Today is Wednesday, August 20, 2025. I’m posting this late tonight because I forgot to mention that I was going to attend a meeting of my TCM group this evening at 5. There were eight of us sitting at a long table at the diner called Tick Tock on 8th Avenue and 34th Street. Our host, if you will, was “Derrick.” I thought I had a working knowledge of cinema, but Derrick’s grasp of world cinema really extended beyond my mere lowly grasp. He held court for the entire evening, which amounted to about four hours when we finally took our leave from each other. Derrick narrated story after story about some unknown morsel of film knowledge to everyone’s delight. The most intriguing story was his attending a film screening and coming across the acclaimed director Francis Ford Coppola sitting in the audience. Derrick mentioned that Coppola was asked to give a talk to the audience on the cuff, and he humbly agreed to do so. Derrick indicated that Coppola talked about 10 minutes, mostly about the issues he encountered on filming Apocalypse Now which forms the basis of a 1991 documentary on the problems plaguing the cast and crew during the making of Coppola’s Vietnam saga. I just finished watching this documentary last night; I recommend it to anyone interested in the film process.

The most unpopular president in American history is seeing his polling ratings dive precipitously day after day as he pursues stupid issues as caring about the depiction of slavery at the Smithsonian Institute. An online opinion piece addresses this dichotomy between Demented Don’s declining popularity and the pursuit of subjects that Americans mostly don’t care about like tackling museums and other fucking nonsense. The piece is titled “Trump is widely unpopular and losing ground fast. Why is anyone afraid of him? Opinion.” This musing is written by Rex Huppke.

According to Huppke, the burning issues for most Americans are high prices, inflation, and health care. But our increasingly unpopular president is laser-focused on “things nobody cares about him,” except him. One issue is downplaying exhibitions on the history of slavery at the Smithsonian.

“On the same day a new poll by The Economist/YouGov showed Donald Trump’s disapproval rating hitting a new high, the president took time to post this on social media: “The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL [there’s his ridiculous capping style], where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been.”

Why the fuck would Americans in 2025 worry about the depiction of slavery when it was abolished in 1865 when American voters are watching the costs of beef and vegetables skyrocket?

This idiot then instructed his attorneys to go after museums and to get rid of “woke” ideology. Huh? This is such a diversion from releasing the Epstein tapes that no one would be distracted into thinking that the federal government should be interfering with museum policy on such a high level.

Finally, the writer of this piece questions why anyone is still afraid of this bumpkin, especially when his favorable ratings are so fucking low. He actually calls Demented Don a “toxic president.”

Nearly two-thirds of Americans say the country, under the “leadership” of the pedophile in chief, is “out of control.”

Huppke wonders why no public figures are coming out to denounce the toddler in chief. Of course, repugnicans will not do it because they’re cowed by him for some strange reason. According to Huppke, “They’ve spent decades ignoring the needs of their voters, focusing instead on tossing them red meat from the culture wars and assuming that bashing liberals is all that matters.”

The writer here criticizes Democrats for going after Chump with kid gloves, except for Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, and California Governor Gavin Newsom. There aren’t that many Dems out there who have taken off the kid gloves, which is irrational, given Dump’s unpopularity at the moment.

Even corporate types have been silent or outright supportive of a president liked by fewer and fewer Americans.

This is unwise, according to Huppke, especially when dealing with such a fucking bully as this ghastly man who will stop at nothing to use the power of the federal government against his enemies.

Huppke feels that there “is zero political risk to standing up to this president. There is only upside, and how more haven’t realized it yet is beyond me.”

In the meantime, the horrible Texas House did pass that ghastly GOP-drawn redistricting effort, despite full Democratic opposition to it. It is now time, according to Governor Newsom, “to fight fire with fire.”

And so it went!