5. Exactly. Divine providence.

Ah, just for fun: People take up enough column inches with other crap no one wants to see:

How to Use rat in a Sentence
rat
noun
Definition of rat
Synonyms for rat

I can't believe that rat turned us in to the police!
Every night he goes to work out with the other gym rats.
No one understands why she's with a rat like him.
Are there rats or mice on cruise ships?
"
Nathan Diller, USA Today, 6 May 2026
That ****** is a rat ****** cap.
"
Dan Raby, CBS News, 13 Apr. 2026
More than likely a mouse or rat.
"
Soo Kim, MSNBC Newsweek, 29 Aug. 2025
The rain, or the rats, had made holes in all the flour sacks.
"
Literary Hub, 12 Jan. 2026
These are like dollar store rats.
"
Chris Spargo, PEOPLE, 31 Oct. 2025
The rat tail, his little jabs here and there.
"
Andre Gee, Rolling Stone, 2 Oct. 2025
Are rats cute, creepy, or a matter of genre?
"
Alison Foreman, IndieWire, 21 Oct. 2025
There are rats in the yard from the orange tree.
"
Joan Morris, Mercury News, 18 May 2026
Now, any creature that eats rats is a friend of mine.
"
Inga, San Diego Union-Tribune, 5 Jan. 2026
For her, yes, the noise, yes, the dirt, yes, the heat"whoops, a rat!
"
D. T. Max, The New Yorker, 18 Sep. 2023
The risk of seeing a rat or mouse on your next cruise is, too.
"
Nathan Diller, USA Today, 6 May 2026
Not a gym rat but want to burn off the late-night snacks and buffet bites?
"
Victoria Uwumarogie, Essence, 30 Jan. 2024
These posts referred to the witness as a rat and as a snitch.
"
Leonard Greene, New York Daily News, 18 Feb. 2026
Both old friends had fond memories of rats.
"
Bethy Squires, Vulture, 6 Mar. 2026
Stop these rats by installing a locking gas cap.
"
Josh Max, Forbes.com, 23 May 2026
Noe returned to the wharf and slung the dead rat across the water.
"
Literary Hub, 16 July 2026
In one, an empty egg crate was filled with newborn rats.
"
Grant Stringer, Mercury News, 16 Apr. 2026
One of the rats available for adoption.
"
Neal Riley, CBS News, 3 Mar. 2026
On one side stood a dozen or so cages occupied by snow-white rats.
"
Dhruv Khullar, New Yorker, 9 Feb. 2026
The human cells wound up making up one-sixth of the rats' brains.
"
Harold Maass, The Week, 24 Feb. 2023
VanDam hopes the craze fades, the crowds ebb and the rat hole can stay.
"
Jonathan Edwards, Washington Post, 31 Jan. 2024
Lali actively hunts mice, rats, and birds.
"
Tao Lin, Harpers Magazine, 20 Aug. 2025
In the meantime, traffic and rats.
"
Ben Smith, semafor.com, 5 Jan. 2026
The two cats stayed at the house but also roamed outside to help with the rats.
"
Corey Schmidt, Sacbee.com, 4 July 2026
Short of these kinds of changes, no amount of rat poison can fix the problem.
"
Arkansas Online, 20 Jan. 2026
Squirrel poop is about half an inch long, but a little rounder than rat poop.
"
Brandee Gruener, Southern Living, 1 July 2026
That way, the rat has to work at getting the nut, which will trigger the trap.
"
Joan Morris, The Mercury News, 25 Mar. 2024

I don't know why "rat" needs to be put in quotes when referring to a Trump loyalist. Forget the sinking ship.

Merriam Websters 2a

: a contemptible person: such as
: one who betrays or deserts friends or associates

Example sentence:
Alas, poor Bryan is about to learn the hard way that change " as the saying goes " is as hard to outrun as an ever-growing zombie rat king with 37 different limbs and a weirdly personal vendetta.
-- David Ehrlich, IndieWire, 16 Sep. 2026

Rove is one of the people who paved the way for the lying extremes of the present administration. In his day, he was not a good actor at all.

America was through with lying for awhile after Vietnam and Watergate.

Unfortunately, Reagan and Clinton were practiced liars.

Rove et al. ran with it while the party descended into dumbness and racism. W was punching above his weight.

But if the foreign actors can pass an abs viewing from the minister of masculinity and a testosterone test, and maybe the cough test for some hernia, well, there are exceptions....

Try going to a China AI search engine and typing in the date for Tiananmen Square. Gets a few sentences in, sees what it's getting ready to say, and shuts down the query.

Forget searching Tiananmen.

"Hello, It's Me" is Todd Rundgren?

I've been changing the station on that song since it came out.

FFS.

I don't know anything about Bryon Noem except that he had to be bat$#!+ crazy to be married to Ms. GooglyEyes, and given the party history, and he being a married Republican, I'd have to think there's some kinkiness involved.

Maybe the article says otherwise. Not reading it. Wouldn't believe the first news out of the box anyway.