Newsbusters

Between Friday morning and Wednesday morning, ABC, CBS, and NBC have giddily devoted 16 minutes and 38 seconds to House Republicans being ambushed at town halls with angry attendees lashing out over their support for President Trump, Elon Musk, and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). 

Naturally, however, less than four percent (or 36 seconds) speculated this latest example of a supposed nationwide groundswell against a conservative agenda was actually fraudulent, made up of crowds organized by far-left activist groups and even outside the House member’s district.

 

 

To add onto word last week from our friend Erick Erickson, the Free Beacon exposed the organizer of angry attendees at town hall held by Congressman Rick McCormick (R-GA) was a self-described “Democrat & Political Activist” and town halls nationwide were targeted by Indivisible and MoveOn, which are funded by, yes, George Soros.

ABC led the way with nine minutes and four seconds, with less than one percent (0.7 percent, or four seconds) acknowledging the boisterous haranguing might not actually be genuine.

World News Tonight anchor David Muir bragged on February 21 about “the heated moments in states across the country” with “voters packing town halls.”

Former Biden apple polisher Mary Bruce had seven different soundbites gushing over “Americans angry with President Trump’s sweeping layoffs and Elon Musk’s drive to slash government spending, packing raucous town halls” and “Republican[s]….starting to feel the heat” in Georgia, Kansas, and Oregon.

By the February 22 Good Morning America and World News Tonight, senior White House correspondent Selina Wang touted “angry Americans across the country from Georgia to Kansas are pushing back” against DOGE amid a litany of soundbites from McCormick’s townhall, including one calling Trump a “megalomaniac.” 

ABC’s This Week co-host Martha Raddatz played McCormick soundbites as proof of a “grilling” Republicans received, but later conceded it might not be genuine: “[B]ut we saw a couple of videos over the week of pushback in those town halls. Now, whether they were Democrats, we — we don’t really know who they were.”

Senior political correspondent Rachel Scott joined in by the February 23 World News Tonight by leading into another angry woman shouting at Congressman Glenn Grothman (R-WI) before trumpeting “[v]oters showing up at town halls in some parts of the country over the last week to confront GOP lawmakers.”

Bruce returned for February 24’s World News Tonight with another astroturfed mob (click “expand”):

CONGRESSMAN MARK ALFORD (R-MO): I’ll come back to you, okay? I promise.

BRUCE: Tonight, growing backlash after Elon Musk gave more than two million federal workers until midnight tonight to send an email listing what they’ve done in the last week or lose their jobs. In Belton, Missouri, long lines of people waiting to get into a town meeting for Republican Congressman Mark Alfred.

ALFORD: Elon Musk has contracts with the federal government. [CROWD HECKLING] But he is also, I think, doing an effective job — [INAUDIBLE]

ANGRY WOMAN #1 AT ALFORD TOWNHALL: Conflict of interest!

ALFORD: I know —

ANGRY WOMAN #1 AT ALFORD TOWNHALL: Show me, show me!

ALFORD: — a lot of people who don’t want to see waste, abuse and fraud weeded out. Some of them here today.

ANGRY WOMAN #1 AT ALFORD TOWNHALL: I don’t want him in charge of it.

And, on Tuesday, Scott deemed “tensions high” while Bruce insisted “[f]or nearly a week, Republican members of Congress have been getting pushback from their constituents.”

Shifting to NBC, they doled out six minutes and 35 seconds between Friday and Wednesday. Only eight percent (or 32 seconds) entertained the notion the anger was manufactured.

After Friday’s Today kicked it off, Lester Holt said on Nightly News the townhalls were a “growing” “backlash” as a lead-in to correspondent Garrett Haake deploying the same word alongside soundbites of townhalls held by McCormick and Congressman Scott Fitzgerald (R-WI). 

February 22’s Nightly News trotted out correspondent Vaughn Hillyard to keep drilling the narrative into the minds of voters that DOGE has been met with, at best, “mixed reviews.”

Far-left White House correspondent Yamiche Alcindor ventured out for Sunday Today and Nightly News to revel in her fellow liberals creating “pushbacks” and Americans “sounding off” amid soundbites from townhalls for Grothman and Congressman Pete Sessions (R-TX).

NBC’s Meet the Press featured rare instances of pushback.

After having cheered Republicans being “forced to defend the cuts to voters at town halls,” moderator Kristen Welker faced down Senator Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) pointing out the organized nature of the anger with new Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin having “openly admitted on MSNBC just yesterday that they were manufacturing these protests. They were bussing in armies to manufacture these protests.”

In the panel segment, Politico’s Jonathan Martin cited the “pushback” as proof of Americans realizing DOGE affects “actual people and their actual jobs” and was backed up by NBC’s Melanie Zanona describing frustration from House Republicans for facing “angry constituents[.]”

Hoover Institution’s Lanhee Chen provided a reality check: “Look, I think we have to question who some of these folks are in these town halls, right? Some of the reporting has said that these are activists who never liked Donald Trump, who were never in favor of Donald Trump, so, I mean, let’s see how this all plays out.”

NBC joined ABC in keeping the days old clips alive. Haake returned for Monday’s Today to regurgitate the “growing outrage” and an angry woman at a Sessions town hall demanding he help “get control of the Congress back from the executive and stop hurting our constituents.”

As for the Alford town hall, he celebrated Alford on Tuesday’s Nightly News for “supporting the President’s efforts to downsize the federal government but criticizing Musk’s approach.”

Chief Capitol Hill correspondent Ryan Nobles was on Tuesday’s Today to salute the “backlash at town halls,” but passed along in each hour that Alford believed the “organized protesters” included “agitators from outside his district.”

To their credit, CBS and its flagship newscasts — CBS Mornings, the CBS Evening News, and Face the Nation — perhaps saw the fake news in this. They were silent until Tuesday with 59 seconds on CBS Mornings.

Co-host and Democrat donor Gayle King claimed the country is “very frustrated” and “showing up at town halls across the country demanding that Congress stand up for them.”

Senior White House correspondent Weijia Jiang grasped onto this na rrative, saying DOGE has been “anger” and “confusion” that combined “to boil over at those congressional town halls.”

She peddled the soundbites from the Alford and McCormick town halls that ABC and NBC dutifully peddled as authentic. Amid those, she declared Americans as “lashing out” and, like ABC had also done, suggesting they’ve worked because “McCormick now says there should be studies on the impact of mass firings.”

In contrast to their cheering now and Democratic anger in 2017 over ObamaCare repeal and replacement discussions, they deemed Tea Party groups confronting Democrats as fraudulent. ABC claimed the protesters were “cheered on by Fox News and talk radio” and thus “not a real grassroots phenomenon at all.” Over at CBS, they argued “fresh polling” has proven the “passion” wasn’t real while NBC diagnosed these patriots as “not…as home-grown as it may seem[.]”

When there’s anger against a policy the liberal media want to see foisted upon Americans, it’s astroturfing. But when they themselves manufacture dissent only a month into a Republican presidency, they view it as cries from the huddled masses, yearning to breathe free.

The ABC News hosts of The View were off and running Wednesday with a plethora of baseless conspiracy theories about President Trump’s latest immigration proposal to essentially add a “gold card” (a play on green card) to the visa program. But according to the lies of ABC News, Trump had already sold the United States to Elon Musk, he would sell access to the country to terrorists via the program, and there was no longer a legal means of immigration.

After playing a soundbite of Trump loosely describing how the “gold card” program would work, ABC moderator Whoopi Goldberg led the cast in some anti-immigrant bigotry once again aimed at Musk (click “expand”):

GOLDBERG: You know, remember when Elon bought America?

JOY BEHAR: Yeah.

SUNNY HOSTIN: Yeah.

GOLDBERG: He could have saved money with this because this is only 5 million.

SARA HAINES: But he only would have gotten a green card, not the whole country.

HOSTIN: Oh, he spent over 200 million.

BEHAR: Timing is everything.

GOLDBERG: You’re right. You’re right. There you are.

FACT CHECK: Misinformation. Musk had been a U.S. citizen since 2002, long before even Trump’s first term.

Faux conservative Alyssa Farah Griffin ridiculously suggested that Trump’s immigration program “makes it sound like America is for sale to the highest bidder. I don’t like that.”

FACT CHECK: Misinformation. The program would not sell America to anyone.

Farah Griffin did note that what Trump was doing was “basically an expansion on the existing EB5 visa program, but went on to question if he’d let in terrorists: “But I want to know, is there national security vetting? So, yes. Could a terrorist organization or a Russian oligarch come in?”

FACT CHECK: Misinformation. Of course, there would be vetting.

 

 

She did go on to admit that Trump had all but cut off the flow of illegal border crossings:

But, the border crisis, he’s effectively solved in one month. This blew my mind. The Washington Post, there has been a 98 percent drop in daily border crossings in the lowest single day total in 15 years this past week. From an all-time high of 11,000 in December of 2023 under Biden to only 200 a week ago under Trump. So, he’s doing that. That is what people voted for. Now, please get to the economy because everything is too damn expensive.

With her own misinformation, pretend independent Sara Haines falsely claimed Trump was also anti-legal immigration and wrongly conflated the decrease in illegal border crossings with legal immigration:

To speak like this about the fact that he ran on anti-immigration and ‘I’m going fix that.’ Like you said, numbers are down but if you have enough money, you can come. So, I don’t think that’s going to bode well for the people that voted for him; that you can just skip the line if you’re wealthy. That is a problem.

Haines took Farah Griffin’s fear mongering about Trump selling access to America to terrorists and ran with it, going so far as to claim it would be ripe for 9/11-style terrorists:

15 of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi Arabians. Not that that is necessarily linked to the government, but there’s a lot of money there. And right now, you have Trump talking loosely about taking over Gaza. That puts a terrorist target on our back and extremists groups, jihadists will not stop until they’re not just done with land grabs, they’re done with western civilization. So, they will definitely come here if this kind of thing can be bought.

“If we’re going to brag about immigration going down, there might be another reason it’s going down, because you’re threatening people! You’re threatening their lives!” Goldberg falsely shouted near the end of the segment.

Goldberg too wrongly conflated the decrease in illegal board crossings with a decrease in legal immigration. She went further in suggesting that no one was able to figure out how to come to America legally: “Now, nobody knows how you get in, what do you do, because it’s a mess! So I want somebody to make their — make up your mind so people know what to do!”

Insanely, Goldberg’s rant took on an anti-American bent as she ridiculously claimed that Americans didn’t know how to do anything and we needed immigrants to teach us:

I listen to folks say, ‘oh, well, you know, we don’t want people from other countries coming and teaching people how to do stuff. Why aren’t Americans doing it?’ Because Americans don’t know stuff! We need folks coming in to help us figure out how to do stuff! We’re not the only people on the planet!

The only thing that stopped her was the fact that she was being played off by her producers for most of her rant and they needed to go to commercial break.

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

ABC’s The View
February 26, 2025
11:03:36 a.m. Eastern

(…)

WHOOPI GOLDBERG: You know, remember when Elon bought America?

JOY BEHAR: Yeah.

SUNNY HOSTIN: Yeah.

GOLDBERG: He could have saved money with this because this is only 5 million.

SARA HAINES: But he only would have gotten a green card, not the whole country.

HOSTIN: Oh, he spent over 200 million.

BEHAR: Timing is everything.

GOLDBERG: You’re right. You’re right. There you are.

ALYSSA FARAH GRIFFIN: Listen, a lot of times –

[Goldberg drops her pen]

GOLDBERG: What is happening?

FARAH GRIFFIN: What is happening?

HAINES: Pocket of leaking pens.

FARAH GRIFFIN: The way that he talks about it, it makes it sound like America is for sale to the highest bidder. I don’t like that.

But what I will say, this is basically an expansion on the existing EB5 visa program. I have some questions, because those are basically meant to incentivize the best and brightest to come to America, to create jobs here, to hire people, contribute tax revenue. But I want to know, is there national security vetting? So, yes. Could a terrorist organization or a Russian oligarch come in? And then, just again don’t make it sound like we’re for sale. Make it sound like you want to be here because you want to be in America.

But I’ll say this on immigration, Donald Trump ran on two things, the economy is still looking really dicey. My eggs were like $14 the other day.

GOLDBERG: You mean cooking eggs.

FARAH GRIFFIN: Yes, cooking eggs! Those eggs are even more expensive!

[Laughter]

But, the border crisis, he’s effectively solved in one month. This blew my mind. The Washington Post, there has been a 98 percent drop in daily border crossings in the lowest single day total in 15 years this past week. From an all-time high of 11,000 in December of 2023 under Biden to only 200 a week ago under Trump. So, he’s doing that. That is what people voted for. Now, please get to the economy because everything is too damn expensive.

HAINES: Well, one thing though that a lot of the people — Correct me if I’m wrong, that voted for Trump, a lot critical of immigration are immigrants themselves; who came here and went through the processes and are like, ‘I did my part. You should do yours.’

To speak like this about the fact that he ran on anti-immigration and ‘I’m going fix that.’ Like you said, numbers are down but if you have enough money, you can come. So, I don’t think that’s going to bode well for the people that voted for him; that you can just skip the line if you’re wealthy. That is a problem.

I also think that to – He talks so much about criminals coming across the borders and all the problems they bring with them. People with money can be criminals too.

[Laughter]

FARAH GRIFFIN: Yup!

HAINES: In fact, they have more resources to be criminals.

[Applause]

And so I – What comes to mind right away, you mention terrorists. I think it was 11 or 12 — 15 of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi Arabians. Not that that is necessarily linked to the government, but there’s a lot of money there. And right now, you have Trump talking loosely about taking over Gaza. That puts a terrorist target on our back and extremists groups, jihadists will not stop until they’re not just done with land grabs, they’re done with western civilization. So, they will definitely come here if this kind of thing can be bought.

(…)

11:10:30 a.m. Eastern

GOLDBERG: If we’re going to brag about immigration going down, there might be another reason it’s going down, because you’re threatening people! You’re threatening their lives!

FARAH GRIFFIN: This is his intention! The same way Kamala Harris said ‘do not come.’ She went to the southern border and said that.

GOLDBERG: Just let me finish now this time.

My point is, we’ve spent over 100 years saying to people, ‘come, you’re welcome. We’ll take you.’ Now nobody knows how you get in, what do you do because it’s a mess, so I want somebody to make their — make up your mind so people know what to do. If you can come, and you want them to come, because I listen to folks say, ‘oh, well, you know, we don’t want people from other countries coming and teaching people how to do stuff. Why aren’t Americans doing it?’ Because Americans don’t know stuff. We need folks coming in to help us figure out how to do stuff. We’re not the only people on the planet.

Okay. You know, we’ll be right back.

Somewhere, “1984” author George Orwell is smiling. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. And on MSNBC this morning: discrimination creates a “level playing field.”

On Wednesday’s edition of MSNBC’s Way Too Early, host Ali Vitali invited Lauren Leader to discuss the vote by Apple shareholders not to abandon the company’s DEI programs.

As Leader’s home page describes her [emphasis added]:

Lauren is also founder of a boutique consulting firm that works with a wide array of institutions and leaders both in business and politics to advance diversity and equality. She has served dozens of major companies and institutions in that capacity.

So Leader literally makes her living by promoting DEI in corporate America and politics. No surprise then that she was pleased by the decision by Apple shareholders to retain DEI policies.

Leader went Orwellian when at the end of the segment she said:

“Diversity is what this country was built on. And most Americans do understand that it should be a level playing field for all.”

Equality of opportunity? By all means. But the “E” in DEI isn’t “Equality.” It stands for “Equity.” In other words, not equal opportunity. Equal outcomes.

And how are those equal outcomes achieved? By choosing less qualified people based on their race and sex while rejecting more qualified people who don’t check the right boxes. In other words, by blatant discrimination.

Vitali was all in on Leader’s pro-discrimination approach. She praised Leader for “tug[ging] on a really important thread when you make the case that Apple is responsive to what its consumers want. The more range of lived experience that you have sitting at the table means that more people are going to be able to have positive interactions with their product.”

You know what most people consider “positive interactions” with products? Having products like computers and planes that don’t crash. Who cares about the color or sex of the people building them? Just make the darn things work!

And then there was Leader’s claim that our country was “built on diversity.” America was built on the foundation of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The authors were all people of pallor. What’s worse, their gender at birth had uniformly been assigned as male! 

Leader has made numerous MSNBC appearances, always hewing to the liberal line. In 2023, our Nicholas Fondacaro caught Leader accusing Nikki Haley of being a race traitor by supposedly playing to Republican biases. And, as Fondacaro pointed out, Leader “brazenly lied” in claiming that Tim Scott claims that he has never been a victim of racism.

In 2018, I noted Leader encouraging military leaders to disobey orders from the Commander-in-Chief, Donald Trump.

Here’s the transcript.

MSNBC
Way Too Early
2/26/25
5:56 am ET

ALI VITALI: Joining us now, co-founder and CEO of All In Together, Lauren Leader. Lauren, so what do you make of Apple shareholders’ decision to kind of swim against the current here and keep their diversity and inclusion programs? 

LAUREN LEADER: Well, look, I think for companies that are consumer-facing like Apple, diversity and inclusion is really mission critical. Because it’s about how they build products and services that are responsive to the marketplace, which is, in their case, the whole world. 

So I think, you know, Apple’s been very clear that they were not interested in you know, outside pressure on this, and that they were going to prioritize their shareholders and prioritize the business itself. 

VITALI: I also think you tug on a really important thread there when you make the case that Apple is responsive to what its consumers want. The more range of lived experience that you have sitting at the table means that more people are going to be able to have positive interactions with their product. 

That also applies in the political space. You and I talk about this so much, so often, that diversity of people who are running and taking up space in office means that policy is just better for a larger swath of the American public. 

So if you’re a consumer or if you’re a politic-minded person, how can you be thinking about these DEI moves by the administration, versus what actually would be borne out if you had more diverse people taking up these spaces? 

LEADER: Right. In business and democracy and government and everywhere. I mean, I think, and look, all the polls show that the vast majority of Americans really understand this. I mean, diversity is what this country was built on. 

And most Americans do understand that it should be a level playing field for all. 

Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos announced a dramatic ideological shift for his newspaper’s opinion section toward free markets, and staff are predictably having a nervous breakdown over it.

Bezos stated on X that he notified Post staff of significant changes being made to the opinion section: “We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets.” In addition, said Bezos, “We’ll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.” Bezos emphatically stated his confidence that “free markets and personal liberties are right for America. I also believe these viewpoints are underserved in the current market of ideas and news opinion. I’m excited for us together to fill that void.” 

This is a massive hard-to-starboard maneuver on Bezos’s part, given the life-sucking abyss of monolithic leftist sewage his newspaper’s opinion section has been over the years. It also follows Bezos’s surprising move before the 2024 election to bar his newspaper from making any political endorsements, because, who knew that maintaining neutrality constituted good journalism ethics! MRC Vice President of Research and Publications Brent Baker welcomed the news: “After a dozen years of ownership in which The Washington Post matched the liberal legacy media’s disdain for anyone not liberal, and became less and less relevant, it’s good to see Bezos recognize there’s a big audience out there in favor of basic American values. But it’s sad Post journalists see this as an attack on them and not an opportunity.”

Along parallel lines, NewsBusters Executive Editor Tim Graham expressed surprise at Bezos’s move in a statement:

It’s one thing for Jeff Bezos to rule against an editorial endorsing Kamala for President. This is a more dramatic proclamation that flies in the face of the leftist culture of The Washington Post. To most Posties, ‘free markets’ sounds like a PR phrase for rapacious price-gouging greedheads. 

I shared this note with the Washington Post team this morning:
I’m writing to let you know about a change coming to our opinion pages.
We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets. We’ll cover other topics too…
— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) February 26, 2025
The Post staff’s reaction effectively proved Baker’s and Graham’s point that they’re so wedded to their ideological wormhole that any shift to the center spells Armageddon. As insufferable Post columnist Philip Bump cried on Bluesky five minutes after Bezos’s X post went live: “[W]hat the actual fuck.” 

Post Opinion Editor David Shipley immediately quit following Bezos’s announcement to his staff, perhaps he couldn’t fathom the idea of “personal liberty” and “free markets” actually being the guiding principles of his department. According to Bezos, “I offered David Shipley, whom I greatly admire, the opportunity to lead this new chapter. I suggested to him that if the answer wasn’t ‘hell yes,’ then it had to be “no.” After careful consideration, David decided to step away.” It’s worth pointing out that Shipley — when he was a top brass editor for Bloomberg Opinion — had taken a leave of absence to join his boss Michael Bloomberg’s $1 billion-plus 2020 campaign, so he was never really a beacon for independent journalism to begin with.
Post economics reporter Jeff Stein was erratic in his response to the Bezos announcement. “Massive encroachment by Jeff Bezos into The Washington Post’s opinion section today – makes clear dissenting views will not be published or tolerated there.” Is he serious? Did he have a brain fart about where he works? This is the same newspaper that grave-stomped over its dead conservative editor Wesley Pruden as “defiantly abrasive,” which is asinine considering how its obituary section treated the death of murderous Cuban dictator Fidel Castro when it hailed him in as a “romantic figure in olive-drab fatigues and combat boots.” “Dissenting views” won’t be “tolerated?” Oh shut up Stein.

“I still have not felt encroachment on my journalism on the news side of coverage, but if Bezos tries interfering with the news side I will be quitting immediately and letting you know.” Right Stein, we are all just waiting on the edge of our seats gorging on hopium to see what your decision will be in this scenario (sarcasm).

Oh how terrible the prospect that Stein probably won’t be able to mindlessly simp for Bidenomics and disguise his opinion as news as he’s done in the past!

Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) didn’t spend years fighting Big Tech censorship to let Massachusetts Democrat Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) outright deny that censorship faced by conservatives on social media platforms exists. 

The Murphy v. Missouri veteran laid into Big Tech for its censorship in response to a stunning denial from the “totally ignorant” Sen. Markey during a Feb. 25 hearing for Federal Trade Commission (FTC) nominee Mark Meador. If confirmed to the position, Meador would provide Republican FTC members a majority on the critical commission. Unfortunately for Markey, Schmitt’s turn to speak came immediately after the Massachusetts senator’s easily refuted denial that Big Tech censorship against conservatives exists. 

[Story Continues on MRC Free Speech America] 

PolitiFact finally found time to fact-check a Democrat on Tuesday. Unfortunately, writer Louis Jacobson refused to give Washington Sen. Patty Murray’s false claim a false rating when she declared that, since 2001, GOP tax cuts have done more than anything else to add to the deficit, instead giving the claim a “half true rating.”

The specific claim from Murray came from a speech she gave on the Senate floor on February 20, claiming the Senate GOP’s budget is “not about balancing the budget. We all know that. Because they don’t plan to reverse one of the biggest drivers of the debt: Republican tax cuts. Despite all the boogeymen the Republicans like to point to as driving the national debt, the reality is that the single biggest driver of our national debt since 2001 has been Republican tax cuts.”

The reason why Jacobson gave Murray a half true rating wasn’t because of the “tax cuts” part, but the “GOP” part. He wrote, “the tax cuts were enacted not only by Republicans; when the laws were extended, much of the debt they spurred was also ratified by congressional Democrats, President Barack Obama, or both. In fact, of five tax cut bills enacted since 2001, Murray ended up voting for two, the first directly and the second by not objecting to the unanimous consent motion.”

However, in the preceding paragraph Jacobson defended the attack on tax cuts, “A 2024 analysis by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a fiscally hawkish group, found that tax cuts were the biggest of four types of legislation that have added to the federal debt since 2001. Two other types of legislation trailed close behind tax cuts in fiscal impact: large stimulus bills and annual spending increases.”

Sounds convincing, but there’s just one problem. Normally, when this debate is had, tax cuts are one category and spending is another, but RFB and Jacobson, split spending into three separate categories. Meanwhile, every tax cut or tax cut extension was thrown into the same category.

As Jacobson’s pie chart tells it $8.4 trillion (38 percent) was spent on tax cuts, $6.8 trillion (31 percent) on recession responses, $5.9 trillion (26 percent) on new discretionary spending, and $1.1 trillion (5 percent) on Medicare expansion.

However, if tax cuts and spending were treated the same, the pie chart would have had new spending at $13.8 trillion (62 percent) and tax cuts at $6.8 trillion (38 percent).

There’s a second problem with RFB and Jacobson’s analysis, mainly that it “did not factor in additional spending for mandatory programs such as Social Security because they were authorized before the 2001 cutoff.”

Okay, but the increase in spending is still real.

We all expected the Democrat/corporate media alliance to come up with some bogus reason to hate the Trump administration for slashing government waste, but some of the programs these journalists are mourning are beyond parody. It’s starting to feel like there’s an ongoing bet in the “mainstream” press to see who can find the dumbest possible waste of taxpayer money to defend in earnest.

Let’s begin this petulant complaint thinly disguised as a headline by CBS News 24/7 host Lindsey Reiser on February 20: “President Trump is back at the White House today, where he will mark Black History Month, despite his administration’s moves to gut diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.”

There was actually quite a bit of DEI shilling last week. Take this February 15 segment teaser by CNN’s Victor Blackwell: “PBS is having to deal with the purge of DEI offices and initiatives. The Sesame Street icon who played Maria for decades is here to share why she’s so concerned.”

Yes, imagine having to deal with a purge of DEI initiatives; how dreadful! Thank goodness there was a Sesame Street icon available to break that disturbing development down for everyone.

That wasn’t even the only mention of Sesame Street. This past Sunday, CNN’s Michael Smerconish took an ambitious shot at defending a taxpayer-funded Iraqi spinoff of the children’s show: “Those soft power exercises make for great sound bites, but when you drill down, for example on Sesame Street in Iraq, they often make sense.”

His argument was that funding western entertainment in countries like Iraq might somehow reduce the threat of terrorism in those nations: “You know, you’d rather spend on that than bullets,” (unfortunately, as guest James Fishback pointed out, there was a terror attack in Iraq just last month which killed at least 40 individuals).

Of course, there’s also been a lot of media handwringing about the recent spate of executive branch layoffs. But even if the majority of Americans were bought into the media’s bogus premise that government layoffs are always bad — there’s no such thing as a redundant or underachieving government employee in the eyes of the press — were they really expecting anybody who’s ever paid taxes in this country to be sad about firings at the IRS?

Evidently yes, because quite a few news briefs last week took great pains to emphasize that these IRS workers had been laid off “at the height of tax season!” Among the talking heads deploying that hyperbolic terminology were veteran NBC News anchor Kristen Welker, newly-anointed CBS Evening News co-host John Dickerson, and MSNBC host Ana Cabrera.

We’ve really on scratched the surface of all the stupid excuses the media have come up with for hating Elon Musk’s DOGE cuts. See the video below for a more complete (but still far from comprehensive) display of their antics:

 

If this whole DOGE saga has taught us anything, it’s that there is no government program too stupid or wasteful for corporate journalists to defend.

CBS’s Stephen Colbert kicked off Tuesday’s edition of The Late Show by applauding federal employees who responded with porn to Elon Musk’s email where he demanded to know five things they accomplished the previous week.

Colbert began by trying to cheer his liberal audience up, “Today marks the fifth week of Trump’s second presidency, and it is clear, even at this point, and even at this early stage, it is clear that he is hell-bent on dismantling our federal government and ending our 80-year-long Western alliance. But on the bright side, these people clearly don’t have a clue what the [bleep] they’re doing.”

 

 

As an example, Colbert recalled, “Now, case in [bleep], this recent Elon Musk email he sent out on Saturday demanding that federal employees tell him five things they did last week or they’d be fired.”

As the audience began to boo, Colbert read from a Rolling Stone article, “Employees were— [Audience Boos] That’s what they said. Employees were not thrilled, leading some to respond with ‘very rude’ emails listing fake, vulgar ‘accomplishments,’ even sending links to graphic images of sex and scatological content.’ Now, yes! Good for them. If there’s anyone out there who don’t know what scatological means: Boodily beep bop bop bap beep badoopbap—that’s poop! 

Obviously, if one of Colbert’s subordinates or anyone at CBS sent their boss such a reply, Colbert would not be saying “good for them.” If you want to make the argument that federal workers really are a collection of patriotic, non-partisan civil servants who are being unfairly railroaded by Musk, sending him porn emails is the worst way to do that. This will just confirm to him that a chainsaw approach to reforming the bureaucracy is required.

Here is a transcript for the February 25 show:

CBS The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

2/25/2024

11:36 PM ET

STEPHEN COLBERT: Today marks the fifth week of Trump’s second presidency, and it is clear, even at this point, and even at this early stage, it is clear that he is hell-bent on dismantling our federal government and ending our 80-year-long Western alliance. But on the bright side, these people clearly don’t have a clue what the [bleep] they’re doing. Now, case in [bleep], this recent Elon Musk email he sent out on Saturday demanding that federal employees tell him five things they did last week or they’d be fired.

Employees were— [Audience Boos] That’s what they said. Employees were not thrilled, leading some to respond with “‘very rude’ emails listing fake, vulgar ‘accomplishments,’” “even sending links to graphic images of sex and scatological content.” Now, yes! Good for them. If there’s anyone out there who don’t know what scatological means: Boodily beep bop bop bap beep badoopbap — that’s poop! 

When Democrats switch parties and become Republicans or vote for Republicans, no one expects the liberal media to keep describing them with words like “liberal” or “Democrat.” But somehow, after former conservatives and ex-Republicans campaigned for staunchly leftist Kamala Harris for president, journalists just keep calling them “conservatives.”

Bill Barrow of the allegedly “fact-based” Associated Press wrote an article headlined “Conservatives who still oppose Trump gather at ‘Principles First Summit’ in search of a path forward.” Barrow’s first sentence read: “Conservatives from across the country filled a ballroom a few blocks from the White House and lamented that the United States is abandoning the ideals that forged a great nation.”

Then the AP scribe turned to ex-Republican Heath Mayo, “the Yale-educated attorney who founded Principles First five years ago for self-identified politically homeless conservatives.” The “PBS News Hour” website published this repetitive falsehood, and its progressive partners at PolitiFact won’t object to it.

Conservatives from across the country filled a ballroom a few blocks from the White House and lamented that the United States is abandoning the ideals that forged a great nation. https://t.co/oQnP198t3P
— PBS News (@NewsHour) February 25, 2025
Obviously, you can be a principled conservative, be critical of Donald Trump, and refuse to vote for him. But it’s much more common among the elites to hate Trump so much that you have to back anyone who could stop him. Then you can be seen all over liberal TV bashing Trump as a menace to society.

Naturally, Mayo and many of his fellow “Principles First” people campaigned for Kamala last year. The ad for their “summit” was stuffed with ex-conservatives starring on cable news: MSNBC host Michael Steele, MSNBC regulars Charlie Sykes and George Conway, CNN analyst Adam Kinzinger, and pollster Sarah Longwell, among others. Longwell sat on stage with Harris and Liz Cheney at campaign events last fall.

You can’t be “conservative” and support the woman who would make abortion as available as possible and push “gender-affirming care” for children. You can’t be “conservative” and back the team who made a disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan and whose weakness led to wars in Ukraine and Israel.

But for Democrat journalists, it’s just too delicious to be truthful. CNN and MSNBC and PBS and NPR can’t get enough of “Republicans” who back Democrats. They line up with Mayo as he tweeted last year, ”If Dick Cheney is voting for Kamala Harris, it’s safe to say this election is not any kind of referendum on conservatism.”

A year ago, National Public Radio Morning Edition host Michel Martin supportively interviewed Mayo about his conference and cued him up to trash the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). He claimed it has “evolved into this sort of corrupt and crazy circus that was much more focused, I think, on the personalities that were on the stage and the crazy and crazier things that they would say, as opposed to the ideas and the principles that really should define who we are as conservatives.”

Who “we” are? Are “we” suggesting voting for Democrats in 2024 aligned with conservative ideas and principles?  

So Martin asked last year who he was endorsing for president. Mayo said, “Trump represents an existential threat not just to the Republican Party, but to the constitutional principles that shape our country. So I personally would be voting for Biden.” Martin concluded the interview: “That is Heath Mayo. He is president and founder of Principles First. That’s the conservative group hosting an alternative to the CPAC conference.”

These journalists aren’t just pretending that Real Republicans oppose Trump. They’re hinting that they want Real Republicans who surrender to everything Democrats want to do and create a “uni-party” government and a “uni-party” media elite. These journalists would claim that this suffocating consensus would be the flowering of “democracy.”

The Musk-Deranged and DOGE-Deranged media appear to have stumbled on a new genre of goverage: the horrendous fate that will befall Americans due to DOGE cuts across multiple federal agencies. Reaching a new height of absurdity, CBS’s Ian Lee leads viewers to infer that DOGE cuts will lead people to be eaten by bears.

Watch as Lee walks viewers to an empty ranger station at Shoshone National Forest in Wyoming:

CBS’s Ian Lee takes @DOGE Derangement to new heights, now suggesting that budget cuts will get you eaten by a bear:
IAN LEE: Let’s say you just arrived in town and you want some information about the forest, maybe a good place to camp or a trip to hike on. Or maybe you are… pic.twitter.com/G1U09mPkq6
— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) February 26, 2025

IAN LEE: Let’s say you just arrived in town and you want some information about the forest, maybe a good place to camp or a trip to hike on. Or maybe you are scared about bears. You come to a place like this. Your local ranger station. But because of the recent firings, this one won’t be open anytime soon. 

In a prior entry, NBC fearmongered about DOGE ruining people’s Yosemite vacation. The lone person qualified to carry people out of an accident site won’t be there in the event something goes sideways. If someone locks themself in the bathroom, they might not be able to escape. 

Now, this may seem convenient due to the proximity of bears at Shoshone National in Wyoming. The CBS item echoes a familiar pattern with regard to DOGE cuts. There’s the policy announcement, and then there are the victims impacted. 

Of course, this story is the height of absurdity. And of course, the networks will continue to pump fear into the community, without evidence.

  Click “expand” to view the full transcript of the aforementioned report as aired on the CBS Evening News on Tuesday, February 25th, 2025: 

JOHN DICKERSON: The White House won’t say how many federal workers have been or will be fired.

MAURICE DUBOIS: But Ian Lee traced down three of them in Wyoming and they told Ian what their firing could mean for the rest of us.

IAN LEE: Even in the winter, the Shoshone National Forest buzzes with activity. With so many people snowmobiling, riding their bikes, hiking, and rock climbing. Maintaining the country’s forests takes an army of forest service workers, including Dayln Grindell. What did you love the most about your job?

DAYLYN GRINDELL: I love going into work every day and working with my colleagues.

LEE: Grindell, along with Jack Corney and Tim Lee recently received a letter saying they were being fired for poor job performance. 

What was your reaction when you saw that the reason you were being fired was because of poor performance?

TIM LEE: I put my heart and soul into that job, and that’s just not true.

LEE: Every summer, tens of millions of Americans visit the national forests. But this summer, they might look a little different.

GRINDELL: There’s a lot of unforeseen consequences that the general public aren’t always aware of.

LEE: What do you fear then? What could happen?

JACK CORNEY: We’re clearing the trails for people to access the wilderness, and that’s just — that’s not going to happen this year.

LEE: Let’s say you just arrived in town and you want some information about the forest, maybe a good place to camp or a trip to hike on. Or maybe you are scared about bears. You come to a place like this. Your local ranger station. But because of the recent firings, this one won’t be open anytime soon. Terminations at the Forest Service also come as wildfires nationwide grow fiercer and more frequent. 

Show of hands, how many of you were qualified to fight fires? So you guys could have all been on the front lines this summer fighting fires if needed?

ALL: Yes.

LEE: I spoke with several senior Forest Service officials across the country, and they told me the future leadership of the agency has been wiped out, and it could take decades to recover. Another warned that some of these workers monitored bear populations and without them, there could be more encounters.

DUBOIS: Okay, many thanks, Ian Lander in Wyoming tonight.