Donald Trump lives; Secret Service agents foiled what seemed the second design on the presidential candidate’s life while he golfed along the Trump International Golf Club course in West Palm Beach, the same green on which he reportedly won the Club, Senior Club, and Super Senior Championships earlier this year; “I really wanted to finish the hole,” Sean Hannity reported the former president saying of his aborted game after the assassination attempt.1 2 3 4 5 6 Trump later promised in an email that he would “NEVER SURRENDER,” but implied that he would need swift donations in order to keep his word.7 After failing to secure Taylor Swift’s endorsement, which went to Vice President Kamala Harris instead (“I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!” he wrote online), Trump was found to be in violation of musical copyright, having used Eddy Grant’s “Electric Avenue” in a campaign video without permission.8 9 10 Upon being seen, on September 11, in the company of the 9/11 skeptic Laura Loomer, Trump denied knowledge of her conspiracy theory that the event was “an inside job,” but defended her right to say so, calling Loomer a “free spirit” who “has to say what she wants.”11 “Tomorrow I’m doing 9/11,” President Joe Biden told reporters, appearing to suggest that he would either reprise or commemorate the attacks on the World Trade Center; the remark was “quite a flippant” one, said the widow of one 9/11 casualty; “I don’t remember my name … I’m slow,” Biden said to a group of Pennsylvanians on September 11, one of whom called him an “old fart.”12 13 14
Haitian residents of Springfield, Ohio, have had their windows smashed and acid thrown on their belongings after Trump suggested that they consume cats and dogs; the city itself received several bomb threats to a number of its municipal buildings in the days following his comments; “If I have to create stories,” confessed Trump’s vice presidential running mate, JD Vance, an originator of the claim, now debunked, about migrant and specifically Haitian culinary habits, “then that’s what I’m going to do.”15 16 17 18 19 The FX TV show The Bear, about the culinary aspirations of Chicago restaurateurs, lost the Best Comedy Emmy; the displaced residents of Big Bear Valley, California, returned to their smoldering homes; and a Serbian influencer narrowly escaped a mauling after hiding in a bear’s den.20 21 22 Hacks, HBO’s TV show about a septuagenarian comedienne, won Best Comedy at the Emmys, and a teen hacker was arrested in London for snarling transportation systems.23 24 A New York City police officer was shot in the line of duty while attempting to apprehend a fare evader in the subway station, though the scofflaw he pursued had no firearm; the gunfire that wounded him was that of another police officer, whose friendly fire New York City Mayor Eric Adams nonetheless attributed to the fare dodger, who was himself shot many times over, apprehended, and arrested for failing to furnish $2.90 for his fare; two other civilians were injured in the encounter, and “everyone who was struck this afternoon, we believe, was hit by our officers,” said the NYPD Chief of Department, Jeffrey Maddrey.25 26 27 28
The University of California, Berkeley is seeking buyers for at least one of its rifles and another of its submachine guns, and announced its intent to shore up its armory of assault weapons with a stockpile of munitions; United States officials denied, even after sanctioning 16 senior Venezuelan government officials, that the CIA conspired to kill Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and destabilize his government, which, in uncovering what seemed to be the plot against Maduro, seized more than 400 rifles of U.S. origin.29 30 31 “The Mutant,” a Brobdingnagian Belarusian man christened the world’s “most monstrous” bodybuilder, died of a heart attack, a New England town celebrated its being the birthplace of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, New York magazine clarified that it does not condone harm to animals, a jogger in Malaysia was overrun, swarmed, and mauled by a romp of marauding otters that then fled the scene of the crime, and an infantile pygmy hippopotamus took Thailand by storm; the English transliteration of her name, Moo Deng, would be “bouncy pig” or “pork patty.”32 33 34 35 —Lake Micah
