Chaos Reigns, by Design

By Jeffrey Blehar

Tuesday, September 23, 2025

 

I’ve got a piece in the newly released November print edition of National Review (dedicated to “The Trump Effect” on our nation, a year after the 2024 elections) about his singular effect on the media, and I’ve been flogging it both online and in my various other recent pieces here like a dead horse over the last week. I’d do that anyway, but in this case, my urgency isn’t about self-promotion; it’s about how recent events just keep proving my theory of the case in ever more ghastly technicolor ways.

 

On Saturday, Donald Trump publicly threatened Attorney General Pam Bondi on Truth Social in a post that reads for all the world like a private message broadcast in public:

 

Pam: I have reviewed over 30 statements and posts saying that, essentially, “same old story as last time, all talk, no action. Nothing is being done. What about Comey, Adam “Shifty” Schiff, Leticia??? They’re all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done.” Then we almost put in a Democrat supported U.S. Attorney, in Virginia, with a really bad Republican past. A Woke RINO, who was never going to do his job. That’s why two of the worst Dem Senators PUSHED him so hard. He even lied to the media and said he quit, and that we had no case. No, I fired him, and there is a GREAT CASE, and many lawyers, and legal pundits, say so. Lindsey Halligan is a really good lawyer, and likes you, a lot. We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility. They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!! President DJT

 

In case you missed that, what you just read there was the president of the United States demanding, for all the world to see, that the attorney general prosecute his personal enemies. In the aftermath of this post, some on Twitter/X half-seriously suggested that the president had accidentally “fat-fingered” his phone and published something meant for private channels. Nah. Presidents do not discuss confidential matters with their attorneys general over Truth Social. He wants the world to see this.

 

Later that day, Trump resumed his march to reclaim the spotlight by announcing randomly that he wanted Afghanistan’s Taliban to return Bagram Air Base or else . . . what? We would relaunch Operation Enduring Freedom? You be the judge: “If Afghanistan doesn’t give Bagram Airbase back to those who built it, the United States of America, BAD THINGS ARE GOING TO HAPPEN!!! President DJT.” Leaving aside the fact that Bagram Air Base was constructed by the Soviet Union in the 1950s, the threat is utterly farcical (and, if taken seriously, makes a mockery of the foreign policy realists who have flocked to the Trump banner over the last decade). Again, it’s just another piece of bait, left dangling on the hook for whichever media outlet foolishly cares to pursue it.

 

Finally, at Charlie Kirk’s funeral service, Donald Trump delivered the final oration at a gathering most remarkable for Erika Kirk’s powerful message of Christian forgiveness and purpose. And again, he found a way to steal a bit of the spotlight away to make sure the next day’s news cycle would be properly focused where it belongs: on him. He announced that his administration — under the guidance of crack scientist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — had discovered the secret origins of autism and would reveal it the next day. (While the administration proceeded to claim a disputed link involving Tylenol use during pregnancy, the episode at least gave rise to what may become one of the most memorable random media images of the year.)

 

What does it all add up to? Chaos, by design. Covering the Trump administration in 2025 as a commentator feels a bit like serving as a French medic during World War I, as everyone is urgently trying to refine the proper practice of triage: deciding which stories are important, which ones are ephemeral, and which are truly major. (For example, have you noticed that Trump never bothered sending the National Guard into Chicago? He got distracted with easier quarry! This was such a predictable development that it was literally the first thing I mentioned back when he initially floated the subject.)

 

At this point, I am beginning to feel a pang of regret about my coverage of the Trump administration, because it is by necessity guided by the news of the day — and more than ever, Trump can successfully dictate what it is that the media, with their limited manpower and attention span, will talk about at any given moment. Distractions, distractions.

 

The Most Emblematic Crime of the Week

 

Good morning, America! We bring you good news: Yesterday afternoon, ABC announced that Jimmy Kimmel would be returning to the airwaves tonight; our long national nightmare is over. It is unclear whether he will issue an apology or a retraction, but he’s guaranteed to make at least some sort of statement at the top of the show. We’ll see how it goes. (Or not, as it so happens — let’s admit it, not a one of us is actually going to be tuning in to Jimmy Kimmel Live! tonight; we’re going to read about it online tomorrow.)

 

It is a victory for absolutely nobody, whatsoever. Kimmel will return, with mildly elevated ratings for a few days, and then fade back into the ratings obscurity he already currently occupies. He will then be let go once his contract is complete next summer. Donald Trump and his administration have already moved on to other matters, and they assume you will, too. (Incidentally, Donald Trump is suing the New York Times, in a suit so ridiculous — the initial complaint was dismissed by the court for being 80 pages of praise for Trump and five pages of allegations — that I haven’t even mustered myself to write about it.)

 

But let’s all at least laugh for a moment at the guy who went and ruined his life over this, shall we? In response to ABC taking Jimmy Kimmel off the air, an idiot named Anibal Hernandez Santana allegedly decided to haul out his pistol and head to his local ABC affiliate in Sacramento, Calif., to unload a few protest rounds into the building lobby, shooting out a few windows. Nobody was hurt, thankfully.

 

As San Francisco housing activist Armand Domalewski wrote, you really can’t make this sort of thing up anymore: “‘Former legislative director for the California teacher’s union shoots up an ABC affiliate as revenge for them taking down Jimmy Kimmel’ sounds like a right wing fever dream and yet it actually happened.” Reality is now lapping imaginative fiction’s ability to keep up.

 

I Have Extremely Little Faith in This TikTok Deal

 

The Trump administration has announced a deal — not yet finalized — with China to finally get it to disgorge itself of TikTok, the application currently turning your child’s brain into compost at a speed that resembles one of those time-lapse videos you were shown in middle school biology class of a dead fox decaying in the woods. It will not be shut down, alas — Trump, a creature of social media himself, quite clearly will not risk his popularity on social media. But apparently, its algorithm will be licensed to Trump’s Silicon Valley allies at Larry Ellison’s Oracle and Silver Lake:

 

Under the current terms of the proposal, the new U.S. joint venture would receive a licensed copy of the recommendation algorithm that keeps TikTok users endlessly scrolling through clips on their smartphones. Oracle would review, monitor and secure U.S. data flowing through the service.

 

This, of course, was never the issue with TikTok. The issue has always been twofold: (1) China harvests massive amounts of data from the American users of TikTok, building a database that can (and someday likely will) be used against us to no good end; (2) China’s algorithm, which it controls, cultivates division, dysfunction, and despair in youth society on an appalling scale. Merely owning a “licensed copy” of that algorithm is not the same thing as having control over it. It would be like me saying that I will allow you to watch from a safe distance as I burglarize your house and steal your car.

 

So even on a preliminary level, I have little faith in this deal. Perhaps more will emerge later — the entire process will apparently take a year to finalize, more proof of how urgently the Trump administration is treating it. The devil is going to be in the details, and the problem here is that I have zero faith in either side of this negotiation. I don’t trust China to really cede control of its all-powerful society-corrupting algorithm — or the data it returns to Chinese databases — for one moment; I similarly also do not trust the Trump administration to give a rip about these matters, either. Forgive me my cynicism, but eight months into the second Trump administration, I no longer believe he cares about much except his fantasy economic worldview, his personal profits, and his headlines.