Doom Report (Week 84: No Asterisk after "Neighbor")

I want you to imagine a time in the United States when we have an increasingly unpopular president, we’re staring down the barrel of a war in the Middle East for no good reason, our traditional allies don’t want anything to do with it, and our government has decided that just changing the name of something is going to fix everything.

That’s right: I’m talking about the early 2003 “freedom fries” incident.  (Why? what did you think I was talking about?)  Yes, there once was a time when we got pissed off at France, because they didn’t want to go along with our bullshit reasons for invading Iraq.  And so, naturally, some people in our government decided that obviously the solution was to rename “french fries” to “freedom fries” (and, less publicized, they also tried to rename “french toast” to “freedom toast”).  Sadly, this brilliant scheme turned out to have a few, minor problems.  Namely, the vast majority of the American public thought it was ridiculous.  Specifically, polls showed that ⅔ of Americans thought it was silly, and fully 80% just kept calling them “french fries” anyways.  And, in terms of “that’ll show those French bastards,” they ... didn’t care.  Because: why would they?  How could some dimwits in a Congressional cafeteria an ocean away decide to call something which the French never named in the first place possibly affect their lives in any way whatsoever?  (Plus: french fries originated in Belgium anyhow.)  It was, to put it mildly, an utter failure that made everyone involved seem like a complete moron.

Wait ... sorry.  Getting some déjà vu here ...

Because, here in 2026, our increasingly unpopular president, now hopelessly embroiled in a war just one country over, with (once again) no conceivable logic as to why, and (once again) no support from our allies because they don’t want anything to do with this clusterfuck, has decided the way to fix everything is to (wait for it) rename Lake Ontario to “Lake America”.  And here we see the parallels start to fall apart.  First off, there was at least a thin thread connecting France to the war in Iraq (i.e. that France had threatened to veto any war resolution in the UN Security Council), whereas Canada has nothing whatsoever to do with Iran (and also the idea of going to the UN for approval for war seems a bit quaint nowadays).  Also, the whole “freedom fries” thing at least went through some people in Congress (though it never required nor received a full vote in the House), whereas Trump just did the whole “Lake America” thing all by his lonesome.

If you just want to hear people agree with you on how utterly dumb the Canada trade war is, Runaway Country host Alex Wagner and Hysteria host Erin Ryan have you covered, including discussion of Ontario premier Doug Ford noting that his ass has a lot of real estate, which makes it easy for Trump to kiss it.  If you want to hear people talking about how Trump is just trying to pick on Canada because he’s too scared to mess with Russia or China and he thought Canada wouldn’t put up much of a fight—and just how wrong that turned out to be—you could check out the latest installment of “A Closer Look: Proof of Life” (it’s a longer video, but well worth it, or you could just jump right to the Canada discussion).  Or, if you just want to hear someone lay out all the ridiculosity for you in under 10 minutes, give BTC a shot and listen to Thursday’s installment of “Another Day”.

But the upshot is that, like the French, the Canadians really don’t give a shit.  Because: why would they?

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Other things you need to know this week:

• In a Strict Scrutiny breaking news episode (meaning it’s much shorter than a regular episode), Leah Litman covers Trump’s attempts to meddle in the midterms, and the Supreme Court’s attempts to back him up.

• Adam Kinzinger didn’t have quite the week he did last week, but it wasn’t too shoddy either.
• On Monday’s “Kinzinger Report”, Adam covered the federal election integrity department hiring an election hacker, Trump’s shifty stock trades, and more.
• On Thursday’s “Kinzinger Report”, Adam discussed just how many people ICE is arresting with no convictions whatsoever (never mind only convictions for violent offenses), Steve Bannon trying (and failing) to get his conviction expunged, and more.

• Two great episodes from Even More News this week, so if you have time for some longer videos, I recommend watching both.
• On Tuesday, Katy and Jonathan give more in-depth coverage of the Natalie Harp incident.
• Meanwhile, on Friday, their former colleague at Cracked Daniel O’Brien joins Katy, Cody, and Jonathan; if you suddenly learned who Hasan Piker is this week, this episode will explain why, and also why corporate Democrats are screwing over the country just as much as the rightwing nutjob Republicans.  Also, tributes to Dolly Parton and Tim Curry, and laughing at Trump’s pathetic attempt to make Dolly’s death all about himself.

• Seth Meyers is still on hiatus, so their channel is releasing “A Closer Look: Proof of Life”, which features Seth and one of his writers talking about the events they would cover if they were back in the office.  These episodes are a bit longer, but they’re pretty fun.  Two such episodes this week: one we mentioned above covering the trade war with Canada; the other has more info about Natalie Harp, plus covering Abdul El-Sayed’s Fox “News” interview where he completely crushes Jesse Watters.

• Like Meyers, The Daily Show is also still on hiatus, but their channel’s strategy has been to celebrate their 30th anniversary (and keep the algorithm fed) by releasing clips from classic shows.  And it just so happens that, this week, they released one of my all-time favorite Daily Show field pieces.  I wish I could tell you it had no relevance to today, but ...  Look, just go watch a much younger John Oliver explore solutions for gun control.  It’ll take 5 minutes of your time, and then you can go back to asking yourself why our politicians are so brain-dead.

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Like Meyers and the folks over at The Daily Show (and Colbert, once upon a time, before Trump got him fired), Jimmy Kimmel takes time off during the summer.  But Kimmel does it differently: instead of 2 or 3 extended breaks throughout the summer when there’s no show at all, Kimmel just takes the whole summer off ... and brings in guest hosts.  Each host stays for 1 week, so you’re never without a show altogether.  There’s always a mix of returning guest hosts and brand new faces, and, as you might imagine, the quality of the guests (and their utility for these Doom Reports) varies considerably.  This summer, Colman Domingo was fabulous but not overly political; Rosie O’Donnell was surprisingly apolitical (though she got her jabs in: speaking directly to Trump one night, she said “it’s time to hang up your wig and let Natalie tuck you in; time to go nighty-night”); Anthony Anderson was exactly as political as you’d expect; and Tiffany Haddish was fairly vicious.

This week was Jelly Roll.  The Grammy-winning country music singer surprised some of the rightwing nutjobs by getting in a few zingers at Trump’s expense: apparently, as a straight white country singer, devout Christian, and fan of professional wrestling—who even had nice things to say about the MMA fight on the White House lawn—he was supposed to be a Trump supporter, and the critics took advantage of the opportunity to decide he was selling out, or “going Hollywood”, or any number of other derogatory phrases.  But Jelly himself took advantage of his final monologue of the week to address his critics and to disabuse them of the notion that he could be reduced to anything so simplistic as a political party.  I’d advise you to listen to the whole thing, but let me offer you a taste; when speaking about his regrets at not using his Grammy speech to deliver a more powerful message, he notes:

And I want y’all to know that, despite the fact that I cuss and I tell jokes, I truly am a man of faith.  And I can’t read the Gospels without being confronted by the words of Jesus himself when he said, “When I was hungry, you gave me food.  When I was thirsty, you gave me a drink.  When I was a stranger, you welcomed me in.”  That’s what Jesus said.

He also gave us two commandments: love God with all your heart, and love your neighbor as yourself.  And that’s what I should have said that night.  There wasn’t an asterisk after “neighbor.”  There wasn’t a political party exemption.  It did not require us to know what country you were born in.  There wasn’t a sentence afterward that said, “unless you’re afraid of them.”  It just said, “Love. Your. Neighbor.”

I really do encourage you to watch the whole thing.  It was moving, and inspiring, and it serves as yet another reminder that, as much as the rightwing nutjobs—and the corporate Democrats—keep trying to tell us that we’re oh so different ... we’re not.  We’re just not.  And that, even if you’re a white country boy from Nashville, a son of a Marine who grew up in the church, you can still see everyone as human, regardless of race, religion, or anything else that our “leaders” tell us is important, or dangerous, or divisive.  Those “others” are neither poisoning the blood of our country, nor are they a basket of deplorables.  They’re just regular folks.

Jelly also discussed why he shook Trump’s hand, and said it came down to his veteran father.

This might be a hot take, but out of respect for him and everybody who has ever served and continues to serve this country, I will always shake the hand of the sitting president of the United States when asked; my father would have been disappointed had I done anything other than that.  I’m proud that I was able to shake the president of the United States’ hand.  I’m also proud that I live in a country where I can make jokes about him.  Ain’t that’s what great about being an American?

And you can’t say fairer than that.