Mort Report is a labor of love by old-style correspondents with lifetimes on the road and young ones with fresh eyes. Our philosophy is simple: we report at first hand with analysis based on non-alternative fact, not opinion. If we get something wrong, we fix it.
PARIS — Tommy Tuberville, a 71-year-old Alabama cracker elected to the U.S. Senate after too many hits to the head on football fields, recently told Fox "News" that Dr. Anthony Fauci "killed or was involved in the killings of nine million people."
An AI check helpfully called that "a claim the network said was unproven and lacked supporting evidence." Ya think? When people like that serve in Congress, a dis-United States is the polar opposite of a representative democracy.
For three hours, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky forced a man America should revere to invoke the Fifth Amendment 111 times lest some slip of the tongue — or any remark inquisitors could twist — enable faithless Republicans to burn him at the stake.
Every Republican on his committee echoed his bogus charges. Afterward, Paul skirted normal procedure to demand Fauci be prosecuted for contempt of Congress, possibly imprisoned. "One million died, and I think they deserve the truth," he said.
The man is a pathetic little pissant. I've spent decades watching dipshits savage truth for self-glorification. Consider established fact and the wider implications of faithless lawmakers, then judge for yourself.
DRAGUIGNAN, France — America is suddenly looking like itself again from across an ocean that over the past 16 months has widened into a forbidding moat. Different now, in a different world, but alive and kicking in a new coat of primary colors.
Earlier this summer my TV was at grave risk from flying objects. Each new day a plundering crime family, coldblooded profiteers and blind ideologues took another little piece of America's heart. A once-great nation was a loathed pariah.
But then World Cup fans from everywhere joined in the 250th birthday bash. They saw workaday Americans — as in, We, the People — take back celebrations from a mafia-don despot who tried to make it all about him.
Foreigners braved grilling at the borders and harsh security at the games. Yet crowds across the nation welcomed them like long-lost family. They ate barbeque with their hands, drank free beer, partied late and made lasting friendships.
Can-do ingenuity dazzled. Visitors were oddly smitten with ranch dressing, but TSA plucked bottles of it from their carry-on. Kraft swiftly came up with miniatures for them to take home where they spread the word about a big-hearted America.
They feted the Fourth under a blaze of pyrotechnics with joyous MAGA-averse music from Mill Valley to Valley Forge. The Boston Pops orchestra played backup to funk and jive near the harbor where colonials had dumped tea.
Trump struck a low note heard round the world. He strong-armed the games' organizers to reverse a penalty red card that would have kept America's star player from playing Belgium. Still, the Belgians won 4-1.
At the end, players did an awkward bump and grind to mock the little dance Trump does at rallies. In Brussels, team officials flipped a middle finger on social media: "Overturn this!"
Countless Americans who have shrugged off Trump's depredations, which by now amount to millions of needless deaths and incalculable human suffering, see their president for who he is. Whatever else, you don't fuck with football.
