The PBS News Hour ended Tuesday evening’s show to a discussion of the “chilling effect” of Trump’s executive actions on free speech on campus, based on the pro-Hamas agitators occupying campus quads and sometimes vandalizing campus buildings and attacking Jewish students, a segment slanted heavily toward the pro-Palestinian side.

No surprise there, given that a June 2024 Media Research Center study found the News Hour’s coverage to slant overwhelmingly toward the side of the protesters, downplaying their pro-Hamas, anti-Jewish rhetoric and of course, rediscovering the merits of “free speech” on campus after years of ignoring the squelching of conservative opinion on campus.

The long segment heavily featured Wesleyan University President Michael Roth, a pro-DEI administrator who has been outspoken in defense of the rights of the pro-Hamas campus agitators. He says he’s pro-Israel, yet defended protests on his campus by telling the campus community “The protesters’ cause is important — bringing attention to the killing of innocent people.”

Co-anchor Amna Nawaz mentioned the administration’s move to deprive Harvard University of federal grants until it cracks down on anti-semitism, giving fellow anchor Geoff Bennett a lead in:

Co-anchor Geoff Bennett: ….well beyond the Harvard case, there are growing concerns about how these moves could affect academic freedom and the future of free speech on campuses across the country. Jeffrey Brown reports for our series Rethinking College.

Banning conservative speakers and expelling outspoken students was never a priority for PBS news coverage. But pushback against vulgar, sometimes violent campus occupiers spouting eliminationist rhetoric toward Jews? Now there’s a “free speech” problem.

Jeffrey Brown: A gorgeous spring day near semester’s end at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, signs of normal student life everywhere. But here, as on many campuses around the country, something else is in the air.

Minnah Sheikh, Wesleyan University Student: There’s fear coming not just from students, but from our parents, from faculty, and that’s a very real concern.

After clips of several students complaining they feel they must be careful with their speech, Brown explained:

Brown: Much of this recent change can be traced back to last year, when student protests over the Israel-Hamas war broke out at colleges across the nation, including at Wesleyan. They reignited an already raging debate around free speech and academic freedom.

Brown neutrally relayed the infamous congressional hearings in which Ivy League college presidents refused to condemn anti-Semitic acts on their campuses, before a clip from Michael Roth, President of Wesleyan University, an outspoken supporter of what he calls “free speech” on campus, but what others call harassment of Jewish students and other supporters of Israel.

Brown: Wesleyan’s President Michael Roth has been one of the most vocal critics of what he calls an assault on higher education.

Roth: I’m speaking out because it seems to me being silent does not buy you protection.

Brown: Does it feel to you like free speech itself is under attack at American universities?

Roth: It does. And for the last 15 years, people who think of themselves as conservatives or even moderate liberals have said free speech is under attack at universities. What is new here is that the government isn’t just saying we want you to ensure that protests don’t get out of hand. Seems like not actually unreasonable to me. But we want to ensure that people don’t say certain things….

Finally PBS broached the long-standing issue of intolerance of conservative viewpoints on campus.

Brown: Ilya Shapiro is the author of the recent book Lawless: The Miseducation of America’s Elites. He points to his own experience in 2022 at Georgetown Law School, when he took to social media to criticize President Biden’s pledge to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court.

Ilya Shapiro: Where I poorly phrased a tweet making an argument against limiting your candidate pool for Supreme Court by race and sex.

Brown: Arguing for another candidate, Shapiro tweeted that the court would be left with a — quote — “lesser black woman.”

Shapiro: And that led to a four-month investigation, protests and letters and a whole inquisition by the DEI office.

Brown: He was eventually cleared of wrongdoing, but decided to resign from Georgetown anyway, while pointing to other controversial posts by progressive professors who he argues were largely protected by the university.

Shapiro: The permissible range of expressed policy views has narrowed and shifted….

After a clip from two Jewish students who felt targeted during campus protests, he relayed a convoluted argument, favored by the hard left and certain PBS guests, that protecting Jewish students from verbal and physical assault makes Jewish students “the face of repression.” As if Jewish students aren’t already the enemy to pro-Hamas campus agitators.

Brown gave Roth the last word, and it was a doozy (Click “Expand”).

Brown: Back at Wesleyan University, President Michael Roth agrees and says the threats universities are now facing and today’s chilling of speech on campus could have broader societal implications.

Roth: If we let the federal government dictate how to teach and learn on a campus, I’m afraid the government will try to tell us how to worship, what we’re supposed to buy and how we’re supposed to conduct our local politics. And we don’t want that to happen in the United States.

(PBS News was scouring online for sources for this story a few weeks ago (“Are you a college student concerned about the future of free speech on campus?”) inviting interested students to fill out a form. Of course, PBS asked for pronouns: “What are your pronouns and race/ethnicity?”

This biased segment was brought to you in part by Cunard.

A transcript is available, click “Expand.”

PBS News Hour

5/6/25

7:44:47 p.m.

Amna Nawaz: The Trump administration has embarked on a pressure campaign that aims to remake how many American universities operate.

The efforts to crack down on protests and diversity initiatives are part of what the White House says is a push to address antisemitism. Just yesterday, Education Secretary Linda McMahon told Harvard University it will not receive any future federal grants until it complies with Trump’s demands.

Geoff Bennett: That case is now heading to court.

But well beyond the Harvard case, there are growing concerns about how these moves could affect academic freedom and the future of free speech on campuses across the country.

Jeffrey Brown reports for our series Rethinking College.

Jeffrey Brown: A gorgeous spring day near semester’s end at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, signs of normal student life everywhere.

But here, as on many campuses around the country, something else is in the air.

Minnah Sheikh, Wesleyan University Student: There’s fear coming not just from students, but from our parents, from faculty, and that’s a very real concern.

Jeffrey Brown: Wesleyan senior Minnah Sheikh is studying government and economics. How does it feel this year compared to last year?

Minnah Sheikh: In terms of tangible impact, I think there is a lot more fear. Instead of going to a protest just by, like, walking in or seeing a gathering and joining, I have to consider, should I put a face mask? Should I be in picture? Should I make myself visible? Should I be seen?

I shouldn’t be worried even as a U.S. citizen that was born in the United States. But those are the very real conversations people are having.

Khalilah Brown-Dean, Professor, Wesleyan University: So I’m glad that we could come together because there’s a lot of conversation happening right now about higher education.

Jeffrey Brown: A lot of conversation, for sure, and enormous turmoil.

Wesleyan Professor Khalilah Brown-Dean tackles these issues as head of a Campus Center for the Study of Public Life. And on this day, she convened a roundtable of students to hear how they were feeling about recent events.

Michael Astorino, Wesleyan University Student: When it comes to politics or controversial subjects, people are walking on eggshells out of fear that, if they say something perceived out of line, everyone will judge them.

Katie Williams, Wesleyan University Student: Even today, I was kind of fearful of attending. And, actually, with my friends at other schools. I have known people to have their scholarships revoked.

Khalilah Brown-Dean: If students are afraid to speak, if students are afraid of how what they say will be taken out of context or used in a particular way, it changes the very nature of what the college experience is supposed to be.

Jeffrey Brown: Much of this recent change can be traced back to last year, when student protests over the Israel-Hamas war broke out at colleges across the nation, including at Wesleyan.

They reignited an already raging debate around free speech and academic freedom.

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY): At Harvard, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard’s rules of bullying and harassment, yes or no?

Claudine Gay, Former President, Harvard University: It can be depending on the context.

Jeffrey Brown: Congressional hearings, university presidents resigning, and now direct targeting, international students arrested after protesting are speaking out, many seeing their legal status in jeopardy.

Donald Trump, President of the United States: I think Harvard’s a disgrace. I think what they did was a disgrace. They’re obviously antisemitic.

Jeffrey Brown: And billions of dollars in federal research and other funding frozen or threatened at more than 60 universities, including an effort to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status, all in the name of stopping antisemitism on campus.

Michael Roth, President, Wesleyan University: It is meant to make people afraid, and it’s working.

Jeffrey Brown: Wesleyan’s President Michael Roth has been one of the most vocal critics of what he calls an assault on higher education.

Michael Roth: I’m speaking out because it seems to me being silent does not buy you protection.

Jeffrey Brown: Does it feel to you like free speech itself is under attack at American universities?

Michael Roth: It does. And for the last 15 years, people who think of themselves as conservatives or even moderate liberals have said free speech is under attack at universities. What is new here is that the government isn’t just saying we want you to ensure that protests don’t get out of hand. Seems like not actually unreasonable to me. But we want to ensure that people don’t say certain things.

And in order to ensure that, we’re willing to defund a diabetes research study or a cancer research study. I mean, that use of financial or economic leverage against research, I do think, is unprecedented.

Jeffrey Brown: One focal point, Columbia University, seen of many highly publicized protests. The Trump administration targeted some $400 million in cuts in federal funding before Columbia agreed to a number of demands, a controversial decision within the world of academia. The outcome is still pending.

Michael Thaddeus, Professor, Columbia University: Nobody wants to express a controversial opinion about anything anymore.

Jeffrey Brown: Michael Thaddeus teaches at Columbia and is a member of the American Association of University Professors, a national organization now suing the Trump administration.

Michael Thaddeus: I’m a math professor and math is a wonderfully apolitical topic. Math, in fact, has flourished under all kinds of authoritarian regimes.

But my colleagues who teach history, political science, regional studies, they’re terrified, especially the ones who are not U.S. citizens.

Jeffrey Brown: But for many conservatives, the real free speech struggle on campus dates back further and is rooted in a progressive ideology they say refuses to tolerate other voices or ideas.

Ilya Shapiro, Manhattan Institute: Finally, the leaders of educational institutions are having their feet held to the fire because I think for too long they have been able to do whatever they want.

Jeffrey Brown: Ilya Shapiro is the author of the recent book “Lawless: The Miseducation of America’s Elites.” He points to his own experience in 2022 at Georgetown Law School, when he took to social media to criticize President Biden’s pledge to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court.

Ilya Shapiro: Where I poorly phrased a tweet making an argument against limiting your candidate pool for Supreme Court by race and sex.

Jeffrey Brown: Arguing for another candidate, Shapiro tweeted that the court would be left with a — quote — “lesser black woman.”

Ilya Shapiro: And that led to a four-month investigation, protests and letters and a whole inquisition by the DEI office.

Jeffrey Brown: He was eventually cleared of wrongdoing, but decided to resign from Georgetown anyway, while pointing to other controversial posts by progressive professors who he argues were largely protected by the university.

Ilya Shapiro: The permissible range of expressed policy views has narrowed and shifted. And people are afraid to express themselves or even discuss certain topics, lest they be caught in the cancellation crossfire. To say the least, this is particularly worrying in an educational environment, where you should be trying on different kinds of arguments to learn, to get at the truth.

Sabrina Soffer, George Washington University Student: Free speech exists for some and not for others.

Jeffrey Brown: Some Jewish students, like George Washington University senior Sabrina Soffer and sophomore Hannah Hettena, say they often felt targeted during last year’s protests, and they support the administration’s moves now.

Sabrina Soffer: Taking away funding, it does scare the universities in a positive way. There needs to be a return to civil discourse, where we can critique the Israeli government, we can critique the way that Palestinian liberation movements express themselves. But it needs to be equal for all. It needs to be done in a civil way with no discriminatory harassment.

Hannah Hettena, George Washington University Student: It’s imperative to make that threat in order to invoke real change. And it’s honestly really sad that it has to come to that. But, if that’s what needs to be done, that’s what needs to be done.

Daniel Wolf-Shneider, Columbia University Student: The suppression of political speech and the sort of dismantlement of campus free speech and activism isn’t making Jewish students any safer.

Jeffrey Brown: But other Jewish students like Columbia junior Daniel Wolf-Shneider see Trump’s moves in a different light entirely.

Daniel Wolf-Shneider: When an administration engages in repressive actions, with the justification of protecting Jewish students, it makes Jewish students the face of repression. It encourages people to blame us for the chaos. And I don’t think that we should be used as a cudgel to sort of sway rhetorical goals or allow the administration, both Columbia and federal, to do whatever it wants on campus.

Jeffrey Brown: Back at Wesleyan University, President Michael Roth agrees and says the threats universities are now facing and today’s chilling of speech on campus could have broader societal implications.

Michael Roth: If we let the federal government dictate how to teach and learn on a campus, I’m afraid the government will try to tell us how to worship, what we’re supposed to buy and how we’re supposed to conduct our local politics. And we don’t want that to happen in the United States.

Jeffrey Brown: For the “PBS News Hour,” I’m Jeffrey Brown.

Is every day Watergate Day in the anti-Trump media? At a London event, Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg said “every day is a kind of Watergate at this point,” implying Trump was a crook like Richard Nixon. Brian Stelter celebrated this “Truth Tellers” summit of liberals congratulating themselves for valiantly fighting against the Trump menace.

Goldberg claimed, “I think we live in an authoritarian or incipient authoritarian kind of climate, but we still can publish what we want to publish.” Trump is such an “incipient authoritarian” that he just granted Jeffrey Goldberg an interview at the 100-day mark, which Stelter failed to mention. That interview came after Goldberg had a field day attacking Trump after he was accidentally included in a Signal chat between Trump bigwigs discussing military strikes in Yemen. 

As part of the self-congratulation, Stelter said some Americans left behind the “legacy media” because they believed Trump’s lies about the press. He added: “I don’t view myself as a fighter. I don’t think most reporters who are covering politics or media think they’re in the middle of a fight. And yet — as Marty Baron famously said, ‘we’re not at war, we’re at work’ – if one side’s at war and the other side is not at war, the other sides loses. A pacifist always loses in a war. And so there is this incredibly difficult dynamic the press is in, because this time it’s not just words from Trump, it’s actions.”

They are in a difficult dynamic — because Trump voters think they are hopeless partisan hacks, and the Biden-Harris voters think they are worthless because somehow they weren’t fierce enough to prevent Trump from retaking the White House. They expect the media view to dominate and persuade the masses.

Conservatives and independents who don’t trust the media anymore don’t need Trump’s opinion to gather their own opinion. It’s not just how they punished Trump. It’s how they pampered Biden — especially by downplaying his mental decline. The latest scoop came on Sunday, that the Biden team pondered having Biden take a cognitive test, but decided that was too dangerous, regardless of the results. It wouldn’t reflect confidence in Biden’s abilities.

Enjoy the podcast below, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

The late spring breeze brings with it warmer temperatures and with it, now that Donald Trump is back in office, the promise of a return to Riot Season. Kicking us off, a violent pro-Hamas protest at Columbia University that the Legacy Media barely covered.

Watch the entirety of the sole report airing on this matter on the legacies: this brief on NBC Nightly News:

LESTER HOLT: Now to protests at Columbia University, where scuffles broke out on campus. Emilie Ikeda is there. Emilie, a tense day on campus at the library.

EMILIE IKEDA: Yeah, Lester, that’s right. Those demonstrations flooding the main library at Columbia University just ahead of finals. Video showing clashes between the campus security and pro-Palestinian protesters as they were trying to leave and enter the building. Columbia University said that any protester who refused to show their identification and then dispersed could face possible arrest. This all comes amid the Trump administration’s crackdown on what they call harassment of Jewish-American students, cutting hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding to the school. These protests, an apparent attempt to restart the sweeping movements we saw take over college campuses this time last year, Lester.

HOLT: Emilie Ikeda in New York tonight. Thank you.

NBC were the only ones to report on the Columbia protest, as was the case yesterday with the “Little Devils of 42nd Street”. And again, these 55 or so seconds given the story by NBC were met with absolute goose eggs from ABC and CBS. 

Even so, there was plenty to absorb from this report. The line “this all comes amid the Trump administration’s crackdown on what they call harassment of Jewish-American students”, which we emphasized in the transcript, downplaying the violence and terror inflicted upon Jewish students is eye-popping. It wasn’t just the Trump Administration calling out the harassment of Jewish students- it was Jewish students themselves, either barred from entry into college facilities or terrorized into staying away from occupied areas.

Likewise, Ikeda’s deceptive language when describing the protests. They weren’t “flooding” the main library at Columbia, but occupying it. Again, downplaying the degree of coercive force deployed by the protesters.

Per The New York Post:

A mob of masked anti-Israel protesters stormed Columbia University’s Butler Library Wednesday — with the chaos injuring at least two school safety officers and later sparking dozens of arrests, officials and law enforcement sources said.

Around 80 agitators were taken into custody so far Wednesday evening, sources said, just hours after a large group of activists were caught on camera shoving past a security guard at the library’s front entrance earlier in the day.

Once inside, they draped large signs over bookshelves, one declaring the library a “liberated zone” and another bearing the name of Bassel al-Araj, a Palestinian activist killed by Israel Defense Forces in a 2017 raid in the West Bank — though they misspelled his first name as “Basel.

To be clear, this was a violent occupation, which eventually spilled over into the streets.

More arrests, lots of them:pic.twitter.com/BdHCfKXJXT
— Steve McGuire (@sfmcguire79) May 8, 2025

NOW: Violent Clashes as Police arrest and push against Pro-Palestine protesters as hundreds march through streets outside Columbia University pic.twitter.com/uGwDi7KBhp
— Oliya Scootercaster 🛴 (@ScooterCasterNY) May 8, 2025

Top NYC moment – as NYPD is clashing with Pro-Palestine protesters outside of Columbia University, hundreds of people on ROLLER SCATES ride by. pic.twitter.com/NE56Kfh0Qs
— Oliya Scootercaster 🛴 (@ScooterCasterNY) May 8, 2025
Ikeda wishcasting for a return of the Summer of Violence was the cherry on top of this fetid sundae. With Trump back in office some in media are already pining for color revolution, and not even bothering to hide it anymore.

Exit question: where’s Mohsen Mahdawi?

The latest episode of CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip, also known as the Thunderdome, proves the old maxim that sometimes the best way to make a conservative argument is to just let liberals talk. This is especially true in the case of the recent ban on transgender individuals in the military.

In sum, the deranged idea to emerge from this panel conversation is that a military ban of transgender individuals is identical to a theoretical ban of Black or Hispanic individuals. On its face, such an argument is ridiculous. In more serious times, those advancing such arguments would be laughed out of polite society for suggesting that having immutable physical characteristics (such as skin color) or European non-Anglo-Saxon ethnic origins are somehow comparable to a mental disorder treated with hormone therapy and, in extremis, physical mutilation. Alas, these are not serious times.

Host Abby Phillip came on after a trans panelist and laid that argument out. But when she was called on it by 2025 MRC Bulldog Award winner Scott Jennings, she deflected and deferred (click “expand” to view all transcripts).

WATCH: @abbydphillip compares gender dysphoria to race and ethnicity, then deflects under direct questioning by @ScottJenningsKY pic.twitter.com/SBFaYOh8sk
— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) May 7, 2025

PHILLIP: What is the argument other than Trump — Hegseth just doesn’t want trans people in the military?

SHERMICHAEL SINGLETON: Well, I mean, I think that the President — we’ll ultimately see, I think that’s why the court is allowing the President to move forward with this until it works itself through the court system, maybe the Supreme Court will be the final arbiter here to say, yeah or nay, you can do this. But ultimately, I think the court is showcasing deference to the executive saying that, look, you’re the President, you’re over the military, you do for the most part get to sort of dictate the standards of our military. And I don’t really see how you can push back against that. Again, we’ll see what happens in the court.

JULIE ROGINSKY: I can.

(CROSSTALK)

ROGINSKY: Yeah, I’m sorry. I can. What if the President wakes up tomorrow and says, I don’t want any black people in the military? Do we have- could we give deference to him? I’m not well, no, no.

SINGLETON: Okay. Julie, Julie.

(CROSSTALK)

JENNINGS: Ridiculous.

ROGINSKY: No, wait a second. It’s not ridiculous. It’s not ridiculous because you’re discriminating against a group of people in a very similar way.

SINGLETON: Julie —

JENNINGS: I knew you were going to say that.

(CROSSTALK)

ROGINSKY: Excuse me. Well, I’m glad you said that.

(CROSSTALK)

PHILLIP: I’m curious, why is it — why is it ridiculous? I mean, you just said the President should be the one who just decides.

UNKNOWN: Right.

PHILLIP: So, if he decides, he wakes up tomorrow and says, I think it’s bad for morale, it’s bad for cohesiveness, for there to be, black people in the military, Latino people in the military. Just in her hypothetical scenario, what’s the difference between that and what we’re seeing here?

JENNINGS: I mean, are you really going to go down this ridiculous road?

PHILLIP: I’m just —

ROGINSKY: I’m sorry. She’s asking —

PHILLIP: I’m asking based–

JENNINGS: Ridiculous. This is a ridiculous argument.

PHILLIP: Well, okay.

(CROSSTALK)

JENNINGS: The President — the President and the Secretary of Defense have an argument here. They believe that readiness and unit cohesion and overall operations of the military are impacted by this. That is their opinion, and that is the opinion of the Commander-in-Chief who the Constitution gives broad latitude to run the Armed Forces. So, that’s her opinion. You’re allowed to have one. You’re allowed to have one. You’re also allowed to run for president and become Commander-in-Chief yourself, but until you do — until you do, he’s the Commander-in-Chief.

(CROSSTALK)

PHILLIP: I have to just say I — I didn’t hear an answer to the hypothetical, right? I just didn’t hear it.

(CROSSTALK)

SINGLETON: That’s not hypothetical though. That’s ridiculous. 

PHILLIP: Okay, the definition of discrimination according to the American Psychological Association – discrimination is the unfair or prejudicial treatment of people or groups based on characteristics such as race, gender, age or sexual orientation. What is the difference between, um, you know, prohibiting certain groups like transgender people from serving versus, you know, people based on their race or even their gender, frankly?

SINGLETON: I — I personally think there’s a difference, and I’m just going to leave it at that.

JEMELE HILL: Well, I — I will say —

JENNINGS: Do you believe that race and are — are you saying that the quality of race and the quality of transgender are the same?

PHILLIP: I’m just asking the question because I think you’re making there’s — there’s a distinction but you’re not explaining why.

JENNINGS: I’m asking, you — you guys brought up hypothetical. Are you arguing that someone’s race is the same as someone choosing to become transgender?

PHILLIP: Alaina?

Jennings took the argument in the direction of the exercise of executive power. But the panelists insisted on arguing that the urge to chop off one’s genitalia is comparable to race and ethnicity. The Atlantic’s Jemele Hill even went so far as to suggest that the trans ban is comparable to the persecution of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King.

“He has an opinion because he won the election.” @ScottJenningsKY shuts down Jemele Hill’s tu quoque after her hot take that culminated in equating a military trans ban to the persecution of MLK. pic.twitter.com/wUnzNQg5nO
— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) May 7, 2025

HILL: The other thing, or there’s a few things that bothered me about this, and mostly it was the language of the policy, right? When you’re — look when looking — reading at some of these words, transgender people as in- as inherently untruthful, undisciplined, dishonorable. That’s like a very weighty thing to say about people who are courageously deciding to protect this country. The other problem, Scott, is that it’s never enough. It’s bathrooms today. It’s sports today. It’s sports tomorrow. It’s the military today.

JENNINGS: No, it’s also sports today, by the way.

HILL: Yeah. It is sports today.

JENNINGS: Eighty percent of Americans agree about it.

HILL: Yeah. Oh, that’s fine. And 80 percent — guess what? The majority sometimes is wrong. That also happens, right? Because the majority used to believe that doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. was —

JENNINGS: Okay.

HILL: — somebody who was a threat and somebody who was not a good American. The majority of people used to be against civil rights. Were they right? No, they weren’t. And so, the whole point is when you target one group and inevitably that line moves to everybody else. And I’m not saying he’s coming for black people tomorrow, but considering that this is a military or this is a — a leadership that is already using DEI as code word for black people already when it comes to the military, suddenly, when you don’t protect the most vulnerable, you wind up making it worse for everybody else that’s in the marriage of the marginalized —

JENNINGS: What do you think about what?

HILL: You don’t think trans people are vulnerable in this country?

JENNINGS: So, are — is it your position that the Commander-in-Chief should recruit people who you’re describing as vulnerable into the —

HILL: No. He should — he should he should recruit people who want to serve and protect this country. And it’s really kind of ironic considering he dodged the draft that he’s trying to — he suddenly has an opinion about — Or else we’ll be suddenly getting a point of elections. And, Elena, you — you pointed this out. This is going through the court system.

(CROSSTALK)

JENNINGS: He has an opinion because he won the election.

Note that Hill basically said that 80% of you are wrong for wanting to get men out of women’s sports. Failing to move Jennings, Hill tries to flourish out with a draft dodger tu quoque but fails. As Jennings correctly points out, the American people adjudicated this. The real whopper comes towards the end, a distillation of our political discourse.

“Here we go again with this sh!t. Okay.”: @MrShermichael getting discrimination blacksplained to him by a white liberal woman. Chef’s kiss. pic.twitter.com/fIB4gHeG8q
— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) May 7, 2025

ROGINSKY: But you also — sorry, but you also talked about unit cohesion, and that’s exactly the same kind of argument that they made against integrating the military when Harry Truman did it. I’m sorry. It’s the same argument.

SINGLETON: Here we go again with this shit. Okay.

ROGINSKY: It’s the same —

PHILLIP: I mean, is she wrong about that, though? I mean, she is right about that from a factual perspective.

(CROSSTALK)

ROGINSKY: There were people who did not want to serve white as white —

SINGLETON: I’m — I’m aware. I’m aware.

ROGINSKY: White people didn’t listen to black people because of unit cohesions. And now you’re saying gay can —

(CROSSTALK)

PHILLIP: We only have a couple of seconds? Shermichael, I — see that you’re — you’re frustrated that she made that argument. But is she wrong that unit cohesion was used as an excuse to keep the military segregated for a long time?

SINGLETON: I think we should —

PHILLIP: And also “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” when it comes to —

SINGLETON: — focus on —

PHILLIP: — discriminating against gay and lesbian people.

SINGLETON: We should focus on the issue at hand. That’s what I think.

ROGINSKY: Same like, same argument.

SINGLETON: But I – I —

PHILLIP: So, no. Just no answer.

SINGLETON: No, we should focus on this issue at hand. I don’t know why we keep going to bringing up race. Let’s just focus on this issue right here.

PHILLIP: Well, look, it’s race, sexual orientation. We’ve seen this twice, right? In two major junctures for the military. I’m just wondering, if she is drawing parallels here between the arguments that are being made to maintain this policy, do you think that she’s…

SINGLETON: I reject those parallels. That’s — that’s my answer. I reject the parallel. I mean, it’s a ludicrous parallel.

“Is she wrong, though” ought to be hung in the Louvre of viewpoint bias. The idea that race and ethnic origin are equal to gender dysphoria on the protected class spectrum is ridiculous and we are all Shernichael Singleton, exhausted and irritated at having even to address such nonsense- or watch it on TV. Based on the responses on X, it looks like you are, too.

Click “expand” to view the full transcript of the aforementioned segment as aired on CNN NewsNight on Tuesday, May 6th, 2025:

ABBY PHILLIP: Breaking tonight, the Supreme Court says that the Trump administration can immediately start banning transgender troops from serving in the military. The ban had been previously blocked by lower courts, but the court gave no reasoning other than allowing it while those other cases are being challenged. Now, it’s worth noting that the court’s liberal justices dissented here. Under the new ban, service members with the current diagnosis, history of, or exhibiting symptoms consistent with gender dysphoria will be processed for separation from military service. Joining us now in our fifth seat is Alaina Kupec, a U.S. or nNavy veteran and a former naval intelligence officer. She’s the founder and president of the Gender Research Advisory Council in Education, a non- profit organization that’s focused on transgender visibility. The — the main argument, Elena, that the Trump administration is making here is that — that allowing transgender troops to serve hurts lethality and it hurts readiness. What do you say to that?

ALAINA KUPEC: Well, there’s no evidence of that. I think that, you know, if that was the case, we’ve seen transgender people serving honorably for the last several years and why — what has changed between now and then? They’ve just woken up to a new administration who has a different outlook on their ability to serve. So, I think that, you know, if you talk to people who are serving on active duty alongside transgender troops, they’re not making these complaints. The leaders in the military are not making these complaints. These are political complaints about military service. So, I think that all of the courts that have looked at this issue and looked at it, you know, and said there’s nothing in fact to back up what the government is claiming here. In fact, the judges challenged them to produce evidence, and they couldn’t produce any evidence. So, I think it’s — it’s a really dark day for our country where, basically, we’re allowed to discriminate against a class of people.

PHILLIP: Scott, if they can’t produce evidence that this actually does, in fact, have an impact on readiness I mean, how is this not then just discrimination?

SCOTT JENNINGS: Well, it’s the opinion of the Commander-in-Chief who, according to our Constitution, is the head of the military. I mean, regardless of anyone’s opinion or, you know, anybody’s — whatever side you’re on, whether you’re for it or against it, at some juncture, the President is the Commander-in-Chief of the military and he has and should have broad latitude to determine how the Armed Forces should be operated. And so, I think that’s what he’s doing here. I think that’s ultimately what the court said today was that the President is the Commander-in-Chief and we got to — we got to respect that on our consent.

PHILLIP: But I mean to — to her point, if there’s not a downside and it’s been going on for years now and, I mean, I’m, just presenting your argument to them.

KUPEC: Yeah.

PHILLIP: What is the argument other than Trump — Hegseth just doesn’t want trans people in the military?

SHERMICHAEL SINGLETON: Well, I mean, I think that the President — we’ll ultimately see, I think that’s why the court is allowing the President to move forward with this until it works itself through the court system, maybe the Supreme Court will be the final arbiter here to say, yeah or nay, you can do this. But ultimately, I think the court is showcasing deference to the executive saying that, look, you’re the President, you’re over the military, you do for the most part get to sort of dictate the standards of our military. And I don’t really see how you can push back against that. Again, we’ll see what happens in the court.

JULIE ROGINSKY: I can.

(CROSSTALK)

ROGINSKY: Yeah, I’m sorry. I can. What if the President wakes up tomorrow and says, I don’t want any black people in the military? Do we have- could we give deference to him? I’m not well, no, no.

SINGLETON: Okay. Julie, Julie.

(CROSSTALK)

JENNINGS: Ridiculous.

ROGINSKY: No, wait a second. It’s not ridiculous. It’s not ridiculous because you’re discriminating against a group of people in a very similar way.

SINGLETON: Julie —

JENNINGS: I knew you were going to say that.

(CROSSTALK)

ROGINSKY: Excuse me. Well, I’m glad you said that.

(CROSSTALK)

PHILLIP: I’m curious, why is it — why is it ridiculous? I mean, you just said the President should be the one who just decides.

UNKNOWN: Right.

PHILLIP: So, if he decides, he wakes up tomorrow and says, I think it’s bad for morale, it’s bad for cohesiveness, for there to be, black people in the military, Latino people in the military. Just in her hypothetical scenario, what’s the difference between that and what we’re seeing here?

JENNINGS: I mean, are you really going to go down this ridiculous road?

PHILLIP: I’m just —

ROGINSKY: I’m sorry. She’s asking —

PHILLIP: I’m asking based–

JENNINGS: Ridiculous. This is a ridiculous argument.

PHILLIP: Well, okay.

(CROSSTALK)

JENNINGS: The President — the President and the Secretary of Defense have an argument here. They believe that readiness and unit cohesion and overall operations of the military are impacted by this. That is their opinion, and that is the opinion of the Commander-in-Chief who the Constitution gives broad latitude to run the Armed Forces. So, that’s her opinion. You’re allowed to have one. You’re allowed to have one. You’re also allowed to run for president and become Commander-in-Chief yourself, but until you do — until you do, he’s the Commander-in-Chief.

(CROSSTALK)

PHILLIP: I have to just say I — I didn’t hear an answer to the hypothetical, right? I just didn’t hear it.

(CROSSTALK)

SINGLETON: That’s not hypothetical though. That’s ridiculous. 

PHILLIP: Okay, the definition of discrimination according to the American Psychological Association – discrimination is the unfair or prejudicial treatment of people or groups based on characteristics such as race, gender, age or sexual orientation. What is the difference between, um, you know, prohibiting certain groups like transgender people from serving versus, you know, people based on their race or even their gender, frankly?

SINGLETON: I — I personally think there’s a difference, and I’m just going to leave it at that.

JEMELE HILL: Well, I — I will say —

JENNINGS: Do you believe that race and are — are you saying that the quality of race and the quality of transgender are the same?

PHILLIP: I’m just asking the question because I think you’re making there’s — there’s a distinction but you’re not explaining why.

JENNINGS: I’m asking, you — you guys brought up hypothetical. Are you arguing that someone’s race is the same as someone choosing to become transgender?

PHILLIP: Alaina?

KUPEC: But — but your argument — you — you’ve made the argument twice that the Commander-of-Chief’s opinion is all that matters. You’ve said that twice now.

JENNINGS: Well, so does the Constitution, yes.

KUPEC: So, if he wakes up tomorrow and says, it’s not okay to be gay or lesbian in service, because that’s his opinion, there’s nothing to back that up. They meet the physical standards, they meet the intellectual standards, they have voluntarily decided to serve their country, to give their life for this country, so many of us don’t have to, that it’s the opinion without any basis in fact that that’s what matters more than the Constitution of equal rights and equal protection.

JENNINGS: My — go ahead.

HILL: No, I was going to say the other thing, or there’s a few things that bothered me about this, and mostly it was the language of the policy, right? When you’re — look when looking — reading at some of these words, transgender people as in- as inherently untruthful, undisciplined, dishonorable. That’s like a very weighty thing to say about people who are courageously deciding to protect this country. The other problem, Scott, is that it’s never enough. It’s bathrooms today. It’s sports today. It’s sports tomorrow. It’s the military today.

JENNINGS: No, it’s also sports today, by the way.

HILL: Yeah. It is sports today.

JENNINGS: Eighty percent of Americans agree about it.

HILL: Yeah. Oh, that’s fine. And 80 percent — guess what? The majority sometimes is wrong. That also happens, right? Because the majority used to believe that doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. was —

JENNINGS: Okay.

HILL: — somebody who was a threat and somebody who was not a good American. The majority of people used to be against civil rights. Were they right? No, they weren’t. And so, the whole point is when you target one group and inevitably that line moves to everybody else. And I’m not saying he’s coming for black people tomorrow, but considering that this is a military or this is a — a leadership that is already using DEI as code word for black people already when it comes to the military, suddenly, when you don’t protect the most vulnerable, you wind up making it worse for everybody else that’s in the marriage of the marginalized —

JENNINGS: What do you think about what?

HILL: You don’t think trans people are vulnerable in this country?

JENNINGS: So, are — is it your position that the Commander-in-Chief should recruit people who you’re describing as vulnerable into the —

HILL: No. He should — he should he should recruit people who want to serve and protect this country. And it’s really kind of ironic considering he dodged the draft that he’s trying to — he suddenly has an opinion about — Or else we’ll be suddenly getting a point of elections. And, Elena, you — you pointed this out. This is going through the court system.

(CROSSTALK)

JENNINGS: He has an opinion because he won the election.

(CROSSTALK)

SINGLETON: And Alaina, you pointed this out. This is going through the courses. The other side has the opportunity to present evidence.

KUPEC: Except for tomorrow, there should be thousands of people who wake up and get processed out. The harm will be done.

SINGLETON: And I certainly understand that, but again, there’s still an opportunity for it to continue through the proper process.

KUPEC: But they — they wake up tomorrow without a job, being removed from their commands. Operational readiness will be impacted, and so there’s commands that are going to be left without leaders. There’s going to be real-life implications for leaders around the world where our military is protecting this country, and for what end? SINGLETON: So, I guess, Alaina, I guess my point is if a strong enough evidence is presented throughout the court process all the way up to SCOTUS and it’s ultimately believed okay, hey, the other side has enough evidence where we can’t rule in favor of the executive, then the executive, I believe, would respect that — that decision. But we have to allow this thing to move forward and see —

(CROSSTALK)

JENNINGS: What was your experience in the military like? Did you serve while you had, after you had transitioned?

KUPEC: No, I served before my transition.

JENNINGS: So, you weren’t in during your —

KUPEC: No.

JENNINGS: Okay.

KUPEC: I came to know that I was transgender while I was serving with a top secret and above clearance, and I knew that I couldn’t pass my polygraph test, and so I had to make a tough decision. Do I stay true to my character, my values, my integrity, or do I choose to leave this role and live a private life?

And so I think that the challenge is that the injunction was to allow people to continue to serve while the courts played out, right? So there would be no harm done to these folks, giving the courts an opportunity to work through these issues. So, people wouldn’t lose their jobs. Now, they’re going to wake up tomorrow without jobs. They can’t just come back in for serving 22 years, waiting for this court case to work its way through for six, nine months, two years.

JENNINGS: So, you hadn’t trans– so was there a prohibition on you transitioning while you were in the military?

KUPEC: Back in that time, there was a ban against serving if you were — the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.

PHILLIP: Yeah. This was in the mid-’90s.

KUPEC: This was in the mid- ’90s.

PHILLIP: Yeah.

PHILLIP: So, but let me — can I ask you a question because I think this is relevant. You know, Alaina was serving, left because of this policy. How many people is it okay to lose who are competent, who are doing their jobs because for — for those — for reasons like that? I mean, at the time, she could have been a gay or lesbian and it probably would have been the same result, as well. I mean, I think that’s why ultimately they ended “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”.

JENNINGS: I mean, I — I think —

 

KUPEC: Discrimination.

PHILLIP: Yeah.

JENNINGS: I mean, I think ultimately, the Commander-in-Chief and the Secretary of Defense have to decide comprehensively about troop levels, troop readiness and unit cohesion.

KUPEC: But that is —

JENNINGS: And overall recruitment. They’re actually quite happy with recruitment right now.

KUPEC: But that has never — there have never been a military standard that transgender people have not met. So, the military standards have not been lowered for people who are transgender. And I think that’s — that’s the issue here. And the courts that have looked at this issue in-depth have said this is pure animus. That there is no evidence of this. So, if you actually take the rhetoric out of it and look at the issue at its heart, all the courts say the same thing. So, I think that’s the travesty here.

JENNINGS: I believe the President has the Constitutional right to do this, and I also think you have the Constitutional right to make your case on it, and everybody’s going to be in court about it. And I think you should continue to make —

(CROSSTALK)

ROGINSKY: But you also — sorry, but you also talked about unit cohesion, and that’s exactly the same kind of argument that they made against integrating the military when Harry Truman did it. I’m sorry. It’s the same argument.

SINGLETON: Here we go again with this shit. Okay.

ROGINSKY: It’s the same —

PHILLIP: I mean, is she wrong about that, though? I mean, she is right about that from a factual perspective.

(CROSSTALK)

ROGINSKY: There were people who did not want to serve white as white —

SINGLETON: I’m — I’m aware. I’m aware.

ROGINSKY: White people didn’t listen to black people because of unit cohesions. And now you’re saying gay can —

(CROSSTALK)

PHILLIP: We only have a couple of seconds? Shermichael, I — see that you’re — you’re frustrated that she made that argument. But is she wrong that unit cohesion was used as an excuse to keep the military segregated for a long time?

SINGLETON: I think we should —

PHILLIP: And also “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” when it comes to —

SINGLETON: — focus on —

PHILLIP: — discriminating against gay and lesbian people.

SINGLETON: We should focus on the issue at hand. That’s what I think.

ROGINSKY: Same like, same argument.

SINGLETON: But I – I —

PHILLIP: So, no. Just no answer.

SINGLETON: No, we should focus on this issue at hand. I don’t know why we keep going to bringing up race. Let’s just focus on this issue right here.

PHILLIP: Well, look, it’s race, sexual orientation. We’ve seen this twice, right? In two major junctures for the military. I’m just wondering, if she is drawing parallels here between the arguments that are being made to maintain this policy, do you think that she’s…

SINGLETON: I reject those parallels. That’s — that’s my answer. I reject the parallel. I mean, it’s a ludicrous parallel.

ROGINSKY: I have some question. Do you feel like you had a choice in your life as to what you were going to do?

KUPEC: No.

ROGINSKY: No, of course not.

KUPEC: No.

ROGINSKY: The same way that I didn’t have a choice to be born who I was. The same way you didn’t have a choice to be born who you were. So, why do we get exclusions and she doesn’t?

SINGLETON: I didn’t say that, Alaina —

ROGINSKY: Well, not Alaina.

SINGLETON: — that she’ll be excluded.

ROGINSKY: Okay. Why under this — under this president’s policy?

SINGLETON: My opinion here is let it work itself through the court system. 

KUPEC: And — and I have no problem with that. That’s just – Don’t fire people while it’s working through the courts. That’s what these injunctions were doing was letting it work through the courts. And the Supreme Court, I think, really just delegitimized itself even further today. And I think that’s a challenge for all of this country when we don’t have the checks and balances of the courts, you know, checking their executive power and Congress checking the executive power and all of those things. Because at the end of the day right now in the military, you can be a white supremacist, a known white supremacist, and serve in this military, but you cannot be transgender and serve in this military. That’s a fact.

PHILLIP: All right. Alaina Kupec, thank you very much for joining us. Everyone else, stay with us. We are just hours away from Catholic cardinals holding their first vote to elect the next pope. More on the papal conclave. That’s coming up next.

 

The liberal media target the Catholic Church because it’s one of the few global institutions they hadn’t completely bent to their worldview. That’s why, during their vapid coverage of the start of the Conclave that would pick a new pope, CBS Mornings produced an entire segment dedicated to calling for a pope more “progressive” than Pope Francis. They went so far to call for priests to be allowed to act on lustful temptations.

CBS Mornings co-anchor Tony Dokoupil couched the push to liberalize the Catholic Church in what would amount to a Faustian bargain to retain and attract new worshipers. “[O]n any given Sunday, back in America, the number of Catholics on their way to mass has been dwindling,” he noted. “Weekly or nearly weekly attendance is down 12 percent since 2000, according to Gallup.”

As an example of a person the church was missing out on, Dokoupil spoke with American flight attendant Kathy Freeman, who claimed to the a Catholic but said she refused to raise her kids in the faith because the church didn’t allow women to be priests:

FREEMAN: I don’t know, I see it more political than divine intervention to be honest with you.

DOKOUPIL: How political? What do you mean?

FREEMAN: Just like politics in the United States. It’s another government up there.

DOKOUPIL: Like more than 40 percent of American Catholics surveyed in a new CBS News poll, she’s hoping the successor to Francis continues his teachings. But she’s so unsatisfied with aspects of the current church, she raised her own children outside of it.

FREEMAN: I would love as a Catholic to see female intervention in all parts of the service.

DOKOUPIL: Really?

FREEMAN: Oh, yeah.

DOKOUPIL: You want to see female priests?

FREEMAN: Yes.

 

 

Freeman did seem to have a grasp of the faith since she said the Conclave was not directed by the Holy Spirit, a core belief of the church.

To back up Freeman, co-anchor Norah O’Donnell recounted a disappointing interaction she had with Pope Francis where he declined to have women join the clergy. “It’s a question that I asked Pope Francis in my interview, could a little Catholic girl grow up and think maybe she could be a deacon someday or member of the clergy. He said ‘no,’” she lamented

But O’Donnell did have hope for upended the Catholic Church, including a CBS News poll:

However, the Synod is studying the idea of women as deacons. And when I too was down there at St. Peter’s Basilica, Sister Rose from the Sisters of St. Paul, came up and said, ‘yes, we need to push for more women should be part of the clergy.’

And so – people do, as you saw in our CBS News polling, they want someone – 40 percent want someone like pope Francis, another 20 percent want someone more progressive than him.

Dokoupil’s idea for adding “more talent in the clergy” was “opening it up to women” “or maybe changing the celibacy laws.”

That desire to change the celibacy laws betrayed a profound ignorance of the Catholic belief of Jesus Christ and the connection to the priests of his faith. It also exposed a type of hypocrisy where they praised Francis’s simple way of life, essentially praising him sheading the deadly sins of greed and pride, but they wanted priests to live in lust.

To Dokoupil’s credit, he did speak with a group of young men who were adamant that the Catholic Church didn’t need to change in order to “accommodate certain modern beliefs” as the CBS anchor put it:

DOKOUPIL: Does the church need to accommodate certain modern beliefs and ways of life to fit them within the history of the church?

ALEX HAROLD: No. No. The church does not need to fit the age. That’s why it’s 2,000 years old.

The transcript is below. Click “expand’ to read:

ABC’s The View
May 7, 2025
7:30:16 a.m. Eastern

TONY DOKOUPIL: Welcome back to our live coverage of the Conclave. We’re in Rome overlooking Vatican City. A live shot there of St. Peter’s Square. And this morning’s Conclave mass, we have pictures of that, as well.

If history is any guide, more than 100,000 people will soon fill that square you just saw on your screen, the one right behind me. But the reality is on any given Sunday back in America, the number of Catholics on their way to mass has been dwindling. Weekly or nearly weekly attendance is down 12 percent since 2000, according to Gallup. Something many people we spoke to here in Rome are very keenly aware of.

[Cuts to video]

Even in the glow of a truly global church, you can’t help running into an American or two.

Were you going to be here anyway, or is this a happy surprise?

UNIDENTIFIED MAN 1: Happy surprise.

DOKOUPIL: Many who had already planned to take in the history here now find themselves with the lucky chance to see it being made.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN 2: You know, it’s a — probably once in a lifetime opportunity to be in Rome when they’re doing the Conclave.

DOKOUPIL: How are you? Where you from?

KATHY FREEMAN: New Jersey.

DOKOUPIL: It’s part of America.

DOKOUPIL: Kathy Freeman and Nancy Flynn are flight attendants who just flew into Rome for work.

You’re Catholics?

FREEMAN: I am, she’s southerner. So —

DOKOUPIL: What does that mean? Protestant, Baptist?

FREEMAN: She’s Baptist.

DOKOUPIL: Many of the faithful we spoke to do believe God will, in fact, be guiding today’s conclave.

What are you hoping for?

UNIDENTIFIED MAN 3: Not hoping for much because the Holy Spirit will hopefully lead either the cardinals or lead the pope after the decision. He’ll be successor of Christ either way. It’s not about my opinions.

DOKOUPIL: For Freeman, that’s not so clear.

FREEMAN: I don’t know, I see it more political than divine intervention to be honest with you.

DOKOUPIL: How political? What do you mean?

FREEMAN: Just like politics in the United States. It’s another government up there.

DOKOUPIL: Like more than 40 percent of American Catholics surveyed in a new CBS News poll, she’s hoping the successor to Francis continues his teachings. But she’s so unsatisfied with aspects of the current church, she raised her own children outside of it.

FREEMAN: I would love as a Catholic to see female intervention in all parts of the service.

DOKOUPIL: Really?

FREEMAN: Oh, yeah.

DOKOUPIL: You want to see female priests?

FREEMAN: Yes.

DOKOUPIL: It’s the kind of story Father Thomas Reese knows all too well. As a priest and a longtime chronicler of the faith.

FATHER THOMAS REESE: We’re going through a crisis in the Catholic Church, in the United States and especially the global north. We have young people who just aren’t interested and are leaving. It’s something like one out of three people who are baptized Catholic no longer identify as Catholic in the United States. That’s huge!

DOKOUPIL: How do you fix that?

REESE: If you have an answer, I’ll vote for you as pope.

DOKOUPIL: Wait! Really? That’s it? You don’t know —

REESE: I don’t think — I think we’re struggling.

DOKOUPIL: While enjoying the sights and the flavors of Rome, we also ran into these young men from Missouri who told us about the potential for change as they see it in the Catholic Church.

Are you hoping that the pope who emerges on that balcony in a matter of days takes the church in a more liberal direction or more conservative direction?

JACKSON GAETA: The goal — I mean, ultimately is uniting both. That would be the most perfect thing to happen here.

ALEX HAROLD: More so than needing somebody who’s left or right, we just need somebody who’s like – is a champion of the faith, that everybody can get behind.

DOKOUPIL: Does the church need to accommodate certain modern beliefs and ways of life to fit them within the history of the church?

UNIDENTIFIED MAN 4: No.

HAROLD: No.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN 4: It’s not how it works.

HAROLD: No. The church does not need to fit the age. That’s why it’s 2,000 years old.

[Cuts back to live]

DOKOUPIL: And Norah, that’s one perspective right there. The church doesn’t need to change. We want that continuity, they say. That’s what makes it powerful and beautiful.

But so many other people like that flight attendant, Kathy Freeman, said I’m Catholic, I’m still Catholic, but my children are not. And in fact she said specifically because she wants to see women in positions of leadership.

NORAH O’DONNELL: It’s a question that I asked Pope Francis in my interview, could a little Catholic girl grow up and think maybe she could be a deacon someday or member of the clergy. He said “no.” However, the Synod is studying the idea of women as deacons. And when I too was down there at St. Peter’s Basilica, Sister Rose from the Sisters of St. Paul, came up and said, ‘yes, we need to push for more women should be part of the clergy.’

And so – people do, as you saw in our CBS News polling, they want someone – 40 percent want someone like pope Francis, another 20 percent want someone more progressive than him.

DOKOUPIL: Yeah. Yeah, it’s an amazing thing. Something Father Reese told me is that one of the issues with the church is they need more talent in the clergy, opening it up to women would be one way to that or maybe changing the celibacy laws.

O’DONNELL: And focusing on social justice.

DOKOUPIL: Yeah. We’ll send it back to you all back in Times Square. The very opposite I would say of Vatican City.

GAYLE KING: The very opposite. Everybody’s trying to read the tea leaves we’ll know soon enough. Thank you both.

Tuesday saw the second-ever installment of MSNBC’s The Weeknight, featuring Alicia Menendez, former Kamala Harris spokeswoman Symone Sanders-Townsend, and former RNC chairman and current liberal talking points repeater Michael Steele. The trio of Joy Reid replacements did their best to continue her legacy by wondering if President Trump decided to defund PBS because he thinks Elmo is black.

After playing a 2005 clip where Sesame Street parodied Trump, an aghast Menendez claimed she has been, “trying to figure out why they are so mad at Molly of Denali and Arthur and those wombats were just trying to work it out.”

 

 

Answering her own question, she continued, “And this quote from the Department of Education made it very clear. This is a spokesperson for the department who said that the Ready to Learn grants were funding ‘racial justice educational programing,’ and ‘the Trump Department of Education will prioritize funding that supports meaningful learning and improving student outcomes.’ Here’s the part I want to talk about, ‘not divisive ideologies and woke propaganda.’”

A normal news program would then highlight how Sesame Street has been trying to teach children that their skin color is “an important part” of who they are or that it, a children’s show defended by public media defenders as a show that simply teaches children the alphabet, celebrates Pride Month.

However, The Weeknight is not a normal news program, and Michael Steele is not a normal Republican. He returned to the 2005 parody, “So, where was what was divisive and woke about this? Because that was 2005. We can actually go back to 1988. We can go back a lot of years where kids sat and watched this, and no one can, not parents then, nor should parents now look at this, Symone, and go, ‘Oh, this is just too woke for my kid.’”

Sanders-Townsend did not want to engage with actual arguments. Instead, she just quipped the administration must think Elmo is black, “Look, I think the problem that they have is with the origins of Sesame Street, which is one of the first places that you could, not first places, but they made a concerted effort to show children characters that could identify with themselves and their experience. But also, we’re talking about Big Bird and, like, Elmo and, I just like, do they think Elmo is black? Maybe that’s it. Like, I don’t, I don’t know.”

If Sesame Street had programs where children were taught that DEI initiatives and gender ideology were harmful, nobody at MSNBC would defend it as a simple children’s educational program that teaches kids how to read. The year following the Trump parody episode, President George W. Bush, quite a different type of Republican, tried to cut PBS’s funding too. Did he think Elmo was black or is there more to conservative opposition to public broadcasting than racism?

Sign the petition to help us defund another MSNBC in PBS and NPR at defundpbsnpr.org.

Here is a transcript for the May 6 show:

MSNBC The Weeknight

5/6/2025

7:52 PM ET

SYMONE SANDERS-TOWNSEND: Yes, nothing says popularity like Sesame Street making a character out of you.

MICHAEL STEELE: Right, I mean, I got a muppet.

SANDERS-TOWNSEND: — the highest honor.

ALICIA MENENDEZ: — trying to figure out why they are so mad at Molly of Denali and Arthur and those wombats were just trying to work it out. And this quote from the Department of Education made it very clear. This is a spokesperson for the department who said that the Ready to Learn grants were funding “racial justice educational programing,” and “the Trump Department of Education will prioritize funding that supports meaningful learning and improving student outcomes.” Here’s the part I want to talk about, “not divisive ideologies and woke propaganda.”

STEELE: So where was what was divisive and woke about this? Because that was 2005. We can actually go back to 1988. We can go back a lot of years where kids sat and watched this, and no one can, not parents then, nor should parents now look at this, Symone, and go, “Oh, this is just too woke for my kid.”

SANDERS-TOWSEND: Look, I think the problem that they have is with the origins of Sesame Street, which is one of the first places that you could, not first places, but they made a concerted effort to show children characters that could identify with themselves and their experience. But also, we’re talking about Big Bird and, like, Elmo and, I just like, do they think Elmo is black? Maybe that’s it. Like, I don’t, I don’t know.

CNN’s Brian Stelter led his “Reliable Sources” newsletter on Wednesday with the event he’s attending in London, the “Sir Harry Evans Investigative Journalism Summit,” operated by former Newsweek and Vanity Fair editor Tina Brown as a tribute to her late husband. The Twitter account for it uses the boastful title “Truth Tellers.”

In her American heyday, she loved trashing conservatives, that the Republicans donned “suicide vests” in opposing Obamacare, and Rush Limbaugh was a “blowhard bullfrog” who shouldn’t be popular. Nothing’s really changed with Tina, as Stelter began:

Naturally there’s been a ton of conversation here about President Trump’s attacks against the media. Trump “has gone for the journalistic jugular,” Brown said on stage, “and when the press needs to be at its most strong, the underpinnings are at its most weak. We’re seeing the consequences of the twin evils of two decades of predatory digital content theft and corporate ownership that is so bedeviled by conflicts of interest that they’re proving how little pressure it takes to throw their media assets under the bus if there’s a business deal in jeopardy.”

This is unintentionally humorous, since Tina Brown happily piled up financial losses at the Daily Beast. Then Stelter recounted more fulminations:

On the topic of Trump, “every day is a kind of Watergate at this point,” The Atlantic’s editor Jeffrey Goldberg said, acknowledging the president’s effectiveness at overwhelming “human cognition.” Of the US in 2025, Goldberg said, “I think we live in an authoritarian or incipient authoritarian kind of climate, but we still can publish what we want to publish.”

Trump is such an “incipient authoritarian” that he just granted Jeffrey Goldberg an interview at the 100-day mark, which Stelter failed to mention.

Stelter briefly mentioned his own contribution: 

I pointed out that even as some media owners “fold” (see: CBS), journalists at those very outlets are showing “fight” by continuing to report fearlessly. 

“Report fearlessly” is liberal code for “trashing Trump every which way.”

Here’s one Stelter snippet:  “Donald Trump’s lies about the media have seeped into the minds and the hearts of tens of millions of people, right? And they’ve opted out of what we consider legacy media. At the same time, there are many liberals, progressives, anti-Trump Republicans who are ticked off at the press right now for other reasons.”

“Donald Trump’s lies about the media have seeped into the minds and the hearts of tens of millions of people, right, and they’ve opted out of what we consider legacy media.” – @brianstelter @cnn @jonsopel #SirHarrySummit pic.twitter.com/qhobyCOSX6
— Truth Tellers (@sirharrysummit) May 7, 2025
He continued: “The word ‘fight’ makes me uncomfortable, inherently, right? We’re talking about fight or fold. I don’t view myself as a fighter. I don’t think most reporters who are covering politics or media think they’re in the middle of a fight. And yet — as Marty Baron famously said, ‘we’re not at war, we’re at work’ – if one side’s at war and the other side is not at war, the other sides loses. A pacifist always loses in a war. And so there is this incredibly difficult dynamic the press is in, because this time it’s not just words from Trump, it’s actions.”

If this event wasn’t such a leftist bubble, there would be audience laughter at the notion that the press hasn’t been at war with Trump since at least the middle of 2016, seeking not just his political ruin, but his financial ruin, and hoping for a long prison sentence. 

That’s not to mention laughter at the self-congratulatory liberal concept that the anti-Trump forces are always the “truth tellers,” and that everyone who supported Trump is far too susceptible to “lies.” 

You can always count on the pipeline from washed up to woke to produce society’s most self-important dilettantes desperately searching for an audience to remind them how special they are. 

But nobody encapsulates their pathetic state better than affluent middle-aged women… more specifically, the pipeline from prima donna to self-congratulating couch mumbler. 

They’re perfect mouthpieces for a greedy ideology that lets its overlords enforce Marxism from behind their pearly gates, while using victimhood as currency to gaslight us plebs into forking over our freedoms. 

Who’s a better pick to spew their shallow cliches and greeting card advice than the trendy ladies of the elite who regurgitate the agenda in soft, therapy voices without any idea of the contradiction they pose? 

From Meghan Markle to Michelle Obama, this episode of ‘Woke of the Weak’ parades out the woke women of the out-of-touch kumbaya class.

The irony was impossible to miss on Tuesday’s edition of CBS’s The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, as MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow joined the eponymous host to declare on one hand that the worst predictions about President Donald Trump have come true, but also that he and Republicans seek to get rid of elections.

Colbert was actually the first to suggest Republicans want to eliminate elections, although his evidence was quite underwhelming:

So, one of the things that’s interesting to me is that there’s such gross and obvious incompetence and disregard for our institutions, touching third rails like Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid, this is not the behavior of people — because Republicans haven’t stood up en masse resist what Donald Trump has done. A few people here or there. This is not the behavior of people who seem like they believe they have to answer to voters in 18 months. That worries me. Not that they are not worried, but that they don’t think that they should be worried because maybe they don’t have to worry about an election at all.

 

 

Republicans are not doing entitlement reform, but even if they were, disagreeing with Stephen Colbert on that subject would not mean that Republicans think there shouldn’t be elections.

Maddow, however, thought Colbert was on to something, “Yeah, and yes, that is the thing to worry about, and I mean, I feel like for as heartened as I am about the American people literally protesting every single day against what Trump and the Republicans are doing and so much more resistance than anyone told us to expect, I think it’s also true that the people who warned us about how bad this was going to be, the people who were really hysterical, like, really, the doomsayers, they were all right about how bad this is, and what we are experiencing is not just somebody who’s fighting against the Democratic Party, he’s fighting against the democratic process.”

She continued:

He doesn’t think there should be elections and they are consolidating power, they’re disempowering Congress, ignoring Congress, defunding agencies or closing agencies. That’s Congress’s job, that’s not the president’s job. When they are defying court orders, that’s them saying the courts don’t have authority over the president, that’s consolidating all the power in one man, that’s authoritarianism, and that’s what you do when you don’t ever want to have an election because you want to stay in power for life, and that is what they are trying. 

Putting aside the fact that disempowering Congress has been progressives’ thing for over a century and the administration acknowledges Congress is the one that needs to formally shutter the Department of Education, for all the talk both about and from Trump on 2028 and the 22nd Amendment, Trump recently dismissed the idea of running again in 2028. In his Meet the Press interview and said that “ideally” he would hand things off to another Republican. That doesn’t sound like a man trying to get rid of elections or someone who has proved his most hysterical critics right.

Here is a transcript for the May 6-taped show:

CBS The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

5/7/2025

12:17 AM ET

STEPHEN COLBERT: So, one of the things that’s interesting to me is that there’s such gross and obvious incompetence and disregard for our institutions, touching third rails like Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid, this is not the behavior of people — because Republicans haven’t stood up en masse resist what Donald Trump has done. A few people here or there. This is not the behavior of people who seem like they believe they have to answer to voters in 18 months. 

RACHEL MADDOW: Yeah.

COLBERT: That worries me. 

MADDOW: Yeah.

COLBERT: Not that they are not worried, but that they don’t think that they should be worried because maybe they don’t have to worry about an election at all.

MADDOW: Yeah, and yes, that is the thing to worry, about and I mean, I feel like for as heartened as I am about the American people literally protesting every single day against what Trump and the Republicans are doing and so much more resistance than anyone told us to expect, I think it’s also true that the people who warned us about how bad this was going to be, the people who were really hysterical, like, really, the doomsayers, they were all right about how bad this is, and what we are experiencing is not just somebody who’s fighting against the Democratic Party, he’s fighting against the democratic process. 

He doesn’t think there should be elections and they are consolidating power, they’re disempowering Congress, ignoring Congress, defunding agencies or closing agencies. That’s Congress’s job, that’s not the president’s job. When they are defying court orders, that’s them saying the courts don’t have authority over the president, that’s consolidating all the power in one man, that’s authoritarianism, and that’s what you do when you don’t ever want to have an election because you want to stay in power for life, and that is what they are trying. 

All the worst predictions about what he’d be like are true, but the best hopes for how much the American people would stand up against it have not even matched a fraction of how much people are standing and how much people are saying no. There’s never, in the history of this country, been an American president who’s been this unpopular at 100 days in. The American public understand, no, are just saying no. No, no, no.

The latest announcement of the Pulitzer Prizes brought great anticipation – not about who would win awards, but about what topics would be honored. Once again, the awards were dominated by the leftist brands – The New York Times and The New Yorker. Pulitzer Prize juries tend to hand out awards based on which causes they want to honor, and who they feel needs to be exposed.

In Donald Trump’s first term, four Pulitzer Prizes for reporting were handed out for investigating Trump, most notably for the phantom menace of Russian collusion in the 2016 campaign. As that conspiracy theory collapsed, Trump caused the Pulitzer bureaucrats to revisit this misinformation, but they resolved that since the awarded newspapers were merely channeling the anti-Trump lawyers and their findings, it was somehow not misinformation. It was publicity. The Pulitzer Publicity Prize.

In the previous eight years, there was not a single reporting prize for exposing anything about President Obama or his administration’s actions.

The 2025 Pulitzer announcement underlined that there was not a single reporting prize over the last four years for exposing anything about President Biden or his administration’s actions.

In the Clinton years, there wasn’t a reporting prize for anything about Clinton’s administration until 1999, after he had been impeached…and it went to The New York Times. The Pulitzer people’s wording was vague: it was about “the corporate sale of American technology to China, with U.S. government approval despite national security risks.” There was no president mentioned, just “government approval.” 

This year, the Pulitzer poohbahs led their list with the “Public Service” prize, granted to the leftist website ProPublica. The subject was “pregnant women who died after doctors delayed urgently needed care for fear of violating vague ‘life of the mother’ exceptions in states with strict abortion laws.” It won a prize because liberal journalists hate “strict abortion laws.” They want abortion to be widely available and practiced without any moral qualms.

Here again, they reward misinformation. Their primary subject was Amber Thurman in Georgia, who died after taking an abortion pill and then the hospital delayed a D&C procedure, supposedly because of pro-life Republicans. But ProPublica’s own reporting acknowledged Thurman’s twins were deceased, so the “vague” exceptions did not apply. No liberal will place any blame on complications from abortion pills.

The other notable prize for liberalism went to former Washington Post cartoonist Ann Telnaes, who quit the Post in a huff because they wouldn’t publish her cartoon attacking the paper’s owner Jeff Bezos as a Trump lickspittle. The Pulitzer puffery sounded like this: “For delivering piercing commentary on powerful people and institutions with deftness, creativity – and a fearlessness that led to her departure from the news organization after 17 years.” Quitting “fearlessly” sealed the deal. Nevertheless, The Post shamelessly touted “their” Telnaes victory on the front page, and in a full-page advertisement.  

For Team Pulitzer, their admiration for “piercing commentary” on “powerful people” with “fearlessness” all goes one way.

This farce wouldn’t be complete without a lecture. Pulitzer Prize administrator Marjorie Miller lamented journalists “face additional threats in the form of legal harassment, the banning of books, and attacks on their work and legitimacy.” These efforts are “meant to silence criticism” and erode the First Amendment! Miller and her ilk think the First Amendment doesn’t have any room for attacking the legitimacy of fake-news stories.

The Pulitzer parade implies liberal journalism is the only journalism…like they think the First Amendment is only for liberal journalists, and that “democracy” flowers when liberal journalists successfully nudge voters to elect the Democrats.

Conservative criticism is also free speech and enhances democracy.