Newsbusters

As much as liberals want to embarrass conservatives for questioning the “Clean Air Act” or the “Civil Rights Act,” it might be time to ask liberals and the media why they are so opposed to Donald Trump and Elon Musk working on the goal of  “Government Efficiency.”

Senior Research Analyst Bill D’Agostino talks about his latest videos. His latest effort reminds us all that when Musk was best known as an electric vehicle maker fighting climate change and dining with President Obama, the pundits loved him. Scott Galloway, who now spits nails at Musk, compared him to Jesus. Brian Williams compared him to Steve Jobs and Thomas Edison. 

But once Musk bought Twitter to grant conservatives more free speech, he very quickly became a Public Enemy. That only worsened when he endorsed Trump for president in 2024 and spent a pile of money to get him elected. Now they root for his cars and spaceships to fail. 

Before that, Bill collected clips representing the liberal refrain that President Biden couldn’t fix the border through executive action. He had to have Congress pass an “immigration reform” bill to fix it. That looks pretty embarrassing now that a few Trump executive actions have slowed the border crossings to a trickle. 

After the explosive Oval Office meeting in front of the cameras with Trump, Vice President J. D. Vance, and Ukrainian leader Wlodomyr Zelensky, Bill found the talking point of the day was Trump and Vance launched an “ambush” of Zelensky. That sounds pretty strange since the verbal battles didn’t really begin until 35 minutes into the conversation. Wouldn’t an “ambush” come much sooner?

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

 

There are many noticeable differences between the first and second Trump administrations, but some things remain constant throughout. Then and now, the major network newscasts are reluctant to report any good economic news to emerge from the Trump administration, in this case: the Consumer Price Index coming in lower than expected.

Per CNBC:

Prices for goods and services moved up less than expected in February, providing some relief as consumers and businesses worry about the looming impact tariffs might have on inflation, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday.

The consumer price index, a wide-ranging measure of costs across the U.S. economy, ticked up a seasonally adjusted 0.2% for the month, putting the annual inflation rate at 2.8%, according to the Labor Department agency. The all-item CPI had increased 0.5% in January.

Consumer relief would’ve warranted a good chunk of A-block time during the last administration. Instead, we were treated to mirror coverage of ugly inflation reports during the Biden administration: two briefs and one omission.

The CBS Evening News placed their inflation item within their “Evening News Roundup”, a minute-long report by Kelly O’Grady:

CBS EVENING NEWS

3/12/25

6:38 PM

JOHN DICKERSON: The Labor Department says inflation slowed last month for the first time since September. Consumer prices rose 2.8%. Money Watch correspondent Kelly O’Grady has a look at what’s driving prices higher and what isn’t.

KELLY O’GRADY: Well, after increasing four straight months, the rate of inflation has fallen. Here’s what’s driving the biggest price swings. Let’s start with a necessity for all of us: Groceries. While prices for most categories of groceries went down last month, meat, poultry, fish, and eggs were up more than 1.5%. That was because of beef and eggs. Eggs alone are up nearly 10.5%, largely the result of the bird flu. Gasoline prices dropped 1% in February after rising for three straight months, and airline fares fell 4%. Analysts say this could be tied to energy prices coming down, and the airlines adjusting prices to counter weaker demand. All of this could change quickly though, as today’s data does not account for the impact of the new tariffs.  

Short and to the point, no editorializing, and with a hedge for the potential future impact of any tariffs. Fair enough. 

The NBC Nightly News took the opposite approach with correspondent Christine Romans:

NBC NIGHTLY NEWS

3/12/25

6:35 PM

LESTER HOLT: Christine Romans is here. We saw the markets close mixed after falling and falling earlier in the week, and people wondering about the state of the economy. What can you tell us?

CHRISTINE ROMANS: You know, Lester, this is the first welcome news the markets have had in days here. Annual inflation improving to 2.8%, getting a little closer to normal. But the context here is so important. The trade war underway is not yet reflected in these numbers. You know, take today’s new tariffs on aluminum and steel. And look at this chart from Barclays Bank. It shows a typical car is 50% steel, 11% aluminum. That’s part of why their forecast that the average price of a car in the U.S. could rise by thousands of dollars. So while Wall Street seemed to calm down a little today given that the president has promised more tariffs to start just weeks from now, it’s the months ahead that could see some real changes in the prices people pay.

HOLT: Going to be a while before we see how this plays out.

ROMANS: That’s right.

HOLT: All right. Christine Romans, thanks. 

Contrast this report with CBS’s. Kelly O’Grady devoted a single sentence of her report to the impact of tariffs. On the other hand, Romans devoted 30 of her 45 seconds to doomcasting about the impact of tariffs.

CBS and NBC devoted about a minute each to the CPI, which was a minute more each than ABC did. ABC World News Tonight omitted the inflation numbers entirely. The CPI didn’t even get the courtesy of a throwaway mention at the back end of the top story on tariffs. This is the exact opposite of what would have happened during the past quadrennium. 

The Regime Media’s shift to Resistance Mode would not be complete without the downplay of some positive economic news. Things are (D)ifferent that way.

 

After telling the American people not to worry about the economy during the 2024 presidential election out of political convenience, the liberal ladies of ABC’s The View had suddenly found reason to fret as they pushed the notion that President Trump was bringing about a recession. They betrayed their motivations with a conversation about how media narratives play a role in manipulating the public’s perception and possibly triggering recessions.

“Let me ask you this, because we did mention a possibility of a recession,” co-host Sunny Hostin asked of ABC News chief business, tech, and economic correspondent Rebecca Jarvis. “[E]xperts across the board have put the likelihood as high as 50 percent. What’s your take on that based on the data? Should Americans start planning, start bracing for a potential recession?”

Jarvis responded by claiming a recession was “an increasing probability, and the probability increases the longer the uncertainty remains.” She went on to explain that consumers just reading headlines suggesting the possibility of a recession could be enough to tip things in that direction:

And, again, it goes back to this idea of consumers. If consumers really feel this, if they see the headlines and if their prices do go up dramatically at the grocery store and they can’t spend in other areas that is where you start see it flow through to the broader economy and you see job losses.

And I want to say, I have now been doing this for almost two decades, and it doesn’t take job losses for people to stop behaving as much with their money, to stop spending as much. People stop spending when they see a fear of job losses in their life.

 

 

Earlier in their conversation, Jarvis tacitly admitted that the media’s narrative around recessions plays a big role in possibly triggering them. “You see these headlines … And that’s where these calls for things like recession start coming up, that’s where the probability of a recession gets more pronounced,” she noted.

“And when you see a headline like that and think, ‘I’m not going to take as big of a summer vacation’ or ‘I’m not going to buy that coffee’ or ‘I’m not going to go out to dinner,’ whatever it is…if we all do it collectively, because we see these headlines and get scared, has an impact on the overall economy,” she said. “And then that can eventually ripple through to things like jobs which hit people in a very real way.”

The question then becomes: if doom and gloom media reporting could trigger a recession, how about the absent of it? Or, can a concerted effort by the media to claim there wasn’t a recession on the horizon, or perhaps one actively happening, stave one off?

Back in 2022, economic growth shrank for two consecutive quarters, the exact definition of a recession, but the media refused to use the term. And as NewsBusters reported at the time, The View tried to downplay the recession and argued that climate change was more important that the peoples’ economic pain.

During the 2024 presidential election, The View scolded the American people several times for thinking about their concerns for the economy. Several of NewsBusters’ items on the subject have been complied here for easy reading.

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

ABC’s The View
March 12, 2024
11:28:16 a.m. Eastern

(…)

REBECCA JARVIS: You see these headlines, and I’m sure everybody in the audience today, you’ve seen these headlines. Everybody who’s watching, you see it, and that makes you more skittish. And that’s where these calls for things like recession start coming up, that’s where the probability of a recession gets more pronounced.

Because our spending as consumers, we are the ones who generate growth. 70 percent of our economy is our spending. And when you see a headline like that and think, ‘I’m not going to take as big of a summer vacation’ or ‘I’m not going to buy that coffee’ or ‘I’m not going to go out to dinner,’ whatever it is.

Each little amount — if we all do it collectively, because we see these headlines and get scared, has an impact on the overall economy. And then that can eventually ripple through to things like jobs which hit people in a very real way.

(…)

11:30:41 a.m. Eastern

SUNNY HOSTIN: Let me ask you this, because we did mention a possibility of a recession. Over the weekend, President Trump refused to rule out a recession. Now he’s saying he doesn’t see one happening, but experts across the board have put the likelihood as high as 50 percent. What’s your take on that based on the data? Should Americans start planning, start bracing for a potential recession?

JOY BEHAR: Planning what? What are we supposed to plan?

JARVIS: Well. See. Okay. I like that question. I like both of your questions, but I do think – As the economics correspondent for ABC news, I think we should always be planning for a day when money doesn’t flow easily, which is why you want to have an emergency savings account at all times. If you can put money aside, you put money there.

HOSTIN: If you can.

JARVIS: If you can, you put money into a 401(k), especially if your company has a match because that’s free money that they’re putting out there. It doesn’t exist for everyone, I know it’s easier said than done.

As far as the calls for recession are concerned, it’s an increasing probability, and the probability increases the longer the uncertainty remains. And, again, it goes back to this idea of consumers. If consumers really feel this, if they see the headlines and if their prices do go up dramatically at the grocery store and they can’t spend in other areas that is where you start see it flow through to the broader economy and you see job losses.

And I want to say, I have now been doing this for almost two decades, and it doesn’t take job losses for people to stop behaving as much with their money, to stop spending as much. People stop spending when they see a fear of job losses in their life.

[Crosstalk]

BEHAR: How do you feel about hoarding cash? A lot of people ask me that.

JARVIS: Let me just say, if you can put money into a high-yield savings account –

SARA HAINES: Not your mattress, Joy.

BEHAR: The mattress. The old mattress.

JARVIS: Well, your mattress, you’re not going to get paid on that money. You’ll just have that money. But if you can put it in a high-yield savings account at an FDIC-backed bank, you’re going to get paid 4.5 percent and that’s risk free.

(…)

The blowhards at MSNBC’s Morning Joe should realize that continuing to shoot lies through their whitened tooth implants on the air about Elon Musk doesn’t make them any more true. What’s worse is that they don’t even attempt to be clever about it.

Both hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski were popping their brain corks over Musk’s March 10 interview with Fox Business host Larry Kudlow. Both just lied about the subject matter. 

Mika went first, shamelessly claimed Musk “referred to the federal spending programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, as the areas that need to be eliminated.”

Fact check: False. The clip she played from the Kudlow show literally begins with Musk referring to “the waste report in entitlement spending” and noted that most of federal spending is entitlements — $1.56 trillion was paid out just to Medicare and Medicaid and another $1.35 trillion just to Social Security in FY2023 alone, not counting other entitlement programs. So that context alone makes sense when Musk followed by saying, “So that’s the big one to eliminate. That’s a half-trillion — maybe six-$700 billion a year.”

It’s obvious that he’s talking about eliminating waste, not ending the programs entirely.  

Scarborough doubled down on this blatant falsehood later in the segment: “Elon Musk didn’t say we’re going after waste, fraud and abuse in Medicare. What he said was we got to get rid of Social Security and Medicare.” No, that’s not what Musk said!

In fact, Kudlow even clarified during his interview with Musk that the billionaire wasn’t out to change “policy” as opposed to fixing the “fiscal mechanisms” that are to make sure that payments properly get from point A to point B with…government efficiency.

 

 

For good measure, Scarborough would later replay the video Mika used that had Musk beginning his comments to Kudlow with the phrase “the waste report.” Musk said later in the Kudlow interview that he was “here to eliminate waste and fraud.” Derp. 

What’s even crazier was Scarborough revealing that he has absolutely no clue how much the federal government spends on Medicare per year: “Do you know how much money was spent on Medicare last year? About $80 billion dollars! [Musk is] talking about the whole kit and caboodle,” Scarborough yelled.

If that seems kind of  low to you, it’s because it is. The federal government actually spent $912 billion on Medicare last year, not $80 billion, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. He’s only off by 800-plus billion! 

In addition, the network falsely accused Musk of saying in the interview that dead people were getting Social Security (SSA) checks, when he was only pointing out the number of dead people listed within the SSA database. Musk didn’t once suggest in that interview that SSA checks specifically were necessarily going to dead people, only that the database was in itself severely flawed at the least.

Scarborough launched the word “lie” at Musk at least six times. The chyron during the segment emphasized Scarborough’s strawman: “Fact Check: Tens of Millions of Dead People Aren’t Getting Social Security Checks.” 

Musk went on to discuss with Kudlow the number of older Americans in the Social Security database that did not have a date of death in their entries. “Why are the 20 million people that are definitely dead marked as alive in the Social Security database?”

This seems like a very reasonable question to ask, since the Office of the Inspector General’s 2023 audit, which Scarborough later referenced, found that “18.9 million numberholders” have “dates of birth in 1920 or earlier but no corresponding death information on their Numident record.” Musk also questioned why the Small Business Administration issued hundreds of millions in loans to children and borrowers over 115 years old, as the Department of Government Efficiency reportedly uncovered. 

As Musk noted in a February 28 interview with podcaster Joe Rogan, other agencies that rely on Social Security database data to determine eligibility for payments. Ironically, the Inspector General report Scarborough displayed also noted that failing to update the SSA’s Death Master File “could result in erroneous payments by Federal benefit-paying agencies that use the DMF to detect inaccurate or unreported deaths.”

These programs are where DOGE should start. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report on March 26, 2024 finding that of the $236 billion “improper” payments doled out by the federal government last year, “About $186 billion (79%) of such errors were concentrated in five program areas,” which included Medicare and Medicaid. In fact, reported the GAO, Medicare and Medicaid were two of the top three programs that “have consistently been among those with the highest payment errors.”

PS: Musk also hammered Democrats for using the age-old allure of government benefits to attract illegal immigrants to swell their voter base. But Scarborough bent Musk’s comments into a pretzel to cry racism: “He said the fraudulent programs are used to lure brown people into the United States.” That’s not what he said. No “fact checkers” will get involved when it’s MSNBC.

On Tuesday’s installment of the White House press briefing, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt praised the changes owner Jeff Bezos is making at The Washington Post, gave the “new media” seat to Saagar Enjeti of Breaking Points, and faced tough questions from across the spectrum on the economy from Fox News, CNN, Politico, and even the Associated Press.

“I would like to commend The Washington Post…According to a new report from Axios, The Washington Post is overhauling their newsroom structure. It appears that the mainstream media, including The Post, is finally learning that having disdain for more than half of the country who supports this President does not help you sell newspapers. It’s not a very good business model,” she stated at the end of her opening monologue.

After Leavitt’s introduction noting Enjeti used to be a White House correspondent and now the host of the wildly successful Breaking Points, Enjeti started with the news of the day, blowing holes in the notion that this “new media” seat is reserved for softball pitchers:

Enjeti followed with two more topical questions, including one pressing from the right (click “expand”):

So, President Trump came out today in a primary challenge against Congressman Thomas Massie. Congressman Massie has been a supporter of DOGE and been a supporter of Make America Healthy Again. What kind of message is this White House sending against a congressman who’s sticking up for principles that he’s long held in the chamber and voting against continuing resolution and spending?

(….)

Just the last question here on Mahmoud Khalil. Does the administration believe that it needs to charge a green card holder with a crime to be eligible for deportation?

Doocy came second and in between a joking question about whether anyone in the administration is shorting the Dow given its rapid drops and President Trump looking at Teslas, he delivered a hardball that, like Enjeti, defeated the idea right-leaning outlets are pure sycophants: “[I]s there any concern here that it’s going to be harder to ask certain federal workers to retire if they look at their retirement accounts and they’re getting rocked every day?”

 

 

A reporter towards the back chimed in with a defense of the former Columbia University grad student Mahmoud Khalil, a green card holder who was arrested as a leader of the pro-Hamas protests on the school’s campus: “At the core of pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses and elsewhere is a demand to end the war in Gaza, a goal that this administration actually supports and has pursued. So why did — why has not — has this not been acknowledged or highlighted even?”

Leavitt promptly dismissed this nonsense because, for example, his group “put out Hamas propaganda, the flyers that have been distributed call for violence” with Hamas’s logo.

“[Hamas is] a designated foreign terrorist organization, and we are not going to tolerate non-citizens, foreigners who come here on a visa, engaging in such behavior, siding with terrorists, and the Secretary of State reserves the authority” to revoke the privilege of being in the United States, she explained.

Fox’s Edward Lawrence also had two questions about the economy, including this one about how to keep up the spirit of Americans who are anxious: “[H]ow do you sell to the American people then after they’re looking at what’s happening in the markets this week and say that the tariff policy long term is something good?”

CNN’s Alayna Treene upped the testiness by peddling the thoroughly debunked lies about the Trump administration cutting entitlements (click “expand”):

 

 

TREENE: I wanted to ask you about some comments Elon Musk yesterday — made yesterday. He said that there is $500 to $700 billion in waste and fraud and entitlement spending. He called it, “the big one to eliminate.” Earlier this month, he also referred to Social Security as a Ponzi scheme. Should Americans expect changes, big changes to Social Security and Medicare?

LEAVITT: President Trump has been unequivocally clear on this. He is going to protect Social Security and Medicare benefits and Medicaid for hardworking Americans who paid into these entitlement programs and deserve those hard-earned benefits, and unfortunately, the mainstream media has taken Mr. Musk out of context. I saw a Bloomberg headline that our team actually worked on getting updated and fixed because it was so wrong and it took Mr. Musk out of text what he was specifically referring to cutting was the waste and the fraud and abuse that does exist in these programs. According to an IG report from the Social Security Administration, there’s more than $70 billion of fraud in the Social Security program alone that we know of and so, the President will continue to protect these programs for hardworking Americans and actually cutting the waste, fraud, and abuse out of these programs will protect it for hardworking Americans.

TREENE: But, to be honest, respectfully, he said around $500 to $700 billion. There’s no evidence to claim that. And also, if that is the case, that would represent more than a third of what Social Security paid out last year, maybe 20 percent of Social Security and Medicare combined.

LEAVITT: Well, if you read his full quote, he said, we think. So, it’s an estimate based on what he’s seen. He’s not saying definitively, he’s saying that’s what DOGE suspects and thinks, and that’s exactly why DOGE was created to ensure that we are investigating the fraudulent spending — the wasteful abuse across our federal government, and I would remind everybody in this room that 77 percent of the American people support this effort by Elon Musk in DOGE to identify such waste, fraud, and abuse. 

Despite the AP’s refusal to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America and suing Leavitt for keeping the AP out of the White House press pool, Leavitt chose to rise above all that by calling on them. Josh Boak was in the seat on Tuesday and, as an economics guy, he asked about tariffs:

When President Trump last addressed the BRT when he was on the campaign trail, his big push was on tax cuts. He’s going there today as he’s proposing tax hikes in the form of tariffs, and I’m curious why he’s prioritizing that over the tax cuts.

When Leavitt said “[t]ariffs are a tax hike on foreign countries” and “a tax cut for the American people,” Boak clapped back: “I’m sorry, have you ever paid a tariff? Because I have. They don’t get charged on foreign companies. They get charged on the importers.”

 

 

Leavitt roared back, calling it “insulting” for Boak “to test my knowledge of economics, and the — the decisions that this President has made. I’m now regret giving a question to the Associated Press.”

Washington Examiner’s Christian Datoc circled back to whether the notion of an External Revenue Service will still come to fruition:

The final hardball on the economy fell to Politico’s Dasha Burns, asking “how high is the pain threshold for President Trump and for this White House as you watch some of the turbulence in the stock markets, as you field concerns from businesses that potentially see some of those approval ratings drop in the short-term, how much is he willing to stomach that and will he stay committed to his vision for tariffs[.]”

Leavitt replied Trump “has been working hard every single day to alleviate the pain that was inflicted by the previous administration through massive deregulation, through drill baby drill as we like to call it, unleashing the might of our energy industry,” and making his tax cuts permanent.

To see the relevant transcript from the March 11 briefing (including questions from our friends Mike Carter of Newsmax, Mary Margaret Olohan with Daily Wire, Lyndsay Keith of Merit Street, and Daily Caller White House correspondent Reagan Reese), click here.

PBS News Hour White House correspondent Laura Barron-Lopez joined the Wednesday edition of CNN’s Inside Politics to freak out about President Donald Trump’s plans to close, or at least downsize, the Department of Education. As Barron-Lopez tells it, Trump is trying to privatize public education, and shuttering the department will start a domino effect that will lead states to do the same and hurt “poor and people of color” the most.

Against the backdrop of the department cutting roughly half its staff, host Dana Bash declared, “I mean, we should know that already, no matter who is president, the way that education funding works is that the vast majority and policy, but both, is done at a local, state and local level.”

 

 

Barron-Lopez replied, without evidence, that eliminating the Department of Education is the first step in a plan to ultimately eliminate public education altogether:

Yeah, that’s right. I think some 900 billion is spent across the states and local level on public education, though the government, I think, spends about 100 billion or so in public education. And so, you know, to me, you see this pattern occurring, whether it’s the Education Department, Social Security Administration, or other agencies, an attempt to privatize these functions, which is to essentially say, we want to turn to private corporations to do the work of public education, which means that public education could take a huge blow.

Perhaps knowing that was not an honest depiction of the administration’s view or how federalism works, Barron-Lopez then pivoted to trying to explain that will be the result, intentional or otherwise, “And yes, the vast majority of that is decided by state and local governments, but they see the federal government doing that. Then state governments are going to follow suit and feel emboldened to create a more privatized system of education versus public education. And who ultimately suffers from that: poor and people of color.”

Earlier in the segment, Bash played a clip of Education Secretary Linda McMahon on Fox where she claimed that Title I and IDEA will not be affected by the cuts. In the event Congress authorizes the closure of the department, those programs and other Congressionally authorized spending, such as student loans and civil rights enforcement, can be moved to other departments. The Department of Education did not exist until 1979; getting rid of it won’t be the end of the world.

Here is a transcript for the March 12 show:

CNN Inside Politics with Dana Bash

3/12/2025

12:22 PM ET

DANA BASH: I mean, we should know that already, no matter who is president, the way that education funding works is that the vast majority and policy, but both, is done at a local, state and local level.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Yeah, that’s right. I think some 900 billion is spent across the states and local level on public education, though the government, I think, spends about 100 billion or so in public education. And so, you know, to me, you see this pattern occurring, whether it’s the Education Department, Social Security Administration, or other agencies, an attempt to privatize these functions, which is to essentially say, we want to turn to private corporations to do the work of public education, which means that public education could take a huge blow.

And yes, the vast majority of that is decided by state and local governments, but they see the federal government doing that. Then state governments are going to follow suit and feel emboldened to create a more privatized system of education versus public education. And who ultimately suffers from that: poor and people of color.

Once a hero of the enviro-left for his electric Tesla cars, the broadcast networks have turned Elon Musk into a boogeyman who is heartlessly firing federal employees and endangering the public with cuts to food and airline safety programs. 

Musk has been so villainized by the media that his once-beloved Teslas are being vandalized by the left. 

There is another narrative that the lefties at ABC, CBS, NBC refuse to tell: How Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have already saved the hard-working American taxpayer billions of dollars by canceling boondoggle government contracts. 

In 32 days of coverage (February 8 – March 12) ABC, CBS, NBC (on their evening and morning news shows) spent a total of (4 minutes, 43 seconds) citing specific dollar amounts that DOGE or President Donald Trump claimed to have saved the American taxpayer. 

ABC (24 seconds) spent the least amount of time on specified DOGE savings. NBC just spent 1 minute, 5 seconds. CBS spent a total of 3 minutes, 14 seconds on DOGE savings examples.   

For this study MRC analysts looked at the broadcast evening (ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News) and morning news shows (ABC’s Good Morning America, CBS Mornings, CBS Saturday Morning, CBS Sunday Morning, NBC Today) from the morning of February 8 (the day after the first citation on DOGE’s website) through the morning of March 12. 

Even then the claims were met with dismissive skepticism. This take from CBS correspondent Weijia Jang was typical: “Last night, DOGE posted on its website what it called a wall of receipts to show its findings to date. So far, it has identified roughly $14 billion worth of federal program cuts, including at least 140 DEI contracts and grants. But all the money allocated was approved by Congress. And DOGE did not provide evidence of a single case of fraud, or even alleged fraud.”

What the networks refused to tell their viewers about is how some of the contracts killed by DOGE funded leftist causes, for example: $74 million for “inclusive justice” in Colombia.

If the networks actually wanted to tell their viewers about specific savings in wasteful contracts they could’ve cited any of the following announcements (via DOGE’s official website):

 

DOGE Highlights 83 percent of USAID Programs Being Cancelled, “Tens of Billions” Saved

On March 10, DOGE re-posted Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s announcement: 

After a 6 week review we are officially cancelling 83% of the programs at USAID.

The 5200 contracts that are now cancelled spent tens of billions of dollars in ways that did not serve, (and in some cases even harmed), the core national interests of the United States.

In consultation with Congress, we intend for the remaining 18% of programs we are keeping (approximately 1000) to now be administered more effectively under the State Department.  

Thank you to DOGE and our hardworking staff who worked very long hours to achieve this overdue and historic reform.

ABC, CBS, NBC evening and morning show coverage: Zero seconds. On the March 10 CBS Evening News co-anchor Maurice DuBois never uttered the amount of money being saved for the taxpayer but did offer this dismissive 10-second mention: “The gutting of USAID is over. Secretary of State Marco Rubio says the 18 percent of foreign aid programs that survived will be absorbed by the State Department.” 

 

DOGE Announces Cancellation of Grant to Study “Menstrual Cycles in Transgender Men”

On March 7, DOGE re-posted Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announcement:

CANCELLED: $600,000 grant to study “menstrual cycles in transgender men”

Keep sending us tips. THANK YOU, @approject! The insanity is ending and the restoration of America is underway. 

ABC, CBS, NBC evening and morning show coverage: Zero seconds.

 

DOGE Announces NIH Cancels Contracts for “Transgender Experiments On Animals”

On March 5, DOGE announced:

Yesterday, @NIH cancelled seven grants for transgender experiments on animals including:

– $532K to “use a mouse model to investigate the effects of cross-sex testosterone treatment”

– $33K to test “feminizing hormone therapy in the male rat”

ABC, CBS, NBC evening and morning show coverage: Zero seconds.

 

DOGE Kills Foreign Grants Including $903,811 for Alpaca Farming in Peru 

On March 4, DOGE Announced Canceled Inter-American Foundation Contracts:

The Inter-American Foundation, an agency whose primary action was to issue foreign grants ($60M budget), has been reduced to its statutory minimum (1 active employee).  Examples of grants that were cancelled in the process:

 – $903,811 for alpaca farming in Peru

 – $364,500 to reduce social discrimination of recyclers in Bolivia

 – $813,210 for vegetable gardens in El Salvador

 – $323,633 to promote cultural understanding of Venezuelan migrants in Brazil

– $731,105 to improve marketability of mushrooms and peas in Guatemala

 – $677,342 to expand fruit and jam sales in Honduras

 – $483,345 to improve artisanal salt production in Ecuador

 – $39,250 for beekeeping in Brazil

ABC, CBS, NBC evening and morning show coverage: Zero seconds.

 

DOGE Announces NIH Killed Grants Including $740K for Studying “Cannabis Use” Among “Sexual Minority Gender Diverse Individuals”

On March 11, DOGE announced: 

Today, @NIH  cancelled the following grants:

– $620K for “an LGB+ inclusive teen pregnancy prevention program for transgender boys”

– $699K for studying “cannabis use” among “sexual minority gender diverse individuals”

– $740K for examining “social networks” among “black and Latino sexual minority men in New Jersey”

– $50K for assessing “sexual health” among “LGTBQ+ Latinx youth in an agricultural community”

– $75K for researching “structural racism”

ABC, CBS, NBC evening and morning show coverage: Zero seconds.

 

DOGE Cancels NIH Grants Including $1.3 Million for “Transforming Health for Gender-Diverse Young Adults”

On February 28, DOGE announced:

Today NIH canceled grants for ~$10.9 million including:

-$1.7M for the “China Health and Retirement Longitudinal study” at Peking University in Beijing, China

-$135K for a research grant to China Medical University in Shenyang, China

-$142K for “using telehealth to improve access to gender-affirming care”

-$1.3M for “transforming health for gender-diverse young adults”

-$120K for “personalized 3-D avatar tool development” focused on “gender identities”

-$400K for researching “sources of minority stress and alcohol consumption” among “adults who report uncertainty about their sexual orientation”

-$160K for researching “racialized sexual discrimination” among “young sexual minority men of color”

-$241K for “an intervention to promote healthy relationships among transgender and gender expansive youth”

ABC, CBS, NBC evening and morning show coverage: Zero seconds.

 

DOGE Announces It Will Water the Eight Plants at Veterans Affairs Office, Saving Taxpayers Thousands

On March 6, DOGE announced:

The VA cancelled a $56,000 contract to water ~8 plants for 5 years. This is ~$1400/plant/year. The contract has been canceled and DOGE will water the plants free of charge.

ABC, CBS, NBC evening and morning show coverage: Zero seconds.

 

DOGE Cancels Millions In Contracts, Including $8 Million for Reducing “Stigma” Against LGBTQI+ Communities in Lesotho

On February 27, DOGE announced: 

US taxpayer dollars were going to be spent on the following items, all which have been cancelled: 

– $60M for “Indigenous Peoples and Afro-Colombian empowerment”

– $74M for “inclusive justice” in Colombia

– $79M for “primary literacy” in Kenya

– $37M for “female empowerment” in Colombia

– $8M to “Reduce stigma, discrimination, and violence against LGBTQI+ communities” in Lesotho

– $3.3M for “being LGBTQI in the Caribbean”

– $25k to increase “Vegan Local Climate Action Innovation” in Zambia

ABC, CBS, NBC evening and morning show coverage: Zero seconds.

Elon Musk may well have fallen harder from the corporate media’s graces than any public figure in recent memory. While today’s journalists jeer and laugh at every SpaceX flub, and deride the tech billionaire as a Nazi, that wasn’t the case as recently as a few years ago.

Some of us are old enough to remember when journalists praised Musk as a “real-life Iron Man,” “a visionary,” and even “the Jesus Christ of our era.” Back then, every SpaceX rocket launch drew more media adulation than a Barack Obama speech, with journalists describing the company’s breakthroughs as “glorious,” “stunning,” and once, even “a miracle.”

But alas, then Elon Musk committed not one, but two cardinal sins: purchasing Twitter and voting for Donald Trump. It’s said that traitors are judged more harshly than enemies, and for these two acts of defiance, Musk was most certainly considered a traitor to the left.

With all the negative headlines circulating about everyone’s favorite (or least favorite) African American tech mogul, we thought it’d be nice to take a little journey back to a simpler time — a time when Elon Musk was just a “staggeringly intelligent” car salesman who wanted to save the Earth from AI and climate change.

To that end, here is some of the most effusive praise journalists would like us all to forget they ever uttered about the eccentric DOGE mastermind:

When you think of the Holy Land, typically holy things come to mind. It’s a land greater than humanity itself…. the birthplace of civilization. You likely wouldn’t think of Paterson, New Jersey, a Democrat-turned dump.

Let’s just say… that’s a different kind of hole. 

But its Jihad-loving mayor places Paterson right up there with Jerusalem, Mecca and Medina! In fact, he claims it’s the capital of the mythical nation, “Palestine,” a territory governed by Islamic terrorists.

There is no clearer omen of a free society’s downfall when its leaders go from wiping its founders from every building facade and statue, to renaming their city after our foreign enemies, all to pander to a voting block of foreigners who pledge allegiance to those enemies.

On this episode of “Woke of the Weak,” we discuss the Left’s not so holy support for terrorism and their double standards when it comes to free speech for violent foreigners versus our own citizens. 

Ham-fisted Nazi analogies and dumb post-Soviet oracles—these are a few of Stephen Colbert’s favorite things. On Tuesday’s edition of The Late Show on CBS, Colbert welcomed actor Nathan Lane and New York Times columnist Ezra Klein to his show to lament the Trump Administration where it was warned that the Trump era will feature pro-Nazi versions of The Sound of Music and that Elon Musk represents the kind of oligarch that arose in the aftermath of the Soviet Union.

Lane was up first, and Colbert asked him, “His administration is purging not just the government but also putting its mark on cultural institutions like The Kennedy Center. He’s the chairman of the board, and he’s appointed his buddies to be on the board with him. What do you make of what he’s doing in terms of what it means for culture?”

 

 

An excited Lane replied, “Well, I don’t want to be a downer, but I think from a historical context, we are totally [bleep]. I mean, you know, The Kennedy Center, he just couldn’t keep his teeny tiny baby hands off it. Who knew Trump could cause more damage to the Kennedy name than RFK Jr.?”

Lane was just getting started:

And the new season that he’s preparing is very troubling. Like tomorrow night they have a youth choir made up entirely of Elon Musk’s children. Because Hamilton canceled its engagement, they are producing Lee Greenwood’s all-rap musical tribute to Ronald Reagan starring Kanye West. It’s called Trickle Down. That is followed by a new production of The Sound of Music told from the point of view of the Nazis. Trust me, trust me, you don’t want to hear the list of their favorite things. And if that wasn’t enough, he just canceled an appearance by the gay men’s chorus, which upset a lot of people, especially—yes, yes, especially those conservative Republicans on Grindr. 

Back on planet Earth, the actual The Sound of Music is scheduled to be at The Kennedy Center in September.

As for Klein, he saw a great conspiracy in Elon Musk’s budget-cutting efforts, “Look, they don’t want it to work, and then the fear a lot of us have is they’re going to make it fail and they’re going to say, ‘See, it doesn’t work? I know you need me to take it over.’ It’s not that they are just trying to make it not work, right? If all Elon Musk was trying to was make government fail, that’s one thing. They’re trying to break it so they can take it over.”

Colbert observed, “Very much like after the Soviet Union, everything that was state-controlled got privatized, and that’s how you rose another class of oligarchs.”

 

 

A decent amount of the post-Soviet oligarchs were former Communist Party hacks who just got a new job. Nowadays, Russia has renationalized several of its industries, most notably oil and gas.

Klein, however, agreed, “Yes, you have Elon Musk to go into the FAA and say, ‘Oh, my god, I’ve walked in; I’ve discovered we need Starlink immediately.’ Oh, do we, Elon Musk?… So, this is not, I think, if you wanted to look at what they were doing, it’s pretty straightforward. They are breaking the government so they can control it, so they can parcel it out.”

Upgrading the nation’s air traffic control is not just a Trump/Musk thing; it has been a priority for several years now. Even if one cringes putting Musk in control of that project, it should also be noted that Canada privatized their air traffic control system in the 90s and somehow has managed to avoid becoming a Russia-like oligarchy.

Here is a transcript for the March 11-taped show:

CBS The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

3/12/2025

12:09 AM ET

STEPHEN COLBERT: His administration is purging not just the government but also putting its mark on cultural institutions—

NATHAN LANE: Yeah.

COLBERT:  — like The Kennedy Center. He’s the chairman of the board. 

NATHAN LANE: I know.

COLBERT: And he’s appointed his buddies to be on the board with him. 

LANE: Yeah, I know.

COLBERT: What do you make of what he’s doing in terms of what it means for culture?

LANE: Well, I don’t want to be a downer, but I think from a historical context, we are totally [bleep]. I mean, you know, The Kennedy Center, he just couldn’t keep his teeny tiny baby hands off it. Who knew Trump could cause more damage to the Kennedy name than RFK Jr.? 

And the new season that he’s preparing is very troubling. Like tomorrow night they have a youth choir made up entirely of Elon Musk’s children. Because Hamilton canceled its engagement, they are producing Lee Greenwood’s all-rap musical tribute to Ronald Reagan starring Kanye West. It’s called Trickle Down. That is followed by a new production of The Sound of Music told from the point of view of the Nazis. Trust me—

COLBERT: Rolph gets his day.

LANE: Trust me, you don’t want to hear the list of their favorite things. And if that wasn’t enough, he just canceled an appearance by the gay men’s chorus, which upset a lot of people, especially – yes, yes, especially those conservative Republicans on Grindr. 

We’re at a rally. Shockingly, I was approached about hosting a grand reopening gala. Yeah, they didn’t offer to pay me but they did offer her not to send me to Guantanamo Bay. 

COLBERT: That’s nice.

LANE: And of course RFK Jr. wants an all unvaccinated audience which means it ever but he goes home with a gift bag and rubella.

…

12:30 AM ET

EZRA KLEIN: Look, they don’t want it to work, and then the fear a lot of us have is they’re going to make it fail and they’re going to say, “See, it doesn’t work? I know you need me to take it over.” 

It’s not that they are just trying to make it not work, right? If all Elon Musk was trying to was make government fail, that’s one thing. They’re trying to break it so they can take it over.

COLBERT: Very much like after the Soviet Union, everything that was state-controlled got privatized, and that’s how you rose another class of oligarchs.

KLEIN: Yes, you have Elon Musk to go into the FAA and say, “Oh, my god, I’ve walked in; I’ve discovered we need Starlink immediately.” Oh, do we, Elon Musk? 

COLBERT: Who owns that?

KLEIN: Yeah, it’s a funny question. So, this is not, I think, if you wanted to look at what they were doing, it’s pretty straightforward. They are breaking the government so they can control it, so they can parcel it out.