In my continued effort to pierce my NPR bubble, I was listening to WJR (“where Michigan comes to talk”) on the way back from the pool Tuesday morning. The morning hosts agreed the Jimmy Kimmel joke about Melania, delivered before the Incident Saturday night, wasn’t funny.
The joke: Something about how beautiful Melania is looking, “she’s glowing like an expectant widow.”
This, the hosts agreed, was too much, given the number of assassination attempts the president has already endured.
To which I say: You triggered? Cry harder.
Kimmel defended himself Monday night, on his show. He said the joke was about the age difference, and about “the look of joy” the First Lady wears whenever she’s in her husband’s presence. That’s another joke, obviously. It’s rare you see a high-profile marriage where one party so openly despises the other, and millions of Americans have convinced themselves this is a love match for the ages. It’s a comedian’s job to point stuff like this out, to say the truth plainly: That when Trump dies, Melania will be a far happier woman. She can stop pretending to occasionally live at the White House. She can say farewell to the whole United States, if she wants. The south of France is very nice in summer, the Caribbean ditto in winter, and isn’t French one of the 17 languages the First Lady is said to be fluent in?
Don’t back down, comedians. Nor should other artists. Let higher ed and big law and other so-called powerful institutions bend the knee, kiss the ring and suck whatever they’re told to suck. Kick out the jams, Bruce Springsteen. Keep the writers working, Jimmy Kimmel. Hold your head high, Stephen Colbert. You’ll look a lot better at the end of this than the University of Michigan will.
Meanwhile, let’s go on another Cletus safari, shall we? Let’s sit down with a tray of cookies and some disenchanted Trump voters.
The stupidest motherfuckers on the planet, ladies and gentlemen. The guy making that argument for not levying property taxes on people living in paid-off houses thinks he might enjoy that benefit someday. His tiny brain can’t conceive that the richest people in the country — the kind who can afford to pay cash for a house — would be the happiest recipients of this policy change. He doesn’t even understand what property taxes are, does he? No, he does not. And yet, his vote counted the same as yours.
Bring back civics education. And happy Wednesday to all who live in this stupid, doomed country.
Sherri said on April 29, 2026 at 2:54 am
It’s the same idiots who carried “Keep Government Out of Medicare” signs at Tea Party protests. It’s not just that they don’t have the slightest clue about what the government does, it’s that they believe they’re getting nothing from government and just having to pay for a bunch of underserving freeloaders.
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Julie Robinson said on April 29, 2026 at 8:36 am
“It will be funny. It will be entertaining. There will be some shots fired tonight in the room”. Karoline Leavitt, on her way in to the dinner.
We pulled up Monday night’s Kimmel where he defended himself well. Next he had man on the street interviews, and I would like to think those were staged, but fear they weren’t.
I’m currently reading King of Kings by Scott Anderson, about the history of Iran leading up to the revolution of 1979. So far it’s confirmed my previous observations that poor decisions are made through stupidity and fragile male egos. Sometimes female, but rarely are women in those positions.
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Dave said on April 29, 2026 at 9:34 am
They’re passing around a petition in Ohio now to put eliminating property taxes on the ballot, I may be mistaken but I believe that’s also happening in Florida. Ramaswami, the presumable Ohio Repug nominee for governor, supports this. You might recall he ran for president and expressed support for everything T****. I see people proposing it in Indiana all the time.
Meanwhile and off topic (or maybe not), the lieutenant governor here, a Christian nationalist type named Micah Beckwith, has stirred up things by criticizing the Westfield High School band over a presentation that he called demonic, which also gives him a chance to criticize public schools because destroying public schools really is part of their agenda. Every day, as our hostess has said, it’s almost too much. https://youarecurrent.com/2026/04/23/lt-gov-beckwith-criticizes-westfield-band-schools-in-facebook-post/
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alex said on April 29, 2026 at 11:35 am
A high school is teaching kids classical music and opera and leading them down the path to Hell, so says our hellfire and brimstone lieutenant governor. I can see the GOP fast losing its snob appeal among the country clubbers and upper-middle-class in this state, and that’s all for the better.
It should be noted that Beckwith is a pastor at a church embroiled in sex scandals involving the lead pastor’s homemade sex videos and the lead pastor’s son’s kiddie porn collection.
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kayak woman said on April 29, 2026 at 11:56 am
Stopping by to yell A-MEN!!!!
My life the last couple days? Spending a few days with my MAGAt husband and some in-laws (mostly MAGAt, one brother-in-law is decidedly anti-Trump). We’re at the family cabin on Houghton Lake (Michigan), dealing with a major flooding event (no damage thanks to quick action).
My life since Trump went down the escalator? Living in a divided house. I count my blessings that our adult daughters did not follow him down that path. Their viewpoint is that we raised them on the Planet Ann Arbor and “allowed” them to choose the alternative public secondary schools. (Yes, of course there are also MAGAts in Ann Arbor but it is a pretty good blue bubble…)
People are always asking me how I get along living with MAGA. Various ways, one of them being when we are in a vehicle together, we listen to “Willie’s Roadhouse” instead of NPR or Fox/Patriot/whatever. And I am not even a country music fan.
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Schtreaky said on April 29, 2026 at 12:36 pm
That “no property tax” Trump voter reminds me of the folks who complain, “Why should I vote for the school levy? I ain’t got no kids in the schools.” We had a house in our neighborhood that would consistently post a giant ‘NO!’ sign in their yard opposing every levy vote. When a levy passed (as they almost always did, thank goodness) I would walk by their house with a big grin on my face.
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Sherri said on April 29, 2026 at 12:40 pm
John Roberts has finally accomplished his life’s work: completely gutting the Voting Rights Act. John Roberts fervently believes that only the right sort of people should be allowed to vote, and from the Shelby County decision to today’s decision, he’s made sure that the right sort of people can control the voting process.
The only good news is that more and more people are recognizing what I was saying years ago: we have to reform SCOTUS, or nothing else we do will matter. Biden had no interest in doing so, but this has to be a litmus test for future Dems.
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Deborah said on April 29, 2026 at 12:47 pm
Kayak Woman, I can not imagine being married to a MAGAt, you are way stronger than me. Have you ever asked your husband why he still is after all that Trump has done since being re-elected like constant lies, nonstop insulting rhetoric, tariffs and wars? I realize it may be better not to talk politics at all so as to stay married. I want to ask my sister the same question, mostly I don’t communicate with her at all but her middle daughter and I get along terrifically, she thinks her mom is nuts. She doesn’t communicate with her mother or older sister at all right now because it drives her crazy and they are quite mean to her, so why bother.
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Brandon said on April 29, 2026 at 1:55 pm
Re: Alex’s post at #4: More here: https://www.wthr.com/article/news/politics/lieutenant-governor-micah-beckwith-criticizes-westfield-washington-band-social-media-post-demonic/531-e294216b-0aaa-4a82-a8d4-095c1f266cd7
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Julie Robinson said on April 29, 2026 at 2:00 pm
And here I’ve had hope that if the Florida g̶e̶r̶r̶y̶m̶a̶n̶d̶e̶r̶i̶n̶g̶, sorry, redistricting, passes it would be overturned by courts. Four more seats for the R’s, being debated now. The legislators did find their manhoods and deny DeSantis the property tax negation, as well as the vaccine mandates he wanted to erase. For once they seeemed to pay attention to the facts of the current measles outbreak.
Beckwith has raised the ire of all my fellow marching band parents, and I’ve been seeing a lot on my social media feeds. It does take a special kind of hypocrite to see danger in kids marching to Carmen while having no problem with the sex scandal in his church.
Books banned from school libraries in a couple of nearby counties: Anne of Green Gables and Heidi. No explanation of why.
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kayak woman said on April 29, 2026 at 2:57 pm
Deborah, I could probably write a book about living with MAGA 🙂 But a few things…
1) We’ve been married more years than I’m strong enough to count (over 40).
2) In all other ways, he is a wonderful person/father, etc. Willing to help people almost to a fault.
3) He absolutely doesn’t try to control me in any way including where I get news/information. (He wouldn’t dare try.)
4) He can fix toilets! And just about anything else and happily does so. This last is only partly in jest.
All branches of our families (his and mine) have people who disagree about Trump. Somehow we all manage to still get along. It isn’t always easy but people are complicated 🙂
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Sherri said on April 29, 2026 at 3:01 pm
Sigh. We have a Donor Advised Fund, which simplifies our charitable giving. Because we have other accounts there, we set it up at Fidelity.
Now, Fidelity has declared that I can’t donate to the Southern Poverty Law Center out of my DAF, because of the ridiculous and totally bogus DOJ investigation of the SPLC. I’m tired of gutless institutions obeying to tyranny in advance.
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Brandon said on April 29, 2026 at 3:17 pm
Books banned from school libraries in a couple of nearby counties: Anne of Green Gables and Heidi.
Where was this? And what’s the reason for banning those titles, both of which seem innocuous to me?
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Julie Robinson said on April 29, 2026 at 3:42 pm
My point precisely, and as I wrote, there was no explanation from either Volusia or Seminole counties here in Florida.
kayak woman, I couldn’t be you.
Sherri, Fidelity is telling you that you don’t get to decide how to donate your own money? How paternalistic. Steam is coming out of my ears on your behalf.
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Brandon said on April 29, 2026 at 3:54 pm
FWIW, arbitrary censorship of classic literature was the main plot of Porky’s II. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porky%27s_II:_The_Next_Day
The Angel Beach High School Drama Club is producing a William Shakespeare Festival in which the group from the first film is participating. A religious leader named Reverend Bubba Flavel wants to halt the production because his group, “The Righteous Flock,” believe Shakespeare is indecent and profane. … Though the Angel Beach principal, Mr. Carter, enthusiastically supports his students, he is forced to cancel the Festival after the county commissioners voted against it. …
The teens discover that the county commissioners, while publicly espousing decency and morality, secretly gather to watch stag films in the courthouse basement. The students take a tape recorder to the courthouse and record the commissioners’ crude commentary on the films, which include remarks that Flavel provided the pornography.
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apocalipstick said on April 29, 2026 at 4:31 pm
Civics education is not the answer. Every state requires some form of instruction in US and state government. I taught that class for years. Here are my two takeaways:
1 You can lead a yada yada yada.
2. I can explain it to you, but I can’t understand it for you.
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alex said on April 29, 2026 at 5:13 pm
The only civics anyone grows up with are taught in the home, and unfortunately in this country we have far too many parents teaching the young that it’s okay to cheat, lie and steal just so long as you put on your best clothes and best behavior for an hour on Sunday morning and make nicey-nice with the invisible man in the sky with the golden tickets. Gotta schmooze or you gonna lose.
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Sherri said on April 29, 2026 at 6:40 pm
Nominal Democrat Marie Glueskamp Perez, who represents SE Washington in Congress, proposes to exempt the first $100K of police officers’ income from Federal income taxes. She came up with this idea after a ride along with the Clark County Sheriff’s Department.
So many thoughts…
-I’ve done a cop ride along, but it didn’t poison my brain like this.
-I’ll consider it in exchange for eliminating qualified immunity. I bet the police officers wouldn’t go for that trade.
-How terrible does a Democrat have to be not to be worth it? MGP is a terrible Dem, in a district that was Trump+3 in 2024. She has won both elections because Joe Kent is a total nutcase. This year, the GOP is running Ryan Braun, a state senator who isn’t as crazy as Kent, even though he has Trump’s backing. There’s not a serious challenger from the left of MGP, which is a shame. If ever there were an opportunity to get a slightly less shitty Dem, this would seem to be an ideal time.
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Pam said on April 29, 2026 at 8:25 pm
I followed your link to the disenchanted Trump voters and discovered that they would do it all over again. When asked what current Republicans they like for After Trump, I was horrified at the names that came up: MTG, DeSantis, Cruz, Rubio, Vance. Have they learned nothing? What would be better with those people? The problem is that the Dems haven’t made a fresh impression on anyone. They keep getting sucked into the shit fights the Republicans keep staging for them. And steamrolled by ads paid for by the mega donors. I don’t have much hope for this country’s future.
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Suzanne said on April 29, 2026 at 8:34 pm
I still can’t grasp that some of the kindest, most helpful people I know support the whole MAGAverse and Trump. Do they have no understanding whatsoever about what he’s doing and supporting? I don’t get it and never will. Kayak Woman, you are a better person than I will ever be.
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Cheez Whiz said on April 29, 2026 at 10:43 pm
There’s a libertarianish argument that taxes should be tied to services. You pay a sewer tax, a water tax, a garbage tax, a school tax, a police tax, a fire tax, a road tax, and on and on. This pretends that government itself is not a service. This position desires an America full of small towns. There is an abiding hatred of cities in conservative America. People like these Trump voters likely don’t consider themselves conservative, but they hate being indebted to a greater culture they do not like at all and being forced to pay for it. They believe they can opt out and it will not affect them beyond more money in their pocket.
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Sherri said on April 30, 2026 at 1:10 am
There are people still living who spilled blood in the fight to get the Voting Rights Act passed, just like there are women still living who had to get an illegal abortion before Roe. That both have been gone from creation to being gutted in our lifetimes outrages me beyond words.
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Jeff Gill said on April 30, 2026 at 7:01 am
Cheez Whiz indirectly points out the geographic issue of MAGA, which Trump himself has mentioned repeatedly, precisely enough someone like Miller or Cheung on his staff must keep reminding him of it.
If you look at us as a collection of counties (spoiler alert: no form of federalism or electoral management does so), it’s the best source of his assertion/belief that he won a “landslide” with a “mandate” other than his popular vote win in 2024 after two popular vote losses nationwide.
Kamala Harris won 427 counties, with 73,857,304. Donald Trump won 2,633 counties, with 76,264,661. What complicates this seeming plurality is if you look at the counties by economic output, as Brookings did, you find the Harris 427 counties total 62% of the national GDP, while Trump’s rural bastions add up to 38% of GDP.
Biden, by comparison, won 512 counties, and 71% of GDP; Clinton back in 2016 had 472 counties go her way, and 64% of GDP. Trump had under 2,600 counties each time, 29% & 36% of GDP. So you have a sense of the ubiquity of Trump support, but as a life long affirmer of rural communities and the importance of agriculture in our national economy, the relevance of his support is questionable, while the Dem candidates have support “where it counts,” economically at any rate.
It makes rhetorical sense for Trump to bang on at length about how he won the country 2,600 to 400, and as CW observes, it lends itself to a certain amount of hating on cities. But given the closeness of the popular vote even in 2024, and demographic trends, it’s a fragile margin, not a mandate. And it’s worth pointing out that Trump has never once cracked 50% of the total voting.
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/trump-again-won-counties-representing-a-minority-share-of-national-gdp-but-with-notable-gains/
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nancy said on April 30, 2026 at 7:49 am
As more than one person has pointed out, Jeff, acreage doesn’t vote. Nor do sheep.
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Jeff Gill said on April 30, 2026 at 9:18 am
As I said, it’s a rhetorical point… not a political one. His shrinking base likes to hear about it because [insert joke about men & nervous sheep here].
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alex said on April 30, 2026 at 11:17 am
Incels and sheep. Perfect bedfellows, it dawns on me.
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Mark P said on April 30, 2026 at 11:41 am
I don’t expect to see a civilized country in my admittedly short remaining lifetime. My nephews are in their 40’s. I’m afraid they won’t either. I’ve said before, I think it will take catastrophic events for the country to mature into a truly civilized country. Unfortunately, I think it will have to be destroyed before it can be rebuilt.
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Sherri said on April 30, 2026 at 11:41 am
Black people live in rural areas, too, especially in the South, but they have been systematically targeted for voter suppression. States put in voter ID requirements, then close DMV offices in black rural areas (Alabama, for example.)
Now with the latest SCOTUS decision, they’ll just redraw lines to make sure no Black representation can ever occur. Louisiana is going to delay their May 16 primary so they can redraw their maps. Alabama and Mississippi are also moving in that direction.
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Sherri said on April 30, 2026 at 12:01 pm
Ah yes, the county map that the GOP loves, thinking it makes them look popular. Yes, counties vary in GDP, but they really vary in population, dramatically. The county I live in, King County, WA, has over 2.2 million people living here. That’s a larger population than 13 states. Why don’t we get a couple of Senators, like Idaho and Wyoming?
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Sherri said on April 30, 2026 at 3:29 pm
As Louisiana gets busy redrawing its maps, let us reflect for a moment that Blacks make up a third of the population of Louisiana. What SCOTUS did was declare that a new Congressional map that would allow for 2 of the 6 seats to be majority Black districts is unconstitutional. That was the map to be used in the May 16th primary.
Well, can’t have those uppity you-know-whats having proportionate power, now can we. The primary has been postponed, and if we’re lucky, they’ll only go back to the map that had one majority Black district. Unless they’ve already got a map that gives all six seats to white people already sitting in their pocket.
Someone said the new Jim Crow is John Roberts.
They don’t want democracy. They want feudalism.
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Mark P said on April 30, 2026 at 3:57 pm
Saying they don’t want democracy is not hyperbole, it’s literally true, and sometimes they are not embarrassed to tell you. They say democracy is the tyranny of the majority; they prefer plain old tyranny.
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