Good morning. It's September 16th. It's a pleasant morning in New York City, not really committed to feeling like either summer or fall, and this is your Indignity Morning podcast. I'm your host, Tom Scocca, taking a look at the day and the news. 

The lead story on the front of this morning's New York Times, two columns wide, is “Trump Unharmed After Shots Fired at Florida Course.” The subhead is “A suspect is arrested in what the FBI calls an assassination attempt.” That is not entirely accurate. What the FBI said is it appears to be an attempted assassination, which seems like a subtle but meaningful semantic distinction,  the person was allegedly lurking in the bushes alongside Trump's golf course, with an assault rifle and a scope, along with backpacks, full of ceramic tile and a GoPro camera, but the gunshots in the headline were fired by the Secret Service while Trump was still one hole away and the FBI's phrasing seems to reflect those facts. From the available information, it sounds like the person arrested had set up an ambush in an attempted assassination but got caught before he could make an assassination attempt on Trump. 

The FBI's specific statement is included in the story which features five bylines, six additional reporting credits, and one researcher credit, for 12 people on a 20 paragraph story. The only visible detail that separates this mass deployment of personnel from just what the wire services got is that the accused gunman or would-be gunman, Ryan Wesley Routh, was, the Times writes, “interviewed by the New York Times in 2023 for an article about Americans volunteering to aid the war effort in Ukraine. Mr. Routh, who had no military experience, said that he had traveled to the country after Russia's invasion in 2022 to recruit Afghan soldiers to fight there. He told the Times he once visited Washington to meet with politicians to strengthen support for Ukraine. ‘I’m just a U .S. citizen that's helping out.’” Online, the Times dived a little deeper into that interview and into the suspect's overall history, saying “he spoke with the self-assuredness of a seasoned diplomat.” But also, when an American foreign fighter seemed to talk down to him in a Facebook message he shared with the New York Times, Mr. Routh said “he needs to be shot.” 

The story also picks up on the news that a man with the same name and similar age as Mr. Ralph was arrested in 2002 in Greensboro, North Carolina, after barricading himself inside a building with a fully automatic weapon, according to the Greensboro News and Record newspaper. Coverage elsewhere didn't even seem to hedge that point, and yet, somehow he ended up in possession of an assault rifle yesterday. 

Breaking news in New York City this morning, if I can clear away the pop-ups and the unfurling menu bars from the New York Post's website and hold them at bay, “Two retired New York City Fire Department fire chiefs,” the post writes, and then a Range Rover ad covers it up, and I have to go make that go away, “were arrested by the feds early Monday for allegedly accepting more than $190 ,000 in bribes to allegedly help fast-track safety inspections and reviews, officials said. They are accused of soliciting and accepting tens of thousands of dollars in bribe pay”—and now an autoplay video of JD Vance has covered the story. Right, okay, “tens of thousands of dollars in bribe payments in exchange for providing preferential treatment to certain individuals and companies with matters pending before the FDNY from 2021 through 2023.” Is this connected with the allegations that Mayor Eric Adams fast-tracked fire safety approval for the Turkish consulate while collecting airfare, hospitality, and other perks from the Turkish government? Maybe we will learn more later, but that brings us back to the front of the Times, “Adams's Crises Muddle Agenda and Re-election,” an odd choice of a placeholder headline written in generalities rather than highlighting what was the freshest Adams news at press time that his chief legal advisor, Lisa Zornberg, resigned suddenly on Saturday. That gets its own standalone story inside the paper while the front page piece focuses on different ways you can type “Eric Adams is in trouble.” The chronology or explanation is a little goofym the story says on Tuesday, “the mayor's handpicked choice to become the city's top lawyer withdrew his nomination, sparing himself and the mayor from a public rejection.” And then it continues “two days later, a separate embarrassment emerged. Mr. Adams's police commissioner, Edward A. Caban resigned under duress. Mr. Caban and his twin brother are under federal investigation, one of four federal inquiries circling the highest levels of the Adams administration.” A “separate embarrassment emerged” isn't really right there. There was a whole public sub embarrassment prior to that in which the news broke that Adams was trying to get Caban to leave and he wouldn't. So really, if anything, the resignation made that part less embarrassing. 

On the top left of page one, “How 3 women tackle doubts over elections, culling Georgia voters or registering them.” Another legitimately deranged piece of packaging from the Times, on some very good reporting by Eli Saslow about how one woman in Georgia and a group of activists she leads are trying to strip as many people off the voter rolls as possible as part of the Republican effort to subvert voting in Georgia to keep Donald Trump from losing there again. And then how another woman has responded to the voter harassment by organizing to protect and restore people's voting rights. The third woman in the headline is, I guess, the voting registrar whose office is overstretched and having trouble administering the election because of all the work brought on by the Republican anti-voter campaign. It is a great story, but it is not at all about doubts over elections. It's about a coordinated effort to sabotage democracy and the effort to fight back. 

With lower stakes, but still dubious framing, there's a front page feature about an online trend. “Over the past few months,” the Times writes, “influencers and content creators have flooded TikTok, Instagram, and other social media sites with pictures and videos of aesthetically pleasing airport trays. Yes, those gray, plastic bins in which you put your shoes, keys, laptop, and other personal items.” Just as the reader's blood pressure starts spiking at the prospect of people holding up the TSA line to create an artful composition for the x-ray machine, the story talks to one of the people who, it says, “posted a video of her own aesthetic trays in July.” Yes, the Times is now using the word “aesthetic” in the incredibly vile and vacuous way that influencers do it. But anyway, the Times writes, “She arranged them on the floor of her apartment's living room in Chicago.” Another person, it says, “took photos simulating the travel trays last summer to sell vintage shoes.” So, two of the examples are people who didn't do them in airports at all. Two others describe doing it after going through the security line. It seems like reading this story wasted more of my time than the people in the story wasted of other people's time. 

That is the news. Thank you for listening. The Indignity Morning Podcast is edited by Joe MacLeod. The theme song is composed and performed by Max Scocca-Ho. Your paid subscriptions to Indignity are what keep us going. That, and now the little tip button. So please send us some money if you can, and if all goes well, we will talk again tomorrow.