THE WEAVE: If a tree falls in the woods does it make a noise? If Donald Trump says something shocking does it still have the power to shock. It might not.

  The other might in a Nebraska rally Trump was riffing about elections and former Vice President Kamala Harris then segued into this, evidently about the Iran war: “But I want to see a tremendous victory. You want to see a tremendous victory because it verifies all the things we did. And again, remember with the word just artificial, it’s a little bit high. It’s a small price to pay for keeping the world safe, keeping our country safe. They can take out a city. Let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego. This is a very small price to pay and it’s going to be over with very soon. It’s essentially almost over with and they might keep going a little long.”

  Of course the people and politicians of San Diego and Los Angeles objected but the President’s own party politicians were largely silent because they are out campaigning to keep him and their fellow Republicans in power. 

  White House Communications Director, Steven Cheung, responded yesterday: “The media freakout over President Trump’s comments is not rooted in reality. He was clearly stating U.S. cities would have been threatened if a nuclear Iran hadn’t been stopped.”  

  That’s not what everyone else heard, if they heard anything at all.

FRENCH TOAST: Student protests over austerity budgets swept France yesterday as thousands of people crowded streets  across the country.

  Hundreds of schools and colleges were shut, with students complaining about crowded classrooms, understaffing ,and inequalities in the education system.

  Thousands of protesters were detained.

  “Today’s high school and university students are tomorrow’s workers. They should not have to pay the price for austerity policies,” one of France’s main labor unions, the CGT, said in a statement.

  The French government is trying to deal with a huge budget deficit.

MONSTER BUSINESS: Paramount has become the Godzilla of Hollywood entertainment after closing its merger deal with Warner Bros. Discovery, giving the company enormous power over television, streaming, movies, and news.

  The new company will be called Skydance, the name of CEO David Ellison’s company before he started gobbling up the rest of Hollywood. Ellison said he will keep alive the now sub-brands Paramount and Warner Bros. The deal adds CNN to Ellison’s ownership of CBS and CBS News.

  To pay off debts for its purchases of both Paramount and Warner, Skydance says it plans to make $6 billion in cuts within three years.

TRADWIFE: Angela Paxton, a Texas Republican state senator and the estranged wife of Senate candidate Ken Paxton, whom she has accused of adultery, is campaigning  to get her husband elected even while she is divorcing him.

  Mrs. Paxton, who had said she is divorcing “on Biblical grounds,” is reported to be more concerned about appearing loyal to the Republican Party for the sake of her own political future rather than openly condemning her scandal-plagued husband.

  In a commercial in which she does not mention her husband by name, Mrs. Paxton says, “In a general election, it’s not as much about the individual players on the team, it’s about getting the whole team across the finish line.”

THE WAR ROOM: Pretty soon, you’re talking about real money. The US so far in the Iran war has lost 81 planes, helicopters, and drones worth a total of $3.3 billion, according to the Congressional Research Service.

INFINITE SCROLL: 

— Former Olympic canoeist David Hearn, who was wrongly accused of vandalizing the bottom coating of the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool, is asking government watchdogs to investigate the prosecutors who had him indicted on the basis of  “blatantly false” information. 

  Hearn sent letters to the inspector generals of the Interior and Justice Departments  saying the agencies ignored their own evidence in a rush to satisfy President Trump’s desire for criminal charges.

  Trump continued to insist that the bottom coating was damaged by vandals even after the company that did the refurbishment admitted poor workmanship and flaws with materials. 

— President Trump does not plan to reimburse the government for self-promotional advertisements that have already run on television and online. He said his Super PAC will pay for the ads from now on.

  The latest ad called “Maduro,” about the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, ran yesterday. Part of the narration featured Trump saying,  “This was one of the most stunning, effective, and powerful displays of American military might and competence in American history.”

THE OBIT PAGE: Actress Eva Marie Saint, a beauty from the heyday of Hollywood who won an Oscar opposite Marlon Brando in “On the Waterfront” and played the love interest for Cary Grant in “North by Northwest,” has died in Los Angeles at age 102.

  Saint was a delicate blonde beauty and a real actress. She won for Best Supporting Actress in “Waterfront” while Brando took home “Best Actor.”

  Those two performances could have launched Saint to super-stardom but she chose to limit herself to one movie a year while she raised children. She said, “I have a life, and it is not lived on the set.” 

THE SPIN RACK: Lawyers for Christa Pike, who survived two supposedly lethal injections in Tennessee’s attempt to execute her for murder, is awake and speaking in a hospital. Pike had been on death row for 30 years. — Cornell University named Sally Yates, a former acting US attorney general and career federal prosecutor, to lead an independent internal review into how the school handled a former student’s allegation that she was gang-raped in a frat house. Yates was the US deputy attorney general under President Barack Obama.  

BELOW THE FOLD: An 8-foot statue titled “Orange Plague” depicting a naked, gold-covered and grossly obese Donald Trump has been unveiled inside the European Parliament in Strasbourg. The Trump figure is holding a golf club.