Good morning. It is October 30th. It is a rainy morning in New York City. And this is your Indignity Morning Podcast. I'm your host, Tom Scocca, taking a look at the day and the news. 

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced yesterday that the U.S. military had carried out yet another unprovoked attack on yet another unarmed vessel, again in the Pacific. It was the 14th strike against a total of 15 boats and killed four more defenseless people, raising the total number killed since the Trump administration made summary killings of civilians at sea into standard U.S. policy to 61.

In other massacres, the World Health Organization says that more than 460 people were slaughtered at a maternity hospital in the city of Al Fasher in Sudan after the Sudanese military was pushed out of the city by its opponent in the ongoing civil war, the Rapid Support Forces. 

And, an assault by Brazilian police on the favelas of Rio de Janeiro left at least 119 people dead, four police officers and the rest residents in what the government describes as a pitched battle against an entrenched criminal gang and what residents describe as a campaign of summary executions. 

Last night, President Donald Trump went on his social media account and posted, “because of other countries testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our nuclear weapons on an equal basis. That process will begin immediately. Thank you for your attention to this matter." He put up that post on his Asian tour just minutes before he was scheduled to meet President Xi Jinping of China, who is overseeing one of the fastest buildups of a nuclear arsenal on Earth. There's been a lot of discussion in the course of the past year or so about how the press tries to take the ever more incoherent and alarming things that Donald Trump says or posts, and reshape them into something that might resemble a policy position that a regular presidential candidate or then president might announce. But here, the Times, and other outlets are trying to do this with basically the ongoing existence of life on Earth at stake. The words on an equal basis, the Times writes, “may mean he will show off the power of American missiles or undersea nuclear assets rather than detonate a nuclear weapon. The United States routinely tests unarmed missiles. Mr. Trump did not clarify his remarks to reporters while greeting Mr. Xi. While China,” the Times writes, “is rapidly expanding its nuclear stockpile and deploying missiles in new silos, it has not tested a nuclear weapon since 1996. Russia has not conducted a confirmed test since 1990. And while the United States has never ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which bans weapon detonations, past presidents have largely observed its provisions.” So here we have a logical construction. The president did use the phrase, “on an equal basis,” and factually, on an equal basis, other nuclear armed powers have not been detonating nuclear weapons for decades. If you expect Donald Trump to say precisely the words he means, and you expect Donald Trump to base his actions on well-established observable facts about reality, then it's possible to believe that when Donald Trump says, start testing our nuclear weapons, he doesn't mean detonating a nuclear explosion. The theory here is that Donald Trump has a sophisticated and nuanced understanding that the nuclear arsenal is an assortment of interconnected systems of which the nuclear explosives are simply one part. And he can test the capability of the things with which the country would wage a nuclear war without making that big boom that he saw in all the movies and TV when he was growing up. He might mean that, but what does anyone want to bet on that interpretation? Would you bet, for instance, all life on earth on it? Another way of looking at this would be that the times and others are trying very hard to convince the president that this is what he meant and that his demands for nuclear testing can be satisfied without any nuclear weapons going off. “It was not clear,” the Times writes, “what prompted the announcement, which Mr. Trump appeared to have made while in Marine One, the presidential helicopter, as he was flying to meet Mr. Xi. But he may very well have been angered by recent tests of exotic nuclear delivery systems by Russia. In the past few days,” the story continues, “President Vladimir V. Putin said Russia had successfully tested a nuclear-powered and nuclear-capable cruise missile and, separately, a nuclear torpedo called the Poseidon. The torpedo is designed to travel under the Pacific from Russia's east to hit the American west coast. Those systems were known to observers, Mr. Putin showed them off during Mr. Trump's first term. It is unclear whether they are fully operational. And Mr. Putin's saber rattling in the wake of fizzled plans for a summit meeting with Mr. Trump about Ukraine consisted of tests of the delivery vehicles. He did not detonate any nuclear weapons.” But to review, we have a “may mean.” We have a “did not clarify his remarks.” A “not clear what prompted the announcement,” and a “may well have been angered.” That is, the president said something about his intentions toward nuclear weapons and what he meant, why he said it, and what his underlying motivations were are all a matter of guesswork. This does not seem like an ideal way to handle the ultimate authority for equipment capable of global annihilation.

The death toll from Hurricane Melissa has surpassed 30 across Jamaica, Haiti, and Cuba. The storm is now down to a Category 1 and is out at sea, making its way toward Bermuda. On the front of the print edition of this morning's New York Times, the top photo is of flooding and devastation under blue skies at Treasure Beach in Jamaica. The hurricane news story is in the left hand column. “3 Islands Left Partly Crippled By Hurricane / First Glimpses of Ruin in the Caribbean.”

“Hurricane Melissa blasted Cuba and Haiti,” the Times writes, “with torrential rain and howling winds on Wednesday, inflicting even more damage just hours after it devastated parts of Jamaica, ripping the roofs off homes and hospitals, flooding villages and littering roads with trees and electrical poles.” Surveying Jamaica's share of the damage, the paper then writes, “Communication problems and power outages were hampering the authorities’ ability to assess the full scope of the devastation. Nearly 80 percent of the country was without electricity on Wednesday morning, said Dana Morris Dixon, Jamaica’s information minister.”

The right-hand news spot belongs to Trump's Asia tour. “ON KOREAN VISIT, TRUMP SETS GOAL TO BROKER PEACE / LAVISH PRAISE BY HOST / As South Fetes President, North’s Only Reaction Is a Missile Test.”

Once again, even more pointedly than they did with the Japan leg of the tour, the Times is basically recounting the day as a spectacle intentionally designed to coddle the President of the United States. “On Wednesday,” the Times writes, “Mr. Trump landed in South Korea for the last leg of his tour of Asia. He was greeted with fanfare and flattery over his newfound obsession of ending global conflicts. President Lee Jae Myung of South Korea presented Mr. Trump with a medal symbolizing the nation's highest honor in recognition of his contribution to peace on the Korean Peninsula and his continued role as a peacemaker. He was served a meal that included a “peacemaker's dessert” that included a brownie flecked with gold. That got Trump to declare that he would like to speak to Kim Jong-un of North Korea about negotiating an end to the longstanding formal hostilities between North and South. The commitment” the Times writes “came on Wednesday when South Korean officials feted Mr. Trump with some of the things known to appeal to his idiosyncrasies. A military band playing YMCA, a replica gold crown, and side dishes made with ketchup, which Mr. Lee's office described as a favorite food of President Trump.” The story later on says, “on Sunday in Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital, Mr. Trump witnessed the signing of an agreement between Thailand and Cambodia. During remarks to South Korean business leaders, Mr. Trump drew applause for the truce. And he recounted several conversations he had with leaders in recent months in which he threatened to halt trade talks should they continue their decades old conflicts. One, he said, was between himself and Prime Minister Narenda Modi of India. Mr. Trump said he told Mr. Modi he would not make a trade deal with him unless India stopped fighting Pakistan. Mimicking Mr. Modi in an Indian accent, Mr. Trump recalled him saying, ‘No, we will fight.’ Mr. Trump has taken credit for a ceasefire between the South Asian neighbors, but India has rejected that characterization, saying it's settled the matter directly with Pakistan.” 

Just doing a funny accent, gobbling up his ketchup treats, grooving to YMCA. Extremely normal things for the leader of superpower on the world stage. 

On page A7 in the international section, the headline is “lethal attacks by bears lead Japan to send the military in.”

“The horror stories” the Times writes “are everywhere in Japan this fall. Bears breaking into supermarkets, bears killing farmers, bears attacking workers at a hot springs resort. More than 100 people have been injured by bears in Japan this year, and 11 have died, a record. Now the government is preparing to dispatch the military to one hard-hit area to help deal with the problem. They are not, going to fight the bears,” the Times writes that they're “to help set traps and dispose of the carcasses of dead bears.” According to the Times, “the killing will be left to local hunters.”

On page A20, five days before Election Day in New York City and more than seven months after Andrew Cuomo launched his unsuccessful bid for the Democratic mayoral nomination to be followed by his independent sore loser general election campaign. New York Times has at the top of the page. “Cuomo made almost $5 million from consulting in 2024 returns show.” Above “as a young lawyer Cuomo had a rent stabilized unit.” And then at the bottom of the page, “how ex-governors dream of a radio gig fell apart.” The top one is about how Cuomo had $4,712,978 in consulting income last year collected through a pass-through company that makes it impossible to know the identities of the clients who were paying him all this money. “Mr. Cuomo,” the Times writes, “who is running as a third-party candidate after losing June's Democratic primary, was the last major mayoral candidate to agree to share his tax documents. He did so only in the waning days of the campaign, as early voting was underway.” 

The story at the bottom of the page is about what Cuomo was not getting money for, about how he tried to insinuate himself into a largely right-wing talk show and podcast business only to hook up with a financially unraveling company, one that the Times describes in a perfectly pitched bit of comedy writing as having “hosts that included Laura Ingraham, Soledad O'Brien, Mike Huckabee, and Pete Rose,” and then tried to escape to WABC, but couldn't convince the people there that he had what it took to make good radio. The Times reports, “‘basically, I said to the techs, if he ever becomes a podcaster here, I'd want to impale myself with a microphone,’ said Curtis Sliwa, a W.A.B.C. mainstay who is now clashing with Mr. Cuomo as the Republican nominee for mayor. ‘The guy is boring.’” 

And the story in between those two is a belated follow up to Cuomo's long running attacks on Democratic nominees Zorhan Mamdani for living in a rent stabilized apartment, reporting that Cuomo as a young and extremely well-connected son of the Lieutenant Governor and then Governor Mario Cuomo, did the same thing. 

Less any one fear that the Times's decision to belatedly empty its clip into the extremely large and available target of Cuomo means it has abandoned its crusade against Mamdani, page A21 is all Mamdani. Up top, “mayor's race favorite still hedges on stance on housing proposals. Zorhan Mamdani surged to the front of the pack in the New York City mayor's race, the Times writes, “by focusing on the topic of affordability and presenting himself as a candidate who was willing to take a stand on important issues. But when it comes to a series of contentious ballot proposals aimed at building more housing amid the current dire shortage, Mr. Mamdani has repeatedly dodged questions about where he stands. His evasiveness has continued, even with early voting underway and just days left until the November 4th election.” What he's trying to finesse is that the ballot initiatives are set up to expedite the approval of housing construction by stripping power from the city council, and so Mamdani's desire to advocate for more housing and his desire not to antagonize the city council are directly opposed to each other. 

Below that is a considerably less substantive angle of attack on Mamdani. The Times has equipped the print version of the story with a bland feature-y headline “How a small college in Maine helped shape Mamdani's view of the world.” But the byline is that of the New York Times' anti-woke crusading reporter, Jeremy W. Peters, and the purpose is to present Mamdani as the embodiment of the caricature of educated young people, that the right-wing political movement and the kind of reactionary liberals in control of the New York Times, have dedicated themselves to scaremongering about. “It wasn't so much what Zoran Mamdani said,” Peters begins, in what amounts to a confession about what the project of this piece is. “It was,” Peters writes, “how he said it. ‘We're going to stand up for Haiti because you taught the world about freedom,’ the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York told an elated crowd at a Haitian music festival in June, fresh off his upset victory in the primary. Mr. Mamdani,” Peters writes, “pronounced the island nation's name, ‘AH-ee-tee,’ near perfect Creole elocution. ‘When I heard him say that, I smiled,’ recalled Brian Purnell, one of Mr. Mamdani's former professors at Bowdoin College. He also noted that Mr. Mamdani's reference to freedom was a nod to Haiti's status as the first republic founded by former slaves.” Okay, so he pronounced the name of the country correctly and he made an accurate historical reference. And this is something to be concerned about. “If Mr. Mamdani becomes the next mayor of New York,” Peters writes, “as polls suggest, he will be mold breaking in striking ways. He would be the first Muslim, the first democratic socialist and at 34, among the youngest to hold the office. 

Kind of important side note here is that the New York Times has already published a podcast interview in which the host, I think it was David Leonhardt, but maybe it was Ezra Klein [EDITORIAL NOTE: IT WAS MICHAEL BARBARO] called Mamdani potentially the first democratic socialist mayor of New York, and Mamdani corrected him by pointing out that Mayor David Dinkins was a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. Miss Peters' story was also published online before it went into the print edition, and people then likewise flagged that the claim that Mamdani's Democratic Socialist affiliation is some novelty was false, and yet, there it is, black and white and untrue. Anyway, ignoring his continuity with a previous mayor of New York, Peters writes, “he would also become one of the most visible representations of a new generation of progressives whose formative years were shaped by elite colleges where, over the last decade, theories of social and racial justice became even more deeply ingrained in liberal arts education.” Peters writes that he got his degree in Africana study and writes that his education is “emblematic of the charged debate over what is taught in universities.” Emblematic to whom? “Critics,” Peters writes, “say the growth of these programs, which aim to teach about historical events from the perspective of marginalized and oppressed groups, has turned colleges into feckless workshops for leftist political orthodoxy.” The principal critic who gets to air his views in the piece is J.D. Vance, who doesn't know anything about Mamdani's actual education, or really about Africana studies at all. The point is the idea of it makes him mad, as it makes Jeremy W. Peters mad, and that is enough to justify a story, even though throughout the story, Mamdani's actual professors point out that he got a pretty normal and well-rounded college education, in which, Peters reports, “his professors say he studied traditional American thinkers and writers.” That's because the programs that Peters is eager to quote outside critics as calling “grievance studies” are generally interdisciplinary and fully necessarily engaged with the mainstream discourse that they critique and build upon. This understanding is basically what led the New York Times to publish the 1619 Project as an attempt to reconstitute American history in terms that incorporate the knowledge, experience and analysis of Black Americans to tell a universal story to the general public. The fact that the same paper is now running this story, by this guy, with these assumptions behind it, is effectively a coda to the 1619 Project demonstrating the ways in which the truth and liberation of the Civil War and Reconstruction were overturned in favor of the false history and repression of Redemption and Jim Crow. 

That is the news. Thank you for listening. The Indignity Morning Podcast is edited by Joe MacLeod. The theme song is composed and performed by Mack Scocca-Ho. Bring an umbrella if you're going to go out. Apologies for what may very well be the longest podcast in the Indignity Morning Podcast history, but I was real het-up about the Peters thing, and if nothing unexpected gets in the way, we will talk again tomorrow.