One of these weeks, we are going to skate through a Friday where there just aren't ten dumb things said. I am here to report that today is not that day. 

After an intense lobbying effort by the boss on what to include in the list, careful review and consideration was undertaken. You might call it Hot Air's DOGE audit. There were many, many contenders, but at the end of the day, if every one of these clips, tweets, or news stories were on a Zoom call, you've got to disappear them from the grid one at a time in order to get down to 10. I began with 15 contenders, but whittled them down like a cruel episode of Beast Games. 

You know this list has to be pretty stellar when a CNN story about the promise of a cow fart vaccine on the horizon to save the climate isn't dumb enough to make the cut. Without further ado, here is the list for your weekend pleasure. 

#10

Rep. Darren Soto Attacks Donald Trump for Joe Biden's final jobs report

Pres Trump’s first Jobs Report is a WEAK one. Slowest start since 2016.

Chaos and division are bad for business.https://t.co/sfw0Z0hgCe pic.twitter.com/IlJCrRrQta

— Rep. Darren Soto (@RepDarrenSoto) February 7, 2025

Representing one of the very few remaining blue districts in Florida, Rep. Soto pounced and/or seized on the latest jobs report out on Friday, which admittedly was not very good. Only 143,000 jobs were added, underperforming the expectation of 173,000. Take note of the community notes to Soto's attack. The final payroll used for the report was January 12th - 8 days before Donald Trump took the oath of office. Soto, flailing away at anything to attack Trump, inadvertently indicted Biden as being worse than previously realized. It's especially dumb to pull this stunt in Florida, where the current rate of new voter registration by party ID indicates that it's not going to be very long before there aren't any chairs left for him when the music stops playing. 

#9 

Jesus of USAID

I'll bet you didn't realize our Lord and Savior was born, and died, for government service. I must confess, I hadn't run across that in my weekly Bible studies. But Zach Lambert, the lead pastor of Restore Church in Austin, Texas, seems to think that Jesus Christ did not come here to build a church and be the savior for humanity, but instead was to run the Department of U.S.A.I.D.

I was hungry, but you took free lunch out of schools.

I was thirsty, but you cut humanitarian aid funding for clean water.

I was a stranger, but you sent ICE agents into my church to arrest me.

I was sick, but you took away my healthcare coverage.

I was in prison, but you…

— Zach W. Lambert (@ZachWLambert) February 6, 2025

First off, the Savior to which I have committed my heart, mind, and soul is not a Democrat, Republican, or a servant of any government. The God I serve allows governments to come and go according to His purpose. If God wasn't bigger than the theoretical goals of U.S. foreign aid policy, it's kind of hard to talk about Him creating the universe and everyone in it. The funny thing about this is according to Lambert, we should be living in what is in essence a bureaucratic theocracy. After Democratic Rep. Jared Huffman's comments about the National Prayer Breakfast being an apostasy on the separation of Church and State, he's got to be ready for the smelling salts after reading this. 

Second, Jesus was far less concerned about laws and man's governance than he was about each person's heart and to whom and what it served. If Pastor Lambert truly wanted to preach about the heart of Christ, he would indict every Christian believer who did not focus part of their personal ministry on charitable works like feeding the poor, taking care of children, and tending to the sick, if that is God's calling on their life. Jesus' message was for each one of you to get your hearts right with God and then follow God's guidance and act in accordance with that faith. Nowhere in there does it say that Jesus would proclaim that it's up to governments to do the job the Church was always meant to do. Lambert, sadly, is a progressive liberal in a progressive, liberal city running a progressive liberal church trying to score partisan political points using the Lord as a bludgeon. Progressivism is his first love, not Jesus. This is not the way.

#8

Jeff Merkley - Just wait for the indignity of girls in sports having to prove they're girls

Look, I live in California, so I have very little room to talk, but there has to be something funny in the water in Oregon. After Donald Trump's Executive Order banning men from competing in women's sports Thursday, Merkley took to X on Friday and came out with this gem.

Trump’s anti-trans sports ban threatens every girl who plays sports. Girls who are stronger, faster, or taller are now exposed to the humiliation of proving their gender. Local orgs have rules in place to make competition fair and safe—it's not a role for federal government.

— Senator Jeff Merkley (@SenJeffMerkley) February 7, 2025

This is Jeff Merkley showing me he knows nothing about youth sports without telling me he knows nothing about youth sports. 

Every league - whether it's girls' softball, Little League, boys and girls, soccer, basketball, volleyball, lacrosse, whatever the sport, in order to register for a league, they have to show a copy of a birth certificate. Why? To determine age. That's how most leagues are broken up - by age divisions. Works best that way to keep 12-year-olds from pummeling 7-year-olds with flying objects or sticks. Do you know what else is on a copy of a birth certificate, something super genius Merkley doesn't seem to recognize? Their sex at birth. Oh, the indignity and humiliation of it all. How on earth will girls deal with the shame of their parent or guardian showing a birth certificate along with writing a check to cover league fees?

As the girls move into more organized high school athletic programs, in another point that escaped Merkley, as does most intelligent thoughts, is that there is something required of every student athlete from junior high school on, something that requires a trip to a medical doctor. Starts with a P. It's right on the tip of my tongue. Oh, that's right, a physical. They have to have a doctor sign off that the student is physically fit enough to engage in that activity or sport in question. I'm fairly confident that doctors do have to pass biology and anatomy during their educational road to physicianship, and that it doesn't require any extra shame and embarrassment to the student for the doctor to check the M or the F in the box based on the genitalia in front of him or her. It's among the lamest of critiques to what Trump signed, and is lining up squarely with the 20% minority of an 80-20 issue. 

#7

Jamie Raskin - Democracy has flown the coup.

Assumed Felon Jamie Raskin, that's how we refer to all those former President Joe Biden pardoned in the January 6th investigation, was on MSNBC with Joy Reid, assumed moron. What they couldn't assume was everyone understanding the United States is in the middle of a coup.

So let's take his premise seriously for a second, which is about the length of time it deserves. Elon Musk is conducting a hostile takeover of the federal government. A coup is underway. This would presume that Donald Trump is actually not in charge of the federal government. Just look at what has happened the last three weeks. Is there honestly anyone who believes Donald Trump isn't running the Trump II administration? I sure don't recall Assumed Felon Raskin talking about a coup during the Biden years, when everyone knew Biden was non compos mentis for four years. 

The lack of understanding of the Constitutional order of government by elected members of Congress taking an oath to protect and defend that very same Constitution is beyond staggering. We have one executive in charge of Article II, the Executive Branch. One. That's why the founders called it the unitary executive. It's not a committee, not a group, not an oligarchy. The entire Article II vast array of agencies and departments are the responsibility and under the explicit control of the President. Period. Full stop. If Trump thinks Musk goes too far, he puts on the brakes. Remember Vivek Ramaswamy was supposed to be part of the DOGE team, too, but got out in front of his skis a little too far in the last days of the transition, and Trump sent him back to Ohio. 

But to entertain Assumed Felon Raskin's premise, if Musk were doing a hostile takeover, he would be beefing up the Executive Branch, making it stronger, not weaker. It's an insane argument to claim that Trump and/or Musk are conducting a coup by reducing the size and scope of the federal government, and therefore, their own power they derive from it. But the left has to counter Donald Trump with something, and when you don't have an intelligent response to offer, you wind up with this nonsense. 

#6 

Washington State Senate Majority Leader Jamie Pedersen - Parents have no rights over children 13 and older

I understand state politicians are the minor leagues compared to the Major Leagues being Washington, D.C. But it's really kind of funny to have the entire Democratic apparatus nationally attack people 19-25 that happen to be serving on Elon Musk's DOGE team as uneducated kids who don't know what they're doing, and then have this yahoo make this claim Friday.



Okay, so just to understand the composite Democratic logic about the youth, they aren't actually kids until they're laying on the slab and the parent still wants them two days later. Before that, they can be killed on demand with no explanation necessary. But once that baby unfortunately escapes the abortion industry, their gender preference has to be taken into account as early as 6 months old, because that's what lefty science says. 

Once in school, they must learn about all the fun things they can do with their private parts, and to and with other students' private parts, in kindergarten. As soon as they become a teenager, they get to choose their own mental health path, whatever that path turns out to be, and their parents are just ATM's at that point, complete with overdraft protection, without any of the penalties. 

The left would want a Constitutional amendment to allow those kids to vote as soon as they made the decision to change their gender...but if they do not appear to have embraced progressivism by the time they're college-aged, they are not to be trusted with anything important, especially government service. They can enlist in the military, technically, but we really don't want them to serve unless they're learning DEI and woke stuff instead of all the violent stuff military people normally do. 

It's a mystery why suburban moms flocked back to Donald Trump in 2024. No clue at all how that happened. 

#5

Garrett Haake - Why aren't you listening to Democrats warn about Elon's power grab? 



Again, among the more Constitutionally inane questions you'll hear. NBC's Haake is asking the authoritarian-in-chief, Hitler, the Nazi in a red tie, the totalitarian, why he's not taking Democratic talking points seriously about Elon Musk reducing his ability to be...an authoritarian, Hitler, Nazi, and totalitarian. 

If Trump wanted to become the fascist everyone on the left and some of the Never Trump camps have called him, he would be ramping up the power of the federal government. He would load it up with even more MAGA Nazis to force everyone to bend to his will. What he is actually doing is shrinking the very agencies that have crippled American productivity for decades. He's reducing the size of government he commands. He's weakening the bureaucracy he gets to command for the next four years. He's doing exactly the opposite of what the Democrats Haake breathlessly represents claim. 

Why is it not resonating? Because to most Americans, according to polling, they're getting a kick out of watching government workers working from home for pensions finally go through the equivalent of what the average person endures during an IRS audit experience. And they find it glorious. 

#4

Abigail Spanberger - Sure, they're crooks, but they live in Virginia, so they're our crooks. 

The Commonwealth of Virginia has their statewide elections in off years. Glenn Younkin is nearing the end of a very successful four-year term and is barred from running for a second term due to their state constitution. Rep. Abigail Spanberger is the Democrat most likely to get the nomination at this point, and she was on MSNBC with Ali Velshi. Her beef? These poor government workers at U.S.A.I.D. and other agencies that have lost their jobs. What are they going to do now? She isn't concerned a whit that they were part of a bloated federal bureaucracy, or that the agencies in which they recently worked were wasting tens of billions of taxpayer dollars annually. It doesn't matter that these workers were working the phones on one of the biggest scams in the world. They happen to live in Northern Virginia, so they're her scam artists, and have to be looked after. Spanberger could care less about the rest of the state's taxpayers that have seen their hard-earned incomes be taxed to pay for condoms to Hamas and the Taliban and are angry about it. It's about saving the deep state - the ones that reliably vote Democratic. 

#3

Assumed Felon Adam Schiff - The moment you violate the law to shut down an agency, you can shut down anything.

The ringleader of the circus that for eight years attempted to shut down the first Trump administration and prevent the second, impeaching him twice in the process, might want to take a seat about norms and such. U.S.A.I.D. still stands. There are still 294 employees out of 10,000 who have been relocated at State under Acting Director Marco Rubio. All money outflows have not been cancelled. They've been paused until further analysis determines whether they should resume or not. Assumed felon Schiff, as is his wont, is flat-out lying. Lying is as much an autonomic response for Schiff as breathing is for the rest of us. 

He engineered and attempted a coup against Donald Trump six years ago, and it's laughable how he seems a little perplexed why all this is happening now and no one is paying much attention to him anymore. 

#2

Kamala Harris - These rare extreme weather occurrences are extreme, and they're increasingly less rare, which is extreme. 

Look, I don't know what she's talking about. Not even God knows. I have no idea if this is the second dumbest take of the day, but it's certainly in the top ten. And if Kamala makes the top ten, well, she'll always be number two in my book, an extreme position to take, but one that's increasingly less rare. But extreme. 

#1

Brent Hawkes - Hey, Christian Churches, can we tone down the whole Savior stuff? It's off-putting.

He's from Canada's Metropolitan church, so they play fast and loose with what Scripture clearly says about marriage and living a same-sex lifestyle. It's certainly not the way I read the Bible, but that's not my quibble here. 

Hawkes now thinks a church professing that Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world is turning people away with the message, and that they need to hide the S-word in order to get more people to come in. Preach the Gospel without actually explaining what the Gospels are or why they're so important in people's lives.

My church is Harvest Christian Fellowship in Orange County, California. Its senior pastor is Greg Laurie, who next to Billy Graham has probably led the most people in the country to Christ. I've attended for years. I've never heard one service by Pastor Greg or any of the pastoral staff at Harvest get through one service without expressly proclaiming Christ as our Savior and the necessity of that belief in order to receive salvation. You can't get that message across by excising the savior part out of it. What you would have left is a Kamala Harris statement. 

Notice the cross he's wearing around his neck. Why no, that's not a symbol of the ultimate sacrifice Jesus made for all mankind - absorbing all sin ever committed after living a sinless life in order to redeem all those who believe. No, it's not that at all. It's a T, and that rhymes with P, and that stands for pool, which sounds a lot like fool, which is to whom this congregation is listening. 

Could there be a fourth Friday of dumb things said next weekend? If past is prologue, count on it.