Greetings and welcome to Saturday, May 24, 2026. It’s National Asparagus Day, National Escargot Day (Ummm, ewwwww), National Scavenger Hunt Day, National Caterers Appreciation Day, Aviation Maintenance Technician Day, and World Schizophrenia Awareness Day. It’s also Pentecost — a Christian observance celebrating the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles following the Easter season.
Today in History:
1764: Samuel Adams writes instructions for the Boston Town Meeting opposing the Sugar Act, laying the groundwork for colonial resistance to taxation without representation.
1775: John Hancock is unanimously elected president of the Continental Congress.
1830: “Mary Had a Little Lamb” by Sarah Josepha Hale is first published by Boston firm Marsh, Capen & Lyon.
1844: Samuel Morse taps out “What hath God wrought” in the world’s first telegraph message: ….. .- – …. …. .- – …. –. — -.. .– .-
1883: The Brooklyn Bridge is opened by President Chester A. Arthur and New York Gov. Grover Cleveland.
1915: Thomas Edison invents the telescribe to record telephone conversations.
1931: The first air-conditioned train is introduced on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.
1944: Icelandic voters sever all ties with Denmark.
1954: IBM announces a vacuum tube “electronic” brain that could perform 10 million operations an hour.
1964: The Beatles’ fourth appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show features an interview and a pre-recorded performance of “You Can’t Do That.”
1969: “Sugar, Sugar” single released by cartoon band The Archies (Billboard Song of the Year, 1969).
1980: Iran rejects a call from the World Court to release U.S. hostages.
1987: Golden Gate Bridge 50th anniversary: More than 800,000 people show up, and 300,000 walk on the bridge at the same time; the span temporarily flattens from the weight (San Francisco, California).
Birthdays Today Include: Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit, physicist, inventor, and scientific instrument maker who invented the thermometer and the Fahrenheit scale; Queen Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom and Ireland (1837–1901); Samuel I. Newhouse Sr., businessman and publisher (Parade, Vogue, Glamour); Jane Byrne, politician (50th mayor of Chicago, 1979–83); Tommy Chong, comedian (Cheech & Chong); Bob Dylan, singer-songwriter; Tony Valentino, rock guitarist (The Standells — “Dirty Water”); Gary Burghoff (M*A*S*H (the film); M*A*S*H, 1972-79 , 1972–79 — “Cpl. Walter ‘Radar’ O’Reilly”); Patti LaBelle, pop and R&B singer; Priscilla Presley, actress (Dallas, The Naked Gun) and wife of Elvis; “Waddy” Wachtel, session guitarist, composer, and record producer (Warren Zevon, Stevie Nicks, James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt, Jackson Browne); and Albert Bouchard, musician, singer, and songwriter (Blue Öyster Cult — “Don’t Fear the Reaper”).
If today’s your day, you’ve got a good day for it. Have a happy one.
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By now, you’ll have heard about the mentally troubled individual who opened fire on a White House checkpoint yesterday. Our Matt Margolis was covering it before the echo died. I knew about the situation but chose not to write about it — as I’ve mentioned before, I tend to avoid developing stories, preferring to wait until some of the dust settles. Matt’s far better at that kind of thing than I am, anyway. At this point, though, far fewer questions remain unanswered, and I’ve had time to think it through. I spent a goodly chunk of last night, into the wee hours, sorting this stuff out. So, strap in.
A crazed gunman who believed he was Jesus Christ pulled out a revolver and opened fire outside the White House Saturday night, before he was quickly taken down by a barrage of shots from the Secret Service, sources said.
Nasire Best, 21, fired at a checkpoint at about 6:10 p.m. after being seen pacing in a strange manner up and down 17th St. Northwest, sources told The Post. He only got off a few shots before he was shot and killed in a hail of bullets from federal officers.
According to a different New York Post report:
Best, who believed he was Jesus Christ, was well known by the Secret Service for repeatedly loitering around various entry posts and had violated a previous court order to stay away from the White House.
He was busted back in July 2025 when he attempted to cross a White House checkpoint without authorization, failing to listen to officers’ orders and claiming he was Jesus Christ as he begged to be arrested, the Associated Press reported.
[…]
A “Pretrial Stay Away Order” was issued against Best, ordering him to stay away from the White House.
A bench warrant was issued in August after a notice of “noncompliance” against Best, who didn’t appear for a subsequent hearing.
CNN reports that Best maintained a social media presence in which he threatened violence against President Trump in one post and declared himself “the son of God” in another.
We also find, thanks to a Fox Local DC report, that the 21-year-old Best had racked up multiple run-ins with the Secret Service. Agents detained him last June for flagging them down and making threats, then picked him up again two weeks later for entering a restricted area. He was also under a court order to stay away from the White House — a court order that he obviously ignored.
A separate CNN report dug up court records showing that, at some point, someone committed Best to a psychiatric hospital against his will, and that local police arrested him on a separate occasion while he was busy claiming to be Jesus Christ. Multiple outlets have confirmed he had a documented mental health history.
So, tat’s what we know for now. This still qualifies as a developing story, and I expect more details to surface soon — possibly even later today.
Even without whatever else is coming, one question already stands out and is the focus of my comments today. It demands an answer: Why was this man not in a psychiatric hospital?
Tellingly, that’s the very same question I raised about every other assassination attempt on the president’s life — and, obviously, that’s exactly what this could have become.
From the 50,000-foot level — which, sure, let’s zoom way out so the pattern looks nicer — one might charitably note that Trump isn’t exactly breaking new ground here. Presidential assassins and would-be assassins have historically been a rogues’ gallery of the mentally unstable and deeply troubled: Hinckley shot Reagan, Squeaky Fromme and Sara Jane Moore took their swings at Ford, Arthur Bremer went after George Wallace, Booth turned Lincoln’s night at the theater into something considerably less enjoyable, and Oswald had a personal history that was, to put it diplomatically, a lot.
So yes, unhinged people targeting the powerful — and usually, it’s people who aren’t Democrats who become the targets — none of this is a new phenomenon.
And yet, one cannot exactly ignore that Trump has been collecting assassination attempts at a pace that would make the Secret Service agents charged with his safety age in dog years. Nasire Best is simply the latest entry in what has become a genuinely remarkable streak. Oddly, it’s one the Democrats have failed to remark on, other than those few seriously affected enough by their Trump derangement syndrome to be actively cheering such events.
Even to the casual observer, the general profile of the political assassin tends to cluster around a familiar type: isolated, marinating in grievances, often—indeed, usually—mentally unstable, and radicalized by whatever media ecosystem told them their misery had a very specific human cause.
I mean, let’s think about this. Grievance-driven. Mentally unstable. Radicalized by a media apparatus that told them violence was not just justified, but desperately needed—that Trump is a fascist, that he’s a threat to democracy, that he’s responsible for all the evil in the world, and on and on. Is all of this starting to sound familiar?
The party affiliation I will leave as an exercise only for people who have been either gloriously stoned or unconscious since 2016. For most of us, it’s not a question at all.
Thought of the Day: It’s day 2250 of the 15 days to stop the spread.
VIP Members: Hit that heart on the lower left, and let’s hear your comments on this one. I’d love to hear them.
Be safe this weekend, please. I’ll see you here tomorrow.
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