Newsbusters

File this one under “No Good Deed Goes Unpunished.”

The liberal media has been leading the charge against the Trump tariffs. So what happens when Trump heeds the warning signs and pulls back? Does the MSM applaud his statesmanship, his courage in changing course given changed circumstances? 

C’mon—of course not. This is the liberal media, after all.

Thus, on today’s Morning Joe, Axios co-founder Jim VandeHei, purporting to explain Trump’s change of direction, declared:

“Make no mistake: he panicked.”

For Trump, there’s no winning with the liberal media. 

Trump adapts his policy to changing realities: “He panicked!”

And if Trump hadn’t changed course? “Trump ignores reality—determined to drive the world economy off a cliff!”

Note: VandeHei’s subsequent words debunked his claim that Trump panicked. The Axios CEO went on to say that Trump “saw that  [serious economic troubles were in the offing] and he hit pause.” 

Pausing doesn’t automatically mean panic. Unless your only interest is constantly going on the negative. 

Here’s the transcript.

MSNBC
Morning Joe
4/10/25
6:05 am EDT

JOE SCARBOROUGH: Jim VandeHei, the president, getting ready for Masters weekend by employing that famous golfing term, the yips—is what you say about somebody standing over a putt that doesn’t know how to get it in the hole—but said that things were getting a little yippy. 

That included also, of course, the bond markets, where a real concern, this one Scott Bessent and others went to the president saying this could go sideways very quickly. 

JIM VANDEHEI: Yeah, I mean, make no mistake, he panicked. It’s probably the first time we’ve seen him blink in such a public way. 

He was under a lot of pressure from GOP senators, a lot of CEOs, a lot of investors, Elon Musk, people calling him saying, listen, look, not just the bond market, look at the regular market, look at the bond market, look at the dollar. That a real economic collapse was in the offing. And he saw that and he hit pause. 

And then you had his entire team come out and say, no, this was like part of the art of the deal. And I don’t think anyone’s buying that. Certainly, a lot of people internally aren’t buying it. They underestimated the effect it would have on the markets. 

And now, yes, the market’s surged, but if you talk to CEOs, there’s still so much unpredictability. You basically replaced the largest, maybe the largest trade war of generations with another, maybe the second largest trade war, which is us versus China. Which might be a bigger deal, and it’s now escalated, which still creates a hell of a lot of uncertainty for CEOs. 

. . . 

WILLIE GEIST: Yeah, and the stock markets did come roaring back yesterday, John, but not yet even to the point where they were just eight days ago when all this started. 

With some of the roadblocks to the prosecution of the second failed would-be assassin of President Donald Trump removed, the shocking details of his plot are revealed. And for some strange reason, NBC News has still not aired any of the shocking details on their television offerings.

Here is ABC’s full report on the findings, as aired on ABC World News Tonight on Tuesday, April 8th, 2025:

DAVID MUIR: We also have new reporting tonight on the alleged assassination attempt of then-candidate Donald Trump. What the president at the president’s Florida golf course on that day allegedly tried to get his hands on before that day, including anti-aircraft weapons. Here’s Pierre Thomas.

PIERRE THOMAS: Tonight, months after his dramatic arrest, federal prosecutors releasing disturbing new details which they claim show Ryan Routh’s apparent obsession with assassinating President Trump. Before he allegedly stalked Trump on his Florida golf course, prosecutors say Routh, a fierce supporter of Ukraine, who had visited the war-torn country multiple times, reached out to an associate there. His request: “send me an RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) or Stinger surface-to-air missile. Prosecutors claim Routh desperately wanted to blow up then-candidate Trump’s plane writing: “I need equipment so that Trump cannot get elected.” 

DONALD TRUMP: Take a look at what happened… (GUNFIRE)

THOMAS: The second assassination attempt coming just two months after Trump was nearly killed in Pennsylvania. Authorities in Florida say Routh waited for 12 hours in a sniper’s nest just off Trump’s golf course. A Secret Service agent positioned one hole ahead of the president spotting the barrel of an assault rifle in the bushes, engaging the suspect before he could take a shot at Trump. And now, the FBI says Routh could have had an even more powerful weapon, after he first tried to buy a .50 caliber rifle, capable of piercing body armor and slicing through car doors. Routh has pleaded not guilty, but the FBI says they have footage of him conducting surveillance and placing him at the scene just before the alleged attempt. David.

MUIR: All right. Pierre Thomas in Washington tonight. Pierre, thank you.

Neither CBS Evening News nor CBS Evening News Plus aired anything on Routh, but CBS News Mornings did run a very early brief the following morning:

MICHAEL GEORGE: Newsweek reports Justice Department officials claim a thwarted Trump assassin tried to buy a rocket launcher from Ukraine. Prosecutors say Ryan Wesley Routh used an encrypted messaging app to chat with someone he believed to be a Ukrainian contact with access to military-grade weapons. The 58-year-old is facing multiple federal charges after he was allegedly spotted pointing a rifle through the fence of Trump’s golf club in Florida last September. Routh has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Granted, some of this is previously known information was repurposed by ABC as dramatic filler. We knew about Routh’s stakeout position, and that he had previously cased the property out. And Routh’s Ukraine obsessions were also a matter of public record. But details on the attempts to purchase an RPG and .50 caliber rifle are intriguing. 

ABC said nothing on the matter, while CBS said Routh was in contact with “someone he believed to be a Ukrainian contact with access to military-grade weapons.” That language is at the very least suggestive of a sting operation. If this is the case, how was Routh still allowed to get so close to Trump? Who knew, and when did they know it? 

These details and their subsequent coverage are worth watching. Or, in NBC’s case, worth airing.

 

Every once in a while, ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel will do a man-on-the-street interview type of segment where he sends someone out to demonstrate how dumb Donald Trump supporters supposedly are in an attempt to discredit one of Trump’s positions. However, Wednesday’s attempt at this unwittingly backfired on Kimmel, who was blissfully unaware that one conspiracy theory floated by one of the interviewees was popularized by an anti-Trump CNN analyst who insisted on redoing the 2016 election.

Kimmel introduced the package, “Since he got back, the president has used his fat little Sharpie to sign over 100 executive orders. He signed a bunch of them today. One of the most notable of the executive orders was his order to disband the Department of Education. Now, we already know how his critics feel about that. But what do the folks who voted for Trump think about it? To find out, we went all the way to Florida, to the Gulf of America, to ask some of Trump’s bigliest fans what they think about the Department of Education.”

Throughout the whole segment, 13 people would be interviewed, but only two of them were explicitly shown claiming they supported axing the Department of Education. Still, the staffer Kimmel sent to Florida asked such questions as “Can you name the first president of the U.S.?”

 

 

After someone said Abraham Lincoln, another was asked, “What do the initials LBJ stand for?” When one woman got the correct answer, the interviewer followed up by asking, “What does the B stand for?”

The woman then answered, “Nothing. Just B,” which is incorrect, but how many people watching Jimmy Kimmel Live! at that moment knew the answer was “Baines.”

There were other cringeworthy moments, such as people not knowing who the U.S. fought in the Civil War or when the War of 1812 was, but eventually the interviewer came to “Do you know who shot Hitler?”

A man replied, “Nobody knows who shot Hitler. It’s like—he may have killed himself. It’s kind of a mystery. I had a teacher tell me that he—he’s still alive, this is what he told me a couple years ago, he’s still alive, and he took a U-boat.”

The questioner followed up, “A teacher in school? Who do you think that teacher voted for?” To which the man answered, “Trump, probably.”

From 2015 to 2020, the History Channel had a show called Hunting Hitler, where ex-CIA operative Robert Baer considered the possibility that Hitler was among the high-ranking Nazi officials who managed to get out of Germany and escape to Argentina and the idea that he shot himself was just a cover story. Baer is now an intelligence and security analyst for CNN who insisted that the 2016 election be redone.

The idea that Hitler made it to Argentina on a U-boat is just proof that conspiracy theories are not unique to one side. If Kimmel were to go to one of those anti-Trump protests or ask liberal beachgoers similar questions, eventually he could get enough dumb answers to have a TV segment, but Kimmel won’t do that, because that wouldn’t fit the narrative he is seeking to build.

 Here is a transcript for the April 9 show:

ABC Jimmy Kimmel Live!

4/9/2025

JIMMY KIMMEL: Since he got back, the president has used his fat little Sharpie to sign over 100 executive orders. He signed a bunch of them today. One of the most notable of the executive orders was his order to disband the Department of Education. Now, we already know how his critics feel about that. But what do the folks who voted for Trump think about it? To find out, we went all the way to Florida, to the Gulf of America, to ask some of Trump’s bigliest fans what they think about the Department of Education.

INTERVIEWER: One thing that Trump wants to get rid of is the Department of Education. Do you support that?

MAN 1: Yeah.

INTERVIEWER: Have you heard about Trump wanting to close the Department of Education?

MAN 2: Yes.

INTERVIEWER: And what do you think about that?

MAN 2: I think it’s right. Put it back to the states.

INTERVIEWER: What do you think about his stance on the Department of Education? He wants to get rid of it.

MAN 3: You know, I’d love to be more educated on it, to give you a well-endowed answer.

INTERVIEWER: I want to do a fun, like, school quiz.

WOMAN 1: Sure.

INTERVIEWER: Can you name the first president of the U.S.?

WOMAN 1: The very first president? Was that Abraham Lincoln?

INTERVIEWER: What do the initials LBJ stand for?

MAN 4: LBJ?

INTERVIEWER: Yeah.

MAN 4: LeBron James?

WOMAN 2: Lyndon B. Johnson.

INTERVIEWER: What does the B stand for?

WOMAN 2: Nothing. Just B.

INTERVIEWER: Who wrote the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin?

MAN 5: Um — does anybody here know the answer — do you know the answer to that question?

INTERVIEWER: How many times has the U.S. fought in a World War?

WOMAN 3: Only World War II, so just one.

INTERVIEWER: When was the War of 1812?

WOMAN 4: Of 1812?

INTERVIEWER: Yeah.

WOMAN 4: Is that the Civil War?

INTERVIEWER: Who did the U.S. fight in the Civil War?

WOMAN 2: I don’t know.

INTERVIEWER: Who did the U.S. fight in the Civil War?

WOMAN 5: U.S. Civil War was — was it Mexico and –

INTERVIEWER: What happened on D-Day?

MAN 4: Kill all the aliens.

INTERVIEWER: Marie Antoinette famously said let them eat –

WOMAN 6: Let them eat — was she, people, was she like a cannibal?

INTERVIEWER: Do you know who shot Hitler?

MAN 6: Nobody knows who shot Hitler. It’s like— he may have killed himself. It’s kind of a mystery. I had a teacher tell me that he — he’s still alive, this is what he told me a couple years ago, he’s still alive, and he took a U-boat.

INTERVIEWER: A teacher in school? Who do you think that teacher voted for?

MAN 6: Trump, probably.

INTERVIEWER: Can you spell restaurant?

WOMAN 6: Yeah. R-E-S-T-R-U-A-R—wait. Restur—

MAN 6: R-E-S-T-U-R-A-N-T.

MAN 7: R-E-S-T-R-A-U-N-T. Restaurant. I think I forgot an E.

INTERVIEWER: How many sides does the Pentagon building have?

MAN 2: It should be ten.

INTERVIEWER: What are the first three digits of pi?

WOMAN 1: A, B, and C?

INTERVIEWER: What are the first three digits of pi?

WOMAN 5: I can see it, hold on. I cannot think of it. It’s been a minute.

INTERVIEWER: How do you spell pi?

WOMAN 5: As far as, as like, blueberry? P-Y-E.

INTERVIEWER: Elon Musk, he has 14 kids. He gives seven of his kids up for adoption. One to Angelina Jolie and two to science. Why does he have so many kids?

MAN 6: That’s a lot. I don’t know.

Every once in a while, ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel will do a man-on-the-street interview type of segment where he sends someone out to demonstrate how dumb Donald Trump supporters supposedly are in an attempt to discredit one of Trump’s positions. However, Wednesday’s attempt at this unwittingly backfired on Kimmel, who was blissfully unaware that one conspiracy theory floated by one of the interviewees was popularized by an anti-Trump CNN analyst who insisted on redoing the 2016 election.

Kimmel introduced the package, “Since he got back, the president has used his fat little Sharpie to sign over 100 executive orders. He signed a bunch of them today. One of the most notable of the executive orders was his order to disband the Department of Education. Now, we already know how his critics feel about that. But what do the folks who voted for Trump think about it? To find out, we went all the way to Florida, to the Gulf of America, to ask some of Trump’s bigliest fans what they think about the Department of Education.”

Throughout the whole segment, 13 people would be interviewed, but only two of them were explicitly shown claiming they supported axing the Department of Education. Still, the staffer Kimmel sent to Florida asked such questions as “Can you name the first president of the U.S.?”

 

 

After someone said Abraham Lincoln, another was asked, “What do the initials LBJ stand for?” When one woman got the correct answer, the interviewer followed up by asking, “What does the B stand for?”

The woman then answered, “Nothing. Just B,” which is incorrect, but how many people watching Jimmy Kimmel Live! at that moment knew the answer was “Baines.”

There were other cringeworthy moments, such as people not knowing who the U.S. fought in the Civil War or when the War of 1812 was, but eventually the interviewer came to “Do you know who shot Hitler?”

A man replied, “Nobody knows who shot Hitler. It’s like—he may have killed himself. It’s kind of a mystery. I had a teacher tell me that he—he’s still alive, this is what he told me a couple years ago, he’s still alive, and he took a U-boat.”

The questioner followed up, “A teacher in school? Who do you think that teacher voted for?” To which the man answered, “Trump, probably.”

From 2015 to 2020, the History Channel had a show called Hunting Hitler, where ex-CIA operative Robert Baer considered the possibility that Hitler was among the high-ranking Nazi officials who managed to get out of Germany and escape to Argentina and the idea that he shot himself was just a cover story. Baer is now an intelligence and security analyst for CNN who insisted that the 2016 election be redone.

The idea that Hitler made it to Argentina on a U-boat is just proof that conspiracy theories are not unique to one side. If Kimmel were to go to one of those anti-Trump protests or ask liberal beachgoers similar questions, eventually he could get enough dumb answers to have a TV segment, but Kimmel won’t do that, because that wouldn’t fit the narrative he is seeking to build.

 Here is a transcript for the April 9 show:

ABC Jimmy Kimmel Live!

4/9/2025

JIMMY KIMMEL: Since he got back, the president has used his fat little Sharpie to sign over 100 executive orders. He signed a bunch of them today. One of the most notable of the executive orders was his order to disband the Department of Education. Now, we already know how his critics feel about that. But what do the folks who voted for Trump think about it? To find out, we went all the way to Florida, to the Gulf of America, to ask some of Trump’s bigliest fans what they think about the Department of Education.

INTERVIEWER: One thing that Trump wants to get rid of is the Department of Education. Do you support that?

MAN 1: Yeah.

INTERVIEWER: Have you heard about Trump wanting to close the Department of Education?

MAN 2: Yes.

INTERVIEWER: And what do you think about that?

MAN 2: I think it’s right. Put it back to the states.

INTERVIEWER: What do you think about his stance on the Department of Education? He wants to get rid of it.

MAN 3: You know, I’d love to be more educated on it, to give you a well-endowed answer.

INTERVIEWER: I want to do a fun, like, school quiz.

WOMAN 1: Sure.

INTERVIEWER: Can you name the first president of the U.S.?

WOMAN 1: The very first president? Was that Abraham Lincoln?

INTERVIEWER: What do the initials LBJ stand for?

MAN 4: LBJ?

INTERVIEWER: Yeah.

MAN 4: LeBron James?

WOMAN 2: Lyndon B. Johnson.

INTERVIEWER: What does the B stand for?

WOMAN 2: Nothing. Just B.

INTERVIEWER: Who wrote the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin?

MAN 5: Um — does anybody here know the answer — do you know the answer to that question?

INTERVIEWER: How many times has the U.S. fought in a World War?

WOMAN 3: Only World War II, so just one.

INTERVIEWER: When was the War of 1812?

WOMAN 4: Of 1812?

INTERVIEWER: Yeah.

WOMAN 4: Is that the Civil War?

INTERVIEWER: Who did the U.S. fight in the Civil War?

WOMAN 2: I don’t know.

INTERVIEWER: Who did the U.S. fight in the Civil War?

WOMAN 5: U.S. Civil War was — was it Mexico and –

INTERVIEWER: What happened on D-Day?

MAN 4: Kill all the aliens.

INTERVIEWER: Marie Antoinette famously said let them eat –

WOMAN 6: Let them eat — was she, people, was she like a cannibal?

INTERVIEWER: Do you know who shot Hitler?

MAN 6: Nobody knows who shot Hitler. It’s like— he may have killed himself. It’s kind of a mystery. I had a teacher tell me that he — he’s still alive, this is what he told me a couple years ago, he’s still alive, and he took a U-boat.

INTERVIEWER: A teacher in school? Who do you think that teacher voted for?

MAN 6: Trump, probably.

INTERVIEWER: Can you spell restaurant?

WOMAN 6: Yeah. R-E-S-T-R-U-A-R—wait. Restur—

MAN 6: R-E-S-T-U-R-A-N-T.

MAN 7: R-E-S-T-R-A-U-N-T. Restaurant. I think I forgot an E.

INTERVIEWER: How many sides does the Pentagon building have?

MAN 2: It should be ten.

INTERVIEWER: What are the first three digits of pi?

WOMAN 1: A, B, and C?

INTERVIEWER: What are the first three digits of pi?

WOMAN 5: I can see it, hold on. I cannot think of it. It’s been a minute.

INTERVIEWER: How do you spell pi?

WOMAN 5: As far as, as like, blueberry? P-Y-E.

INTERVIEWER: Elon Musk, he has 14 kids. He gives seven of his kids up for adoption. One to Angelina Jolie and two to science. Why does he have so many kids?

MAN 6: That’s a lot. I don’t know.

CNN’s Thunderdome, more commonly referred to as NewsNight with Abby Phillip, was particularly lively tonight. Given the issue array, there was bound to be fireworks. And sure enough, there were.

The show began with discussion of President Donald Trump’s decision to pause the global retaliatory tariffs and put pressure on China, and drifted to Greenland on account of their rare earth minerals. 

After responding to a personal insult, Scott Jennings gets accused of levying a personal insult pic.twitter.com/kZUTIzcKMk
— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) April 10, 2025

TIFFANY CROSS: It’s the colonizers attitude to say, I like it, I’m just going to steal it. Now, the fact of the matter is…

SCOTT JENNINGS: Steal what?

CROSS: In this new… land, land, you cannot just go and say, I like it, it’s mine now. It doesn’t work that way. Well, that that is what they’re trying to do. And in this new world order. Yeah, absolutely. When they’re looking at Greenland and say, I like it, I want to take it for mine. That is a very colonizer attitude.

(CROSSTALK)

JENNINGS: I have never, ever said we’re going to go to Greenland and quote, colonize it. Or steal it. That’s crazy.

CROSS: I’m not even talking about you. You’re not a member of government so you’re irrelevant at that point. I’m talking about the President of the United States.>> You got fired from your job.

(CROSSTALK)

JENNINGS: You got fired from your job, how relevant are you?

ANA NAVARRO: C’mon Scott…

JENNINGS: You want to insult me,,,

CROSS: Scott, if you want to engage in personal insults,

JENNINGS:I don’t. But you do. 

CROSS: What you lack in a legitimate point. You make up for it in your  personal-

JENNINGS: I don’t.

CROSS: Your personal insults. The point I am making is in this new world order, we are looking at countries, whether or not they’re an adversary or ally. It is being determined on what kind of deal we can get. And we cannot govern that way. 

JENNINGS: Why?

CROSS: We cannot legislate that way. We are increasingly isolated on the world stage. 

JENNINGS: No, we’re not.

CROSS: So if you want to engage in personal insults, I would reserve that for your party, 

JENNINGS: We’re not isolated.

(CROSSTALK)

Shortly thereafter, The View co-host Ana Navarro walked right into not one but two clownings by conservative commentator Scott Jennings:

After responding to a personal insult, Scott Jennings gets accused of levying a personal insult pic.twitter.com/kZUTIzcKMk
— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) April 10, 2025

ANA NAVARRO: Serious- I think he’s shown people that he’s crazy, that he’s mercurial. Honestly, if it was Kamala Harris behaving this way, they’d call her hormonal and hysterical, right? Look.

SCOTT JENNINGS: We’d have to get elected to be- well…

NAVARRO: Well, yes. And if she had been elected and she- and if Hillary Clinton had been elected, if any woman had been elected and been…been acting this way, they’d say it was menopause.

JENNINGS: She would have never stood up to China. So I think this is a mood issue, right?

The conversation on trade and tariffs dominated the show. On the panel was CNN Business editor Richard Quest, last seen bemoaning the potential tariffing of Tam Tams. Watch as Quest completely denies the existence of the 2022 recession:

CNN’s Richard Quest engages in gross recession denialism: “And people like myself did believe that there was going to be a U.S. recession, because we suddenly thought, you can’t go from zero to whatever percent and not have a recession. We didn’t because of the resilience of this… pic.twitter.com/YxHVwGCSzk
— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) April 10, 2025

ABBY PHILLIP:Did you recall a period of time when the markets believed, with this degree of certainty, that there was a recession coming in the calendar?

RICHARD QUEST: Yes.

JENNINGS: 2022.

QUEST: Yes. The walls-

JENNINGS: 2022.

QUEST: The walls, the walls. But it was for- it was- it was a much more, it was- it was a it was a slow burner in, in a sense. And it came about because of the Fed raising interest rates at such a precipitous rate that we’d never seen before. And people like myself did believe that there was going to be a U.S. recession, because we suddenly thought, you can’t go from zero to whatever percent and not have a recession. We didn’t because of the resilience of this extraordinary economy, which was able to keep going. But there wasn’t the level of chaos surrounding it. You had measured- they were very fast, faster than we’ve ever seen before. And yes, I thought there would be a recession. I thought, yeah.

ANA NAVARRO: But it wasn’t from that- by one man, but the president.

This is some premier recession denialism, as embodied by Quest. 2022 had two quarters of negative growth, the classic definition of a recession, but the media were no longer interested in actual facts. Here’s a reminder, via NPR:

And, finally, in the most heated exchange of the night, commentator Shermichael Singleton lets former MSNBC host Tiffany Cross have it over her continuous tone-policing and hectoring.

“NOBODY IS GOING TO DICTATE THE WAY I ANSWER QUESTIONS”: @MrShermichael Singleton blows the Thunderdome panel up pic.twitter.com/1G4l84Ta3w
— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) April 10, 2025

ABBY PHILLIP: He signed two executive orders ordering investigations, weaponizing his Justice Department against people who just disagree with him. How does that- how do you justify that?

SHERMICHAEL SINGLETON: You know, politically, my advice to to the president on this one would be continue to focus on strengthening the economy. You got to figure out a way to bring down costs. Keep doing what you’re doing as it pertains to immigration. We need to increase chip manufacturing within the United States. There are several political things that I. 

(CROSSTALK)

>PHILLIP: All right, Shermichael, I get it, I get it. Yes. He should focus on the economy. He should. But what do you think about the fact that he’s targeting his political enemies, using executive orders and telling his Justice Department.

SINGLETON: I just don’t focus on it.

(CROSSTALK)

SINGLETON: Ccan I answer?

CROSS:: You haven’t answered.

SINGLETON: Well.

CROSS: No, wait a minute. But you have not answered.

SINGLETON: But I did answer. I just didn’t answer the way you wanted me to answer. You don’t get to dictate my comments to my response on this show.

CROSS: You are not directed to the issue that she asked. And furthermore…

SINGLETON: …because my response was the focus should be…okay..

PHILLIP: Hang on one second

(CROSSTALK)

PHILLIP: Hang on one second. Tiffany, one second. I mean, Shermichael. You’re a friend of the show. You’re my friend. Please answer the question. I mean.

SINGLETON: I answered the question the way I want-

PHILLIP: But but no.

SINGLETON: No, no, I’m going to dictate the way I answer questions. On this show. You may not like the way I answered the question, but I gave an answer. No, I don’t like that. We’re not the question we’re not going to do dictating reply the way I want you to reply. Then just don’t ask me a question. If you’re not, if you don’t like my response, I mean, this is ridiculous, 

PHILLIP: Shermichael. You don’t get to…

SINGLETON: Do we not live in a democracy now?

PHILLIP: You don’t get to…

SINGLETON: I mean, we talked a lot about a democracy tonight. I gues just not on THIS show.

PHILLIP: You don’t get to just change the subject to. Avoid having to say something that might be perceived as negative about Donald Trump.

(CROSSTALK)

SINGLETON: You just didn’t like my answer to your question.

PHILLIP: That’s what- well, that’s what it seems like. If you were a politician, a regular person on the street would say, well that sounds like spin to me.

A man can only take so much, before he has to speak up. Demanding that he answer the question in a manner satisfactory to the rest of the panel was a bridge too far. 

Thunderdome was wild tonight.

 

NewsBusters just published a study demonstrating that ABC’s The View is a double-reinforced leftist bubble. Over the last three months, they welcomed on 63 guests pushing a liberal agenda, and zero conservatives or Republicans. Why would we do that?

Associate Editor Nick Fondacaro explains. Nick watches The View for us, and people like to joke that he should get hazard pay, or that it’s cruel and unusual punishment. But readers love to know what kind of claptrap is coming out of their mouths. These days, it’s become a double-reinforced liberal bubble of a show. Is the result a surprise? No, but the point of this is to underline how unanimous the whole show is.

The last-time The View spoke with a Republican politician that didn’t hate President Trump was former New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu on August 1, 2024; and before that it was Rep. Nancy Mace on October 2, 2023.

As Nick reported in a December 2023 exclusive from NewsBusters, The View rejected requests from Sen. Ted Cruz to come on the show and promote his book at the time. They can’t handle dissent!

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

On their Wednesday episode, ABC’s The View spewed their usual vitriol about the Trump administration, with Joy Behar especially going above and beyond. As the rest of the panel cheered her on, she spun an on-the-spot conspiracy theory, with zero to flimsy evidence, about Trump plotting to declare martial law and make himself a dictator. She threw that piece of fiction out there as though it were legitimate political commentary.

“[W]hat is his exact plan?” Behar demanded to know of Trump’s tariffs. Then, in answer to her own question, she declared: “He’s trying to destroy the country.”

Behar did not attempt to produce a shred of actual evidence for this accusation, but she didn’t let that stand in her way, and decided to weave a conspiracy theory out of whole cloth right there on the spot.

 

 

“Now, why’s he doing that?” she asked rhetorically. She then went on to manufacture an answer to her own question:

[F]irst of all- he- if he tanks the entire … the stock market, then all his billionaire friends can swoop in and buy everything low. That’s not an original idea.

Her apparent idea of evidence to that conspiracy theory was a Truth Social post by Trump stating, “A great time to buy.” “Hmm,” Behar emoted as if she was onto something; obtuse to the fact that Trump likely wouldn’t have to send out cryptic social media posts to communicate with his “billionaire friends.”

Although, she was actually correct that it was not an original idea, that same groundless assertion had in fact become pretty cliche among the left-wing media. However, she continued:

The other theory is from James Carville, which I think is interesting, that- he wants to stoke such instability and chaos to consolidate power for himself so that people start to really go nuts, which we’re starting to.

“No, we’re not,” Whoopi Goldberg cut in:

BEHAR: Well, people are starting to get mad.

GOLDBERG: Well, that’s good. You want them to get mad.

BEHAR: Yeah, yeah. But how- how mad will people get? And how broke will people get? And how many jobs will be lost? And then he can- he can say, ‘Well, there’s too much chaos, and now we’re going to have martial law in this country,” and he becomes a dictator. I mean- I don’t know- that may be out- out of the- bounds.

Many people would have thought that if ABC News wanted to be regarded as a place of reputable journalism, hurling wild, fabricated accusations that the sitting president was scheming to destroy the nation he had been elected to lead was indeed out of bounds. 

Goldberg didn’t seem to think so, though. “Anything is possible,” she assented.

“So as a- just as a- somebody watching,” Behar concluded, “that’s what I see.”

Granted, what she saw was wild conjecture that she had just made up on the spot, but apparently that wasn’t an obstacle to blurting it out for the world to hear, if it fit the favored storyline.

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

ABC’s The View
04/09/2025
11:04 AM

(…)

JOY BEHAR: Well, first of all, in order to kiss his ass, you have to get Mike Johnson out of the way-

[LAUGHTER]

BEHAR: -That’s number one. Number two, what is his exact- plan? Is what I want to know. 

WHOOPI GOLDBERG: Yes.

BEHAR: I was home- I had a cold yesterday- so I was home watching everything. 

And I’m thinking, ‘He’s trying to destroy the country. Now, why is he doing that?’ Just as a person in the- in the audience- like- watching this.

SUNNY HOSTIN: Yeah. Yeah.

BEHAR: So, there’s a couple of theories-

GOLDBERGi: Yes, and the-

BEHAR: -Like, what’s — first of all- he- if he tanks the entire- what do you call it-

HOSTIN: Um- Economy? Stock market?.

BEHAR: -The stock market-

GOLDBERG: -The stock market, then what happens?

BEHAR: -Then all his billionaire friends can swoop in and buy everything low-

HOSTIN: -Low-

BEHAR: -That’s not an original idea. That’s- Hakeem Jeffries said that.

HOSTIN: Yeah.

BEHAR: And where I- and the other thing- and in fact- today, on truth social, he wrote- Trump wrote, ‘A great time to buy.’ Hmm.

HOSTIN: Ah.

BEHAR: The other theory is from James Carville, which I think is interesting, that- he wants to stoke such instability and chaos to consolidate power for himself-

HOSTIN: Uh-huh?

BEHAR: -so that people start to really go nuts, which we’re starting to-

GOLDBERG: No, we’re not.

BEHAR: Well, people are starting to get mad.

GOLDBERG: Well, that’s good. You want them to get mad.

BEHAR: Yeah, yeah. But how- how mad will people get? And how broke will people get? and how many jobs will be lost? 

And then he can- he can say, ‘Well, there’s too much chaos, and now we’re going to have martial law in this country,” and he becomes a dictator. I mean- I don’t know- that may be out- out of the- bounds-

GOLDBERG: Anything is possible.

BEHAR: -But it’s possible.

GOLDBERG: Yeah.

BEHAR: So as a- just as a- somebody watching that’s what I see.

(…)

In the past few days, two MSNBC regulars have aimed the kind of race-obsessed vitriol at Republican voters that the liberal news network has long been known for, claiming that the 77 million Americans who voted for Donald Trump are racists.

On Monday’s Deadline: White House, during a discussion of President Trump’s tariffs and the court battle over whether the administration can be forced to retrieve a deported illegal alien who was sent to a prison in El Salvador, contributor Eddie Glaude began ranting against the 77 million who voted for Trump in 2024:

I’ve gotten to the point where I’m asking myself this question. Wide aperture for a quick second. I don’t know what it’s going to take for the American people — for 78 [sic] million Americans to deal with what motivated them to make the choice that the — to elect this man again — to make the choice that will allow these people to undermine every fundamental assumption we have that you can just be disappeared, and then they could argue that, you know, a court is getting in the way of their ability to exercise, you know, foreign policy in some ways, right?

He continued:

I don’t know what it’s going to take to get 78 [sic] million Americans to deal with what motivated them to make this choice. And the choice that they’ve made is to literally throw the republic into the trash bin. And this is just one example. The tariffs is another, right? They’re — they made the choice. Now, what is behind it? I — we have to grapple with it because it’s the snake — it’s — it’s the — it’s the beast coiled up in the heart — in the bosom of the country as Fredrick Douglass said. And the fact that they are doubling down on this shows you what kind of human beings they actually are.

After host Nicolle Wallace prodded him, “Say more,” he added:

We chose a felon who is more interested in loyalty — who’s more interested in retribution — who’s more interested in grift than in democracy. And we chose a felon because we didn’t want to elect a black woman. So to read that — to actually explicate that is to say, “We would rather destroy the republic than for that to have happened.” And until we grapple with that, there’s no amount of protesting I could do — there’s no amount of — of resistance that could come into play to actually force 78 [sic] million people to grapple with what motivated them to put themselves in this position.

A few days earlier on Saturday’s The Katie Phang Show, The Nation’s Elie Mystal casually labeled Trump voters as “white supremacists” as he promoted his desire to allow any eligible voter to vote without having to register first:

I’m focused not on the 77 million white supremacists that voted for Donald Trump. I’m not — I can’t help them, right? That is between them and their God. I’m worried about the 90 million people who sat on their couch — the 90 million eligible voters who sat on their couch and didn’t take a stand on fascism or no.

Transcripts follow:

MSNBC’s Deadline: White House

April 7, 2025

5:28 p.m. Eastern

EDDIE GLAUDE, MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR: You know, I think, ultimately, you know, they, they follow the rule that, “Don’t own a mistake — double down.”

NICOLLE WALLACE: But they already did — they said it was a mistake.

GLAUDE: That was the mistake — that was the mistake, right? So I — I — I’m just — I’ve gotten to the point where I’m asking myself this question. Wide aperture for a quick second. I don’t know what it’s going to take for the American people — for 78 million Americans to deal with what motivated them to make the choice that the — to elect this man again — to make the choice that will allow these people to undermine every fundamental assumption we have that you can just be disappeared, and then they could argue that, you know, a court is getting in the way of their ability to exercise, you know, foreign policy in some ways, right?

I don’t under — we — I don’t know what it’s going to take to get 78 million Americans to deal with what motivated them to make this choice. And the choice that they’ve made is to literally throw the republic into the trash bin. And this is just one example. The tariffs is another, right? They’re — they made the choice. Now, what is behind it? I — we have to grapple with it because it’s the snake — it’s — it’s the — it’s the beast coiled up in the heart — in the bosom of the country as Fredrick Douglass said. And the fact that they are doubling down on this shows you what kind of human beings they actually are.

WALLACE: Say more.

GLAUDE: We chose a felon who is more interested in loyalty — who’s more interested in retribution — who’s more interested in grift than in democracy. And we chose a felon because we didn’t want to elect a black woman. So to read that — to actually explicate that is to say, “We would rather destroy the republic than for that to have happened.” And until we grapple with that, there’s no amount of protesting I could do — there’s no amount of — of resistance that could come into play to actually force 78 million people to grapple with what motivated them to put themselves in this position.

(…)

MSNBC’s The Katie Phang Show

April 5, 2025

12:33 p.m. Eastern

KATIE PHANG: And, you know, something that you said that also resonated with me, Elie, is you said the left has to take a page from the right’s playbook and to bring in the hammer. I would actually amend that a little bit and say we have to bring in the sledge hammer based upon what you just said that the Republicans do. What does that look like, though? Because there’s a big game and a big talk with messaging, and yet the actual implementation of something always seems to be lacking. 

ELIE MYSTAL, THE NATION MAGAZINE: Democrats always say they want to protect voting rights, right? And that’s great. I also want to protect voting rights.

PHANG: Why not?

MYSTAL: Your previous guest, Marc Elias, has dedicated his life to protecting voting rights, but I want to do more than that. I want to expand voting rights. I want to make voting. I want to make voting actually easier for people. So one of the — the first chapter in my book is about repealing voter registration laws — not voter eligibility requirements. I’m not crazy, right? We should have eligibility requirements, you know. If you have, let’s say, an age limit, right — you got to be 18 to vote — I’m generally cool with that. I don’t want my nine-year-old voting — that would be a bad idea. I’ve talked to him, right? However, once you are eligible — once you have met the eligibility requirements, there is no need to have a secondary hurdle to pre-register before you go vote. If you’re eligible, you should be able to walk into a polling booth and vote. It’s that simple.

And it’s so simple that this isn’t my idea. This is the idea of most democracies around the world. Everybody else besides us either has automatic registration, mandatory registration, or same-day registration. We’re the only ones that have this archaic, asinine system where you have to register — pre-register 10 days, two weeks, a month in advance of the actual election, right?

So I’m kind of, with that suggestion, I’m focused not on the 77 million white supremacists that voted for Donald Trump. I’m not — I can’t help them, right? That is between them and their God. I’m worried about the 90 million people who sat on their couch — the 90 million eligible voters who sat on their couch and didn’t take a stand on fascism or no. Right? And I’m thinking that one of the ways to motivate them is to make it just a little bit easier, and getting rid of pre-registration requirements makes it just a little bit easier for people who, again, are already eligible to vote — have already met the eligibility requirements. We’re not talking about noncitizens voting — we’re not talking about undocumented people voting. We’re talking about eligible American citizens. Why should they — why should you have to pre-register in order to exercise your franchise inside this alleged democracy?

Wednesday’s CBS Mornings Plus showed its thoughts on whether borders and citizenship actually mean anything as they dedicated a segment to a Columbia University Law professor informing illegal immigrants to cheer up and not as fearful because everyone enjoys the same rights under the Constitution, no matter whether you immigrated legally, we’re born in this country, or came illegally at anytime under any pretense.

“Recent deportations have fueled fear, uncertainty, and misinformation around traveling. We’ll talk to an expert so you know the facts and your rights,” featured co-host Vladimir Duthiers boasted in the “Eye Opener,” making it seem like CBS is concerned with giving safe harbor to illegal immigrants.

 

 

No word on whether CBS journalists will help them evade Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) or do future segments fawning over helping illegal aliens avoid capture like The Washington Post did.

Co-host Adriana Diaz set up the interview with Columbia’s Elora Mukherjee by saying this week’s CBS News Confirmed segment would discuss “travel and immigration, sifting through so called advice online to get to the truth about your rights” since “videos have gone viral on social media talking about experiences going through U.S. Customs.”

Asked “what should eveyrone know,” Mukherjee said she had been “inundated with calls from students, scholars, researchers, ordinary people who are wondering how to stay safe in this very difficult and unprecedented moment,” wondering if their social media posts or political activities would put them in danger.

Mukherjee more or less explained those concerned shouldn’t be and continue going about their lives, holding whatever views they so choose:

In terms of what everyone should know, people should know that the U.S. Constitution applies to them regardless of their immigration status. Everyone has a right to remain silent, regardless of immigration status, if they’re approached by law enforcement officers or immigration officers. The First Amendment protects the speech of all people regardless of their immigration status. And due process applies to people who are lawful permanent residents and visa holders to a certain extent. So people should know that they should be taking steps to stay safe and that the U.S. Constitution does apply.

Duthiers shifted to green card and long-term visa holders (i.e. those “in the process of becoming a U.S. citizen”) and asked again for Mukherjee to reiterate: “Your point being that the U.S. Constitution covers everybody.”

After saying “yes,” she added the caveat one’s “level of due process…may depend on the length of time that they’ve been in the United States” with the particular dividing line being two years with those above that line safer in demanding “a hearing before they are subject to deportation.”

The conversation then turned to political speech with Mukherjee unsurprisingly defending the anti-Semitic mobs that took over her university (click “expand”):

DIAZ: So, professor, you’re talking about people’s due process rights, their First Amendment rights. But we are seeing in the news students, including former students at Columbia, who are being detained and their lawyers are saying it’s unlawfully, it’s — it’s in violation of their constitutional rights. What should people make of what you’re saying people’s rights are? And then what they’re seeing happening.

MUKHERJEE: The executive branch right now is pushing the bounds of executive power beyond that, that is allowed by the U.S. Constitution pushing beyond the checks and balances system that is set up by our laws and our constitutional democracy. We are at a moment that is unprecedented in terms of the executive branch testing the limits of the judiciary. And in the coming days and weeks, we will see whether and to what extent the executive branch respects the law that is set forth by the federal courts.

Before thanking Mukherjee for having given viewers “really important information,” Duthiers fretted “Customs and Border Protection agents do have the right to search your phone if they ask you when you’re coming into the United States” and wondered if those entering the U.S. should wipe their social media or fall back on the First Amendment.

Mukherjee provided one last dose of assurance that “[t]he First Amendment protects everyone who is within the United States” although “[i]t’s more complicated at ports of entry” such as airports.

To see the relevant CBS transcript from April 9, click here.

In late February, Dr. Mahendra Amin settled his defamation suit with MSNBC (for an undisclosed amount) after they falsely claimed that he had performed medically unnecessary hysterectomies on illegal immigrant women in the custody of ICE, erroneously dubbing him “the uterus collector.” NewsBusters recently spoke with Dr. Amin’s lead counsel Georgia State Representative Stacey Evans (D) and co-counsel Scott Grubman about the case and the future of defamation law.

Evans, who has been practicing law for 22 years and defamation law for 15, is an elected Democrat in the Georgia House of Representatives and was shocked when learning about the accusations against her client. “[W]hen I had heard the allegations and, you know, they sounded horrible” and “particularly stood out because the allegations against him were so egregious,” she said.

Even with the political nature of the case and the on-going election year at the time, Evans said she didn’t shy away from it because “we need to hold [MSNBC] accountable for it” and get the truth out:

I have learned, you know, that the media doesn’t always get it right. And so while I think Scott [Grubman] and his partner may have thought at first that I would shy away from this one because of my politics and because that we were in the middle of an election cycle. I said, ‘no, absolutely not.’ If they got this wrong, we need to hold them accountable for it. And while I knew it was going to be challenging because of the fact that the media had already run him through the wringer, so to speak, I was very glad to, to dig in and get to the truth.

Grubman noted that politics played a role in why the story against his client gained traction. “It is a political issue, and we believe that a big part of why all these allegations were made, and then … it spread so much through the media, is because of all the political stuff going on,” he said.

On Dr. Amin’s politics, Grubman noted that his client “is not a political person in any way, shape, or form.” Adding: “He doesn’t get involved in politics … he practices medicine, he keeps his head down and that’s it.”

What happened was MSNBC ignored “an alarm bell going off to them that they did not have this story right,” Evans explained. “And in the face of all of that, they broadcast to the world that Dr. Amin was this evil caricature of a doctor in his basement collecting uteruses.”

Explaining how the MSNBC’s lies hurt Dr. Amin, Evans said the false reports, “really cut to the heart of who he is as a person, which is a very caring, very dedicated, very selfless doctor.”

Dr. Amin’s practices in a very rural part of southeast Georgia, which Evans explained to NewsBusters as “very remote, very rural area” with “a lot of poverty” that Dr. Amin very much wanted to help. “[H]e treats patients regardless of the ability to pay, and he’s often been the only OBGYN in the county and sometimes in a pretty large radius of the area of Georgia,” she stated.

Both Evans and Grubman pointed out that MSNBC’s false claims particularly hurt him because they accused him of targeting migrants when he was an immigrant himself.

The reporting also led to Dr. Amin receiving death threats, as recounted by Evans:

The fact that he received death threats, that he was being followed, that even when he wasn’t being followed, he felt like he was being followed. He was compared to Nazi doctors experimenting on patients. He was called some of the vilest names that I think any of us would probably ever even imagine being called and that was his life. I mean, it was awful. It affected his, his family, his staff, because they were getting harassing phone calls at work. And of course the toll that it took on him affected everyone around him. Because Doctor Amin is a selfless doctor whose dedicated himself to a very underserved area of the country and the state of Georgia.

Looking up Google reviews of Dr. Amin’s practice, NewsBusters can verify that people were indeed saying very heinous things about him while trying to sink him. “He’s a eugenicist and sterilizes migrant women without telling them in order to pad his wallet. Pure evil,” one reviewer wrote. Another unrionically proclaimed “Do your research!!” before going on a 345-word tirade against him parroting the same lies MSNBC pushed.

Regarding some of those statements made by MSNBC, Grubman pointed that Judge Lisa Godbey Wood found in summary judgment that “multiple of these statements, crucial statements made by MSNBC and Rachel Maddow on the air, were false as a matter of law.”

The media outlets that were reaching out to Dr. Amin to comment essentially wanted him to break HIPPA laws. They wanted him to answer the allegations they were baselessly leveling against him, but in order to do that he needed to break doctor-patient confidentially, which he refused to do.

When asked if we’re seeing more defamation suits against the media these days, Evans wasn’t sure about raw numbers but did think more outlets were willing to call each other out over it. She was also seeing more “good faith” efforts to have certain aspects of defamation law better defined and work for victims:

I do think that folks are getting braver at trying cases and pushing for good faith changes in the law and standards. And I think you’ve seen a lot of effort to try to have higher courts look again at actual malice standards and private versus public figures and how we treat people differently, and what that actually means. You’re seeing a lot more, you know, nerdy academic discussion of the law and what have we put in place and should we have and should that change.

So, I do think you’re getting a lot more discussion about defamation cases. I’m not sure that we’re actually having more defamation cases.

Evans was happy to see those efforts taking place “because it is important for folks to know that that old adage that you learned as a kid, sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me. They do. They do hurt and it’s real pain, and it’s real damage.”

“And in today’s day and age, because of the fact that things can get amplified so quick and go around the world so fast, it can ruin you in a second, and that matters,” she declared. “And people should be held accountable when they are so reckless with their words that they destroy somebody’s reputation, which you work your whole life to develop, and the fact that someone can destroy it in a second. Should not go unchecked.”