Newsbusters

Thursday’s CBS Mornings Plus featured a remarkable segment about a new book from reporter David Zweig about the wholly political behavior and unscientific actions of keeping schools shuttered long-term during the Covid pandemic, perpetuated by so-called public health experts, certain politicians, and teachers unions.

Once again, co-host Tony Dokoupil showed disgust with this period of time and the damage it’s continued to inflict, but co-host Adriana Diaz seemed annoyed and took umbrage at Zweig arguing the media played a role in harming American children.

 

 

Dokoupil began by noting that, back in 2020, Americans were forced to accept “a new reality,” including “the big one we all had to accept, closing schools for a long time, an indefinite period.”

“Experts, at the time, said that decision was made to keep our kids and stop the spread of this deadly disease…But a new book argues that schools were safe to reopen way, way earlier than many of them. The book is called An Abundance of Caution. It was written by investigative journalist David Zweig, who argues the decision to shut down schools was made while ‘ignoring or dismissing real world evidence.’…Follow the science, trust the science. That’s what we were all told,” he added.

Zweig replied he was and remains in a unique position because he has “both challenged the established position, but I did it from within establishment media.”

He then got to the real heart of the matter about why some schools lost an entire year to the farce that was distance learning: “[U]nfortunately, because our culture in our country is so politically acrimonious and divided, what we find is that and what I talk about in the book at length is that much of the response, led by our public health establishment, aided by the media, was very politically motivated.”

The reporter also called out the lunacy of the fact that, while schools were closed, “adults down the street could be having a glass of wine,” to which Dokoupil concurred as having been “wild” and along with the “loss of access to learning,” children were trapped in “environment that’s sometimes dangerous.”

“Right. Child abuse skyrocketed. You have a kid who is kept home with a monster. Why? Because teachers and educators are the first line of defense who can see when abuse is happening. That was taken away from our children,” Zweig replied.

Asked why this happened despite the initial guidance from the American Academy of Pediatrics that schools reopen, Zweig politely as he could on a corporate, liberal, legacy network to slap them across the face for choosing to put defeating Donald Trump ahead of America’s children (click “expand”):

They did and so, the AAP — the American Academy of Pediatrics — came out with guidance. They basically said no matter what, let’s get kids in school. It’s so important. They’re at basically zero risk. They’re not going to be super spreaders. And don’t even worry about six feet of distancing. If you can — three feet, that’s fine. Just get them into the classroom. Shortly thereafter, Donald Trump tweeted in all caps, you know, OPEN THE SCHOOLS IN THE FALL, with a bunch of exclamation points. Immediately after, the AAP reversed its guidance. Gone was the idea of no matter what, get them in the classrooms. Gone was this idea of don’t worry about six feet of distancing. Instead, they replaced it with listen to the experts and we need a lot of money. Otherwise, the schools can’t open. And the other piece is, not only what was in this guidance, but who the co-authors were. And it was the two largest teacher’s unions.

Diaz then came in with an attempt to defend the ruling class, citing a clip from Dr. Tony Fauci telling CBS Mornings last year that his profession wasn’t actually wrong because the only thing worth debating was “how long” schools should have been closed, falsely adding they weren’t “shut…down completely.”

“So, you have said that health officials made errors in their assessment of the data. What errors? What did they get wrong? And how did they get it wrong, because these are top scientists,” she wondered from a position of sympathy.

Zweig upped the heat by saying “much of my book is about the failure of the expert class and one of the most stark examples — kind of the original sin, if you will, is — at the end of April, in the beginning of May, millions of children started going back do school in Europe” and “there was a meeting of the education ministers at the EU…and they said we have observed no negative consequences of schools reopening” with confirmation a month later.

Zweig set Diaz off with this final point about the media’s culpability: “They told everybody schools are open. Millions of kids are in. There’s no negative consequences and you know who covered that in America? This is huge news. This wasn’t in an obscure blog post. This wasn’t in a medical journal. This was the EU. No one. No one covered it.”

Diaz interjected this wasn’t true, leading Zweig to call her out for this “gotcha” (click “expand”):

DIAZ: No, CBS News covered it.

ZWEIG: Oh, you did? Amazing.

DIAZ: I have an article right here. Yeah, we did. I’ll show it to you.

ZWEIG: You covered the —

DIAZ: “Millions of kids around the world adjust to —”

ZWEIG: Fantastic.

DIAZ: “— the reopening of schools.”

ZWEIG: Fantastic. Finally.

DIAZ: But maybe your point was this was not widely covered.

DOKOUPIL: But, no. The —

ZWEIG: This was not widely — I mean, that’s was a good gotcha you had on me, but —

DIAZ: This wasn’t meant to be a gotcha. It was just —

Dokoupil rescued the segment from morphing into something out of CNN Thunderdome (aka CNN NewsNight) by asking Zweig about an observation from his book that “The New York Times had an article that said ‘Cases Could Soar in Communities If Schools Reopen Soon’ on the very same day that the British Medical Journal — the prestigious journal in the UK wrote an article — published an article: ‘Children are not super spreaders. Time to go back to school.’”

The CBS co-host gave his own take: “The disconnect between what was happening there and what was happening here — I mean, we’re still dealing with the consequences.”

After dismissing the article Diaz gave him as not actually related to the subject at hand, Zweig concluded the success of European school reopening “was largely ignored” and took aim at Fauci:

Dr. Fauci said we should get kids back in school, but only when it’s safe — with this special qualifier. Except when it’s safe was a series of contrived, bogus reasons that didn’t have any science behind them when the kids were already in school without masks or distancing or anything with no negative consequences.

To see the relevant CBS transcript from April 24, click here.

Before basketball’s 24-second rule, there was a tactic called freezing the ball. The team that was ahead would attempt to run out the clock by holding onto the ball as long as it could to deny the opposing team an opportunity to score.

That looks like what Iran is again doing – “freezing” negotiations while finishing the final stages of nuclear enrichment on the way to building a deliverable nuclear weapon.

It is important for the U.S. to take Iranian leaders at their word. Failing to do so and believing the regime will pull back on what some of their leaders have said is a religious mandate to wipe out Israel and “the great Satan” virtually guarantees the world will be faced with the greatest threat since the beginning of the Cold War with a nuclear-armed Soviet Union. Except the Soviets were atheists. The Iranian mullahs think doing what they claim to be Allah’s will, especially if it leads to martyrdom, guarantees them a ticket to Heaven.

The West has a history of not taking seriously the announced intentions of its enemies. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels publicly stated their economic and political goals, which were fulfilled in the Bolshevik Revolution and the imposition of communism and socialism in Russia.

Adolf Hitler wrote “Mein Kampf” (My Struggle) in which he stated his hatred of Jews, a hatred incorporated in the Third Reich, which led to the Holocaust.

In each instance there were Western academics, journalists, even clergy, who excused, denied or rationalized these objectives. And in each instance millions of lives were lost in a forced famine and gulags (Stalin) and World War II (launched by Hitler).

Past deals with Iran, including initially agreed inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency and the UN, have been violated. Why does anyone believe the Iranians will abide by a new agreement?

Writing for the publication JNS.org, New York attorney Eric Levine references an April 14 op-ed in The Wall Street Journal by former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in which Kerry“ discusses what a good deal between the United States and Iran will look like if Iran is willing to reach an agreement with President Donald Trump. Kerry’s hypothetical new Iran deal bears no resemblance to the disaster that he and then-President Barack Obama forced down the throats of Americans in 2015, despite overwhelming bipartisan opposition.”

Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, has no experience dealing with people who claim a religious motivation for their actions. He is no more likely to succeed with Iran than Kerry and Obama who got rolled by the mullahs.

As John Bolton, President Trump’s former national security adviser, has written for the publication Independent Arabia: “Washington has every justification to take military action against Tehran’s proliferation efforts. Iran’s nuclear threat is not a problem merely for Israel, but for the entire world. For thirty years, the ayatollahs have sought to become a nuclear power, to the detriment of everyone else. America has the wherewithal to eliminate this proliferation threat, and would be politically and morally justified in doing so. Helping Israel de-fang Iran follows quite logically.”

Iran is in a weak position, domestically and internationally. Regime change would be the best option, but the rulers are unlikely to willingly relinquish power. The time to strike Iranian nuclear facilities is now. Delay means we will likely have to face a nuclear armed Iran with the ability to launch ICBMs at Israel and American cities. Who thinks that is a risk worth taking?

PolitiFact editor-in-chief Katie Sanders is still decrying Meta Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to break up with the fact-checking companies, so, on Thursday, she wrote an article using the death of Pope Francis to argue he supported their work.

Sanders cites two Francis quotes, “Francis outlined the societal harms of misinformation in 2018, tracing the origin of false news to the Garden of Eden ‘snake tactics’ that led to the original sin” and ‘“There is no such thing as harmless disinformation; on the contrary, trusting in falsehood can have dire consequences,’ he wrote Jan. 24, 2018, for World Communications Day. ‘Even a seemingly slight distortion of the truth can have dangerous effects.’” 

In that document, Francis did write, “Praiseworthy too are those institutional and legal initiatives aimed at developing regulations for curbing the phenomenon, to say nothing of the work being done by tech and media companies in coming up with new criteria for verifying the personal identities concealed behind millions of digital profiles.”

However, and for all his reputation as a “reformer” on certain matters of gender and sexuality, Francis was still fiercely critical of gender ideology and maintained there are only two sexes and used “sex” interchangeably with “gender.” PolitiFact, by contrast, claims such beliefs are wrong.

Sanders then proceeded to list several Francis-related hoaxes, but she missed the main point. It is not objectionable if PolitiFact points out an AI-generated image was, in fact, AI-generated or that a certain article was satirical, provided they don’t slap a “false” label on a joke and suppress social media reach. The problem is when PolitiFact confuses its or its preferred experts’ opinions for facts, when it doesn’t fact-check itself before publishing, or applies double standards to similar claims. 

Towards the end of her article, Sanders recalled, “In his 2018 message, Francis described journalists’ responsibility as the world’s informers to promote accurate, trusted reporting. He called on everyone to ‘promote a journalism of peace.’”

She concludes:

More than ever, the future of information integrity relies on ordinary people seeking truth and providing corrective information in the public square.

Take it from Francis’ message:

‘The best antidotes to falsehoods are not strategies, but people: people who are not greedy but ready to listen, people who make the effort to engage in sincere dialogue so that the truth can emerge; people who are attracted by goodness and take responsibility for how they use language.’

 Yes, “sincere dialogue,” not proclamations from St. Petersburg, Florida. Truth is not relative, and people should put in the effort to make sure what they are saying or posting on social media is true, but Pope Francis would agree that does not mean the truth is defined as whatever PolitiFact says it is.

Life is sooo hard being a Former First Lady with a $70 million net worth. Remember in 2008 when Michelle Obama announced she only became proud of our nation right then, as she was about to achieve First Lady status?

Now that she’s no longer First Lady, she joined the washed-up female star to podcaster pipeline, admitting on her show that she no longer has to pretend she likes America anymore.

On Thursday, I joined Fox and Friends First to discuss how Obama has become the Meghan Markle of White House history. We also covered the Left’s antisemitic double standards when it comes to free speech on college campuses. 

 

 

Going back to Obama, she patted herself on the back for refusing to have the decency to put her grudges behind her and show up at President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January (as if anyone outside her elite bubble cares that deeply, whether she attended or not).

Refusing to get off her lazy butt apparently makes this narcissist a feminist martyr, in her own eyes. The former First Lady made up an imaginary misogynist overlord she somehow defeated by playing hooky and packaging it as a message for young women that “it’s okay to say no.”

But congratulating yourself for staying home and doing the bare minimum is a core Leftist value, after all.

The left-wing fanatics over at New York Magazine chose to use Earth Day to celebrate the budding legacy of George Soros’s “loyal parasite” son Alex Soros, the crown prince of his empire.

“Alex, 39, is dressed in black leather boots, black pants, and a black turtleneck, a uniform that matches his pallid complexion, intense demeanor, and Ph.D. in European intellectual history,” fan-boyed the magazine’s features writer Simon van Zuylen-Wood in his 7,959-word Earth Day nonsense.

Zuylen-Wood’s item tried to cast the radical extremist as being America’s savior from President Donald Trump, as was exemplified by his headline: “The New Soros: With Trump on the rampage, Alex Soros takes control of his father’s empire. What will he do with his influence?” Alex’s new position as chair of his father’s $20 billion Open Society Foundations, fawned Zuylen-Wood, makes him “the key megadonor poised to bankroll the liberal movement for years to come.” 

The most disturbing part of the interview came when Alex described his relationship with his notorious father. “I said to him, ‘No, come on — I enjoy your company. You’re my father, and I’m going to be your loyal parasite. I’m going to be by your side.” This confirms what the MRC has long suspected over why George chose to crown an heir at all given his narcissistic god-complex: Alex is his most dedicated and enthusiastic acolyte. 

And Alex’s top mission, according to Zuylen-Wood, is to destroy President Donald Trump. “Again and again, [Alex] says his priority remains power, however the Democrats can attain it. Before the election, Alex was wholly fixated on beating Trump: ‘Everything else doesn’t matter.’”

That’s didn’t turn out well. “Now that Trump has won, [Alex] wants to prevent more winning. ‘The courts, they’re not going to save us. We put faith in concepts that don’t exist in real life, like the separation of powers. It takes one man to violate those and nobody to do anything in order for that to just be shredded,’ he says. ‘And I think that’s the very important lesson, right? Leadership matters.’” 

Yikes.

Zuylen-Wood’s Soros-championing piece just happened to be published the same day as MRC Business’s latest groundbreaking report exposing how Alex and his father fund and steer the global climate change movement. The empire under both father and son have unleashed $618 million in spending and commitments to purchase an eco-utopia that aligns with their dark vision for the world. The eco-extremist groups financed by the Soros machine around the world have pushed everything from elimination of the internal combustion engine, to war on the fossil fuel industry, to adoption of a Global Green New Deal, to transform youth into climate radicals, and to direct intimidation of politicians who don’t properly toe the eco-extremist line.

When viewed through just the lens of his global climate change agenda alone, Zuylen-Wood’s particular emphasis on how Alex is building up power around the world becomes even more chilling:

Alex’s fondness for collecting powerful figures embarrasses people at the foundation. It also underscores his influence. OSF is by some measures the second-largest charitable foundation in the United States, trailing only the Gates Foundation. It gives out roughly $1.5 billion a year, and it spends its U.S. budget not only on liberal causes but also on some of the big dark-money nonprofits aligned with the Democratic Party, including America Votes, the Sixteen Thirty Fund, and the pro-Harris spending group Future Forward USA Action.

The Soros empire clearly couldn’t have asked for a better de facto PR firm than New York Magazine. Good grief.

Navy veteran Zachary Young filed a defamation suit against U.S. News & World Report on Wednesday, the third such defamation suit filed after his trial victory against CNN in January. In the complaint filed with Florida’s 14th Judicial Circuit in Bay County, Young alleged that U.S. News had defamed him by way of republishing the same Associated Press article he recently sued them for.

The filing, obtained by NewsBusters, reiterated their argument against the AP, noting that, “AP’s article blatantly accused Mr. Young of engaging in criminal human smuggling” (emphasis added in filing).

Adding: “The Article further uses the characterization: “but he said he worked exclusively with deep[1]pocketed outside sponsors” further calling into question the verdict from the jurors in Bay County, the rulings from the Court, and implying that Mr. Young is really a people smuggler who just simply said he was being paid by outside sponsors to “smuggle” people. The reputational damages here are substantial.”

On the allegations against U.S. News, the filing pointed to their republishing of the offending AP report:

Defendant U.S. News & World Report L.P – an AP syndication partner – republished that AP article on its website the same day, disseminating the defamatory accusation anew to a significant audience who has come to trust U.S. News & World Report as a source of news. In that article (the “Article”), U.S. News republished the Article from AP, paradoxically stating that “Young’s business helped smuggle people out of Afghanistan.

As NewsBusters previously reported, U.S. News had pulled the republished AP story from their website and replaced it with this statement explainong why it was removed and that it was removed after Young had reached out to them (Click “expand”):

U.S. News & World Report has removed the article previously available at this URL that had been published on January 17, 2025, entitled “Florida Jury Says CNN Defamed Navy Veteran in Story About Endangered Afghans.” The article was reported and written by the Associated Press (“AP”). As an AP subscriber, U.S News regularly republishes multiple AP articles on a daily basis.

The AP article reported on Zachary Young’s defamation lawsuit against CNN. The AP article reported that the jury found that a CNN report on Mr. Young had falsely implied he had engaged in illegal conduct. The article further reported that the jury awarded Mr. Young damages of $5 million and that the case then settled.

The AP article described Mr. Young as a “U.S. Navy veteran who helped rescue endangered Afghans”. The AP article also stated that “Young’s business helped smuggle people out of Afghanistan.” Mr. Young subsequently contacted U.S. News and objected to the word “smuggle” as accusing him of engaging in criminal activity. In republishing the article, U.S. News had no intention to suggest that Mr. Young’s actions were unlawful. Nevertheless, to avoid any possible misunderstanding, U.S. News has removed and retracts the AP article.

The new filing provided more backstory to how that move by U.S. News came about, including their request he sign a legal waiver.

“U.S. News & World Report L.P, tried to condition a retraction on Mr. Young signing a release of claims. This self-serving delay and conditional “correction” undermined the very purpose of a retraction and demonstrated U.S. News’s bad faith,” he told the court.

The filing described Young’s initial contact with U.S. News over the matter as “a no-cost, no-strings-attached opportunity to resolve the matter and mitigate the harm.” It apparently took the outlet “two full business days to respond” and they partially came back with “With all due respect to you and your client, U.S. News cannot accept your client’s proposed retraction” (emphasis used in filing).

Young also argued that U.S. News knew the offending aspects of the AP report were incorrect because they had republished a Reuters report on the CNN defamation trial verdict and an earlier AP article detailing the allegations in the case.

The filing accused U.S. News on three counts: defamation per se, defamation by implication, and injurious falsehood / trade libel. Young also “demands an award of interest, taxable costs, and a trial by jury on all factual issues so triable[.]”

Professor and podcaster Christina Greer and MSNBC Prime host Alicia Menendez had what could only be described as an epic meltdown on Wednesday. As the White House has started kicking around various ideas to reverse declining birthrates, the duo insisted that “we know” that their actual intention is to increase the political power of white people.

The whole segment raised the question of just what kind of educating goes on in Greer’s classrooms as she declared, “This administration, and dare I say, the Republican Party writ large, does not tend to care about children once they’re outside of the womb.”

 

 

She added, “When you say a six-week abortion ban, most women have no idea that they’re even pregnant. If they knew anything about women’s anatomy, they would know that. And so there’s this lack of understanding, but a purposeful lack of understanding for certain people in this administration, and others actually do know the harm that they’re causing, and they don’t care.”

Greer then made things racial, “And so what’s so frustrating and dangerous about this moment is it’s couched in this real conservative family values. But we know the overarching theme is this larger conservative ideology of what a family looks like, but also we can’t ignore the racial element.”

Adding immigration to the mix, Greer continued, “This has a long-standing history in this country about who should be the dominant group. We know that the president has talked many times about his good genes and his eugenics, and we know that they want/need more white people in this country. This is what the mass deportations are about. We know that the way the rules are set up in this country, only white women can make white men. Only white women can make white babies.”

Greer also insisted that pro-lifers’ true motivations are also racist, “So if that’s the case, you have to make sure you defund abortion. You have to make sure you make it illegal and criminal. You have to make sure that you make it as easy as possible for white women specifically to be able to have children, whether it’s IVF or whatever it may be, because the idea is to get them back to 100 years ago, when white people are the dominant group.”

Menendez then wondered, “How do you pin them down, though, on that? The fact that restricting abortion access was Jane Crow Part One, and that then incentives to procreate that are very specifically tailored to specific groups are part two. How do you make the subtext textual?”

 

 

Greer suggested non-white women call the GOP’s bluff, “What if women of color said, ‘All of these policies that you’re making so easy for other women, what if we were all of a sudden interested in.’ I’d be really curious, because we know the overarching fear is that white people will not will not be the dominant group by 2040.

There are still plenty of non-absurd questions you could raise about this idea. For one, how would the White House pay for these new benefits? But, the racial angle is ridiculous. After spending the previous few minutes claiming conservatives just want more white people, Greer claimed even non-white people can further their racist goals, “Now, we also know that you don’t have to be white to subscribe to white supremacy. We’ve seen that quite a bit. But this particular administration has always come in with a very laser-sharp focus on what it means for women in this country, where women should be in this country. It is not in the halls of Congress. It is at home in the family with children, and they’re being as explicit as they possibly can be with these new policies.”

That would be news to all the GOP women in Congress. Whatever one thinks of the natalist movement and its suggestions on their face, it is a fact that one of its leaders in the U.S. is Vice President JD Vance, who has three mixed-race children, but according to MSNBC, it is heads you’re a racist, tails you’re a white supremacist.

Here is a transcript for the April 23 show:

MSNBC Prime

4/23/2025

7:51 PM ET

CHRISTINA GREER: This administration, and dare I say, the Republican Party writ large, does not tend to care about children once they’re outside of the womb. They are obsessed with women’s wombs, and they know very little about menstrual cycles. It was surprising—

ALICIA MENENDEZ: I know; could everyone actually sit in on that class. Maybe all members of Congress could join them.

GREER: If we have an 8th grade public health class, I beg, because most men you know, when you say a six-week abortion ban, most women have no idea that they’re even pregnant.

MENENDEZ: Right.

GREER: If they knew anything about women’s anatomy, they would know that. And so there’s this lack of understanding, but a purposeful lack of understanding—

MENENDEZ: Yes.

GREER: — for certain people in this administration, and others actually do know the harm that they’re causing, and they don’t care. And so what’s so frustrating and dangerous about this moment is it’s couched in this real conservative family values. But we know the overarching theme is this larger conservative ideology of what a family looks like, but also we can’t ignore the racial element. 

This has a long-standing history in this country about who should be the dominant group. We know that the president has talked many times about his good genes and his eugenics, and we know that they want/need more white people in this country. This is what the mass deportations are about. We know that the way the rules are set up in this country, only white women can make white men.

Only white women can make white babies. So if that’s the case, you have to make sure you defund abortion. You have to make sure you make it illegal and criminal. You have to make sure that you make it as easy as possible for white women specifically to be able to have children, whether it’s IVF or whatever it may be, because the idea is to get them back to 100 years ago, when white people are the dominant group.

MENENDEZ: How do you pin them down, though, on that?

GREER: How do we pin—

MENENDEZ: The fact that restricting abortion access was Jane Crow Part One, and that then incentives to procreate that are very specifically tailored to specific groups are part two. How do you make the subtext textual?

GREER: I’m curious if what if black and Latina and Asian women said, “sign me up,” like all these programs that you’re offering, let’s see if they will still offer them. I mean, we saw this. I mean, I know it’s not a one-to one comparison, but we saw with certain gun control, right. When the Black Panther Party said, “Oh, well, you want to have guns, we want to have guns.” 

All of a sudden we have gun laws, right? And we saw a backpedaling. What if women of color said, “All of these policies that you’re making so easy for other women, what if we were all of a sudden interested in.”

I’d be really curious, because we know the overarching fear is that white people will not will not be the dominant group by 2040. Now, we also know that you don’t have to be white to subscribe to white supremacy. We’ve seen that quite a bit. But this particular administration has always come in with a very laser-sharp focus on what it means for women in this country, where women should be in this country. It is not in the halls of Congress. It is at home in the family with children, and they’re being as explicit as they possibly can be with these new policies.

Jason Horowitz, the Rome bureau chief of The New York Times and a passionate fan of the late Pope Francis (he loved to cast opponents of the late pontiff’s political proclamations into the outer darkness as “archconservatives” or “ultraconservatives”) made Wednesday’s front page off-lead slot with another story to accompany his official obituary for Pope Francis: “As Ears Closed, Pope Amplified Those Unheard Lonely Moral Message in a Changing World.”

While Horowitz admitted in his obituary of Pope Francis that the pontiff stumbled in his attempt to confront sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, back in August 2018 Horowitz penned a hostile story on a Vatican whistleblower, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, who called on Francis to resign for helping to coverup sexual assault, as “an ideologically motivated opposition” member who “weaponized” the church’s sex abuse crisis.

The online headline deck to Horowitz’s latest story provided the flavor: “Francis’ Death Silences a Voice for the Voiceless — As democratic values and alliances were being turned upside down, the pope was a consistent moral guidepost. Who can play that role now?”

The paper’s traditional hostility toward traditional religion was set aside to celebrate Pope Francis and his leftist political viewpoint. In Horowitz’s telling, the world lost not only a pontiff but a powerful activist, leaving the world worse for the meek.

As the world Pope Francis consistently called for — one that cared for migrants, safeguarded the health of the planet and protected human rights — collapsed around him in recent years, Francis would react to the newest setback by going quiet.

Horowitz saw a darker world after voters began to wake up to the consequences of untrammeled immigration, which often turns deadly both in Europe and America

That silence is now permanent. The death of Pope Francis on Monday morning has now deprived the world of a persistent advocate for the downtrodden. As mass deportations become the norm, authoritarianism expands and the alliances that governed the post-World War II era are turned upside down, it is clear that Francis has left behind a world quite unlike the one he joined as pope in 2013.

….

Francis didn’t speak up only in support of those he considered vulnerable. He used his enormous platform as the spiritual leader of an estimated 1.3 billion Catholics to push back against world leaders who he and his supporters worried demonized migrants, the poor and the marginalized for political gain.

Horowitz again and again cast Francis, who encouraged left-wing interpretations of church doctrine during his term (without making many actual changes) as the last hope for humanity’s downtrodden.

….In his last public appearance, during the Urbi et Orbi Easter address from the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica on Sunday, Francis lacked the strength to speak, but a prelate reiterated his concerns for migrants, victims of violence and conflict across the world and a growing climate of anti-Semitism.

But Francis’ warnings had a tendency to go unheeded.

Meanwhile, the late Pope’s opponents, and conservatives in general, were described in inflammatory terms.

During his pontificate, which began with his visits to migrant camps in southern Italy, Europe became increasingly reluctant to accept migrants, and nationalist parties — feeding off the economic frustration, populist politics and xenophobia of voters — have steadily risen.

Francis repeatedly warned of a return of authoritarianism, and nationalism’s tendency to reintroduce history’s horrors. By the end of his pontificate, right-wing parties had scored major victories throughout Europe, and President Trump, whose Christianity Francis had once questioned, was back in power.

But Cardinal Czerny said Francis was never motivated by the desire to make alliances among leaders, but instead by looking out, and speaking up, for the world’s meek.

As Elon Musk starts to contemplate wrapping up DOGE’s mission to identify wasteful spending in the federal government and return to Tesla on a more full-time basis, ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel had a suggestion. On Tuesday, he brought back an old STD bit and suggested to Musk that he sell the company to “someone more likeable, like chlamydia or AIDS.”

Kimmel began, “And then we have Mr. Congeniality, Elon Musk, who has been lying low as of late and reportedly wants to get out of DOGE. Musk says that he will dial back his work with the government so that he can spend more time with all ten of his families. People forget Elon, he can’t spend all his time in Washington. He has a company to run into the ground.”

 

 

Reaching for the Nazi card, Kimmel continued, “In the first three months of this year, Tesla’s profits fell 71 percent, which I guess is what happens when your CEO turns into white Kanye before your eyes.”

Kimmel added, “But I don’t know about this plan. He might as well stay. I’m really not sure going back to Tesla is going to help anything at all. The reason Tesla is tanking is because people hate him and they don’t want to buy his stuff. Him being back is not going to make it better. What he needs to do is sell Tesla to someone more likable, like chlamydia or AIDS.”

Invoking chlamydia and AIDS is not news for Kimmel. He once responded to a passage in former Sen. Mitt Romney’s book about a possible unity ticket with him and Ted Cruz in 2016 to run against Donald Trump in the primary by claiming that would be “like trying to fight chlamydia by teaming up with AIDS.”

Between the Nazi and STD references, the real question is whether Jimmy Kimmel Live! can produce any original material that goes beyond simplistic name-calling.

Here is a transcript for the April 23 show:

ABC Jimmy Kimmel Live!

4/23/2025

11:40 PM ET

JIMMY KIMMEL: And then we have Mr. Congeniality, Elon Musk, who has been lying low as of late and reportedly wants to get out of DOGE. Musk says that he will dial back his work with the government so that he can spend more time with all ten of his families. People forget Elon, he can’t spend all his time in Washington. He has a company to run into the ground. In the first three months of this year, Tesla’s profits fell 71 percent, which I guess is what happens when your CEO turns into white Kanye before your eyes, but I don’t know about this plan. He might as well stay. I’m really not sure going back to Tesla is going to help anything at all. The reason Tesla is tanking is because people hate him and they don’t want to buy his stuff. Him being back is not going to make it better. What he needs to do is sell Tesla to someone more likable, like chlamydia or AIDS.

For weeks, liberal TV news have showered de Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s legal team with friendly press. So far this month, the attorneys defending Garcia, the deported illegal alien from El Salvador, have sat for 28 friendly interviews on corporate media airwaves, or more than one per day.

MRC analysts combed through SnapStream recordings and Nexis transcripts from April 1 through April 23 for every interview of Garcia’s attorneys on liberal broadcast (ABC, CBS, and NBC) and cable (CNN and MSNBC) networks. Throughout those 23 days, five lawyers representing Garcia — Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, Rina Gandhi, Benjamin Osorio, Chris Newman, and Alexandra Ribe — were interviewed a total of 28 times.

While most aired on cable channels, it was the April 1 edition of CBS Evening News that televised the first interview. The attorney in question was Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, who would go on to appear in a total of fourteen interviews in the first two weeks of April.

CNN aired by far the most sit-downs with Garcia’s lawyers: sixteen in total, or just over half. MSNBC ran ten such interviews over the same period, while ABC and CBS were responsible for the remaining two.

Unsurprisingly, none were even remotely adversarial. While some hosts saw fit to throw in the odd token challenge or straw man here or there, almost all of the questions these lawyers faced were overwhelmingly sympathetic. In fact, anchors spent most of their time commiserating with Garcia’s attorneys.

During an April 2 interview on CNN, host Erin Burnett seemed so convinced of Garcia’s innocence that she wondered if perhaps his case would be a turning point for Trump supporters. To Sandoval-Moshenberg she inquired: “Do you think your client’s situation, his deportation, could make other Trump supporters, maybe even other Republican officials, think twice about what Trump is doing on deportations?”

On April 15, MSNBC’s Christina Ruffini attempted to downplay Garcia’s ties to MS-13 while interviewing attorney Rina Gandhi: “You know, we all change… Maybe he did some things earlier in his life that they could be talking about? Or is there just, in your opinion, no evidence to support this whatsoever?”

And just last week, on April 18, CNN host Kaitlan Collins sought reassurance from Gandhi that her legal team would be able to keep Garcia from being deported elsewhere if they managed to secure his release:

We had the border czar, Tom Homan, on last night, and his argument that he made to me was, one, that that 2019 from an immigration judge, who technically was working for President Trump was meaningless. But he also said that if your client is brought back to the United States, he’ll just be deported again to a third country. If that happened, legally do you think you’d be able to prevent that.

Even as more damning evidence has emerged about Garcia’s past, the leftist TV networks have pressed doggedly onward with his legal team’s free publicity tour. It looks like they feel too dug in to attempt an about-face.