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Reuters’ anonymous-source MAHA hit job. Spirit Airlines ‘unexpectedly’ folds. The Palisades arsonist’s Luigi cult. Trump’s America First for-profit doctrine. Bush’s “low expectations” returns. More.
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Good morning, C&C, it’s Tuesday! Your roundup includes: a Reuters “exclusive” anonymously sourcing the death of MAHA; Spirit Airlines folding its yellow tray-tables for the last time after fistfights and fuel hikes; the Palisades arsonist who idolized Luigi Mangione and apparently didn’t know what “enslaved” meant; SNAP rolls dropping by three million while the corporate media looks for someone to blame; Patel quietly closing the Hoover Building after a generation of failed promises; and Trump’s federal investments printing money while critics who insisted Argentina would default explain why “tens of millions in profit” was somehow gross.
🌍🇺🇸 ESSENTIAL NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🇺🇸🌍
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Yesterday, Reuters ran an ‘exclusive’ story headlined, “Warned off vaccine actions, Kennedy seeks quick health wins ahead of midterms.” Reuters knows full well that the threat to the midterms actually comes from a fractured base, not from independents anxious about Kennedy canceling some jab mandate. So Reuters stood up, dusted off its hands, and said, this base isn’t going to fracture itself! Let’s see what they’ve actually got here.
For starters, the obligatory corporate media photo of Kennedy looking clueless
Reuters’ story claimed that the Trump Administration ordered HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to shut up about vaccines right now and focus instead on “quick wins on new health initiatives to help Republicans in November’s midterm elections,” like “research into psychedelics” and “a slate of food initiatives.” The story argued the White House told him no more steps against vaccines this year.
It’s a brave claim. The article even praised itself, bragging, “Many of the details about Kennedy’s strategy … are reported here for the first time.” In other words, Reuters is the only one saying this.
“The stakes are high for Trump’s Republican party,” the wire service stressed, “which risks losing control of both chambers of Congress.” (Not the Republican Party; Trump’s Republican Party. It was a sly but obvious rhetorical trick to transform the midterms into a presidential referendum.) The gist was, Reuters believes President Trump thinks the best way to win the midterms is by making MAHA see red.
“Kennedy’s past moves, such as removing vaccines from the recommended U.S. childhood immunization schedule,” Reuters argued plaintively, “are among the policies that could hurt the party’s candidates.”
But like woke scientists always say, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. So … what evidence did Reuters offer for this extraordinary, MAHA-destructive claim?
💉 Just apply the lessons I’ve taught you. First, check the sources. For this story, every single operative detail behind its extraordinary narrative was a quote. No documents. No memos. No emails. Just who said what to Kennedy, what the White House has “insisted,” which moves are now off‑limits– and all of those quotes were sourced from unnamed “senior administration officials,” “people familiar with the matter,” and “current and former officials.”
Reuters never said how it got clued in to its exclusive story in the first place. In other words, it’s all anonymous hearsay from nowhere, which down here in Florida we call gossip.
Having identified that Reuters’ claim was based on 100% anonymous sources, we moved to the next step: speculating on who the anonymous sources might be. Do you think they’re die-hard Kennedy fans trying to boost his image by betraying MAHA? Do you believe Reuters’ hardworking reporter got “a hunch” and cold-called the entire federal government until she struck a vein of journalistic gold with “a dozen senior officials and outside advisors”?
Or is it more likely that a cabal of anti-RFK malcontents prepackaged the whole thing and reached out to a friendly media outlet?
🔥 To conceal the weakness in its sourcing, the story quoted a handful of named pro-vaccine Republicans— all people with no inside knowledge about the alleged strategy. For instance, it quoted pollster Tony Fabrizio, who wrote an unrelated article in December claiming that “vaccine skepticism is bad politics.” (Reuters didn’t even try to reconcile Fabrizio’s dumb claim with the basic fact that in 2024, Trump openlyaligned with the most famous “anti‑vaccine” figure in the country, survived months of unhinged coverage about it, and then won decisively. But never mind.)
Reuters’ narrative treated Fabrizio’s pro-jab memo as if it were some timeless law of politics, rather than, at best, a momentary snapshot that’ll be modified by turnout, intensity, and the difference between generic “public sentiment” and the highly motivated voters who actually turn out in swing states and midterm election cycles.
I could easily continue. The reason I spent the time to debunk this witless narrative —this unverified gossip obviously intended to enrage MAHA— is that other corporate media platforms will soon pick it up by citing Reuters. (“According to a recent Reuters exclusive…”) And then the doombloggers will start carping like a murder of black crows.
At least now you know where the latest “Kennedy betrays MAHA” narrative came from: thin air.
Finally, and by the way, the reasoncorporate media is so obsessed about “fracturing” MAHA is that the health-freedom movement includes so many ‘reclaimable’ former and disaffected Democrats who, they assume, still agree with the rest of the donkey platform. And also because trad-media thinks MAHA voters are gullible, single-issue types with gnat-like attention spans who can be easily peeled off with the right wedge.
Don’t be a gnat with a wedgie. And— make journalism great again.
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Saturday morning, after 34 years, Spirit Airlines —the bright yellow budget carrier that taught America you could fly for less than a large pepperoni pizza (if you didn’t mind holding your luggage on your lap)— suddenly and unexpectedly shuttered its operations. Its second bankruptcy in two years proved fatal after a proposed $500 million government bailout collapsed. CBS reported, “Spirit Airlines shutting down after failed effort at government rescue deal.” Transportation experts were baffled.
Traveling on Spirit Airlines was much like any other airline. It involved checking your baggage, finding your seat assignment, wedging your carry-on into an overhead bin space half the size required, and then enjoying a peaceful, relaxing flight experience comparable to being shoved into an MMA-style cage match with the doors locked behind you.
There might be a clue to Spirit’s multiple bankruptcies. I would direct baffled experts to behold this sampling of recent and not-so-recent headlines. Note: I did not make any of these up. They are not Babylon Bee headlines, either (although they could be). They are a drop of goo in the bankrupt airplane’s toilet-overflow bucket.
Live and Let’s Fly, February 2025:
LALF again, November 2024:
Metro, May 2024:
CNN, August 2022:
Fox-2 Detroit, July 2021:
NBC News, March 10th (my birthday!), way back in 2016:
Personally, I am a Delta Airlines fan. I’ll admit that Delta isn’t perfect— but which affordable common carrier is? During a typical year, I mostly fly Delta, but also United, American, and JetBlue. I have flown Bahamas Air. I even took a couple of flights on Indian state-owned airlines —not ‘Indian’ as in on the reservation; in Southeast Asia— during a difficult-to-explain vacation there.
For all those airlines’ imperfections, I will say this: Never once, not in 40 years of air travel, have I ever been required to put up my dukes, eat a knuckle sandwich, or wrestle to reach the lavatory. Oh, I’ve gotten my share of nasty looks when I reclined my seat. I’ve been scolded by countless stewardesses over the years for leaving my tray table down too long, twice for leaving my foot partly extended into the aisle, and once for having my mask below my nose.
But I’ve never even seen a fistfight on an airplane. Not one time. I’ve certainly never seen a mid-flight catfight between two women or, Moses help us, between the gate agents.
Let’s be honest: Spirit Airlines had a reputation. I can confidently assume that my assistant would never even offer me a Spirit flight option, not even if it were half the price, not even if it got me home a day early. She wouldn’t even check the Spirit web page. That kind of reputation is not too good for business.
Bizarrely, most of yesterday’s media coverage focused on the tragedy of losing an airline and quibbled about whose ‘fault’ it was— dandy Pete Buttigieg or the Trump Administration. But capitalism demands that some poorly run businesses must fail. It’s like clearing the underbrush out of the forest to prevent forest fires.
I feel sorry for anyone displaced by Spirit’s bankruptcy. But I am sure that all Spirit employees —those without criminal records— will soon be gainfully employed with other airlines.
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Chalk up more murders to left-wing violence. Yesterday, the New York Times reported, “Man Accused of Starting Palisades Fire Admired Luigi Mangione, Prosecutors Say.” The subheadline added, “The Los Angeles suspect was lonely and angry and felt ‘enslaved’ by rich people, prosecutors say.” So, logically, he torched the Los Angeles hills.
Let’s not forget too quickly that, after the fire, the Times credited climate change for starting the massively destructive blazes. But it turned out that “climate change,” apparently, is 30 years old, idolizes murderous terrorist Luigi Mangioni, and likes playing with matches. (Probably a bedwetter.)
LA resident Jonathan Rinderknecht, 30, single, was arrested last week for arson, which killed 12 people, burned down thousands of private homes, and torched billions in personal property. Federal prosecutors recently filed a trial memorandum that described Rinderknecht as “a lonely and erratic man who was angry at the world, particularly the rich.”
So weird! I wonder where Rinderknecht got that hyper-violent idea? Barron’s, 2019:
Reddit, posted last year, but appears at the top of today’s search (who is “we?”):
Democrat meme search:
Anyway. According to prosecutors’ trial memo, Rinderknecht googled Mangione-related news using the search terms “free Luigi Mangione,” “lets take down all the billionaires” and “reddit lets kill all the billionaires.” Investigators asked him why someone might burn the Palisades. Rinderknecht answered that it would be out of resentment of the rich, and he compared the fire to Luigi Mangione’s assassination of a random insurance executive.
“We’re basically being enslaved by them,” he told the investigators. (It wasn’t clear that Rinderknecht knows what “enslaved” means.) Rinderknecht denies the charges.
He was obsessed with fire, prosecutors said. A few months before the Palisades fire, he asked ChatGPT to generate images of people fleeing from a burning forest. On December 5th —just weeks before the Palisades fire— he googled images of a wildfire in Southern California caused by arson. On December 29th —the day before— he filmed fire engines leaving a Hollywood station and said out loud, presumably to himself, “They’re coming for you, bro.” He then, according to the court filing, warned himself to “get his mind in order” and “not be liking this craziness.”
In 2011, mathematician Gordon Woo coined the term “stochastic terrorism,” which refers to “the public demonization of a person or group resulting in the incitement of a violent act, which is statistically probable but whose specifics cannot be predicted.” Democrats, who see hate speech and “dangerous disinformation” everywhere else they look, can’t recognize it in the mirror.
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A good news mini-roundup! First, this weekend, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Administration is not just pruning food stamps but fundamentally restructuringthe whole system:
Under the revised rules, non-disabled adults between 18 and 64 without children under 14 must work, volunteer or participate in approved job-training programs for at least 80 hours a month. (The previous age limit for work requirements was 54, and allowed exemptions for adults with children under 18.) The new rules also ended eligibility for illegal aliens.
Enrollment is plummeting. “These large state drops in SNAP caseloads represent a fundamental restructuring of the food-assistance safety net,” said Colleen Heflin, a welfare studies professor at Syracuse University. It is “beyond anything we’ve ever seen,” she added.
They’re just getting started.
🔥 Next, Fox News reported more progress at structurally reforming the Federal Bureau of Investigation. It will never be the same:
Don’t forget that Kash Patel is also closing the monolithic Hoover Building. And he announced the bureau is ‘embracing’ artificial intelligence tools to speed its investigations. Between treasonous Russiagate conspirators, welfare fraudsters, and election thieves, they have a lot of important stuff to investigate.
🔥 Last week, the Hill reported, “Trump says US government’s Intel stock made the country $30B in last 90 days.” Last year, President Trump made a national security investment in Intel Corporation —one of the last remaining fully domestic chipmakers— and that investment has now made up to $45 billion dollars. Compare that to prior Administrations, which always spendmoney on their programs. Trump is the first president I can remember whose programs keep making money and securing massive new investments.
It’s so much more than the Intel investment. It’s not even just a trend. It is an America-first dealmaking philosophy. For another example, at the end of January, the Hill reported, “Argentina pays its debt: The US-Latin America strategy becomes clearer.”
Last October, the Trump Administration agreed to ‘loan’ Argentina $2.5 billion in a transaction called a “currency swap.” (Put simply, we buy some of the other country’s currency, hold it for a while, then sell it back. In the interim, that country has US dollars it can use.)
At the time of the swap, Senator Elizabeth “Face-Like-Mule” Warren (D-Mass.) blasted the president for “putting himself and his billionaire buddies first and sticking Americans with the bill,” and tried (and failed) to pass a law blocking the credit line altogether. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) —who never misses a chance these days— piled on that the package was “probably one of the grossest things” that the administration had ever done.
Corporate media experts warned darkly that American taxpayers would never see a dime — because Argentina’s long history of defaults made repayment a fantasy.
Welp. In January, Argentina repaid the entire $2.5 billion with interest and ahead of schedule. The swap line worked exactly as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent intended: as a short-term bridge to support a key Latin American ally during acute market stress. It was never a bailout. And it made money— a windfall estimated at tens of millions.
All this money-making by Trump programs made me wonder: When did we relax our expectations so far? Why shouldn’t the government be expected to often turn a profit? Especially when that profit is coupled with our strategic national interests, like protecting domestic AI chipmaking or supporting key, lithium-rich, strategic South American allies?
Why shouldn’t foreign aid, bank bailouts, development loans, and ‘green energy programs’ be required to be profitable? When did we start assuming the federal government can be nothing more than a parasitic money-sucking charity? It’s the hard bigotry of low expectations.
The Trump Doctrine is being revealed as the opposite of the New Deal and Great Society philosophies. Those eras framed federal action as insurance and redistribution: you “pay in” via taxes, and government “pays out” in services, safety nets, and public goods— but never cash returns. Admittedly, there are lots of potential pitfalls to avoid, such as the federal government distorting domestic markets, picking winners and losers, prioritizing lucrative conflicts over less profitable peace, and creating ethical hazards.
But we obviously need better expectations.
This lesson is an unexpected Trump 2.0 bonus— the Administration is proving the concept of profitable governance. Draw that line far enough, and you can see a point on the map where income tax becomes no longer necessary. What would you say if Trump ended the income tax for good?
Because we are headed in that direction.
Have a terrific Tuesday! Coffee & Covid is the antidote to corporate media’s mockingbird mantras of doom and gloom. Be sure to get your friends and relatives out of the doom spiral by turning them on to C&C. And meet back here tomorrow, for another roundup of essential news and caffeinated commentary.
Rose Rambles... 