Defying Blago, I say 'never!' to his 'never say never' hint that he might run for the U.S. Senate

Plus a hope that Pritzker and Duckworth don't clear the Democratic field in the race to replace Durbin

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Tuesdays at 11:30 a.m. I talk with WGN-AM 720 host John Williams about what’s making news and likely to be grist for the PS mill. The WGN listen-live link is here.

OK, then I’ll say it: NEVER!!!!

Breitbart reports that, on the “Breitbart News Saturday” talk program, disgraced former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich responded to host Matthew Boyle’s question about whether he’d consider running for the U.S. Senate seat now occupied by retiring Democrat Dick Durbin :

Never say never. It’d be quite a story, wouldn’t it? You know, coming out of prison after eight years and then returning to Washington and becoming a United States senator.

I’d like to say to your listeners: I didn’t break a law, cross the line or take a penny … I believe my greatest accomplishment was standing up to weaponized prosecutors who criminalized things that were legal. Criminalized conversations Obama started. You go to the White House for eight years and I go to the — I go to prison for eight years because I wouldn’t give in. And I think that’s one of the greatest — I do believe that’s the greatest constitutional challenge in American history since the Civil War. If I ever was in a place of influence where I could play a role in trying to return our government — not just back to the people, but actually, you know, end this frightening trend towards weaponizing prosecutors and politicizing courts for politics. Which, again, is not what our founding fathers envisioned, and this is the greatest threat to freedom in America, I would love to play that role.

Now, would I run for the United States Senate? You know, I gotta tell you, Matt, that would be a crazy thing. [My wife Patti has] made it clear, Matt, that if I did something like that I’d have to do that with my second wife. So, in order for me to actually, like, decide to do something along those lines, I’d have to win my first primary — and that one’s right in my bedroom. And I’d have to convince my wife, Patti, that she should go along with something like that. But whether I do something along those lines, or whether there’s others, I do think that the winning strategy and the winning formula in a state like Illinois isn’t the traditional politics. It isn’t being the traditional Democrat, or the crazy lunatic socialist Democrat, or the traditional corporate country club Republican.

It’s being a populist, common sense candidate that shares a lot of the same values of the Make America Great Again movement. So, whether I do something crazy like that, Matt, remains to be seen. But I have to say, I’ve come a long way. And through the grace of God, I’m in a place where — one day, so long ago, I was walking into prison for political things Obama started. And here I am, all those years later — after President Trump rescued me from prison, pardoned me — answering a question from a serious guy like you about running for the United States Senate. I’ve come a long way.

His multiple accusations that “Obama started” the prosecution against him is a reminder of how desperately delusional our state’s No. 1 narcissist remains. Obama was not yet in the White House when the feds frog marched Blago out of his home in December, 2008. The investigation into his sleazy actions as governor and the prosecution of the federal case against him was overseen by Patrick Fitzgerald, who was appointed U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois by Republican President George W. Bush.

Meanwhile, no president in history has come close to Donald Trump in weaponizing virtually every agency of government — particularly the Justice Department — in an effort to exact revenge against his opponents.

Blagojevich will never be a United States Senator.

That said, for the sheer entertainment value alone, I’d love to see him enter the Republican primary field and watch the MAGA fur fly.

Meanwhile, on the Democratic side, I’m not sure I want somebody somebody sent

Durbin’s retirement announcement was still echoing when Gov. JB Pritzker and U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth jumped in to endorse Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton in the March 17, 2026 senate primary.

Nothing against Stratton — I barely know her résumé other than she was a one term state representative when Pritzker chose her to be his running mate in 2017. But I’ll be making up my own mind, thank you. And it looks to me as though Pritzker, in particular, with his vast wealth, is attempting to clear the field by anointing Stratton and discouraging more experienced, accomplished Democrats from entering the race.

I went through the list of possible candidates last Thursday and even made a wild guess about who would prevail. I’d like to see most of those prospective candidates ignore these thumbs on the scale and come forward with their visions for the office

Notes and comments from readers — lightly edited — along with my responses.

In the Suggestion Box last week were several requests from readers to include more conservative viewpoints in Z-mail . Here is some of the response to those suggestions:

David Leitschuh — I was more than a bit surprised to read several suggestions from readers that they would like to see more conservative viewpoints in the PS, and I am very gratified by this tolerance and openness. Following is my contribution in this regard.

The overwhelming majority of PS readers, as reflected in their posted comments, are viscerally opposed to Trump's policies and viscerally dislike his unquestionably arrogant and brash public persona. I also see a lot of comments in PS posts that deride Trump with a great number of personal insults, alleging that he is unintelligent, emotionally unstable and/or in cognitive decline.

And it may come as a surprise to some, and perhaps many, PS readers to learn that a CNN poll this past week reflected that Trump voter regret is "almost non-existent" in the words of the CNN pollster. Only about 2% of Trump voters would change their vote, about the same as indicated by Harris voters. People on the left who are outraged over Trump policies may well be surprised by this. But to those of us who voted for Trump because of the policies he proposed, we are very pleased that he is in fact making good enacting those policies. In other words, Trump voters overall are pleased they are getting what they voted for with Trump.

Steve T. — That same CNN poll shows Trump dramatically losing independent voters — down to minus 22. It really does seem as if you’re just trying to find ways of rationalizing your support for this cruel, vindictive man and those in his administration who signal their hatred for fellow human beings. I also don’t doubt that you’re a good man, so I hope you find some peace when the day comes when you realize that you used your one strong voice to support inhumanity in the name of commerce or tradition or tribalism or whatever motivated your vote. And if your response to this is again to point to how many others voted that same way, history has some sobering tales to tell.

Zorn — I very much appreciate David’s contributions here, though I do frequently disagree with his takes. I would like to know just what supporters think Trump is “delivering” on. Prices are up, the peace he promised has not materialized and his immigration crackdown has been haphazard and unnecessarily cruel. By the way, here’s a CNN graphic on the results of its most recent polling:

Debra Higginbotham -- I reside in a blue bubble and would welcome conservative feedback/push back. Not the king-worshipping MAGA culture wars garbage, but thoughtful conservative ideology.

Steven K. — I’m a fairly liberal fellow, yet I wouldn’t mind seeing a few other viewpoints from time to time.

Merrilee Redmond — Enough venues already exist for conservative voices. People who do not admit our world climate is changing are now in control of our government and of much of the media. People who did not recoil when their flag-bearing candidate lied and attempted a coup after a lost election have had their angry misguided voices heard around the world. They are pushing candidates to sit on local school boards and governments. They want "equal time" to advocate anti-science based views on vaccination and health. They have plenty of venues for angry lies. Please do not feel compelled to amplify their views unless you feel there is a rational issue that should be illuminated.

Little Bear --- I come here for your take on things, same reason I read your column at the Tribune. If I wanted conservative views I would go follow John Kass. Not every spot needs to kowtow to conservative views.

Zorn — I have no interest at all in platforming sneering, demonizing reactionaries, but there remain millions of thoughtful people on the right side of the political spectrum whose views at the very least sharpen my own.

How’s that Project 2025 going?

Rick Weiland —Speaking hypothetically, if you wanted to weaken the United States, to make it vulnerable to its economic, philosophical, and military adversaries, here’s a list of the things you might do:

• Hobble the economy by putting tens of thousands of people out of work all at once, disrupting trade relationships, inflating prices, and limiting the availability of cheap labor

• Drive a wedge between us and our traditional friends and allies

• Put incompetent fools in charge of defense and commerce

• Cripple educational institutions at all levels

• Hamstring scientific and medical research

• Create a general atmosphere of fear and uncertainty

Does any of this sound familiar?

Mark K. — If Putin had installed an agent as president of the U.S. with the goal of inflicting severe, long term devastation to the country's economy and geopolitical standing, what would that agent do differently from what Trump is doing?

Zorn — Good question! What is the evidence that Trump isn’t Putin’s poodle? Conservative readers, now is your time to shine!

Was my across-the-board demand for due process an example of false equivalence?

Jo A. — Regarding the gross injustice in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man mistakenly seized and deported to a prison in El Salvador, you wrote:

For consistency’s sake, be sure your demands for justice are framed as demands for due process and fair trials. That way you preserve the leg you’re now standing on as you demand due process and a fair trial for… Garcia.

What a false equivalence! I have never heard any one, let alone a public official, seriously suggest that police officers who end up killing should be put in prison without due process. Maybe arrested quickly . But that’s when due process kicks in. Fired without further thought? Sure. And while union rules require due process like protections, suggesting someone lose their job is hardly like suggesting they go to prison. Most people have zero protections for keeping their job so this, while not right under the collective bargaining contract rules the police are subject to, hardly shocks the conscience. Moreover with Garcia the most disturbing issue is that the government’s position is that there is nothing they can do after their mistake.

Mark K. — That irked me a little also, to be honest. It sounds like a kind of pre-emptive whataboutism: "Sure, feel free to criticize the Trump regime's lawlessness that threatens the country's constitutional system, just make sure you also advocate for due process in local emotionally charged cases." One is not relevant to the other, each can and should be addressed separately.

Zorn — It’s certainly human nature to jump to conclusions about the guilt or innocence of criminal suspects, sometimes even before they’re been charged. We see or read a possibly tendentious version of the facts and decide what “justice” ought to look like. To wit:

This was before Rittenhouse was acquitted after successfully pleading self defense in the shooting deaths of two men at a Kenosha, Wisconsin protest in August, 2020.

It’s precisely when cases are “emotionally charged” that consistency demands we insist on due process. I say this not in any way to excuse the Trump regime from flagrantly trampling on Garcia’s due process rights or to suggest that the verdict of lefty “jury” on social media excuses or mitigates the denial of Garcia’s rights.

The Holocaust joke (?)

Daniel Bruetman — Last week you wrote that you decided that the following quip was too pointed and controversial to include with the silly quips:

A Holocaust survivor died recently and went up to heaven. Upon meeting God he decided to tell a Holocaust joke. God said, “That's not funny.” To which the Jew replied, “Oh, I guess you had to be there.”

You made a good call not including it with the other jokes. I’m a Jew, I have no problem with it and I find it amusing, but not crazy funny. I opted to overthink it and consider “you had to be there” as you had to be there as in where were you when we needed you?

Nancy Shugan — No, it is not a joke. Yes, it is heart-rending, poignant, awful and truthful. Just not funny. Sometimes comedians will say something macabre, and it will elicit more groans than laughs. The comedian will quip, “I guess it's too soon for jokes.” Yes, six million years too soon. Thank you, for both not including it in the jokes voting, and for asking for feedback.

Michael M. —The joke makes me think of this: A message scratched into a brick wall in the Auschwitz death camp by one of Hitler’s victims was, ‘If there is a God, he’ll have to beg for my forgiveness.’”

Richard Ramlow — I guess it is funnier if you are not a believer in God. Kind of a "gotcha" joke. If you are a believer, then you could have several different responses. My initial thought is that God is the life force that kept the prisoners from giving up completely, but I'm also always disturbed about the absence of God in the existence of the camps at all. Sadly, evil is embedded in the human condition, as is altruistic good. The concept of God helps us sort this out at various times during our lives. Right now, there is a resurgence of self-serving people using God to justify their own maladjusted views. Maybe the concentration camps are the perfect example that God doesn't inform every event. That's why Trump's survival of the assassination attempt is not evidence of God's approval of him.

Mark K. — I've heard that joke before, and I like it because it's a bitter rebuke of the whole concept of an omnipotent, omnipresent, benevolent being with a grand plan in full control of the universe. It's the problem of evil — if God will not stop great evils like the Holocaust then he's not benevolent, and if he can't stop them then he's not omnipotent or omnipresent.

Zorn — Yes it is a mordant restatement of the problem of evil, and of course it’s not a joke about the Holocaust — obviously not a laughing matter — but a joke about religion and the ironic double meaning of “you had to be there.”

AI phobia

Laurence E. Siegel — Artificial Intelligence will be used and misused by humans until AI decides it can do without us. Defenders will point out the wonderful things that can be created with AI. It has already been proven to produce fake ads and political speeches, enable student cheating and otherwise be used for mischief. How will we ever be able to determine when speech and images come from AI and not actual people?

Cate Plys — Whatever anybody is doing to develop AI responsibly and ensure its implementation doesn't destroy what's left of humanity's ability to think and do things for ourselves, it isn't anywhere near enough. A Pew Research Center poll published earlier this month found 76% of AI experts think AI will benefit them personally, versus 24% of all adults. I would be less worried if they were more worried!

While 73% of AI experts surveyed say AI will have a very or somewhat positive impact on how people do their jobs over the next 20 years, that share drops to 23% among U.S. adults. … Only about one-in-ten U.S. adults and experts think AI will have a positive impact on elections. … While 57% of the public is highly concerned about AI leading to less connection between people, this drops to 37% among the experts we surveyed.

If a pollster ever calls me to rank my issue concerns, AI will be number one.

Zorn — I’m less concerned about certain jobs becoming obsolete than I am about the blurring of the lines between truth and fiction. How anyone can think AI will have a positive effect on elections is beyond me.

Why that 13-year-old appeared so clueless

Mark. K. — Your item about the 13-year-old who had trouble answering questions about recently obsolete technology highlighted an important challenge we're facing as humans: The increasingly profound, exponential, and accelerating changes to the ways of daily life. It's a relatively recent development. Humans have been around maybe 200,000 years and a person alive in 73,456 BC probably lived exactly the same as a person in 14,654 BC. Someone from 850 AD didn't live much different than someone in 1167 AD in the same location. But the pace of progress and innovation since maybe the mid 1800's has been blinding. This breakneck pace is taxing and stressful, especially for older people, and will only get worse.

Presumed engrossing

Jake H. — I second your recommendation of “Presumed Guilty,” a typically smart and engaging new legal thriller by Chicago's own Scott Turow. I particularly like the characterization of Rusty Sabich, which feels genuine, ambiguous, suitably lived in. Plot-wise, there are twists, but they're not dumb, and the centerpiece trial is a model of the craft, well-informed as usual by authentic legal knowledge and experience. I'm hoping for a movie of it with Harrison Ford, who portrayed Rusty in the 1990 movie of '‘Presumed Innocent.”

Equal ≠ Coequal

Stuart Senescu — When did “co-equal” become the word of the decade? Is it different from the word “equal?” We have, supposedly, three equal branches of government, so why do so many people, including you, write of “co-equal branches”? It grates on my 77-year-old ears. This sounds like something someone without a good speech writer would say, someone who doesn’t have a good grasp of public speaking.

Zorn — WikiDiff explains that “the difference between equal and coequal is that equal is the same in all respects while coequal is equal to each other in size, rank or position. While Vocabulary.com notes that coequal means “ having the same standing before the law.” So the idea is that the executive, judicial and legislative branches don’t have equal, identical powers, but they ideally have powers of equal weight.

From the suggestion box

I’m responding for the next few weeks to some of the hundreds of anonymous suggestions/comments that readers posted to my recent reader survey:

Media coverage

• I’d like to see more coverage of local media because there’s been too little of that since Robert Feder retired

• News and gossip from the media precincts

• More stuff like Feder reported on

• Chicago is in desperate need of a media columnist, please fill that gap

• I’d like your perspective on the accuracy of Chicago area news sources. Which can we trust most?

It’ll be three years in July that my former Sun-Times rival and now good friend Robert Feder retired from the local media beat that he thoroughly dominated for decades. I regularly shoot him text messages bemoaning that he’s not reporting on some compelling, infuriating or puzzling development on local radio, TV, newspapers or online. No one else is really doing it — the Tribune didn’t even report on a one-day strike by its own newsroom union!

But it’s a more fragmented beat than ever, and to cover it adequately would require a lot more bandwidth than I have in semi-retirement. I’d be happy to promote the work of an independent journalist who launched an aggressive media-crit site, one that ignored birthdays, anniversaries and meaningless puffery and instead offered frequent dives into what’s happening and why in our newsrooms.

The long and short of it

• The PS is awfully long. I’d prefer a more frequent, shorter version

• Be a little briefer in the articles. I feel overwhelmed sometimes by all the info you throw at me

• I'd like it more if you weren't so verbose

From Day One I’ve heard the complaint/observation that this publication should be shorter or that I should post more, shorter issues each week.

I understand that. Last Thursday’s issue ran nearly 6,000 words not including boilerplate and the table of contents. But my experience with newsletters that come more often is that I end up feeling overwhelmed and simply stop opening them as they pile up in my inbox. If anything, I wonder if I should consolidate Tuesday and Thursday into one even bigger weekly issue that would be easy to navigate with a table of contents with hot links.

My idea is there is likely to be something in these offerings that you look forward to every week. I’m curious what the click-voting readership thinks, but I make no promises to honor the results!

Talk about your chilly hours and minutes of uncertainty

The Associated Press reported last week:

China on Thursday denied any suggestion that it was in active negotiations with the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump over tariffs, saying that any notion of progress in the matter was as groundless as “trying to catch the wind.”

Those of us of a certain age instantly remembered Donovan’s 1965 hit “Catch the Wind,” one of the most poignant love songs of all time, though it’s probable that China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun was not going for a musical allusion.

Unpopular opinions?

My former Tribune colleague posted the above on Twitter, and though I’m sure criminal charges would not be popular for the act of soliciting a tip for routine counter service, I’m wondering if the idea of a business code of conduct strongly discouraging such requests will be popular.

Counter servers are not well paid. and rewarding them with a little something for the effort when they’re cheerful and prompt is certainly defensible. On the other hand, gratuity creep has gotten out of hand, and the shaking tin cup of the rotated iPad can be intimidating and irritating. Your view:

Last week’s result

387 votes

This was my opinion, and it certainly proved unpopular.

Mark K. — I'm in the minority, having voted against unsigned editorials. The idea that a publication has a collective institutional opinion that can be published without a human's name attached seems intuitively wrong to me, like Citizens United allowing a corporation to make political donations as a legal "person", I don't think it should work like that. Companies are fictions, their actions or views are the actions and views of people.

Obviously it's a person that writes the opinion and a reader would be better able to know how much weight to lend that opinion if the author's name and reputation were attached to it. Obscuring the writer behind the marquee of the outlet makes the opinion anonymous and therefore less important

John Houck — One can reasonably assume that a majority of the editorial board agrees with the unsigned editorial or it wouldn't be printed. They own the opinion even if they didn't write it.

Zorn — I can report from the front lines of the Tribune Editorial Board, where I sat in on meetings for many years though I wasn’t a voting member, that John’s assumption is generally true, but not a safe assumption. Editorial boards are not democracies — except in the case of some college newspapers. I’m unaware of any publication that allows all the staff journalists to vote on major issues and candidate endorsements, and then writes institutional opinions based on the results. It would be an interesting experiment, but would stand to compromise the objectivity of the reporters and editors.

But since most editorial boards consider themselves analogous to the U.S. Supreme Court, it might be useful and illustrative to have a member or members of the board who dissent from the main editorial to offer their views in an adjacent essay.

I doubt we’ll see that.

In an editorial published Monday morning, the Tribune wrote dismissively of “the old workplace cliché, ‘that’s how we’ve always done things,’ typically uttered by people in comfortable positions who are uninterested in change, even if needed.”

I did a spit-take. If there was ever an institution more guided by the sclerotic principle of “that’s how we’ve always done things,” it’s newspapers.

This occasional Tuesday feature is intended to highlight opinions that are defensible but may well be unpopular. If you have one to add, leave it in comments or send me an email, but be sure to offer at least a paragraph in defense of your view.

NewsWheel

Inspired by the WordWheel puzzle in the Monday-Friday Chicago Tribune and other papers, this puzzle asks you to identify the missing letter that will make a word or words — possibly proper nouns; reading either clockwise or counterclockwise — related to a story in the news. The answer is at the bottom of the newsletter.

The National Examiner evidently knows its audience

• Jimmy Stewart was born in 1908

• Queen Elizabeth was born in 1926

• Goldie Hawn was born in 1945

• Sally Field and Dolly Parton were born in 1946

• Jane Seymour was born in 1951

The National Examiner is a sister supermarket tabloid to the National Enquirer, and seeing this on the rack at checkout the other day made me wonder who is still buying these publications, given the availability of free celebrity gossip, scandal and health tips online.

The answer seems to be not very many people. I couldn’t find circulation figures for the Examiner, but in 2024 the Alliance for Audited Media showed the National Enquirer had a paid circulation of 77,438 down from a reported nearly 8 million at its peak.

Scam alert

Given the Trump administration’s effort to “subdue” the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau , we’re all going to have be more on the alert for scams like this — a text message similar to several I’ve gotten recently:

The Illinois Tollway advises:

The Tollway has been alerted to a text message phishing scam claiming that recipients owe money for unpaid tolls and detailing a specific outstanding toll amount. These are not legitimate messages from the Illinois Tollway.

If you receive a text, please check your account online here or call our customer service center at 1-800-UC-IPASS (1-800-824-7277) from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on weekdays. If you receive a phishing text, please report it to the Federal Trade Commission and/or the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center. Both sites facilitate the sharing of information regarding Internet crimes among law enforcement agencies.

The week’s best visual jokes

Here are some funny visual images I've come across recently on social media. Enjoy, then evaluate:

To the objection that the “things” and “Greg or Ian” jokes are mostly verbal jokes, I respond that the layout of the words is integral to the joke. I tried simply rendering them as written quips for the Thursday poll and I didn’t feel they worked as well.

There’s still time to vote in the conventional Quip of the Week poll!

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Info

Eric Zorn is a former opinion columnist for the Chicago Tribune. Find a longer bio and contact information here. This issue exceeds in size the maximum length for a standard email. To read the entire issue in your browser, click on the headline link above. Paid subscribers receive each Picayune Plus in their email inbox each Tuesday, are part of our civil and productive commenting community and enjoy the sublime satisfaction of supporting this enterprise.

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Answer to the NewsWheel puzzle

MISTRIAL