Anthony L. Hall

Gone fishing...

Surely a $50-million wedding already reeked of Marie Antoinette excess. But 20-minute vows, each, take the cake. I give this marriage six years tops. Because this couple doth perform too much, methinks. And no matter the drugs, nobody can keep it up that long.

Lumumba Vea stood motionless in the stands, formally suited in DR Congo’s colors, turning World Cup spectacle into anti-colonial witness. His silent tribute to Patrice Lumumba shamed Belgium for its colonial crimes. ipinionsdaily.substack.com/p/lumumba-ve...

Because nothing says Independence Day quite like Trump marking it with a “businesslike” call from Putin. The “Russia, Russia, Russia hoax” was always projection. This treasonous oaf takes counsel from a kleptocratic Russian autocrat, then trolls fellow Americans as enemies of the state.

Because, when it comes to race in America, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Sure, they wear masks instead of hoods, khakis instead of robes, and carry flags instead of crosses. But a racist group marching in different uniforms is still a racist group.

Say what you will about Lindsey Vonn’s comeback, at least she showed there was still elite performance left if she could stay healthy. Serena’s comeback has shown the opposite. The losing streak that drove her into retirement wasn’t a glitch. It was the verdict. She should have stayed retired.

Lady Liberty takes America 250 to therapy and comes away with the only diagnosis that matters. America is tired, tested, and frayed, but not finished. ipinionsdaily.substack.com/p/happy-four...

Yet, like Trump, Fox has such contempt for MAGA suckers that it expects them to ignore their lying eyes and believe Trump’s fair is teeming with people. Empty lawns, fake enthusiasm, and televised gaslighting. Welcome to Freedom 250, brought to you by the Ministry of Truth.

America turns 250 as Trump turns July 4 celebrations into a cesspool of vanities. But Frederick Douglass, America’s ill-begotten Founding Son, still exposes the country’s original sin and its ongoing failure to honor the promise of equality. ipinionsdaily.substack.com/p/fourth-of-...

Ok, Ukraine. Tit for tat. Show Putin what you’ve got. But make it count where it hurts: his war machine, his oil, his airfields, his command centers, not civilians he can turn into propaganda.

This proves MAGA is to America what the Taliban is to Afghanistan. You'd better toe the party line or face the trolling executioners. Even Amy Coney Barrett becomes an apostate the moment she refuses to turn the Constitution into a Trump deportation decree.

Except that Trump’s bond with Natalie Harp is neither secret nor emotional. It's ego-boosting and sexually gratifying. The eager-to-please, I’ll-do-anything-you-want look she gives him makes Monica Lewinsky’s loving gaze at Clinton look like Jane Austen coyness. But Melania, have you no shame left?

Serena crashed out at Wimbledon after a comeback that looked more like box-office nostalgia and Ro branding than tennis. Emma withdrew again, turning even a real injury into another chapter in her post-US Open decline. Both humiliations were foretold. ipinionsdaily.substack.com/p/wimbledon-...

They are few and far between, but this is a SCOTUS ruling I agree with. Girls’ sports should be for girls only, not biological boys who identify as girls. That is not bigotry. It is basic fairness. Lia Thomas put the issue in the spotlight. Riley Gaines kept it there.

Putin probably sees this and thinks Stalin killed faster just to stay in power. He fancies himself Peter the Great, burning through Russian soldiers to reclaim lands lost when the Soviet Union collapsed. Two world wars, apparently, were footnotes to his imperial nostalgia.

Hey, Dems, condemn her rantings. But stop cannibalizing your own on GOP command. She’s fringe and not even in Congress. Trump is president. Your fringe has a candidate; theirs runs the country.

Kaitlan Collins has become the rare White House reporter who can rattle Trump with a follow-up question. Maggie Haberman praised her for it. But with Trump-adjacent media oligarchs circling CNN, that praise may read less like a tribute than a warning. ipinionsdaily.substack.com/p/cnns-kaitl...

Jillian Michaels keeps auditioning to be MAGA’s house gay, laundering homophobia as brave truth-telling. Pride wasn’t “hijacked” by drag queens and leather daddies. It was built by people MAGA would shove back into closets. The hijacker is Jillian’s own self-abnegation.

Call them trolls, but the complaint is fair. If a passenger can’t fit safely and fully in one seat, airlines should require or provide a second. What’s unfair is making the neighbor surrender paid-for space in silence just to prove everyone else is too polite to object.

Rain turning Trump’s tacky state fair into a muddy mess belongs to the same family of metaphors now defining his presidency as algae turning his renovation of the Reflecting Pool into a green, fetid swamp. Even Mother Nature seems determined to expose the rot beneath his gaudy pageantry.

Amazon Prime Day is just a genius business model to make Bezos richer by getting us to buy stuff we don’t need. Then we turn to Goodwill to clean up our shame. ipinionsdaily.substack.com/p/amazon-pri...

The Roberts Court handed Trump two immigration wins, blessing border cruelty and allowing him to target Haitian immigrants. This is the Robert Court’s version of the Taney Court’s Dred Scott decision, sanctioning racism with the force of law. ipinionsdaily.substack.com/p/supreme-co...

His loss is hardly shocking. He has the name, the charm, and the Camelot glow, but not enough of the discipline or political depth to turn nostalgia into votes. In fact, Camelot’s electoral magic has been fading for years. Maybe it died when JFK Jr.’s plane went down off Martha’s Vineyard...

Miller is the grotesque paradox of Trump's deportation regime. This self-hating Jew, this Judenrat, is the architect of immigration policies that echo the very machinery Jews once begged the world to recognize before it was too late. "They're taking my dream away," cries the migrant Anne Frank.

C’mon, Britain. If rich kids are too lazy to sit their own exams, jailing the tutor who helped them cheat is like jailing the prostitute while letting the johns walk free. These kids were always buying advantage. He just sent an invoice.

Mamdani’s New York sweep proves Democratic Socialists are doing more than making noise. They’re turning insurgent energy into institutional power, forcing establishment Democrats to confront Democratic replacement from within. ipinionsdaily.substack.com/p/mamdani-sh...

Given Trump’s notorious habit of mocking people’s looks, this lineup is rich. Steven Cheung, the pit bull he hired as his online troll, looks like the Bond villain Oddjob. And J.J. Cafaro, the pool guy he hired to fix the Reflecting Pool, looks like a cross between Gomez Addams and The Penguin.

Renaldo has become far more interested in looksmaxxing for online followers than playing for stadium fans. He’s like a hapless heavyweight blowing his load the night before the big fight. He couldn't even help Portugal past DR Congo. Today's match against Uzbekistan offers a chance at redemption

Brexit Britain has become Italy with worse weather and fewer excuses. Starmer is resigning because Labour decided his competence act had curdled into drift. But in this climate, Burnham could just as easily become Labour’s Liz Truss, with a premiership lasting no longer than a wilting cabbage.

Nostalgia isn’t about pining for the past. It’s about detoxing from a present that feels too synthetic, performative, and fake. From flip phones to dating-app burnout, the past is calling because the future got too creepy. ipinionsdaily.substack.com/p/nostalgia-...

Because this grandstanding, narcissistic oaf has to pretend Starmer’s collapse is all his doing. If Starmer is forced out, it’ll be partly because he spent too much of his premiership kissing Trump’s ass. And even now, Trump is trying to turn Starmer’s humiliation into another tribute to himself.

The memes of these two are priceless. But just imagine the world today if Obama-Hillary were as electable as Obama-Biden in 2008. Talk about missed opportunities...

The New Religion of Pickleball

Call it 'White Man’s Burden' meets 'Trading Places'. For one brief parade moment, this White Knicks player learned what far too many Black men know by experience: You can belong, earn your place, dress the part, and still be treated like a suspect who wandered in from the wrong side of town.

Trump stripped Juneteenth and MLK Day from the national parks' free-admission calendar while making his birthday a free-admission day. Meanwhile, Obama opened a monument to Black achievement as Trump wages war on Black history. That speaks volumes. ipinionsdaily.substack.com/p/trump-is-m...

Netanyahu thought Trump was the useful frog who would carry him across the Iran pond. Instead, Trump turned out to be the scorpion. Trump boasted about signing a denuclearization deal with North Korea, only for North Korea to end up with more nukes than ever. Iran seems bound to do even better.

Republicans savaged Obama for admitting abroad that America wasn't perfect. Now Trump trashes America for applause and brags that world leaders called us a weak laughingstock before him. He can't tell flattery from mockery. But the cowed GOP dare not condemn his brazen treachery.

Macron giving Trump a personalized bike at the G7 has to be elite trolling after Trump mocked the Macrons’ marriage over the slap heard around the world. Yes, the “senile” Biden he mocks could probably lap him before Trump finished blaming the pedals, Obama, and windmills for not getting started.

America once crushed Antigua for legalizing online gambling, preaching morality while destroying a Caribbean industry. Now Trump is hosting the same vice at the White House, dressed up as spectacle, sport, and profit. ipinionsdaily.substack.com/p/america-cr...

Trump boasts that "weaponization of the DOJ" got him elected. Now he's returning the favor. Nobody should doubt Newsom can out-martyr Trump. He doesn’t even want his own namesake inheriting MAGA. So yeah, Trump now seems hell-bent on helping Newsom get elected president.

Er, folks, this preening oaf handed out a no-bid contract for an “American flag blue” water makeover to a company called Green Water Solutions. But if you think that’s embarrassing, wait till his next no-bid contractor, Shoddy Construction, gets done “beautifying” the East Wing of the White House.

Rogan spent hours denouncing Trump’s UFC birthday spectacle, then showed up as ringmaster, holding the mic while a Hulk Hogan wannabe called Michelle Obama “a man” and MAGA guffawed. UFC cleanup is like toothpaste back in the tube. No self-respecting Black should give Rogan the time of day.

Trump’s Haiti policy exposes Washington’s oldest habit toward the world’s first Black republic. It outsources guilt, privatizes violence, and calls the invoice policy. The Shield of the Americas was never meant to shield Haiti. ipinionsdaily.substack.com/p/the-shield...

I hate to break it to you, but Trump is hell-bent on getting the last laugh. And he’ll do so by keeping that tarp up for the rest of his presidency, thumbing his petty nose at the judge and his critics. He’ll say it's for renovations he plans to “oversee” until the day he leaves office.

Patel crashing the men’s hockey gold-medal celebration was annoying. But Chalamet trying to make the Knicks’ NBA championship celebration about his Oscar drought takes the cake. Knicks fans waited decades for this. Timmy has been pining for a statue for about five minutes. Congrats, Knicks!

Delayed judicial orders read like corrections buried after a false story ran on the front page. By the time judges restore what Trump broke, the damage has already done its work. And all the king’s horses and all the king’s men can't keep up with his Humpty-Dumpty administration.

Trump’s birthday UFC spectacle on the White House lawn, complete with trash talk at the Lincoln Memorial, turned national symbols into props for vanity, vulgarity, and imperial decline. ipinionsdaily.substack.com/p/decline-an...

David Hockney was the prodigal son of Norman Rockwell, if Rockwell had fled into color, candor, California pools, and modern desire. He made domestic life shimmer without embalming it in nostalgia. His genius was turning sunlight, friendship, lust, and loneliness into pop art with a pulse. RIP.

Given the way America is humiliating the world for this World Cup, the world should boycott the LA 2028 Olympics. ipinionsdaily.substack.com/p/host-the-w...

For 53 years, Knicks fans mistook hope for a diagnosis. Then, in Game 4 of the NBA Finals, they erased a 29-point deficit, the greatest comeback in Finals history. One more win... The Spurs learned talent announces the future, but composure decides the present.