Trump Pardons Rich White Criminals & Fox Host Warns that Real Men Don't Use Straws
May 30, 2025
What I’m Discussing Today:
Kareem’s Daily Quote: Today’s quote warns against the lure of false prophets seeking the profits of their followers.
Grand Theft Auto 6’s delay could lead to a spike in real-life crime: Do violent video games actually decrease crime?
A Fox host’s ‘rules for being a man’: no leg-crossing, no public soup drinking: This advice for being manly actually announces the opposite: a sad, insecure, hive mind.
Turning Qatari 747 into Air Force One could cost $1 billion and take years, experts say: Free? Not so fast.
FBI reopens investigation into cocaine at White House, leaked Dobbs opinion: The case was dismissed for lack of evidence, but Trump will throw more money at it in an attempt to besmirch Biden.
Kareem’s Department of “Try to Justify This”: Trump Pardoned Tax Cheat After Mother Attended $1 Million Dinner: Trump pardoned a bunch of White people who were convicted of fraud and corruption. Hmmm.
Kareem’s Video Break: An otter and a golden retriever. Enough said.
Kareem’s Sports Moments: Rock climbing takes so many skills—and lots of courage.
Javi Callén and Milena Casado Jazz Duet Play “Ugly Beauty”: His voice is like a clear, cool Colorado stream.
Quick Personal Announcement
On Wednesday of this week, I was honored to give a speech at Harvard University on Class Day. During the speech, I praised Harvard for being one of the few institutions to have the courage to stand up to Trump’s illegal assault on education, despite his continued efforts to punish them for using free speech. It was important to me that people recognize how Harvard president Dr. Alan Garber is following in the tradition of other defiant American heroes like Dr. King and Rosa Parks in not accepting injustice just because it’s popular.
I also encouraged the graduating students to recognize their responsibility to not just have successful careers after Harvard, but to be successful members of their community and defenders of democracy. The next day I received an honorary Ph.D. which was a thrill, mainly because one of my favorite performers, Rita Moreno, also received one. Thank you, Harvard University, for the degree, but mostly for being a force fighting for free speech and democracy when so many have turned their backs.
Kareem’s Daily Quote
Fear prophets and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them.
Umberto Eco (1932-2016), Italian novelist and philosopher
People love to be told what to do and there’s no shortage of individuals eager to step into the role of teller. Sadly, as a species, we aren’t very discriminating about vetting who we are willing to follow. History is mostly about the violence resulting from followers at war with other followers. And the people they’ve followed have often been real losers.
For about 1,200 years, the Greeks followed the advice of the oracle at Delphi, a high priestess who influenced everything from politics to military strategy to religion to their sex practices. As such, she was the most powerful woman in Greek society. She was believed to channel the god Apollo’s words while in a trance-like state, often causing her to utter cryptic messages (or unintelligible gibberish) that would then have to be interpreted by priests, undoubtedly to the benefit of the priests and the powers that employed them. Here’s the rub: Beneath the temple was a fissure that released vapors, thought to be ethylene or a mixture of ethylene and ethane, which caused the oracle’s trances. Her sacred utterances were merely the result of being high.
Not much has changed. Too often in our desperate need for a savior, we imbue unworthy people with supernatural authority that supersedes human reason. That way, the prophet can’t be challenged by facts or reason. That leaves the followers free to turn off their logic and go to sleep under the watchful eye of the benevolent parent they always dreamed of. The need for a supernatural aspect levels the playing field so that intelligence, logic, reason, and knowledge are no more important to choosing a path than the flip of a coin if a high priestess anoints the coin to be from a god.
Decision-making is hard and it should be. We should be challenged to research facts and other opinions rather than just fall into step with the mindless mob who seek freedom from the responsibility of thinking for themselves by making blind faith the virtuous path.
You can see where this is going. Yesterday, I read a poll on Trump’s declining approval rate. At first, I was delighted to see people recognizing his buffoonery for what it was. Then I saw that 41% of people still approved of his job. Who are these 41% that prize their need for a prophet over the actual damage their prophet causes? That level of self-destructive ignorance would be okay if they weren’t also dragging the rest of us down with them. Because they choose not to think for themselves, I have to pay more at the store for everything. Worse, I have to watch racism and misogyny thrive and watch the disappearance of free speech under relentless punishment.
Trump’s continued vicious attacks on Harvard University embody the showdown between reason and manipulating people through blind faith. Trump only remains in power because he’s convinced a lot of people to stop thinking logically (which is a relief to them) and just follow. Harvard represents the ideal that we should all use critical thinking to forge our paths in life. That way of thinking is a threat to oracles.
Today’s quote could have been written especially for Trump. A man who has deliberately cut critical health and well-being programs that will cost thousands of American lives and hundreds of thousands of lives in needy nations. It’s a slow-motion genocide that we all have some responsibility for. We need to accept that responsibility and try to stem the continued chaos and onslaught against democracy. We have two roads to a better and safer America: impeachment and voting out every Republican who supports his policies because they place career over conscience. Let’s take both roads. We don’t need false prophets who babble prophecies based on the heady fumes of greed and dementia.