A journalist I respect once explained to that she and other journalists eschew the word 'a lie because since they cannot know what is in the speaker's heart, they could never be sure whether the speaker's intent was to lie.

With all due respect, I consider this bullshit. 'a lie' only means 'intent to deceive' if we assume that definition 1a is the only use of the word. There is 1b, which doesn't take a stand on the the intentions of the speaker, and 2, which is more plain, just 'anything that misleads or deceives.'

I never care nor judge anyone by their intentions, but their actions. I feel that journalists of all people should be the best at this, but they are the worst, apparently by design. I'm not asking journalists to read anyone's mind! Just say if a thing is true or false, if that thing can be known to be true or false. False things said by people have a plain English word to describe them: lies.

One more thing: the notion that Pirro and her office had to somehow be informed that no, there wasn't really vandalism in the reflecting pool is a real case of willful ignorance, and it should be subject to some sanction someday. It's just bullshit.

The Guardian commits an act of journalism and pieces together the entire sordid tale. Amazing!

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/01/trump-reflecting-pool-saga-timeline

Political prosecutions are so, so bad in terms of where we are on the fascism timeline. We’re well along the road here.

The presumption of regularity previously enjoyed by the DOJ is now used toilet paper in every court in the land.

Jeanine Pirro is such a trifling bozo. Bye, Felicia! Who's up next, Rudy frickin' Giuliani? 😆 Oh he's too drunk as well? Perpetually "at deaths door!" in avoidance of the court?!

Bloomberg:

"Capital One said in a court filing late Friday that it closed accounts belonging to President Donald Trump’s sprawling real estate company in 2021 for legitimate reasons after an internal review by the bank’s anti-money laundering team.

The lender made the revelation in a filing asking a judge to toss out a Trump Organization lawsuit accusing it of illegally “debanking” the president’s company because of political discrimination following the assault on the Capitol by his supporters on Jan. 6, 2021."

https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/currencies/articles/capital-one-cites-money-laundering-165238809.html

This story is almost a perfect example of how the media atomizes everything that Trump does.

They are very careful to treat each incident as if it were isolated, thereby collapsing the evidentiary chain that preceded it.

So instead of a comprehensive story that starts at the beginning of the reflecting pool and follows the facts until this ridiculous end, we get one-off stories that only capture the latest insanity.

This is entirely by choice, and it only applies to Trump and Republicans. Not necessarily because the media is biased, though it sure as hell can look that way.

Trump and the media are locked in an epistemic feedback loop where they feed off each other and sustain each other.