Coffee Talk with Tiff

December 17, 2025 1:22 pm EST Tiff Coffee Talk with Tiff 0
Coffee. Photo by Jonathan Thursfield.

It’s Wednesday…

President Shitshow’s public schedule for…

12/17/2025:

9:00 AM
In-Town Pool Call Time
The White House

10:30 AM
Out-of-Town Travel Pool Call Time
Joint Base Andrews
Out-of-Town Travel Pool

1:15 PM
The President and First Lady participate in a Dignified Transfer Ceremony
Dover Air Force Base, DE
Out-of-Town Travel Pool

9:00 PM
The President delivers an address to the Nation
Diplomatic Reception Room
On Camera

Reportedly focused on “accomplishments,” which suggests a carefully lit recap of things that sound impressive when listed quickly and not examined at all. A solemn room, a serious tone, and a speech that could have been a press release but wanted attention.


Ahead of his address, the President of the United States posted a string of nonsense on his social media platform, “Lies Social.” We will limit this section to two examples.

Here’s what Susie Wiles, the Chief of Staff, told Vanity Fair about President Retribution and his fixation on so-called “enemies.”

I had to turn toward the New York Times as Part 2 of the interview from Vanity Fair is paywalled.

New York Times (gift link–12/16/2025):

President Trump’s chief of staff said she tried to get him to end his “score settling” against political enemies after 90 days in office, but acknowledged that the administration’s still ongoing push for prosecutions has been fueled in part by the president’s desire for retribution.

Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, told an interviewer that she forged a “loose agreement” with Mr. Trump to stop focusing after three months on punishing antagonists, an effort that evidently did not succeed. While she insisted that Mr. Trump is not constantly thinking about retribution, she said that “when there’s an opportunity, he will go for it.”

[snip]

The president’s fixation on payback against his enemies offers a case study. Ms. Wiles confided in Mr. Whipple in March that she had told Mr. Trump that his presidency was not supposed to be a retribution tour.

“We have a loose agreement that the score settling will end before the first 90 days are over,” she said then. When that did not happen by August, she told Mr. Whipple that “I don’t think he’s on a retribution tour” but said that he was aiming at people who did “bad things” in coming after him. “In some cases, it may look like retribution,” she said. “And there may be an element of that from time to time. Who would blame him? Not me.”

Among the targets, she acknowledged, was Letitia James, the New York attorney general, who won a civil court verdict against Mr. Trump for business fraud with a penalty of nearly $500 million. “Well, that might be the one retribution,” Ms. Wiles said. Did she advise Mr. Trump to back off? “Not on her. She had a half a billion dollars of his money.” (An appeals court later threw out the penalty as excessive but left the verdict intact.)

As for James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director who was fired by Mr. Trump while leading an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, Ms. Wiles said, “I mean, people could think it does look vindictive. I can’t tell you why you shouldn’t think that.” She added: “I don’t think he wakes up thinking about retribution. But when there’s an opportunity, he will go for it.”

New York Times (gift link–12/16/2025).

Narrator: He wakes up every morning thinking about retribution.

The manhunt for the gunmen that killed two and injured nine others at Brown University continues days after the incident occurred.

In last night’s update officials explained when questioned about the cameras.

Reporter:
So, do you have video inside the engine? Both inside and outside?

Colonel Oscar L. Perez, Jr. Chief of Police:
I’m sorry, just outside. That’s all we have. Not inside.

Reporter: Are they going to be released anytime soon? Police building.

Colonel Oscar L. Perez, Jr. Chief of Police:
That was released already. That was the outside of the building. We released that.

Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha:

Let me just jump in here and clarify. For those of you who’ve been with us before, and I understand not all of you have been, there is video inside the building. There are cameras inside the building.

What we have released to you are videos of this person of interest. I want to be clear, because later on there may be other videos that get released in the course of a prosecution, and likely will be at some point.

Those videos show things like chaos after the shooting. What they don’t show is this person of interest. And that’s why we haven’t released those videos.

What you do have are videos from a camera outside of the Brown building and other cameras from around the neighborhood that the good men and women in law enforcement located and have put together in this montage.

And to your question, Chris, there are two versions of that video, but the bottom line is they depict the same thing. And the agencies are working very, very well together, as I think the special agent in charge would agree.

YouTube Transcript of Presser. 12/16/2025.

Several media outlets are reporting that Brown has about 1200 cameras around campus. Officials say the big issue with finding the shooter is that this campus is mixed inside a residential setting. I googled a map of the shooting.

I then went to google maps; I need the satellite view to understand maps.

The red dot is where the shooting took place.

This is just an example of the neighborhoods surrounding the university.

That house is right across the street from where the shooting took place.

I’m not saying they can’t improve their security, I am saying that unlike other shootings, this suspect had tons of areas to flee to without being caught.

Taken together with the fact the gun used was a hand gun and not a AR-15 or long gun, I can see how he slipped right through the sidewalk cracks.


Flash News

Yesterday, I shared this propaganda tweet from the White House’s official twitter account.

“100% of new jobs going to native-born Americans”

With every bad jobs report they say this and every time they do, I google it and nobody had a true fact-check. Well, it finally happened, Jed Kolko…

Did me solid by posting this tweet from an article he wrote back in August!

After recent monthly jobs reports, Administration officials and their supporters have been posting and talking about the astounding growth in employment for native-born Americans. The Vice President, the Secretary of Labor, and the new nominee for Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) commissioner have all recently trumpeted that there are two million more employed native-born Americans than a year ago.

It’s not just Administration cheerleaders: respected mainstream economists on the center-left and center-right have charted and commented on these trends in native-born and foreign-born employment too. And no wonder: immigration is an urgent and contentious topic that directly affects the economy. (Note: these figures are readily accessible in the monthly jobs report, and the historical series of native-born employment and foreign-born employment are easily downloadable on FRED.)

But these charts and commentaries are a multiple-count data felony. The statistical agencies explicitly warn that these data are not suitable for sizing and trending the foreign-born and native-born populations. In fact, the apparent boom in native-born employment is just a statistical artifact, arising from arcane rules about how the data are constructed and population levels are determined.

The right way to see how native-born Americans are doing is to look at their unemployment rate. The native-born unemployment rate has increased over the past year, while foreign-born unemployment rate has not.

Before getting into the technical details, let’s pause to ask whether the supposed trends in foreign-born and native-born employment even pass the sniff test. The Current Population Survey (CPS) shows that from January to July the foreign-born population dropped by 2.2 million, and foreign-born employment by 1 million.[1] That’s bogglingly far outside a recent estimate by leading researchers that full-year 2025 net immigration (accounting for immigrants both coming and leaving) could range from +115 thousand to -525 thousand. Furthermore, the CPS reports that the native-born adult population rose by 3 million people from January to July, and native-born employment was up 2.5 million in those six months. How is that possible when population growth excluding immigration is typically a little over half a million annually? Was there a massive baby boom 16 years ago that no one knew about that’s now entering the workforce? Or a medical innovation that prevented any deaths this year? A moment’s thought says these swings are implausible.

No, Native-Born Employment Has Not Soared by Jed Kolko. 08/13/2025.

Jack Smith is or has testified before Congress this morning; it was behind closed doors despite Smith’s request to testify publicly.

Show more =’s “Exploiting that violence, Pres Trump & his associates tried to call Members of Congress in furtherance of their criminal scheme, urging them to further delay certification of the 2020 election. I didn’t choose those Members; President Trump did”

Nick Reiner the son of Rob and Michele Reiner appeared in court today to face murder charges, however the arraignment has been postponed until January.

Nick Reiner appeared in a Los Angeles court on Wednesday over the killing of his parents, Rob Reiner and Michele Singer Reiner. After brief proceedings, his arraignment was postponed until Jan. 7, defense attorney Alan Jackson told reporters.

The judge instructed cameras not to film Reiner, CBS News’ Adam Yamaguchi reported. 

Reiner was behind a glass wall in a custody area, and he did not enter a plea. He only said, “yes, your honor,” to agree to the arraignment date. His lawyer had requested the postponement. 

Reiner wore a suicide prevention smock as he appeared in shackles, The Associated Press reported.

The 32-year-old is being charged with two counts of first-degree murder with special circumstances, Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman announced on Tuesday. Hochman said the charges carry a maximum sentence of life in prison without parole or the death penalty, but that his office hasn’t decided which to pursue. 

CBS News. 12/17/2025.

We will be wrapping there.

This is an open thread

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About Tiff 3420 Articles
Member of the Free Press who is politically homeless and a political junkie.