Newsbusters

On Thursday’s episode of The 11th Hour, MSNBC showed yet again the extent of their lack of self-awareness. Host Stephanie Ruhle used a discussion with author Ryan Holiday as an occasion to weaponize classical Stoic philosophy, and the memory of the second-century Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, for the purposes of the 21st-century left-wing media’s political hang-ups. 

Ruhle began by introducing Holiday, whose book, ostensibly about the ancient Greco-Roman Stoic School of philosophy, was entitled Right Thing, Right Now- Good Values, Good Character, Good Deed. “Good God,” she fumed, “it doesn’t feel like people are prioritizing any of those things anymore. How do we get there?”

“Yeah,” Holiday began to lecture about how Stoicism was supposed to be acted upon:

[T]his idea of virtue in public life- that just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should, just because something’s (…) not illegal means it’s okay, is deranged. I think, ancient philosophy is supposed to be a guide to being- a flourishing human being. Not just how to succeed, but how to be a good person across the board. And Stoicism, in all different areas, for 2000 years, has been this thing that people turn to when the world feels like it’s falling apart. Stoicism is supposed to be this thing that holds fast.

That sounded noble and admirable, and not like an obvious thing to exploit for angry, divisive political purposes. 

 

 

Ruhle apparently did not see it that way, though, and immediately turned the subject around to a favorite leftist bogeyman. “[Y]oung, right-wing men,” she sneered, were increasingly identifying with this philosophy. She asked Holiday “What does it actually mean?” as though if it meant something good, it certainly couldn’t be something that “young, right-wing men” would understand or appreciate.

Holiday hastily conceded that it was “wonderful that people are coming to this ancient philosophy, and that people are finding it through social media… we should be turning to these ideas.”

However, he went on to lament how it was supposedly being interpreted: 

The problem is, people are stripping it from the context which it’s supposed to be in… Stoicism is this idea, that we don’t control what happens, we control how we respond to what happens, and that everything, everyone, is an opportunity for us to practice arete, or excellence… it’s this chance for us to be… in command of ourselves.

Again, a fine and noble idea, which did not sound at all like MSNBC’s petty, vitriolic, obsessive partisan rantings, but indeed rather the opposite.

That was, nevertheless, the chosen narrative for the discussion. Showing a staggering lack of self-awareness, considering the usual content of her show, Ruhle lamented about people being “driven by grievance,” and seeing their neighbors as “the enemy based on how they live, how they vaccinate, how they vote[.]” 

Holiday responded by continuing the projection of antiquity onto modern-day liberal pet causes:

[T]he Ancients did this, too… We’ve always been about the other. But there is something strange about the richest man in the world telling the richest country in the world that’s spending 1 percent of its budget on- on aid for the poor, is insane, right? That’s insane. We- What good is power, wealth, success, the strongest military in the world, if we can’t use it to be a force for good in the world? And so I think it is hard when the most powerful and important people in society are not modeling these virtues.

As if this illustrated the point, he then related a story from the Meditations of the Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius, to whom much of what was espoused by MSNBC would have been inconceivable:

[T]he reason that the Emperor Hadrian chooses Antoninus to succeed him (…) is because in a moment that he doesn’t think anyone is watching- Hadrian catches Antoninus helping his elderly stepfather up a flight of stairs. Right? He sees kindness, someone doing something good for someone else. And this is a core part of stoicism.

Based on MSNBC attempting to use that, of all things, to promote the angry, vindictive, and partisan stuff they routinely spewed every day, it was hard to imagine what, in their minds, would be off limits as a left-wing propaganda tool.

To view the full transcript, click “expand” to read:

MSNBC’s The 11th Hour
04/10/2025
11:49 PM

(…)

[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: RYAN HOLIDAY ON NEW BOOK, ‘RIGHT THING, RIGHT NOW’]

STEPHANIE RUHLE: I know there’s a ton of breaking news out there and very serious business to get to, but I think this is, maybe, the most serious. 

It is very hard to navigate fear and uncertainty, especially when grievance is involved. In these days, in our country, in this world, it feels like grievance affects everything: our politics, our small communities, our big cities. 

Our next guest believes he has the blueprint to, not just surviving tough times, but how to thrive after them. How? By achieving our true potential, and not just lifting ourselves, lifting each other in the process. With me now, New York Times best selling author, podcast host, my friend Ryan Holiday. He wrote the book Right Thing, Right Now- Good Values, Good Character, Good Deed. 

Good God, it doesn’t feel like people are prioritizing any of those things anymore. How do we get there?

RYAN HOLIDAY, NYT BESTSELLING AUTHOR: Yeah, this idea of virtue in public life- that just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should, just because something’s illegal- or, not illegal- means it’s- okay, is- is deranged. 

I think, ancient philosophy is supposed to be a guide to being- a flourishing human being. Not just how to succeed, but how to be a good person across the board. 

[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: RYAN HOLIDAY ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF STOICISM]

And Stoicism, in all different areas, for 2000 years, has been this thing that people turn to when the world feels like it’s falling apart. Stoicism is supposed to be this thing that holds fast.

RUHLE: Well, what is it, right? People are tossing around the world- the word ‘Stoicism’ a lot right now. What does it actually mean?

HOLIDAY: Well, it definitely doesn’t mean the repression or the suppression of emotion. It’s not about pushing away empathy. It’s about- I think it is being less emotional, but not emotionless. I mean-

RUHLE: So hold on. It means don’t get triggered-

HOLIDAY: Yeah-

RUHLE: -by things, but- because right now, we’re actually seeing a rise in this- in Stoicism, from- sort of- young, right-wing men. And- it’s- people are even calling it ‘broicism.’ Okay? So, help us understand what they’re doing, and what you’re talking about.

HOLIDAY: I think it’s wonderful that people are coming to this ancient philosophy, and that people are finding it through social media, that’s all wonderful. We should be turning to these ideas. 

The problem is, people are stripping it from the context which it’s supposed to be in. Which is, it’s an ethical philosophy, a guide to be a good person to be involved in public life to contribute to what the- the ancients would have called the ‘Polis.’ Right? The public society. 

Stoicism is this idea, that we don’t control what happens, we control how we respond to what happens, and that everything, everyone, is an opportunity for us to practice arete, or excellence. Moral, professional, personal excellence, that’s- that’s the core idea. That- it’s this chance for us to be what we’re meant to be, to be in command of ourselves.

RUHLE: But, when we’re driven by grievance- which is what it seems many people are, they feel like ‘Life isn’t fair. And I’m mad’-

HOLIDAY: Yes.

RUHLE: What you’re talking about- what we talk about a lot here- is the importance for [sic.] kindness-

HOLIDAY: Yes.

RUHLE: -to live in service of others. But right now, lots of people would think of kindness as weakness, and living in service of others- ‘Why do that when I want to put myself first?’ That’s not how an individual or a society thrives.

HOLIDAY: There’s been this resurgence with Marcus Aurelius, right? Gladiator- He’s all over the memes- he’s this cool badass from history. 

And, he writes this book, Meditations, the private thoughts of the most powerful man in the world. I see why that’s going to be attractive to people. And he has things in there about controlling your temper, about not being anxious, about- you know- conquering your- your demons. 

But, he also refers to the idea of the common good something like 80 times. Over and over again he says, in Meditations, that what we’re here to do, is have good character, and do things for the common good. That’s what a good life is, he says- that the fruit of a good life is that you are a person of good character and you do things for the common good.

RUHLE: Then explain this to me- and I know I don’t have all night with you,- but explain this: We’re the most prosperous country in the world. 

HOLIDAY: Yes.

RUHLE: You and I are very lucky. We live the American dream. 

Where did things break that- people are completely angry, and they don’t feel like there’s a common good, and they only want to serve themselves? Or they think that person on the other side of the street, they’re not part of their community, they’re the enemy based on how they live, how they vaccinate, how they vote?

HOLIDAY: Yeah, look, the Ancients did this, too. ‘Barbarian’ refers to how- the foreigners would- would speak, ‘bar-bar-bar’. Right? The- We’ve always been about the other. 

[RYAN HOLIDAY ON GRIEVANCE IN POLITICS]

But there is something strange about the richest man in the world telling the richest country in the world that’s spending 1 percent of put- of its budget on- on aid for the poor, is insane, right? That’s insane. We- What good is power, wealth, success, the strongest military in the world, if we can’t use it to be a force for good in the world? 

And so I think it is hard when the most powerful and important people in society are not modeling these virtues, that we have always held up as the highest form of human greatness. You know- is it about your victories on the battlefield? Is it about the size of your fortune? Or is it about how you treat other people? Is it the goodness that you do? 

The reason that the Emperor Hadrian chooses Antoninus to succeed him- there’s a series of Roman emperors who don’t have a son, so they choose their successor- the reason he chooses Antoninus, who in turn chooses Marcus Aurelius, is because he- in a moment that he doesn’t think anyone is watching- Hadrian catches Antoninus helping his elderly stepfather up a flight of stairs. Right? He sees kindness, someone doing something good for someone else. And this is a core part of stoicism.

RUHLE: Then how- Help us. You and I don’t rule the world-

HOLIDAY: No.

RUHLE: -but we do control ourselves. 

HOLIDAY: Uh-huh.

RUHLE: -And to those emperors, you could have picked your daughters, just FYI- We do control ourselves. Yes, as does our audience. 

We are living in a time where we do have world leaders calling each others [sic.] losers and liars and morons. We do have the richest man in the world cutting off aid to the poorest people, making it more difficult for senior citizens to get access to the money that’s owed to them. If this is how our leaders are treating us- and in theory, they’re the example-setters and we’re the ones at the bottom, we’re the individuals- what do we do to get out of this? Help us.

[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: RYAN HOLIDAY ON NAVIGATING UNCERTAINTY]

HOLIDAY: I think it’s important to realize we are also example setters. We’re not at the bottom. Each one of us is a parent. Each one of us is a boss. Each one of us is a person walking down the street seeing litter on the ground. 

And what are you going to do with the part of the world that’s in your control, which is your own actions? So, yeah, well- we all need to vote in elections, we all need to speak out politically. That’s part of our job as- as not just human beings- but the stoics said this too- but at the same time, we do have a lot of control over individual actions, how we spend our days, how we treat the people around us. 

And we can set counter examples. We can be- we can stand out, amidst the cruelty and the chaos and the dysfunction by- by being what we wish other people would be. That is up to us.

RUHLE: We can be the example.

HOLIDAY: Yes.

RUHLE: Be the change you want to see. Well, all I can do is take my 52 minutes a night, and invite people like you on to speak to our audience. Thank you so much.

HOLIDAY: Thank you so much for having me.

RUHLE: Thank you for everything you do. I’m honored to have you here. We’ll be right back.

If Trump’s second term was a movie, the network news anchors would title it Trump Tariff Meltdown. In all the tariff turbulence, the networks have obsessed over economics with a very negative tone, even on the typically soft-news morning shows. Good news on inflation and employment is buried in the “meltdown” hype. 

When it comes to Trump, on any issue, the broadcast network “news” shows seem designed to push a 100-percent negative narrative – or if they manage ten seconds of good news, it’s 95 percent negative.

On April 4, the Bureau of Labor Statistics found the economy added a stronger-than-expected 228,000 jobs in March. CBS skipped it. ABC gave it 14 seconds. NBC anchorman Lester Holt gave it 18 words: “Not even a surprisingly strong jobs report — 228,000 jobs added in March — was enough to stem today’s market slide.” Behind Holt, a graphic screamed “Trump Tariff Meltdown.”

On Thursday, the Consumer Price Index actually declined 0.1 percent, for a year-over-year inflation rate of 2.4 percent. Once again on the nightly newscasts, there was next to nothing. On NBC, Christine Romans gave it eight seconds out of 164 seconds of news: “That bright spot, consumer prices fell in March from the month before, bringing the inflation rate to 2.4 percent.” On CBS, anchor John Dickerson did almost nine seconds out of CBS pushing five minutes of tariff anxiety. ABC skipped it entirely.

The PBS News Hour added insult to injury, preceding 15 words on the inflation statistic with economic mockery from Team Biden. John Yang intoned: “On CNN, former Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said President Trump took a wrecking ball to the economy.” Yellen claimed “This is the worst self-inflicted wound that I have ever seen an administration impose.”

We also explore the latest parade of bias on CNN. Morning host Audie Cornish is still having trouble locating any pro-Trump pundits. Anderson Cooper presided over a one-hour socialist softball session with Bernie Sanders. CNN’s promoting a weekend “Misinfo Nation” special with Donie O’Sullivan, who thinks all the extremism is on the right-wing side. And “fact checker” Daniel Dale has already provided 23 on-air “checks” of Team Trump in the first 80 days of the second term, when there were only two fact checks of Biden in his first 80 days. 

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

 

It seems impossible for former New York Times columnist Paul Krugman to stay out of the limelight and make himself look even more ridiculous.

The insufferable economic dunce-in-chief joined the show Here & Now on National Public Radio to go on a predictable tirade against President Donald Trump’s tariff battle with trading partners, and completely downplaying the significance of trade deficits. NPR asked Krugman during an April 8 segment, “Trump has long criticized U.S. trade deficits with countries including Japan and China. Do trade deficits with individual countries matter?”

Then Krugman had the temerity to accuse Trump of using dumb economics, as if he really has any leg to stand on  following the extent to which he simped for the disaster of Bidenomics. “No, just as simple as that. This is all junk economics. I have a trade deficit with my supermarket. I have a trade surplus with my employer. Bilateral trade deficits are all around us. It’s how we live.”

Yes, the same person who spent months trying to convince the country that the inflation crisis under Biden was “transitory,” that America would witness a Biden boom, and who told Biden before his inauguration “ Don’t Worry About Inflation” is complaining about so-called “junk economics.” He also even had the audacity to bleat that Biden “created the best job market in a generation.” The level of projection here is just unreal.

Fox Business reported in February that  the“U.S. goods deficit soared 14% to $1.2 trillion in 2024, with imports reaching an all-time high of $364.9 billion in December ahead of Trump’s return to office,” with significant deficits tied to China, Mexico and Canada. 

Krugman further stoked alarmism when asked about the effects of a persistent trade war, ““In the longer run, meaning a year or two from now, it just means increases in prices that will run well ahead of increases in wages. So, we’ll be talking about people having less purchasing power. It’s a pretty serious cost.”

Oh, so now all of a sudden Krugman is concerned about increased prices running ahead of wages after he effectively treated Americans as being dumb for panning Bidenomics? Research released by Statista in February 2025, found that “[d]espite the level of wage growth reaching 6.7 percent in the summer of 2022, it has not been enough to curb the impact of even higher inflation rates. The federally mandated minimum wage in the United States has not increased since 2009, meaning that individuals working minimum wage jobs have taken a real terms pay cut for the last twelve years.”  In January 2025, Statista released another analysis headlined, “Biden’s Blemish: Wages Haven’t Kept Up With Inflation.”

Was Krugman making a fuss then? Nah. In fact, in 2024, Krugman was too busy telling readers in 2024 that their economic struggles were practically made-up: “A lot of it is simply — a lot of people who say the economy is lousy —what they’re really saying is, ‘I hate the idea that a Democrat is president.’”

Krugman’s comments, of course, were blurted out right before the latest inflation report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics was released, showing that prices slowed down in March more than expected to 2.4 percent against the projected 2.6 percent increase. Krugman’s comments were also prior to Trump announcing a 90-day tariff pause on 75 countries who did not execute retaliatory actions against his trade policies, while slapping a 125 percent tariff on China to boot, ironically leading to stock markets skyrocketing.

As columnist David Marcus analyzed April 10, “Democrats, and a fair number of free-marketeer conservatives to boot, celebrated Trump ‘caving’ to the pressure of the financial markets. But when the smoke settled, it was clear that, far from folding, Trump had instituted a historic tariff regime, and somehow got a stock market rally out of it.” 

Everyone’s freaking out about the tariffs and the stock market dropping, but here’s the deal: This isn’t the end of the economy.
If you’re a real investor, you don’t make decisions based on headlines. You think long term. The market is still up over time. Wealth is built by… pic.twitter.com/vlhQ5WRUgI
— Dave Ramsey (@DaveRamsey) April 8, 2025
What the end result of Trump’s trade war is, nobody knows. But there is enough evidence to show that the last person anybody in the media — including NPR — should be looking to for a serious take on the economy’s future is an unhinged ideologue like Krugman who acts like Bidenomics was the best thing since chocolate ice cream. Good grief. 

CNN’s supposed extremism expert Donie O’Sullivan — whom one could think of as Irish Brian Stelter (and with hair) to get a sense of their worldview — joined Friday’s CNN News Central to preview his latest report for Sunday’s The Whole Story about political extremism and falsely claimed “the issue very much so is on the right” but no “equivalent on the left.”

Nevermind that President Trump has faced two assassination attempts in the last year, House Republicans were targeted in June 2017 and nearly murdered en masse by an MSNBC viewer, or the rampant support by the American left for Hamas, a terrorist organization. This is CNN, one of many networks eager to paint right-of-center Americans as not only wrong, but terrorists.

 

 

Fill-in co-host Jessica Dean — whose husband worked for the Clintons back during their reign in Arkansas — tried to bring balance by telling viewers O’Sullivan’s special will also profile “people who consider themselves fans of Luigi Mangione,” the alleged murderer of United HealthCare CEO Brian Thompson.

O’Sullivan played coy and didn’t address the extremism on the left celebrating the murder. 

Instead, he declared that, between January 6 and the August 2017 events in Charlottesville, there shouldn’t be any suggestions there’s serious extremism on both sides:

[W]hen it comes to extremism in this country, I mean, the issue very much so is on the right, on the far-right from — you know, from Charlottesville to — to January 6. There isn’t exactly an equivalent on the left in this moment. 

Rewinding to earlier, Dean twice teased O’Sullivan’s appearance and Sunday special, which will feature his interviews with “[t]he godfather of 3-D printed guns, pardoned January 6 rioters, and Luigi Mangione fan club.”

Having used a clip with a released January 6 defendant who threatened O’Sullivan’s safety as the strawman for what CNN’s up against, he said his special would air “on the 30-year anniversary this month of the Oklahoma City bombing, of course, which was, by — by Timothy McVeigh, who bombed the federal building in Oklahoma back in 1995[.]”

As students of history would recall, that event was used then and now to censor and smear conservatives such as the late Rush Limbaugh, despite no connection to McVeigh.

“[W]hat we’re looking at is how, over the past 30 years, true — how the revolution in technology and social media and also how we consume and share information, how really much more easier it is to be radicalized in America today than it was 30 years ago,” he explained.

O’Sullivan cited “a racist and anti-Semitic novel, The Turner Diaries” that inspired McVeigh as having been “quite difficult” to obtain in those days whereas “now, obviously, through social media, we know a lot of people, particularly young men, are getting all the sentiments…served…through their social media feeds.”

In other words, the implication is there needs to be some level of censorship, just so long as the legacy press are still allowed to do as they please. And nevermind changing hearts and minds to turn them away from said hatred!

To see the relevant CNN transcript from April 11, click here.

CNN’s Anderson Cooper hosted a town hall with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday, and, even by CNN’s standards, it was quite the softball session. Not only did both men take advantage of fact-checker Daniel Dale apparently having better things to do with his time by accusing President Trump of “whitewashing American history,” but Cooper even invited the president of American University’s College Republican chapter to use the word “softball” in his question.

There were other lowlights as well, such as when Cooper wondered if there was anything at all in the federal budget that could be cut, “There’s a lot of talk—from the DOGE team about, or from Elon Musk, about waste, fraud, and abuse and what they’re finding. Have you seen much evidence of waste, fraud, and abuse? Because what they put on their wall of receipts, some of the top items, the biggest savings they allege to have implemented turned out to be mistakes or just lies.”

 

 

Even the socialist Sanders acknowledged there’s got to be something that can be cut, “Look, am I going to sit here and tell anybody in America that the United States government doesn’t have a bureaucracy and there isn’t waste? Of course there is.”

Later, Cooper turned to Trump’s executive order about the Smithsonian, “Some of these moves have been reversed, but President Trump’s also now going after the Smithsonian, accusing them of, quote, ‘divisive, race-centered ideology.’ Do you think the administration is trying to whitewash American history?”

Since Dale was not there to point it out in real time or afterwards, it should be noted that the executive order states in plain English that the Smithsonian will not be allowed to teach that “our Nation’s unparalleled legacy of advancing liberty, individual rights, and human happiness is reconstructed as inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed [emphasis added].”

Nevertheless, Sanders confidently declared, “Of course they are.” He would go on to suggest Trump doesn’t want the Smithsonian to teach about the history of racism and slavery, “There’s so much in our history that we can be proud of. But like every other country, Anderson, there’s a lot in our history that we should not be proud of, that we should learn from. You know, slavery and racism and sexism and homophobia. All right. That’s nothing to be proud of. But we learn from those things. We overcome them.”

Further on in the program, Cooper introduced a questioner, “I want to introduce Grace Thomas. She’s a local civil rights attorney. She’s a Democrat. Grace?”

 

 

Thomas began by pronoun-checking Cooper, “They/them pronouns, actually. Thank you.” As for the actual question, Thomas worried that practical electoral concerns are hurting the party’s ability to play identity politics, “Polling and turnout data indicate that men of all racial demographics are turning away from the Democratic Party. But of course, white men, in particular, do not feel that the DNC’s messaging targets them in the issues that they care about.”

Sanders began his reply by trying to portray himself as the embodiment of all things good and decent, “Look, this is, it is no great secret that in America, people have strongly different points of view, right?… I believe that we got to end all forms of bigotry, et cetera, et cetera. Not everybody agrees with me.”

For Sanders, the solution was to focus on his socialist economics, “On many economic issues, there is widespread agreement. And the failure of the Democratic Party, in my view, has been, they have not been aggressive in standing up to powerful corporate interests, in laying out an agenda, and implementing an agenda that speaks to the needs of the working-class.”

Further still, Cooper introduced “Joel Pritikin. He’s a student at American University, originally from Venice, California. He’s president of the College Republicans. Joel?”

If you were hoping that might mean Sanders would get a challenging question, you would be out of luck, as Pritkin asked, “I wanted to give you kind of a softball question. Who on the other side have you worked the best with, as a senator?”

Sanders would cite Sens. Rand Paul, Mike Lee, and Roger Marshall as his answers. Meanwhile, the hour CNN spent with Sanders made it clear which side it is on.

Here is a transcript for the April 9 show:

CNN Town Hall

4/9/2025

9:11 PM ET

ANDERSON COOPER: They — there’s a lot of talk about — from the DOGE team about or from Elon Musk about waste, fraud, and abuse—

BERNIE SANDERS: Yes.

COOPER: —and what they’re finding. Have you seen much evidence of waste, fraud, and abuse? Because what they put on their wall of receipts, some of the top items, the biggest savings they allege to have implemented turned out to be mistakes or just lies.

SANDERS: Look, am I going to sit here and tell anybody in America that the United States government doesn’t have a bureaucracy and there isn’t waste? Of course there is.

…

COOPER: Some of these moves have been reversed, but President Trump’s also now going after the Smithsonian, accusing them of, quote, “divisive, race-centered ideology.” Do you think the administration is trying to whitewash American history?

SANDERS: Of course they are. I mean, that’s what I just mentioned right now.

Look, to be a strong nation, we have to be a well-educated nation. And to be a well-educated nation, we have to face the truth. And the truth is, as much as Americans, we should be extraordinarily proud of. You know, I’ve been — when I give speeches, I now, I should have studied this harder when I was in the sixth grade. But you got people back in the 1790s who wrote the Constitution. You know what? That was an extraordinary document for the 1790s. Talk about separation of powers, which Trump is trying to do away with.

So there’s so much in our history that we can be proud of. But like every other country, Anderson, there’s a lot in our history that we should not be proud of, that we should learn from. You know, slavery and racism and sexism and homophobia. All right. That’s nothing to be proud of. But we learn from those things. We overcome them.

…

COOPER: I want to introduce Grace Thomas. She’s a local civil rights attorney. She’s a Democrat. Grace?

GRACE THOMAS: They/them pronouns, actually. Thank you.

COOPER: Oh.

THOMAS: Good evening, Senator Sanders. Polling and turnout data indicate that men of all racial demographics are turning away from the Democratic Party. But of course, white men, in particular, do not feel that the DNC’s messaging targets them in the issues that they care about.

Should progressive campaigns craft policies and messaging to better encapsulate these voters? And if the answer is yes, how do they do so without abandoning marginalized voters of color and gender?
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I-VT): Okay. Thank you for the question, Grace. Look, this is, it is no great secret that in America, people have strongly different points of view, right? On abortion, for example, I believe very much that women have a right to control their own bodies. People disagree with me. I believe that we’ve got to combat homophobia. I believe in gay marriage. My state helped led way on that. Not everybody agrees with me. I believe that we got to end all forms of bigotry, et cetera, et cetera. Not everybody agrees with me.

But you know what, Grace? On many economic issues, there is widespread agreement. And the failure of the Democratic Party, in my view, has been, they have not been aggressive in standing up to powerful corporate interests, in laying out an agenda, and implementing an agenda that speaks to the needs of the working-class.

…

COOPER: This is Joel Pritikin. He’s a student at American University, originally from Venice, California. He’s president of the College Republicans. Joel?

SANDERS: Hey, Joel.

JOEL PRITIKIN: Hi, Bernie. I wanted to give you kind of a softball question. Who on the other side have you worked the best with, as a senator?

SANDERS: I’ve worked with a couple of people. And it’s funny. I’ll give you an example. Rand Paul is kind of a maverick on the Republican side. But Rand worries very much about authoritarianism. And so he and I have worked on some of those issues.

Mike Lee and I have worked on trying to make sure that Congress, not the President, has the power to declare to — the constitutional power to declare war. I have worked with Roger Marshall from Kansas on trying to expand community health centers.

So, there are Republicans that I admire and work with. We disagree on a whole lot of issues, but we do try on occasion to come together for the American people.

In a Friday filing with Florida’s 14th Judicial Circuit in Bay County, Navy veteran Zachary Young filed a defamation suit against the Associated Press for making similar claims against him which led to CNN being found liable for malicious defamation. The complaint pointed out that the AP used similar rhetoric against Young that they used for criminal conduct and that they refused to publish “any retraction or correction.”

According to the filing, exclusively obtained by NewsBusters, “AP blatantly accused Mr. Young of engaging in criminal human smuggling” [emphasis added in the document].

The filing argues that the AP’s reporting falsely suggested that Young was committing a felony under United States federal law:

In its article, AP published the defamatory statement, with actual malice, that Mr. Young’s business “helped smuggle people out of Afghanistan”. This statement is categorically false. At the time of publication, AP knew or recklessly disregarded that a Florida court had already ruled Plaintiff committed no crime in connection with the Afghanistan evacuations. Mr. Young never “smuggled” anyone.

Describing Mr. Young’s lifesaving evacuations as “smuggling” is not only grossly misleading, it charges Mr. Young with a serious crime. Human smuggling is a grave felony under U.S. law (8 U.S.C. § 1324), and it is condemned as a serious crime under international law (the U.N. Protocol Against the Smuggling of Migrants). By accusing Mr. Young of human smuggling, AP effectively branded him a criminal.

“AP has used the term “smuggling” in dozens of prior articles to describe plainly criminal conduct such as human trafficking, drug operations, and transnational crime,” the filing added.

Similarly with Young’s defamation suit against Puck News, reports using terms asserting that Young was engaged in illegal activity (while helping to rescue almost two dozen women and baby from Afghanistan) were lies as a matter of law.

Prior to the beginning of his trial against CNN, Young scored wins on many of the facts of the case long before the AP published their offending article. As NewsBusters reported on December 8, 2024, Judge William Henry ordered: “[I]mportant part of the Court’s prior ruling was that Young did not do anything criminal or illegal.”

Young pointed to AP’s article on the results of the CNN trial as the offending report. In that article, the AP wrote [emphasis added in the document]: “Young’s business helped smuggle people out of Afghanistan, but he said he worked exclusively with deep-pocketed outside sponsors like Bloomberg and Audible.”

The filing stated:

The clear takeaway from AP’s wording is that Mr. Young smuggled people out of Afghanistan – i.e. engaged in the crime of human smuggling – even if he didn’t charge those people directly. The statement is written as a fact, and it is absolutely false.

AP’s assertion is, in essence, that Mr. Young’s evacuation work was an illegal smuggling operation bankrolled by wealthy sponsors. This statement about Mr. Young and Nemex is false, defamatory, and extremely damaging.

In a Facebook post from February 6 2019, the AP Stylebook wrote this about human smuggling: “Human smuggling or people smuggling typically involves transporting people across an international border illegally, with their consent, in exchange for a fee.”

 

 

Further, the complaint noted that the AP had full access to the facts since they were following the trial and thus were aware that “The jury’s verdict against CNN confirmed that Mr. Young was falsely portrayed as doing something unlawful.”

“AP had obvious reasons to doubt the truth of its statement (given the CNN verdict and the information available from that case), yet it published the accusation anyway. No one from AP reached out to Mr. Young for comment or clarification before publishing the “smuggling people” charge,” the filing continued.

The complaint presented three counts against the AP: defamation per se, defamation by implication, and trade libel. Young was requesting a “trial by jury” for damages “to be determined.”

On today’s CNN This Morning, host Audie Cornish offered surprising praise for Marco Rubio’s take on revoking student visas, calling it “common sense.”

Rubio had said:

“A student visa is like me inviting you into my home. If you come into my home and put all kinds of crap on my couch, I’m going to kick you out of my house. And so, you know, that’s what we’re doing with our country, thanks to the president.”

On the other side of the ledger, Cornish—yet again—assembled a panel bereft of any Trump-supporting Republican. It consisted of:

Akayla Gardner, a Bloomberg News White House correspondent. At Ohio State, Gardner was the founder of the university’s chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists. NABJ is a left-leaning group that, among other things, was actively involved and supportive of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Hyma Moore, former chief of staff to Jaime Harrison during his tenure as Chair of the DNC.
Andrew Egger, White House correspondent for the fiercely anti-Trump Bulwark. How fiercely? Egger recently described Trump as “fascism in clown paint.”

In the five weeks since Cornish took over CNN This Morning hosting duties from Kasie Hunt, she has never once had a full-throated, unapologetic, Trump supporter on a panel.

What is Audie afraid of? Wouldn’t it be “common sense” for Cornish to bring real balance to her panels? Echo chambers are boring! Or maybe liberals who watch CNN can’t handle anyone speaking up for Trump.

Here’s the transcript.

CNN This Morning
4/11/25
6:05 am EDT

AUDIE CORNISH: It’s gonna be up to a lower court to clarify a previous order mandating Garcia’s return. 

Joining me now to make sense of all of this, Akayla Gardner, White House correspondent for Bloomberg News, Andrew Egger, White House correspondent for The Bulwark, and Hyma Moore, former chief of staff for DNC Chairman Jamie Harrison. Y’all welcome to the group chat on a Friday morning.

We’ve been talking about students who were on student visas that have been revoked. I think that number, according to the State Department, is more than 400 visas who have been revoked. 

And you know, when I think about how Marco Rubio has been talking about this, I want you guys to hear, because I think it sounds like a very kind of commonsense response. 

MARCO RUBIO: A student visa is like me inviting you into my home. If you come into my home and put all kinds of crap on my couch, I’m going to kick you out of my house. And so, you know, that’s what we’re doing with our country, thanks to the president. 

Comedy Central’s The Daily Show held a satirical debate on its Friday show between host Desi Lydic and pretend White House correspondent Troy Iwata. While Lydic took the position that President Trump’s recent executive order on showerhead pressure was dumb and a waste of time, Iwata took the position that it was a welcome distraction from all the “bigger, real things.” Ultimately, the two came together to compare Trump to Adolf Hitler.

Lydic simply wondered, “Okay, but who does this help?”

Iwata replied, “The real question is, who does this hurt? And the answer is no one, okay. They’re going to do bad things anyway, Desi! But if I’m going to spend five hours a day stress pooping on the toilet, at least they can give us an executive order like the one this afternoon that says, “‘No more itchy tags on clothes. It’s too, too, too, too itchy. Have a great summer, Donald Trump.'”

 

 

Again, Lydic questioned, “Okay, I do agree with that. Tags are itchy. But shouldn’t he be focusing on bigger, real things?”

Getting the Hitler comparisons started, Iwata answered, “He’s bad at bigger, real things! Ninety-five of these executive orders are about punishing people who just disagree with him, so I’m fine with Side Quest Trump, okay. What, would you go up to Hitler and be like, ‘Why are you painting? You’ve got work to do!’”

A dismayed Lydic followed up, “Is it too much to ask for a president who is not Hitler?”

“Yes, apparently it is! So just focus on the wins. Yes, he’s putting Dora the Explorer on a flight to El Salvador, okay. But he’s declared that ‘Anyone on the flight who asks for a soda has to get a whole can. XOXO, Donny,’” Iwata answered.

If Dora violated the law and entered the country illegally, then how exactly is that like Hitler? Meanwhile, The Daily Show will pretend that deporting pro-Hamas students, who are much better Hitler analogues, is threat to free speech.

Here is a transcript for the April 10 show:

Comedy Central The Daily Show

4/10/2025

11:09 PM ET

DESI LYDIC: Okay, but who does this help?

TROY IWATA: The real question is, who does this hurt? And the answer is no one, okay. They’re going to do bad things anyway, Desi! But if I’m going to spend five hours a day stress pooping on the toilet, at least they can give us an executive order like the one this afternoon that says, “No more itchy tags on clothes. It’s too, too, too, too itchy. Have a great summer, Donald Trump.”

LYDIC: Okay, I do agree with that. Tags are itchy. But shouldn’t he be focusing on bigger, real things?

IWATA: He’s bad at bigger, real things! Ninety-five of these executive orders are about punishing people who just disagree with him, so I’m fine with Side Quest Trump, okay. What, would you go up to Hitler and be like, “Why are you painting? You’ve got work to do!”

LYDIC: Is it too much to ask for a president who is not Hitler?

IWATA: Yes, apparently it is! So just focus on the wins. Yes, he’s putting Dora the Explorer on a flight to El Salvador, okay. But he’s declared that “Anyone on the flight who asks for a soda has to get a whole can. XOXO, Donny.” 

Journalists are terrible at hiding their desire to run our democracy, using their platforms to direct history to the “right side.” That badly disguised lust for power creates an audience problem, where the people resent the media’s imperious lectures about which side they are supposed to favor – and if they don’t, they are uneducated racist nincompoops.

Axios.com co-founders Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen appeared on the podcast “Honestly with Bari Weiss.” The host left The New York Times editorial page staff as it bubbled over in wokeness in 2020. She asked her guests what caused the collapse in public trust in the media.

VandeHei blamed three happenings for the problem:

1. The ascent of Twitter showed reporters were engaged in a “hotbed of liberal groupthink,” and reporters clearly stated which side they were on. He oddly argued before Twitter, reporters were objective, and their opinions “they hid from the public.”

2. In 2020, the coverage of Covid, “defund the police,” and the “word policing” didn’t sit right with Americans.

3. The final straw was the coverage of President Biden, where the public clearly saw his decline, but there wasn’t a lot of coverage of that. The media lectured that this issue was all “cheapfakes.”

VandeHei then claimed that this problem was somehow caused by only a few people! He announced he is a fierce defender of journalism, and “I believe that most reporters at most institutions actually do try to get to the closest approximation of the truth and achieve it most of the time. I think it’s a couple of bad apples who make it look bad for everyone.”

That inevitably undercuts numbers 1, 2, and 3. The media’s arrogance isn’t limited to two or three “bad apples.” They are unified in a broadly national and overtly hostile mindset.

These three are certainly factors, but the voters who are old enough to rely today on traditional media outlets know it goes back further than that. Contrary to VandeHei’s imagination, reporters openly demonstrated an infatuation with Bill Clinton in 1992, insisting he was a more talented candidate than JFK. Then they descended even deeper into “thrill up my leg” adoration for Barack Obama in 2008. 

Weiss told her guests they should start in 2016, where the election of Trump caused crying fits in the newsroom and spurred the national newspapers to present themselves as crusaders, because “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” But it’s the combination of the overt adoration of Obama and the attempted evisceration of Trump that sunk trust in the media.

When Weiss returned to the coverup of Biden’s mental decline, Allen blamed the groupthink: “People discounted what they saw with their own eyes…you don’t want to be separate…the herd wanted the approval of the White House…they didn’t want to look like they were being ideological.”

Isn’t it strange that these self-appointed heroes who think they embody democracy are a herd who deny reality because they “wanted the approval of the White House”? Today’s “news judgment” is very crude when it’s considered “ideological” to pursue an obvious storyline because it might help Trump.

The legacy media today aren’t “fact-based.” They are results-oriented. Public trust would seem to go hand in hand with the media letting go of their overweening desire to control the results. You can’t gain public trust when it’s obvious you don’t trust the public to vote “the right way.”

An inflation report coming in lower than expected with a coe inflation number under 3 for the first time since the pandemic would have drawn elated A-block coverage across the “legacy” evening news. But a similar report at the outset of Trump II? Not so much.

Here’s how the inflation report was discussed on the NBC Nightly News:

IT’S (D)IFFERENT: The better-than-forecast inflation numbers drew a grand total of 8 seconds on the NBC Nightly News pic.twitter.com/MYejS8gl6k
— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) April 11, 2025

CHRISTINE ROMANS: That bright spot, consumer prices fell in March from the month before, bringing the inflation rate to 2.4%.

That’s 8 seconds on the rate itself- nothing on core CPI or the things that drove the reduction in inflation. 8 seconds for the “bright spot” within a doom-and-gloom report on tariffs that ran 2 minutes and 44 seconds. If we were doing one of our classic studies, we’d say NBC devoted about 20.5 times as much time to tariff fear mongering as they did to the positive inflation report.

The CBS Evening News was measurably worse. John Dickerson couldn’t be bothered to mention the actual rate.

The better-than-expected inflation report garnered just under 9 seconds on the CBS Evening News, tucked into the lede on a story about retail egg-laying hens. It’s (D)ifferent, you see. pic.twitter.com/0yR1moCr7y
— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) April 11, 2025

JOHN DICKERSON: Falling gasoline prices are helping to bring inflation down. The government reported today that consumer prices fell a tenth of a percent in March.

Not just measurably worse, but significantly worse. The nearly 9 seconds devoted to inflation is about 39 times less than was accorded to tariffs. 

And yet, there were worse depths to plumb. ABC World News Tonight didn’t even bother to cover the report at all. Zero. Nada. Had this report happened under a hypothetical President Harris, Davis Muir would be doing somersaults and delivering a rambling 5-minute introduction to the report. When you aggregate the total coverage times devoted to tariffs, that’s close to 50 times the coverage given to the inflation report.

If it weren’t for double standards, there’d be none at all.

Click “expand” to view the full transcripts of the aforementioned reports as aired on their respective evening newscasts on Thursday, April 10th, 2025:

CBS EVENING NEWS

4/10/25

6:38 PM

JOHN DICKERSON: Falling gasoline prices are helping to bring inflation down. The government reported today that consumer prices fell a tenth of a percent in March.

MAURICE DuBOIS: But food prices were up 0.4% and eggs have hit $6.23 a dozen.

DICKERSON: That’s driving some people to DIY eggs, and in this case, Elaine Quijano reports the chicken comes first.

ELAINE QUIJANO: It’s a scramble to fill orders at Marie McMurray Hatchery in Webster City, Iowa. These chicks are in high demand. Customers want egg-laying hens.

SWITCHBOARD OPERATOR: McMurray Hatchery. Are you okay with a white-egg layer?

TOM WATKINS: We are taking anywhere from 2000-2500 phone calls a day.

QUIJANO: This family run business hatches an average of 3 million chicks each year. Tom Watkins is president.

WATKINS: Late January is probably when we really noticed that this was not a typical year. We saw calls that were double and triple in that time frame.

QUIJANO: And what sparked that demand?

WATKINS: Egg prices. You know? That’s probably number one.

QUIJANO: Right now the cost of a dozen large eggs is up more than $3 from a year ago. 

QUIJANO: The only threat to Watkins’ business is bird flu. He has 50,000 chickens in five barns. Those barns sit in a busy migration path for wild birds which can spread the disease, so every vehicle here is sprayed and once a month, chickens are swabbed and tested for bird flu. The precautions are part of a precise process to incubate, hatch, and ship day-old chicks.

AMIE ROE: We ordered all hens.

QUIJANO: To customers like Amie Roe in upstate New York.

ROE: We will get a lot of eggs from these chicks.

QUIJANO: She already has a flock of chickens. 

Why did you decide to get more chicks now?

ROE: Well… [Laughs] Chicken math. We just- we love chickens and we wanted to keep high numbers of laying eggs.

QUIJANO: Roe has a steady supply of eggs for her family, and sells the rest for $6 a dozen at a local farm stand. They often sell out.

DuBOIS: And Elaine Quijano joins us now, what a concept here. So how much do these chicks cost to buy and then to care for them?

QUIJANO: So McMurray Hatchery cells chicks for about $3 to $12 per chick, and then after that the cost can really vary. It depends on how elaborate you want your set up to be. But chickens need to be protected from predators and the weather- that often means a coop and some fencing. That can start at about a couple hundred dollars and go up from there. And the cost of chicken feed for one hen? About $36 a year. 

DuBOIS: Okay.

DICKERSON: Elaine Quijano, thank you.

NBC NIGHTLY NEWS 

4/10/25

6:38 PM

TOM LLAMAS: We turn to the chaos on Wall Street. Not over yet. It was another brutal day with some of yesterday’s gains wiped out. The president today ramping up his trade war on China and warning, it will come at a cost to Americans. Here’s Christine Romans.

ROMANS: Another day of whiplash on Wall Street. The Dow closing down more than 1,000 points, reversing about a third of yesterday’s historic gains. It’s down 6.2% since President Trump announced new tariffs last week, and today, the president hinting the worst is not over.

DONALD TRUMP: There’ll be a transition cost and transition problems. But in the end, it’s going to be- it’s going to be a beautiful thing.

ROMANS: Just 24 hours after he said people’s nervous reactions to the market prompted his abrupt pause on most of the tariffs.

TRUMP: I thought that people were jumping a little bit out of line. They were getting yippy, you know. They were getting a little bit yippy, a little bit afraid.

ROMANS: But tonight investors showing they are still worried about the growing trade war with China, with The White House clarifying, its tax on Chinese imports will now total 145%.

TRUMP: Well, we’ll see what happens with China. They’ve really taken advantage of our country for a long period of time. They’ve ripped us off beyond anybody. All we’re doing is putting it back in shape.

ROMANS: And today the Treasury Secretary insisting what he sees in the market is not unusual. That allies are calling now to make deals to lower their trade barriers on American companies.

SCOTT BESSENT: We will end up in a place of great certainty over the next 90 days on tariffs. But we have very good inflation numbers today.

ROMANS: That bright spot, consumer prices fell in March from the month before, bringing the inflation rate to 2.4%. Better numbers than expected. But for so many small businesses, it’s the ongoing turmoil over tariffs that’s having the biggest impact.

KATE NELSON: Your little small business that you love to walk to, we’re really going to be hurting.

ROMANS: Kate Nelson owns the Greenwood shop in California and on Instagram, where she sells goods from all over the world. She says she’ll hold off ordering from China for now. But all other imports still face, at least, that baseline 10% border tax.

NELSON: We have Mother’s Day coming up. Mother’s Day, for small business, is basically mini Christmas. And we are all terrified that our mini Christmas is not going to happen.

LLAMAS: And Christine, I know you have some new reporting about some of the deals the president is trying to cut with these other countries?

ROMANS: Yeah, a couple of the president’s advisers saying today there are about 15 countries that have made offers. They’re prepping those, they’re going to present those to the president. No movement on China here, and that pause, Tom, expires July 9th.

LLAMAS: Okay. Good to know there. Christina, we thank you for that.