Watch what's being done...not what's being said. And...maybe swap one word: it's less gaslighting than STAGING.
Gaslighting works in private...on one person...over time. This is a man renting a room ...and inviting the SPY CHIEFS to sit in it...so the PICTURE does the arguing.
Which is actually good news for us. Private manipulation is hard to prove. STAGING...you can just point at.
Your two answers are the RIGHT two. Notice they're the same answer. The majority...and the truth...are only a threat to someone whose story can't survive EITHER ONE.
That is exactly it. The bully didn't get his way so he wants the rules to work only for him. Meanwhile, one of my State US Representatives has sent a warning to Canada to knock off the smoke. Basically Canada get your act together or else!! WTAF! My husband thought I made it up or it was from the Onion. #Holdfast
Kristine...Your husband owes you an apology...lol. It's real...and it's TODAY.
Four Michigan Republicans wrote to Prime Minister Carney...their third letter in three years...saying they're done accepting apologies in place of action...and warning the U.S. will look elsewhere and act on our own.
Then Senator Moreno of Ohio...announced he'll introduce a bill next week to sanction Canada...and the Canadian officials responsible.
SANCTIONS. Over SMOKE. The instrument we use on Iran and North Korea...aimed at WILDFIRES. Bat shit crazy.
Your bully framing is exactly right...it's the SAME move...in a smaller costume.
Something bad happened...it can't be fixed by yelling...so find someone to BLAME... and THREATEN them. NOBODY in that letter proposes a SINGLE thing that would put out a fire.
Meanwhile...Detroit had the worst air quality on the planet yesterday. That's the actual problem...and not ONE word of the response...goes anywhere near it.
This would be funny if it wasn’t so pathetic! I’m just hoping he doesn’t just call off the game and declare himself the winner. My area doesn’t need poll workers. I wish they would let me work in Philadelphia-one mile away-but it doesn’t work that way. I wouldn’t let any kid watch this nonsense anyway 👹
That psychotic speech Christofascist, Mike Johnson gave that was dutifully broadcast on CSPAN was probably a preview. He said that Democrats want to abolish the Senate and that Communists will take over the House, where they will declare that we no longer have borders. He was channeling Joe McCarthy. He went on and on about Stalin, Soviets, Communism, Socialism. It was insane. He called it a “trail to certain death” and said that the election this Fall will decide whether we descend into communism.
Lanie..."Trail to certain death" is from his OWN press release...you quoted him right.
But...the trick isn't McCarthy. He's reading the DSA platform...and attaching it to the Democratic Party. DSA really says SOME of that. Democrats don't. Real document... SMALL group, BIG implication.
Jack Hopkins asked you to explain tonight’s speech to a fourth grader, and the exercise worked because it stripped away the one thing authoritarian language depends on: adult vocabulary that makes an unreasonable claim sound like a reasonable position with two sides. This is worth sitting with, because it is not a rhetorical trick. It is a diagnostic tool, and historians use versions of it constantly. When a claim survives translation into plain language, it was true. When it doesn’t, it was performance.
File the date: July 16, 2026, six years and change since the man in question lost an election, still telling a television audience that he won it. Note which detail Hopkins fixes on — not the claim itself, which by now is background noise, but the absence of proof. Not from courts. Not from his own appointed officials. Not from six years of trying. This is the tell that distinguishes a grievance from a strategy. A grievance fades because reality keeps contradicting it. A strategy persists because the goal was never to win the argument. The goal is to make the argument permanent, so that “the rules were unfair” becomes the standing justification for changing the rules before the next contest.
Jack is correct that a fourth grader gets this immediately, because children have not yet learned to mistake fluency for legitimacy. They have met the kid who loses and insists the game was rigged, and they know that kid is not owed a rule change. Adults forget this lesson gradually, one polysyllabic euphemism at a time. “Election integrity” is not a simplification of anything. It is an inflation — a phrase built to let an unproven claim travel through rooms where “he’s lying” would get challenged.
File the date on a different case, too: 2017, when a Republican-led Senate committee reviewed the intelligence community’s assessment and found it held up — Russia ran a covert operation in 2016, hacked into a party’s servers, worked to help elect this same man. 2021, when that finding was updated for 2020: Russia’s operation again aimed to help him, to hurt his opponent. Note which case has documents. Note which case has a bipartisan committee, a grand jury, twelve named intelligence officers indicted by his own Justice Department. That is the interference with a paper trail. That is the one he does not mention tonight.
A fourth grader would ask the obvious question here, too: if he only cares about foreign interference in elections, why does he spend his energy on the six-year-old loss with no evidence, and go silent on the one with an evidence file thick enough to indict people over? A child notices when a rule is applied to one case and not its mirror. An adult is supposed to notice this faster, not slower. The inversion is the point. The lie he repeats has no documents behind it. The interference that does have documents behind it happened in his favor, and he has never once asked for hearings on that.
Historians who study democratic collapse spend most of their time on this exact mechanism: not the lie itself, but the vocabulary built to house it, and the institutions that agree, out of habit or fear, to speak that vocabulary back. Weimar had its own euphemisms. So did every faltering republic since. The pattern is not that people believe the lie. The pattern is that people stop finding it strange enough to name plainly.
Jack is correct, too, that tonight’s speech will sound most reasonable exactly when it uses its biggest words, and that this is itself the confession. A true thing does not require inflation to be believed. Only a false one does. Watch the vocabulary tonight. Note which words are doing the work of hiding something a fourth grader would ask about directly. Then ask yourself why the adults in the room stopped asking — and why the one case with real evidence was never the one that needed a speech.
Funny thing.. before I saw this I was thinking back to my youth...childhood actually...teachers would on special occasions roll in a TV for us to watch and listen to The President of the United States give a speech. It was a big deal. We even sat up straighter in our desk chairs. This was a special man that we respected and a role model. The teacher made a civics class out of it. Sheceould tell us personal details about the President and important things he had done. She was respectful of him too. He was a hero. I was thinking of John Fitgerald Kennedy.
Fast forward 60 plus years and look at what is coming on the TV tonight.. I was actually wondering if I would even want my child to see and hesr him. He's no example to model after and I wouldn't be able to guarantee decency or truth from him.
When I was in fourth grade, Jack, I was told I read at first year college level. Never was sure what that meant. I just knew I loved books. And in writing, I know that simple is best. Remember Word Perfect? It was so much better than Word. If I wrote an ad, a paragraph or a brief, I could have the program compare it to a famous writer for length of words, run on sentences (my worst habit), etc. I always chose Hemingway. It would score my work compared to his and give it a grade level. Then I would edit and try again, finally getting a finished document that could be understood by a sixth grader. Most audiences read at that level. It made me use shorter sentences, simpler words that meant the same.
That said, maybe we all should try to talk to those not too far under trump's thrall like you would with a fourth grader. In simpler words. In short sentences with pauses in between thoughts.
#HoldFast
Sue
PS. I have to watch my lawn die, so won't be hearing trump tonight.
I was an advanced reader, as well, and tested at the same level in 4th grade that you did. My mom was still having babies, working full time, keeping house and sustaining a 4.0 GPA in college at that point, but she’s a retired (excellent) career educator. Reading was always very big in our house, and I don’t recall her ever turning down a request to read a book with any of us.
I looked up “sore loser” and this is what I found….which just happens to be a perfect description of this 80 year old child!
A sore loser is someone who throws fits, makes excuses, or sulks when they fail to win a game or contest. Instead of being a gracious sport, they often blame others or act annoyed, ultimately ruining the fun for everyone else
So very sad that we are here and would ever have to explain this to our children or grandchildren. I only hope that people realise that this is total nonsense…that it falls flat. I’ve heard that none of the networks will be airing it live, in fact the White House is actually streaming it on YouTube.
Fingers crossed tonights speech is the biggest dud ever!
Thank you Jack…always what we need and when we need it!
When Thomas Huxley said “Veracity is the heart of morality” that was one huge crystal ball he must have been gazing into…. Thank you as always Jack for finding just the right way to shed some light on such nonsense, though we know there’ll be at least one group of nonthinkers who will hear it as some sort of clarion call.
Trump need to be careful. If he spreads lies and unsubstantiated allegations tonight in an effort to dissuade people from voting, he will be destroying any Republicans chance of winning an election in the mid term. Why? Because the only people that will believe what he says are the Republican voters and they will say, why bother if the election is rigged I'll just stay home! Democrats and independents, if they watch at all will be laughing their asses off at the 9 year old's tantrums and delusions. Give it your best shot Donnie and be prepared to live with the consequences of your miscalculation.
ALL trump AND his DESPERATION has left is GASLIGHTING!
As you said, Jack...watch the psychology... NOT the words.
What IS trump MOST AFRAID of now??
1) The MAJORITY of Americans.
2) The TRUTH!!
WE ARE NOT INTIMIDATED!!
WE ARE STRONGER TOGETHER!!
WE WILL NEVER STOP FIGHTING BACK!
Sky Blue...you've got the method right.
Watch what's being done...not what's being said. And...maybe swap one word: it's less gaslighting than STAGING.
Gaslighting works in private...on one person...over time. This is a man renting a room ...and inviting the SPY CHIEFS to sit in it...so the PICTURE does the arguing.
Which is actually good news for us. Private manipulation is hard to prove. STAGING...you can just point at.
Your two answers are the RIGHT two. Notice they're the same answer. The majority...and the truth...are only a threat to someone whose story can't survive EITHER ONE.
-Jack
That is exactly it. The bully didn't get his way so he wants the rules to work only for him. Meanwhile, one of my State US Representatives has sent a warning to Canada to knock off the smoke. Basically Canada get your act together or else!! WTAF! My husband thought I made it up or it was from the Onion. #Holdfast
Kristine...Your husband owes you an apology...lol. It's real...and it's TODAY.
Four Michigan Republicans wrote to Prime Minister Carney...their third letter in three years...saying they're done accepting apologies in place of action...and warning the U.S. will look elsewhere and act on our own.
Then Senator Moreno of Ohio...announced he'll introduce a bill next week to sanction Canada...and the Canadian officials responsible.
SANCTIONS. Over SMOKE. The instrument we use on Iran and North Korea...aimed at WILDFIRES. Bat shit crazy.
Your bully framing is exactly right...it's the SAME move...in a smaller costume.
Something bad happened...it can't be fixed by yelling...so find someone to BLAME... and THREATEN them. NOBODY in that letter proposes a SINGLE thing that would put out a fire.
Meanwhile...Detroit had the worst air quality on the planet yesterday. That's the actual problem...and not ONE word of the response...goes anywhere near it.
Not The Onion. Just THURSDAY.
#HoldFast
-Jack
Oh dear God. I swear we have some of the dumbest people imaginable in our Congress.
You know what, Roberta...I have no desire to argue that point. None.
-Jack
This would be funny if it wasn’t so pathetic! I’m just hoping he doesn’t just call off the game and declare himself the winner. My area doesn’t need poll workers. I wish they would let me work in Philadelphia-one mile away-but it doesn’t work that way. I wouldn’t let any kid watch this nonsense anyway 👹
That psychotic speech Christofascist, Mike Johnson gave that was dutifully broadcast on CSPAN was probably a preview. He said that Democrats want to abolish the Senate and that Communists will take over the House, where they will declare that we no longer have borders. He was channeling Joe McCarthy. He went on and on about Stalin, Soviets, Communism, Socialism. It was insane. He called it a “trail to certain death” and said that the election this Fall will decide whether we descend into communism.
Lanie..."Trail to certain death" is from his OWN press release...you quoted him right.
But...the trick isn't McCarthy. He's reading the DSA platform...and attaching it to the Democratic Party. DSA really says SOME of that. Democrats don't. Real document... SMALL group, BIG implication.
Nothing to fact-check. He never has to lie.
Thanks for being here!
-Jack
Now that's an evil dangerous little weasel right there.
And all of what he said is absolutely and literally insane just on its very face!
Biggest baby on the planet. Expect a lot of WAHHHH WAHHHHH WAHHHHH, and just am glad I am not part of the housekeeping staff at the WH.
Jack Hopkins asked you to explain tonight’s speech to a fourth grader, and the exercise worked because it stripped away the one thing authoritarian language depends on: adult vocabulary that makes an unreasonable claim sound like a reasonable position with two sides. This is worth sitting with, because it is not a rhetorical trick. It is a diagnostic tool, and historians use versions of it constantly. When a claim survives translation into plain language, it was true. When it doesn’t, it was performance.
File the date: July 16, 2026, six years and change since the man in question lost an election, still telling a television audience that he won it. Note which detail Hopkins fixes on — not the claim itself, which by now is background noise, but the absence of proof. Not from courts. Not from his own appointed officials. Not from six years of trying. This is the tell that distinguishes a grievance from a strategy. A grievance fades because reality keeps contradicting it. A strategy persists because the goal was never to win the argument. The goal is to make the argument permanent, so that “the rules were unfair” becomes the standing justification for changing the rules before the next contest.
Jack is correct that a fourth grader gets this immediately, because children have not yet learned to mistake fluency for legitimacy. They have met the kid who loses and insists the game was rigged, and they know that kid is not owed a rule change. Adults forget this lesson gradually, one polysyllabic euphemism at a time. “Election integrity” is not a simplification of anything. It is an inflation — a phrase built to let an unproven claim travel through rooms where “he’s lying” would get challenged.
File the date on a different case, too: 2017, when a Republican-led Senate committee reviewed the intelligence community’s assessment and found it held up — Russia ran a covert operation in 2016, hacked into a party’s servers, worked to help elect this same man. 2021, when that finding was updated for 2020: Russia’s operation again aimed to help him, to hurt his opponent. Note which case has documents. Note which case has a bipartisan committee, a grand jury, twelve named intelligence officers indicted by his own Justice Department. That is the interference with a paper trail. That is the one he does not mention tonight.
A fourth grader would ask the obvious question here, too: if he only cares about foreign interference in elections, why does he spend his energy on the six-year-old loss with no evidence, and go silent on the one with an evidence file thick enough to indict people over? A child notices when a rule is applied to one case and not its mirror. An adult is supposed to notice this faster, not slower. The inversion is the point. The lie he repeats has no documents behind it. The interference that does have documents behind it happened in his favor, and he has never once asked for hearings on that.
Historians who study democratic collapse spend most of their time on this exact mechanism: not the lie itself, but the vocabulary built to house it, and the institutions that agree, out of habit or fear, to speak that vocabulary back. Weimar had its own euphemisms. So did every faltering republic since. The pattern is not that people believe the lie. The pattern is that people stop finding it strange enough to name plainly.
Jack is correct, too, that tonight’s speech will sound most reasonable exactly when it uses its biggest words, and that this is itself the confession. A true thing does not require inflation to be believed. Only a false one does. Watch the vocabulary tonight. Note which words are doing the work of hiding something a fourth grader would ask about directly. Then ask yourself why the adults in the room stopped asking — and why the one case with real evidence was never the one that needed a speech.
#HOLDFAST
Funny thing.. before I saw this I was thinking back to my youth...childhood actually...teachers would on special occasions roll in a TV for us to watch and listen to The President of the United States give a speech. It was a big deal. We even sat up straighter in our desk chairs. This was a special man that we respected and a role model. The teacher made a civics class out of it. Sheceould tell us personal details about the President and important things he had done. She was respectful of him too. He was a hero. I was thinking of John Fitgerald Kennedy.
Fast forward 60 plus years and look at what is coming on the TV tonight.. I was actually wondering if I would even want my child to see and hesr him. He's no example to model after and I wouldn't be able to guarantee decency or truth from him.
When I was in fourth grade, Jack, I was told I read at first year college level. Never was sure what that meant. I just knew I loved books. And in writing, I know that simple is best. Remember Word Perfect? It was so much better than Word. If I wrote an ad, a paragraph or a brief, I could have the program compare it to a famous writer for length of words, run on sentences (my worst habit), etc. I always chose Hemingway. It would score my work compared to his and give it a grade level. Then I would edit and try again, finally getting a finished document that could be understood by a sixth grader. Most audiences read at that level. It made me use shorter sentences, simpler words that meant the same.
That said, maybe we all should try to talk to those not too far under trump's thrall like you would with a fourth grader. In simpler words. In short sentences with pauses in between thoughts.
#HoldFast
Sue
PS. I have to watch my lawn die, so won't be hearing trump tonight.
LOL!! That last line slayed me! 🤣
I was an advanced reader, as well, and tested at the same level in 4th grade that you did. My mom was still having babies, working full time, keeping house and sustaining a 4.0 GPA in college at that point, but she’s a retired (excellent) career educator. Reading was always very big in our house, and I don’t recall her ever turning down a request to read a book with any of us.
I’m EVER so grateful.
#HoldFast
I looked up “sore loser” and this is what I found….which just happens to be a perfect description of this 80 year old child!
A sore loser is someone who throws fits, makes excuses, or sulks when they fail to win a game or contest. Instead of being a gracious sport, they often blame others or act annoyed, ultimately ruining the fun for everyone else
WE are the kid on the playground.
#HOLDFAST #OUTLAST
So very sad that we are here and would ever have to explain this to our children or grandchildren. I only hope that people realise that this is total nonsense…that it falls flat. I’ve heard that none of the networks will be airing it live, in fact the White House is actually streaming it on YouTube.
Fingers crossed tonights speech is the biggest dud ever!
Thank you Jack…always what we need and when we need it!
Christie
When Thomas Huxley said “Veracity is the heart of morality” that was one huge crystal ball he must have been gazing into…. Thank you as always Jack for finding just the right way to shed some light on such nonsense, though we know there’ll be at least one group of nonthinkers who will hear it as some sort of clarion call.
Trump need to be careful. If he spreads lies and unsubstantiated allegations tonight in an effort to dissuade people from voting, he will be destroying any Republicans chance of winning an election in the mid term. Why? Because the only people that will believe what he says are the Republican voters and they will say, why bother if the election is rigged I'll just stay home! Democrats and independents, if they watch at all will be laughing their asses off at the 9 year old's tantrums and delusions. Give it your best shot Donnie and be prepared to live with the consequences of your miscalculation.
Oh my, this is spot on. 💯