The number of readers of this blog each day varies. I don’t usually focus on the differences, but I was surprised that there were relatively few readers yesterday when I wrote about Alan Dershowitz and impeachment. I thought it very interesting. Maybe you want to look at it today.

I started today with a longish walk to the bank and the post office and am now having a cup of coffee near Chevy Chase Circle, about 3000 steps from my house.

And I am thinking about Kaitlin Collins. In case you don’t know who she is, she’s a TV journalist, who anchors the 9 p.m. news show on CNN (Eastern Time), and does a remarkably good job at it. Why I am thinking about her is that she has a major position with a major cable news outlet, interviewing some of the world’s most newsworthy individuals, including former President Trump and his long time aide, Brian Butler, and she is only 31 years old.

She has been with CNN since 2021, as their White House correspondent and co-anchor of their morning show. How do you get in that position at such a young age? She comes from a small town in Alabama and has only an undergraduate degree from the University of Alabama. I find it remarkable that she was promoted so quickly. There must be a lesson here that others can learn from.

At any rate, she does a very good job, and this was proven last night through her “exclusive” interview with Brian Butler, Trump Employee #5, who has apparently given extraordinary testimony about (1) removing classified documents from Mar-a-Lago the day the FBI was coming to town, and (2) making sure that surveillance cameras were turned off in the rooms where the boxes were stored. Damning testimony, it seems. One more nail in what will be hopefully Trump’s political coffin.

But let’s get back to my cup of coffee this morning. The cafe is not crowded, and an elderly man, who looks like he may be sleeping on the street (of course, I may have looked that way, too) steps in, walks up to the counter, orders a ham and cheese something and a bottle of water and sits down near me. As he bit into the sandwich, I heard him mutter to himself: “This bread is hard. It’s not American bread. It’s French bread. I’m not French.”

There was another friend in the cafe, and he and I had been talking from our two tables. The man eating ham and cheese had overheard a little of that and, after my friend left, began talking to me.

“Here we go”, I said to myself. Little did I know that I was about to enter a lengthy conversation about the history of the Washington Post. And a fascinating conversation it was with an individual who worked as a Post reporter for about 5 years during the 1970s, and who has apparently had a rough time after that time. But his knowledge of Post history was remarkable. We spoke about Eugene Meyer and Katharine and Philip Graham and Ben Bradlee and William Raspberry, and others. It was an interesting conversation, filled (on his part) with details, and dates, and connections, including thoughtful points on the role of Black reporters during the time after the death of Martin Luther King, Jr and the riots in DC, and the Watergate scandal and the Nixon resignation.

And then we got into conspiracy theory. It is my friend’s belief that it is possible that Philip Graham didn’t commit suicide, but that his wife Katharine Graham murdered him. Whoa!!

Here is his theory. Eugene Meyer gave control of the Post to his son-in-law Philip Graham, with whom he was very close, in part because if he had given control to Katharine, it would have meant that Philip would have been working for Katharine, and he had a strong feeling that a husband should never work for a wife. Then, after Eugene Meyer left the Post and died, the marital relationship between Katharine and Philip became very strained. Philip then found a new love (my friend named her, but I don’t remember what he said her name was) and decided to leave Katharine. As this was going on, Philip was having mental or emotional problems and entered a mental health facility known as Chestnut Lodge in Rockville, Maryland. At some point, Katharine took Philip out of Chestnut Lodge and drove him to one of their homes. That is where Philip “committed suicide”.

I am not commenting on the accuracy of this theory. I would assume it is wrong. But the conversation I had this morning? That was fascinating.