Greetings and welcome to a rather demoralized 67th performance of the Carnival of Fools. Sometimes the news is simply bleak, and there is no way to mordantly comment one’s way out of it. So we trudge forward unceasingly regardless — the past is dust, not a bridge to return across. The path necessarily leads through dark events — and this is the way, step inside.

The Latest Atrocity Exhibition

The decent portion of humanity fell into horror on early Sunday — but not surprise, sadly — at the news of a massacre in Sydney, Australia. Over 1,000 Jews — including, reportedly, a survivor of the 10/7 attacks — had gathered at Bondi Beach to celebrate the start of Hanukkah. They were targeted by a father-son team of Pakistani Muslims who murdered at least 15 innocents before the father was taken down by (tardy) police and the son captured alive. The response by Australia’s left-wing government, naturally, has been to propose ever-more-stringent gun control laws rather than address the Islamist elephant in the room.

But at least that elephant is known. Much closer to home, students, faculty, and parents alike at Brown University in Providence, R.I., are justifiably terrified at the fact that a killer remains on the loose. On Saturday, a masked shooter burst into an auditorium during exams at the Ivy League university and started shooting. Two are dead, nine are injured — and we don’t have any idea who the shooter is. Speculation is rampant that the shooter may have targeted his victims, but nobody knows anything for the simple reason that the police freely admit they don’t have any leads on the ID of the shooter, or even any video of him.

To say that this is “less than reassuring,” as my colleague Jim Geraghty did yesterday, is to indulge in the privilege of writerly understatement; it beats howling a series of expletives. But the Providence P.D. clearly aren’t lying when they say they’re clueless as to the suspect — otherwise they wouldn’t have arrested (and subsequently released) the wrong guy. For now, we are left with sickening, lingering questions as to potential motive — and continuing danger.

And I don’t want to talk about any of it, at least not more than I have with these few brief paragraphs. It’s not that these matters lack importance or are undeserving of commentary; it’s just that I feel like I’ve written all of it already over the past two years or so, and have little to add at this point — it feels like digging up an old grave, and there are too many new ones to dig now. Let us instead address one unquiet spirit who has yet to accept that her political career sleeps in that quiet earth.

Kamala Harris’s Ghost Checks Itself for a Pulse

Yes. In what counts, relatively speaking, as joyful news, Kamala Harris apparently is itching to get back into the big presidential game. Axios makes the case with their typical breathless formatting:

LOS ANGELES — Kamala Harris isn’t planning to go gentle into that good night. This week the former vice president made clear to potential 2028 rivals that she’s working to keep another White House campaign viable.
Why it matters: Despite worries from party leaders and donors that she can’t win, Harris remains at or near the top of most 2028 Democratic primary polls. She also has strong support among Black voters — the most critical voting bloc in most recent Democratic presidential primaries.

Apparently, Harris appeared at a DNC event this week in Los Angeles and extended her 107 Days book tour to extra cities in the Deep South, which Axios interprets as preparation for a 2028 primary campaign. Now I’ll be honest and tell you that I don’t buy the idea that Harris will run for president again, not even for a second. (Neither, I suspect, does Jim Geraghty, who wrote about this topic the other day as well.) I do however buy the idea that Kamala Harris would like to be seen as potentially running for president, much in the same way that I would like to be seen as “potentially in Sydney Sweeney’s league.”

But I encourage this phantom boomlet regardless. Maybe the Harris team is just keeping the pilot light on in its mind — keeping all their options open. How stupid of them! I advise Kamala to leap in whole hog, and get in as early as possible — you don’t want to let Gavin steal even more of a march on you, now do you?

Readers, it really has come to this. When I have written about Harris in the past, I have usually added words to the effect that she is a derangingly unwelcome force in my life, a political wraith to be exorcised — and now here I am, flying to her open arms for a tipsy embrace. I suppose I am more forgiving of Harris now that I consider her a completely empty threat, but given how awful I expect both 2026 and 2028 to be — for Americans in general, for Republicans more specifically, and especially for conservatives — the idea that Kamala Harris might be contemplating one last humiliation at least gives me something grim to look forward to.

Trump’s Economic Approval Rating Spells Doom

Speaking of Axios, the outlet also helpfully flagged the reason that 2026 is most likely going to be a biblically awful election for incumbent Republicans: “Trump’s Approval Rating on the Economy Hits Record Low of 31%.”

Some headlines really don’t need to be elaborated upon for multiple paragraphs. Maybe you doubt this one AP-NORC poll, but the number is part of a much larger trend that has seen Trump’s primary election strength become his biggest weakness in office — an economy that continues to stagnate as prices rise as a direct result of Trump’s senselessly unconstitutional tariff regime. So I’ll stipulate that I’m including this item in the Carnival as a reminder to readers to keep your eye on the ball.

This column is usually, by its nature, devoted to the spectacle and folly of the political circus. But basic fundamentals remain the true substance of electoral politics, and the economic fundamentals look dire indeed for the foreseeable future. Trump owns this, surely, as the man who desperately sought to brand his name to the post-Biden economy. But there’s a reason all Republicans with half a brain are also currently “Panicans” (to use Trump’s coinage): Both Trump and his handmaiden GOP “own” the economy by now in the eyes of voters. Trump will never face another election again; Republicans will.

Your Periodic Reminder That the President Has a Small Soul

Filmmaker Rob Reiner and his wife were murdered on Sunday night, stabbed to death in what looks to have been a terrible family tragedy. (Their son Nick is currently in police custody; he is known to have had a long history of drug addiction problems.) I wrote a tribute to Reiner’s particular place in my life yesterday, and I invite you to read it: Reiner’s run of films from 1984-1990 might as well have been little lamps purpose-hung to light the general course of my progress from awkward adolescent to romantically angst-ridden, college-aged rock snob during my own childhood, so his loss feels curiously cruel to me.

Others also decided to make Reiner’s death about themselves as well, albeit in far less relatable ways. Upon hearing the news, the leader of the free world took to his bullhorn on Truth Social to eulogize the great director — and noted left-wing activist/Trump critic — by suggesting that, really, he had gotten himself killed:

A very sad thing happened last night in Hollywood. Rob Reiner, a tortured and struggling, but once very talented movie director and comedy star, has passed away, together with his wife, Michele, reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, sometimes referred to as TDS. He was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump, with his obvious paranoia reaching new heights as the Trump Administration surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness, and with the Golden Age of America upon us, perhaps like never before. May Rob and Michele rest in peace!

Commentary on the above would be superfluous. The provocation is so transparent and nakedly despicable as to be unworthy of response. If it is meant as a cynical ploy for attention — Trump has long needed to be the central character in every possible story — it is tasteless beyond even his normal measure of shamelessness. If it reflects his true bitterness — fulminating even amidst an obvious family tragedy about the death of a Hollywood critic — then it betokens the ineradicable smallness of his soul.

I ask myself, “Who could possibly defend this?” And then all I have to do is turn to Twitter to find Trump’s brand-name Defenders™ making excuses for him. (“Well, he was a fierce critic . . .”) They usually stop there, because even they know better than to openly connect the dots to “so it’s okay to claim he died from TDS, as opposed to being brutally stabbed to death alongside his wife.”

I can already anticipate the response from some readers, having heard it countless times before: “Why are you harshing my vibes by pointing out how selfishly rotten our president is? We know Trump is no angel, he’s just better than the Democratic option.” Be that as it may. Are you happy with this style of politics? What prospect does anyone realistically see for its continuation after Trump has left office? I don’t believe for one moment that Trump’s most dogged defenders actually like these sorts of thuddingly callous outbursts. They tolerate them as a necessity — until they no longer do, because they’re tired of the rest of the act. As I said above, it is the economy that will ultimately sink Trump, not his thoroughgoing indecency. But the indecency of it all — his absolute incapacity for grace — will make the sting of that coming catastrophe so much more bitter.

Until next week.