Newsbusters

On March 27 the Trump administration scored a big win with the Virginia arrest of a top MS-13 leader. The day before (March 26) alleged Hamas-supporter and Tufts University student Rumeysa Ozturk was picked up by ICE agents. 

So which arrest did the leftist news outlets care more about? The arrest of the Turkish student Ozturk.

From March 26 (when the cables first started reporting on Ozturk’s arrest) through March 27 ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and MSNBC devoted a total of 119 minutes, 18 seconds to the Ozturk case, but just 11 minutes, 42 seconds to the MS-13 leader capture. 

That’s ten times more coverage to Ozturk than the capture of MS-13 leader Henrry Josue Villatoro Santos. 

In fact, ABC, CBS, NBC didn’t devote a single second to the violent terrorist gang leader’s arrest. 

So why the discrepancy? Whereas the arrest of MS-13 leader was a great PR win for Team Trump the footage of Ozturk being arrested on the street prompted leftist anchors, reporters and pundits to decry what they called the “authoritarian” actions of the Trump administration. 

On the March 27 edition of MSNBC’s Deadline:White House, Alicia Menendez gravely warned: “The arrest of a Tufts University student captured on video is the latest worrying sign for colleges and universities under the increasing authoritarianism of the Trump administration.”

On March 26 CNN News Central host Erica Hill alerted her viewers: “This just into CNN, some chilling video. It shows the moment that a Tufts University grad student from Turkey is arrested and taken into ICE custody.”

Over on NBC, anchor Lester Holt opened the March 27 NBC Nightly News this way: “Good evening and welcome. With the Trump administration widening its net against foreigners here both legally and illegally, a rally was held today near Boston in support of a Tufts university doctorate candidate whose arrest by ICE, despite her legal status, has cast a chill across some college campuses.”

Executive Editor of NewsBusters Tim Graham observed:

“A disparity like this demonstrates that the media prefer one narrative over the other. Trump having a success in arresting a gang leader is too positive to underline. They prefer the narrative that Trump is some kind of dictator arresting foreigners for speaking too freely about the horror of Israel. They don’t even have the shame to notice that Hamas isn’t exactly a free-speech paragon.”

Overall, MSNBC allocated the most time on the Ozturk arrest (58 minutes, 48 seconds.) CNN spent 50 minutes, 9 seconds on the Turkish student. 

NBC aired 6 minutes, 6 seconds on the Turkish student. CBS provided 2 minutes, 39 seconds on Ozturk. ABC delivered 1 minute, 39 seconds of time to the Tufts University student case. 

On the MS-13 leader’s arrest, MSNBC offered a tiny 3 minutes, 43 seconds amount of coverage. CNN aired just 7 minutes, 59 seconds on the gang leader capture. 

ABC, CBS, NBC aired zero seconds on the MS-13 leader being brought in.

For this study MRC analysts reviewed all the segments on the MS-13 leader and Rumeysa Ozturk arrests aired on ABC, CBS, NBC evening and morning news shows as well as all of the morning, daytime and evening programs on CNN and MSNBC on March 26 and March 27.  

Don’t be shocked, but MSNBC doesn’t like the former Fox News host running the Pentagon. He can’t possibly be qualified.
On Monday’s edition of MSNBC’s Deadline White House, Democrat Claire McCaskill, the ex-senator from Missouri turned MSNBC contributor, said:

“Pete Hegseth thinks that a cleft chin and push-ups is all he needs to lead America’s military.”

Drop and give us 10, Claire!

That came after show host Nicolle Wallace called Hegseth a “peacocking ding-dong.”

I rarely watch Wallace’s execrable emission, but tuned in today to see how she would react to the decision of a French court not only to convict Marine Le Pen for using government employees to work on her political matters, but to bar her from running for office for five years. 

Le Pen, head of the National Rally party, whose key issue is addressing the wave of immigration that has threatened French culture and security, is the leading candidate in the upcoming presidential election. The court’s decision effectively prevents her from running against incumbent President Emmanuel Macron in 2027.

Wallace buried the shocking news until her show’s last minute. But when she finally got around to it, Wallace, predictably, rather than condemning this blatant political move to remove Macron’s main rival, hailed the decision:

“A lesson for us here in America for holding leaders accountable.”

Imagine the outraged reaction of Wallace and the rest of the liberal media if a Republican administration somehow barred the leading Democrat presidential candidate from running for office!

Here’s the transcript.

MSNBC
Deadline White House
3/31/25
4:15 am EDT

NICOLLE WALLACE: Claire, let’s deal with the Pete Hegseth of it all. You read the messages because it is, you know, the service that the journalists did here is showing us how the folks at the highest level of our government communicate privately. And that was interesting. 

But even privately, when he’s not sort of peacocking for the cameras, Pete Hegseth sounds like a ding-dong. 

And his whole denial, which, again, I caught, was sort of a lie wrapped in an embarrassing performance. I mean, this is not cable television. And I wonder and I hate asking this question on television. I’m embarrassed that I still ask it. But is there a breaking point for any Republicans that at one time cared very much about the military? 

CLAIRE MCCASKILL: Yeah, I mean, Pete Hegseth thinks that a cleft chin and push-ups is all he needs to lead the people of America’s military. And you need more than that.

As encounters with illegal aliens along the southwest portion of the border hit all-time lows it is important to remember that, until very recently, it wasn’t always this way. And before our southern border was overrun, Spanish-language media mostly kept quiet about the onslaught that was to come.

On the back end of the pandemic, Title 42 was the only thing sort of holding the border together with duct tape, chewing gum and bailing wire. There were real concerns that removing Title 42 would blow the border right open. 

Coverage was mixed at best: Univision completely omitted covering the Biden administration’s concerns over the potential border surge, CNN en Español barely covered it and Telemundo ran a report that featured no comment from the administration:

JOHANA SUÁREZ: There are fears of a massive arrival of migrants at the southern border with the elimination of Title 42, the rule that allows the denial of entry to people who cross seeking asylum. According to reports, the United States is already preparing buses and tents to deal with this wave of migration. Cristina Londoño has more. 

CRISTINA LONDOÑO: Fearing a surge of more than 170,000 immigrants, the Biden administration is making extraordinary preparations, according to Axios, because they fear a mass exodus when they abolish title 42 with which former President Donald Trump closed the border at the peak of the pandemic.  

…

We asked the government to confirm the existence of this contingency plan in case of a massive arrival of migrants at the border, but they did not answer.

…

It is estimated that there are more than 25,000 immigrants waiting in Mexico for the border to reopen.

As MRC Latino noted at the time:

It doesn´t look good. As the media covers up the inconvenient news of upcoming waves of migrants hitting our borders in their quest for asylum, 25,000 are already in Mexico waiting for the good-to-go from Uncle Sam; right behind them, some 170,000 more are expected to arrive and be sent to different locations in the US.

…

Instead of the silent treatment the White House and the Hispanic media -so vociferous when it comes to the safety of other nation´s borders- should be publicly addressing a national threat versus quietly devising a “contingency plan” with other government agencies that includes the use of buses and planes to transfer the migrants, and – hear this – building new tents (formerly called ´cages´ under Trump) to house them. 

Time proved that there was no contingency plan except to blow the border open and take about 12 million illegal aliens into the country, and fly them all over the interior of the country. And for the longest time, the media pretended that nothing was happening.

That is, until the country was shocked by migrant crimes in big cities like New York and horrified by needless and totally avoidable murders such as those of Laken Riley, Jocelyn Nungaray, and so many others. 

The caravans have ground to a halt now, and migrant encounters are at near all-time lows. But we are reminded that it wasn’t always this way.

 

MSNBC’s Ana Cabrera Monday invited Jason Stanley, Yale University’s so-called “fascism expert” and the author of How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them, to mouth off about why he was supposedly moving to Canada. Stanley claimed he was doing so over Columbia University’s “capitulation” to the Trump administration in cracking down on overt anti-Semitism on campus, and cynically used the fact that he’s Jewish and was raising his children as Jews to somehow back up his incoherent position.

Cabrera introduced Stanley by ignoring the details of the campus and boasting that he:

[I]s departing the hallowed Ivy League school to teach in Toronto… ‘entirely because of the political climate in the United States.’ This comes as the Trump administration threatens to withhold funding for preeminent institutions like Columbia, which capitulated to the administration over so-called security reforms, and as grad students from Columbia and Tufts are among scholars now detained by immigration enforcement after their involvement in pro-Palestinian protests or writings. 

She asked Stanley if the “current political environment” was “impeding you from teaching what and how you’d want to teach?”

Stanley assured her that was “absolutely not” the case, as “Yale has… protected its scholars, unlike Columbia.” Rather: “[I]t has nothing to do with me. It has everything to do with my children, and my desire to send a warning to Americans that is consonant with the work I’ve been doing.”

Apparently, in Stanley’s mind, taking a stand against violent and disruptive anti-Semitic demonstrations and riots on campus was not “consonant” with his self-proclaimed anti-fascist mission.

 

 

Cabrera brushed over how the “capitulations” entailed things like “new rules for protests, more security officers that can make arrests, new leadership to oversee certain academic programs like Middle East studies.” She asked him what he meant when he called that a “warning.”

Stanley responded: “[N]ever before is [sic.] the federal government intervened to put a department into receivership… And needless to say… Columbia’s capitulation to this, is a grave sign about the future of academic freedom.”

Stanley seemed to think that the Trump administration exercising such influence was somehow a grave threat, but that when the Biden and Obama administrations had done much the same thing to support their positions, it was seemingly a non-issue for him.

Cabrera just took his words at face-value, though, and a short time later asked him: “You are an American citizen. Why not stay, and try to be the change you’re seeking? Why not be part of the pushback to this sort of behavior?”

Stanley insisted that he would “continue to throw punches against fascism and bullies from Canada. Don’t worry.” He went on:

I have two black and Jewish kids. I think my kids, actually, are more important to me than anything else. So, they’re using my religion to… go after academic freedom, crushing universities, supposedly, in the name of protecting… my people…American Jews. My kids are Jewish, my kids are black. They’re attacking their history. And I want to send a political message… I love America because it doesn’t have kings. I don’t love America cause we can punch other people in the nose… It is a brutal attack on America’s freedoms… on our democratic institutions: the legal system, the courts and universities and the media… [T]he media’s been attacking universities for a decade. They’ve been doing Trump’s work for him.

After this rant, in which Stanley managed to weaponize his own children for the purpose of his far-left politics, Cabrera showed, yet again, that the media’s problem was more like subservience to the far-left when she applauded this poisonous foolishness with the words:

Jason Stanley, let’s keep in touch. Thank you very much for being on our show and providing your perspective and some expertise as well. We appreciate it. 

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

MSNBC’s Ana Cabrera Reports
03/31/2025
10:31 PM

[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: YALE FASCISM SCHOLAR LEAVES U.S. FOR CANADA]

ANA CABRERA: A prominent Yale professor who studies fascism is leaving the U.S., amid the Trump administration’s crackdown on universities and colleges. Jason Stanley, author of How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them, is departing the hallowed Ivy League school to teach in Toronto, telling a philosophy website the reason is ‘entirely because of the political climate in the United States.’ 

This comes as the Trump administration threatens to withhold funding for preeminent institutions like Columbia, which capitulated to the administration over so-called security reforms, and as grad students from Columbia and Tufts are among scholars now detained by immigration enforcement after their involvement in pro-Palestinian protests or writings. 

Professor and author Jason Stanley joins us now. Professor, thanks for taking the time with us. You cited the current political environment in this country as why you’re leaving, why you’re heading to Canada. Is it impeding you from teaching what and how you’d want to teach?

JASON STANLEY, ‘HOW FASCISM WORKS’ AUTHOR: Oh, absolutely not. Yale has, to this extent, protected its scholars, unlike Columbia, who forced, for example, Katharine Frank, a prominent law professor, into early retirement. 

So, it has nothing to do with me. It has everything to do with my children, and my desire to send a warning to Americans that is consis- consonant with the work I’ve been doing.

[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: FASCISM EXPERT SHARES STARK WARNING ABOUT U.S.]

CABRERA: You talk about Columbia submitting to the White House’s demands, after the threats to withhold federal funding. I mean, some of what they agreed to are new rules for protests, more security officers that can make arrests, new leadership to oversee certain academic programs like Middle East studies. You called Columbia’s capitulation a warning. How so?

STANLEY: Well- in- Americans don’t really understand some of the details. They put the department- the- never before is [sic.] the federal government intervened to put a department into receivership, much less an excellent department like the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at Columbia University. 

And it’s not new leadership. They’re going to appoint, perhaps, a non-academic. It’s someone who’s, obviously, going to intervene in academic affairs. They’re very serious about this. Receivership is only meant for when professors in a department dislike each other so much, they can’t be in the same room together. 

[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: YALE FASCISM SCHOLAR LEAVES U.S. FOR CANADA]

And needless to say, this- crackdown- Columbia’s capitulation to this, is a grave sign about the future of academic freedom. In addition to, say, hauling people off the street and sending them to Louisiana prisons like they did at Tufts university, for co-authoring op-eds, in the student newspaper.

CABRERA: Yeah. I mean, it’s Tufts, it’s Columbia, Georgetown, the University of Minnesota. I mean, we keep learning of new and new cases of grad students or other academics being detained by ICE. 

And I’ll note that these are people who are here legally. They have permanent residence, they’re- you know- on student visas. 

Secretary of state Marco Rubio said last week that these cases are just the beginning. What is the message this administration is sending, by detaining these scholars and- prioritizing this sort of a crackdown?

STANLEY: The message is that they’re going to do a kind of stochastic terrorism against our country. They’re going to target people one by one so that those who are in fear will shut up, essentially. 

And universities are filled with fear, already. They’re ceasing to make public statements, they’re not banding together. 

Right now, they’re targeting non-citizens for, you know, writing in student newspapers. I’m sure- or, I suspect, they’ll start pulling people’s passports, targeting U.S. Citizens for various reasons, and- exploiting Americans’ ignorance- generally- you know- we don’t know about each other’s workplaces. Exploiting America’s- Americans’ ignorance about academic freedom. 

And they’re trying- they- they’re trying to- and I fear they will succeed, in destroying America’s higher education system, which is by far the best in the world.

CABRERA: I wonder- you know- there are probably people watching this right now thinking- well, you have a lot to say. You are an American citizen. Why not stay, and try to be the change you’re seeking? Why not be part of- the pushback to this sort of behavior?

STANLEY: I will continue to throw punches against fascism and bullies from Canada. Don’t worry. 

I have two black and Jewish kids. I think my kids, actually, are more important to me than anything else. So, they’re using my religion to crack- crush- to go after academic freedom, crushing universities, supposedly, in the name of protecting my- my people, Amer- Jews- American Jews. My kids are Jewish, my kids are black. They’re attacking their history. 

And I want to send a political message, as I’ve been doing with my work. 

This comes at great personal cost. This is not some- you know- I’m taking a huge salary cut. I’m not a super-wealthy person. I’ll still be well paid, but I’m taking like a 25% salary cut, removing myself from my homeland, that I love. 

And I- I love America because it doesn’t have kings. I don’t love America cause we can punch other people in the nose.

CABRERA: And so we’re seeing President Trump consolidate power, pushing to quiet dissent, pressuring law firms and universities, detaining scholars. He’s also attacking the judiciary and any judges who block or question his policies. How would you describe this moment for America?

STANLEY: It is a brutal attack on America’s freedoms. It’s a decon- it’s an attack specifically on our dem- on our democratic institutions: the legal system, the courts and universities and the media. And these institutions are, un- you know, the media’s been attacking universities for a decade. They’ve been doing Trump’s work for him. So, that doesn’t help when the democratic institutions are working against each other. 

And each of these institutes- institutions, in the face of this attack on democracy and this attack on freedom, by a lead- a ruler who’s completely saying he wants to be a king, and a political party that’s behaving like Communist China, and lining up 100 percent against [sic.] him- In the face of this, universities are turning on each other- are saying, ‘Oh, we don’t want to be in the public. We’re going to hide under the table.’ So- law firms- stealing each other’s clients. 

So, it’s not a positive development. And I’m going to continue calling it out from the University of Toronto.

CABRERA: Jason Stanley, let’s keep in touch. Thank you very much for being on our show and providing your perspective and some expertise as well. We appreciate it. 

The White House Correspondents Association is already having a bad week. They fired comedian Amber Ruffin from their White House Correspondents Dinner. Add to that President Trump is taking over the seating chart in the White House Briefing Room. What will they do as the left sees them as weak? Managing Editor Curtis Houck takes it on.

First, the WHCA fired Amber Ruffin, the leftist comedian they were delighted with just last month. Well, she went on the Daily Beast Podcast with Samantha Bee and proclaimed she would not try to make sure her jokes targeted all sides of the political spectrum as the WHCA had requested, and likened the Trump administration to “kind of a bunch of murderers.” Playing to both sides “makes them feel like human beings,” she said, “cause they’re not.” Let’s guess no “independent fact-checkers” will throw a flag: Team Trump is not a “bunch of murderers” and they are human beings.

Ruffin said the WHCA people told her “You need to be, you know, equal, and make sure that the that you give it to both sides, and blah blah blah. I was like, ‘there’s no way I’m gonna be freaking doing that, dude, under no circumstances.’”

There has never seemed to be no need for a balance of jokes. They dropped comedians for a bit after Michelle Wolf mocked then-White House press secretary Sarah Sanders and her eye makeup. 

For her part, Bee agreed there should be no balance in comedy: “Some people are more culpable than others. And they get more jokes made about them and the jokes are meaner because they’re doing things that are worse in a lot of ways. That’s how that goes. It can’t be even.” That is the spirit of the left: fairness makes you a traitor to Democracy, or something.  

Then the WHCA is furious that Team Trump wants to take over the seating chart in the White House briefing room. They proclaimed “Our members want to cover the administration without fear or favor, and stand ready to question government officials from any corner of the Brady Briefing Room.” They certainly operated from fear of Team Biden, and favored them for large periods of time. Do they think nobody noticed? 

Besides, the supposedly “sycophantic” journalists from right-leaning media outlets have asked plenty of solid journalistic questions that don’t sound like tee-ball questions like “What is your plan today?”

Finally, at the Washington Free Beacon, Bulldog Award winner Andrew Kerr penned a blockbuster piece Monday morning that revealed far-left Senator Raphael Warnock (D-GA) lives in a $1 million home in DeKalb County, Georgia without having ever owed a penny thanks to Ebenezer Baptist Church, where he still serves as part-time senior pastor when he’s not representing the state of Georgia in Congress.” The headline was “Raphael Warnock Lives Free in $1 Million Luxury Home—Purchased by His Church.”

Enjoy the podcast below, or wherever you listen to podcasts — Apple, Spotify, all over. 

On the eve of Wisconsin’s pivotal Supreme Court election, which could decide the balance of the Court, the permanence of Scott Walker’s reforms and potentially alter the makeup of Congress, CBS aired a report that simultaneously broadcasts the Elite Resistance Media’s contempt for the Rust Belt and its severe Musk Derangement Syndrome.

CBS Senior White House Correspondent Ed O’Keefe begins his video package by dismissing the importance of the election:

Elite Resistance Media can’t hide their contempt at having to cover hugely consequential Wisconsin Supreme Court race, as shown by CBS’s Ed O’Keefe: pic.twitter.com/CxT3a6WQl2
— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) April 1, 2025

ELON MUSK: I think this will be important for the future of civilization. It’s that significant.

ED O’KEEFE: Uh, not quite. It’s just a state supreme court contest in Wisconsin. By some estimates, more than $80 million will be spent here including from out-of-state donors- including Elon Musk, who even wore a cheesehead last night while visiting Green Bay. 

After dumping on Wisconsin proper, O’Keefe then shifts to the Elon Derangement portion of the program. In one of the wilder instances of overt bias we’ve seen in a while, O’Keefe’s video package displays dollar amounts donated by Elon Musk in direct (or indirect) support of conservative candidate Brad Schimel. No such dollar amounts, though, disclosed for donors JB Pritzker and George Soros in support of liberal Susan Crawford:

NOT EVEN PRETENDING TO HIDE THEIR GROTESQUE BIAS ANYMORE: CBS discloses dollar amounts donated by @elonmusk in Wisconsin Supreme Court race, but NOT amounts by ILGOV JB Pritzker and George Soros pic.twitter.com/S2v4FXbqNf
— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) April 1, 2025

O’KEEFE: But as the first big political contest since President Trump took office, it’s become a proxy fight between his supporters and opponents. Musk has personally donated $3 million to the state GOP, and his political action committee spending more than $12 million to help the Republican-backed candidate Brad Schimel. On the left, billionaire Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and liberal activist George Soros have donated millions.

“Millions”, says O’Keefe. Unspecified, indeterminate millions by billionaires Soros and Pritzker versus a dollar amount by Musk. The contrast couldn’t be clearer.

Even on the question of donations- O’Keefe aired Crawford’s nonresponse, unattached to any question, but aired his pointed question to Schimel on Musk’s donations. There is a night-and-day difference between how these candidates are covered.

CBS’s coverage of the Wisconsin Supreme Court race is a reminder: if it weren’t for double standards, there would often be none at all. 

Click “expand” to view the full transcript of the aforementioned report as aired on the CBS Evening News on Monday, March 31st, 2025: 

JOHN DICKERSON: Voters in Wisconsin go to the polls tomorrow to elect a justice to the highest state court.

MAURICE DuBOIS: The job pays $196,000, but more than 400 times that amount has been spent on the race, and that makes it the most expensive judicial contest in U.S. history.

DICKERSON: Billionaires on both sides are pumping in money. The reason? The race could decide whether the Court leans left or right on some very critical issues. Ed O’Keefe is in Milwaukee.

ELON MUSK: I think this will be important for the future of civilization. It’s that significant.

ED O’KEEFE: Uh, not quite. It’s just a state supreme court contest in Wisconsin. By some estimates, more than $80 million will be spent here including from out-of-state donors- including Elon Musk, who even wore a cheesehead last night while visiting Green Bay. Susan Crawford is the Democratic-backed candidate in this officially nonpartisan race, who says the state court could rule on critical issues.

SUSAN CRAWFORD: So it can be things like fair elections, the right to vote, health care privacy, reproductive rights. You know, the safety of our water in Wisconsin.

O’KEEFE: But as the first big political contest since President Trump took office, it’s become a proxy fight between his supporters and opponents. Musk has personally donated $3 million to the state GOP, and his political action committee spending more than $12 million to help the Republican-backed candidate Brad Schimel. On the left, billionaire Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and liberal activist George Soros have donated millions.

CRAWFORD: We’ve been in control over all of the- all of the contributions that our campaign has received. And on the other side, Elon Musk has pretty much taken over.

O’KEEFE: Musk said today he’d give Schimel supporters $20 if they promote him online. Last night he gave million-dollar checks to two supporters of his political action committee. Schimel says he wasn’t invited.

The accusation that he’s spending tens of millions of dollars to buy a seat and that you’re the guy that’s going to help them do that, you say…?

BRAD SCHIMEL: You have to ask him why he spent all this money.

O’KEEFE: I would love to.

SCHIMEL: Yeah, I didn’t ask for it, I didn’t ex- I didn’t know that that was going to happen. I’m grateful for it. As long as that help isn’t pretending I’m going to do anything that I- that I wouldn’t do.

DuBOIS: Ed O’Keefe in Milwaukee now. So the race was high-stakes before Elon Musk and the billionaires got involved, so take us through what’s at play here, Ed.

O’KEEFE: Well. the ideological balance of the seven-member court is going to be set by whoever wins tomorrow night, which means on issues like abortion rights, election issues, women’s rights and whether labor unions can organize, could all be determined and stay in either the liberal or conservative viewpoint for several years to come.

DICKERSON: Ed, is what Musk is doing here, is it legal?

O’KEEFE: That is a good question, John. The Democratic attorney general of Wisconsin didn’t think so and tried to sue, blocking Musk from handing out those checks. The issue worked its way through the courts of Wisconsin through the weekend- got all the way to the state Supreme Court- the one that has a seat up for grabs tomorrow night. They’ve declined to engage on the issue which means for now, at least, it’s perfectly legal for the wealthiest man in the world to keep handing out checks in Wisconsin.

DuBOIS: All right. Ed O’Keefe in Milwaukee tonight. Thanks.

 

The “Big Three” networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC were fired up Monday morning with coverage of Tuesday’s Wisconsin state Supreme Court election and predictably were apoplectic over Elon Musk’s tens of millions of dollars spent to help elect conservative Brad Schimel, but only CBS cared to mention liberal Susan Crawford has her own billionaire donors in Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker (D) and George Soros.

“Overnight, Elon Musk handed out million dollar checks in Wisconsin with the balance of power on the state Supreme Court up for grabs. What it could impact,” scoffed ABC’s Good Morning America co-host and former Clinton official George Stephanopoulos in a tease.

Co-host Michael Strahan later had the lead-in for senior political correspondent Rachel Scott, huffing “Musk and his allies are spending millions of dollars on the race, which is drawing national attention.”

 

 

An ardent Trump hater, Scott painted it as some nationwide referendum on Trump, calling it “a political litmus test for his agenda” despite fretting this race has gone against the grain of being “traditionally non-partisan.”

Kvetching about Musk handing out two checks to those who signed a petition with his America PAC, Scott said the results will be “a test of the political power of Musk and a barometer about how voters are feeling about President Trump’s second term” and directly “impact future rulings on abortion rights and Wisconsin’s congressional map, which could shake up control of Congress.”

Ah, there it is! Scott admitted the quiet part out loud about the left’s objective: redraw congressional districts to favor Democrats.

Scott saw no reason to care about Pritzker or Soros, but instead closed by denouncing Musk creating “the most expensive judicial race” ever and embracing “Democrats and the candidate” for having “seized on Musk’s outside role.”

NBC’s Today could only muster 29 seconds about the election as it folded all its political news into one segment. Senior White House correspondent Gabe Gutierrez shared that, amid the protests at Tesla dealerships, Musk was in Wisconsin for a town hall “ahead of a crucial state Supreme Court election tomorrow.”

 

 

“Democrats are accusing Musk of trying to buy the seat. The billionaire has offered money to voters there who are willing to sign a petition against ‘activist judges.’ Musk handing out million dollar checks last night,” he added ahead of a Musk soundbite about the election “affect[ing] the entire destiny of humanity.”

CBS Mornings mentioned Pritzker and Soros, but only as a footnote. Co-host Tony Dokoupil led off with Musk “putting money into yet another election” while senior White House and campaign correspondent Ed O’Keefe led with Musk’s support for Schimel and the checks.

 

 

Only shortly thereafter did O’Keefe note Crawford’s far-left supporters and then admit the left’s invested in Crawford’s victory so Democrats can concoct more blue House seats (click “expand”):

O’KEEFE: By some estimates, more than $80 million will be spent on the court race. Musk personally donating $3 million to the state’s Republican Party and his America PAC is pumping more than $12 million into advertising and campaign operations for Schimel, but billionaire Democrats are also spending here, most notably George Soros and Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker boosting Susan Crawford, a circuit court judge who has made her closing argument mostly about Musk.

CRAWFORD: I never could have dreamed that I would be fighting the richest man in the world.

O’KEEFE: So why all the attention and money spent on this race? Well, it’s going to determine the ideological balance of the state Supreme Court, and they’re expected to handle a series of hot button issues in the coming years — abortion rights, whether labor unions can organize state workers, and then, perhaps most critically, ahead of next year’s midterm elections, congressional redistricting and then, of course, Elon Musk, some critics say he’s got business interests here in the state, that’s why he’s so interested

CBS Mornings Plus also covered the election and again framed it as only a major story because of Musk and used the far-left Brennan Center for Justice to claim Crawford’s the financial underdog.

And, just as they falsely claimed a few weeks ago the Brennan Center was “non-partisan,” they brought in someone from the Wisconsin chapter of the “bipartisan” Common Cause to denounce Musk as a foil for the ugliness of money in politics. Here was part of that (click “expand”):

 

 

DOKOUPIL: [W]e are talking about an election right now because more than $80 million has been spent on a state Supreme Court race. Between people who — folks who went to law school with these people. Probably don’t remember them. Never heard of them, they would say and we’re covering it here. Because one of the people spending big. There’s multiple billionaires involved. One of them is Elon Musk. His presence has helped turn this race, which has some big political implications — ihat is true for the state of Wisconsin into a test of what’s been framed as Elon’s money versus liberal anger. At a rally last night, Elon Musk himself gave two voters million-dollar checks. That he says were payment for them acting as spokespeople for his petition, which involves language like you support judges reading the Constitution as is. And not adding their own interpretation. So opposing activist judges there, so that’s a quote from the petition. Musk is not the only one spending big here in Wisconsin’s officially, technically non-partisan but no one’s fooled race. For just one Supreme Court seat in that state. Brad Schimel.

(….)

DOKOUPIL:. He’s received about $46 million of donations, including from Musk. Meanwhile his opponent, Susan Crawford, has raised about $36 million. Including donations from prominent Democratic backers George Soros. He’s a billionaire. And Illinois Governor J.D. Pritzker, another billionaire, so if you do the math overall. Tomorrow’s election will be the most expensive judicial race in American history.

DIAZ: And joining us now to explain why so much money is being thrown at this election and some of the concerns that this is creating, is the Executive Director of Common Cause Wisconsin, Jay Heck. Jay, thank you so much for joining us. Your organization is a pro-democracy, bipartisan watchdog group, so Elon Musk has called this state Supreme Court race. Something that will potentially affect the entire destiny of humanity. That he also says will help determine who controls the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington, D.C. Why is he making these claims? Why does he view this election as so critical?

COMMON CAUSE WISCONSIN’s JAY HECK: Well, good morning from Madison, Wisconsin. It’s a brisk 30 degrees today. We haven’t put our snow shovels away. We’ll see how that affects the turnout tomorrow. I think it’s going to be very robust. And in part it is because Elon Musk has made himself a central issue in Wisconsin. $80 million that’s — it would probably be $100 million before it’s all said and done. Of which $20 million, Musk himself has put into the race. In addition, as you referenced, he’s made awards of $1 million to two people who have signed his petition. And he’s paying people $100 a piece to sign his petition. So he is injecting himself into a state Supreme Court election, which, you know, years ago, 20 years ago, when I started at Common Cause, would have been maybe $500,000. A nonpartisan race. And this has turned into a national referendum on Elon Musk and really the beginning of the Trump administration with all of this ridiculous amount of money that’s been poured into the race.

(….)

DOKOUPIL: Jay, you know, you guys are a pro-democracy organization. You want people to take seriously their right to vote, exercise their right to vote. Isn’t all of this money a good thing in terms of creating excitement and driving turnout? I mean, people are paying attention to a race that we definitely would not be talking about if it weren’t a contest of billionaires, anger, and Elon Musk.

HECK: Tony, you cannot turn your television on, your computer on, or even look at your phone without some negative ad from one side or the other inundating you. I would say that a little money is useful, but $100 million is overkill. And the question I think people are going to have in Wisconsin is whether they resent this outside unprecedented interference of zillionaire money coming into the state to influence the outcome of our election, a state election in Wisconsin and Musk by far has poured the most money in. Yes, there’s millionaire money supporting the progressive candidate, but it’s nothing on the scale that Elon Musk is spending.

To see the relevant March 31 transcripts, click here (for ABC), here (for CBS Mornings), here (for CBS Mornings Plus), and here (for NBC).

The arrest and persecution of women in Iran under the Islamic regime for failure to cover their hair or for protesting the morality police, is a subject often ignored by U.S. networks – perhaps, one suspects, because of misguided leftist concerns about encouraging so-called Islamophobia.

But the recent conviction of two Russia mobsters in the attempted assassination of outspoken Iranian-American feminist Masih Alinejad, who escaped persecution in Iran and is now an American citizen, drew the attention of PBS News Weekend, which aired an interview with Alinejad on Sunday evening. A shame PBS had to inject the liberal media’s fight with Trump into the discussion.

PBS News White House reporter Lisa Desjardins, pulling substitute host duty on the Sunday evening show, set the table.

Lisa Desjardins: ….Just this month, two men with ties to the Russian mob were convicted in a plot to kill an Iranian-American journalist and women`s rights activist living in New York. Her name is Masih Alinejad. As the court heard her attempted murder in 2022 was orchestrated by the Iranian government, part of more than a decade of violent plots targeting its critics abroad. I spoke with her about how she sees these times in Iran and in the U.S. and began by asking her reaction to the guilty verdict for her would-be assassins.

Alinejad laid out years of targeting of dissidents by the Islamic Republic of Iran, including several previous attempts to kidnap Alinejad herself. Desjardins asked her about “The state for women right now under the Iranian regime and how you think that could change, or if it could,” and Alinejad talked about her fight against compulsory veiling of the head.

But when Desjardins tried to bait her into responding to current events in America, the PBS journalist may not have gotten the answer she was looking for, with feminist activist Alinejad providing instead some global perspective on the importance of free speech and airing opposing views, both in Iran and the United States.

DESJARDINS: You are a journalist. You are also an American citizen. President Trump has taken some actions against the media in this country. He says the media is biased against him. I wonder how you see what’s going on in this country with the media right now.

ALINEJAD: To be honest, it breaks my heart when I walk in the street, even people tell me that, Masih, we support you, don’t go to Fox News. Some of them stop me and they say, Masih, we support you, but don’t go to CNN. So, and I’m like, oh my God, I’m coming from dictatorship country, having Fox News and CNN and MSNBC, PBS. It’s just our dream, because we have only one state-controlled TV. We have only one — the cleric, the big guy making decision about everything, about my body, about nuclear, about our lifestyle, about everything. So that’s why I want to dedicate my life to not only give voice to my people, to get rid of dictatorship, but to protect America, to protect freedom of speech from this mindset, saying that, let’s cancel this, let’s cancel that. Let’s work together and love America and protect America.

Sounds far more sensible than the mindset of your typical American-born feminist activist.

This Trump-baiting segment was brought to you in part by LetsMakeaPlan.org

A transcript is available, click “Expand.”

PBS News Weekend

3/30/25

7:17:27 p.m. (ET)

LISA DESJARDINS: The U.S. is not immune to foreign assassination attempts. Just this month, two men with ties to the Russian mob were convicted in a plot to kill an Iranian American journalist and women`s rights activist living in New York. Her name is Masih Alinejad.

As the court heard her attempted murder in 2022 was orchestrated by the Iranian government, part of more than a decade of violent plots targeting its critics abroad. I spoke with her about how she sees these times in Iran and in the U.S. and began by asking her reaction to the guilty verdict for her would be assassins.

MASIH ALINEJAD, Iranian-American journalist: To be honest, I felt relieved because three years I have been moving between safe houses. 21 times I didn`t have a normal life. I was screaming, crying, dancing. I was bombarded by different emotions. People were there to kill me, convicted. I am alive. I am alive. I know maybe people don`t get it, but you must be given a Second Life to understand how it feels to face your would be assassins.

LISA DESJARDINS: I don`t want to bring up too much trauma for you, but I think for some Americans, this kind of thing seems far away. But this was at your home in New York that you actually saw this would be assassin. What memory of that day in 2022 stands out to you?

MASIH ALINEJAD: First of all, I really appreciate what you said. You don`t want to bring too much trauma because a lot of time people even don`t get that this is not a news story. This is my life. But at the same time, I want. If this happened to me today, it might happen to you in America. In Brooklyn, in front of my sunflowers garden, my beautiful garden where I used to feed the whole neighborhood with my tomato, cucumbers, basil. The guy was there, gigantic guy. I stared into his eyes, but I thought, he`s just taking picture of my beautiful garden. I thought, he`s admiring my garden. But he was not.

LISA DESJARDINS: He`s there to kill you.

MASIH ALINEJAD: He said that in a public court, that I was there to kill the journalist.

LISA DESJARDINS: Now, knowing what you do, and we`ve seen other reporting that Iran, for example, has worked with criminal gangs in this country to try and target those who oppose it. How broad do you think Iran`s reaches around the world?

MASIH ALINEJAD: Listen, it`s not just me. There are more than 500 people who were the target of the Islamic Republic in four decades beyond their own borders. And in this case, they actually hired Russian mobsters. They were trying to actually kidnap me first because, as you know, this is not the first assassination plot. I survived three.

The first plot, they were trying to kidnap me to take me to Venezuela. So you see, Venezuela, Russia. So these dictators are helping each other to get rid of any of, you know, their critics beyond their own borders.

This is called transnational repression. And that`s why I think it is very important for Americans to understand what happens in dictatorship is not going to stay there. I know what happened in Vegas stays in Vegas, but what happened in the terrorist countries, like, you know, Iran, Russia, they can infect the rest of the world.

LISA DESJARDINS: You remain an activist and a target. Can you help us understand what you know about the. The state for women right now under the Iranian regime and how you think that could change or if it could.

MASIH ALINEJAD: They are my hero. The reason actually I`m not giving up my fight are because of these women. They`re saying to the ayatollahs, we are here unveiled. Where are you? So that actually shows you that women in Iran, they`re not just fighting against, like, compulsory veiling or a small piece of cloth. They want to have secular democracy. You know, in my court, there was a woman who was deliberately blinded by the Revolutionary Guards during the uprising.

LISA DESJARDINS: Blinded?

MASIH ALINEJAD: Blinded, yeah. She lost her eye because they shoot her in her eye and then she was blinded. But she was there with hope, with me in a public trial. And I was like asking her, why did you come all the way? She was like, I want to show Americans that they did everything to us. They took everything away from us, but not hope.

LISA DESJARDINS: What is the meaning of your tattoo?

MASIH ALINEJAD: Zanzendekiaza (ph) woman, life, freedom. You know, it makes me emotional because my country, women got blinded, got killed, men got executed for the crime of just peacefully chanting, woman, life, freedom. So our culture is tolerance, music, singing.

But women are in prison for the crime of singing in my country in 21st century. So I want to ask everyone to join my fight. Yes, I am an activist. I`m louder than ever, but I can`t do it on my own.

LISA DESJARDINS: You are a journalist. You are also an American citizen. President Trump has taken some actions against the media in this country. He says the media is biased against him. I wonder how you see what`s going on in this country with the media right now.

MASIH ALINEJAD: To be honest, it breaks my heart when I walk in the street, even people tell me that, Masih, we support you. Don`t go to Fox News. Some of them stop me and they say, Masih, we support you, but don`t go to CNN.

So, and I`m like, oh, my God, I`m coming from dictatorship country, having Fox News and CNN and MSNBC, PBS. It`s just our dream because we have only one state controlled TV. We have only one the cleric, the big guy making decision about everything, about my body, about nuclear, about our lifestyle, about everything.

So that`s why I want to dedicate my life to not only give voice to my people, to get rid of dictatorship, but to protect America, to protect freedom of speech from this mindset saying that, let`s cancel this, let`s cancel that. Let`s work together and love America and protect America.

LISA DESJARDINS: Masih Alinejad, what an honor to speak with you. Thank you so much.

MASIH ALINEJAD: Thank you so much for having me here.

The liberal ladies of ABC News’s The View were getting really bad at hiding their disdain for the lives of President Trump and his supporters. During Monday’s show, none of the cast members gave a full throated condemnation of comedian Amber Ruffin after she called everyone in the Trump administration and Trump’s supporters sub human. Instead, they whined that the White House Correspondents Association axed her from their dinner, suggested they deserved to be dehumanized, and invited Ruffin on The View to do her set.

Before defending Ruffin, they played this edited together soundbite to highlight Ruffin calling the Trump administration “murderers” and denying their humanity (Click “expand”):

They’re not 100 percent interested in being like, ‘ha, you’re here, look at your stupid head. You’re burned.’ I care, like, you’re kind of a bunch of murderers. So, like, they were like, ‘you need to be, you know, equal and make sure that the, that you give it to both sides and blah, blah.’ I was like, ‘there’s no way I’m going to be fricking doing that, dude.’

[Transition]

I think it that just runs on Trump hurt badly. And then it trickles down to everyone who is around him. Because y’all also guilty. So, I think it just, they got their feelings hurt. But it want the false equivalency that the media does. They want that. It feels great. It makes them feel like human beings but they shouldn’t get to feel that way because they’re not.

According to Ruffin, it’s a “false equivalency” to view those on the right as “human beings” “because they’re not.”

Yet, as the show returned to their live shot, their far left audience applauded Ruffin and co-host Sunny Hostin could be heard laughing. When the camera finally showed her face, Hostin had a huge smile.

Hostin lamented that the WHCA ditched Ruffin. She equated it to them “capitulate[ing]” to a “bully.” “I mean, it just seems to me that when you capitulate and give into a bully, that bully will continue bullying you. It’s like the schoolyard bully,” she sneered. “If he takes your lunch one day, he’s going to take your lunch again.”

“And when you talk about false equivalency, there is a false equivalency,” Hostin defended Ruffin’s dehumanization of people on the right. “She’s a comedian, she’s not a journalist. And I think it’s a time-honored tradition. And I think – I know Eugene Daniels very well. I think he made the wrong call. I think he capitulated just like Chuck Schumer did.”

Fake Republican Ana Navarro refused to condemn Ruffin’s dehumanization of the people in what she purported was her political party. Instead, she lamented that Ruffin wouldn’t be able to dehumanize them at the dinner.

 

 

“I’m very disappointed, first of all, because Amber Ruffin is really funny. Also, because Amber Ruffin is a black, woman, and queer,” she boasted. “And I think these are communities that feel that we’re being erased. That, you know, we’re under attack. And so I think, you know, having her there would have had a great significance.”

Navarro actually decried the WHCA for “capitulating” to Trump, someone who wanted to be seen as human, and lamented that they “legitimized” him. “And so, I think it’s very disappointing to see all of these institutions bending a knee and giving in to the bully that is never going to give up bullying you because you just embolden and legitimized them,” she bemoaned.

Laughably, Navarro also suggested that the media were the “people are the ones that have to show fearlessness and guide us out of a very dark time.”

It was Navarro who was the one to speak out and invite Ruffin onto The View so she could tell her dehumanizing material, which got a huge applause from the studio audience and support from moderator Whoopi Goldberg:

NAVARRO: She should come and do it here.

[Applause]

GOLDBERG: Amber, you’ve been invited!

For her part, Goldberg chided the WHCA, arguing that you wouldn’t know what she was going to say until she said it. “I do want to say that when you chop up a comedian, whatever you think the median’s going to do, until they do it, you don’t know what they’re going to do,” she huffed.

Goldberg went on to claim, without explanation, that Ruffin getting canned was “another hack at free speech.” She also seemed to insist that Trump and his supporters deserved to be dehumanized. “And if you can’t take the heat, then you should not have started this fire,” she proclaimed.

Pretend independent Sara Haines only supported the WHCA distancing themselves from Ruffin because the show didn’t seem funny. “So, I think in hearing the direction she was going, this wasn’t going to be a fun, like, throwing it out at everyone in a room,” she said. “I would prefer it to be funny and it sounds like this was going to be a tinderbox.” Haines didn’t condemn Ruffin’s dehumanization.

Faux conservative Alyssa Farah Griffin did admit that her knee jerk reaction was to assume the WHCA “were being a bunch of cowards, but then I watched that.” She supported the WHCA ditching Ruffin because the most important thing for the media right was to “be able to show that they can objectively, without fear or favor, cover this administration. And objectively is the keyword.”

“And for a lot of Americans when there’s record high distrust in the media, if you have them sitting in a room with somebody who basically said Trump administration officials are subhuman, they’re a bunch of murderers, it adds to distrust in the press. It comes off as kid of a tacit endorsement of what she’s saying.,” she added, but still no full throated condemnation.

The View’s backing of dehumanizing rhetoric came less than a year after two assassination attempts on President Trump. There had also been attempts on the lives many Republicans and conservatives, including Justice Brett Kavanaugh and his family.

NewsBusters did a roundup of The View’s most dangerous and incendiary rhetoric from 2024, including when they refused to tone down the type of anti-Trump rhetoric that led to the attempts on his life.

When NewsBusters reached out to The View, asking if the cast members saw Trump and his supporters as human, they did not respond to the request for comment.

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

ABC’s The View
March 31, 2025
11:16:49 a.m. Eastern

(…)

AMBER RUFFIN: They’re not 100 percent interested in being like, ‘ha, you’re here, look at your stupid head. You’re burned.’ I care, like, you’re kind of a bunch of murderers. So, like, they were like, ‘you need to be, you know, equal and make sure that the, that you give it to both sides and blah, blah.’ I was like, ‘there’s no way I’m going to be fricking doing that, dude.’

[Transition]

I think it that just runs on Trump hurt badly. And then it trickles down to everyone who is around him. Because y’all also guilty. So, I think it just, they got their feelings hurt. But it want the false equivalency that the media does. They want that. It feels great. It makes them feel like human beings but they shouldn’t get to feel that way because they’re not.

[Cuts back to live]

[Applause and laughter]

[Sunny Hostin laughs]

WHOOPI GOLDBERG: You know, it’s a funny thing; free speech.

SUNNY HOSTIN: Yeah.

GOLDBERG: What do you think about the decision to drop her?

ALYSSA FARAH GRIFFIN: So, at first, I thought the White House Correspondent Association were being a bunch of cowards. But then I watched that.

And the most important thing that journalists need to do in this moment is be able to show that they can objectively, without fear or favor, cover this administration. And objectively is the keyword. And for a lot of Americans when there’s record high distrust in the media, if you have them sitting in a room with somebody who basically said Trump administration officials are subhuman, they’re a bunch of murderers, it adds to distrust in the press. It comes off as kid of a tacit endorsement of what she’s saying.

And I think it’s important to highlight good journalism. My worry is without having a comedian all together, that that will fall by the wayside and fewer people will tune in.

SARA HAINES: Why would they even go? I do for the funny part.

FARAH GRIFFIN: I actually support the decision and I worked with most of the people in the White House Correspondents Association. Eugene Daniels is a very serious journalist and I think it was actually the prudent decision.

GOLDBERG: Okay.

HOSTIN: I disagree. I mean, it just seems to me that when you capitulate and give into a bully, that bully will continue bullying you. It’s like the schoolyard bully.

[Applause]

If he takes your lunch one day, he’s going to take your lunch again.

And so, this White House has taken control of the White House Correspondents Association, many of its duties, including who’s going on in the press pool. Now, they’re rearranging the seats in the briefing room so that legacy media is going to be in the back and some right wing podcaster is going to be in the front.

I think you stand united as a press corps and you do things you’ve always done. I mean, this has been an association since 1921.

And when you talk about false equivalency, there is a false equivalency. She’s a comedian, she’s not a journalist. And I think it’s a time-honored tradition. And I think – I know Eugene Daniels very well. I think he made the wrong call. I think he capitulated just like Chuck Schumer did.

FARAH GRIFFIN: It was unanimous.

GOLDBERG: Right.

ANA NAVARRO: You know, I’m very disappointed. I’m very disappointed, first of all, because Amber Ruffin is really funny. Also, because Amber Ruffin is a black, woman, and queer. And I think these are communities that feel that we’re being erased. That, you know, we’re under attack. And so I think, you know, having her there would have had a great significance.

And also because this doesn’t come in a vacuum. Right? It comes after attack after attack on the press. And after we have seen media capitulating to him and corporate America capitulating to him and law firms capitulating to him. And so, I think it’s very disappointing to see all of these institutions bending a knee and giving in to the bully that is never going to give up bullying you because you just embolden and legitimized them.

And it goes back to your point. We can’t look at the institutions. We’ve got to look at the people. Because everybody else in the institutions, academia, media, all of these things, are afraid. But the people are the ones that have to show fearlessness and guide us out of a very dark time.

SARA HAINES: I know that White House Correspondents Association is separate from the administration, but I’m guessing in general you don’t want to, like, blow the place up when you show up. I was surprised they invited a comedian because his presidential run, Donald Trump started as a joke was made at his expense by President Obama at the time. I just don’t think this is an administration with a lot of sense of humor.

So, I think in hearing the direction she was going, this wasn’t going to be a fun, like, throwing it out at everyone in a room. That’s why a lot of comedians work as hosts when it comes to Oscars. They go after everyone. I would prefer it to be funny and it sounds like this was going to be a tinderbox.

FARAH GRIFFIN: And we should note, the Trump administration is boycotting the dinner, they’re not attending. And also, Eugene Daniels, who’s the president of WHCA, is a black gay man himself. So, there’s representation that’s going to be there. And he’ll be chairing it and MCing the event. But they’re focusing, they’re saying, on journalism, rather than the comedic event.

NAVARRO: What do you think of the comedian?

GOLDBERG: As one who is often told: ‘Listen, you can’t come through this; we can’t have you here doing this.’ You know, people make the decisions they make.

I do want to say that when you chop up a comedian, whatever you think the median’s going to do, until they do it, you don’t know what they’re going to do. The pre-chop of this is just another bad move in my mind because we are already seeing people being stopped from saying what they think. One of the great things about being an American is you can say anything. Anything. And if you can’t take the heat, then you should not have started this fire.

This is not, you know, you know who Amber Ruffin is. Something you said earlier today, you knew who she was, you know the kind of humor she does, and you know she doesn’t go tiptoe lightly. So, for y’all to have I invited her and then going “uh oh, uh oh, we should stop that,’ seems to be, for me, another hack at free speech. And that, that makes me more uncomfortable than anything.

FARAH GRIFFIN: Can I ask one thing though?

GOLDBERG: Yes, got to do it quick though.

FARAH GRIFFIN: Cause it wasn’t a comedic bit there. I was very surprised to hear her say sub humor and you’re murderers. Maybe say, ‘You’ve had actions that I don’t think are humane, or I think you’ve contributed to death.’

GOLDBERG: But when you’re talking to an interviewer, you’re not doing your show. You’re answering a question. So, yeah, she is very funny.

HOSTIN: It might have been funny.

GOLDBERG: It might have been much funnier than anybody thought.

NAVARRO: She should come and do it here.

[Applause]

GOLDBERG: Amber, you’ve been invited! We’ll be right back.

On Sunday, Axios co-founder Mike Allen revealed the White House press team will be taking over the seating chart for news outlets inside the Brady Briefing Room, wrestling control from the elites that rule the White House Correspondents Association (WHCA) and a chart that primarily rewards corporate liberal media outlets.

Allen wrote “[i]t’s the latest — but likely not the last — effort by the White House to take a heavier hand in shaping who covers President Trump” by “upend[ing] decades-old press corps traditions” even though a source emphasized the tweaks would be to represent new outlets, not simply ones that openly support President Trump.

Sunday’s scoop came just over a month after the team — led by Deputy Chief of Staff Taylor Budowich — assumed control of schedule for the press pool, a smaller, rotating group of reporters for White House events and travel. As part of that change, they booted the Associated Press over the Gulf of America name change, triggering an ongoing lawsuit.

Allen’s source argued the alterations to seating chart would be “based on metrics more reflective of how media is consumed today” with newer voices being added to the front from “TV, print and digital outlets,” such as “online influencers and newer organizations” like “Axios, NOTUS and Punchbowl.”

The anonymous official made clear those rewarded per se won’t be entirely based on whether the White House has received “favorable coverage,” but “truly an honest look at consumption” and an outlet’s ability to be there day in and day out.

It was for that reason, they told Allen, that those moved towards the front wouldn’t necessarily all consist of influencers because, while “important…they aren’t [equipped to provide] consistent coverage.”

Before those who still give their full faith and credit to the liberal media, Allen said “[m]ajor legacy outlets will still be included. But expect some to have diminished visibility compared with their customary spots in the first few rows.”

Allen also shared this move came as some in the WHCA “have been looking for ways to de-escalate” with one member having “privately raised the possibility of changing the organization’s bylaws so the sitting White House press secretary, currently Karoline Leavitt, always serves as WHCA president,” but there’s obvious doubt its membership would approve it.

To help think through where the seating chart currently stands, we’ll walk through the first three rows to show how the legacy liberal media dominate the front and the eye of the press secretary.

Going from left to right from the press secretary’s perspective, row one includes CNN, Reuters, ABC, Associated Press, CBS, Fox News, and NBC. In row two (and still going to left to right), the seats go USA Today, The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Public Radio (NPR), Bloomberg, CBS News Radio, and the Wall Street Journal.

Moving in the same direction for row three, liberal outlets still dominate with ABC News Radio, Los Angeles Times, Agence France-Presse (a major wire service), foreign pool (a rotating seat for a reporter representing an overseas outlet), McClatchy (a newspaper chain), PBS NewsHour, and Politico.

Daily Wire? They have to stand in the aisle. Breitbart and Real America’s Voice? Same deal. Axios and Semafor are also without seats. 

Where do our friends with Newsmax sit? In the center of row six.

Thankfully, Real Clear Politics and The Washington Times have their own seats…but in row five.

How about our friends with the New York Post, America’s oldest, continuous newspaper? They have a better slot in the middle of the fourth row, but they have to share it with TheGrio. In fact, many smaller outlets have to share their seat with multiple other outlets.

Here are a few others. NewsNation? Row seven, split with Scripps (which laid off hundreds last year, doing away with around-the-clock national news). Daily Caller? Also in the last row (seven), sharing time with another friend of ours in EWTN.