Newsbusters

Sometimes there are early April stories so absurd that you hope they are just April Fool’s pranks, but unfortunately the idea that Netflix might decide to go with a female Aslan in their upcoming adaptations of C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia appears to be very real.

The rumor had been percolating on the internet for a few days, but Deadline confirmed the news on Thursday, “Oscar winner Meryl Streep is in talks to play Aslan the Great Lion in Greta Gerwig and Netflix’s Narnia movie, we have confirmed with sources.”

Andreas Wiseman goes on to report, “We understand that they’re not quite at the offer stage yet, however.” 

Weisman observed, “In the novels, Aslan is a talking lion who serves as Narnia’s guardian and a guide for the human children. Generally portrayed as a male, Aslan was created as an allegory for Jesus by author C.S. Lewis.”

It is important to note that Wiseman does caution that not all internet rumors have been confirmed, “Nexus Point News was first with the Streep talks and also reported that the film will adapt the sixth novel in the Narnia series, The Magician’s Nephew, which chronologically takes place first in the series. The novel tells the origin of Narnia and is centered on Digory Kirke and Polly Plummer, who discover the magical world through Digory’s uncle’s magic. The site reports that Aslan will be female in the Gerwig adaptation. We haven’t had those plot details confirmed yet.”

Weisman is hardly the first to incorrectly refer to Aslan as an allegory for Jesus. Lewis, such a stickler for word choice that he wrote an entire book on the subject, wrote in a letter, “The Narnian books are not as much allegory as supposal. ‘Suppose there were a Narnian world and it, like ours, needed redemption. What kind of incarnation and Passion might Christ be supposed to undergo there?’”

In other words, Aslan is not a symbolic representation of Jesus; he is Jesus, and Jesus is the Son of God. He literally lived as a male. Turning Aslan into a female isn’t like rebooting Ghostbusters or the Ocean’s series; it is fundamentally changing not just Lewis’s work but the Christian religion. It would be like turning Lucy Pevensie, one of children’s literature’s greatest female characters and someone who was possibly modeled after a real 15th century saint and has similarities to Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Jesus, into a boy.

There is no reason for Gerwig and Netflix to turn Aslan into a female. The Magician’s Nephew is, in part, about three worlds in various stages of decay. Charn has been destroyed through Jadis’s pride and lust for absolute power; Narnia is a new world that, despite Digory’s importation of Jadis, is initially innocent about evil and will remain “for many hundred years yet shall be a merry land”; and ours is somewhere in-between with a warning to the reader about our world going the way of Charn. If Netflix chooses to turn Aslan into a female, it will have missed the entire point of the book and the series. The good news is there is still time for them to stop this plan before it wrecks the whole series.

One need not rely on experts to know tariffs are typically not a good policy. Going back to Adam Smith writing “The Wealth of Nations,” we know it is better to manufacture cheap commodities in areas that can make them cheaply so that wealthier nations can spend their wealth more productively. Adding tariffs historically disrupts that balance and often causes economic slowdowns.

President Donald Trump thinks the United States needs to rebuild its manufacturing capacity. In some cases that is true. We should, for national security reasons, be making microchips, weapons, planes, ships and pharmaceuticals in the United States. But we do not need to make everything.

Former President Joe Biden wanted coal miners to learn to code and transition to newer jobs. Donald Trump does not want to transition Americans to higher technical jobs, but to instead create less technical jobs that people are not currently doing. It is a progressive approach. Instead of “learn to code” it is “make the t-shirt.”

What Trump supporters miss is that the United States outsourced its less technical manufacturing to third-world nations and now manufactures more technical goods here. In Northwest Georgia, Vice President JD Vance lamented the closure of a t-shirt manufacturing facility. He wanted it restored. What he missed is that while that plant closed, the carpet manufacturer expanded. Not only is carpet manufacturing more technical than t-shirt manufacturing, but it pays better.

Outside of limited areas related to national security, we do not need to create new manufacturing in this country. Labor and production costs are higher than abroad. It costs $70 an hour in labor costs to make a car in the United States compared to $6 in Mexico. Adding tariffs to make foreign cars more expensive does not make American-made cars less expensive. It makes it more expensive for the poor and middle class to buy a new car.

Companies have no incentive to repatriate much manufacturing because the tariffs might change. In four years, with a new president, they could go away. If it takes five years to zone, approve and construct a new plant in the United States, and then train a workforce that may or may not exist at the time, why not keep money in an interest-bearing account and see the political fallout of tariffs instead? It makes more economic sense for a lot of companies to sit on the sidelines than reinvest with so much uncertainty around the whims of a single man.

The United States would instead deregulate. Lower the costs for businesses to manufacture in the United States. Reduce the minimum wage. Reduce regulatory compliance costs. Reduce environmental costs and zoning burdens to build. Reduce and simplify the tax code. We may never get back the cheaply produced t-shirts, but other manufacturers could be incentivized to come back through lower development, regulatory, and tax costs that offset shipping and foreign development costs.

It is a myth that other countries have piled high tariffs on the United States. President Trump’s chart of those tariffs, for example claiming a 90% tariff from Vietnam, is fictional. Many of the countries accused of high tariffs have free trade agreements with the United States and have zero tariffs on our imports.

The President, using fiction to sell the largest tax increase on Americans since 1968, should rethink his plan. Cut taxes, do not raise them. Deregulate instead of expanding regulatory compliance costs related to tariffs. Be strategic with tariffs, not broad. Target China, certainly, but do not punish countries that would be our allies against China. Understand that, contrary to Vice President Vance’s claims, Americans do want cheap toasters because then they have money to spend on their children’s education, their homes, vacations and more.

President Trump and his supporters have decided the burden of leading the world is too great and we are overextended. They have not contemplated the costs of not leading the world, which would be higher. And, in the meantime, the people who scream that we cannot manage the whole world have decided to start a trade war against every other nation. There is a better way.

The Nation justice correspondent, frequent MSNBC guest, and all around crazy person Elie Mystal took his book tour to The Breakfast Club podcast on Thursday. The premise for Mystal’s book is the laughable premise that every law passed prior to 1965 is unconstitutional, but also that the constitution is “a piece of crap.”

Mystal began with a terrible analogy, “When South Africa got over apartheid, did they just go back to their Afrikaner racist constitution and be like, ‘Oh, we just need a couple amendments, we just need a couple of changes here to make way.’”

 

 

Answering his own question, Mystal continued, “No! They threw the whole thing out and started again, this time asking everybody, this time having a completely new delegation of all the people of South Africa, not just the white folks, but not no white folks, and they came up with a new constitution. It’s one of the reasons why the South African constitution is generally thought of as one of the best constitutions in the world and ours continues to be a piece of crap.”

Mystal didn’t make the usual argument that the three-fifths compromise was wrong or anything like that; he said it “continues” to be bad, so what about our constitution makes it a “piece of crap”? Is it the separation of powers? Federalism? The Bill of Rights? Limited government power? Those would be weird things for a progressive to complain about in the age of Donald Trump.

Ultimately, it appears Mystal just wants his policy preferences enshrined as constitutional mandates. DJ Envy asked him, “So what laws would you kick out immediately? What laws are you seeing that needs to get the fuck out of here?”

Echoing a point he made on The View, Mystal’s first instinct was to go for voter registration laws, “Yeah, so the first one I have in my book is that I want to eliminate every single voter registration law, all of them. All of them in every state are bad. That’s different than voter eligibility, right?”

Mystal further compared voter registration laws to a scenario where, “the government says ‘No, you can’t fish there,’ and I say, ‘Why?’ They say, ‘Because the Loch Ness Monster might get ya.’ Get out of my face with that. Shut up, that’s stupid.

If one assumes, for the sake of discussion, that he gets his way and automatic registration for everyone who is eligible becomes the law, how do election authorities verify people are eligible? Finally, the Loch Ness Monster doesn’t exist, but Mystal’s instance that voter fraud is basically nonexistent is because there are laws against it, not because it is a mythical being.

Here is a transcript for the April 3 show:

The Breakfast Club

4/3/2025

ELIE MYSTAL: When South Africa got over apartheid, did they just go back to their Afrikaner racist constitution and be like, ‘Oh, we just need a couple amendments, we just need a couple of changes here to make way.’

No! They threw the whole thing out and started again, this time asking everybody, this time having a completely new delegation of all the people of South Africa, not just the white folks, but not no white folks, and they came up with a new constitution. It’s one of the reasons why the South African constitution is generally thought of as one of the best constitutions in the world and ours continues to be a piece of crap.

DJ ENVY: So what laws would you kick out immediately? What laws are you seeing that needs to get the fuck out of here?”

MYSTAL: Yeah, so the first one I have in my book is that I want to eliminate every single voter registration law, all of them. All of them in every state are bad. That’s different than voter eligibility, right?

I think we can all agree that there should be eligibility requirements like an age requirement, right? You have to be 18 to vote. I might say 16, but I’m not going to say 8, right? I got an 8-year old—we don’t want—no. They’re not ready for that, right?

That’s a voter eligibility requirement, but once we—once your eligible, there’s no reason for you to have to pre-register in order to execute your franchise. You’re eligible to vote, you should be to just rock to up to the polls and vote. Again, I didn’t make that up. That’s what they do in nearly every other democracy. Nearly, every other democracy either has mandatory registration, automatic registration, or same day registration.

What we do with this bullcrap of, like, having to show up 10 days before, a month before in some places in order to pre-register before you’re—we’re alone basically in the modern world in terms of people who do that. So, we can just get rid of all of them. We can just get rid of all of them.

And people will say, like, “Oh, well, we can’t do that because of voter fraud.” Right? Well, first of all, and I know this is going to be hard for some listeners who spend a lot of time listening to Republican lies, but voter fraud does not exist.

CHARLAMAGNE THA GOD: I loved how you broke that down in your book. It’s loud and clear.

MYSTAL: Voter fraud just doesn’t exist. It’s not a real thing. We shouldn’t make laws based on protecting us from things that don’t exist, right? An analogy I’ve made is like if let’s say I wanted to go fishing and I want to fishing in that lake, the government says “No, you can’t fish there,” and I say “Why?” they say, “Because the Loch Ness Monster might get ya.” Get out of my face with that. Shut up, that’s stupid.

A very interesting exchange on last night’s CNN NewsNight With Abby Phillip (AKA The Thunderdome) proved that a worthy argument can be undermined by an ineffective spokesperson. In this case, a point on the everyday effects of tariffs on imported goods that ended with Scott Jennings standing tall in defense of American snack foods.

Watch as CNN Business editor Richard Quest makes one of the weirder and tone-deaf arguments against tariffs to air on American cable television- you’ll pay more for high-end water:

THIS IS CINEMA: CNN Business editor Richard Quest trots out fancy fu-fu water and Australian snacks as examples of things that will spike with tariffs pic.twitter.com/0EL7bvxJ62
— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) April 4, 2025

RICHARD QUEST: This was America’s investors and the world’s investors, if you look at other markets, basically saying they are terrified at the way in which the United States is unilaterally reworking the global trading system. I’ve got a couple of examples, if I may. Here we go. This is a bottle of San Pellegrino. Now, of course, there are plenty of U.S. domestic options as well. This is going to go up by 20% because it comes from Italy. Therefore, the E.U. If you want Fiji water- it’s a bit of a luxury product, it’s quite good. This is going to go up over 30% because of where it comes from. And good old fashioned Tim Tams from Australia.

ABBY PHILLIP: I see the package has been broken into, because they’re- they’re so good.

QUEST: This didn’t stand a chance. The Tim Tams of Australia, which is a wonderful biscuit, these are going to go up by 10% because they’re imported. Now, by the way, these just came from the- the deli across the street along with everything else. There are alternatives. But if you extrapolate all of this into all our individual products, the short answer to- the long answer to your short question: we’re all paying it.

How many working-class Americans regularly consume fu-fu drinking water from the pristine springs of Europe or Fiji? How many struggling Americans count on imported Australian biscuits, deliciousness notwithstanding, as a daily staple? Hearing Quest rant about these items, one is reminded about Barack Obama whining about the price of arugula (or Dr. Oz about crudités so save yourself your whatabouts) at a town hall event…IN IOWA. Whatever point Quest may have wanted to make about tariffs was undone by his tone-deaf execution.

This prompted conservative mainstay Scott Jennings to respond accordingly:

Scott Jennings strikes a blow for American snacks pic.twitter.com/NMVwgshpQN
— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) April 4, 2025

SCOTT JENNINGS: One of the arguments the president is making is that it does actually make some sense to try to make some things in the United States that we outsource long ago, and I don’t know what you have against the Keebler elves of Battle Creek, Michigan, but I’ll take them. I’ll take them over your Tim Tams any day. They’re Americans. Are we trying to put them out? Are we trying to put them out of business over there, Richard? I don’t understand.

(CROSSTALK)

QUEST: I’ll pay good money- I’ll pay good money to charity to see you eat the chocolate biscuit.

JENNINGS: I’m sure it’s delicious. But it’s just not Keebler.

That exchange right there almost perfectly encapsulated the current discussion on trade. And then as now, the American stood tall- whether for manufacturing or, in the case of Jennings, the Keeble elves of Battle Creek, Michigan.

BONUS COVERAGE: Watch as Jennings pitches a remake of…SNOW WHITE

On tonight’s Thunderdome Nightcap, in honor of the Naked Gun trailer: proposed remakes. @ScottJenningsKY’s? SNOW WHITE 😂😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/SMQLxp0CHw
— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) April 4, 2025
 

A recent report from the American Enterprise Institute summarizes results from the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress — also known as the nation’s report card.

The test, given every two years, reports scores of our nation’s children in reading and math at the fourth grade and eighth grade levels.

AEI characterizes the most recent results as a “five-alarm fire.” I call it simply pathetic.

In 2024, 40% of fourth graders scored below “basic level” in reading. This is 25% worse than 2013, when 32% scored below “basic level.”

NAEP rates scores at three levels: basic, proficient and advanced.

It defines “basic” as “partial mastery of the knowledge and skills that are fundamental for proficient work.”

Among Black fourth graders, 56% scored below “basic.”

In eighth grade math, 39% were below basic. Among Black eighth graders, 56% were below basic.

Not only are scores horrible, but performance over the years has gotten decidedly worse.

One of the beauties of America’s free enterprise system is failure is punished and purged, and success is celebrated and rewarded.

But this doesn’t happen in socialism. It doesn’t happen when markets are controlled by politics and not by business and the desires of consumers freely expressed.

Only in markets where competition does not exist, where products are sustained and perpetuated by political power and not by the desires of consumers, is failure perpetuated.

How can we possibly be allowing this to happen in our most precious product — education?

Columbia Law School professor Philip Hamburger wrote recently about how, early in the last century, one of the great advocates of federal control of education was the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan wanted control of our culture and wanted our schools to become factories for their bigoted view of the world.

Today the massive teachers unions — the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers — aspire to the same control over education as the Klan did in the 1920s.

Except rather than wanting all Americans to be white Protestants, which is what the Klan wanted, the teachers unions want a culture purged of the Bible, purged of biblical truth, purged of the traditional values of households headed by a mother and father with children educated to look to the Ten Commandments for their rules in life. Teachers unions want a culture defined by woke ideology.

Although the NAEP measures reading and math to score our education system, education is about more than reading and math.

Education is about the transmission of values, transmission of what one generation understands as true and false, good and evil, right and wrong, to the next generation.

We cannot, in our free country, force the Bible and Christianity. But we also cannot have a reality, as we have today, where every parent does not have a choice to send their child to a school that teaches these truths.

The Wall Street Journal recently ran an article headlined “American Women Are Giving Up on Marriage.” The article reports that in 2023, 51.4% of women 18-40 were single, compared to 41.8% in 2000. In 2024, per the article, 39% of women 18-29 identified as liberal, up from 32% in 2014.

This is a great success story of teachers union-controlled public education.

President Donald Trump is 100% on the right track to want to shut down the teachers union-inspired enterprise called the United States Department of Education.

The Department of Education has some 4,000 employees and a discretionary budget of around $80 billion. The 4,000 should be immediately terminated. There are some 50 million children in public schools K-12. The $80 billion could provide a $1,500 scholarship voucher to each of these children to attend whatever private school their parents choose.

Let’s end socialism and start a free market in America’s most precious product — education.

Star Parker is founder of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education. Her recent book, “What Is the CURE for America?” is available now. To find out more about Star Parker and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

CBS’s outgoing host of After Midnight, Taylor Tomlinson, continued to display her infatuation with alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson assassin and terrorist Luigi Mangione on Wednesday’s show. After a monologue discussing the latest trends in men’s fashion, Tomlinson put up a photoshopped image of Mangione, claiming, “I’m just glad that the internet has shown men how to attract women. It’s easy; just dress like this.”

The first trend was the idea that men wear shorts when they feel confident about the economy. Referencing a video she played earlier in the monologue, Tomlinson declared:

“I’ll be honest, the truth is I don’t know if this is a good measure for the economy or not, but we had to write jokes about it because this morning I got caught watching the shorts video and I had to be like, ‘It’s for work. I’m learning about thighs, I mean guys, I mean the economy. Shut the door! Shut the door behind you!’ Obviously, our economy is in a bad place right now, so I am asking every American man to do their part. Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what your thighs can do for your country. 

 

 

Moving on to the second trend, Tomlinson referenced an article from the Guardian, “In other men’s fashion news, the biggest trend is now ‘slutty little glasses.’ Seen this? Yeah, the little wire-framed glasses, described in this article as “barely there” are considered the hot new accessory for men to wear. And I definitely get this. If a man is wearing glasses, I assume he can read. 

Tomlinson added, “That’s how low the bar has gotten for men. Like oh, my god, it is so hot that you are literate. There is nothing hotter than a guy with an elongated attention span who knows how to use it. Am I right? Am I right?”

Concluding, Tomlinson put up a picture of Mangione in his orange prison jumpsuit surrounded by police officers, edited to turn his pants into shorts and to include the glasses in question, and declared, “It’s also the opposite of the movie trope of a girl taking off her glasses and magically becoming hotter. Yeah, because men like it when girls are impaired and can’t see through their lies. Honestly, I’m just glad that the internet has shown men how to attract women. It’s easy, just dress like this.”

It may be hard for a show that will be cancelled after a year and a half on the air to have a defining legacy, but After Midnight’s will be the host’s bizarre quest to turn an alleged assassin and terrorist into a sex symbol.

Here is a transcript for the April 2-taped show:

CBS After Midnight

4/3/2025

12:40 AM ET

TAYLOR TOMLINSON: I’ll be honest, the truth is I don’t know if this is a good measure for the economy or not, but we had to write jokes about it because this morning I got caught watching the shorts video and I had to be like, “It’s for work. I’m learning about thighs, I mean guys, I mean the economy. Shut the door! Shut the door behind you!”

Obviously, our economy is in a bad place right now, so I am asking every American man to do their part. Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what your thighs can do for your country. 

In other men’s fashion news, the biggest trend is now “slutty little glasses.” Seen this? Yeah, the little wire-framed glasses, described in this article as “barely there” are considered the hot new accessory for men to wear. And I definitely get this. If a man is wearing glasses, I assume he can read. 

That’s how low the bar has gotten for men. Like oh, my god, it is so hot that you are literate. There is nothing hotter than a guy with an elongated attention span who knows how to use it. Am I right? Am I right?

This is such a dramatic change in how glasses are seen, right? It used to be that Superman would disguise himself as Clark Kent. Now, Clark Kent takes off his glasses, and everyone’s like, “Where’d that hot slut go?” It’s also the opposite of the movie trope of a girl taking off her glasses and magically becoming hotter. Yeah, because men like it when girls are impaired and can’t see through their lies. Honestly, I’m just glad that the internet has shown men how to attract women. It’s easy; just dress like this.

Tonight’s evening news coverage of the reciprocal tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump bordered on hysterical, to the tune of a combined 25 minutes and 34 seconds. Of those, only about a minute and a half was devoted to explaining things in a manner the public could understand.

Watch as CBS MoneyWatch Correspondent Kelly O’Grady calmly explains how Trump’s tariffs are intended to do, as opposed to the usual hair-on-fire reporting:

A lone voice of reason and cool headedness among all the tariff hysteria in the evening news: CBS’s @TheKellyOGrady. pic.twitter.com/PJ64LT0V6a
— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) April 4, 2025

MAURICE DuBOIS: MoneyWatch correspondent Kelly O’Grady joins us now to walk through some of the scenarios as to how this might actually play out. So Kelly, let’s start with a best-case scenario.

KELLY O’GRADY: Yes, so when it comes to tariffs, I want to show you a couple of things. These are some of the positives. It’s not exhaustive. But it could mean more products made in America because companies would move manufacturing here to avoid those steep tariffs. That could also create more American jobs and, put that all together, a more self-reliant economy. Now this might take years and hundreds of billions, maybe trillions of dollars, but it certainly would have been good during Covid to have a domestic supply chain. The other thing, though, is also revenue from these tariffs that could offset government debt. The White House says $700 billion this year.

DuBOIS: Do people have the patience, that’s the question. What about a worst-case scenario? What’s that look like?

O’GRADY: So this happens a little more immediate, kind of the next few months, maybe a year, you saw the stock market today. Investors really didn’t like this.

DuBOIS: Not at all.

O’GRADY: Of how it could impact profits at companies as well as the consumer, and that gets us to spending. If inflation goes up because of tariffs, which JPMorgan is projecting 1% to 1.5% this year based on yesterday’s announcement, consumers might spend less which means a slower economy. And then finally, a trade war, where you have retaliatory tariffs and countries don’t come to the table and negotiate, but it is all back and forth.

DuBOIS: A lot of this is based on emotion. What about a middle ground? Is there one? We see one?

O’GRADY: That’s the more likely scenario. I mean, nothing in the economy happens in a vacuum. Yes this is the impact of tariffs, but there will be other things. Likely higher prices, companies will absorb some of that. But definitely some short-term pain.

DuBOIS: Again. Patience. Will people have it? We’ll see. Kelly, thank you so much.

O’Grady analyzed the tariffs in a calm, measured tone, calmly walking anchor Maurice DuBois (and viewers at home) through multiple scenarios. Regardless of where one may sit on the issue of tariffs, the viewer emerges from that segment a bit more knowledgeable about the issue at hand. 

Most importantly: O’Grady didn’t editorialize or condescend. This is a restraint that we don’t see enough of in the news industry these days. Given that tariff-related news is likely to dominate in the short term, it would behoove the rest of the news media to go forth and do likewise.

 

On Thursday’s episode of MSNBC’s Chris Jansing Reports, former Romney campaign consultant Stuart Stevens was not content to simply criticize specific things about the Trump administration that he happened to disagree with. Rather, he ran off with wild accusations, calling the administration criminal with zero evidence and offering an alarmist view that “this is not a normal moment.” For her part, Jansing just went along as though he had made a valid, substantiated point.

Jansing led in with a discussion of government cuts, quipping that she shouldn’t do math:

If you take a 20 percent hit, a 25 percent hit, and you lose 40 or $50,000 of your 401K, if you’re Elon Musk, if you’re Donald Trump, if you’re any of the billionaires who work in the administration, that’s not real money. That’s like me taking a ten out of my pocket, or maybe less. But that’s years- that is years, off of what you planned for, to be able to actually pay for your retirement. So how do you message that?

“Well,” Stevens began, “I think that- you just laid it out. They have to- Democrats need to get in front of people, and say how this is affecting you personally. That’s absolutely the right thing to do.”

 

 

Instead of actually addressing any specific problems, how these problems might be affecting people personally, or practically what could or should be done about it, he went off the deep end with wild and unfounded accusations, which by then weren’t even original for the liberal media:

And this is what Democrats should be out there hitting. They have to understand that this is not a normal moment. They have to stand up… You know, this is a corrupt administration that is breaking the law. And that’s how we should start talking about it. Elon Musk- it’s been said over and over- is probably engaged in criminal activities. That makes him a criminal. That makes him someone who should be held accountable under law. And that’s the framework this needs to be put in. It’s not a normal moment.

Stevens gave no specifics, and provided no evidence, but simply offered his claim that the administration was criminal and this was “not a normal moment” as a blanket assertion.

Jansing did not even bother to press him on it, but just took his groundless personal accusations and amorphous prophecies of doom at face value.

True to form for MSNBC, rather than actually report some news, Jansing was happy to spend the interview rehashing the same old cliched liberal media obsessions and, if necessary for the storyline, creating a crisis where none existed.

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

MSNBC’s Chris Jansing Reports
04/03/2025
1:29 PM

CHRIS JANSING: Let me try to do something that I probably should never do, Stuart, and that’s a little bit of math. 

FORMER ROMNEY CAMPAIGN ADVISER STUART STEVENS: [LAUGHS]

JANSING: First of all, set a baseline in- politically- that says your most reliable voters are older, right? Older voters tend to vote more than younger people. The average 401K balance is around $127,000. But if you’re lucky enough to have one, if you’re not depending just on a pension or Social Security, but you have a 401K and you’re over 65, your 401K on average is about $272,588, that’s before today. Okay? That- those are the latest numbers that are out there. 

If you take a 20 percent hit, a 25 percent hit, and you lose 40 or $50,000 of your 401K, if you’re Elon Musk, if you’re Donald Trump, if you’re any of the billionaires who work in the administration, that’s not real money. That’s like me taking a ten out of my pocket, or maybe less. 

But that’s years, that is years, off of what you planned for, to be able to actually pay for your retirement. So how do you message that?

STEVENS: Well, I think that- you just laid it out. They have to- Democrats need to get in front of people, and say how this is affecting you personally. That’s absolutely the right thing to do. 

You know, people never believe the politicians will cut taxes. They are willing to believe they will raise taxes, and they are willing to believe that a politician might not raise taxes. So, generally people are very skeptical of any good that is going to come, but they will embrace the harm because they’ll see what it’s doing to them. 

And this is what Democrats should be out there hitting. They have to understand that this is not a normal moment. They have to stand up. I- Booker was- was heroic in this. But do that over and over and over. 

You know, this is a corrupt administration that is breaking the law. And that’s how we should start talking about it. Elon Musk- it’s been said over and over- is probably engaged in criminal activities. That makes him a criminal. That makes him someone who should be held accountable under law. 

And that’s the framework this needs to be put in. It’s not a normal moment.

In his Tuesday monologue for his eponymous show, Fox News Channel host Greg Gutfeld took a blowtorch to MSNBC’s Morning Joe co-host Joe Scarborough as a “bozo” and “grifter” with “dime slot hillbilly eyes” and “more full of [EXPLETIVE] than a cage full of chimps mainlining Metamucil” for recently claiming Joe Biden’s June 2024 debate performance was “shockingly bad” despite having said this was “the best Biden ever” “intellectually” and “analytically.”

“So they say hindsight is 20/20. And if anybody in the media sees out of his hind end, it’s Joe Scarborough. He was once a Republican in Congress, but will be remembered as the worst thing to happen to Florida since Ron Jeremy toured The Villages. I know. But what I like most about Scarborough is his honesty. Well, that and his dime slot hillbilly eyes,” Gutfeld began.

 

 

A clip of Scarborough played from Monday’s show in which he said this to Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes — co-authors of their latest behind-the-scenes campaign book, Fight:

We always look back in retrospect and think things were a certain way, just because it’s the way the media at the time defined it. You know, I remember after Biden’s shockingly bad presidential debate, that’s when, like, the history books were starting — you know, you could just see that was going to be the reason why he was pushed out of the race[.]

An incredulous Gutfeld clapped back: “Oh, you could just see that was going to be the reason because there were no reasons before the debate….Saying the debate was like a shocking reason for Biden’s downfall is like saying, I didn’t know Hunter Biden was a problem until I saw his artwork.”

Noting Scarborough said this all “now that Biden is long gone,” Gutfeld offered arguably the most important point about these tell-all books: “[T]hat’s what you get when the media is interviewing the media without addressing the diseased and dying elephant in the room, the media. Scarborough was talking with the authors of a new book that details just how Biden really was, how bad he was. And Scarborough acts as if he knew it the whole time.”

This served as a segue to a clip of Scarborough from March 6, 2024 in which he gushed over Biden as “far beyond cogent” and “[t]his version of Biden intellectually, analytically is the best Biden ever.” NewsBusters readers will recall this was our 2024 Brian Stelter Memorial Quote of the Year:

 

 

“I think he meant pungent. Keep yacking, you grifter….Of course, it wasn’t the truth, you bozo, which is why you said it. This guy has always been more full of [EXPLETIVE] than a cage full of chimps mainlining Metamucil,” he replied.

Moments later, Gutfeld laid waste to Biden’s actual mental capacity:

Biden didn’t have the mental capability to dissect his own pork chop for dinner, let alone dissect a Joe Scarborough op ed. You couldn’t debate a speak and spell, which is why they told him the speak and spell was the nuclear football and Scarborough actually wanted us to believe Joe was still awake at 08:30 at night? By then, he was already in his cryogenic chamber, dreaming about his uncle getting eaten by cannibals, overcoming oil cancer, corn pop’s love for hairy legs.

Gutfeld and his team had one more clip as, on February 9, 2024, Scarborough lambasted the Hur report predicting Biden would be seen by a jury as an “elderly man with a poor memory” as “random conclusions, irrelevant conclusions” that were “gratuitous” and in “bad fath.”

This went right to Gutfeld’s conclusion about why Scarborough (and the liberal media writ large) refused to be honest:

[If] Scarborough got within 200 feet of a polygraph machine, it would burst into flames. But Scarborough couldn’t afford to be honest with his audience because the Dems had a big bad orange man breathing down their necks…He had to blurt out hostile fidgety [EXPLETIVE] or they wouldn’t give him the pills that keep him from turning into a werewolf…The funny thing is [EXPLETIVE] if you had just told the truth when it mattered, maybe the Dems would have had time to find a candidate who could actually win an election…[H]ey, it could always be worse. Morning Joe could be on a network people watch.

To see the relevant FNC transcript from April 2, click here.

Most people probably do not know who Angie Drobnic Holan is, but they should. Holan is the director of the International Fact-Checking Network at Poynter, and on April 2, or International Fact-Checking Day, she wrote an op-ed bemoaning the setbacks the industry has taken in 2025 from Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and the Trump Administration.

The entire column displayed a tragic lack of self-awareness on how the industry has failed to learn from its mistakes and the problems stemming from its overinflated view of its importance. Holan writes, “But this year’s fact-checking day also marks a very serious moment for the fact-checking community. We are facing multiple challenges to our ability to do our journalism, and it’s not clear what the next few years will bring. As director of the International Fact-Checking Network at Poynter, which connects 170 organizations around the world all adhering to high standards in fact-checking, I see a community under intense pressure. Not everyone loves fact-checking, and there are powerful political forces that would simply like it to go away.”

Holan thinks people are opposed to factual accuracy when they’re simply opposed to partisan spin pretending to be fact-checks. Nevertheless, Holan claimed that without them, the world would just dissolve into chaos where relativity replaces truth:

This is indeed a crisis for fact-checkers, but it’s even worse for the general public. Disinformation hurts people. It has real-world consequences. Without fact-checking, more grandparents will fall victim to financial scams. Adults will refuse to vaccinate children against proven killers like measles. Teens will read faked reports of current events with no way to tell them apart from the real thing. 

Does Holan really think that the industry has prevented those things? Conspiracy theories arise because of a lack of trust in “official” sources, and, whether Holan likes it or not, some people are going to say to themselves, “If they lie about how many genders there are, they must also be lying about vaccines.” 

Still, Holan goes on, “Two heavy blows hit fact-checking in 2025. In January, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg announced his decision to end its third-party fact-checking in the United States. The program paid fact-checkers to help Meta identify and flag hoaxes and other false information on its platform; the program’s end means less money for fact-checkers and less distribution via one of the world’s largest social media companies.“

She further lamented, “The other blow came from President Donald Trump’s administration, when billionaire Elon Musk pointed his Department of Government Efficiency at the U.S. Agency for International Development. The abrupt ending of USAID meant an immediate end to funding independent international journalism, which included support for fact-checkers in Eastern Europe, Africa, Latin America and Asia. Some of these fact-checkers have suffered quietly, trying to find other ways to fund their work.”

Later, Holan continued to show no self-awareness, “Fact-checking’s effectiveness, in fact, may be why it is under such harsh attack in 2025. Fact-checking holds the line on reality for history’s sake. It builds evidence-based records that can withstand political pressures. Politicians who want to create their own realities are fighting hard against fact-checking, and they’re strong-arming tech companies and social media platforms into helping them.”

It doesn’t. On everything from naval strategy to vice presidential debates, fact-checkers have said things that are straight-up not true, but the fact-checkers got used to their power to be able to throttle social media posts for things they said were untrue, but Holan was eager to pretend that didn’t happen, “Politicians have led the charge that fact-checking is ‘censorship,’ but that self-serving argument is fundamentally a mischaracterization of what fact-checkers do. We’re more like nutrition labels for online content. Nobody thinks a nutrition label on a bag of potato chips or a gallon of milk is censorship.”

In the real world, when a Republican calls a Democrat a communist, they get such a label, but when a Democrat calls a Republican a Jim Crow throwback, they don’t. Sometimes, fact-checkers don’t even agree with each other. Everyone should agree that a democratic society should operate in factual reality, but people who appoint themselves the final arbiter of what is true should be a little humbler and more consistent in how they adjudicate controversial claims.