11 … 2 … 3 it’s Fibonacci day today; the omens foretell 5 in your future, and then 8, and then 13, and then 21, leaping upward in ever-greater jumps, in an elegant spiral of numbers (I used to be a mathematician, and still have a license to chatter enthusiastically about numbers and abstract patterns). This is today’s moment of wonder and delight, the only protection I can offer against what comes next.
A moral monster of great power, dripping corruption and careening into dementia, is the stuff of unbearable nightmare; we are all living in it. Even worse: behind this demonic figure stand cool-headed engineers of death and dominion. But today I talk about the figurehead of their plots, Our Overlord Grabpussy. In two of his recent forays with the press, which I report on here from a New York Times story of 11/18 by Michael M. Grynbaum (which I believe to be the most accurate and detailed account of these two episodes — which I’ll call Saudi and Pedo); the NYT is behind a paywall for me, but three friends managed to get copies of the text for me.
Background. He just hates challenges from the press; in his view, the press is there to provide him with openings to broadcast his opinions, so he sees challenges as disrespect (and he demands respect). He hates challenges from the mainstream media, which he views as all “fake news”; his opinions are the only real news. He especially hates challenges from women, as in both Saudi and Pedo. (Most of all he hates challenges from black women, but both of these women are white.)
Meanwhile, he is extravagantly admiring of autocratic rulers; their having bloody hands — as Vladimir Putin and Mohammed bin Salman, for example, do — is no bar; in fact, it’s probably part of his attraction to them.
Finally, his moral emptiness, his inability to see any purpose in action that garners neither power nor money, leads him to seek control over other people, and, especially, to extract money and services from them for his purposes. It makes him monumentally corrupt (as in Saudi) and abusive of women (as in Pedo).
(There’s more of course, lots of things all happening at once, but here’s a chunk of it, and it’s a nightmare.)
And now, from the NYT. “Tr**p Berates One Reporter and Tells Another,‘Quiet, Piggy’; The president grew frustrated with Mary Bruce of ABC News over her questions during his meeting with the Saudi crown prince. On Friday, he told a Bloomberg News reporter, “Quiet, piggy””:
[Saudi:] President Tr**p assailed an American journalist in the Oval Office on Tuesday for asking Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, about the violent death of a Washington Post columnist at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in 2018. U.S. intelligence has said the attack was carried out on the prince’s orders.
“You don’t have to embarrass our guest by asking a question like that,” Mr. Tr**p told the journalist, Mary Bruce of ABC News, later referring to her query as “a horrible, insubordinate, and just a terrible question.”
“A lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about,” Mr. Tr**p said, referring to the murdered journalist, Jamal Khashoggi. [AZ: JK was a Saudi dissident living in America and reporting for the Washington Post] “Whether you like him or didn’t like him, things happen.” [AZ: the thing that happened was that JK was murdered, then dismembered with a bone saw and somehow disposed of] The prince has denied involvement in the killing.
It was the second time in a week that Mr. Tr**p had leveled a fierce insult at a woman who was covering him.
[Pedo:] On Air Force One on Friday, he cut off a reporter for Bloomberg News, Catherine Lucey, when she tried to ask why he had not yet released the Epstein files. [AZ: of documents relating to the Tr**p associate and child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein]
“Quiet!” the president said. “Quiet, piggy.”
My focus in the remainder of this posting is on the Pedo episode.
The first question is how Catherine Lucy should have responded. In a context outside of a presidential press conference, the best responses to a bully — DT is famously a thin-skinned bully, from childhood on — are vigorous confrontation or deflection through humor; but it’s important to cut the bullying off or it will simply go on and on, probably amplify. CL, however, is a reporter, and in that role it would be improper to respond the way a private person would. So she didn’t insult him back (though others have imagined many crushing retorts she might have used, and there’s something of a cottage industry in fashioning responses that are vicious or hilarious or both — one of which I’m about to play with.)
CL differentiated her public role as a reporter and her private role as a woman in a network of social relations. DT simply doesn’t understand this distinction; he is always indistinguishably both the president of a great nation and a man in a network of social relations. The idea that a public figure might, as a matter of course, arouse criticism and occasion opposition in their public role is incomprehensible to him; he takes everything personally because that’s all there is.
Needless to say, this is a disastrous pathology for someone of great power in the world.
Bring on the punk. This ends the grim portion of the program, with all of its loose ends still dangling. Now comes the entertainment portion.
On Facebook on 11/19, Billy Green passed on this Peter Mulvey posting of 11/18:
Somewhere, four feminist noise-punk artists just named their band Quiet Piggy
To which I responded, on BG’s page:
I envision, not one band, but a movement, with scores of feminist noise-punk bands named Quiet Piggy spread out in a network across America: several SF Quiet Piggys, several LA Quiet Piggys, a host of NYC Quiet Piggys, Latina Quiet Piggies in many places (several in Miami alone, and of course in San Juan and Austin), Black Quiet Piggys in Harlem and South Chicago and elsewhere, country Quiet Piggys in Nashville, and on and on.
Let a thousand Quiet Piggys bloom!
November 24, 2025 at 7:16 am |
One thing that struck me particularly on reading this is his characterization of Mary Bruce’s question as “insubordinate”, suggesting a seriously distorted idea of the relationship between President and reporter.
November 24, 2025 at 7:43 am |
Yes. In my text: “He just hates challenges from the press; in his view, the press is there to provide him with openings to broadcast his opinions, so he sees challenges as disrespect (and he demands respect). “