Newsbusters

The CEOs of PBS and NPR vehemently deny any evidence of leftist bias at their taxpayer subsidized outlets. 

In fact, PBS CEO Paula Kerger took her claim a step further, insisting she’d “be very interested in seeing” the innumerable evidence documented by the Media Research Center over the span of decades.

But when I rolled into both of their headquarters to deliver our 6-foot tall tower of proof, I was immediately shooed away like a security threat. 

In an interview on One America News Network, I was asked why I believe both outlets were so “afraid of accountability.” 

Accepting accountability and our stack of evidence would threaten both their egos and the taxpayer gravy train that rewards them hundreds of millions of dollars each year to spew party propaganda under the guise of “objectivity.”

As I noted during the OANN segment, how can public media comply with its “strict adherence to objectivity and balance” when NPR CEO Katherine Maher believes truth is a “distraction?” 

In fact, her outlet used that same adjective as a reason to paint President Joe Biden’s drug addicted son as a saint while dismissing legitimate evidence of his laptop scandal in 2020. 

“Balance” is a foreign concept to PBS, whose coverage on gender ideology is favorable to the left 90% of the time. That ideal certainly doesn’t fit their ratio of blasting the “far right” 162 times versus the “far left” 6 times from 2023 to 2024.

NPR’s so-called “balance” features a titled newsroom with 87 top editors reportedly registered as Democrats and 0 registered Republicans.

But those are just snippets I shared with OANN. 

Visit mrc.org/defund-pbs-and-npr to review all the reasons to defund “public” broadcasting and sign our petition. 

Wednesday’s edition of the PBS News Hour took on yet another unlabeled liberal or Democrat-linked critic of Trump as its guest expert on an issue, this time defending the dubious idea of tax-related privacy rights for illegal immigrants against DOGE’s budget cuts to the IRS, even warning viewers that the agency could implode during tax season as a result.

REPORTER WILLIAM BRANGHAM: For decades, the IRS encouraged undocumented immigrants to file their taxes, with the assurance that their data would be protected. But now this unprecedented agreement would give authorities who want to deport migrants access to personal records that include job information, home addresses and more. It comes less than a week before Tax Day and after a tumultuous few months that also saw mass layoffs across the agency. So, to help understand what this all could mean we are joined now by Natasha Sarin. She`s the president of the Budget Lab at Yale University.

Sarin worked for the Treasury Department for two years during the Biden administration, but PBS wouldn’t tell you that, nor that she contributed $750 to the Biden campaign in 2020.

The conversation initially focused on the recent resignation of IRS head Melanie Krause.

NATASHA SARIN: ….the fact that Melanie Krause chose to resign is really pretty indicative of things being quite awry at the IRS….And so for her to be of the view, that at this moment, one week before Tax Day, it is no longer tenable for her to be at the helm of this agency, I think tells you a lot about how dire circumstances really are there. And with respect to the nature of this data-sharing agreement, there has really been nothing like it in the history of the IRS, and for very good reason.

Sarin fretted about the IRS’s special understanding with illegal immigrants being betrayed, and hyperbolized about the potential results of the betrayal.

SARIN: ….after sort of building up that trust with this population and being in a state where people really had faith that their data would be secure and protected and not used for any other purpose other than tax administration…you’re in a situation where this type of data-sharing is going to occur going forward. And we think that’s going to cost hundreds of billions of dollars over the course of the next decade.

After fretting about IRS staff cuts reducing the organization to 1960-level staffing (is that conservative applause I hear?), Sarin launched a so-far baseless warning about the IRS falling apart during this tax season.

SARIN: ….And so I am really concerned — and this relates to the nature of the fact that we`re on our sort of — we will be on our fourth IRS commissioner of this filing season — that the tax system is kind of on the brink of breaking already.

BRANGHAM: I know your organization did an analysis of what happens when you take a lot of these cops off the beat, to use an expression. But you also tried to calculate what would happen if the general public started to get the idea that there were less cops on the beat and they were less likely to get audited….

SARIN: ….what we find is that, as a result of those behavioral effects, the IRS is on track to lose anywhere from $400 billion to over $2.4 trillion in taxes that are owed over the course of the next decade as a result of not being able to have cops on the beat.

As our Jorge Bonilla pointed out earlier this year, Sarin’s bio at the Budget Lab describes her Treasury work in a way that sounded like she herself performed audits under the Biden administration:

….(Sarin) served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy and later as a Counselor to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen at the United States Treasury Department, where her work focused on narrowing the gap between the taxes owed by the American public and those collected by the Internal Revenue Service. 

Which may make her an expert on performing taxpayer audits, but not exactly an objective source on their necessity or validity.

This segment was brought to you in part by Consumer Cellular.

A transcript is available, click “Expand.”

PBS News Hour

4/9/25

7:30:15 p.m. (ET)

AMNA NAWAZ: The top official at the IRS is resigning after news of a deal between the agency and immigration authorities to share sensitive personal data became public on Monday. William Brangham joins us now with more — William.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: That`s right, Amna.

For decades, the IRS encouraged undocumented immigrants to file their taxes, with the assurance that their data would be protected. But now this unprecedented agreement would give authorities who want to deport migrants access to personal records that include job information, home addresses and more.

It comes less than a week before Tax Day and after a tumultuous few months that also saw mass layoffs across the agency.

So, to help understand what this all could mean we are joined now by Natasha Sarin. She`s the president of the Budget Lab at Yale University.

Natasha, thank you so much for being here.

So immigration officials will now have access to this personal data of migrants who are living in this country and filing their taxes. And when news of this broke, the head of the IRS, Melanie Krause, quit. How unusual is this agreement and this quitting?

NATASHA SARIN, President, Budget Lab at Yale University: So, to put the sort of quitting in some context, we are now at a state where the IRS has gone through three commissioners in one filing season.

I — in modern history, there has been nothing like it or nothing even close to it, frankly. And the fact that Melanie Krause chose to resign is really pretty indicative of things being quite awry at the IRS, because Melanie, in terms of public reporting, at least is what we have seen, has been someone who, from the agency`s perspective, has been incredibly keen to work with the administration, to work with DOGE on their efforts with respect to work force reductions and data-sharing agreements.

And so for her to be of the view, that at this moment, one week before Tax Day, it is no longer tenable for her to be at the helm of this agency, I think tells you a lot about how dire circumstances really are there.

And with respect to the nature of this data-sharing agreement, there has really been nothing like it in the history of the IRS, and for very good reason. As you mentioned, the agency has historically made clear to undocumented immigrants and to their employers that they should feel secure from a privacy perspective in complying with their tax obligations paying into the IRS $66 billion in federal taxes each year, because their data won`t be weaponized or used for law enforcement in this manner.

And now, after sort of building up that trust with this population and being in a state where people really had faith that their data would be secure and protected and not used for any other purpose other than tax administration, except in incredibly rare circumstances, you`re in a situation where this type of data-sharing is going to occur going forward.

And we think that`s going to cost hundreds of billions of dollars over the course of the next decade.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: I mean, that seems like a natural occurrence from all of this.

Separate from that news, DOGE has also been cutting quite considerably the IRS work force. What do you know about who has been laid off from the IRS and what kind of work were they doing?

NATASHA SARIN: So, so far, what we know is that the agency has laid off about 7,000 probationary employees. And these are people who are either relatively recent hires to the agency or people who are, frankly, such good performers that they have recently been promoted to new roles within the agency.

And, disproportionately, these cuts are coming from individuals who work on activities related to tax compliance and tax enforcement within the IRS. And that`s really concerning, because already the IRS had so little capacity to be able to expend resources on enforcement, particularly of high earners, where every $1 that the IRS spends, every one hour that they spend auditing a multimillionaire generates $4,500 in owed taxes to the agency.

So these are highly productive people that were doing very important work. And as a result of the work force reductions we have already seen there, they`re — they have left the agency. You`re also in a situation where the IRS is making preparations and DOGE is making preparations for work force reductions that range, based on public reporting, from somewhere between 25 to 50 percent of the agency.

That would put the size of the IRS at levels that it hasn`t seen since 1960, at a time when the population was 60 million people fewer than it is today. And so I am really concerned — and this relates to the nature of the fact that we`re on our sort of — we will be on our fourth IRS commissioner of this filing season — that the tax system is kind of on the brink of breaking already.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: I know your organization did an analysis of what happens when you take a lot of these cops off the beat, to use an expression.

But you also tried to calculate what would happen if the general public started to get the idea that there were less cops on the beat and they were less likely to get audited. What did you find there?

NATASHA SARIN: Importantly, the sort of cop on the beat, the taxpayer behavior effects that you`re talking about, they`re actually even more significant than the direct costs of not being able to do audits.

And what we find is that, as a result of those behavioral effects, the IRS is on track to lose anywhere from $400 billion to over $2.4 trillion in taxes that are owed over the course of the next decade as a result of not being able to have cops on the beat.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: And these are taxes that are legally owed. This is not like they`re going after people in a punitive way.

NATASHA SARIN: No, these are taxes that are legally owed.

And, importantly, it`s not just taxes that are legally owed by people who are looking to evade. Another aspect of what the IRS isn`t going to be able to do as well going forward is help taxpayers get it right when they want assistance from the agency about, like, should I be paying taxes on this type of income and how do I report it? Those types of investments are investments that the IRS has recently been able to scale up because it`s had some resources.

But now it`s having to scale those back down already this filing season.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: All right, that is Natasha Sarin of the Yale Budget Lab. Thank you so much for being here.

NATASHA SARIN: Thanks so much for having me.

Remind us again about who was president in March? You wouldn’t know if you only depended on the CNN News Central report on the very unexpected DROP in the rate of inflation in March that was presented by reporter Matt Egan. Despite all his gushing about the drop in the inflation rate, Egan couldn’t bring himself to mention the T-name. Oh, and the other name missing from Egan’s report was Joe Biden despite having presided over monthly increases in the inflation rate throughout his time in the White House from 2021 through January 20, 2025.

Watch Egan present the very good news on the inflation front without ever mentioning You-Know-Who.

 

CNN has to keep reporting win after win with this new Trump Administration, this time on wholesale inflation coming down.
“We were expecting an increase in prices. Month over month. We did not get that. We got a DROP in prices. Look at this 0.4%. That is much better than… pic.twitter.com/Ga1mYHTwtc
— DeVory Darkins (@devorydarkins) April 11, 2025

JESSICA DEAN: Breaking moments ago, new data shows wholesale prices easing this month. Matt Egan is joining us now to kind of walk us through this new information. So, what are we finding out?

MATT EGAN: Well, Jessica, this is the second day in a row we’re getting some encouraging news on the cost of living. The one catch, and it is a big one, is that it does not fully capture the impact of the trade war, right? This is measuring prices in March, before the full impact of all the tariff increases. But let me run you through the numbers first.

So, we’re talking about the Producer Price Index. This is wholesale inflation before it gets to all of us as consumers. And we were expecting an increase in prices month over month. We did not get that. We got a drop in prices. Look at this, 0.4 percent. That is much better than anticipated. The annual rate we were anticipating around 3.3 percent. We did not get that. We got a much lower number, 2.7 percent. This is a deceleration. When we look at the trend, we can see that things have certainly improved from a few years ago when it comes to inflation. This metric – the graph’s not up right now, but this metric was around 11, 12 percent.

So not even a lower increase in the rate of inflation which the Biden administration crowed about but an actual “deceleration” which is an actual drop in real inflation. Gee! And it happened only after a certain someone, noticeably not mentioned by Egan, recently took office.

DEAN: We want you to do it from memory. Yes.

EGAN: So, it was really, really high. It has come down significantly. Now, why was this number better than expected? There’s a few factors. One of them is energy, right. We’ve seen oil prices plunge. That has lowered the cost of energy. When you think about gasoline and diesel. So, that’s one of the things.

Of course, energy is not only getting cheaper for good reasons. Some of that is recession fears. The other big factor here was egg prices. And I know that’s something that everyone is following very closely. And we did see some good news on eggs. Egg prices, they fell month over month by 21 percent at the wholesale level. That is very encouraging. That is a very big improvement from the month before. However, we’re still looking at dramatic increases on an annual basis, 165 percent. And we learned yesterday that the cost of eggs in the supermarket for consumers is still at all-time highs.

Egan states that energy is getting cheaper because oil priced “plunged.” Was the  reason for this due to  a recent change to an administration which encourages, not discourages, oil production? Egan is obviously reluctant to reveal that. 

At least CNN, unlike much of the media which was reluctant to even report on the good economic news, did give us the inflation details but somehow absurdly neglected to mention the main reason why (change in administrations) the sudden change in inflation rate.

Well, of course, anybody with eyes to see could see plainly in 2024, if not before, that President Joe Biden was, as the saying goes, “cognitively impaired.” The public was far ahead of those so-called investigators in the press.

But where was the detailed, hot-on-the-trail Watergate-style investigation and reporting from the media at the time? Where was the investigation into what was really going on inside the Biden White House? Who was making the decisions? Who was running the place?

Over there now in USA Today, journalist Nicole Russell headlines: 

We were right: New books expose truth about Biden’s failing health. I’m furious. | Opinion

Only now, a year too late, are Democratic insiders and journalists finally telling Americans the truth about Joe Biden’s failing health while he was president.

Russell writes in part: 

For months in early 2024, conservatives like myself tried to sound the alarm on President Joe Biden’s declining physical and mental health. It was obvious that he was unwell.

Yet, Democrats and much of the legacy news media ignored that reality and even attacked those of us who were willing to speak the truth. They claimed we were fabricating tales and spreading baseless conspiracy theories.

Now, the narrative has changed dramatically. Journalists are publishing books and news articles detailing not only Biden’s poor health but also an orchestrated cover-up inside the White House. According to one of the books, even one of Biden’s closest former aides now admits that the commander in chief was “out of it” last year as he attempted to run for reelection.

Russell cites this Politico piece focusing on Biden’s world now bracing for a deluge of books telling the behind-the-scenes tales of Biden world in the day.

In one instance she writes: 

One of those books, ‘Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House,’ by NBC News’ Jonathan Allen and The Hill’s Amie Parnes, includes incredible details about Biden’s poor health while he was still in office.”

This is all well and good. But late. Way, way too late.

These books, if reporting as Russell notes, beg the glaringly obvious question. To borrow from the question repeatedly asked in the day by the Senate Watergate Committee’s Senator Howard Baker (“What did the President know and when did he know it?”) the question in the Biden case should be: “What did the media know about Biden’s cognitive decline and when did they know it?”

Yes. Had the media done their job and Americans realized the real problems behind the scenes in the Biden White House, it is apparent that there might have been considerable public pressure for Biden to resign and have then-Vice President Harris succeed him as President. 

Would that pressure have succeeded? Who knows? Yet that does not remove the hard fact of that day that the media that was covering the Biden White House in the day did next to nothing to report the scandalous cover up going inside 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. They allowed the Bidens to keep their hands on power no matter how compromised Joe was.

It’s as if it were 1973-1974 and young, rapacious-for-stories Washington Post journos Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein got their tips on the Nixon White House and the unfolding Watergate scandal and simply shrugged their shoulders and went on covering the goings on of petty crime in local District of Columbia criminal courts. Nothing to see here. Move along.

Which is to say, the non-curiosity and lack of investigative reporting by the mainstream media covering the Biden White House speaks volumes about the left-leaning politicization of that media. In fact, former NBC Meet the Press host Chuck Todd is now out there in this story as headlined at Fox News:

Former NBC host Chuck Todd admits media feared that covering Biden’s decline would help Trump

Then, not so mysteriously, Donald Trump becomes President and that same media is overtly suspicious of everything. Suddenly, they are demanding: What does Elon Musk do? What is the President’s relationship with Musk and Tesla? Why did Musk get the job to run DOGE? And so on and so on. As comedian Jerry Seinfeld might say: “Yada Yada Yada.”

So in other words? 

Brace yourself America. 

As USA Today’s Nicole Russell reports: 

Democrats and much of the legacy news media ignored that reality and even attacked those of us who were willing to speak the truth. They claimed we were fabricating tales and spreading baseless conspiracy theories.

The question now is what will happen as a result of what could easily be called a media coverup — the gaslighting — of the Biden health scandal? To borrow from a favorite saying of the late Rush Limbaugh: “Zip, zero, nada.”

And that, without doubt, is a professional shame.

HBO Real Time host Bill Maher recapped his recent meeting with President Donald Trump on Friday’s show where he emphasized the importance of talking to people even if you disagree with them. He also claimed that Trump, in private, is quite personable as contrasted with the more combative public persona that people either love or hate. However,  Washington Post foreign policy columnist Josh Rogin was not a fan as he showered Maher with praise despite claiming he fell “into the trap,” leading Maher to shoot back “you don’t have to patronize me, dude.”

After Rogin’s fellow panelist Piers Morgan expressed his agreement that there is a difference between private and public Trump, Rogin sought to counter, “Counterpoint? You know, Bill, I think you’re right in saying that people make too much of this. Okay, it’s not the Yalta Summit; you’re not Churchill, Kid Rock is not Stalin. Trump, sure as shit, isn’t FDR, okay, so yes, I believe too much has been made about this but I think you’ve fallen into the trap, I think I represent 99 percent of the internet when I say this is that you have played the game of proximity is principal.”

 

“Millions of liberals’ sphincters just tightened.” On his first show since having dinner with President Trump, @BillMaher recounted how he gave Trump a “list of almost 60 different insulting epithets the President has said about me. Things like ‘stupid,’ ‘dummy’… ‘sick,’ ‘sad,’… pic.twitter.com/oOrMfjOYCC
— Brent Baker 🇺🇲🇺🇦 🇮🇱 (@BrentHBaker) April 12, 2025
 

Rogin sought to insulate himself from blowback by making sure to add, “what people are worried about — it’s not your motivation, we believe you, we love you, everybody loves Bill, right? So, I’m not questioning motivation, I’m questioning Trump’s, okay and if we can say that you went there in good faith, but maybe, just maybe he wasn’t there in good faith. I mean, you sold him on the Iran deal, and he took it in, give me a break, okay, so the idea here is that your motivation is sound but what’s the impact? And I think a lot of people out there, fans of yours, people who love you, people who are fans of you, like me—”

 

And @BillMaher concluded: “My favorite part of the whole night was we were standing in [Clinton’s] blow job room” and “he said I’ve heard from a lot of people who really like that we’re having this dinner. Not all but a lot to. And I said: same….We agreed the people who don’t… pic.twitter.com/wMWkGPvyMU
— Brent Baker 🇺🇲🇺🇦 🇮🇱 (@BrentHBaker) April 12, 2025
 

Getting a little annoyed, Maher interjected, “You don’t have to patronize me, dude. I don’t know you, I never met you, not everybody has to like it.”

Of all the things Rogin could’ve mentioned, he brought up the Iran nuclear deal. For several years, Trump has talked about the need for a new and better deal and on Saturday, American and Iranian officials began negotiations to that end. Time will tell how successful those talks will be.

 

 

As it was, Maher continued, “That’s what we said, there are people who didn’t want to happen at all, you sound like one of them. It’s okay.”

He also asked, “Did you hear what I said? What is the alternative to not talking? Just sitting at your lunch table and don’t talk to anybody?”

After Rogin tried to defend himself by claiming he has interviewed Trump, Maher claimed a conversation and an interview are not the same thing. That led Rogin to claim, “I agree with the principle of engagement. I’m just saying from his perspective, you have to understand, that people who out there know, all Americans know, that for him this was a PR stunt and in his view of you were a prop in that PR stunt.”

Neither Trump nor Maher will likely come away greatly changed because of their meeting, but that wasn’t the point. Maher makes an effort of talking to people he doesn’t always agree with—earlier in this episode he interviewed Steve Bannon—and contrary to Rogin’s claim, Trump doesn’t gain much from talking to Maher. The rest of the late night comedy shows could take a lesson from the Maher-Trump meeting and actually try talking to a Republican.

Here is a transcript for the April 11 show:

HBO Real Time with Bill Maher

4/11/2025

10:32 PM ET

JOSH ROGIN: Counterpoint? You know, Bill, I think you’re right in saying that people make too much of this. Okay, it’s not the Yalta Summit; you’re not Churchill, Kid Rock is not Stalin. Trump, sure as shit, isn’t FDR, okay, so yes, I believe too much has been made about this but I think you’ve fallen into the trap. I think I represent 99 percent of the internet when I say this is that you have played the game of proximity is principal and what people are worried about — it’s not your motivation, we believe you, we love you, everybody loves Bill, right? 

So, I’m not questioning motivation, I’m questioning Trump’s, okay? And if we can say that you went there in good faith, but maybe, just maybe he wasn’t there in good faith. I mean, you sold him on the Iran deal and he took it in, give me a break, okay? So the idea here is that your motivation is sound but what’s the impact? And I think a lot of people out there, fans of yours, people who love you, people who are fans of you, like me—

BILL MAHER: You don’t have to patronize me, dude—

ROGIN: Okay. Fair enough.

MAHER: — I don’t know you, I never met you, not everybody has to like it.

ROGIN: I’m just saying that this comes from a place of love. All I’m saying–

MAHER: That’s what we said, there are people who didn’t want it to happen at all, you sound like one of them. It’s okay.

ROGIN: No, no.

MAHER: Did you hear what I said?

ROGIN: Yeah.

MAHER: What is the alternative to not talking? Just sitting at your lunch table and don’t talk to anybody?

ROGIN: I’ve talked to him, I’ve interviewed Trump, Piers as interviewed Trump—

MAHER: This was not an interview. This was not an interview.

ROGIN: I agree with the principle of engagement. I’m just saying, from his perspective, you have to understand, that people out there know, all Americans know, that for him this was a PR stunt, and in his view, you were a prop in that PR stunt.

Neil Young once stormed the country to sing the First Amendment’s praises.

That 2006 Freedom of Speech tour came after some said it was unpatriotic to critique the War on Terror. Young and his Crosby, Stills and Nash bandmates disagreed. They used the tour to skewer President George W. Bush, highlighted by the song, “Let’s Impeach the President.”

 

 

Subtle. And they had every right to sing it, even if they alienated longtime fans along the way.

It turns out Young’s First Amendment defense had plenty of strings attached.

Years later, Young declared war on a podcaster for sharing the “wrong” thoughts on a global pandemic. In 2021, the rocker said Joe Rogan’s contrarian COVID-19 views shouldn’t be shared on Spotify.

He even pulled his music from the platform to protest Rogan. It’s either him or me, Young argued. Spotify stuck with Rogan.

 

 

Young eventually returned his music to Spotify. Time has been kind to some of Rogan’s “problematic” pandemic views.

Meanwhile, Young said nothing about the media’s misinformation campaign tied to COVID-19. Remember how the jab would prevent the recipient from getting the virus and spreading it?

What about the six-foot rule? St. Anthony Fauci? The serial attacks on the lab leak theory?

Young stayed mum through it all, even though he was outraged by Rogan’s so-called lies.

It gets worse.

In recent years, Young has said nothing publicly while Cancel Culture ravaged the arts. “Sensitivity readers” sliced and diced novels by Ian Fleming, Roald Dahl and Agatha Christie. Comedians watched what they said for fear of career repercussions.

The Twitter Files scandal found a major tech platform silenced right-leaning Americans. Competing platforms booted a former President from their digital shelves.

The Biden administration, along with the disinformation czar dubbed “Scary Poppins,” vowed to censor more “misinformation” (like the Hunter Biden laptop story).

Where was Young during this crisis? Some free speech hero.

Now, Young is warning us that President Donald Trump might prevent him from touring stateside due to his negative comments about the 47th president.

“If I talk about Donald J. Trump, I may be one of those returning to America who is barred or put in jail to sleep on a cement floor with an aluminum blanket…That is happening all the time now.”

His proof? He has nothing save innuendo from a UK punk outfit who lobbed similar complaints without backing them up with facts.

Suddenly, Young cares about free speech again. That’s all well and good, but his silence during the Cancel Culture years and eagerness to shut down Rogan tell a different story.

He’s a fraud, a partisan who only pipes up when it suits his self-interests or political ideology.

We need all the free speech warriors we can get in 2025, people like Bill Maher who consistently defend speech regardless of the politics in play. They should speak out early and often. President Trump should be scrutinized for missteps – like his predecessors.

FIRE has done just that regarding some of Trump’s recent policies. That’s a healthful part of a debate we need to have.

Young can’t be trusted to do just that. He’s already shown us why.

Forty-five minutes into Wednesday’s edition of the podcast Piers Morgan Uncensored, former NBC News correspondent Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd made a splash by drawing the curtain back a little on how the mainstream press concealed President Biden’s mental decline because of fear of being seen by their colleagues as helping Trump by hurting Biden (how did that work out?). Todd also noted the foolishness of the media going along with the deplatforming of Donald Trump after January 6 — which caused the legacy media itself to lose influence.

Piers Morgan: Talk to me about the mainstream media, as Trump puts it, the legacy media, in the four years of the Biden presidency, specifically because look, I’m a Brit, right? And I was living a lot of the time in the U.K, but I was firing off very angry — I read them the other day — angry columns about the cognitive state of Joe Biden and his physical and mental ability to be president of the United States, and just wondering why on earth this was being allowed to continue. But why was the mainstream media so reluctant, it seemed to me, to go much, much harder on what everyone was seeing with their own eyes?

Chuck Todd: Look, look, I’ll sit here and I’ll defend a little bit of this in that I would argue the reason people were able to come to their own conclusion on Joe Biden is because of the media coverage. You know, look, we were subtle, he’s using the back staircase, he’s not using the front staircase, hey, he’s not doing any interviews. So there was this reluctance to draw the conclusion to say, ‘Is he not doing this?” and that I agree with, that was held back, held back a lot. I would argue it was held back a lot back in the late 80s when it was clear Ronald Reagan wasn’t necessarily running everything in the White House.

Whether you want to call it decorum, whatever you want to call it — look, there were plenty members of media — I remember David Ignatius in the Washington Post, plenty of individual people questioning whether he should run. I certainly questioned whether he should run, you didn’t understand, you know, there was some of that. But I understand the argument about the collective on that front.

The only thing I can chalk it up to this — whatever you want to call it, this fear that some members of the media had sometimes that they would be perceived as helping Trump if they somehow diminished Biden, right? That it was some sort of zero-sum game.

Todd went further in mocking mistakes by his former press colleagues, saying the spirit of the First Amendment also protects Trump and his misguided allies from the January 6 riots, pointing out that Todd himself had interviewed the president of Iran, so why wouldn’t he talk to a congressmember who didn’t certify the 2020 election?

And I think that has been the fundamental mistake that many members of the traditional press have done. For instance, advocating for deplatforming Donald Trump after January 6. Look, I think January 6 was atrocious, it was awful, all those things. But to deplatform him? We’re Americans, defend the First Amendment. I’m going to defend the First Amendment when Donald Trump tried to kick members out of the press, but you gotta defend his First Amendment right to also talk.

And I think that was also I would argue a mainstream media mistake. It looks more obvious today, because what did he do, he built his own information ecosystem and now traditional media is doing what? Showing up on YouTube, right? Traditional media doesn’t have the influence it did anymore because it shoved — it got along with this deplatforming exercise, which I think fundamentally was — I didn’t get it then, I was not one of those who said I wouldn’t put a January sixer, or a de-certifier on the shows. I thought, why would you do that? I’d interviewed the president of Iran, I’ve got no problem interviewing a member of Congress who chose not to certify the election. I never understood that logic when you think about the First Amendment of our constitution.

Hat-tip The Wrap.

For Friday’s installment of CBS Evening News, correspondent Lilia Luciano decided to profile Brenda Martinez, a 28-year old California DACA recipient who has chosen to self-deport. Luciano framed the whole story as tragic as she wondered if Martinez was quitting too early, but she also claimed that an immigration judge greenlighting the deportation of anti-Semitic Hamas supporter Mahmoud Khalil means “she should be afraid.”

In the studio, co-host Maurice DuBois got the mourning started, “While the Trump administration is forcibly removing some undocumented immigrants, it is using different techniques to encourage others to leave on their own.”

 

 

Fellow co-host John Dickerson added, “Including taking away their Social Security numbers so they can’t work and can’t afford to live here. And using the IRS to track them down.”

Dubois then introduced Luciano’s segment, “Some are leaving because they fear an uncertain future. Lilia Luciano talked to an immigrant in Southern California.”

Luciano set her scene by declaring, “Brenda Martinez and her husband, Richard, are packing up to leave the only country they’ve called home.”

Martinez was then shown adding, “I’m not afraid of people knowing that I’m undocumented. I’m afraid of what they would do to me if they knew.”

Further along, Luciano reported that, “Her husband, who was born in the U.S., petitioned for her to get a green card, but that process can take years. So, she’s been weighing her options with a lawyer.”

Recalling her decision to leave, Martinez claimed, “I see checkpoints coming up like everywhere, and that’s when I started to feel like the wall’s caving in. And then, just for a second, I was like, ‘What if I just left?’”

Luciano followed up, “You feel your entire life is up to one agent or officer’s hands?”

Martinez answered, “Yeah, I do. If, like, someone decided to not pay attention to my work permit, being detained terrifies me.”

That led Luciano to wonder if Martinez was giving up too soon. First, she reported, “So terrified, they are moving to Mexico, leaving behind family, friends, and their jobs. Searching for stability in a place she has no memories of” before asking, “Why not wait it out? I mean, you waited 26 years?”

Martinez concluded the video, “I want to live my life, but also, I grew up with a bunch of American children. They have, like, these amazing dreams that they’ve never been limited from.”

Back in the studio, Dickerson asked Luciano, “Lilia, how many other people like Brenda Martinez, who are leaving?”

 

 

Luciano estimated that “When it comes to DACA, there is a group that was advising Brenda and other people like her. They tell me in their Facebook group alone, that membership has doubled from 3,000 to 6,000 people who are seeking that guidance and resources to leave the country.”

DuBois then jumped in to add, “And Brenda’s fears are not unfounded, right? I mean, they’re other cases to make her just worry.”

Luciano concurred, “She is certainly worried, and today is a perfect example of that. The ruling on the Khalil case, who is a permanent legal resident of the United States, targeted and now possibly in the process for deportation, serves as evidence as to why she should be afraid.”

The easiest way to avoid deportation for being an anti-Semitic terrorist supporter who disrupts college campuses is not to be an anti-Semitic terrorist supporter who disrupts college campuses. As for DACA, giving protections to people who were brought to the country illegally as children only incentivizes others to do the same, but CBS wasn’t interested in that.

Here is a transcript for the April 11 show:

CBS Evening News

4/11/2025

6:34 PM ET

MAURICE DUBOIS: While the Trump administration is forcibly removing some undocumented immigrants, it is using different techniques to encourage others to leave on their own.

JOHN DICKERSON: Including taking away their Social Security numbers so they can’t work and can’t afford to live here. And using the IRS to track them down.

DUBOIS: Some are leaving because they fear an uncertain future. Lilia Luciano talked to an immigrant in Southern California.

BRENDA MARTINEZ: And then you don’t want this?

LILIA LUCIANO: Brenda Martinez and her husband, Richard, are packing up to leave the only country they’ve called home.

MARTINEZ: I’m not afraid of people knowing that I’m undocumented. I’m afraid of what they would do to me if they knew.

That was me the year before we left.

LUCIANO: Martinez was born in Mexico and brought to California when she was two.

Why did you choose to talk to us?

MARTINEZ: There’s a lot of kids in the shadows. They’re terrified.

LUCIANO: Now 28, she has been undocumented, temporarily protected from deportation under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA.

MARTINEZ: This folder also has every employment authorization.

LUCIANO: Since 2012, the program has given more than 900,000 young immigrants like Martinez work authorizations, but no legal pathway to citizenship.

MARTINEZ: This is not, like, permanent status. This is just a deferment.

LUCIANO: Her husband, who was born in the U.S., petitioned for her to get a green card, but that process can take years. So, she’s been weighing her options with a lawyer.

MARTINEZ: Do you feel like a lot of what we are hearing now with, like, executive orders and everything, do you think it is just a bunch of noise?

LAWYER: With the release of the ICE agents into the community, we are seeing people being picked up, randomly.

MARTINEZ: I see checkpoints coming up like everywhere, and that’s when I started to feel like the wall’s caving in. And then, just for a second, I was like, “What if I just left?”

LUCIANO: You feel your entire life is up to one agent or officer’s hands?

MARTINEZ: Yeah, I do. If, like, someone decided to not pay attention to my work permit, being detained terrifies me.

LUCIANO: So terrified, they are moving to Mexico, leaving behind family, friends, and their jobs. Searching for stability in a place she has no memories of.

Why not wait it out? I mean, you waited 26 years?

MARTINEZ: I want to live my life, but also, I grew up with a bunch of American children. They have, like, these amazing dreams that they’ve never been limited from.

DICKERSON: And Lilia Luciano joins us now. Lilia, how many other people like Brenda Martinez, who are leaving?

LUCIANO: That’s a very good question, John. I mean, we have heard reports from the federal government that there are thousands of people who are allegedly voluntarily leaving through an app that the government changed to allow for that to happen. When it comes to DACA, there is a group that was advising Brenda and other people like her. They tell me in their Facebook group alone, that membership has doubled from 3,000 to 6,000 people who are seeking that guidance and resources to leave the country.

DUBOIS: And Brenda’s fears are not unfounded, right? I mean, they’re other cases to make her just worry.

LUCIANO: She is certainly worried, and today is a perfect example of that. The ruling on the Khalil case, who is a permanent legal resident of the United States, targeted and now possibly in the process for deportation, serves as evidence as to why she should be afraid.

DUBOIS: Yeah, he had a green card. Okay, Lilia Luciano, thank you so much.

Washington Post associate editor Jonathan Capehart and New York Times columnist David Brooks assembled for their weekly airing of grievances on Friday night’s PBS News Hour as they discussed the news that the Trump Administration has reached deals with five top law firms to provide $600 million in pro bono work. Capehart ignored vital details of the deals to claim Trump was going after his enemies, while Brooks claimed we no longer live in a democracy, and both men accused Trump of acting like the Mafia.

Host Amna Nawaz recalled a Thursday report from Laura Barron-Lopez, “She reported on this larger pattern of him using his executive power, using the DOJ to go after perceived political enemies and institutions, even law firms in some cases, who we have now seen actually cutting deals with the president, right? The president just said today that some — a number of law firms have reached deals committing some $600 million in legal work for his administration.”

 

 

She then asked Capehart, “What do you make when you look at this bigger picture and what’s the impact of those kinds of deals?”

Capehart declared that, “When it comes to the law firms, what’s so — among the many things that’s so troubling about all of this, the $600 million that you just mentioned, that’s $600 million in pro bono work that those law firms would have used, could have used for all the other causes and people who can’t afford legal representation to help them hold the government accountable in one way or another.”

By contrast, “what the Trump administration has done has been able to work up a $600 million legal slush fund, if you will, to have the administration go after in another way his enemies. Remember, Donald Trump ran for another term in the White House saying, ‘I will be your retribution,’ and then on the campaign trail talking about going after his political enemies, seeking vengeance. This is what we’re seeing. This is the result. And it should trouble everyone.

Neither Nawaz nor Brooks nor Capehart at any point cited a Trump Truth Social post that explained what this $600 million would be spent on, “President Trump and the Law Firms both support and agree to work on, including in the following areas: Assisting Veterans and other Public Servants, including, among others, members of the Military, Gold Star families, Law Enforcement, and First Responders; ensuring fairness in our Justice System; and combatting Antisemitism.”

As for Brooks, he claimed, “I benefited a lot from a piece Jonathan Rauch wrote in The Atlantic a couple — maybe a month ago a couple weeks ago, saying there are certain systems — people say Donald Trump is quite verging on authoritarianism, but the real thing he’s verging on is patrimonialism.”

 

 

According to Brooks, patrimonialism is a “sort of a premodern form of government, if you go back before democracy, before the Treaty of Westphalia and all that kind of stuff. It was — it was run by families. And the family enriched itself. And they took after anybody who threatened the family. It’s a little like mafioso.”

Capehart jumped in to agree, “I was going to say, it sounds like the mafia.”

Before anyone could say “That sounds like the Bidens,” Brooks then continued, “And so Trump is treating the justice system the way the head — the father of this patrimonialistic system would treat it. And he’s going after things that are just personal. And so that’s the erosion of democracy, which is supposed to be about clear laws that apply to everybody. And we no longer live in that system.”

It should also be noted that the Trump Administration views certain DEI initiatives—such as “financial awards and employment opportunities only to ‘students of color’”—from big law firms as “unlawful discrimination,” but again, PBS didn’t think that was noteworthy enough to include. 

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

Here is a transcript from the April 11 show:

PBS News Hour

4/11/2025

7:42 PM ET
AMNA NAWAZ: And also she reported on this larger pattern of him using his executive power, using the DOJ to go after perceived political enemies and institutions, even law firms in some cases, who we have now seen actually cutting deals with the president, right? The president just said today that some — a number of law firms have reached deals committing some $600 million in legal work for his administration.

What do you make when you look at this bigger picture and what’s the impact of those kinds of deals?

JONATHAN CAPEHART: Well, first on Miles Taylor and Chris Krebs, let’s not lose sight of the fact that, even though they are former Trump administration officials in the first term, they are now private citizens. The president of the United States is now targeting private citizens for things that they have done that he thinks have wronged him.

When it comes to the law firms, what’s so — among the many things that’s so troubling about all of this, the $600 million that you just mentioned, that’s $600 million in pro bono work that those law firms would have used, could have used for all the other causes and people who can’t afford legal representation to help them hold the government accountable in one way or another.

And instead what the Trump administration has done has been able to work up a $600 million legal slush fund, if you will, to have the administration go after in another way his enemies. Remember, Donald Trump ran for another term in the White House saying, “I will be your retribution,” and then on the campaign trail talking about going after his political enemies, seeking vengeance.

This is what we’re seeing. This is the result. And it should trouble everyone.

NAWAZ: David?

DAVID BROOKS: I took a lot of — I benefited a lot from a piece Jonathan Rauch wrote in The Atlantic a couple — maybe a month ago a couple weeks ago, saying there are certain systems — people say Donald Trump is quite verging on authoritarianism, but the real thing he’s verging on is patrimonialism.

And patrimonialism — authoritarianism is based on institutions and a set of laws and — but patrimonialism is the attempt to turn the government into a family business. And it’s sort of a premodern form of government, if you go back before democracy, before the Treaty of Westphalia and all that kind of stuff.

It was — it was run by families. And the family enriched itself. And they took after anybody who threatened the family. It’s a little like mafioso.

CAPEHART: I was going to say, it sounds like the mafia.

BROOKS: It’s like, you’re making an offer you can’t refuse. And so Trump is treating the justice system the way the head — the father of this patrimonialistic system would treat it.

And he’s going after things that are just personal. And so that’s the erosion of democracy, which is supposed to be about clear laws that apply to everybody. And we no longer live in that system.

As much as the CEOs of PBS and NPR claim to Congress they are nonpartisan and unbiased, there are many ways to demonstrate they careen to the Left. Shortly after their House hearing, the leftist Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation issued their “GLAAD Media Awards” and honored PBS and NPR for completely one-sided promotion of the LGBTQ agenda. 

PBS NewsHour won the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding TV Journalism Segment for its post-election interview with Rep. Sarah McBride (D-Del.), “leading the national conversation about transgender people and politics.” PBS was leading the “historic” first trans Member of Congress through a partisan script: 

We should note you defeated your Republican opponent by a comfortable margin, but this also happened in the backdrop of a campaign that specifically included a lot of anti-transgender TV ads by the Trump campaign. What does your win say to you about your constituents?

….At the same time, I have to ask you, Donald Trump and J.D. Vance made part of their campaign message and a strong part of their closing message a lot of anti-trans rhetoric, right? They spent millions on ads around these messages. A lot of your congressional colleagues-to-be echoed those messages, share those views. How do you work with them? How does that work?

McBride pulled the old card that the right-wingers cause “culture wars,” not the GLAAD types: “I think the ones that are particularly consumed with fomenting and manufacturing the culture wars, those folks are professional provocateurs parading as public officials. They are not willing to work with any Democrat, and they can barely work with their own Republican colleagues.”

There was no counterpoint. PBS was thrilled to get an award for being completely one-sided for the “progressives.” The executive producer of News Hour gushed on X:

Congratulations @IAmAmnaNawaz @shraipopat @mattloff and team for this tremendous honor from @glaad ! https://t.co/ZEEVt7Ys3L
— Sara Just (@sarajust) March 28, 2025
So was Nawaz:

Thank you to producers @mattloff & @shraipopat . Thank you to @glaad for the honor. Most of all , thank you to Rep @SarahEMcBride for this interview. https://t.co/GMhHIgtX6e
— amna (@IAmAmnaNawaz) March 28, 2025
NPR won the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Online Journalism – Video or Multimedia for the film Rainbow Girls: 10 Years of Protection and Prejudice from their “Picture Show” project. It promoted a “Miss Lesbian” beauty pageant in South Africa, offering “a series of portraits of lesbian activists, filmmakers and ordinary women celebrating and advocating for LGBTQ rights in Cape Town.”

“One of the biggest issues facing LGBTQ people in South Africa is that they struggle to be heard,” filmmaker Julia Gunther explained. “We wanted to create a record of their experiences, told in their own words.”

Gunther oozed on Instagram: “To be recognised in this space—among so many powerful, necessary stories—is truly humbling. 🏳️‍🌈”