August 27, 2025

Staff Threatens Walkout If Vanity Fair Puts Melania on the Cover

August 27, 2025August 27, 2025 Pensito Editors

“I will walk out the motherfucking door, and half my staff will follow me. We are not going to normalize this despot and his wife; we’re just not going to do it. We’re going to stand for what’s right.”

– A mid-level editor at Vanity Fair reacting to a plan by the magazine’s new editor to put Melania Trump on the cover.

Ideological Ban and Switch

August 27, 2025 Buck Banks

To win the culture wars, right-wingers employ a tautology,
And they back that up with a kind of inverse psychology.
So they’re into film and book banning,
And art and rainbow crosswalk panning,
But stamping out my ideology doesn’t replace it with your ideology.

Consumer Confidence Dipped in August

August 27, 2025 Buck Banks

-1.3 points

The Conference Board said Tuesday that its consumer confidence index ticked down by 1.3 points to 97.4 in August, down from July’s 98.7, but in the same narrow range of the past three months, the AP reported. A measure of Americans’ short-term expectations for their income, business conditions and the job market fell by 1.2 points to 74.8, remaining significantly below 80, the marker that can signal a recession ahead.

Trump Thinks He Can Do Anything He Wants

August 27, 2025 Buck Banks

Day: August 27, 2025

Staff Threatens Walkout If Vanity Fair Puts Melania on the Cover

“I will walk out the motherfucking door, and half my staff will follow me. We are not going to normalize this despot and his wife; we’re just not going to do it. We’re going to stand for what’s right.”

– A mid-level editor at Vanity Fair reacting to a plan by the magazine’s new editor to put Melania Trump on the cover.

Ideological Ban and Switch

Consumer Confidence Dipped in August

-1.3 points

Trump Thinks He Can Do Anything He Wants

“I have the right to do anything I want to do. I’m the president of the United States.”

— President Trump, speaking to reporters at a Cabinet meeting Tuesday.

Poetic Justice

Verbatim

“If you are committing fraud against the American people, all of us in public leadership should be trying to stop it and throw you in prison for enriching yourself off the American taxpayer.”

— Vice President JD Vance, on Fox News.

“Your generation has a great bullshit meter, because you’re fed bullshit online all day. And the Democratic Party brand right now is so bullshit.”

— Michigan U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed (D), quoted by The Atlantic, speaking to college students.

“We are done, Americans are done with endless conflict in the Middle East, spending trillions of dollars, American lives… this is insane and we have to call it for what it is.”

— Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO), on CNN.

Numerati

+175,000

“The U.S. State Department announced on Monday that it has revoked more than 175,000 visas during President Donald Trump’s administration so far,” Fox News reports.

$4,600

11

30%

A new American Research Group poll finds just 30% of Americans say they approve of the way Donald Trump is handling his job as president and 67% say they disapprove.

61% to 35%