Masks Off Everywhere!

New tune from Jesse Welles, same old song from Trump, plus Kimmel and our usual cartoons.

Yes, it’s still free to subscribe to this nearly daily newsletter! Greg Mitchell is the author of fourteen books and director of five films for PBS since 2022. In a previous life, he was a longtime editor at the legendary Crawdaddy.

Jimmy keeping it real:

Has to be one of the quotes of the year, from Dr. Oz yersterday:

Q: If the president is in such perfect health, why does he keep going back in for checkups? DR OZ: I think he likes the results. He does really well. He aces the test every single day.

We featured the CBS / Scott Pelley fight yesterday, which as you may have heard led to this hours later, via NY Times:

CBS News fired Scott Pelley on Tuesday, jettisoning one of the network’s best-known journalists in a clash over the future of “60 Minutes,” the country’s top-rated news program. Mr. Pelley, 68, a “60 Minutes” correspondent and a former anchor of “CBS Evening News,” joined the network in 1989. At a staff meeting on Monday, he accused the network’s editor in chief, Bari Weiss, of “murdering ‘60 Minutes,’” citing the ouster last week of the program’s leadership team and two on-air correspondents….

Earlier on Tuesday, Mr. Pelley sent a statement to The Times that assailed the new leadership of CBS News, writing that “incompetence and unprofessionalism in the new management have wreaked havoc” at the network.” He added, “The collapse of values at the top has become untenable.”

Mr. Pelley also wrote that senior managers at CBS News had pressured him to insert bias into stories for “60 Minutes” this past season, though he did not provide details about specific segments.

Somehow, Trump has even trumped himself in making a worst-appointee-ever. From Heather Cox Richardson:

This morning, Trump announced he is appointing the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, William Pulte, to become the acting director of national intelligence in addition to his job at the Federal Housing Finance Agency. The director of national intelligence is the nation’s top intelligence official, and federal law requires that the director have “extensive national security expertise.” Pulte has none.

What he does have is willingness to use the power of the government to persecute Trump’s perceived political enemies. It was Pulte who came up with the scheme of going after Federal Reserve Board member Lisa Cook and New York attorney general Letitia James by accusing them of mortgage fraud. He also advocated investigating then–Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell for alleged overruns in the renovation of Federal Reserve buildings….

Today the new secretary of homeland security, Markwayne Mullin, refused to assure a U.S. Senate Appropriations subcommittee that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) would follow court orders. Repeatedly, he told Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) that DHS “will never break the Constitution, and we’re not going to break the law.” But he refused to agree that they would follow court orders. “If we didn’t think courts were politicized, then I would probably be able to answer that,” Mullin said. “But we see courts over and over again that use their bench for their political opinion, not just the rule of law.”

Ohman:

Music Pick

Jesse Welles continuing his hot streak (after amazing rise and Grammy nods last year), played a free gig in NYC’s fabled folkie haven Washington Square Park yesterday, and with new album coming June 12, the title track below. As usual it’s words first for Jesse:

Can't tell you what's worse
The message was terse
Outright white supremacists
Or America First?
I think they both sell merch
The whole place seems a little bit cursed
It's like somebody might have been
Living here first

[Chorus]
All the masks are off
And they don’t even try
They know that you know that they know
And they don’t even mind it
All the masks are off
And they’re getting lazy
They think you’re so damn stupid
They think you’re so damn crazy

From Tune to Toons

Bramhall:

Anderson:

Wuerker:

Monireh Ahmadi

Bramhall again:

Luckovich:

Goris:

Photo Finish

From my camera to you: Morning in all its glory.