Newsbusters

President Trump’s $20 billion defamation lawsuit against CBS News and 60 Minutes appears to have claimed its first scalp on Tuesday, with executive producer Bill Owens announcing his departure from the company to staff via memo to staff. The news outlet has been under pressure from its parent company Paramount Global to settle the election-related suit.

“The fact is that 60 Minutes has been my life,” Owens opined. “My 60 Minutes priorities have always been clear. Maybe not smart, but clear.”

Hinting at pressure from above, Owens huffed that it appeared as though he would not be allowed to run 60 Minutes under their typical business-as-usual approach:

Over the past months, it has also become clear that I would not be allowed to run the show as I have always run it. To make independent decisions based on what was right for 60 Minutes, right for the audience.  So, having defended this show- and what we stand for – from every angle, over time with everything I could, I am stepping aside so the show can move forward.

Things took a pivot to grandiose and self-righteous as Owens crowed about how, “The show is too important to the country, it has to continue, just not with me as the Executive Producer.”

Adding: “60 Minutes will continue to cover the new administration, as we will report on future administrations. We will report from War zones, investigate injustices and educate our audience. In short, 60 Minutes will do what it has done for 57 years.”

It became more obvious that the pressure on Owens extended from outside CBS News directly because he praised the network’s president and CEO. “Wendy McMahon has always had our back, and she agrees that 60 Minutes needs to be run by a 60 Minute producer,” he touted.

In her letter to staff, McMahon commended Owens for how he steered the 60 Minutes ship:

After 37 years, Bill Owens is ending his illustrious career at CBS News, 25 of those years at America’s most important news program, 60 Minutes. His note to the team is below.

As Executive Producer, Bill has led 60 Minutes with unwavering integrity, curiosity, and a deep commitment to the truth. He has championed the kind of journalism that informs, enlightens, and often changes the national conversation.  His dedication to finding and nurturing talent will be felt across CBS News for years.

60 Minutes came under pressure following the election-related defamation against the network. Trump accused the network of “deceitful editing” of their interview with Vice President Kamala Harris, arguing that it was done to help her campaign by making her look better.

 

 

NewsBusters later confirmed that the portion of the interview in question was highly edited, after the Federal Communications Commission published the unedited footage themselves. CBS News refused to share the unedited video with the public.

“Same question. Same answer. But a different portion of the response,” CBS argued in their defense. Adding: “When we edit any interview, whether a politician, an athlete, or movie star, we strive to be clear, accurate and on point. The portion of her answer on 60 Minutes was more succinct, which allows time for other subjects in a wide ranging 21-minute-long segment.”

CBS’s parent company Paramount Global was pushing for a settlement with Trump since the administration had to sign off on their merger with Skydance.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt opened Tuesday’s press briefing on a heater, spreading far and wide facts the liberal media have refused to properly spotlight on the meteoric fall of border crossings and then turning to Timcast’s Tim Pool for a question about the liberal media’s coddling of Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

Before restating the facts about Garcia being far from the innocent Father of the Year-like figure the liberal media have portrayed him as, Pool spoke straight into the eyes of the liberal corporate media when he declared “[m]any of these organizations that are represented in this room have lockstep on false narratives such as the very fine people hoax, the Covington smear, and now what is being called the ‘Maryland man’ hoax.”

He then wondered what Leavitt made of this and if this will spurn more changes in the Briefing Room given their “unprofessional behavior.” Leavitt maintained the administration welcomes “diverse viewpoints,” but wants to empower “unbiased journalists who really care about the truth and the facts and accuracy”:

Despite what The New York Times might try to have one think, Leavitt makes plenty of time for journalists from legacy, liberal outlets. In fact, she went right from Pool to Politico, which had Dasha Burns at the table for questions about trade and the latest “Signal-gate” hubbub:

Following questions to the diverse crew of Fox News Radio, ABC, Timcast, and someone in the BBC/Newsweek seat, NewsNation’s Libbey Dean asked about what some might view as a dichotomy at Health and Human Services:

The great Phil Wegmann at Real Clear Politics came next with one about President Trump’s unprecedented push to remake and shrink the federal government (and then one about Google):

2023 MRC Bulldog Winner and Daily Wire White House correspondent Mary Margaret Olohan popped up a few minutes later that was somehow the only question in a Briefing Room packed with progressives about Earth Day:

Olohan was also the only reporter to bring up oral arguments at the Supreme Court today about parental rights in education: “I know the Court is hearing a case dealing with parents who don’t want their kids having to read gender ideology books in schools. Can you comment on that case and what the Trump administration hopes to see come from that?”

World Magazine — which had our own Tim Graham as White House correspondent early in the George W. Bush administration — made its Briefing Room debut this year by giving voice to Christians who faced persecution under the Taliban:

Daily Caller’s Reagan Resse kept up the theme of tough questions from the right by wondering how the administration will keep its promises on deporting illegal immigrants if they continue to be stymied by the judicial branch:

In a follow-up, Reese wondered what was the latest on the alleged MS-13 leader arrested a few weeks ago in Northern Virginia: “The DOJ recently dropped charges against the MS-13 leader caught in Woodbridge, Virginia, with the idea that this will expedite the deportation process. Does the administration plan to drop charges against other criminal illegals to speed along the deportation process?”

“You’d have to ask the Department of Justice. Obviously, that’s within their purview, and I can’t speak for them. However, it is our goal to deport as many illegal criminals and aliens from our country as we possibly can as quickly as we can,” Leavitt replied.

After listening to those questions, tell us again how right-of-center reporters aren’t asking real questions.

And not to be left out, Leavitt also called on Gray TV, Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, and The Epoch Times, and Bloomberg. In other words, outlets representing much of the political spectrum.

To see the relevant transcript from the April 22 briefing, click here.

Back from their spring break on Tuesday, the liberal ladies of ABC’s The View were as hypocritical as ever. While they usually shrieked about the “separation of church and state” on issues like abortion, the cast (only one of which was supposedly a practicing Catholic) jumped at the opportunity to use Pope Francis’s death to push for their far-left open borders policy. Interestingly enough, they were suspiciously silent about Francis’s comments about abortion.

“He called on people to embrace those who are different or who are from different lands, because we are all children of god. Now, his final message to us was that. Do you think it will resonate?” moderator Whoopi Goldberg asked the rest of the table, recalling the Pontiff’s Easter sermon.

The first to spout off was Sara Haines, who had previously lashed out at more traditional Catholics who attend the Latin mass; calling them “extremist” and “cult-like.” Haines flaunted her ignorance of the origins of the Catholic Church (St. Peter the Apostol) when she dubbed Francis “the most Jesus-like” pope ever:

Gosh, I would sure hope so. It’s interesting when people speak of the pope right now they talk about the type of pope he was. There’s liberal popes, there’s conservative. When I think of this pope, he was the most Jesus-like. You know, when you read of Jesus and what his word was and how he walked this, is what I think of, a person who lives their life this way.

She was followed up by purported devout Catholic and staunchly racist Sunny Hostin, who once insanely claimed: “Jesus would be the grand marshal at the pride parade.” Keeping with that sentiment, Hostin lamented that she had “struggled with Catholicism” because of “the doctrines” of marriage being an institution between a man and a woman.

 

 

Hostin touted how she and Francis were supposedly on the same page about immigration and empathy. She took his comments about the human condition’s conflict with empathy and suggested that it was only a problem with America:

I remember, I was having this discussion with you, Joy, about how I feel like there’s a crisis of empathy in this country; that unless it happens to you, you can’t feel the empathy of it happening to somebody else. They’re going to deport that person, it’s not going to affect my family so I don’t care it’s affecting others.

And I was watching a 60 Minutes piece that he was interviewed on and he said: ‘We have to get over our hearts to feel again. We cannot remain indifferent in the face of such human dramas. The globalization of indifference is a very ugly disease,’ that this country is suffering from. That’s the kind of pope that he was, and that’s the kind of pope that I hope will replace this pope after the current one.

Former Catholic Joy Behar seemed ignorant of how and who elected the pope. She feared “there might be a backlash against how good he was and how much humility he had compared to some of the leaders in this world right now.”

“So, there might be a backlash to it and they’ll get some conservative guy in there who, you know, is anti-gay and everything else,” she decried.

Behar also demanded that the pope’s memory be forever used to shame President Trump and Elon Musk (Click “expand”):

One of the things that stands out just pictorially is a picture of somebody like Musk and Trump who are cutting back on helping children around the world, you know, cutting back on services for sick children and et cetera; and then you see the pope washing the feet of the poor. The contrast is astounding really.

You are talking about the legacy and whether there’s any legs to this, yes, I think that those pictures should be put out there all the time because this administration is basically hurting children around the world with these cuts that they’re doing. USAID and all of this other stuff, it’s a disgrace.

Faux conservative Alyssa Farah Griffin said she “loved how he advocated for refugees which is a core tenet of the Christian faith…He brought Syrian refugees to Rome.”

“Listen, hopefully, hopefully the conclave will find a way to continue on his path because what it has done is it seems to have brought people back,” Goldberg proclaimed. “All of these things went on to bring people back into the church. And if the church is smart, they will not waste this. This is a legacy that has legs.”

Conspicuously absent was Francis’s comments about abortion doctors and about what abortion was: “Doctors who do this are – allow me the word – hitmen. They are hitmen…And on this you cannot argue. You are killing a human life.”

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

ABC’s The View
April 22, 2025
11:15:01 a.m. Eastern

WHOOPI GOLDBERG: Welcome back. Yesterday was a tough day, because Pope Francis, one of the great popes in my opinion, passed away just hours after sharing a very timely Easter message at the Vatican. He called on people to embrace those who are different or who are from different lands, because we are all children of god. Now, his final message to us was that. Do you think it will resonate?

SARA HAINES: Gosh, I would sure hope so. It’s interesting when people speak of the pope right now they talk about the type of pope he was. There’s liberal popes, there’s conservative. When I think of this pope, he was the most Jesus-like. You know, when you read of Jesus and what his word was and how he walked this, is what I think of, a person who lives their life this way.

He also said at one point, in 2013 regarding gay priests: ‘If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?’ And these messages were what resonated with me, not as a Catholic but just a Christian, the love thy neighbor – love all thy neighbors, and do not judge. And he lived that through his words and his actions.

JOY BEHAR: I don’t know if I love all my neighbors though.

[Laughter]

SUNNY HOSTIN: No, but I love how you said that. As a Catholic, you know, my whole life – and all of you know this, I’ve spoken to many of you about it. I’ve struggled with Catholicism because of so many of the church’s — the doctrines, especially when — in regards to the LGBTQ+ community, in terms of the sex scandals. I’ve struggled with being a Catholic, but this pope changed this for me. And Whoopi and I have spoken about that.

I remember, I was having this discussion with you, Joy, about how I feel like there’s a crisis of empathy in this country; that unless it happens to you, you can’t feel the empathy of it happening to somebody else. They’re going to deport that person, it’s not going to affect my family so I don’t care it’s affecting others.

And I was watching a 60 Minutes piece that he was interviewed on and he said: ‘We have to get over our hearts to feel again. We cannot remain indifferent in the face of such human dramas. The globalization of indifference is a very ugly disease,’ that this country is suffering from. That’s the kind of pope that he was, and that’s the kind of pope that I hope will replace this pope after the current one.

BEHAR: I wonder because there might be a backlash against how good he was and how much humility he had compared to some of the leaders in this world right now. So, there might be a backlash to it and they’ll get some conservative guy in there who, you know, is anti-gay and everything else.

ALYSSA FARAH GRIFFIN: I have to say I’m a protestant but I loved this pope and I loved how he advocated for refugees which is a core tenet of the Christian faith. He visited – He was the first pope to ever visit Iraq and meet with Yazidis Christians who’ve been displaced by ISIS. He brought Syrian refugees to Rome. I mean, he was an incredible person and somebody we’ll miss and I know you met him personally.

GOLDBERG: Yeah, he was great.

I mean, listen, he brought – And this sounds crazy, but he brought 100 comedians from around the world. 100 of us.

BEHAR: I remember that.

GOLDBERG: In to meet with him and what he said was –

[Laughter]

BEHAR: What are you doing?

GOLDBERG: What he said was I want to laugh more.

BEHAR: Oh.

GOLDBERG: We all need to laugh more and then he looked at the 100 of us and he said, ‘what you do is very important, because without you, it’s a grayer day.’ Now, I don’t know any other pope in my lifetime. He’s — my pope was John XXIII who I was a little kid and saw him and he was going by in a popemobile and he looked over and it was like, ‘I see you’ and I thought, I see you too.

[Laughter]

And this pope, his thing is this, he grew up around refugees. You know, he understood what people needed. He got it. Now, whether you like it or not, refugees are with us around the world. So why be negative? Why not be positive and help? Which is what he has always said. And help and walk in the grace of god.

[Applause]

Because that’s how that works.

BEHAR: One of the things – One of the things that stands out just pictorially is a picture of somebody like Musk and Trump who are cutting back on helping children around the world, you know, cutting back on services for sick children and et cetera; and then you see the pope washing the feet of the poor. The contrast is astounding really.

You are talking about the legacy and whether there’s any legs to this, yes, I think that those pictures should be put out there all the time because this administration is basically hurting children around the world with these cuts that they’re doing. USAID and all of this other stuff, it’s a disgrace.

HOSTIN: And hurting other people. Just to put a button on that. You know, what he said when he saw Trump during the first administration with the building a wall in Mexico will pay for it, we know Mexico didn’t pay for anything. He said — The pope said this, ‘A person who thinks only about building walls wherever they may be and not building bridges is not Christian.’

[Applause]

BEHAR: Well, you better tell that to some people.

GOLDBERG: Listen, hopefully, hopefully the conclave will find a way to continue on his path because what it has done is it seems to have brought people back, because they’re not afraid of being divorced, because the pope wasn’t mad about it. Because you’re gay, the pope said, ‘look, you love god, I love god, why am I mad at you?’ All of these things went on to bring people back into the church. And if the church is smart, they will not waste this. This is a legacy that has legs.

We’ll be right back.

Actress and expatriate Rosie O’Donnell joined CNN’s Tuesday installment of The Situation Room to promote a new documentary about her, her autistic daughter, and her service dog. Before that, however, host Wolf Blitzer had to discuss politics, which included O’Donnell’s flight to Ireland on behalf of her “non-binary child” and watching President Trump “destroy the country.”

Blitzer wondered, “As you know, some people entertained the idea of moving abroad after the 2024 election. You actually did it. Tell us about your experience so far, and do you have any regrets?”

 

 

O’Donnell claimed she did not, “I have no regrets. Not a day has gone by that I thought it was the wrong decision. I was welcomed with open arms. I knew after reading Project 2025 that if Trump got in, it was time for me and my non-binary child to leave the country.”

She continued, “And although I was not one of the celebrities who announced that that’s what I would do, I made the decision within my family and my therapist, and should he win, and then when he did, we made the plan into action, and we were gone before he was inaugurated.

It should be noted that O’Donnell’s child is only 12 and apparently came to this conclusion when she was 10. According to O’Donnell, Dakota, who now goes by Clay, has taught her such things as “gender is infinite,” which is not true whether it’s coming from a 10-year old or a 50-year old. If the debate is between Trump, who does not believe 10-year olds should be authoritative voices on gender, and O’Donnell, who does, that is a debate she is going to lose every time.

Still, Blitzer was not done, “You’ve been a longtime critic of this Trump administration and a target of President Trump for that matter as well. What has it been like watching the last few months unfold from abroad?”

In response, O’Donnell claimed that, “It has been heartbreaking; I have to tell you. I knew that if I was in the United States and watched him destroy the country and the Constitution and really pay no mind to any of the laws that the Founders stood by and that our country stands for as a beacon of shining light and freedom for the rest of the world, that should he do what the Heritage Foundation said he was going to do in that Project 2025, that we were going to be in big trouble. And it’s as bad as they promised and even a little bit worse, and it’s been heartbreaking and personally very, very sad to watch.”

O’Donnell’s newfound patriotism is too little, too late. She’s previously compared the U.S. military to terrorists and promoted conspiracy theories about George W. Bush cheating in 2000 and 9/11. But just in case anyone thinks she’s changed, she is still in the conspiracy business: on March 21, O’Donnell went on Ireland’s The Late Late Show and offered up a bit of election-denying conspiracy mongering on why Trump won:

I question why the first time in American history a president has won every swing state and is also best friends and his largest donor [Elon Musk] was a man who owns and runs the Internet. So I would hope that that would be investigated and that we would see whether or not it was an anomaly or something else that happened on election night in America when Kamala Harris was filling up stadiums with people who supported her and Donald Trump was not able to do that.”

Maybe it is best for everyone if O’Donnell stays in Ireland.

Here is a transcript for the April 22 show:

CNN The Situation Room

4/22/2025

10:25 AM ET

WOLF BLITZER: As you know, some people entertained the idea of moving abroad after the 2024 election. You actually did it. Tell us about your experience so far, and do you have any regrets?
ROSIE O’DONNELL: I have no regrets. Not a day has gone by that I thought it was the wrong decision. I was welcomed with open arms. I knew after reading Project 2025 that if Trump got in, it was time for me and my non-binary child to leave the country.

And although I was not one of the celebrities who announced that that’s what I would do, I made the decision within my family and my therapist, and should he win, and then when he did, we made the plan into action, and we were gone before he was inaugurated.

BLITZER: You’ve been a longtime critic of this Trump administration and a target of President Trump for that matter as well. What has it been like watching the last few months unfold from abroad?

O’DONNELL: It has been heartbreaking; I have to tell you. I knew that if I was in the United States and watched him destroy the country and the Constitution and really pay no mind to any of the laws that the Founders stood by and that our country stands for as a beacon of shining light and freedom for the rest of the world, that should he do what the Heritage Foundation said he was going to do in that Project 2025, that we were going to be in big trouble. And it’s as bad as they promised and even a little bit worse, and it’s been heartbreaking and personally very, very sad to watch.

Taxpayer-funded PBS marked Earth Day with typical liberal scare-mongering on its news programs, hosting a Washington Post “environmental health” journalist who sounded more like an environmental health activist on a quest for so-called environmental justice, followed by a radical environmentalist, with no dissenting guests and few if any challenging questions posed.

First up on Sunday’s News Weekend show was the Post’s Amudalat Ajasa.

Anchor John Yang: For three decades, EPA offices were established nationwide to address the disproportionately high levels of pollution in poor and minority communities. Now the Trump administration is eliminating these environmental justice offices as part of its effort to end DEI programs and to cut what it sees as wasteful spending. Ali Rogin recently spoke with Amudalat Ajasa, who covers environmental health for The Washington Post.

Ali Rogin: ….let’s talk about the history of the environmental justice movement and how did it become a part of what the EPA does?

Ajasa sounded like an advocate, not a journalist.

Amudalat Ajasa: Yeah. The history of the environmental justice movement really recognizes the fact that everybody deserves access to clean air, water and the land that they live on. Right. And that was really introduced into the government over 30 years ago by Bill Clinton. He recognized the fact that these inequities needed to be addressed at the government level because it wasn’t happening elsewhere. It developed 30 years ago, but folks really felt like their voices were heard under the Biden administration….

Rogin played a clip from the left-wing (though unlabeled by PBS) Natural Resources Defense Council about “a tribal community” having to drink “radioactive” water before setting up Ajasa for the weepy payoff.

Rogin: So how are these communities reacting to these offices now being closed?

Ajasa: These communities are devastated. These communities are gutted….

Rogin’s nod to equal time was reading a statement from EPA head Lee Zeldin, but giving Ajasa the last word.

Rogin: ….He says that environmental justice sounds like a good idea in theory and receives bipartisan support. But in reality, environmental justice has been used primarily as an excuse to fund left-wing activists instead of actually spending those dollars to directly remediate environmental issues for those communities. What do you make of that?

Ajasa: These offices weren’t just helping specific DEI communities or, you know, leftist woke communities, but they were helping everybody….

Next up, on Monday’s News Hour, was radical environmentalist Bill McKibben (described by anchor Geoff Benntt only as a “leading environmentalist”) under the loaded online headline “How the Trump administration is dismantling climate protections.”

William Brangham: 2024 was the hottest year on record, capping a decade where almost every year broke the previous year’s record high. Carbon emissions, which help drive that warming, are also at record levels. President Trump and his administration argue that this is not a problem and that trying to address it only hurts the economy and puts the U.S. at a competitive disadvantage….While Trump’s actions face legal challenges, environmentalists are sounding the alarm. And among them is Bill McKibben. He’s the author of several books on climate change, the founder of the grassroots climate campaign called 350.org, and Third Act, which organizes older Americans to work on climate justice.

At PBS it’s just “climate justice,” not “what liberal activists call climate justice.” Once again, there was a nod to the Trump argument, just to organize the rebuttal: 

Brangham: What about the argument that this administration makes that the concerns about climate change and the impacts it will have on our world are, they argue, exaggerated or overblown or so far in the distance that to exert energy and money to address them is an enormous cost?

Bill McKibben: Tell that, first of all, to the good people of Los Angeles, say, who watched large parts of their city burn after the hottest, driest weather on record.

PBS wasn’t going to bring up that PBS projected Earth had only 10 years to respond to global warming or there would be “enormous calamities”….back in 1990. 

A transcript is available, click “Expand.”

PBS News Weekend

4/20/25

7:11:31 p.m. (ET)

John Yang: For three decades, EPA offices were established nationwide to address the disproportionately high levels of pollution in poor and minority communities. Now the Trump administration is eliminating these environmental justice offices as part of its effort to end DEI programs and to cut what it sees as wasteful spending. Ali Rogin recently spoke with Amudalat Ajasa, who covers environmental health for the Washington Post.

Ali Rogin: Amudalat, thank you so much for joining us. First of all, let’s talk about the history of the environmental justice movement and how did it become a part of what the EPA does?

Amudalat Ajasa, Environmental Health Reporter, The Washington Post:Yeah. The history of the environmental justice movement really recognizes the fact that everybody deserves access to clean air, water and the land that they live on. Right. And that was really introduced into the government over 30 years ago by Bill Clinton.

He recognized the fact that these inequities needed to be addressed at the government level because it wasn’t happening elsewhere. It developed 30 years ago, but folks really felt like their voices were heard under the Biden administration. You know, although some of them felt like the administration didn’t go far enough in the legislation that they did pass to make sure that they had cleaner air and water, they felt like for the first time, the risks that they faced were really acknowledged.

Ali Rogin: What are some specific examples of environmental justice policies at work and the types of problems that this office set out to address?

Amudalat Ajasa: Some of the policies at work really limited the amount of pollution that industry would be able to pump into the air, the soot that would be allowed to linger in the air, other specific chemicals that they really went after, benzene and other things that for folks who live in Cancer Alley. That’s a day to day reality for them.

Ali Rogin: Tell us about Cancer Alley, what is that?

Amudalat Ajasa: Yeah, Cancer Alley is an 85 mile stretch in Louisiana that is full of industry that is pumping a lot of air, pollutants. And these communities on the front line, they get the name is dubbed Cancer Alley because for them cancer is a reality. Cancer, you know, it’s either somebody close to them that has cancer, somebody in their family, or they know people in their community.

So they have these hot pockets of not just cancer, but other health ailments that the normal American wouldn’t be dealing with. But because they’re exposed to so many chemicals on a day to day basis, that’s their reality.

Ali Rogin: I want to play for you. We spoke to a former EPA environmental justice employee. He now works at the Natural Resources Defense Council. Here’s how he explained how he worked with community members he was serving.

Matthew Tajeda, Former Director, EPA Office of Environmental Justice: We had a tribal community that was sure that the drinking water that they used for their families and for their animals was contaminated with radioactive toxic elements in it. We worked with them to make sure that were hearing what was going on with this community. We provided them with technical assistance and eventually a grant that supported that community in actually testing their own drinking water for levels of radioactivity. And sure enough, their water was radioactive.

Ali Rogin: So how are these communities reacting to these offices now being closed?

Amudalat Ajasa: These communities are devastated. These communities are gutted. I mean, the environmental justice office really served as a liaison for the community and the government. They were on the front lines in many instances in these regions, really connecting with people and understanding what their local challenges were, you know, considering. Like he talked about water contamination, air contamination, wanting to have electric school buses and solar panels.

So they really understood what was happening on the front lines and they were the voice for those communities and the government. So to have that office be completely gutted for many of them makes them feel like there a lot of that relationship is now being cut. And it’s a true unraveling of not only what the Biden administration worked to do, but the 30 years of environmental justice work that has been happening in this country.

Ali Rogin: I want to read for you a statement from EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin. He says that environmental justice sounds like a good idea in theory and receives bipartisan support. But in reality, environmental justice has been used primarily as an excuse to fund left wing activists instead of actually spending those dollars to directly remediate environmental issues for those communities. What do you make of that?

Amudalat Ajasa: These offices weren’t just helping specific DEI communities or, you know, leftist woke communities, but they were helping everybody. You know, I went to Cancer Alley for a story that I worked on and I was amazed but also shocked by the flares that would go off that kind of lit up the sky, almost like it almost looked like fireworks in a weird way. And the smells that I smell, you know, I got a headache being in those communities for almost an hour of just driving.

And that’s experiences were every day. It leaves a lot of people who live on the front lines of these communities abandoned, you know, and it means that for the future that they might be sicker. It means that they have a sicker future. It means that they don’t have as much clean air as they were starting to develop. It means that their water could be contaminated and there’s really nobody there to help them.

Ali Rogin: Amudalat Ajasa with the Washington Post. Thank you so much for joining us.

Amudalat Ajasa: Thank you so much for having me.

MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle marked the passing of Pope Francis on Monday’s The 11th Hour by welcoming historian Jon Meacham to “juxtapose” how “this anti-immigrant movement has risen up” during Francis’s pontificate.

Before that, however, there is the question of Meacham’s credentials. Ruhle introduced him as “the first canon historian for the Washington National Cathedral,” but the National Cathedral is not Catholic but Episcopalian, and the Episcopalian Church is quite liberal and shrinking.

 

 

As it was, Meacham declared, “And that as we went through last week, hearing once again Jesus saying on the night he was handed over to suffering and death, and the words of the right he was, he ordered, commanded us to love one another as I have loved you. And I think that was the guiding star for this pope.”

That led Ruhle to turn to politics, “Blessed are the meek. Juxtapose that, though, Jon, with how different that is with where we are as a society right now. Not just Americans, but Europeans, around the world. How this anti-immigrant movement has risen up. Well, you have a pope who over and over made it his mission to talk about the importance of protecting those who are most vulnerable.”

Ruhle would never describe unborn babies as society’s “most vulnerable.” She also wants an overly simplistic immigration debate. She doesn’t want to talk about the impacts heavy amounts of Islamic immigration have had on Europe. She doesn’t want to discuss the consequences of having chaos at the border and how that allows bad actors to enter undetected or about respect for the law.

As for Meacham, he tried to be more philosophical, “Well, you have, you know, democracy and Christianity. And this is not to get into Christian Nationalism and the often unhealthy blending of faith and power politics, but democracy and Christianity have a great deal in common. It requires us to see one another as fellow children of God.”

He added, “And that may sound grand or soft somehow, but that is in fact the motive force of democracy. If I don’t respect you and your dignity before the law, and you don’t respect mine, then we fall into a state of nature. We fall into a struggle, a constant battle to get what we want. And the message both of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament is that you can’t simply take everything you want when you want it, that there is, in fact, a hierarchy of affections, that we have to control our appetites. And in doing so, we all have a better chance of filling those appetites. So it’s not just about being great people, but it is about seeing one another in a way that enables us to, at least, if we don’t love our neighbor, we should at least try.”

That sounds nice, but immigration policy is a little more nuanced than anyone who shows up claiming poverty gets in and anyone who dissents doesn’t love their neighbor.

Here is a transcript for the April 21 show:

MSNBC The 11th Hour with Stephanie Ruhle

4/21/2025

11:51 PM ET

JON MEACHAM: And that as we went through last week, hearing once again Jesus saying on the night he was handed over to suffering and death, and the words of the right, he was, he ordered, commanded us to love one another as I have loved you. And I think that was the guiding star for this pope.

STEPHANIE RUHLE: Blessed are the meek. Juxtapose that, though, Jon, with how different that is with where we are as a society right now. Not just Americans, but Europeans, around the world. How this anti-immigrant movement has risen up. Well, you have a pope who over and over made it his mission to talk about the importance of protecting those who are most vulnerable.

MEACHAM: Well, you have, you know, democracy and Christianity. And this is not to get into Christian Nationalism and the often unhealthy blending of faith and power politics, but democracy and Christianity have a great deal in common. It requires us to see one another as fellow children of God.

And that may sound grand or soft somehow, but that is in fact the motive force of democracy. If I don’t respect you and your dignity before the law, and you don’t respect mine, then we fall into a state of nature. We fall into a struggle, a constant battle to get what we want. And the message both of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament is that you can’t simply take everything you want when you want it. That there is, in fact, a hierarchy of affections, that we have to control our appetites. And in doing so, we all have a better chance of filling those appetites. So it’s not just about being great people, but it is about seeing one another in a way that enables us to, at least, if we don’t love our neighbor, we should at least try.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 

At 94 years old, leftist billionaire George Soros has established the blueprint for how his enormous Open Society Foundations, fueled with $32 billion of his fortune, will continue fulfilling his dark vision throughout the world under the leadership of his more extreme son Alex. Part of that vision involves using the ever-evolving specter of climate change as a springboard to impel the world towards a New World Order. The utopia that the elder Soros envisions is one that has banned fossil fuels, with everyday human existence regulated into oblivion. The COVID pandemic in 2020 provided what he called a “revolutionary moment” to recognize what kind of social control could be accomplished.

MRC Business, in partnership with Bongino Report, conducted a three-month investigation into the Soros empire’s reach into the global climate-change movement. We uncovered a vast radical leftist network of hundreds of powerful Soros-funded grassroots organizations, universities, and international NGOs with influence in some of the most powerful policy-making institutions, such as the United Nations.

This is what we found.

345 Eco-Activist Groups Push the Soros Climate Agenda Worldwide: MRC Business tallied 345 groups around the world that the Soros empire has bankrolled between 2016 and 2023 that have acted as conduits for his vision, with some groups even holding sway in the most powerful international governing bodies. The Soros-funded Climate Action Network (CAN), for example, bills itself as “a global network of more than 1,900 civil society organisations in over 130 countries driving collective and sustainable action to fight the climate crisis and to achieve social justice.” If that wasn’t indicative enough of the kind of power this organization wields, it prominently notes that it “convenes and coordinates civil society at the UN climate talks and other international fora.” MRC Business found that the Soros empire under George and Alex committed an enormous $193,895,617 in climate/environment spending split between these 345 radical groups between 2016 and 2023 alone.
Eco-Extremism Pushed by Soros-Backed Groups Is Nothing Short of Terrifying: The groups financed by Soros 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. In one of the most extreme cases, the Climate Action Network, which has major influence in the U.N., condemned Israel’s so-called “climate violence” for daring to launch a defensive attack against terrorist organizations like Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon after both perpetrated genocidal attacks against the Jewish state within months of each other.
$618 Million to Buy an Eco-Utopia: Between the $193 million fortune funneled into eco groups and hundreds of millions pledged in commitments between 2016 and 2024, the Open Society Foundations under both the elder Soros and his son Alex’s leadership respectively have allocated at least a whopping $618,895,617 collectively toward exploiting the issue of climate change to overhaul global politics to be more in line with its dark vision for the world. 
Soros-Backed Eco-Extremist Groups Publicly Intimidate Politicians: Soros-backed eco-extremist groups like the notorious Sunrise Movement are infamous for publicly disturbing the peace and intimidating politicians to do their bidding, even if it means blocking roads and streets and causing great disruptions to do it. In October 2021, Sunrise shut down Manhattan highways during rush hour while barking demands that President Joe Biden “save the planet.” The southbound West Side Highway was blocked at West 34th Street for over an hour. Police arrested “13 protesters on the FDR and another 32 demonstrators on the West Side Highway,” according to NBC New York. The youth-led extremist group’s activists also caused a prolonged climate change-charged ruckus at the 2025 Democratic National Committee meeting following President Trump’s electoral victory. According to Fox News, DNC chair-candidate Jason Paul reportedly stated that Sunrise and other protesters were “hijack[ing] the whole evening” and turning the event “into scream night.” 
READ THE ENTIRE MRC REPORT ON THE SOROS EMPIRE’S GLOBAL CLIMATE INFLUENCE BELOW:

 

The death of Pope Francis serves as a refresher in the perils of media projection. Mourning the loss of a perceived fellow traveler, the media have chosen to project their narrow leftwing culture and ideology on to Pope Francis.

Watch as CBS rehashes former Evening News anchor Norah O’Donnell’s interview of Francis from last year, in particular: a telling exchange on conservatism:

NORAH O’DONNELL: As pope for 12 years, Francis was known for his humility. He stuck to Church doctrine, but extended his hand to those he felt were marginalized, especially migrants and the LGBTQ community.

You have said, “Who am I to judge? Homosexuality is not a crime.”

POPE FRANCIS: No, it’s a human fact.

O’DONNELL: There are conservative bishops in the United States that oppose your new efforts to revisit teachings and traditions. How do you address their criticism?

POPE FRANCIS: You used an adjective, “conservative.” That is, “conservative” is one who clings to something and does not want to see beyond that. It is a suicidal attitude. Because one thing is to take tradition into account, to consider situations from the past, but quite another is to be closed up inside a dogmatic box.

You’ll recall that the original interview, which we covered here, was largely a paean to migration and climate change. There were no questions on abortion or same-sex marriage, leftwing policy preferences where Francis did NOT deviate from longstanding Catholic teachings. As we noted at the time, after Francis got his softball climate question:

Here, again, is an issue where Francis’ stances align with those of the Regime, unlike abortion and same-sex marriage (individual non-couple benedictions notwithstanding). More curious minds would have presented Francis with the idea of climate advocacy as a Malthusian enterprise, and asked him to square that with his pro-life positions and teachings. 

“Pope Francis was still Catholic” does not make for a sexy, transgressive headline. Instead, we get these media exercises in projection and narrative. This is why you get gauzy coverage about Francis taking the subway and living humbly, but none whatsoever about his chumminess with Latin American socialist regimes and what that entailed.

And yes, you can call that liberal mythmaking. The decision to rehash this interview on the occasion of Francis’ passing proves it. 

Click “expand” to view the full transcript of the aforementioned interview as aired on the CBS Evening News on Monday, April 21st, 2025:

MAURICE DuBOIS: Our Norah O’Donnell was the only to interview Pope Francis.

JOHN DICKERSON: She met with him at The Vatican in May of last year.

NORAH O’DONNELL:  Do you like when you’re called “The People’s Pope?”

POPE FRANCIS (VIA INTERPRETER): The Pope of the People. I’ve always been a pastor. You are a pastor for the people, not for yourself. A pastor has to be for the people.

O’DONNELL: Pope Francis was born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Argentina in 1936 into a family of Italian immigrants. Bergoglio was on his way to a party when he passed a church and felt compelled to go to confession. That moment led him to the priesthood. Decades later, he became Archbishop of Buenos Aires, with a focus on the poor. And in 2001, Pope St. John Paul II elevated him to cardinal. As pope for 12 years, Francis was known for his humility. He stuck to Church doctrine, but extended his hand to those he felt were marginalized, especially migrants and the LGBTQ community.

You have said, “Who am I to judge? Homosexuality is not a crime.”

POPE FRANCIS: No, it’s a human fact.

O’DONNELL: There are conservative bishops in the United States that oppose your new efforts to revisit teachings and traditions. How do you address their criticism?

POPE FRANCIS: You used an adjective, “conservative.” That is, “conservative” is one who clings to something and does not want to see beyond that. It is a suicidal attitude. Because one thing is to take tradition into account, to consider situations from the past, but quite another is to be closed up inside a dogmatic box.

O’DONNELL: What do you hope your legacy is?

POPE FRANCIS: I never really thought about it. The church is the legacy. The Church, not only through the pope, but through you, through every Christian, through everyone. Personally, I get on the bandwagon of the Church and its legacy for all.

DuBOIS: Norah joins us, and I never get tired of watching this interview. So why do you think he decided to sit down with you?

O’DONNELL: Well, this interview was almost exactly one year ago, and it surrounded the Vatican’s first World Children’s Day, something incredibly important to Pope Francis. You know, the Holy Father has used his papacy to focus on children, what world is being left for them, whether that is for migrant children, climate change, or issues of war and peace. In many ways it was a reset for the Church which has been beset by the child sex abuse scandal. In our interview he talked about the reforms, and the zero tolerance for any abuse within the Church.

DICKERSON: Norah, you spent so much time with him. What surprised you about your time with the Holy Father?

O’DONNELL: I was surprised by his warmth, his graciousness. He gave us an hour of his time for this wide-ranging conversation. I mean, popes don’t give interviews, but he answered all of our tough questions about doctrines. And one of my favorite parts was when I asked him if he likes being called “The People’s Pope”, and he had this huge smile on his mouth. And I think that’s exactly what he wants his legacy to be, this pastoral outreach and a legacy of inclusiveness. 

DICKERSON: Norah O’Donnell on her extraordinary interview. Thank you, Norah.

 

Since the 1980s, in the hearty middle of Pope John Paul the Great’s leadership, we’ve been writing at the Media Research Center about how the secular liberal media reports on the Catholic church. If it helps the Left, it’s happy news. If it opposes the Left, it’s a horrible obstruction.

When Pope Benedict died at the end of 2022, reporters called him  “God’s Rottweiler” and NBC’s Anne Thompson said he looked “cartoonish.” The breaking news on the late Pope Francis was much more positive, he was “inclusive” and “reformist” and was “throwing doors open.” This is how liberal reporters describe someone they feel is an ally. The headlines demonstrated the point: 

The Wall Street Journal: “Breaking: Pope Francis, who sought to refocus the Catholic Church to promote social and economic justice rather than traditional moral teachings, has died.”

The New York Times: “After decades of conservative leadership, Francis tried to reset the course of the Roman Catholic Church, emphasizing inclusion and care for the marginalized over doctrinal purity.”

The Columbus Dispatch: “Pope Francis, 88, a humble reformer who sought to make the Catholic Church more inclusive much to the ire of some conservatives, has died”

The Bulwark: “A Pope Who Preached Decency in Indecent Times”

The Hill: “Pope Francis, the trailblazing Catholic leader known for his human-rights advocacy and sharp political edge, died Monday…Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), a devout Catholic, lionized Francis, portraying him as the perfect embodiment of the gospel of Matthew…”

Listening to the BBC News Hour in the car this morning, one pope trope was that unlike other popes, Pope Francis had a “common touch.” We know Benedict was bookish, but John Paul II didn’t have a “common touch”? John XXIII? Reporters sound like they’ve forgotten already. Or never knew.

It’s only natural for reporters to leap on the OPTICS of Pope Francis — he arrived in a humble car — and not on the church teachings. Because that would require some homework.

NBC’s Anne Thompson relentlessly noted in each hour of Monday morning’s coverage that Francis “moved the Catholic church way from the culture wars” and toward “love and mercy, throwing back the doors of the church to all.” 

Pope Francis did not bend on church teachings against abortion and opposed transgender ideology. Conservative opposition to abortion on demand and gender-mutilating surgeries is described as “Culture wars”  Advocating for abortion on demand and gender-mutilating surgeries is the side of “Love and mercy.” Advocating for the unborn babies is not the antonym of “love and mercy.”

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

 

After Pope Francis died Monday morning, a few hours after blessing a crowd on Easter Sunday, the New York Times started rolling out tributes to the pontiff at nytimes.com, plus a standard 7,000-word obituary by Jason Horowitz and Jim Yardley, the current and former Rome bureau chiefs for the Times., respectively.

Horowitz adored Francis as pontiff, and the obit predictably hailed the left-leaning pope as a force for “inclusion” against “doctrinaire” conservatives (as if “doctrinaire” is a dirty word when talking about religious doctrine!). However, the phrase “liberal” was scarce in the early coverage, while “conservative” opponents of Pope Francis were easy to find and framed as the enemy of openness.

Pope Francis, who rose from modest means in Argentina to become the first Jesuit and Latin American pontiff, who clashed bitterly with traditionalists in his push for a more inclusive Roman Catholic Church, and who spoke out tirelessly for migrants, the marginalized and the health of the planet, died on Monday at the Vatican’s Casa Santa Marta. He was 88.

….

His insistence on shaking up the status quo earned him no shortage of enemies. He demoted conservatives in Vatican offices, restricted the use of the old Latin Mass dear to traditionalists, opened influential meetings of bishops to laypeople, including women, allowed priests to bless same-sex couples and made clear that transgender people could be godparents and that their children could be baptized.

One didn’t expect the Inquisition so soon in Pope Francis’s obituary.

Conservative Catholics accused him of diluting church teachings and never stopped rallying against him. Simmering dissent periodically exploded into view in almost medieval fashion, with talk of schisms and heresy.

Horowitz and Yardley only briefly noted Francis was a daft hand at stifling dissent, in favor of his own ideological leanings.

Francis showed a deft political hand at isolating opponents….only days after leaving the hospital after undergoing colon surgery in 2021, Francis introduced sweeping restrictions on the Latin Mass, arguing that its proponents had exploited it to undermine the reforms of the Second Vatican Council and to create divisions in the church.

Apparently the only hostility and divisions came from conservatives, not the Catholic left or Francis himself.

The spats mostly remained internal, but the ascendance of Mr. Trump in the United States gave traditionalist forces in the Vatican a rival power to rally around. A constellation of conservative Catholic news sites, blogs and television channels, many financed by sources in the United States and Canada, constantly sought to weaken the pope….In 2018, Francis criticized the hostile tenor that often reverberated throughout the conservative Catholic blogosphere.

The reporters did criticize Pope Francis for not fighting sexual abuse in the church hard enough, writing “The pope also seemed less than sensitive to the appeals of victims,” even after major investigations in European countries.

The most dishonest portion of the obituary came under the subhead, “A New Openness,” which cast conservative popes as narrow-minded while denying Pope Francis’s own ideological blind spots.

Arguably the most dramatic change Francis brought to the church, his supporters say, was perhaps the simplest: a willingness to open questions for debate, planting the seeds for deep, long-lasting change. He talked in 2018 about an “apostolate of the ear: listening before speaking.”

He once told Father Spadaro, the Jesuit priest and friend: “Opposition opens up paths. I love opposition.”

Some of his predecessors had been less fond of it. Pope Pius X purged Catholic theologians who took a modernist approach to Bible studies. John Paul II treated theological disagreement as profane dissent, and with his doctrinal watchdog, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, later Benedict XVI, the Vatican silenced theologians with differing visions of the church. When he became pope, Benedict ordered the removal of the editor of a Jesuit journal, America, because it entertained ideas anathema to conservative orthodoxy.

Francis did not stifle views he disagreed with and believed in a patient process — he called it discernment — in which ideas and proposals could be weighed before going forward.

Really? Transgenderism, immigration, global warming, homosexuality, the Latin Mass – Pope Francis used his power to stifle church conservatives on many fronts.

The rolling live news feed covered similar ground, under the flattering subhead, “His groundbreaking pontificate worked to make the Catholic Church more inclusive. Cardinals will now decide whether to continue his approach or restore more doctrinaire leadership.” Again, the only quibble was that the pope failed to lead left-wing ideology to triumph within the church, as in Ruth Graham’s piece, “Francis faced defiant, conservative U.S. Catholic leaders.”

Francis led an increasingly ideologically fractured church, including a boisterous right wing that often openly defied him. The United States, with a heated cultural and political battle over abortion and other social issues, was a stronghold of that conservative opposition….Yet those appointments did not fundamentally shift the balance of American church leadership in a more liberal direction. The church hierarchy in the United States remains staunchly conservative and plays a significant role in the nation’s searing debates over abortion, sexuality and gender….

The Times doesn’t broach the argument of papal hypocrisy, as Ed Condon did in The Spectator (UK): “And while Francis preached a vision of synodality, consultation, and collegiality, he showed himself willing to depose bishops from all corners of the world – seemingly on a whim, without due process and sometimes without any reasons given – if they were considered ideologically out of step with him.” Neither did the paper bear down on the theological confusion Pope Francis leaves in his wake.