Last week, we warned everyone that July was going to be a sketchy month for us, in terms of our ability to write these Friday columns. So we begin today with a program update. Today's offering is not a complete Friday Talking Points column. It is bare-bones, at best. We're not even really going to attempt reviewing the past week, and we're also not going to write out talking points at the end (although we did complete the two awards sections). Just to warn everyone up front.

Next week, there will be no new Friday Talking Points column at all. But then hopefully by the week after that (the 24th), things will return to normal here and we'll have a full column once again. Again, we apologize for the intermittent nature of the column this month, but we've got a lot of other things going on that are taking up so much time and energy that doing all the work to put a full column together was impossible.

So like we said, we don't have a rundown of the events of the past week, just a few quick takes. Donald Trump went to a NATO meeting, declared the ceasefire with Iran was over, and spewed his usual amount of moosepoop to distract everyone with. Today, Trump is continuing his hissy fit with Senate Republicans by refusing to sign the bipartisan housing bill (that passed with veto-proof majorities in both houses of Congress). But he won't be vetoing it either -- instead he's just going to use the parliamentary rule that says any bill Congress hands him automatically becomes law (even without his signature) after 10 days have passed. This was supposed to be a political lifeline of sorts for the Republicans attempting to get re-elected in November, so Trump refusing to make it a big deal is a blow to them. As is the fact that gasoline prices are now heading back up again, right smack in the middle of summer driving season.

The Democrats had a meltdown of epic proportions this week as well, but we're going to address that in the awards. Which we will move right along to (with one more apology for the abbreviated nature of today's column).

We wrote about this one yesterday in more detail, if anyone's interested. Even though we are personally not big fans of him, we had to admit that the speech that Rahm Emanuel just gave in Tel Aviv was impressive.

Rahm is making no secret about his ambitions to run for president in 2028. We don't think he has a chance of winning, but then hey, stranger things have happened. He's been quietly building a campaign platform for months, releasing provocative white papers and giving speeches on individual issues and where he thinks the Democratic Party should stand on each of them. This week's speech was no different -- it was merely a continuation of this gradual rollout of the entire agenda that Rahm's going to run on. He's aiming to position himself as a serious-minded Democrat who has a plan for everything long before any of the other candidates flesh out their own political agenda to such a degree of detail.

The Democratic Party is divided on the future of what America's relationship with Israel should look like. They're not alone in this -- the Republican Party is also divided on the question. For the first time in decades, it is looking like there will soon be some major changes in the relationship between the two countries. But most American politicians have either taken hard stances in total support or total condemnation of Israel, or they just prefer not to talk about the issue at all (because it is such a thorny one).

Rahm's speech (which you can read in full on his Substack page) attempted to chart a new course without resorting to absolutism in either direction. And while we don't fully agree with all of the prescriptions for change Rahm laid out, we have to admit that he at least did a decent job of identifying the biggest problems (including calling out the actions of Benjamin Netanyahu).

You can agree or disagree with Rahm's agenda moving forward, but to us, the fact that he's at least attempting to chart some kind of new course was impressive. It's one of those issues that everyone knows needs addressing, but that few American politicians are brave enough to tackle -- much less to do so directly to an Israeli audience, in Israel.

For doing so -- again, even if we do not agree on everything he proposed in his speech -- we have to give Rahm Emanuel the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award. Sooner or later every Democrat contemplating a presidential run is going to have to take a stand one way or another on Israel, and while he's definitely not our candidate of choice, we have to acknowledge that Rahm Emanuel started this process off in a big way this week.

[Rahm Emanuel is still a private citizen who has made no official announcement of his candidacy yet, and it is our blanket policy not to provide contact information for such private citizens.]

This one's pretty obvious. Graham Platner, who is still officially the Democratic nominee for Senate in Maine, went down in flames this week, after a woman credibly accused him of forcing himself on her in her apartment. She agreed in one interview that his actions fit the definition of rape.

Support for Platner immediately collapsed. It took him two days to face the reality of this, and then when he did he released an 11-minute video that was filled with accusations that others had somehow conspired to end his historic candidacy -- but with absolutely no personal remorse or apology. Now he is waiting until the very last minute to file his paperwork to remove his name from the November ballot. There is no reason for this delay, other than to annoy his fellow Democrats. [Editorial Note: while we were editing this, Platner did indeed officially withdraw his candidacy, after earlier threatening not to do so until Monday's deadline.]

The Maine Democratic Party will have until July 27th to name a replacement candidate for November. They have decided to do so with a mini-convention with 600 Democrats deciding which candidate to pick. This could turn into a free-for-all sort of convention, since none of the delegates is supposed to be pledged to any particular candidate before it begins. There are numerous Democrats who have put their names forward, all claiming in some way or another to be true to the issues that Platner raised in his own campaign.

This whole fiasco will be studied for years to come (no doubt), but we're still smack in the middle of it. The lack of vetting Platner went through will be heavily criticized, and establishment Democrats will doubtlessly conclude that this is what happens when progressives are allowed to succeed. The entire process for choosing his replacement will also wind up under the microscope, and many comparisons will be made to the process used to replace Joe Biden with Kamala Harris.

Progressives are more than just disappointed with this turn of events, it bears mentioning. They thought they had a new champion who would dethrone Susan Collins and then be a true voice for the working class. Now those dreams have been shattered. No matter who replaces Platner will struggle with the shortened timespan of the remainder of the campaign, and will almost certainly not generate the same level of voter enthusiasm that Platner did. There will be "once bitten, twice shy" feelings among the voters, most likely.

Nobody has any clue what this means for the November midterm election, at least not at this point. Will the replacement candidate still stand a chance against Collins? She has won tight races previously, and she may indeed prevail again -- which will lead to feelings of a giant missed opportunity by Maine Democrats. Or the new candidate might run a great campaign and wind up unseating her anyway. There's just no way to tell what the chances of any of this will be at this point -- and there won't be, until a replacement is selected and Maine's voters start to weigh in on how they feel.

But for placing himself, Maine, and the Democratic Party in such a predicament, the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week is without question Graham Platner of Maine.

[We would provide contact information for Graham Platner, but what's the point, really? We think by now he pretty much knows what everyone else thinks of him, so we're personally just waiting for him to completely fade into the background.]

Volume 848 (7/10/26)

As we warned, there are no talking points this week. Instead, we thought we'd pick a bone with the mainstream media, just for fun.

There are a lot of double standards in the media today when it comes to coverage of our two major political parties, but the one that stuck out this week was the difference in covering the relative health (both physical and mental) of politicians while they are still in office.

Let's start with the physical. Senator Mitch McConnell was whisked away to a hospital last month and has not been seen since. On June 14th, emergency medical services were called to his house and reportedly performed C.P.R. on a person who seemed to be in cardiac arrest. Neighbors said they saw an unconscious McConnell loaded into an ambulance on a stretcher. Since then, there has been no official word from McConnell, although three people said they talked on the phone with him for 20 minutes each (two Republican politicians and a conservative media commentator).

Rumors are swirling (especially from the MAGA right). Is McConnell in a coma? Is he brain-dead? Is he actually dead? Nobody knows for sure. His office says he is fine, but nobody is taking their word for it at this point. There has been no information on what happened to McConnell, or what he is being treated for -- just an information void. After almost a month of this, the media has reacted with a collective shrug.

This may all be a ploy to avoid an upcoming deadline. Because Kentucky insisted on electing a Democratic governor, the Republican state legislature completely stripped the governor's office of the power to appoint a replacement senator, if a sitting senator happens to die while in office. Instead, a special election will be held to elect a replacement -- if a vacancy opens up before August 3rd. Because we are so close to the midterm elections, if a vacancy opens up after that point, then there will be no replacement (since McConnell is not running for re-election, there's already a campaign underway for who will replace him starting in January). The Republicans don't want a special election, which has given rise to the conspiracy theory that they're now running out the clock and won't make any announcement on McConnell until after the deadline passes.

You'd think this would be big news, but sadly, that has not been the case. Earlier this year, a sitting Republican House member disappeared for four whole months before resuming his elected duties with an explanation that he had been undergoing treatment for a mental condition. That story wasn't covered much either.

As for mental health, we also have a sitting president who is deteriorating before our very eyes (not to mention "and on the world stage"). Donald Trump attended a NATO meeting this week and rather bizarrely talked about his military problems with "the Islamic Republic of Japan." He also, during a press conference, motioned to Volodymyr Zelenskyy (the leader of Ukraine) next to him and asked the reporters if they had any questions for "President Putin."

Please take a moment now and remember back when Joe Biden was president. Remember the endless stories about his mental and physical capacities? Either one of these mental slips ("Japan... Iran... what's the diff, right?") would have generated an absolute flood of news stories with pundits opining about whether Biden was all there or not. With Trump, these things weren't even mentioned by most media sources.

Also, in the midst of ranting (once again) about not being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, Trump claimed that in one of the "eight" wars he ended (between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda) "about 15 million people had their heads chopped off." There is no evidence that that many people died in the conflict, and even less that that many people were beheaded. Once again, the American media simply let this bizarre claim go by without even reporting on it (much less questioning it).

This double standard has always surrounded Donald Trump, but it seems to be getting worse. At this point, one wonders what he would have to say -- how completely crazy a statement he would have to make -- before the media even wakes up and notices.

Again, for reference, please compare all of this to how the media treated Joe Biden.

We seem to be in for an extended period of Trump deteriorating before our very eyes while no one in the media even blinks, much less points it out. This deterioration is both physical and mental, but none of it is deemed newsworthy. And Republicans in Congress can just disappear into a hospital with no public explanation and the mainstream media snoozes on the story.

As mentioned, there are many double standards when it comes to the media's treatment of Republicans and Democrats -- including an enormous one on sexual scandals (as evidenced by the disconnect between the treatment of Graham Platner and Donald Trump on the issue). But the double standard on medical situations seems to be getting worse right now -- right when the public could really use some actual reporting on the facts of the matter.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant