Good morning. It is November 13th. It is a cold, bright morning in New York City. The dryness has clamped down yet again, and this is your Indignity Morning Podcast. I'm your host, Tom Scocca, taking a look at the day and the news. 

Donald Trump continued building his prospective administration by announcing last night that he wants to nominate Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense. Hegseth would be put in charge of the world's largest, most powerful and most expensive military based on his performance as a TV host on Fox News, whose most visible public engagement on military policy was crusading to convince Trump in his previous term to pardon the war criminal Eddie Gallagher, a former Navy SEAL whose misconduct was so vicious and egregious that his own colleagues turned him in, and testified in favor of locking him up. He's also an outspoken opponent of diversity who said publicly within the past week that women should be banned from combat roles. The writer, Jeff Charlotte, who documents American extremism, picked up a copy of a Hegseth's book, The War on Warriors, in which he describes the American left, a group that includes Barack Obama, as America's domestic enemies at home, who seized power while patriots were fighting enemies abroad, and who uses the language of counterinsurgency to talk about liberating America's city centers from progressive stormtroopers. This all sounds deranged and absurd, but the things that people like Pete Hegseth say on TV or publish in their books to excite and whip up their fans form the fabric of reality for Donald Trump. Trump already manifested this in the Gallagher pardon. Gallagher was a real war criminal who committed real acts of butchery, but Hegseth turned him into a fictional and symbolic character on TV to convince Trump to use real presidential powers on his behalf. The whole thing is like pro wrestling in reverse, talking bombastically about real lawlessness and violence to create the impression it's all just a show. 

On the front of this morning's New York Times, in the lead news column, the headline is “At Trump's side, Musk puts stamp on next US era. Uncle at Mar-a-Lago. Richest man's role in the transition surprises even some allies. In nearly every meeting that president-elect Donald J. Trump holds at Mar-a-Lago,” the Times writes, “alongside him is someone who has been elected or appointed to nothing and only a few months ago had no meaningful relationship with him.” Paragraph break. “Elon Musk.” Period. Paragraph break. “The world's richest person, the Times continues, has ascended to a position of extraordinary unofficial influence in Mr. Trump's transition process, playing a role that makes him indisputably America's most powerful private citizen. He has sat in on nearly every job interview with the Trump team and bonded with the Trump family, and he is trying to install his Silicon Valley friends in plum positions in the next administration.” Why, it's almost as if Donald Trump traded access and influence over his executive powers for huge amounts of cash, campaign support, and relentless flattery. Who could possibly have seen things going that way? 

Down at the end, there's a strange scrap of stray reporting. As the story turns, after a roundup of all the other Silicon Valley creeps who are planning to help steer the federal government in the next four years to the subject of Peter Thiel, Mr. Thiel, for his part, the Times writes, “should be riding high after the rise of JD Vance, his one-time protege. But despite their relationship, the mood at his election night party last week in Los Angeles was relatively subdued, according to people who were there, though it began on West Coast time and unfolded with the outcome of the night mostly clear. Mr. Thiel, like Mr. Musk, is a fan of gimmicks and lavish parties, and he paid homage to the concluding campaign. Bartenders were dressed in Trump wigs and the food harked back to one of Mr. Trump's campaign photo ops, McDonald’s,” challenging his teen blood infusions with a big dose of cholesterol. Not that it's really possible to imagine Peter Thiel touching the hamburgers he serves to the masses. 

Next to the Musk story in the second news column, “Many women see a setback. Many disagree.” Really working the meter there. “Harris's loss illustrates deep rooted divide.” Time for some deep thinking about gender and politics. “In many ways,” the Times writes, “election results seem to contradict generations of progress made toward women's equality and for feminism generally. Women,” the Times continues, “now find themselves in a country where Mr. Trump won decisively with a campaign that pitted men against women, sitting down with podcasters who trade in sexism and choosing a running mate who had criticized single women as childless cat ladies. Mr. Trump took credit for appointing the Supreme Court justices who overturned the constitutional right to abortion, but appeared to pay little price at the polls.” You have to take the jump before you get to the part about him being a racist, that is, being found liable for the sexual abuse of E. Jean Carroll, the former magazine writer. But how did this happen? “Exit polls, the Times reports, show that 45 % of female voters cast ballots for Mr. Trump and that far more white women voted for Mr. Trump than black women.” What do you know? White women voted for whiteness first, the same way they always do. 

The Washington Post exit polling supplies some numbers to help illuminate what it means when the Times writes that far more white women voted for Mr. Trump than black women. The post polling has Trump collecting 7 % of black women's vote to 91 % for Harris, while white women voted for Trump 53 to 45. 

The rest of the top of page one is a four-column photograph of Palestinians fleeing from one part of North Gaza to another as smoke rises behind them. The headline is “Israel Renews Brutal Cycle of War in North Gaza.” And this story describes how the Israeli army is circling back to smash territory and expel residents where they smashed the territory and expelled the residents last year. The Times writes, “here are so many corpses, multiple residents and a local doctor said, that stray dogs have begun to pick at them in the streets.” The return of fighting to the northernmost reaches of the Gaza Strip, the Times writes, “shows how Israel's approach has led to a bloody carousel of sorts, with the Israeli military chasing Hamas fighters in circles and civilians often caught in the crossfire.” The story continues to say, “this cyclical combat reflects Israel's murky strategy and a war in its 14th month. Israel has eliminated much of Hamas's senior military leadership, killed thousands of its fighters and collapsed many of its tunnels. Yet Israel has shown no sign of letting up. That is in part,” the Times continues, “because Israel has avoided holding much ground and Benjamin Netanyahu has not committed to a post-war plan. Hamas has filled the power vacuum.” At some point, and that point came a long time ago in Gaza, what you do in the war is your strategy for the war. If Netanyahu wanted to stabilize North Gaza and move toward a post-war arrangement, then he would have done it. And if he wanted to just keep killing Palestinian civilians over and over again, then he would have done just what he's doing. The bloody carousel isn't a side effect of Israel's execution of its plan. The bloody carousel is the whole plan. And Joe Biden has long since forfeited any claim to be trying to steer Israel toward any other plan. The war is the war. 

And down at the bottom of the page, the Archbishop of Canterbury has resigned. After, the Times writes, “a damning report concluded that he had failed to pursue a proper investigation into claims of widespread abuse of boys and young men decades ago at Christian summer camps.” That's the brand. No pope, but otherwise as close to the Catholic Church as possible in every respect. 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 Mack Scocca-Ho. Our work is sustained by the contributions through subscriptions and the tip button of you, our faithful listeners. And barring something unforeseen, we will talk again tomorrow.