This morning at the reflecting pool

I went through Trump's public appearances over the past five months and found that he has referenced the 2020 election and his false claim that he won once every four days so far in 2026. It has been more than 2,000 days since Biden won. My latest video for @MSNOWNews

I never met Gordon Wood, but I have a story about him. In one of my grad school seminars, we read Wood’s Creation of the American Republic. The sheer erudition and evidentiary depth of the book bowled me over. Back then, before kids and before life accelerated to warp speed, I used to call my mother every Sunday to catch up. Lots of times, we ended up talking about what I was reading that week in my grad seminars or for leisure. Mom had an omnivorous mind, and she was always looking for something else to read. She was a true intellectual—curious about almost everything, always eager to integrate new arguments or ideas into her existing schemas of how the world worked or to have those schemas challenged and changed. When we talked that particular Sunday, I think I tried to describe to her part of Wood’s argument about the relationship between the state constitutions during the Articles of Confederation era and the federal Constitution. Maybe I was tired, maybe I didn’t completely understand her questions, but the end result of the conversation was that Mom had questions about Wood’s argument that I didn’t answer satisfactorily. I told her that she should probably just read the book, and we said goodbye. She did eventually read the book, but the next Sunday, Mom started our conversation by saying, “Well, I had a lovely conversation with Gordon Wood this week.” For a split second, I thought she was joking, but then I remembered who I was dealing with. I started to sweat. “How?” I asked. A whole variety of unlikely scenarios in which the foremost historian of the American Revolution and my mother, who lived in Wichita, Kansas, might have met ran through my mind. “Oh, I just looked up his office phone number on Brown’s website and called, and he picked up!” Mom said. I decided I would have to find another profession. As it ended up, Gordon Wood spent about an hour on the phone with my mother answering her questions about the Constitution. Ever since, I’ve had a soft spot for the man when I imagine him picking up the phone in Providence and finding Becky Elder from Wichita on the other end of the line. His generosity in that moment spoke very well of him. Rest in peace, professor.

New: A top White House aide intervened to get a $620 million Pentagon loan for a company tied to Donald Trump Jr. “The call came from the White House: We have to get this done,” said one person involved. propublica.org/article/donal…

A great read on Trump, Trumpism and the state of the GOP

The Hilton donated the ~2600 dinners that went unserved at WHCD. They freeze dried the steak and lobster for longer shelf life before giving them to 2 shelters for abused women and children. HUGE thank you to the staff that worked through the night under terrible circumstances.

Bullet holes, first aid remnants: Scenes from the WHCD shooting aftermath I was covering the red carpet last night when shots rang out. This morning after law enforcement left the Hilton, my @MSNOWNews producer @lilliebnews I (to our surprise) were able to walk into the scene.

Only one chance in this lifetime… Like watching sunset at the beach from the most foreign seat in the cosmos, I couldn’t resist a cell phone video of Earthset. You can hear the shutter on the Nikon as @Astro_Christina is hammering away on 3-shot brackets and capturing those exceptional Earthset photos through the 400mm lens. @AstroVicGlover was in window 3 watching with @Astro_Jeremy next to him. I could barely see the Moon through the docking hatch window but the iPhone was the perfect size to catch the view…this is uncropped, uncut with 8x zoom which is quite comparable to the view of the human eye. Enjoy.

📢 New board leadership at NPF: @Reddy of @MSNOWNews is the new board chair, with Jon Sawyer as vice chair—two respected voices in journalism and media leadership. The board also named @robyntomlin as treasurer and @kevinmgoldberg as secretary. nationalpress.org/newsfeed/n…

The president is getting "a little bored." “Not that he regrets it or something — he’s just bored and wants to move on.” ms.now/news/trump-iran-war-m…

I built a free live TSA wait time tracker that shows live wait times by checkpoint, including Precheck, Clear, and priority (where available). I did it because: - TSA lines are insane - Existing tools offer estimated waits - Test the power of AI tools tsa.fromthetraytable.com/

Former FBI director and special counsel Robert Mueller has died — MS NOW ms.now/news/former-special-c…

Last year, Donald Trump Jr. invested in a rare earths startup at a $200 million valuation. Then three months later, the US government announced a huge loan backstop for the company and now it's worth around $2 billion. bloomberg.com/news/features/…

“A war with Iran would make the war in Iraq look like a cakewalk,” Tulsi Gabbard said in May 2019. “The devastation and the cost would be far greater than anything they’ve ever experienced.”

>>> Americans spend roughly $3.7 million more per day for every one-cent increase in the national average price of gas. With prices now roughly 50 cents higher than a week ago, drivers are already spending about $187 million more per day than last weekend gaspriceguy.substack.com/p/o…

In a phone call Trump tells me “everything is on the table” when asked if he would consider sending in special forces to seize Iran’s nuclear stockpile.

Kennedy: “If he sends in troops, the thud you hear will be me face planting because I fainted.”

BREAKING: The increase in the average U.S. gas prices over the last 7 days is now in the top 10 largest weekly increases ever recorded at 41.6c/gal, according to live GasBuddy data

NEW -- The FBI director fired a dozen members of an FBI counter-espionage team with a speciality in tracking Iran threats. Not the best time: when Trump last bombed Iran, it spawned several Iranian plots here to kill Trump ms.now/news/kash-patels-late…

The Trump doctrine: The rest will be up to you “We should have learned the lesson. You may remove a dictator, but what you may well get in response is another dictator.” via ⁦@RohdeD⁩ ms.now/news/trump-doctrine-i…