Good morning. It is July 15th. It is a sweltering morning on the way to a scorching day in New York City. The cat is flicking her tail on a stack of papers right by the microphone, but anything I might do about it will just make things worse. And this is your Indignity Morning Podcast. I'm your host, Tom Scocca, taking a look at the day and the news. And boy poh boy, do we have some news, apparently inspired by the site of Donald Trump dodging a literal bullet over the weekend. Federal judge, Alieen Cannon, appointed by Donald Trump, stopped indefinitely delaying his trial for stealing classified documents and simply threw out the indictment, citing a concurrence by Clarence Thomas in the Supreme Court's ruling granting Trump absolute presidential immunity that contrary to completely established law and precedent, the very existence of the special prosecutor was unconstitutional. This was supposed to be the good strong case against Trump, the one where he self -evidently broke a law that prosecutors have always taken seriously. But thanks to the top to bottom corruption of the judicial system by the conservative movement, heavily-bribed Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas gave the totally unqualified rank amateur judge the pretext she needed to declare dear leader untouchable by the law. 

Meanwhile, the morning newspaper is stuffed full of coverage of Saturday's assassination attempt, even though you could fit all the new news since yesterday onto probably one page. The full page banner is, “Gunman's motive sought as Trump vows to go to RNC.” That “vows” is pretty much the tenor of the coverage everywhere. Donald Trump is bravely boldly refusing to let some damaged ear cartilage stop him from accepting his party's nomination this week. Investigators searched on Sunday for a motive, blah blah blah. And there's “FBI finding few red flags on the shooter. Secret Service will face review and assess convention security.” Below the fold, there's a story on the poor guy who actually got killed. And Peter Baker tries to write the dumbest analysis in the paper. “US is likely to be ripped further apart.” The lead is, “when President Ronald Reagan was shot by an attention -seeking drifter in 1981,” technically he wasn't really seeking everyone's attention, just Jody Foster's. Anyway, “when President Ronald Reagan was shot by an attention -seeking drifter in 1981, the country united behind its injured leader, the teary -eyed Democratic Speaker of the House, Thomas P. O 'Neill Jr., went to the hospital room of the Republican president, held his hands, kissed his head, and got on his knees to pray for him. But the assassination attempt against former president Donald J. Trump seems more likely to tear America further apart than to bring it together. Within minutes of the shooting, the air was filled with anger, bitterness, suspicion, and recrimination. Fingers were pointed, conspiracy theories advanced, and a country already bristling with animosity fractured even more.” Bristled and fracturing. Wow.

The Democratic House Minority Leader, Hakeem Jeffries, did not go visit Donald Trump in his hospital room. It's true, mainly because Donald Trump isn't staying in the hospital because unlike Reagan, he was not seriously wounded. He did put out a message of support, as did every other prominent Democrat. The anger, bitterness, suspicion, and incrimination that Baker's talking about pretty much all manifested themselves on platforms that didn't exist in 1981, a banal fact about cultural change over time that Jonathan Weissman spins out into a whole story inside the paper snatching the prize for worst commentary away from Baker “in the era of memes, ex -posts, truths, threads, and TikTok introspection was never going to be the dominant mood rage, blame, and even comedy were the watchwords of 2024 a picture of Mr. Trump fist aloft, American flag fluttering overhead became iconic in an instant.” Yeah, and you know where else there was out of control instant response? A frantic orgy of trying to impose meaning on an event before its details had even been properly established, that's right, the New York Times and all the rest of the frenzied mainstream media. Nobody knew what was going to happen in this election before the shooting. Nobody knows what's going to happen after the shooting. It took less than 48 hours for another drastic manifestation of the constitutional crisis to rear up. But why stop and think when there's so much blather to be blathered? 

Meanwhile, there's bird flu among Colorado poultry workers. There's measles at a migrant shelter in New York. Mayor Eric Adams' New York Fire Commissioner quit. And the Israeli military blew up at least 90 people inside a designated humanitarian zone, using the Times' writes, at least five US -made precision -guided bombs, claiming to have killed a Hamas lieutenant and to maybe or maybe not have hit the leader of Hamas's military wing. Israel now just treats it as self -evident that killing nearly 100 civilians in a place of refuge for the sake of hitting one or maybe two members of Hamas is simply the normal and acceptable course of warfare. 

That is the news. Thank you for listening. Please subscribe to Indignity to keep us going. I have no idea where the barking dog in the background came from, but I hope it's just visiting. And if all goes well, we will talk again tomorrow.