The Weekly WTF: President shouts, nobody listens
Plus, Pentagon testosterone shortage, Trump tweets for sale, smoking Canada 🔥
THIS STUFF ACTUALLY HAPPENED:
They just said no. Most of the major news networks ran other programming on their main broadcasts while President Trump delivered a prime-time address on July 16. ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, and MS Now treated the speech as if it were a newsy curiosity, discussing Trump’s remarks as he made them but giving Trump himself little airtime. Only Fox News ran the speech in full.
Since Trump said in advance he was planning to talk about election fraud, the networks all knew he would gas on about cheating that never happened in 2020 and all the other bogus theories he has trotted out a million times before. That’s exactly what he did. The networks saved themselves a lot of fact-checking and denied Trump a platform for lying to millions of Americans about election integrity, which is actually quite good.
Trump got angry that most of the networks didn’t carry his speech, even though they’re not obligated to. He criticized ABC and NBC during the speech itself, and later threatened to revoke their over-the-air broadcast licenses. The networks have declined to carry other presidential speeches—by Joe Biden and Barack Obama, among others—without provoking any White House outcry at all. If you really want to trigger a bully, ignore him.
[Check out The Weekly Matterboard: News that’s actually worth your time]
Election theft heating up. Trump’s deranged-uncle act would be comical except he’s telegraphing what is likely to be an unprecedented federal effort to overturn opposition party gains in the 2026 midterm elections. Trump has been railing against Congress for its failure to pass the SAVE America election bill, which many critics characterize as voter suppression. Trump may have thought his July 16 speech would create momentum for passing that bill, but it didn’t. The bill can’t get past the Senate filibuster, which means the only way to pass it is to eliminate the filibuster, which even Republicans don’t want to do.
With the elections less than four months away and Republicans likely to lose at least one house of Congress, Trump’s minions at various federal agencies are likely to start working the system hard. The FBI has already sent an army of agents to intimidate election workers in Georgia. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin says states that don’t “cooperate” with his department by sharing access to their voting systems will face consequences.
This is all crap. Cheating in federal elections is exceedingly rare and has probably been inconsequential since at least the days of Lyndon Johnson. States and cities don’t need Washington’s help running their elections. Trump and his goons are trying to taint legitimate elections because they know they’re going to lose. There’s a good chance they will try to block or overturn election results they don’t like. Expect November to be ugly.
[The double-haters’ guide to the midterm elections]
The White House opens an insider trading window. Trump’s media company, Trump Media & Technology Group, plans to let financial firms pay a fee of $100,000 per month to get early access to posts on its Truth Social platform. This is the outright sale of inside information for money-making purposes. Trading firms with blazing-fast computers can place trades in fractions of a second when computer algorithms think they detect something likely to move markets. Other social-media sites, such as X and Reddit, already offer faster access to posts, for a fee.
The difference is that those sites aren’t controlled by the president of the United States, who routinely moves markets with abrupt social-media announcements on tariffs, Iran war developments, regulatory actions, and specific companies he wants to reward or punish. Trump posts such market-moving announcements himself on a media platform he controls, and now he plans to sell market-moving news to the highest bidder. This is graft in plain sight.
In other graft news … A man named Gabriel Perez who has been a Trump aide for years, operating the teleprompter Trump uses to read speeches on TV, appears to be one of the Trump insiders winning bets on public betting markets because he had early information on something Trump was likely to say. Teleprompters run the words of a script across the same camera screen the person on camera is looking into, which is how TV people are able to read while looking straight out of the screen. Anybody working with a preloaded script would know what Trump was about to say. Prediction markets allow bets on whether public remarks by prominent figures will contain certain words or phrases. It’s so easy to game that, of course, somebody was going to rig it.
Betting market Kalshi apparently detected the fishy activity itself, and reported it to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. There were more than a dozen trades that netted the bettor more than $100,000. The White House says it has placed Perez on unpaid leave, pending an investigation. We think Trump will reverse himself and give Perez a medal, a raise, and a promotion, for actions completely consistent with the most visibly corrupt presidential administration in US history.
[Inflation is down, but going back up]
Beware “the Brush therein.” Trump plans to impose new tariffs on Canadian imports, to punish our northern neighbor for the wildfire smoke that has been polluting the air over much of the United States. Seems odd, given that no country has burned more of the carbon that has caused global warming, and set the conditions for out-of-control wildfires, than the United States. But we are not responsible for anything anymore here in the land of it’s-your fault-not-mine.
“We are holding Canada responsible for the fact that they are not properly maintaining their Forests, and the Brush therein,” Trump wrote on social media on July 17. “Cost of this pollution must of necessity be added to the TARIFFS Canada is currently paying.” Soon, some lucky trading firms will get the word early and make money off of it.
[The Weekly WTF: Trump out-gaffes Biden]
Sky black. This is what the sky over Moscow looked like on July 18 after Ukrainian drones hit a nearby oil refinery. Ukraine has been mauling Russia’s energy infrastructure, to bring the war home to ordinary Russians. Looks like it’s working.
Thank you for your participation in this matter! Trump has won an Iran War Participation Trophy for partaking in the ongoing war with Iran. An artist collective known as Secret Handshake erected the 10-foot golden statue on the National Mall in Washington, DC, about half a mile from the White House. Trump might be able to see it while gazing at the reflecting pool to see how the algae are doing.
A White House spokesperson told Time that the statue is “ugly.” She might have been missing the point.
Overcompensating. Punkish Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that the Pentagon will test all uniformed servicemen 30 and older to make sure they have enough testosterone. That’s in response to widespread concerns among the troops that their testosterone might be deficient.
That’s a joke, nobody has even thought about servicemember testosterone levels except the ridiculous Hegseth. Was this guy forced to wear dresses as a kid, or something? Anyway, if your juice is low, the Pentagon will pay to top you off. Such treatments can cause side effects, such as lower sperm production, infertility and blood clots. But warriors ain’t afraid of no stinking blood clots! Kill harder!
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Thinks for the informative report on the loonie tunes bunch! God Bless!