☕️ GREAT EXPECTATIONS ☙ Tuesday, May 5, 2026 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

Good morning, C&C, it’s Tuesday! Your roundup includes: a Reuters "exclusive" anonymously sourcing the death of MAHA; Spirit Airlines folding its yellow tray-tables for the last time after fistfights and fuel hikes; the Palisades arsonist who idolized Luigi Mangione and apparently didn't know what "enslaved" meant; SNAP rolls dropping by three million while the corporate media looks for someone to blame; Patel quietly closing the Hoover Building after a generation of failed promises; and Trump's federal investments printing money while critics who insisted Argentina would default explain why "tens of millions in profit" was somehow gross. 💉💉💉 Yesterday, Reuters ran an ‘exclusive’ story headlined, “Warned off vaccine actions, Kennedy seeks quick health wins ahead of midterms.” Reuters knows full well that the threat to the midterms actually comes from a fractured base, not from independents anxious about Kennedy canceling some jab mandate. So Reuters stood up, dusted off its hands, and said, this base isn’t going to fracture itself! Let’s see what they’ve actually got here. Reuters’ story claimed that the Trump Administration ordered HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to shut up about vaccines right now and focus instead on “quick wins on new health initiatives to help Republicans in November’s midterm elections,” like “research into psychedelics” and “a slate of food initiatives.” The story argued the White House told him no more steps against vaccines this year. It’s a brave claim. The article even praised itself, bragging, “Many of the details about Kennedy’s strategy … are reported here for the first time.” In other words, Reuters is the only one saying this. “The stakes are high for Trump’s Republican party,” the wire service stressed, “which risks losing control of both chambers of Congress.” (Not the Republican Party; Trump’s Republican Party. It was a sly but obvious rhetorical trick to transform the midterms into a presidential referendum.) The gist was, Reuters believes President Trump thinks the best way to win the midterms is by making MAHA see red. “Kennedy’s past moves, such as removing vaccines from the recommended U.S. childhood immunization schedule,” Reuters argued plaintively, “are among the policies that could hurt the party’s candidates.” But like woke scientists always say, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. So … what evidence did Reuters offer for this extraordinary, MAHA-destructive claim? 💉 Just apply the lessons I’ve taught you. First, check the sources. For this story, every single operative detail behind its extraordinary narrative was a quote. No documents. No memos. No emails. Just who said what to Kennedy, what the White House has “insisted,” which moves are now off‑limits– and all of those quotes were sourced from unnamed “senior administration officials,” “people familiar with the matter,” and “current and former officials.” Reuters never said how it got clued in to its exclusive story in the first place. In other words, it’s all anonymous hearsay from nowhere, which down here in Florida we call gossip. Having identified that Reuters’ claim was based on 100% anonymous sources, we moved to the next step: speculating on who the anonymous sources might be. Do you think they’re die-hard Kennedy fans trying to boost his image by betraying MAHA? Do you believe Reuters’ hardworking reporter got “a hunch” and cold-called the entire federal government until she struck a vein of journalistic gold with “a dozen senior officials and outside advisors”? Or is it more likely that a cabal of anti-RFK malcontents prepackaged the whole thing and reached out to a friendly media outlet? 🔥 To conceal the weakness in its sourcing, the story quoted a handful of named pro-vaccine Republicans— all people with no inside knowledge about the alleged strategy. For instance, it quoted pollster Tony Fabrizio, who wrote an unrelated article in December claiming that “vaccine skepticism is bad politics.” (Reuters didn’t even try to reconcile Fabrizio’s dumb claim with the basic fact that in 2024, Trump openly aligned with the most famous “anti‑vaccine” figure in the country, survived months of unhinged coverage about it, and then won decisively. But never mind.) Reuters’ narrative treated Fabrizio’s pro-jab memo as if it were some timeless law of politics, rather than, at best, a momentary snapshot that’ll be modified by turnout, intensity, and the difference between generic “public sentiment” and the highly motivated voters who actually turn out in swing states and midterm election cycles. I could easily continue. The reason I spent the time to debunk this witless narrative —this unverified gossip obviously intended to enrage MAHA— is that other corporate media platforms will soon pick it up by citing Reuters. (“According to a recent Reuters exclusive…”) And then the doombloggers will start carping like a murder of black crows. At least now you know where the latest “Kennedy betrays MAHA” narrative came from: thin air. Finally, and by the way, the reason corporate media is so obsessed about “fracturing” MAHA is that the health-freedom movement includes so many ‘reclaimable’ former and disaffected Democrats who, they assume, still agree with the rest of the donkey platform. And also because trad-media thinks MAHA voters are gullible, single-issue types with gnat-like attention spans who can be easily peeled off with the right wedge. Don’t be a gnat with a wedgie. And— make journalism great again. ✈️ ✈️ ✈️ Saturday morning, after 34 years, Spirit Airlines —the bright yellow budget carrier that taught America you could fly for less than a large pepperoni pizza (if you didn’t mind holding your luggage on your lap)— suddenly and unexpectedly shuttered its operations. Its second bankruptcy in two years proved fatal after a proposed $500 million government bailout collapsed. CBS reported, “Spirit Airlines shutting down after failed effort at government rescue deal.” Transportation experts were baffled. Traveling on Spirit Airlines was much like any other airline. It involved checking your baggage, finding your seat assignment, wedging your carry-on into an overhead bin space half the size required, and then enjoying a peaceful, relaxing flight experience comparable to being shoved into an MMA-style cage match with the doors locked behind you. There might be a clue to Spirit’s multiple bankruptcies. I would direct baffled experts to behold this sampling of recent and not-so-recent headlines. Note: I did not make any of these up. They are not Babylon Bee headlines, either (although they could be). They are a drop of goo in the bankrupt airplane’s toilet-overflow bucket. Live and Let’s Fly, February 2025: LALF again, November 2024: Metro, May 2024: CNN, August 2022: Fox-2 Detroit, July 2021: NBC News, March 10th (my birthday!), way back in 2016: Personally, I am a Delta Airlines fan. I’ll admit that Delta isn’t perfect— but which affordable common carrier is? During a typical year, I mostly fly Delta, but also United, American, and JetBlue. I have flown Bahamas Air. I even took a couple of flights on Indian state-owned airlines —not ‘Indian’ as in on the reservation; in Southeast Asia— during a difficult-to-explain vacation there. For all those airlines’ imperfections, I will say this: Never once, not in 40 years of air travel, have I ever been required to put up my dukes, eat a knuckle sandwich, or wrestle to reach the lavatory. Oh, I’ve gotten my share of nasty looks when I reclined my seat. I’ve been scolded by countless stewardesses over the years for leaving my tray table down too long, twice for leaving my foot partly extended into the aisle, and once for having my mask below my nose. But I’ve never even seen a fistfight on an airplane. Not one time. I’ve certainly never seen a mid-flight catfight between two women or, Moses help us, between the gate agents. Let’s be honest: Spirit Airlines had a reputation. I can confidently assum…