Frank: Well, the stench itself is unbearable. But let’s see about the hunting. I’d urge everyone to read the authoritative, dispassionate analysis of “his long-running project to erode public faith in elections” that our colleagues Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman wrote this week. And to revisit the last minutes of Trump’s “Meet the Press” interview with Kristen Welker, when he stormed off. It’s telling that he sat there calmly enough through her mentions of his broken promise not to start wars and of stratospheric gas prices, but when she pushed back on his bogus claims that the 2020 election was stolen, that Jan. 6 rioters were set up by the F.B.I. and that Democrats are rigging this year’s contests, he freaked out. Melted down. We’re talking Wicked-Witch-of-the-West-caliber melting.
Bret: You’re pointing to the real damage caused by Trump, which isn’t that he’s going to inflict a catastrophe but rather that he’s going to corrode the invisible bonds of trust that keep a republic like ours together. Then again, it would help if we could call an election in hours, rather than wait days or potentially weeks for the ballots to be counted, like in Los Angeles. Democrats could do their own part in restoring trust in elections by ending the practice of ballot harvesting — letting third parties like labor unions collect and return ballots — and insisting that late-arriving votes won’t get counted.
Frank: We indeed need to recognize that there are current voting practices that confuse people — slow counting and delayed results are prime examples, as The Times’s editorial board just commendably recognized — and that there’s a climate of profound distrust in this country that compels us to make things simpler, clearer, faster. You and I have found a point of agreement here!
Bret: Uh-oh.
Frank: I bet we can also agree, Bret, on an inspiring recent article by another Times colleague, David Waldstein, about Earl “the Pearl” Monroe, a key part of the New York Knicks’ championship in 1973 — which was the last time the team won it all. He played through injuries and was physically ravaged by the sport. Now 81, he lives in chronic pain. But he refuses to complain about that.
Our country is all grievance all the time. And this man is all gratitude.
Bret: And speaking of gratitude, our readers shouldn’t miss Amelia Nierenberg’s and Ségolène Le Stradic’s moving and fascinating obituary in The Times for Marjane Satrapi, author of the graphic memoir “Persepolis,” who died much too soon at the age of 56. The blockbuster memoir was a chronicle of her nightmare childhood under the totalitarian religious despotism of the mullahs. What I didn’t know is that Satrapi also directed mainstream feature films, was an acclaimed painter, wrote children’s books and basically demonstrated how absolutely amazing Iran’s women are and will be, the moment they’re finally set free.
