Newsbusters

With January 6 cases having evaporated, CBS’s Scott MacFarlane has been looking for a new area to channel himself and being the Justice correspondent (i.e. Deep State liaison) has suited him well. But Thursday’s CBS Evening News showed MacFarlane dismissing the Trump administration’s labeling of drug cartels as terror groups, denouncing it as a “controversial,” “provocative,” and potentially harmful.

MacFarlane was cued up by co-anchors John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois acknowledging a Coast Guard display Thursday of “nearly 46,000 pounds of illegal drugs seized in the Eastern Pacific” that “includ[ed] more than 12,000 pounds of cocaine.”

 

 

MacFarlane actually started on a strong note: “Inside the headquarters of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, the walls are covered from nearly floor to ceiling with pictures of Americans killed by fentanyl.”

After acting DEA Administrator Derek Maltz said the fight against fentanyl isn’t “a red or blue issue” and seeing these tragic cases “inspires me” to bring justice, MacFarlane brought up the terror designation.

“It seems to be equating them with ISIS, bin Laden. Is that an accurate comparison,” he asked, to which Maltz said it’s something he’s wanted “for years” because “we’re losing 100,000-plus Americans every year to these dangerous substances that are coming into this country.”

With that number established that, if it were done by an Islamist group, Americans would be enraged, Maltz explained the reasoning behind the designation: “The cartels’ motive is to make as much money as they can, but they really don’t care of the collateral damage…If they kill 100,000 Americans, but they make billions of dollars, that’s okay with them.”

MacFarlane then pivoted back to the terrorists, fretting “[a]nother potentially powerful, though controversial, tool, charging people, including Americans, who help the cartels with a felony charge of material support of terrorism, which could carry a life sentence.”

To provide a defense of illegal immigrants who belong to foreign gangs now labeled as terrorists and lament this could affect remittances to Latin America, he turned to Rachel Levinson-Waldman, Brennan Center lawyer and Kamala Harris donor (though he left the last part out). It was also here he claimed going after cartels is “provocative” (click “expand”):

MACFARLANE: Rachel Levinson-Waldman is a national security expert with the Brennan Center for Justice. [TO LEVINSON-WALDMAN] Do you think it’s realistic that somebody in Chicago or Cheyenne sends money back home to Mexico to family could get prosecuted if the family ends up handing that money over to a cartel?

LEVINSON-WALDMAN: I actually think it’s not unlikely at all and I think that’s especially seeing it through the lens of what this administration has very explicitly stated its goal to be. Its goal is mass deportations.

MACFARLANE: As you try to get after this, you need some cooperation from Mexico. Doesn’t this provocative designation make it harder for Mexico to want to help?

MALTZ: We just can’t keep relying on people that don’t want to cooperate. So we have to be more aggressive than we have been. And we have to use all the tools that are available.

Back live, MacFarlane blasted the idea of charging cartel members and going into their bank accounts by saying it “could scare off people from knowingly giving money to the cartels or risk unknowingly doing so.”

“[L]ate today, a federal lawsuit was filed by the family of a DEA agent allegedly killed by cartel leaders. They have sued the cartel leaders individually for money. John and Maurice, that’s a legal strategy only available in this case to terror victims,” he added.

Even though he already spent time opining like an ACLU lawyer why throwing the book at illegal immigrant drug cartels is somehow wrong, DuBois asked MacFarlane to explain more about the “downside to all of this.”

The CBS correspondent shamefully fretted this will “scar[e] things off”: “How about scaring off sources the DEA may have inside these cartels, helping them infiltrate it? And also, as we asked at the end there, does it damage relationships with Mexico, which has also been critical right on the border of helping infiltrate the cartels?”

To see the relevant CBS transcript from March 20, click here.

Even by its standards, ABC’s Friday edition of The View was deranged. The cantankerous quintet welcomed actor, comedian, and professional race hustler John Leguizamo to the show to baselessly accuse the Trump Administration of running “pogroms,” among several other racially inflammatory statements.

Joy Behar began with DEI, “You once told me about the fact that, according to you, DEI, which is what you say you are, stands for diligence, excellence and imagination. So tell me what your reaction is to Trump’s executive order terminating all the DEI mandates, policies, and programs in the federal government?”

 

 

Trump may have the nation’s first Secretary of State, but that didn’t stop Leguizamo from declaring, “It’s terrible. I mean, they’re removing plaques of black and Latino and women heroes, just, I mean, what kind of action is that? It’s like a white only club. DEI was supposed to give equity to black and Latinos because we’ve been here 500 years, 400 years and, you know, there was segregation, lynching, red-lining, we were experimented on, you know, we were kept from jobs from, you know, going to the best places.”

He further added, “This was to undo 500 years of being oppressed. To give us equity. Give us a chance to get to the same level as everybody else. Yes. I think Americans do want inclusion. I think Americans do want diversity and grew up with Latino, black people, Asians, and they know that we have value. They’re neighbors. They’re in love with us. We’re lovely people. We’re very sexy.”

Amid some crosstalk, Behar replied, “But when white people have been dominate for such a long time—John, white people have been in control, they don’t like it now that other people—”

At the same time, Sunny Hostin concurred, “Equity feels like oppression to people who have not experienced—”

Leguizamo mostly agreed, “Some white people. I don’t think it’s all white people… some white people don’t want that diversity, and that’s why he has to demonize DEI. He has to make us feel like we’re getting a leg up and we don’t deserve it, but all the black and Latin people that I know who are in positions of power have to be five times better than their white brothers and sisters.”

Ana Navarro then moved to identiy politics and immigration, “Let’s talk about our people, let’s talk about the Latinos. You were very vocal, very active during the election speaking to the Latino community. Forty-six percent voted in this country, Latinos in this country ended up voting for Trump despite the fact that he demonized Latinos, demonized immigrants every single day, and since becoming president, he’s targeted, hunted them down.”

 

 

Pulling out the Nazi card, Leguizamo proclaimed, “Yes, it’s like basically pogroms. They’re coming up to all these people that they said ‘they’re criminals.’ They’re not criminals, and there’s no due process. You can say anybody is a gang member, and you saw that Fox clip where they said this kid’s a gang member, but then they had shaved his head, and the hair was still on the floor to make them look like they’re gang members, because there’s no due process then you can call anyone a criminal, and you know these people—you meet immigrants, they’re hard-working, lovely, decent, wonderful people.”

Navarro chimed in with, “Doing the jobs in this country that nobody else wants to do.”

With a sense of racial self-righteousness, Leguizamo continued, “We feed America. We serve America. We build America. We give America everything and they get nothing back. They’re not taking from our services. They’re not getting anything from us.”

Americans of all races work to feed this country and build its economy, but even if one accepts the argument that illegal immigrants are a significant part of that effort, it is not as if Mr. Hollywood Movie Star is part of that “we” doing manual labor for a living.

Here is a transcript for the March 21 show:

ABC The View

3/21/2025

11:28 PM ET

JOY BEHAR: Alright, well now I’m going to jump to politics. So, before we go to your movie, which is wonderful, you once told me about the fact that, according to you, DEI, which is what you say you are—

JOHN LEGUIZAMO: Yes. I am.

BEHAR: Stands for diligence, excellence and imagination.

LEGUIZAMO: That’s right. 

BEHAR: So tell me what your reaction is to Trump’s executive order terminating all the DEI mandates, policies, and programs in the federal government?

LEGUIZAMO: It’s terrible. I mean, they’re removing plaques of black and Latino and women heroes, just, I mean, what kind of action is that? It’s like a white only club. DEI was supposed to give equity to black and Latinos because we’ve been here 500 years, 400 years and, you know, there was segregation, lynching, red-lining, we were experimented on, you know, we were kept from jobs from, you know, going to the best places. Churches, parks. This was to undo 500 years of being oppressed.

BEHAR: Right.

LEGUIZAMO: To give us equity. Give us a chance to get to the same level as everybody else. Yes. I think Americans do want inclusion. I think Americans do want diversity and grew up with Latino, black people, Asians, and they know that we have value. They’re neighbors. They’re in love with us. We’re lovely people. We’re very sexy.

BEHAR: But when white people have been dominate for such a long time—John, white people have been in control, they don’t like it now that other people—

LEGUIZAMO: Some—

SUNNY HOSTIN: Equity feels like oppression to people who have not experienced—

LEGUIZAMO: Right, right. Some white people. I don’t think it’s all white people—

HOSTIN: Some.

BEHAR: Of course not.

LEGUIZAMO: Yeah, but some white people don’t want that diversity, and that’s why he has to demonize DEI. He has to make us feel like we’re getting a leg up and we don’t deserve it, but all the black and Latin people that I know who are in positions of power have to be five times better than their white brothers and sisters.

ANA NAVARRO: Let’s talk about our people, let’s talk about the Latinos. You were very vocal, very active during the election speaking to the Latino community. 

LEGUIZAMO: Yes.

NAVARRO: Forty-six percent voted in this country, Latinos in this country ended up voting for Trump despite the fact that he demonized Latinos, demonized immigrants every single day, and since becoming president, he’s targeted, hunted them down.

LEGUIZAMO: Yes, it’s like basically pogroms. They’re coming up to all these people that they said “they’re criminals.”

HOSTIN: They’re not criminals.

LEGUIZAMO: They’re not criminals, and there’s no due process. You can say anybody is a gang member and you saw that Fox clip where they said this kid’s a gang member, but then they had shaved his head, and the hair was still on the floor to make them look like they’re gang members, because there’s no due process then you can call anyone a criminal, and you know these people — you meet immigrants, they’re hard-working, lovely, decent, wonderful people.

BEHAR: That’s true. 

NAVARRO: Doing the jobs in this country that nobody else wants to do.

LEGUIZAMO: We feed America. We serve America. We build America. We give America everything and they get nothing back. They’re not taking from our services. They’re not getting anything from us.

NBC has been bemoaning a bill has been introduced in the House that would end America’s routine issuance of student visas to nationals of an unfriendly foreign power. In response to the measure, Kimmy Yam published an article on NBCNews.com on March 19 alleging that the bill amounted to a “new Chinese exclusion act.”

The article focused heavily on the complaints of current Chinese students and advocacy groups in the U.S., and gave less attention to the practical security concerns which might make such a measure attractive. Yam gave attention, for instance, to an anonymous Chinese student who flatly denounced the bill as “just blatant racism and xenophobia,” and another who claimed to have noticed a “slight shift” in attitudes since Trump took office, but who failed to back up these words with any actual specifics. Yam also claimed that the bill has resulted in “concerns around safety” for such students, but again failed to back up this assertion with facts.

The supporters of the bill were not completely ignored, as a quote was provided from Rep. Riley M. Moore (R-W. Va.), who introduced the measure, and was quoted as saying “I will never apologize for defending America’s vital national interests against our greatest geopolitical foe.”

 

I wonder why @NBCNews didn’t include the rest of my quote. Any explanation @kimmythepooh? pic.twitter.com/tqdibdRpxA
— Rep. Riley M. Moore (@RepRileyMoore) March 19, 2025
 

It appeared, though, that NBC did not even quote Moore in his entirety. Moore posted that evening on X that, in addition to the words reproduced by NBC, he had also said “but NBC News should apologize to its readers for pathetically parroting Chinese Communist propaganda.” 

Yam also quoted a spokesperson of the Chinese embassy, who claimed that America has already long “suppressed and persecuted” Chinese students in this country, but again made no attempt to actually substantiate this claim with any evidence.

Apparently, NBC was more concerned with making sure they were not publicly accused of parroting Chinese Communist propaganda, than they were with actually not parroting Chinese Communist propaganda.

ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel welcomed California Sen. Adam Schiff to his Thursday show for some liberal group therapy. The theme of the interview was that Kimmel would put the ball on the tee for Schiff, who would then say things like Democrats have to fight against the “dictator wannabees,” that President Donald Trump and Elon Musk have a “certain arsonist’s glee,” and that Trump can “go [bleep] himself.”

One of Kimmel’s setups was, “At this point, are you surprised by anything?”

Schiff claimed, “I am surprised just how quickly they have created a climate of fear. I wouldn’t have thought it possible. But by going after universities, they’re intimidating other universities. By going after certain press organizations, they’re causing others to self-censor.”

 

 

He further added, “I would not have thought it possible to so quickly create that climate of fear. And we have to band together. We have to speak out. We have to push back. We have to show courage. The dictator wannabees, this is part of their playbook. And the only way to defeat it is by standing strong and saying, basically, ‘Screw you, I won’t be intimidated.’”

Kimmel also wondered, “Today, they seemed to have caught hundreds of millions of dollars in money that was supposed to go to food banks, for school lunches, and for people who are hungry. What is the thinking behind that? Like, why?”

With no sense of irony considering all the vandalism and arsons against Tesla happening throughout the country, Schiff declared, “The main thrust of it is they want to make all these cuts so they can take the money that they’re supposedly saving and plow it into a tax cut for big corporations and wealthy people. That’s sort of the central animating purpose of the Elon Musks and Donald Trumps and their crowd. But there’s also a certain arsonist’s glee about watching things burn.”

Schiff also insisted, “I think the cruelty is not an accident. I think part of it, the cruelty, is the objective. And this is what’s going to bring them down. The corruption will bring them down. The cruelty will bring them down. This is not who we are as a country.”

 

 

Later in their interview, Kimmel ran off several nicknames Trump has given Schiff including “Pencil Neck,” which he didn’t understand, “Your neck size seems very normal to me, you know?”

Schiff responded, “I’m getting the impression he doesn’t like me very much. But, you know I’m a good Democrat, so my view, of course, is when they go low, we go high. He can go [bleep] himself.”

Kimmel concluded by thanking Schiff not just for appearing on the show but, “for what you’re doing. As much as I guess can be done. Senator Adam Schiff, everybody.”

Earlier in the show, during his monologue, Kimmel also took on Trump’s decision to shutter the Department of Education, “According to the annual World Happiness Report, Americans are less happy than ever. The U.S. now ranks 24th on the happiest list. They say it is our lowest ranking since they’ve been measuring…. This chart shows the level of American happiness; look, it looks like it looks like the Tesla stock price. But our president has a plan to change that all. They say ignorance is bliss? And today Donald Trump signed an executive order to dismantle the Department of Education.”

 

 

 Kimmel proceeded to equate the Department of Education with education itself, “I know it sounds like a joke, but it’s not. Trump famously said he loves the poorly educated, and now he will have so many more people to love. Trump signed the order during an event at the White House. They invited a group of children to attend. They’re like ‘Hey, kids who hates school?’ and they’re like ‘Well, we do’ and they said ‘Good news, it’s over.’”

Federalism also didn’t appeal to Kimmel, “The idea behind this is to let the states come up with their own educational standards. For instance, from here on, in order to receive a high school diploma in Florida, all you have to do is complete the maze on the back of the kids’ menu at Fuddruckers.”

With logic like that, it is no wonder Democratic politicians feel so at home on the late night shows. 

Here is a transcript for the March 20 show:

ABC Jimmy Kimmel Live!

3/20/2025

11:36 PM ET

JIMMY KIMMEL: According to the annual World Happiness Report, Americans are less happy than ever. The U.S. now ranks 24th on the happiest list. They say it is our lowest ranking since they’ve been measuring. Yeah, no [bleep]. Why are you even ranking us? Leave us alone! Are you happy? I’ll kill you, that’s how happy I am. Finland was the happiest. Followed by Denmark, Iceland, Sweden, and the Netherlands. This chart shows the level of American happiness; look, it looks like it looks like the Tesla stock price. But our president has a plan to change that all. They say ignorance is bliss? And today Donald Trump signed an executive order to dismantle the Department of Education. 

I know it sounds like a joke, but it’s not. Trump famously said he loves the poorly educated, and now he will have so many more people to love. Trump signed the order during an event at the White House. They invited a group of children to attend. They’re like “Hey, kids who hates school?” and they’re like “Well, we do” and they said “Good news, it’s over.” 

The idea behind this is to let the states come up with their own educational standards. For instance, from here on, in order to receive a high school diploma in Florida, all you have to do is complete the maze on the back of the kids’ menu at Fuddruckers. 

…

KIMMEL: Did you thank President Trump for all the water, for the spigot that he turned to send the water down the state?

ADAM SCHIFF: Thank you was not exactly the two words — one of the two was the same.

KIMMEL: Are you ever — at this point, are you surprised by anything?

SCHIFF: I am surprised just how quickly they have created a climate of fear. I wouldn’t have thought it possible. But by going after universities, they’re intimidating other universities. By going after certain press organizations, they’re causing others to self-censor. By going after certain law firms, they’re causing other lawyers to not want to take cases if they think it will be retaliated against by the administration. 

Companies, you know, toeing a Trumpian line because they’re worried about losing government contracts. I would not have thought it possible to so quickly create that climate of fear. And we have to band together. We have to speak out. We have to push back. We have to show courage. The dictator wannabees, this is part of their playbook. And the only way to defeat it is by standing strong and saying, basically, “Screw you, I won’t be intimidated.”

KIMMEL: Today, they seemed to have caught hundreds of millions of dollars in money that was supposed to go to food banks, for school lunches, and for people who are hungry. What is the thinking behind that? Like, why?

SCHIFF: You know — part of it is — really, the main thrust of it is they want to make all these cuts so they can take the money that they’re supposedly saving and plow it into a tax cut for big corporations and wealthy people. That’s sort of the central animating purpose of the Elon Musks and Donald Trumps and their crowd. But there’s also a certain arsonist’s glee about watching things burn. 

So, part of this — I think the cruelty is not an accident. I think part of it, the cruelty, is the objective. And this is what’s going to bring them down. The corruption will bring them down. The cruelty will bring them down. This is not who we are as a country. 

But in addition to, you know, their own self-defeating, internal, ugly politics, the Democratic Party needs to get its act together. We need to have an affirmative case we’re making. We need to answer the question that so many millions of Americans are asking, which is, if you’re working hard in this country, can you still earn a good living for yourself and your family? We need to be able to answer that central question. I think the key to it is by getting things done again and moving the country forward. We can’t be reliant on them to self-destruct, although they will. We have to offer something positive.

…

KIMMEL: Your neck size seems very normal to me, you know?

SCHIFF: I’m getting the impression he doesn’t like me very much.

KIMMEL: Yeah, he doesn’t. 

SCHIFF: But, you know I’m a good Democrat, so my view, of course, is, when they go low, we go high. He can go [bleep] himself. 

KIMMEL: Thanks for what you’re doing. As much as I guess can be done. Senator Adam Schiff, everybody.

Conservatives love to joke that the Democrats should keep supporting outrageous Democrats that will hurt their image, from Jasmine Crockett to David Hogg to Tim Walz. What they fear is Democrats figuring out why they lost and fixing it.

On Ezra Klein’s podcast for The New York Times, they turned to Democrat consultant David Shor, who analyzed the 2024 results in a way that’s discouraging to the leftist press. “I think that superpolitically engaged people are overrepresented at every single step of the political process,” Shor announced. “I really think the only point, other than Election Day, when regular people get a say, is in polls.”

The biggest Democrat assumption that Shor set out to crumble was that fuller turnout always translates to a bigger Democrat win. Shor argued with his data that if only people who had voted in 2022 had voted, Kamala Harris would have won the popular vote and the Electoral College fairly easily. But if everyone had voted, Trump would have won the popular vote by nearly five points!

This underlined Shor’s media-confounding finding: “The story of this election is that people who follow the news closely, get their information from traditional media and see politics as an important part of their identity became more Democratic in absolute terms. Meanwhile, those who don’t follow politics closely became much more Republican.”

In other words, “the lower your political engagement, education level, or socioeconomic status…the more Trumpy you are.” This is a new development.

Klein reacted by stating how journalists see the problem: they’ve failed to be anti-Trump enough to force a Democrat win. “Obviously, I get a lot of incoming from people who want The New York Times to cover Donald Trump differently.” Klein raised the obvious follow-up: “How do you change the views of voters you don’t really have a good way to reach?”

Journalists don’t just want to inform voters. They want to manipulate voters into selecting “the right side of history.” What if the voters refuse to be manipulated? 

Elitist liberal journalists tend to see Trump-leaning voters with a lower education level as voters who believe anything their crazy uncle posts on Facebook. More of their “fact-based” information should translate to more Democrats. Voting Republican and being less educated makes perfect sense to their cocksure sensibilities.

What doesn’t compute as easily is all their pompous lecturing – that inflation isn’t so bad, that you can’t define what is a woman, and Joe Biden is at his best mental state ever — can damage public trust and turn voters away.

Shor had more frustrating results to share: he estimated immigrants went from being a Biden plus-27 group in 2020 to a group that Trump narrowly won in 2024. This group of naturalized citizens makes up roughly 10 percent of the electorate.

Worse yet, the youngest voters have the largest gender gap. Eighteen-year-old men were 23 percentage points more likely to support Trump than 18-year-old women, which Shor proclaimed was the “scariest” chart. Shor and Klein guessed this had something to do with Covid and made generalizations about how young men and women have very different and gendered social-media experiences.

Democrats are demoralized right now, and polls show they’re at their lowest popularity in decades. Flooding the media system with anti-Trump messaging (and legal actions designed as messaging applications) didn’t work in the last election. But they’ll keep hoping it will make a difference in the next one.

If conservatives are lucky, they may invest their hopes in the energetic performances of Crockett, Hogg, and Walz.

The media continue to fall over themselves in order to protect the reputations of suspected jihadists on our college campuses, as they face deportation pursuant to current immigration law. And once again, they continue to raise the free speech straw man as they attempt to create sympathies for these detainees.

Watch NBC’s report on Georgetown academic Bidar Khan Suri in its entirety (click “expand” to view full transcript):

LESTER HOLT: Tonight, temporarily blocking the deportation of a Georgetown University researcher, the Trump administration is looking to remove him from the country, accusing him of ties to a terror group. Gabe Gutierrez has late details.

GABE GUTIERREZ: Bidar Khan Suri, a graduate student and father of three from India who was teaching at Georgetown University, is now accused of having ties to a terror group. But late today, a federal judge temporarily blocked his deportation, after the ACLU filed an emergency motion.

SOPHIA GREGG: Freedom of speech in this country should never be limited. And it should never be chilled by the government.

SPOKESPERSON: But the idea that somehow he is a threat to our national security because of his views on the Israel/Palestine conflict is just ridiculous.

GUTIERREZ: But a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security says Suri was “actively spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting anti-semitism on social media.” A U.S. official tells NBC News his father-in-law was a Hamas advisor. Georgetown University says it is not aware of Suri engaging in illegal activity and that he was granted a visa to the United States to continue his doctoral research on peacebuilding in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Trump administration is using a law that grants the Secretary of State power to deport visa holders whose presence has adverse foreign policy consequences.

MARCO RUBIO: We will continue to look for people that we never would have allowed into this country on student visas had we known they were going to do what they’ve done.

GUTIERREZ: Meanwhile, Columbia University is now signaling it will comply with the Trump administration’s demands in return for restoring $400 million in federal funding, canceled because The White House accused Columbia of continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students. During pro-Palestinian protests, campus buildings were occupied and vandalized. Jewish student Shoshana Aufzien says she was trapped inside one of them.

SHOSHANA AUFZIEN: There comes a point where speech is, you know, it’s not protected anymore if you are inciting violence, if you’re supporting terrorism.

GUTIERREZ: As for the Georgetown graduate student, his lawyer says he’s done nothing wrong, and that he’s still in custody at a detention center in Louisiana. Lester. 

HOLT: All right, Gabe. Thanks.

Once again, a terror-adjacent foreign national with a legal right to work and live in the United States is the beneficiary of the media’s deployment of a straw man defense. Whether it’s this Georgetown academic, or Mahmoud Khalil, or the Hezbollah doctor that was recently deported, the media’s defense of choice is free speech.

No one is looking to strip anyone’s free speech rights, and people are free to say what they want. In this case, though, there is some of that free speech that gets weighed against national security risks pursuant to federal law- which may lead to deportation of the individual that exercised that free speech. And no one is exempt from that.

By advocating for this academic with literal familial ties to Hamas, the medieval savages that executed the barbaric attacks on October 7th, the media remain stuck in their pattern of usefully idiotic terror apologia.

 

If you wanted more evidence of the descent of CBS News into utterly pretentious piffle, look no further than CBS Evening News Plus, which indulges the ego of its anchor, John Dickerson, by enabling a “Reporter’s Notebook” editorial at the close of each telecast. Dickerson’s latest oeuvre: a diatribe blaming President Donald Trump and Elon Musk for ruining spring for him.

Watch Dickerson’s grandiloquent pomposity for yourselves, and drink it all in:

JOHN DICKERSON: The happiness report is here again. I’m not talking about the global rankings of happiness that was published today. I’m talking about spring, nature’s happiness report, which also arrives today. It is the first day of spring where we are. A fact that might not be in evidence everywhere but will be soon enough. Spring is pushy. Water seeps up stalks, bulbs, crack; bird answers bird. You can’t stop the march of green, the return of color. Persephone is on the front door stoop. Words come out of storage. You can’t bask in a snowstorm. But you can bask in the sun, you can sprout, you can unfurl. It is nature’s station alert. We interrupt this programming for a comeback tour. The season arrives with equal generosity for all, indifferent to our human boundaries and sorrow. Egalitarian renewal that comforts, but that also accuses. Accuses those whose avarice, callousness, or even our own comfort have made parts of the world so miserable. That they deprive those who toil, those who flee and those who endure of even a moment’s peace to experience this basic thing, the birth of spring. We are lucky, those of us who can feel spring as a tonic, but not all of us are lucky, which makes spring a thorn. If is it generous, maybe we should be more generous, too. And that’s tonight’s CBS Evening News Plus. I’m John Dickerson. Good night.

Dickerson’s editorial lulls viewers into the hopeful anticipation of a newscast closing with an unvarnished and unsullied evocation of the inevitable, unstoppable beauty of spring. Dickerson’s warm and fuzzy prose, a lyrical harbinger of the season to come.

Alas, that was not the case. The hopeful anticipation turned to bitter loathing as, at about 48 seconds in, Dickerson proceeds to shove Persephone off the front door stoop and bludgeon her all the way back to Hades. This, too, was ultimately a political screed. 

Dickerson’s jabs at Musk, Trump, and America herself are veiled but easily visible. “Egalitarian renewal…that accuses” being the early tell and tonal shift, concealing his denunciations of DOGE, immigration, and foreign policy beneath florid prose that ends in a scold-like call for generosity.

When the time comes to perform an autopsy on whatever happened to CBS’s news division, this editorial will be at or near the top of the exhibit list. Lyrical and florid, like spring itself, but vomitous nonetheless. 

 

Keeping her habit intact of assembling conservative-free panels, CNN This Morning host Audie Cornish’s guests today were CNN’s oh-so-serious Stephen Collinson, Washington Post reporter Sabrina Rodriguez, and Cari Champion, a CNN contributor who’s also the host of the “Naked Sports” podcast.

The target was Trump’s moves to shut down the Department of Education. There were clips of a teachers union boss, a school principal, and the Dem Lt. Gov. of Kentucky, all bewailing what would happen. Unsurprisingly, no clips from conservative activists applauding the end of the Department of Education’s efforts to inject leftist ideology into school curricula, and to use its budget to fund leftist NGOs. 

The panelists then took their shots at the impending shuttering. 

Cornish even managed to work in a clip of Lisa Murkowski [speaking of herself in the third person], kvetching that Musk might take the next billion he makes from Starlink to finance a primary against her.

Champion got off the segment’s most unintentionally amusing comments. She actually recycled the tired cliché of describing the situation as something out of The Handmaid’s Tale, because no one supposedly dares talk about what Trump has been doing. 

LOL: no one is talking about it? It’s precisely what the liberal media has been doing virtually non-stop. It’s what Champion and the rest of the panel were doing today: hello?!

Collinson felt Murkowski’s pain: “I think intimidation works. It’s the new Republican party. The old Republican Party was people like Lisa Murkowski. The new Republican Party is Elon Musk and Donald Trump, and that’s just the way it’s going to be.” This is kind of funny, because the Alaska senator’s voting record since 2017 is less than half-conservative.

Cornish and Champion were peeved at Musk’s ability to get his message out. Ah yes, the liberal media’s nostalgia for the good old days, when they monopolized news sources!

Champion did say one thing that was indisputably true, observing that people in other countries don’t understand what’s happening, she added, “and neither do I.” 

Evidently!  

Here’s the transcript.

CNN This Morning 
3/20/25
6:02 am EDT

AUDIE CORNISH: Earlier this month, the agency said it was getting rid of about half of its workforce. Teachers and unions say this is going to affect the most vulnerable students. 

TEACHERS UNION PRESIDENT: When they are attacking the Department of Education, they are attacking our students, and we are not going to stand for them. 

ELEMENTARY SCHOOL PRINCIPAL: Educational opportunity is not government waste. It’s something that is very central to what makes America great. 

JACQUELINE COLEMAN [KY Lt. Gov.]: I think that these kids deserve the moon. And if there’s any cuts that can be made to make government more efficient, shouldn’t be on the backs of special education students. 

CORNISH: Joining me now to discuss, Stephen Collinson, CNN Politics senior reporter, Carrie Champion, CNN contributor and host of Naked Sports with Carrie Champion, and Sabrina Rodriguez, national political reporter for The Washington Post. 

So, Sabrina, we actually heard from a union leader there. Are you starting to see any movement or conversation among parents groups, students groups, like, the people who will be affected by the laws that the U.S. Department of Education kind of enforces. 

SABRINA RODRIGUEZ: Absolutely. I think right now there’s a lot of anxiety around what exactly is going to happen here. 

. . . 

STEPHEN COLLINSON: The president is doing something that Republican presidents have said ever since Ronald Reagan that they want to do. 

CORNISH: Yes, I’ve been hearing this forever. 

COLLINSON: You know, every time you go to a conservative political meeting, this is one of the big applause lines. The difference is that most Republican presidents thought that they had to do it through Congress, because that’s the law, as you pointed out. 

I think the big question here is what happens to programs for low-income kids, the disabled kids. The president is not being quite truthful. 

CORNISH: Yes. Special education, bilingual education, although now that English is officially the language, maybe that doesn’t matter. 

COLLINSON: The states already look after schools. It’s all these extra programs. And then there’s the question of student loans. They say they’re going to put it into the Commerce Department. If that happens and we get to the summer when all the new students are applying for their loans, there could be complete chaos if they don’t do it properly. 

. . . 

CORNISH: Yes, so to underscore what you know, as we mentioned, it takes an act of Congress to do something like this, but obviously when you look at where Republicans are in the party, they’re not going to be pushing anything too hard. 

Here’s Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, what she talked about this week when she was talking about working with Donald Trump and Elon Musk in this DOGE effort, even when they make cuts that she disagrees with. 

LISA MURKOWSKI: It may be that Elon Musk has decided he’s going to take the next billion dollars that he makes off of Starlink and put it directly against Lisa Murkowski. And you know what? That may happen. That’s why you’ve got everybody just like ziplip, not saying a word, because they’re afraid they’re going to be taken down. They’re going to be primaried. 

CORNISH: Cari Champion,:ziplip. 

CARI CHAMPION: Ziplip. Well, I do feel that way. I feel like we are, and I know you’ve heard this before, but in a real life episode of Handmaid’s Tale. Everyone is just watching it and we’re all asleep and no one is saying anything and doing anything. I’m just really so concerned about all the issues that are happening. 

There is, when you repeat this out loud, to other people who may be, say, live in other places, in another country. They don’t understand what’s happening. And neither do I. 

CORNISH: [Murkowski] survived the Tea Party revolution, right? She survived those previous events. 

RODRIGUEZ: But we’re in a different place today because we’re talking about the world’s richest man involved in U.S. politics. And he has no problem going on X throughout the day and launching attacks at lawmakers that he disagrees with, and has openly talked about how he will primary anyone that disagrees with what Donald Trump wants to do. 

So, we’re at a different point right now, because again, it’s the information war, it’s him on X talking about all of these things, and it’s the fact that he has all the money to actually do it. 

CORNISH: Yeah, Stephen, do you see this as haunting, this whole conversation? 

COLLINSON: I think intimidation works. It’s the new Republican party. The old Republican Party was people like Lisa Murkowski. The new Republican Party is Elon Musk and Donald Trump, and that’s just the way it’s going to be. 

CORNISH: Yeah. All right. 

CHAMPION: Sabrina, can I say something about what she said about the information war? 

CORNISH: Yeah, yeah!

CHAMPION: What I find interesting about how they’ve orchestrated it, so if Elon Musk puts it on X, it goes from X to being retweeted by however many other people. 

CORNISH: To ending up on podcasts, too. 

CHAMPION: To Joe Rogan, to Theo Von, and the list goes on and on, and all the different people who are listening. And so the message is already clear who, quote, unquote, the problem is, and it doesn’t always turn out to be him because no one’s saying anything. 

CORNISH: Yeah. 

If you tuned into CNN and/or MSNBC on Thursday morning, the message was clear based on their coverage of supposed “anger” at congressional Republicans over the Trump agenda and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and hits from the left at Democratic town halls: Blue wave incoming!

Nevermind these protests at GOP town halls — including one Wednesday night they were warm and fuzzy inside over out in Wyoming for Congresswoman Harriet Hageman (R) — have been stacked with the bluest of blue partisans and organized by far-left groups, including some with ties to George Soros.

MSNBC’s Way Too Early host Ali Vitali boasted: “Republican Congresswoman Harriet Hageman, in deep-red Wyoming, faced a rowdy crowd during a town hall there last night. Almost 500 constituents packed the room and aired their frustrations, with the loudest reaction coming when Hageman spoke about her support for DOGE…A lot of anger there on the ground in Wyoming.”

 

 

MSNBC’s Morning Joe was unsurprisingly the most invested with five live discussions on the Hageman town hall as an “incredible” harbinger of “what’s happening out there” to the point it’s an “organic eruption.”

The Hageman hecklers even led the show with co-host Mika Brzezinski exclaiming: “Wow…It continues the trend of contentious meetings with constituents for Republican lawmakers…There was this incredible town hall in Wyoming…It really is a sign of what’s happening out there.”

Co-host Willie Geist later blasted anyone claiming this wasn’t a data point in a nationwide groundswell for Democrats (click “expand”):

GEIST: And, by the way, this brings it all the way back to how we came into the show when you had Harriet Hageman, the congressman in Laramie, Wyoming getting screamed at, loudly booed with chants of “deport Elon Musk from her Republican audience, people in that room. That’s what happens you —

BRZEZINSKI: That’s — it’s there.

JONATHAN LEMIRE: Yes.

GEIST: — cut 20 percent of the VA. That’s what happens when you cut 50 percent of the Department of Education and that’s what happens when you talk about cutting Medicaid. These are real cuts that impact real people’s lives, whether they’re Democrats or Republicans. And every time we see one of these Republican town halls, they have an excuse. They say, well, they’re busing in Democrats to yell at us. At some point, you can’t say that when it’s town hall after town hall of your voters, of your constituents screaming at you.

ANAND GIRIDHARADAS: Yeah. And, you know, I just it’s March 20. We’re exactly two months into this administration[.]

The insufferably pompous pricks opened up the 6:30 a.m. Eastern half-hour with sarcasm as co-host Joe Scarborough joked “Wyoming is a very progressive state” and longtime liberal hack John Heilemann remarked Wyoming is a “hard” place “to bus people in” and the Democrats are currently “not organized enough” to astroturf anything.

Geist further declared the mob to be real because “no state…gave more of its vote as percentage to Donald Trump than did Wyoming” and blasted claims by Hageman and her team it was a stacked room, arguing the University of Wyoming is “not exactly…a hippie school, necessarily.”

To briefly pause for a reality check and before continuing on with the liberal smugness, conservative strategist Tim Murtaugh flagged a few telling passages from a local news article about the hullabaloo:

Back to the quackery, Heilemann reveled in Hageman being booed since “she’s the woman who beat Liz Cheney in the primary…so there’s a particular kind of poignance[.]”

“When you’re telling your voters to calm down you may not be winning. Wow,” said far-left, pro-rioting pundit Anand Giridharadas.

Scarborough, as usual, made it about himself, twice arguing his time as congressman showed it’s actually quite easy to hold town halls and win over any audience (click “expand”):

SCARBOROUGH: I’m telling you, there’s nothing that — that your constituents like more than when you show independence and you say, as I did, I disagree with Bill Clinton here, here, here, here and here. It’s not good for you. I disagree with Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole and Republicans and all of these different places. I mean, if it’s all about helping constituents, this is actually an easy call and you actually can stand up to Elon Musk and live to tell about it. The perfect example of it politically — he lived to tell about it perfect example was in the transition. Elon Musk came out and I think Donald Trump did too, came out and told Republicans, you are going to vote for this CR or we’re going to target you. Elon said this, we’re going to destroy you and you will not be elected in Congress. Something along those lines. 38 voted now and they said, basically, screw you. I know my constituents better than you know my constituents. I’m going to do what I need to do. I mean, that’s the thing. If you have relationship with your constituents, you can talk to them, you can go to those meetings and you can go, I agree with you. Veterans should not have, you know, their VA benefits slashed. I agree with you. Veterans that have served in — in our country’s uniform for 20 years should not be fired randomly by a billionaire immigrant from South Africa who doesn’t seem to understand the most basic concepts of Madisonian democracy. You can say that and win.

SCARBOROUGH: Yeah, that’s your job.

LEMIRE: That’s the example of Republicans who have defied them so far, but it can’t be overstated. There’s real fear —

SCARBOROUGH: Yeah.

LEMIRE: — among Republicans on Capitol Hill of — it’s always been, you don’t want to cross Trump. You don’t want to, you know, get the tweet taking you down or endorsing your primary opponent and — but now it’s also Musk because he has the money —

MIKE BARNICLE: He’s got the checkbook! He’s got the checkbook.

LEMIRE: — to bankroll it[.]

(….)

SCARBOROUGH: I can tell you, I held about 100 town hall meetings a year. I never once talked down to my audience. In fact, if they got upset, I got off the stage. I went down, and I sat down and I started talking to them. You don’t do it that way. I will tell you something else. That these Republican congressmen and congresswomen are learning, like the federal government in red state America, for a lot of these people, it ain’t way off in Washington, D.C. It’s the doctor that takes care of their child. It’s the nursing home that — that — that protects their parents and their final years of life, because that’s funded by Medicaid, that’s funded by the federal government. I mean, it’s a Social Security check that comes in every month that allows them to continue living their lives the way they deserve to live their lives and when Elon Musk calls Social Security the greatest ponzi scheme, I mean, that — that — that — that is somebody that doesn’t understand that red state America gets more tax dollars proportionally than blue state America.

Perhaps the most disturbing part came next when Giridharadas declared “[n]o one in America voted for apartheid-era Elon,” who’s been granted the power of “slashing and burning…the Republic.”

 

 

Heilemann made sure Wyomingites were also smeared as modern-day fans of apartheid: “Do not — do not discount the Afrikaner vote in — in Laramie.”

In the second hour, fellow faux Republican Mark McKinnon declared the angry mobs at GOP town halls to be “so significant” and “something’s happening here” to the point of an “organic eruption.”

 

 

Vitali joined the set and offered predictable talking points that not only was the Hageman crowd a genuine sample of the state’s political mood, congressional Republicans are far more anti-Trump and anti-DOGE than they let on out of fear of both Musk and Trump.

Frequent Morning Joe panelist and serial plagiarist Mike Barnicle shared a prediction he claimed he heard from the now-late former Senator Al Simpson. After more Scarborough chest-thumping, McKinnon wrapped things up (click “expand”): 

BARNICLE: You know, Joe about a month before he died, I called our old pal Al Simpson out in Wyoming — in Cody, Wyoming. Just having a conversation with him about how things were going and he raised the possibility that all of his neighbors who he knew voted for Donald Trump twice. They voted for him in 2016 and they certainly voted for him last fall that they would not know what to do when they went down to the local Social Security office — and he said in the spring or early summer and the office was no longer there, he said and then there’s going to be hell to pay. Well, hell is already arrived, I think.

BRZEZINSKI: Yeah.

SCARBOROUGH: Yeah and again. And you know this, Mark, you don’t — you don’t — you don’t run away. You don’t run away from unpopular issues. You run into them, I remember in 1995, we had to slow down the rate of Medicare. Medicare trustees said that it was going bankrupt in seven years, so we had to slow down the rate of Medicare.

MCKINNON: Right.

SCARBOROUGH: And — and Republicans ran away from it. They lost. I think it was one of the only Republicans who ran straight into it. And when somebody tried to demagogue it, I said, this is all I’m going to talk about the entire campaign and it is all I talked about the entire campaign.

MCKINNON: Yeah.

SCARBOROUGH: And I said, ask me a question about education. I’m going to talk about why we had to slow down the rate of Medicare. Well, we had to cut Medicare to save medicare and Mika has heard me say this before, at the end of the campaign at Glen Bolger at Public Opinion Strategies, say, we’ve done 130 districts. I got to ask, what did you do with seniors? And I was like, oh God, why? I said, because you had the highest approval rating by far of anybody that any Republican out of the 100+ we did with seniors. What did you do? I said, I told them the truth. I told them why we had to cut Medicare and he was like, oh my God.

MCKINNON: Voters can take the truth.

SCARBOROUGH: They can take the truth, and these people aren’t giving it to them, are they?

BRZEZINSKI: They really don’t like —

MCKINNON: Yeah, no — it’s interesting too, Joe, is that, you know, for years, sort of the Republican mantra, particularly his backbenchers, has been government sucks. We’re going to shut it down. Government’s just unpopular and so, they ran against it. Well, now they’ve caught the car and they’re — they’re shutting down stuff and 80 percent of these jobs are not in Washington. They’re out in red states. And just as a — just one example, think about the National Parks where they basically cut out all the rangers. Those are the guys that clean the toilets, so wait till everybody —

BRZEZINSKI: — right.

MCKINNON: — goes to the national parks this summer and tries to go to the restroom.

Though less incendiary, the lie was still spread far and wide on CNN. CNN News Central co-host Sara Sidner gushed over “anger and frustration boiling over at town halls across America, officials on both sides of the aisle drawing large crowds and harsh critique from constituents. Republicans continue to be blasted by voters demanding answers about President Trump and Elon Musk’s gutting of federal jobs and programs and agencies.”

After a soundbite from Democrat Sean Casten’s (IL) town hall that descended into chaos and cut short by “pro-Palestinian protesters,” she said Hageman crowd for “showering” her “with boos after seeming to downplay the sweeping cuts to federal jobs at the hands of Elon Musk and DOGE.” 

Correspondent Arlette Saenz didn’t even suggest there were any partisan shenanigans afoot and instead called it proof of “a lot of frustration” whereas those at Democratic town halls are demanding their people get tougher.

For good measure, Saenz returned in the show’s second hour and again for The Situation Room.

 

 

On the latter show, co-host Pamela Brown said “lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are feeling the heat as fiery constituents derailed town halls nationwide” yet demanded they continue because “these lawmakers need to be talking to their constituents.”

Following Saenz’s report, co-host Wolf Blitzer called these protests “very interesting” while Brown argued “you do have to give credit to these lawmakers for continuing to go out in person and confront their constituents who are upset and have a lot of passion in this environment.”

To see the relevant CNN and MSNBC transcripts from March 20, click here (for Way Too Early), here (for Morning Joe), here (for CNN News Central), and here (for The Situation Room).

On Wednesday’s PBS NewsHour, co-host Geoff Bennett conducted a 13-minute interview with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and it was challenging – from the Left.

PBS began with a video medley of Democrat leaders from Nancy Pelosi to Gov. Josh Shapiro expressing their fury at Schumer for voting in favor of a continuing resolution to prevent a government shutdown.

The headline for the interview summarized the tilt of the interview: 

‘We had an awful choice’: Schumer defends voting with GOP saying shutdown would be worse

Bennett, a former MSNBC correspondent, came at Schumer with attitude:

I know that you maintain that a shutdown would have been far worse than passing the Republican bill. What do you see that the vast majority of Hill Democrats don’t see? Why are they wrong in saying that you should have blocked?…

But when you hear the governor of Pennsylvania say that you squandered your leverage, or Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi saying that you gave up the votes and got nothing in return, how does that strike you?…

There are Democrats who say that, if the government had shut down, you force Republicans to own it. All the pain that Americans would feel that you just described, Republicans would pay the political price. Why not be as tactically ruthless as Republicans have shown themselves to be?

In theory, PBS would be expected to be a moderator between Democrats and Republicans in policy disputes. But in reality, they demand Democrats be “tactically ruthless.”

Bennett didn’t offer a scintilla of pushback as Schumer claimed you can’t go into a shutdown because its duration is “totally up to those evil people who hate the federal government, who hate all the good things that we have been able to do. One of the Republican senators told the Democratic Senator, if you go to shutdown, we will be in it for six, nine months until we destroy the federal government.” Is that an actual quote?

Bennett did offer one question imagining how the ardent Democrats (and their ardent media allies) have failed: 

Channeling what I would imagine would be some of the pushback from the Democratic base, it would be that naming and shaming with Donald Trump doesn’t work. That’s what Democrats have done for the past two years.  In this last election, he won the popular vote, the Electoral College, every battleground state. So the rules of political gravity, press conferences and bold statements and coordinated tweets, it doesn’t work. I mean, what does the fight look like in 2025?

Then the questions became easier for Schumer, like this anti-Trump softball: “There are those who believe that we are in real time living through an assault on the constitutional order. Do you believe that we are in a constitutional crisis right now? 

Schumer replied: “Yes, our democracy is at risk because Donald Trump shows that he wishes to violate the laws in many, many different ways.”

When Bennett turned to the original reason for the interview, Schumer’s book on anti-Semitism, he did ask Schumer to explain what he wanted to say to anti-Semites on the Left. Then he turned back to Trump: “In the Oval Office days ago, President Trump condemned you, saying that you aren’t Jewish anymore. He called you a Palestinian, using that word as an insult.”

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