MaKail Crawford
Oct 21, 2025
A recounting of the White House's October 16th
The Politics of Performance
Off the heels of the Israeli Knesset and the United Nations address, the White House hosts a packed day on October 16, 2025. Of the media coverage, we hear from FLOTUS Melania Trump, FBI Director Cash Patel, FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Secretary of Health Kennedy, and even Dr. Oz. This administration fuels itself by morality.
We see moral empathy in FLOTUS bringing home the Ukrainian children from Russia. Then we see moral control in the crime crackdown domestically and narcoterroristically in partnership with the FBI, the President, and the Attorney General. Finally, we see moral deliverance with the policy announcement of in vitro fertilization (IVF) cost reductions and installation into employee benefit packages. We see how, over the past month, the administration fulfills various promises and continues efforts to bring resolution, care, and empathy outside of its own domain.
Moral empathy binds this administration as the woman behind the man running the most powerful and economically prosperous nation in the world opens her remarks with, "a child's soul knows no borders, knows no flags." My recount of the October 16th day in the White House begins with FLOTUS. She sets the tone for the day's events to come.
In doing so, she delivers to her intimate audience the results of her ongoing negotiations with Russian President Putin on the safe return and good-faith facilitation of Ukrainian children back to their families who were dislocated throughout the ongoing war. From August 2025 to October 2025, she accomplishes the retrieval of eight children—three displaced and sent to the Russian Federation and the remaining five scattered throughout the war-torn country. FLOTUS commends President Putin and Russia for his "demonstrated willingness to disclose objective and detailed information reflective for the current situation." She receives in good faith dossiers including the children's biographies, photos, overviews, and social, psychological, and medical service reports as afforded to the children.
FLOTUS commits herself to her work as her continued goal is to "prioritize and optimize a transparent free flow exchange surrounding all children [and] to facilitate the reunification of children with their families." While her last media appearance may have been at the Navy remarks, she works empathetically doing humanitarian efforts with a warmonger who both should have won the war in a week while simultaneously never should have started the war in accordance with President Trump’s take. By positioning himself as the moral empathetic source and solution for these kids' return, he allows it to spill over into other areas of the day as seen next in the moral control of criminal crackdowns via FBI Operation Summer Heat.
Since September 23, 2025, we see it in President Trump's rhetoric of his cleaning up of D.C. first as well as his attempts at Memphis, Chicago, and New Orleans. The mid-day press conference functions as a staged media presentation. It is for the media and for the public. It serves as the second part in a four-step news distribution process. The FBI and Attorney General correspond directly with the President, even if they're not supposed to, which is part of what Attorney General Bondi gets grilled for in her Congressional testimony. They then hold a press conference for the media, the media partakes and disseminates the information via their respective news outlets, and then the public finally hears the three-month-old intra-political news days later. So much so that four minutes into this conference President Trump touts the same arrest statistics and fentanyl removal stats as he has since September 23, 2025.
My opinion holds true as President Trump turns over the podium to FBI Director Cash Patel. Patel then treats the conference like a science expo—pie charts, infographics, and tables. While nothing is wrong with this manner of presentation, it drives home the narrative of performative public spectacle rather than actual news. For those involved and studying up to date, it is nothing more than a recap from the previous episode. The real crux of this press conference lies not in the FBI retouting but in the journalistic questions.
We see questions and answers regarding the Prime Minister of India stopping the purchase of Russian oil, a key highlight from the Knesset address, Venezuela and its President Nicolas Maduro conflicts, whether the CIA has the authority to take him out, and if attacks will now commence on land in addition to sea. Additionally, Congress speculates whether the boats being targeted are actual drug boats, to which President Trump responds affirmatively, seeing as how they have "drug dust" on them once obliterated. Furthermore, he takes the opportunity to jab at Boston's Mayor Wu, essentially citing how she needs to get her mayoral act and her city's act together if they wish to participate in the FIFA 2026 World Cup. He lays out the same grounds for punishment to San Diego regarding the 2028 L.A. Olympics. This press conference situates President Trump and his administration as the source, enforcer, and solution to the rampant decline in narcoterrorism afflicting this country as well as the safety of democratic cities. President Trump says, "[e]very American deserves to live in a community that they're not afraid of being mugged, robbed, raped, assaulted, or shot!"
To be honest, his democratic counterparts could argue this as militaristic weaponization of justice such that it no longer targets individual political opponents but rather the very institution they stand on. A lucrative lesson President Trump fails to admit he learns from the Biden administration as he frequently upgrades what they did to him yet still calls them out for their use of it. The morality of this administration is that they are the source and solution of national moral crises. These crises do not fall short of global humanitarian efforts and national crime but also moral framing of traditionalism as it pertains to family planning in the United States of America today.
In the late morning and early afternoon, President Trump literally takes a seat and gives way to the Senior Vice President of U.S. Fertility and HIV/Endocrinology of EMD Serono with other prominent women and guests like Dr. Oz as they unveil the new policy announcement of the low reduction costs of in vitro fertilization medicines. The new policy brings a reduction in the per-cycle cost of IVF, now legal and accessible in all 50 states. As it stands, 70% of employers don’t cover insurance costs for IVF treatments. However, through the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Treasury, they "create a legal pathway for employers to offer fertility benefit packages to people similar to dental, vision, and medical," as Heidi Overton, Deputy Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, announces (21:25).
For an administration ridiculed and dragged through the dirt regarding pro-life abortions through the aftermath of the overturning of Roe v. Wade, it is an administration actively helping with family planning in a supportive, non-intrusive way. The fertility rate, as reported by Robert Kennedy Jr., Secretary of Health & Human Services, now sits at 1.8%. The replacement rate for the U.S.A. is 2.1%; we're under by .03%. So the installation of the policy is quadruple-fold. It aids the replacement rates, boosts fertility rates for family planning, affords employees the added benefit to their packages, and boosts poll numbers regarding this administration's collaboration with women and family planning with their husbands.
The second term of the Trump administration builds itself on various degrees of morality—from moral empathy in humanitarian children efforts, moral control in criminal crackdowns domestically and via narcoterrorism, to moral deliverance in delivering the promise of the reinstitution of traditional values and morals as it relates to family planning. These moral endeavors are not isolated political acts but rather work in unison with one another to achieve the ultimate goal of re-bordering the nation's morals and values back to foundational traditionalism in defiance and opposition to political correctness and social progressiveness as demonstrated by the previous two Democratic presidencies.