Letters from an American - Lies and Non Sequiturs

Starting point is 00:00:06 April 6th, 2026. It's really difficult to cover him in a way that conveys how unhinged he is, journalist Aaron Rupar told George Grills of the Times about President Donald J. Trump. Rupar explained that political journalists are trained to think, okay, what did he say that was newsworthy? So you convey that to your audience. But in reality, when you actually watch his rallies, you see that they're full of hatred.

Starting point is 00:00:35 He's lying constantly, and a lot of it is incoherent. Rupar spends as much as 80 hours a week watching Trump and members of his administration, clipping videos of their noteworthy statements into a few minutes at a time. His work is indispensable for translating Trump's long, meandering speeches to people who need shorter versions of them. In this quotation, he nails the real problem of this moment, in which the president of the United States is threatening obliteration if another nation doesn't do as he demands. The noteworthy story is not what the president says. The story is the president himself and its obvious mental deterioration. Today was another surreal day in the second Trump administration.

Starting point is 00:01:29 At their traditional White House Easter egg role this morning, Trump, whose right hand was swollen and covered with makeup after his weekend away from the cameras, stood with First Lady Melania Trump on a White House balcony, accompanied by a human-sized Easter bunny. The columns of the White House stood festooned in soft, red-white and blue plaid over the crowd of young children and their parents in festive pastel clothes, excited for the day's events. The band played hail to the Chief. After a rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner, Trump told the audience that, It's a day where we celebrate Jesus. It's a day where we celebrate religion. And it's an honor to be the President of the United States. Then things veered off course. He continued,

Starting point is 00:02:22 Our country is doing so well like it has never done before. You'll see that very shortly, and things that we've done have not been done before. We've broken. every record on the stock market. We've broken every record on our military. And then he launched into a speech about Iran and wars and bombing and rescues. The Easter Bunny's blank eyes seemed first shocked and then desperate. It was a scene out of a surreal movie, the President of the United States describing a war next to a giant rabbit with big vacant eyes. Charlotte Clymer of Charlotte's Web Thoughts wrote, Every day I think there's no possible way it can get dumber and more embarrassing.

Starting point is 00:03:11 And then Trump does something like this. And yes, this is real. It's all too real. While the children were rolling their eggs along the ground with spoons, Trump spoke to reporters, telling them about Iran, if it were up to me, I'd like to keep the oil. I just don't think the people of the United States would really understand. He suggested that attacking Iran's infrastructure wouldn't be a war crime because they killed 45,000 people in the last month.

Starting point is 00:03:42 More than that, it could be as much as 60. They killed protesters. They're animals, and we have to stop them, and we can't let them have a nuclear weapon. He claimed, again, that former presidents are telling him they wish they had done what he did in attacking Iran. All four living ex-presidents have denied speaking to him. Sitting with children drawing pictures, he told them they could sell his autograph on eBay for $25,000. He signed their pictures, and while he signed, he told the children that former President Joe Biden was incapable of signing his name, so he had aides follow him around with an auto pen machine. A later press conference at the White House continued the wild lies and non sequiters.

Starting point is 00:04:29 Trump began the conference by greeting the reporters with, Happy Easter. We had a great Easter. This is one of our better Easters, I think, in a lot of different ways. I can say, militarily, it's been one of the best. The celebratory speeches about the war compared a rescued airman to Jesus Christ and gave a great deal of detail about the rescue operation, but they didn't deliver much information to the journalist packed into the room about negotiations or goals or the president's ultimatum that Iran must agree to his demands by eight o'clock tomorrow night or face obliteration. Trump reiterated, the entire country could be taken out in one night, and that night might be tomorrow night. He said that while the regime governing the country has

Starting point is 00:05:19 changed, meaning its leadership, because the actual regime is still in power, that his reason for undertaking the war was not regime change, but rather to keep Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. He assured the journalists that he has had a plan all along. I saw somebody said, oh, he doesn't have a plan. I have the best plan of all, but I'm not going to tell you what my plan is. You know, they want me to say, here's my plan, we're going to attack at 947 in the morning, and then we're going to do this, and then we're going to. And if you don't do that, they say, I have a plan. These people know what the plan is. Everybody here knows what the plan is.

Starting point is 00:06:00 Every single thing has been thought out by all of us. But I can't reveal the plan to the media. So you know, but we're just thrilled by the success of this operation. Trump has said Iranians are upset when the strikes stop, and a reporter challenged him to explain, why would they want you to blow up their infrastructure to cut off their power? He answered, they would be willing to suffer that,

Starting point is 00:06:25 in order to have freedom. The Iranians have, and we've had numerous intercepts, please keep bombing. Bombs that are dropping near their homes. Please keep bombing. Do it. And these are people that are living where the bombs are exploding. And when we leave and we're not hitting those areas, they're saying, please come back, come back, come back. After noting he was responsible for the killing of Iranian military officer Qasem Soleimani, he added, I did one of but this one was not picked up. Osama bin Laden. If you read my book, I said you've got to take him out one year before the World Trade Center came down. So I wish you'd read the book. To be a good president, I believe you have to have good instincts, and a lot of this is instinct. A special

Starting point is 00:07:14 operations team located and killed Osama bin Laden, the founder of al-Qaeda and the mastermind of the 9-11 attacks on the United States. In 2011, when Barack Obama, was president. Trump's frequent claim that his book called for a raid against Osama bin Laden has been just as frequently debunked as a lie. Today was an exhausting day as Americans seemed to have little choice but to pay attention to a man who is bizarrely threatening what appears to be war crimes against Iranians while spinning wild tails. The members of both chambers of Congress are away for another week and Republican leaders are showing no sign of calling them back,

Starting point is 00:07:58 leaving the American people to face whatever Trump has in mind for tomorrow on our own. In contrast to Trump's vision of government according to the whims of a single man, no matter how bonkers those whims might be, New York City Mayor Zoran Mamdani, who, as a naturalized citizen, is not eligible for the presidency, is illustrating what it means to have a, a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Mamdani's videos about governing New York City inform New Yorkers about what their government does. At the same time, though, they lift up and honor the workers who make the wheels of government

Starting point is 00:08:41 turn. During his campaign, Mamdani promised his administration would see to it that potholes got filled, and as the road maintenance workers made the trip to fill the 100,000th, hot hole of the year, he tagged along. The video humanized the process and dignified work that often doesn't get attention. Another video today about the 3-1-1 call center in New York City that helps residents find resources to help solve everything from where to recycle a mirror to how to get an apartment repaired, featured Tangie Williams putting a face to the people in the center as she coached Mom Dani himself through a call. Williams told Mom Dami that the calls that tug at my heart are elderly people who have no

Starting point is 00:09:30 family and need both to be heard and to access help, which she provides with evident joy. Letters from an American was written and read by Heather Cox Richardson. It was produced at Soundscape Productions, Dead of Massachusetts, recorded, With music composed by Michael Moss.

Letters from an American - Lies and Non Sequiturs

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