks Loyal Lawyer As Prosecutor / Interim U.S. Attorney Has Thin Résumé.”

“Lindsay Halligan,” the Times writes, “the lawyer chosen by President Trump to replace the ousted U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia has left no doubt about her willingness to lead a charge on his behalf. As one of his personal lawyers, Ms. Halligan, a go-for-the-jugular loyalist who is comfortable on television, denounced the FBI when agents seized classified documents in 2022 from Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump's private club and residence in Florida. As a White House special assistant, she has taken the lead in scrutinizing exhibits at the Smithsonian Institution for improper ideology. Lacking from her background altogether, however,” the story continues, “is any experience in working as a prosecutor or overseeing the complex national security cases that regularly pass through the Eastern District of Virginia. Court records show that Ms. Halligan, who has largely spent her career handling insurance matters in Florida, has filed appearances in only a handful of federal cases during her decade in the law, all of them as one of Mr. Trump's personal lawyers.” 

That too gets a multi-story expansion on the inside of the paper. “Trump's handpicked prosecutor takes over Comey and James cases” as the headline at the top of page 16, with the jump arriving at the bottom of the page. 

And “Systems built in protections could slow path to revenge.” The story that notes that Trump's wave of attempted federal criminal charges in Washington, D.C. has been met by a counter wave of grand jurors refusing to return indictments. 

And on the next page, A-17, the time circles back to Trump's remarks at the Charlie Kirk Memorial event. “‘I hate my opponent,’ the root of the Trump mindset.” 

Below that is “Trump signs executive order targeting Antifa movement,” a story that notes Mr. Trump's order said that he was declaring Antifa a domestic terrorist organization, a designation that does not actually exist under U.S. law. 

And in still more news precipitated by the president's behavior down at the bottom of page one, the headline is “Kimmel returns, but not to every ABC station.” 

“Jimmy Kimmel's late night show was set to return to ABC on Tuesday night after a tense standoff from remarks he made about the Trump administration's response to the killing of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk,”  the Times writes, “but about a quarter of the ABC stations in the United States were not planning to air it. Nexstar, a major owner of local ABC stations, said on Tuesday morning that it would preempt Mr. Kimmel's show indefinitely. Sinclair, another owner of local affiliates, said the same on Monday evening, hours after Disney announced Jimmy Kimmel Live would return. Those decisions,” the story adds, “set up a high stakes impasse between Disney and the TV station groups that transmitted shows to millions of households across the United States.”

It's a giant pile of Trump stories, but he is, after all, the president. 

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. Keep sending those along if you are able. And if nothing unexpected gets in the way, we will talk again tomorrow.