While walking into the White House Wednesday morning, I passed the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, as usual, and saw a family taking pictures.
"Who was Dwight Eisenhower?" a cherubic teenager asked.
Times change, I know. But seriously?
When I first came to the White House in the 1980s, Eisenhower wasn't an unknown, and AIDS wasn't a thing. A reporter named Lester Kinsolving, a right-wing radio host and former Episcopal priest, changed that when he asked Larry Speakes, Reagan's deputy press secretary, about the rising number of AIDS-related deaths. Speakes privately called him "a fairy."
Kinsolving also asked a whole variety of other questions, on topics including but not limited to UFOs, aliens, Bigfoot and other topics that drew chuckles from reporters and disdain from Speakes and subsequent press secretaries at the White House.
One press secretary, when asked why he called on Kinsolving so often during briefings, reportedly said, "Because he makes the rest of you look like idiots."
On Monday in the Brady Briefing Room, a reporter's question about unexplained aerial phenomena, or UAPs (the new term for UFOs) was taken seriously by National Security Council spokesman John Kirby, a former Navy admiral who definitely knows who Eisenhower was. He also knows what UAP means, and answered the question straight on. "I mean, some of these phenomena, we know, have already had an impact on our training ranges … when pilots are out trying to do training in the air and they see these things, they're not sure what they are, and it can have an impact on their ability to perfect their skills," Kirby explained.
That is a shocking change from the formal stance of the Air Force at the end of Project Blue Book, when Pentagon generals dismissed the UFO phenomenon as hoaxes, reflections of the planet Venus and/or "swamp gas." "Now, we're not saying what they are or what they're not," Kirby continued. "We're saying that there's something our pilots are seeing. We're saying it has had an effect on some of our training operations. And so we want to get to the bottom of it. We want to understand it better."
That's a historic change. Our government admits that UAPs are real — whatever they actually are.
That's not the only change brought about by time. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre condemned Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s antisemitic remarks about the COVID pandemic, which surfaced in a recent video. "The claim made on that tape is false. It is vile," said Jean-Pierre, adding that the lies could "put our fellow Americans in danger." Kennedy's "assertion that COVID was genetically engineered to spare Jewish and Chinese people is deeply offensive and incredibly dangerous," she concluded.
Several members of the Kennedy family have also denounced the video. How times have changed — and my, how far that famous last name has fallen.
Finally, Kirby dropped a bomb when asked why abortion had anything to do with military readiness — this question came because Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama (and there's a name!) began blocking military postings because of the Pentagon's stance on allowing service members to have abortions — and to travel out of state to do so, if necessary. It was an obvious question that previously had not been asked. Kirby was succinct:
One in five members of the U.S. military are women. Twenty percent. We're an all-volunteer force. Nobody is forcing you to sign up and go. People volunteer to go. You raise your right hand and you say, "I'm going to do this for a few years or even for my life, and it might cost me my life to do it.
And when you sign up and you make that contract, you have every right to expect that the organization — in this case, the military — is going to take care of you, and they're going to take care of your families, and they're going to make sure that you can serve with dignity and respect no matter who you are or who you love or how you worship or don't.
How times have changed.
The military is a progressive force in our society? Who saw that coming? And as Kirby pointed out, the change in so many state abortion laws following the reversal of Roe v. Wade is already discouraging some from continuing service.
"So, if you don't think there's going to be a retention and a morale issue, think again," he said. "It's already having that effect. What happens if you get assigned to a state like Alabama, which has a pretty restrictive abortion law in place, and you're concerned about your reproductive care? What do you do? Do you say 'no' and get out? Well, some people may decide to do that. And what does that mean? That means we lose talent — important talent."
It was an eye-opening and significant statement. Kirby and Jean-Pierre also opened a few eyes by talking about the Russian naval blockade that's preventing grain shipments out of the Black Sea.
How times have changed there. Russia thought it would overrun Ukraine in a few days — and 16 months later the Biden administration is dealing with a grain blockade and the fallout from the Wagner Group mutiny. When I asked if those two events were a sign of Russian weakness, Kirby said he did not know, but that Putin's actions were "completely irresponsible" and "reckless."
In another indication of how times change, record heat was recorded across the planet this week, bringing with it mounting deaths and collapsing infrastructure. Meanwhile, Rep. Ted Lieu of California came to the White House to talk about cyber-security, and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont showed up to talk about unions and strikes — and also to recommend busting up media monopolies.
"I believe one of the things we have right now is more concentration of ownership in virtually every sector of American society," Sanders said. "You have three Wall Street firms combined that are major stockholders in 95 percent of the major corporations in America."
OK, so I asked the question that provoked that response — but it needed to be asked.
Finally, the president of Israel, Isaac Herzog — who is a largely ceremonial figure, not the head of government — showed up at the White House on Tuesday. He didn't answer when I shouted, "Will there be peace in Palestine?" as he got out of the car. But I was asked to move by a reporter who wanted to take a selfie.
Since Joe Biden apparently no longer does press conferences of any type, his "bilat" pool spray — that is, his brief appearance before the press pool alongside Herzog — was a raucous affair, with shouted questions, pandemonium and all the decorum of feeding time in the primate house.
While that was going on, Vice President Harris was hosting a roundtable discussion with attorneys general from several states about the life-threatening nationwide problem of fentanyl overdose.
Look at how times have changed, and how dramatic and historic this week's news has been:
A potential alien incursion, life-threatening climate change, a war in Ukraine with a dangerous chance of expansion, peace in the Middle East, cyber-security concerns, American global military readiness, life-threatening drug epidemics and a woman's right to choose her health care — and none of those things topped the news.
What still takes up the most oxygen in the room? Donald Trump.
The former president got one of those "target letters" from Jack Smith. Again. And went nuts. Again. Where's Forrest Gump when you need him?
Trump claimed in an email to his supporters that he is "our only hope" and that the deep state was coming to get him because Biden is a crook and Donald is outdistancing him in the polls.
But Trump is no Obi-Wan Kenobi. Not only is he not our only hope, his hope for eluding the long arm of the law is rapidly dwindling.
Trump has topped the news so far this week because, along with that letter from Smith about the federal investigation into the Jan. 6 insurrection, the Georgia Supreme Court (filled with Republicans) unanimously rejected Trump's appeal to stop Atlanta District Attorney Fani Willis from indicting him for his efforts to overturn the presidential election in Georgia. At almost the same time, the 16 folks who signed up as fake Trump electors in Michigan found themselves under indictment, and finally, on Wednesday morning, Trump found out that he can't file for a new trial in the E. Jean Carroll civil case. (So the verdict in that trial, which found Trump liable for sexually assaulting Carroll and then defaming her, will stand — and cost him $5 million.)
Times change. Donald Trump does not.
By Wednesday evening, most reporters across the country — the few that are left after corporate downsizing — were mainlining caffeine and chugging amphetamines to keep up. I'll bet someone wished they hadn't left their little baggie at the White House.
And while Trump continues to frame the argument and take up all the oxygen in the room, there are signs the Democrats may be finding their footing heading into campaign season — and they might have Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene to thank for that.
That has nothing to do with the hideous display she made in a congressional hearing Wednesday, when she displayed lurid photos of Hunter Biden with an alleged prostitute and, as Speaker Kevin McCarthy's chief congressional troll, tried to drag the administration hard.
But Times have changed. Trump would have had a massive fit and threatened widespread revenge on the deep state if anyone had tried to go after one of his sons that way.
Joe Biden took a different approach. As he welcomed members of Congress to the White House for the congressional picnic, he called McCarthy his friend. "I don't want to hurt his reputation, but I actually like him," Biden told the gathered crowd.
As for the Republicans who continue to hound him and his son, he showed incredible reserve: "You know, for all the disagreements we have, you gotta remember at the end of the day we're friends," he said. "That's how it's always been. You gotta be friends with each other. I mean, I think we're getting there."
Times definitely change.
After all, despite MTG's demeaning and classless act in Congress, who knew she was a Biden fan?
She recently gave a speech meant to be critical of Biden, and the president's re-election campaign has seized on it, not only agreeing with her, but using her words as narration in an ad that concludes with Biden saying, "I approve this message."
He certainly leaned into it, accepting the criticism and flipping the script to make clear that Greene's criticisms were actually endorsements of policies that benefit average Americans, embedded in social programs started by Franklin D. Roosevelt and enhanced by Lyndon Johnson.
During Monday's briefing, Jean-Pierre seemed to swallow a smile as she described how well Greene had framed the argument. "We agree with her all around on this. We are opposed to rural poverty. And the president is committed to protect Medicare and committed to protect Social Security, as you heard from him over and over again over the past several months," she said.
As tongue-in-cheek as the compliment to MTG was, it outlined the Democrats' ongoing problem. Republicans are better at framing arguments — even when those arguments benefit the Democrats. Even in its stupidity, the GOP is better at messaging than the Democrats.
Oh, dare to dream: What if the GOP concentrated on things that truly matter? What if Kevin McCarthy and his MTG sock puppet talked about the prolonged, unrelenting heatwave that has scorched the planet for a record-breaking three weeks? Then, just maybe, the world might begin to address a problem so severe that scientists say there is no such thing as a "new normal." They have no clue what the future will hold because our climate is so chaotic. This summer is "just the beginning," scientists are saying, and as long as global temperatures continue to rise the world has to brace for escalating impacts.
Maybe that's why the Pentagon is taking UAPs seriously. Some of the rich and famous might be looking to hitch a ride out of town, away from the new abnormal.
And if that happens, I'd still expect to see Donald Trump at the top of the news — probably raging about how the deep state left him behind as it took off in those flying saucers.
