Newsbusters

On CNN This Morning, host Audie Cornish devoted a segment to the showdown between Harvard and the Trump administration. Harvard has rejected the administration’s call for it to abandon DEI, among other requirements. In return, the administration has frozen about $2 billion in federal funding to the university. 

Noting a statement by the Harvard president, and playing a clip from a Democrat politician, Cornish promoted the notion that this is a fight over Harvard’s “independence” and its right of “free expression.” It’s not. 

Harvard is free to rename itself Hamas U. Offer a major in “From The River To The Sea Studies.” Ditch “The Crimson,” and call its teams “The Fightin’ Kidnappers.” All Harvard would have to do is make like Hillsdale College, and reject any federal or state funding.

But Harvard wants to have it both ways: keep the federal funds flowing, while rejecting the obligations that go with it. It reminds me of when, as an 11-year-old, I demanded that my parents continue to pay my weekly allowance, despite rejecting their requirement that I make my bed and mow the lawn. Didn’t work out that well.

CNN chief domestic correspondent Phil Mattingly injected a note of realism, acknowledging the Trump administration’s authority to do what it’s doing:

“It turns out, because of government funding, because of government authority, that the president and the administration, the executive branch, can do an awful lot in an awful lot of spaces.”

But Cornish immediately turned that into a negative: “Right. Create a lot of choke points here.”
Choke points: yikes! Look for the Harvard president to take the hint from Audie and start complaining, “I can’t breathe!”

Cornish also  played a clip Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC), made yesterday when he conveniently happened to be part of a Harvard Institute of Politics forum on “Moral Leadership In Polarized Times,” at which he said: “If Harvard had capitulated, I really fear for what next year would be.” 
Enthused Cornish: “He really lays out the stakes. And it feels like this is a moment where people are deciding, like, if you give an inch, they’ll take a mile.” Resist, Audie!
Note: When Kevin Fry, Spectrum’s DC correspondent, said that the Trump administration has floated the possibility of judicial oversight of Columbia’s compliance on diversity in coursework, Cornish interjected a silly non sequitur: “Which is ironic, since they’re kind of dismantling the Ed Department.” 

Here’s the transcript.

CNN This Morning
4/15/25
6:01 am EDT

AUDIE CORNISH: Since retaking the Oval Office, Donald Trump has been successful at bending U.S. institutions to his will. Whether that’s government agencies, tech companies, law firms, one way or another they’ve been forced to decide whether or not they want to comply with the president’s demands. 

Now the Trump administration is taking the fight to America’s oldest university. 

. . . 

HARVARD LAW PROFESSOR: It’s a transparent effort to change what is taught, what we say in our classrooms, what we teach our students. To make sure that the only things that are actually said on university campuses are things that the Trump administration wants to hear and wants to be said. 

CORNISH: On Monday, the Trump administration froze more than $2 billion of Harvard’s federal funding, that decision made after the university rejected a list of demands that the White House sent it last week. Among those demands, an end to so-called DEI practices. They also want an external audit looking for, quote, viewpoint diversity in everywhere from coursework to the student body itself, and new discipline policies, including retroactive punishments, including for protests that happened two years ago, and a comprehensive mask ban. 

The Trump administration even specified that people who wear masks should be punished with no less than suspension. 

So in a statement, Harvard’s president described Trump’s desired changes as a violation of the university’s constitutional rights. 

. . . 

KEVIN FREY: There’s now conversations about whether or not there should be some sort of judicial oversight of whether or not they [Columbia University] are in compliance. 

CORNISH: Right. I don’t want to just skip by some of the things you said. Oversight into actual curriculum. So we want to tell you, or at least be able to look at what you’re teaching. Which is ironic, since they’re kind of dismantling the Ed Department. But they want to do this in higher ed. 

Democrats and their allies coming to universities’ defense. Here’s a sense of what they’ve been saying. 

BERNIE SANDERS: He is putting pressure on universities as well. Good news is, Harvard University today said, go to hell! 

JAMES CLYBURN: That may break the fever. I really hope it does. I do know this. If Harvard had capitulated, I really fear for what next year would be. 

RO KHANNA: There are things that matter more than simply the size of one’s endowment. We need the presidents to be banding together and standing up for free expression. 

CORNISH: Gabby, I probably could have stopped with Clyburn, because he really lays out the stakes. And it feels like this is a moment where people are deciding, like, if you give an inch, they’ll take a mile. 

So if the concern is anti-Semitism, but you let that go into, also you need to wear a mask, also we want to go into curriculum, also, like, the list just gets longer. 

. . . 

PHIL MATTINGLY: The thing I would just emphasize here is, this wasn’t an ad hoc thing that they just decided to launch. 

Stephen Miller, who has a lot of stuff on his plate as a deputy chief of staff for policy. Russ Vought is controlling the budget operation. These guys have been working in groups under the same umbrella over the course of several years, planning all of this out.

And recognizing that it turns out, because of government funding, because of government authority, that the president and the administration, the executive branch, can do an awful lot in an awful lot of spaces if they just are willing to do it. And they are. 

CORNISH: Right. Create a lot of choke points here. 

The New York Times is grating its teeth over the prospect that a Christian-owned company is setting up shop in “liberal” Manhattan, as if having a business with religious morals would be a net negative for that God-forsaken city.

“Hobby Lobby Is Opening Its First Manhattan Store. Not Everyone Is Happy,” cried Times reporter Jane Margolies in an April 9 item that was slapped onto the front page of the business section of the April 15 print edition.

Margolies whined that the neighborhood of TriBeCa in Lower Manhattan, “known for its liberal politics and sky-high rents,” was bracing itself for the incoming of a new retailer “known for its conservative Christian convictions.” Oh how terrible. Rather than just reporting on the development, Margolies chose to elevate how “some residents” were supposedly “feeling affronted that Hobby Lobby is opening in their neighborhood.” Waah.

Naturally, Margolies threw a tantrum over Hobby Lobby’s record of not genuflecting to the typical figureheads of wokeism: “Local groups and forums that are protesting the company’s arrival in TriBeCa point to Hobby Lobby’s work with organizations that oppose gay and transgender rights.”

Then, she said the quiet part out loud: “They haven’t forgotten the private company’s lawsuit in 2014 to fight against having to provide insurance coverage for contraception for employees.” By “they” Margolies is more likely referencing how The Times still hasn’t gotten over the U.S. Supreme Court siding with Hobby Lobby in 2014 over its refusal to violate its Christian ethics by complying with the infamous Obamacare mandates.

As The Times beta-energy-afflicted editorial board wailed during that time, “The Supreme Court violated principles of religious liberty and women’s rights in last week’s ruling in the Hobby Lobby case, which allowed owners of closely held, for-profit corporations (most companies in America) to impose their religious beliefs on workers by refusing to provide contraception coverage for employees with no co-pay, as required by the Affordable Care Act.” How dare a company’s owners have public Christian convictions that are known to their employees before they decided to work for them, right (sarcasm)?

The owners of Hobby Lobby — the Green family — even “largely sponsored” the $500 million privately-funded Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C for goodness’ sake! In October 2022, Hobby Lobby CEO and founder David Green announced in a Fox News op-ed that he was giving up his company because he “chose God” over wealth.

Margolies’ latest slant suggests The Times is more enraged over the fact that the paper and Hobby Lobby are now going to be neighbors:

Over a decade later, it remains to be seen whether low prices and a staggering selection of products are enough to make residents in an area that has long been a liberal stronghold look past the company’s conservative bent.

The whiny brats over at The Times sure can’t seem to get over it. That’s for sure. 

When the “Big Three” networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC weren’t lamenting Tuesday morning the plight of their beloved “Maryland man” Kilmar Abrego Garcia, they each complaining about the Trump administration freezing $2 billion in taxpayer funding from far-left and private Harvard University, siding with the university’s insistence it spend taxpayer dollars as it sees fit.

ABC’s Good Morning America led both hours with Harvard, including a tease with co-host Robin Roberts decrying the “escalation in the Trump administration’s campaign against elite colleges.”

Later, in tossing to chief national correspondent Matt Gutman, Roberts dismissed the concerns of the Trump administration about anti-Semitism, ideological bias, and racial discrimination as merely “policy demands.”

 

 

Gutman declared Harvard President Alan Garber was “the first to openly defy the Trump administration, drawing that line in the sand, saying that no government should dictate to a private university what it can teach, who it can hire, and admit.”

“Harvard, America’s wealthiest university, not backing down in the face of pressure from President Trump, who is threatening to pull roughly $9 billion in federal aid…The administration ordering the school to report foreign students who commit conduct violations to federal authorities, submit to an audit to ensure academic departments have diverse viewpoints, and end all DEI program, share hiring data with the administration, and submit to an audit of admissions data,” he added.

Gutman also threw in the Trump administration’s concerns with Harvard as just one of many hotbeds of anti-Semitic filth: “The administration also calling for the correction of what it calls anti-Semitism on campus, an issue which Harvard said it has already taken steps to address.”

He went onto say Garber’s defense is on First Amendment grounds and that the leadership’s “defiance has been applauded here on campus by faculty and students, and the university vowing not to surrender to the Trump administration going forward.”

To his credit, Gutman was the only network journalist to mention this important tidbit: “And one of the big questions going forward is Harvard going to dip into that $50 billion plus endowment to make up for that federal shortfall?”

NBC’s Today had a single segment in the first hour. Co-host Savannah Guthrie teased: “And the White House’s battle with Harvard taking a dramatic new turn overnight. The administration yanking billions of dollars in funding. We’ll have the very latest.”

Fill-in co-host and NBC Sports anchorman Mike Tirico had the setup for senior Washington correspondent Hallie Jackson: “Also this morning, a legal battle intensifying between the Trump administration and one of the most prestigious universities in the country. Harvard is now being hit with a $2 billion funding freeze after rejecting a list of demands from the White House to make sweeping changes.”

 

 

Jackson called it “a major showdown” with Trump “basically punish[ing] Harvard for not complying with that list of demands from the government by freezing more than $2 billion in grants” and thus what the school argues would be “violating [their] own constitutional rights” (click “expand”):

JACKSON: This is a major showdown between the country’s oldest and richest school and the Trump administration. Overnight, you had the Trump administration to basically punish Harvard for not complying with that list of demands from the government by freezing more than $2 billion in grants. That’s because Harvard, earlier in the day, had told the administration they’re not interested in what they say amounts to a federal takeover or government control of the university. So, all of this makes Harvard now the highest profile school to go toe-to-toe with the White House, Savannah.

TIRICO: Hallie, I’m going to jump in here for a second because this is significant for universities around the country. What are the specific demands the White House is making of Harvard?

JACKSON: Yeah, Mike, there’s a bunch of them here. The administration wanted an immediate shutdown of DEI programs. They wanted Harvard to share hiring and admissions data and an audit on what they called viewpoint diversity. They wanted to Harvard to restrict the acceptance of international students who are, “hostile to American values and institutions,” plus an overhaul of departments and programs with anti-Semitic records, and plagiarism checks on current and prospective faculty. Now, the White House, Mike, frames this as part of its fight against anti-Semitism on college campuses. But Harvard says, wait a second. They say that’s not the intention of what the government wants to do here. They want to regulate us but they’re violating our own constitutional rights. And you saw that in a letter that the president of the school put out, writing that, “[n]o government – regardless of which party is in power – should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue,” Mike,

TIRICO: It’s the buzz of boards and administrations of universities around the country. Hallie Jackson, thanks this morning.

Given that they’re still surrendering large scores of airtime to co-host Gayle King’s trip to space, CBS Mornings only had 42 seconds at the tail end of a segment lamenting the plight of illegal immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

Chief White House correspondent Nancy Cordes touted Harvard “reject[ing] demands that it institute changes in hiring and admissions” (click “expand”):

TONY DOKOUPIL: Nancy, you know the Trump administration has also taken new steps against Harvard University. What do you know about that?

NANCY CORDES: That’s right. Last night, the White House announced a freeze of $2.2 billion in grants and a $60 million contract for Harvard University. This comes, Tony, after Harvard rejected demands that it institute changes in hiring and admissions to ensure what the Trump administration has been calling viewpoint diversity. The White House says they’re just ensuring that taxpayer dollars do not go towards racial discrimination or racially motivated violence. But, in a statement, Harvard said that it will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights.

To see the relevant transcripts from April 15, click here (for ABC), here (for CBS), and here (for NBC).

Over the weekend, Pennsylvania Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro was the target of a possible politically motived arson attack at the Governor’s mansion by a man with a history of mental illness and animosity towards both parties. But minutes after the news broke on Monday, disgraced former CNN host Don Lemon took to his podcast to blame President Trump, MAGA, and Republicans in general for the attack and every bad act in America; proclaiming: “You are the purveyors of hate!”

Despite the news being very fresh, Lemon decried that “MAGA is silent this morning. The White House is silent this morning. Donald Trump is silent this morning.” Meanwhile, Trump did call the man responsible for the attack a “whack job.”

Lemon seemed to catch himself as he launched into a hyperbolic statement suggesting the arson attack was worse than the assassination attempts on Trump. “They don’t have a thing to say about one of the most horrific acts of political terrorism this country has seen in some time,” he said.

He never gave an explanation for what he meant by “some time” and “most horrific,” since the first attempt on Trump was less than a year old and saw the President shot in the head, a supporter killed, and several injured. Fortunately, no one at the Governor’s Mansion was injured and the attacker never found Shapiro or his family.

“Where are our priorities? Where are the priorities today? Is it in a rocket? Is it in stopping stuff like this?” Lemon huffed about the rest of the media coverage of the morning.

 

 

Lemon then blamed Trump for all the hate in the world and for the attack:

Because there’s a reason that there’s so much hate going around. There’s a reason that there’s so much anti-Semitism and so much racism going around, and there’s a lot of it. There’s a look – and it’s not just, you know, one political party and all that stuff, but you can place it at the feet of one person who didn’t start this but certainly exacerbates it and foments hate and bigotry.

Towards the end of the segment, several minutes later, Lemon admitted that Trump had only just heard about the attack and proceeded to bloviate about a purported double standard in outrage from the right:

So, I was just listening to the thing and Donald Trump said he had only just heard of the attack. And look, he will probably respond I’m sure, hopefully he will respond in depth, but I don’t see many people, many Republicans or anyone speaking out against this. And I just know if had it been the other way around, it would have been people in the MAGA folks would have been going crazy. ‘I can’t believe Kamala Harris, she’s condoning this. Why aren’t Democrats doing whatever.’

So, I think Republicans speak out, say something. Not just like a measly little statement. ‘Have my, uh, have, have uh have Barbara draw up a statement for me uh to this and whatever, and have him put it out on social media.’ No, let’s say something. Don’t just draw up the statement.

Lemon followed up by dropping all semblance of his earlier pretext that there was violence on both sides of the aisle and declared: “[I]t certainly does happen more on one side.”

“Hate. January 6. The racism. The bigotry. The anti-Semitism. The transphobia. The homophobia. It certainly does happen on one side more than the other,” he chided. “So, yeah, does it happen on the Democratic side? Yeah, but not to the extent that it happens on the Republican side, especially with MAGA.”

Of course, the liberal hack was omitting both assassination attempts on Trump, the assassination attempt of Justice Brett Kavanaugh and his family, the assassination attempt against Republican gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin (NY), the attempt on Representative Steve Scalise (R-LA) and the rest of the Republican Congressional Baseball Team, the BLM riots of 2020, the acts of terrorism against Tesla, the anti-Semitism on college campuses, and all the other attacks on Republicans on the local and state levels.

“Let’s just be honest,” he crowed as he proceeded to lie about how “hatred and bigotry” were the “motor” and “axel” which “makes the MAGA wheel spin.”

Lemon wanted to hold Republicans responsible for every act of violence by demanding: “Say something Republicans about the hate every single time it happens. Every single time it happens.”

“And don’t try to spin it as to that Democrats always do it, only do it, and Republicans, somehow MAGA is not doing it when you are the purveyors of hate,” he wrapped out his hate-fueled screed.

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

The Don Lemon Show
April 14, 2025

DON LEMON: So, MAGA is silent this morning. The White House is silent this morning. Donald Trump is silent this morning. They don’t have a thing to say about one of the most horrific acts of political terrorism this country has seen in some time.

This is awful. I don’t know if you paid attention to it. As I said, I just couldn’t watch after a while. I had to stop, especially after this happened. I’m like, oh my God, what is going on in the world? And why isn’t someone condemning this from the highest heights in the White House? Right? Why isn’t someone condemning this? One of the most horrific acts of political terrorism in this country has seen in some time.

Over the weekend, authorities say a man scaled an iron security fence in the middle of the night, everyone, eluded police and broke into the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion. Where he set a massive fire, and then he attempted to murder Josh Shapiro with a hammer.

Now, you guys remember when that happened to Nancy Pelosi’s husband, right? And then the right made fun of it. Remember that? And then they tried to pretend it was some sort of love affair, some hookup gone wrong. All kinds of conspiracy theories. And they did it not just on the fringe media, they did it in the mainstream media as well. The big right-wing news organizations were laughing and joking about it.

“The silence speaks volumes.” You’re right about that, Marlene Prosser, it does.

And so now you have this. Now imagine, if Kamala Harris was in office and something like this happened and there was no statement or nothing, and you didn’t hear anything, people weren’t condemning it. Imagine what would happen. What would folks be saying about this? What would they be saying about this, had this happened and then a Democrat didn’t say anything?

Mr. Shapiro, Governor Shapiro and his family fortunately escaped just in the nick of time. They’re okay. Cody Balmer, who was arrested later in the day, faces charges including attempted homicide, terrorism, aggravated arson, and aggravated assault. During a police interview, authorities said that Cody Balmer told them, after he was taken into custody, that he would have beaten Shapiro with a small sledgehammer if he would have found him. That’s what the documents say.

So this is what I’m saying to you guys. This is, this is what I mean about what is going on in the country. Where are our priorities? Where are the priorities today? Is it in a rocket? Is it in stopping stuff like this? Because there’s a reason that there’s so much hate going around. There’s a reason that there’s so much anti-Semitism and so much racism going around, and there’s a lot of it. There’s a look – and it’s not just, you know, one political party and all that stuff, but you can place it at the feet of one person who didn’t start this but certainly exacerbates it and foments hate and bigotry.

(…)

LEMON: So, I was just listening to the thing and Donald Trump said he had only just heard of the attack. And look, he will probably respond I’m sure, hopefully he will respond in depth, but I don’t see many people, many Republicans or anyone speaking out against this. And I just know if had it been the other way around, it would have been people in the MAGA folks would have been going crazy. ‘I can’t believe Kamala Harris, she’s condoning this. Why aren’t Democrats doing whatever.’

So, I think Republicans speak out, say something. Not just like a measly little statement. ‘Have my, uh, have, have uh have Barbara draw up a statement for me uh to this and whatever, and have him put it out on social media.’ No, let’s say something. Don’t just draw up the statement.

And the Governor is right, this is happening far too often. Now, I say it is not exclusive to one political party, but it certainly is – it certainly does happen more on one side. Hate. January 6. The racism. The bigotry. The anti-Semitism. The transphobia. The homophobia. It certainly does happen on one side more than the other. And they don’t speak out about it enough.

So, yeah, does it happen on the Democratic side? Yeah, but not to the extent that it happens on the Republican side, especially with MAGA. Let’s just be honest. It seems to be part of the, I mean, that’s the, not the cog, that’s a thing that makes the MAGA wheel spin. That’s the motor. That’s the axle. Is hatred and bigotry.

So, let’s hope someone responds. Governor, I’m with you, my Jewish brothers and sisters over this Passover, and over the weekend, I’m with you as well. I wanna see more people start speaking out more about it. Say something, Donald Trump, more than just I haven’t heard about it, and some wrote statement. Say something Republicans about the hate every single time it happens. Every single time it happens. And don’t try to spin it as to that Democrats always do it, only do it, and Republicans, somehow MAGA is not doing it when you are the purveyors of hate.

Liberals may view MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow as something of an intellectual, but her Monday show disproved that notion. If all you did was listen to Maddow, you would come to the conclusion that Trump is waging war on universities simply because he can and not because they have an anti-Semitism problem.

The latest development in Trump’s battle with higher education came after Harvard refused to comply with a list of administration demands, resulting in the cutting of over $2 billion. Maddow lauded Harvard for not caving, “I have just one more thing to show you, because this was Saturday in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which is home, of course, to the most famous and prestigious university in the whole country, Harvard University. This was a Stand Up Harvard rally that happened in terrible rain and sleet and cold in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Saturday afternoon.”

 

 

She continued to wax poetic by claiming, “The theme was effectively courage, not capitulation. People are trying to shore up Harvard to tell them that they’ve got the gravitas and the weight and the wealth, that if they can’t lead, who can, that they should not capitulate to Trump’s threats, to Trump’s demands, to let him essentially take over and subjugate the universities.”

By “subjugate the universities,” Maddow meant that the administration was demanding that the departments most to blame for fanning the flames of anti-Semitism be reviewed and, if necessary, reformed. It also demanded Harvard actually enforce its rules and have a consistent disciplinary system, adopt a merit-based admission policy, and shutter its DEI apparatus (by the school’s own admission, Columbia University’s DEI bureaucracy was a hindrance to addressing anti-Semitism).

It is not as if Harvard is the victim. They are currently being sued for failing to stand up to anti-Semitism on campus. Alleged incidents include Harvard employees vandalizing hostage posters, demanding Jewish students debate them on whether or not Jews did 9/11, and posting threatening videos of themselves wielding machetes. Meanwhile, last year’s demonstrations effectively shut down certain areas of campus and were rewarded with meetings and capitulations.

Maddow, of course, mentioned none of this. Instead, she declared of Trump’s move:

It has thus far been war on international students, war on academic freedom, war on campus free speech. It’s been war on government research funding. It’s about to be war on university endowments. And so these people turned out on Saturday in the wind and the cold, one protest among a gazillion. But in this case, they were just telling Harvard, ‘Don’t do it, don’t capitulate. Stand up.’ This was Saturday, and tonight, here’s the banner headline in the Boston Globe, quote, ‘Harvard refuses to comply with Trump’s demands, says it won’t,’ quote, ‘allow itself to be taken over by the federal government.’

But it will allow itself to be taken over by the mob.

Here is a transcript for the April 14 show:

MSNBC The Rachel Maddow Show

4/14/2025

9:18 PM ET

RACHEL MADDOW: I have just one more thing to show you, because this was Saturday in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which is home, of course, to the most famous and prestigious university in the whole country, Harvard University. This was a Stand Up Harvard rally that happened in terrible rain and sleet and cold in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Saturday afternoon.

The theme was effectively courage, not capitulation. People are trying to shore up Harvard to tell them that they’ve got the gravitas and the weight and the wealth, that if they can’t lead, who can, that they should not capitulate to Trump’s threats, to Trump’s demands, to let him essentially take over and subjugate the universities.

It has thus far been war on international students, war on academic freedom, war on campus free speech. It’s been war on government research funding. It’s about to be war on university endowments. And so these people turned out on Saturday in the wind and the cold, one protest among a gazillion. But in this case, they were just telling Harvard, “Don’t do it, don’t capitulate. Stand up.” This was Saturday, and tonight, here’s the banner headline in the Boston Globe, quote, ‘“Harvard refuses to comply with Trump’s demands, says it won’t,’ quote, ‘allow itself to be taken over by the federal government.’”

On Monday, during a testy Oval Office exchange with liberal CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins, President Trump alleged her network hates the United States of America: “They don’t like putting out good numbers… I think they hate our country, actually.”

Moments later, Inside Politics host Dana Bash took umbrage with the President’s claim: “For the record, since we heard President Trump say in the Oval Office that CNN hates our country, CNN does not hate our country. That should go without saying.”

Clearly we’ve got two conflicting accounts here. To help get to the truth, we at NewsBusters have decided to partake in the highly respected and not-at-all cynical practice of fact-checking (just like CNN’s Daniel Dale does!).

– THE CLAIM – 

President Donald Trump: “I think they [CNN] hate our country, actually.” 

– OUR VERDICT –

– THE EVIDENCE –

Let’s consider the above video, which I put together in about 15 minutes by hunting down a few clips purely from memory. While the rhetoric contained in the video is unquestionably anti-American, we must consider each what each speaker’s relationship with CNN actually is.

First, Tom Verni, who smugly declared America “a racist, sexist, homophobic, islamophobic, antisemitic country,” was not, and has never been, a paid CNN contributor. While the network invited him on to share exactly the kind of trash insight he offered in the clip, they can’t be considered wholly culpable for his bad opinions.

Similarly, Tiffany Cross, who declared that America was “never great,” is not a CNN contributor. Rather, she is a former MSNBC host who was given Joy Reid’s old weekend time slot after Reid was elevated to the 7:00 p.m. Eastern slot on weeknights. However, Cross did used to work for CNN as an associate producer back during the Bush years, so it could be argued that the network is a little more culpable for her her awful commentary than they were for Verni’s.

By contrast, CNN completely owns the midwitted, Howard Zinn-inspired “insights” of ostensible reporter Leyla Santiago, who was (and continues to be) on the network’s payroll. CNN not only sanctioned her Sociology 101-level commentary about stolen land and slavery, they actually continued to pay her for it afterwards, and she remained in their employ until 2023.

They also own the commentary of correspondent and open-borders activist Rosa Flores, who absurdly declared that illegal aliens arriving in the U.S. were discovering that the American dream was “all a lie.”

And of course, W. Kamau Bell, who brilliantly deduced that America would remain irredeemably racist until the government started giving black people (but really just him) free money, was the host of one of those weekend shows that most people don’t know exists. But Bell’s United Shades of America, obscure though it may have been, was nonetheless a real CNN show, which technically makes him a real former CNN host.

All told, two of the five morons in this video are current or recent CNN TV reporters, one is a previous CNN host, one is a past CNN employee (to be generous, we can say she only counts for half), and one is a former cop who presumably wandered onto the set by accident. So of the five clips in this video, about three and a half of them were CNN-original commentary. In other words, 70 percent — a C-minus, but still a passing grade.

Thus, as long as CNN’s paid, on-air employees can be said to speak for their network, it’s safe to say that CNN does, at least somewhat, hate America.

For the Tax Day edition of CNN’s Inside Politics on Tuesday, media correspondent Brian Stelter joined host Dana Bash to allege that President Trump wants to defund PBS and NPR for “simply covering the news.” If Stelter really believes that then he has a funny definition of what is newsworthy.

Of course, any media segment about defunding public broadcasting has to include a good deal of fearmongering and Stelter saw no reason for this one to be any different:

It would mean that local stations, smaller stations, and some of these smaller producers would be hardest hit. For example, the group that produces Sesame Street only relies on government funding for about four percent of the production. Sesame Street would still suffer, but it wouldn’t go off the air as a result of losing government funding. However, there are all smaller stations in smaller states and rural areas that would really suffer if they lost this funding and those are the kinds of preparations that are now underway. As you said, this would be a big victory for Republicans who have wanted this to happen for decades. But it would also be, in many cases, Republican constituents that would suffer, Dana.

 

 

Bash acted as if that was the most profound argument she had ever heard, “Yeah, that is such a good point.”

She then asked, “Brian, just real quick, what is the White House saying about not just PBS and NPR, but about its broader fights with media organizations, including the AP, that we were talking about before the break?”

Stelter began by explain, “When it comes to the White House’s framing of this, it’s about taking on wokeism and liberal bias. Here’s a part of the quote from the White House website. They’ve listed off what they believe are examples of partisan bias at NPR and PBS, saying, quote, ‘for years, American taxpayers have been on the hook for subsidizing NPR and PBS, which spread radical woke propaganda disguised as news.’”

However, Stelter wasn’t buying it, “Some of the examples on the list on the White House website are examples of NPR and PBS simply covering the news, for example, about transgender Americans. So, that list very much about the president’s priorities, trying to push back on DEI. More broadly, Dana, you refer to the AP. We see the FCC under pressure. We see signs of authoritarianism all around. And yet networks like CBS just keep reporting the news. That’s true as well, Dana, at PBS and NPR.”

Stelter referenced the list, but never actually cited anything on it. The transgender-related stories the White House cited include:

“In 2022, NPR educated the nation on the ‘whole community of genderqueer dinosaur enthusiasts’ and ‘trans-ceratops.’”
In 2021, a PBS station aired a ‘children’s program’ that featured a drag queen named ‘Lil’ Miss Hot Mess.’”
In 2017, PBS produced an entire movie celebrating a transgender teenager’s so-called ‘changing gender identity.’”
Not a segment profiling a transgender teenager, an entire movie. What news value to “genderqueer dinosaur enthusiasts” or Lil Miss Hot Mess have? And that is before we get to non-transgender related examples like NPR’s 2020 “the racial origins of fat phobia.”

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

Here is a transcript for the April 15 show:

CNN Inside Politics with Dana Bash

4/15/2025

12:33 PM ET

BRIAN STELTER: It would mean that local stations, smaller stations, and some of these smaller producers would be hardest hit. For example, the group that produces Sesame Street only relies on government funding for about four percent of the production. Sesame Street would still suffer, but it wouldn’t go off the air as a result of losing government funding. However, there are all smaller stations in smaller states and rural areas that would really suffer if they lost this funding, and those are the kinds of preparations that are now underway. As you said, this would be a big victory for Republicans who have wanted this to happen for decades. But it would also be, in many cases, Republican constituents that would suffer, Dana.

DANA BASH: Yeah, that is such a good point. Brian, just real quick, what is the White House saying about not just—

STELTER: Yeah.

BASH — PBS and NPR, but about its broader fights with media organizations, including the AP, that we were talking about before the break?

STELTER: Right. When it comes to the White House’s framing of this, it’s about taking on wokeism and liberal bias. Here’s a part of the quote from the White House website. They’ve listed off what they believe are examples of partisan bias at NPR and PBS, saying, quote, “for years, American taxpayers have been on the hook for subsidizing NPR and PBS, which spread radical woke propaganda disguised as news.”

Some of the examples on the list on the White House website are examples of NPR and PBS simply covering the news, for example, about transgender Americans. So, that list very much about the president’s priorities, trying to push back on DEI. More broadly, Dana, you refer to the AP. We see the FCC under pressure. We see signs of authoritarianism all around. And yet networks like CBS just keep reporting the news. That’s true as well, Dana, at PBS and NPR.

It’s a tale of two different illegal immigrant cases. 

On April 14, a Maryland jury found Salvadoran illegal immigrant Victor Antonio Martinez-Hernandez guilty of the horrific rape and murder of Rachel Morin.

The Maryland mother of five’s 2023 murder was just one of many high profile cases of illegal immigrant crimes that resulted from former President Joe Biden’s border crisis. 

In fact, the attorney for the Morin family has squarely blamed Biden’s immigration policies for her death, noting that Morin’s killer was caught at the border three separate times. 

 

 

So how much coverage did ABC/CBS/NBC devote to the trial on their evening and morning shows? 

Zero seconds. 

However a Maryland case the media DID care about was the deportation of Salvadoran illegal immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia. From April 1 through the morning of April 15, ABC, CBS, NBC spent a total of 64 minutes, 57 seconds on the “Maryland man” trial.  

So why the discrepancy? 

The Abrego Garcia case allowed network anchors and reporters to berate the Trump administration for “mistakenly” deporting him. 

David Muir’s tone from the April 4 edition of World News Tonight was typical of the coverage as the anchor shamed the administration: “In Washington tonight, a federal judge giving the Trump administration until Monday night to return an immigrant mistakenly deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador. The judge saying it was illegal to do so.”

Of course, the networks could have focused on Garcia’s suspected gang affiliations, the details of his 2019 arrest or the fact that multiple immigration courts found that there was credible evidence linking the deportee to MS-13 including, per a confidential informant: confirmed affiliation, gang name, and gang rank. The Daily Caller has more here.

By focusing their attention on the Trump administration’s deportation “mistake” and completely CENSORING the trial of Rachel Morin’s killer the broadcast networks have revealed their agenda to downplay Trump wins against illegal immigration while also burying the Biden administration border security failures.  

For this study MRC analysts looked at the broadcast evening (ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News) and morning news shows (ABC’s Good Morning America, CBS Mornings, CBS Saturday Morning, CBS Sunday Morning, NBC Today, NBC Sunday Today) from April 1 through the morning of April 15.

Over the past two weeks, broadcast networks were utterly consumed by news of the Trump administration’s tariffs, to the degree that the topic took up more than a third of their flagship morning and evening newscasts’ total run time. Yet during that same time period, these networks spared barely any time at all to cover some of the positive economic news, such as the declining Consumer Price Index and a stronger-than-expected jobs report.

MRC analysts looked at all coverage of tariffs on ABC, CBS, and NBC’s flagship morning and evening news shows, from April 2 through April 11. During that time, these networks aired a jaw-dropping seven hours and two minutes of reporting about the Trump administration’s trade war, and all three surpassing two hours each. ABC led the pack with 148 minutes, followed by NBC with 144 minutes and CBS with 130 minutes dedicated to the topic.

But apparently these networks’ fevered interest in the economy did not extent to the March jobs report, which indicated the U.S. economy “added far more jobs than expected” in March. ABC and NBC gave it only a passing mention on the evening of April 4 (14 seconds on ABC, and just 11 on NBC). CBS, which skipped the report entirely that night, spent a scant 20 seconds on it the following morning. All told, the combined coverage across all three networks topped out at a pitiful 45 seconds.

Meanwhile, during that same period (the evening of April 4 through the evening of April 5), the broadcast networks gave tariffs a whopping 62 times more coverage than the jobs report, amounting to 46 minutes and 50 seconds of air time. ABC again topped the list (16 minutes and 50 seconds) minutes and 53 seconds, followed by NBC (16 minutes and 50 seconds) and CBS (12 minutes and seven seconds).

The networks also were also wholly uninterested in the April 10 report which showed the American Consumer Price Index had declined 0.1 percent. ABC skipped the aggregate CPI decline entirely, instead only airing a single 16-second mention that egg prices had slightly increased. CBS, meanwhile, gave the declining prices just nine seconds the evening after the report came out, just barely beating out NBC’s paltry eight seconds.

Recession talk also ramped up on the broadcast airwaves over the past two weeks. From April 2 through April 11, the term was brought up a combined 74 times on all three networks. Even when economists began airing more optimistic sentiment about the odds of a recession after the Trump administration eased up on its tariffs late last week, the doom and gloom continued apace on broadcast networks.

It’s perfectly reasonable for these major news networks to cover a major ongoing trade war, or for them to spend time on a dramatic dip in the stock market. But when these same networks can only be bothered to spare a few disinterested seconds on strong economic news, one wonders whether primary goal is not covering the economy qua the economy, but rather using any negative economic information they can find in order to pillory the Trump administration.

Jon Stewart devoted his Monday monologue on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show to accusing President Trump of being an authoritarian. However, some of Stewart’s examples of authoritarianism, such as protecting women’s sports and defunding public broadcasting, were woefully unimpressive. Additionally, Stewart alleged Trump had bungled “the authoritarian bargain” that requires competence in return for compliance, as he also suggested Trump is to blame for a series of plane crashes.

Stewart began with faux reverence for Trump, “President Trump. Generalissimo. Oh, great Moses. I don’t know what your advisors have told you about the authoritarian bargain, but the basic deal is: the American people look the other way while you disappear undesirables, knuckle under the elites, ban all seven trans athletes from our nation’s beloved NCAA fencing tournaments, you know, all the people that are holding us back, and then you, in turn, make shit work.”

 

 

Getting more animated, Stewart continued, “You want to ignore the Supreme Court and all the other courts and take away people’s licenses to broadcast? Fine!”

Changing voice inflections again, Stewart squeaked, “But when the planes go up, they’ve got to come down, and not on fire. You don’t even have to have them be on time.”

A bit later, Stewart equated not funding something with destroying it, “You want to destroy NPR and PBS, the Voice of America, sell the naming rights of the Washington Monument to Hims.com? Use the R-word, the P-word, the C-word, make up your own slurs? Have the United States Naval Academy remove Maya Angelou from its bookshelves, but for some reason, keep Mein Kampf, which is a real [bleep] thing that they did, we’ll be fine!”

Stewart concluded with a reference to Vice President JD Vance’s Monday blooper, where he dropped the NCAA football championship trophy:

We weren’t that crazy about this system of government in the first place. But you keep [bleep] this up, and some of these lawyers and universities and corporate leaders are going to start to think about suggesting, respectfully, to each other in a very tightly controlled text chat, that someone should reach out to someone who knows someone in your administration to express mild dissatisfaction. Because injustice anywhere is not something we mostly think about and remember, you don’t have that much time to get it right because it’s not like your Vice Authoritarian Butterfingers is inspiring any confidence.

It is also not as if Stewart’s broad definition of authoritarianism is inspiring any confidence in the liberal opposition either.

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

Here is a transcript for the April 14 show:

Comedy Central The Daily Show

4/14/2025

11:17 PM ET

JON STEWART: President Trump. Generalissimo. Oh, great Moses. I don’t know what your advisors have told you about the authoritarian bargain, but the basic deal is: the American people look the other way while you disappear undesirables, knuckle under the elites, ban all seven trans athletes from our nation’s beloved NCAA fencing tournaments, you know, all the people that are holding us back, and then you, in turn, make shit work. 

You want to ignore the Supreme Court and all the other courts and take away people’s licenses to broadcast? Fine! But when the planes go up, they’ve got to come down, and not on fire. You don’t even have to have them be on time. You can take over Greenland, demonize Canada, dominate the golfing pro circuit, but in return, our children should be somewhat safe from most Victorian-era diseases. We love our children. We love them. We love our children. Especially, the Rizzler.

You want to destroy NPR and PBS, the Voice of America, sell the naming rights of the Washington Monument to Hims.com? Use the R-word, the P-word, the C-word, make up your own slurs? Have the United States Naval Academy remove Maya Angelou from its bookshelves, but for some reason, keep Mein Kampf, which is a real [bleep] thing that they did, we’ll be fine! 

We weren’t that crazy about this system of government in the first place. But you keep [bleep] this up, and some of these lawyers and universities and corporate leaders are going to start to think about suggesting, respectfully, to each other in a very tightly controlled text chat, that someone should reach out to someone who knows someone in your administration to express mild dissatisfaction. Because injustice anywhere is not something we mostly think about and remember, you don’t have that much time to get it right because it’s not like your Vice Authoritarian Butterfingers is inspiring any confidence.