Newsbusters

Chelsea Milburn is a disabled veteran of the United States Navy who, until recently, worked for the United States Department of Education. As part of cuts from the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, she has lost her job. On Wednesday, she appeared on the news and lamented, “They don’t care about how this impacts me or people like me. And to me, it’s inhumane. It feels like they’re ignoring our personhood and not respecting us as human beings or as American citizens.” She is not wrong.

President Donald Trump and Elon Musk have channeled their inner Miley Cyrus and come into office like a wrecking ball. Musk’s private sector ideal of moving fast and breaking things has become the ethos of the new administration. No, they do not care about Ms. Milburn’s personhood or that she is a human being. They care that she is a line item in a spreadsheet and not just an employee of the federal government, but an expenditure of federal taxpayer money.

The Erickson Rule of Media Coverage is simply that when Democrats run Washington, the press highlights beneficiaries of policies. When Republicans run Washington, the press highlights victims of policies. When former President Joe Biden canceled the Keystone XL pipeline and the parent company of the pipeline finally threw in the towel, the national press touted the benefits to the climate. Aside from Fox News, very few covered the loss of jobs.

On Dec. 30, 2019, at a rally in Derry, New Hampshire, Biden stated that he would be shutting down fossil fuel production in the United States. He explained to the crowd, “Anybody who can go down 3,000 feet in a mine can sure as hell learn to program as well … Anybody who can throw coal into a furnace can learn how to program, for God’s sake!” Progressives justified the loss of jobs in the fossil fuel sector by explaining that those laid off could “learn to code,” a line amplified by sympathetic voices in the media. Perhaps federal workers can take Biden’s advice.

The infuriating thing about the coverage of these layoffs is that they happen all the time in the private sector. Employees, often seen as cogs in wheels and numbers in spreadsheets, get laid off. According to the Department of Labor, job layoffs in the United States averaged 1,916,490 a year between 2000 and 2024 in the private sector. People lose jobs and people get jobs. But those people do not get to cry on television. They are in the private sector, where layoffs happen all the time.

President Ronald Reagan once quipped, “No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth!” The left would have you believe the jobs within those bureaus are sacrosanct and inviolable. The only government jobs that are seemingly disposable are jobs in the military.

Both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama engaged in military force reductions. Perhaps there was copious media coverage of employed soldiers after those force reductions, but I have been unable to find it. Almost every media outlet has, in the past two weeks, covered civilian federal employees out of jobs. “60 Minutes” covered outside contractors whose jobs were affected by USAID cuts. The New York Times, MSNBC, and much of the rest of the media has as well.

Over the course of the past four years, the elite told Middle America that people were better off than they thought, and that the economy was fine. When government bureaucrats passed regulations that put Americans out of work, the elite insisted Americans would benefit from a cleaner, greener economy. Now, instead of Americans losing jobs because of regulators, the regulators and bureaucrats are losing jobs. The elite are angry, but a large segment of the population might be excused for feeling like a little justice has happened.

We can and should sympathize with displaced workers, particularly those let go by email. But we should also note how quickly the loud voices of objection silence themselves when the private sector downsizes.

To find out more about Erick Erickson and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) ripped search giant Google for abusing its power to exert influence over the minds of Americans. 

Schmitt discussed how platforms like Google get away with their rampant bias with Article III Project Founder and President Mike Davis at a Thursday CPAC appearance. Both speakers made plain that a lack of real free market competition lay at the root of Google’s ability and willingness to censor and write off a significant portion of the country, conservatives. Schmitt called for transparency and competition. 

[Story Continues on MRC Free Speech America] 

With the networks having already established over the last few weeks a totally-not-coordinated stream of sympathetic laid off federal workers to attack the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and President Trump, NBC’s Today added another wrinkle Friday by cheering liberal rabble rousers shouting at House Republicans during constituent townhalls.

It’s not entire surprising as they did this repeatedly (like here and here) back in 2017 in the first year of Trump’s first term.

 

 

Chief White House correspondent Peter Alexander made sure to brag to viewers about this supposed national groundswell:

Now, new fallout. Constituents in some districts giving their Republican representatives an earful, lashing out at them for supporting the massive federal layoffs and budget cuts by the Trump administration and DOGE, Elon Musk’s outside agency as you just saw, Musk is celebrating his team’s work.

After citing Musk spent early Thursday night at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) “driving home his rapid shredding of the federal government” with a gifted chainsaw, Alexander went full bore on the town hall issue: “[S]ome Republicans are now facing constituent pushback over the President and Musk’s vision…taking questions about DOGE’s work this week.”

In the first clip, he played an angry boomer shouting at Congressman Rich McCormick (R-GA): “What’s not reasonable is taking this chainsaw approach. [SCREEN WIPE] Why is this being jammed down the pipes so rushed and sloppily?”

Alexander shared another of a woman asking Congressman Cliff Bentz (R-OR) “who is paying for DOGE” and then only a small clip of Bentz saying amid boos that “we are looking into that now to find out” as he didn’t “know the answer.”

“And last night, tensions boiled over at a Republican congressman’s town hall in Georgia over the President’s executive orders and budget cuts,” Alexander continued.

This gave way to an older woman shouting at McCormick with a clear, partisan agenda: “The people would like to know what you, the congressmen and your fellow congressmen, are going to do to reign the megalomaniac at the White House.”

The NBC correspondent also found polling to back his thesis up: “All of it as a new Washington Poll finds President Trump has a 45 percent approval rating with a majority 53 percent disapproving of his job as president. 57 percent say he’s exceeded his authority while just 34 percent approve of Elon Musk and his handling of the job.”

Other portions of his report were standard anti-DOGE drivel, down to a portion like this that included a sympathetic government worker (though they at least disclosed in a chyron that he was a union representative) (click “expand”):

ALEXANDER: The administration’s latest cuts coming at the IRS. The President’s top economic adviser saying the number of cuts could exceed 3,500 that Democrats have warned could have a catastrophic impact on the IRS season with some veteran IRS workers saying it could affect how quickly you get your refund.

NATIONAL TREASURY EMPLOYEES UNION LOCAL 66 VICE PRESIDENT DANIEL SCHARPENBURG: The work is going to get backed up and so, private citizens are going to be like, the IRS is not doing their job and it’s because we’re getting hallowed out.

ALEXANDER: The White House defending all of the layoffs across government.

KEVIN HASSETT: We’re studying every agency in deciding who to let go and why and we’re doing so very rationally.

To see the relevant NBC transcript from February 21, click here.

What a joke. The same outlet that tried to paint America’s inflation situation before the 2024 election as Yankee Doodle Dandy! is doing the backstroke now that Donald Trump is president.

That’s some convenient timing. 

Axios chief economic correspondent Neil Irwin released a damning story Thursday headlined, “Inflation warning signs mount.”

Irwin wrote that “Bond markets are betting that inflation will stay elevated in the years ahead, and some evidence from business surveys and forecasters points in the same direction.” What this meant, argued Irwin, was that “the Trump administration and the Federal Reserve face a headwind in securing a return to low inflation — concerns that have escalated just in the last few weeks, as the president has threatened tariffs on a variety of U.S. trading partners.”

“Securing a return to low inflation?” This is the same reporter who on July 1, 2024 was celebrating to the cyberverse that President Joe Biden’s so-called “soft landing seems to have stuck.”

Later that month, Irwin was adamant that “[t]he soft landing was very much intact this spring.”

On Election Eve, Irwin propagandized that “the U.S. economy is by most measures stronger than it has been in modern election cycles” with some exceptions. “Inflation has, of course, weighed on public sentiment. But over the 12 months ended in September, the Consumer Price Index rose only 2.4%,” Irwin gaslighted at the time.

Now, Irwin’s flipped like a pancake on a griddle and made it seem like that supposed soft-landing he blathered on for months about is actually still “stuck” in mid-air, as was evidenced by the chart he plastered over his new piece:

The gap between interest rates on standard U.S. Treasury securities and inflation-protected bonds gives a window into how much bond investors expect prices to rise in the future. That gap, known as the breakeven rate, has been on a tear in recent weeks.

But we shouldn’t expect anything less from Irwin. After all, when Irwin was senior economic correspondent at the New York Times in November 2021 (when inflation was 6.8 percent), he tried to make Americans out to be ungrateful idiots for whining so much about prices going to the moon when they had so much going for them. “Americans Are Flush With Cash and Jobs. They Also Think the Economy Is Awful,” read his headline at the time.

Despite Biden enacting policies that predictably launched inflation into orbit that year, Irwin instead tried to blame the supposedly “more powerful force” of “the psychology of inflation” for turning Americans against the Biden economy.

“Americans are, by many measures, in a better financial position than they have been in many years. They also believe the economy is in terrible shape,” Irwin audaciously claimed.

Keep it up Irwin. We can see right through your nonsense.

PBS News Hour reporter William Brangham dumped a truckload of slime over space entrepreneur and Trump advisor Elon Musk’s head in a 10-minute news piece/hit piece that aired Thursday evening. PBS cannot stand that Musk’s DOGE squad will eventually come around to their studios and offices.

Co-anchor Geoff Bennett: President Trump has tasked Elon Musk with an enormous job, to search across the federal government and root out inefficiencies and waste. But Musk’s initial, often chaotic infiltration of various government departments has sparked alarm. It’s also put the tech entrepreneur at center stage of the conservative movement, appearing today in front of an audience at CPAC, wielding a chain saw he said he’d used to slash the federal bureaucracy. 

Reporter William Brangham’s history of Musk told a dark tale.

William Brangham: Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, now standing in the most powerful office in the world.

Musk: The people voted for major government reform. There should be no doubt about that.

Brangham: But how did this visionary tech leader, a man who once championed clean energy to save the planet and remained politically neutral for much of his career, end up working with President Donald Trump to dramatically scale back the size of the federal government?

In Brangham’s telling, the answer is a tragedy. After a couple of clips from Musk biographers, Brangham outlined Musk’s achievements, like electric cars and going to Mars, before a clip of Musk describing himself as “half Republican, half Democrat….sort of socially liberal and fiscally conservative.”

But then Musk’s politics “began a rightward turn” during the pandemic in California, where he was forced to lock down his Tesla electric car plants, and things went dark and reckless.

Brangham: Over the years, Musk spent increasing amounts of time on Twitter, shooting out messages at all hours of the day and night, everything from vulgar jokes to business updates to memes that critics called racist and sexist, even his intention to buy the platform outright…Musk changed the platform’s policies on hate speech, and when analysts claimed that vitriol then flourished on the renamed X, advertisers balked and the company’s value slid. In characteristic fashion, Musk had no time for his critics.

Musk: If somebody’s going to try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money, go (expletive deleted) yourself. Go (expletive deleted) yourself. Is that clear?

Brangham added some personal smears to the mix.

Brangham: Meanwhile, colleagues and board members at his companies reported that they were increasingly concerned about Musk’s mental health and drug use, specifically the drug ketamine, which Musk says he’s prescribed to treat depressive episodes. He began leaning even further into politics, backing Republican candidates during the 2022 midterms and labeling Democrats the party of division and hate. And he shared extremist, hard-right views on X, endorsing the so-called Great Replacement Theory that argues Democrats want open borders to replace white voters, and he elevated antisemitic conspiracy theories….

Politico certainly took the idea of immigrants voting Democrat seriously, in a 2013 article penned before wokeness had kicked in: “Immigration reform could be bonanza for Democrats.”

The most positive thing Brangham could manage about Musk was at the end, when he said Musk retained President Trump’s full support.

This segment was brought to you in part by Cunard.

A transcript is available, click “Expand.”

PBS News Hour

2/20/25

7:24:51 p.m. (ET)

Geoff Bennett: President Trump has tasked Elon Musk with an enormous job, to search across the federal government and root out inefficiencies and waste.

But Musk’s initial, often chaotic infiltration of various government departments has sparked alarm. It’s also put the tech entrepreneur at center stage of the conservative movement, appearing today in front of an audience at CPAC, wielding a chain saw he said he’d used to slash the federal bureaucracy. William Brangham looks at the history of the man at the center of this effort.

Elon Musk, Department of Government Efficiency: If the bureaucracy is in charge, then what meaning does democracy actually have?

William Brangham: Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, now standing in the most powerful office in the world.

Elon Musk: The people voted for major government reform. There should be no doubt about that.

William Brangham: But how did this visionary tech leader, a man who once championed clean energy to save the planet and remained politically neutral for much of his career, end up working with President Donald Trump to dramatically scale back the size of the federal government?

Tim Higgins, The Wall Street Journal: Very rarely do you see a business leader essentially camping out in the White House, trying to influence government spending, influence government regulations the way Elon Musk is doing.

William Brangham: The Wall Street Journal’s Tim Higgins wrote a book on Musk and Tesla called “Power Play.”

Tim Higgins: There’s also this kind of “prove the world wrong” mentality. He’s got a huge chip on his shoulder. For so long, he’s been told that what he was doing wasn’t possible, that he was crazy, that he couldn’t do it.

And you — when you talk to him, you realize he likes proving people wrong.

Kate Conger, The New York Times: He tends to think in terms of missions for himself. So, those usually revolve around making a big impact for humanity.

William Brangham: Kate Conger covers Musk for The New York Times and co-authored the book “Character Limit” about Musk’s takeover of Twitter, which he renamed X.

Kate Conger: You see this with SpaceX, where he’s trying to extend the life of humanity by establishing colonies on Mars, with Tesla, where he’s trying to cut back on E.V. emissions and save the planet. And with X, too, he has given himself this mission of what he sees as protecting and saving online free speech.

And his approach to the Trump administration is the same. He views this as an opportunity to save America and save democracy.

William Brangham: Musk grew up in a wealthy family in 1970s South Africa, then still in the midst of its racist apartheid regime.

Walter Isaacson, who wrote a biography of Musk, told Amna Nawaz back in 2023 that Musk had a difficult childhood, struggling with autism spectrum disorder, being repeatedly bullied, and dealing with an allegedly emotionally abusive father.

Walter Isaacson, Author: Those demons, the dark things about being bullied as a kid, having psychological problems with his father, turn into drives too, drives that get him to be the only person who can get astronauts into orbit from the United States or reuse rockets and land them or bring us into the era of electric vehicles.

But it also makes him a dark and mercurial character and sometimes a crazed character at times.

William Brangham: Musk moved to the U.S. for college, where he studied physics and economics, but building Web-based products, including an online banking service, is what earned him his first real fortune.

It was around this time that Elon Musk turned his sights to two very different fields, the nascent electric car industry and the decades-old competition to conquer space. Musk quickly became a groundbreaking pioneer in both.

Man: And launch of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

William Brangham: Musk founded the rocket company SpaceX in 2002 and quickly became a key partner with NASA on both manned and unmanned spaceflights.

Musk invested in Tesla, then a fledgling electric car company, and would eventually become its CEO.

Elon Musk: An electric car can be the best car in the world.

William Brangham: In a remarkably short span, Tesla became the world’s most valuable auto company.

Tim Higgins: Time and time again, as you look out through kind of his career arc, it’s his ability to build excitement around his vision that tends to help him win the day. It’s tapping into this kind of primal idea, this excitement that people have about what is possible.

William Brangham: Another of his ventures is Starlink, a satellite Internet provider that’s used in over 100 countries and has large U.S. government contracts.

As these various businesses have grown, so has his net worth. In 2021, he became the world’s richest man. And yet, despite Musk’s power, he has spent most of his career avoiding politics.

Elon Musk: And I’m sort of moderate, sort of half Republican, half Democrat, if you will. But I’m somewhere in the middle. I guess I’m sort of socially liberal and fiscally conservative.

William Brangham: During the first Trump administration, Musk quit a presidential advisory board in protest after Trump withdrew from the Paris climate accord.

But, during the pandemic, his politics began a rightward turn. He hated being ordered to lock down his Tesla plants in California.

Kate Conger: He was also, at the time, going through some things in his personal life. He had a child who was coming out as trans and beginning a gender transition.

William Brangham: Musk often blamed his child’s transition on so-called woke ideology.

Elon Musk: They call it dead-naming for a reason. So the reason it’s called dead-naming is because your son is dead, killed by the woke mind virus.

William Brangham: Additionally, in 2021, Musk was excluded from a Biden administration summit on electric cars because Tesla had blocked unionization at its facilities.

Kate Conger: That’s something that Musk has typically resisted in his factories. So Tesla was excluded, and that really bothered Musk.

William Brangham: Over the years, Musk spent increasing amounts of time on Twitter, shooting out messages at all hours of the day and night, everything from vulgar jokes to business updates to memes that critics called racist and sexist, even his intention to buy the platform outright.

He first tried to walk that back, but then purchased Twitter for $44 billion in 2022, promising to create a digital town square, but quickly taking actions that echo his work today in Washington.

Kate Conger: Musk’s takeover of Twitter was really chaotic, I think by any measure. He came into the company and very quickly wanted to slash its budget, and that meant getting rid of everything from a large number of workers, to getting rid of real estate, to firing the janitorial staff who were cleaning the offices. Really, no item in Twitter’s budget went untouched.

William Brangham: Musk changed the platform’s policies on hate speech, and when analysts claimed that vitriol then flourished on the renamed X, advertisers balked and the company’s value slid.

In characteristic fashion, Musk had no time for his critics.

Elon Musk: If somebody’s going to try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money, go (expletive deleted) yourself. Go (expletive deleted) yourself. Is that clear?

William Brangham: Meanwhile, colleagues and board members at his companies reported that they were increasingly concerned about Musk’s mental health and drug use, specifically the drug ketamine, which Musk says he’s prescribed to treat depressive episodes.

He began leaning even further into politics, backing Republican candidates during the 2022 midterms and labeling Democrats the party of division and hate. And he extremist, hard right views on X, endorsing the so-called Great Replacement Theory that argues Democrats want open borders to replace white voters, and he elevated antisemitic conspiracy theories.

Though he initially didn’t support Trump’s reelection, saying he was too old to return to the White House, after last year’s assassination attempt, he changed his mind.

Elon Musk: The true test of someone’s character is how they behave under fire. And we had one president who couldn’t climb a flight of stairs, and another who was fist-pumping after getting shot.

William Brangham: Musk formed a super PAC to support Trump’s bid, donating more than $200 million of his own money.

Elon Musk: This election, I think, is going to decide the fate of America, and along with the fate of America, the fate of Western civilization.

William Brangham: Trump, in turn, embraced Musk on the trail and promised a role for him in a second administration.

Donald Trump, President of the United States: I will create a government efficiency commission tasked with conducting a complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government and making recommendations for drastic reforms.

William Brangham: Following Trump’s win, Musk continued to turn heads by supporting a far right political party in Germany that’s been accused of resurrecting Nazi era ideology and speaking to one of its rallies.

Now, as Musk leads this effort to scrutinize and cut federal agencies from within, his own companies retain massive multibillion-dollar government contracts. Musk has resisted any financial disclosures and claims there’s no conflict with his cost-cutting efforts.

And while there are numerous court challenges to his efforts, Musk continues to enjoy the full support of President Trump.

Donald Trump: The team we have is really unbelievable. But those executive orders, I sign them, and now they get passed on to him and his group and other people, and they’re all getting done. We’re getting them done.

William Brangham: For the “PBS News Hour,” I’m William Brangham.

The New York Post had a juicy scoop Thursday about the newly formatted CBS Evening News – with new co-anchors John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois and fewer-but-more-in-depth stories – has been such a failure in just four weeks they’re crying uncle.

Media reporter Alexandra Steigrad revealed CBS “is reverting to a more news-driven broadcast as ratings tumble” and backing up last week’s reporting from Puck’s Dylan Byers that the more sedate and mini-60 Minutes-like format suffered a huge blow when the February 11 show led off with over six-minutes on America’s education system instead of Elon Musk’s tour de force media Q&A in the Oval office.

Steigrad explained:

“They’ve realized they can’t ignore the news,” said an industry insider of the third-place show. “You can’t really ignore the tsunami of news that is coming out of the White House and Washington.”

The new format was the brainchild of CBS News CEO and president Wendy McMahon, who wanted to shake up the perennially third-place program anchored by O’Donnell for the past five years.

The knives came out with Steigard saying Dickerson and DuBois have “been widely panned by current and former CBS News employees” with one describing Dickerson as “a deer in the headlines” while “another said former WCBS anchor DuBois is a ‘complete unknown’ to anyone outside the New York City market.”

One source said only Dickerson has any “credibility”…but that’s only “political reporting.” Otherwise, this source argued, they have “none” and, based on the ratings, they haven’t passed the other requirement from a “former news executive”: likeability.

Even though CBS has spent decade in third place (for in both the AM and PM), it’s safe to say CBS found a way to go even lower with this CBS Evening News by shedding a million viewers. (click “expand”):

Since the Dickerson-Dubois pairing was launched on Jan. 27, the ratings have experienced a consistent decline, according to Nielsen data. While the show debuted with 5.2 million total viewers, it slid to 4.8 million viewers on average its first week on air.

By its second week, the show lost roughly 300,000 viewers and by its third week ended Feb. 16, it garnered just under 4.5 million total viewers, the data showed.

A source close to CBS News said the drop-off in viewers was “not a surprise.”

“When there is an anchor change, traditionally there is a dip in ratings. We understood there would be a short-term ratings hit and we are in this for the long term and are confident in our long game,” the source said.

Steigard added some of her own observations, such as the newscast having “scrambled to adapt on the fly” and failed even before its burial of the Musk appearance (which it put in its Evening News Roundup) as it couldn’t scramble a correspondent to Toronto for the Delta plane crash.

As usual, Byers had a newsy Wednesday night newsletter about the CBS News drama, including word from earlier in the week that CBS News editorial and newsgathering chief Adrienne Roark was jumping ship for local TV conglomerate Tegna after a seven-month tenure beset by nonsense ranging from the Ta-Nehisi Coates struggle sessions to the 60 Minutes scandal to now the CBS Evening News issues.

Byers reported she “never evidenced the newsroom leadership experience historically required of a major broadcast news chief” and, going forward, CBS will likely see huge changes if the sale of its parent company Paramount to the media studio Skydance goes through.

Byers reported “sources…tell me that [CBS News boss Wendy] McMahon will almost certainly lose her job as head of the news division after the merger, in part because of their frustration with the aforementioned controversies and management problems.”

He added she’s already lost confidence of her future overlords “by strongly advocating against Shari Redstone’s plan to settle the lawsuit that Trump brought against 60 Minutes—an obviously absurd capitulation that Shari nevertheless sees as a small price to pay for securing approval of the deal.”

As for whomever replaces McMahon, Byers predicted their to-do list will be daunting:

Meanwhile, whoever replaces McMahon in the new regime will likely be looking at a teardown situation—a new evening news format, possibly a new permanent anchor, a plan for Mornings after Gayle King eventually retires, and whatever is necessary to rebuild morale at 60 after this whole depressing settlement situation passes. It’s a tough job, but hopefully the Ellisons pay well.

Former NFL punter Chris Kluwe went on a wild anti-Trump tirade at a city council meeting on Tuesday that led to him being arrested. On Thursday, he went on MSNBC’s The ReidOut to beat his chest about what a great guy he is for it and accuse anyone who disagrees with him, especially on transgender issues, of being a Nazi.

Host Joy Reid was simply starstruck, “Chris Kluwe has always been that guy, right? You’ve been an ally to the LGBT community for a long time. You know, you said you risked your, you know, you’re, NFL player, you know, and you go, you stood for the rights of LGBTQ folks back then. You’re doing it now. What do you make of this fixation that the right and that MAGA has, particularly on trans people? Because it definitely is a fixation.”

 

 

It should be said that the Minnesota Vikings insist that Kluwe was released after the 2012 season for poor performance, and looking at his statistics, it is hard to argue with them.

Nevertheless, Kluwe got right into his reductio ad Hitlerum, “It’s well, I mean, it’s disgusting, and it’s straight out of the Nazi playbook. The first people the Nazis went after were the trans community because they thought they would be an easy target, and they could get people to go along with it.”

Of course, Reid wasn’t going to interrupt and say that acknowledging biological reality does not make one a Nazi. Instead, Kluwe kept rolling:

And for MAGA, they tried going after gay people. They’re going to continue trying to go after gay people, but they’re going to use trans people as the wedge to do it, and we’ve seen this playbook before. They’re using the exact same playbook that they use to try to outlaw same-sex marriage, and so it’s up to us to recognize that playbook and to say, ‘No, we’re not going to allow you to do that. We’re not going to allow you to hurt innocent people who have done nothing wrong, and who just want to be free to live their lives.’

Donald Trump’s secretary of the Treasury is a gay man married to another man and not a single Republican cared enough to vote no on his confirmation.

Nevertheless, Reid continued to be amazed by her guest, “What has been the reaction to your protest besides getting on this show?”

Kluwe then moved from outrageous to cringe, “Overwhelmingly positive. Yeah. Yeah. Right, right. It’s overwhelmingly positive on, I’m on BlueSky, which is a great place. I highly recommend BlueSky. It’s fantastic. I’m sure on Nazi Twitter they really don’t like me, but it’s the Nazi site, so I don’t really care.”

BlueSky basically exists to be the echo chamber liberals retreat to for their daily self-affirmations. It is basically if MSNBC were a social media website.

Here is a transcript for the February 20 show:

MSNBC The ReidOut

2/20/2025

7:53 PM ET

JOY REID: Yeah, I, you know, I’m struck by the fact that, I told my team when we did our show me today that, you know, Chris Kluwe has always been that guy, right? You’ve been an ally to the LGBT community for a long time. You know, you said you risked your, you know, you’re, NFL player, you know, and you go, you stood for the rights of LGBTQ folks back then. You’re doing it now. What do you make of this fixation that the right and that MAGA has, particularly on trans people? Because it definitely is a fixation.

CHRIS KLUWE: It’s well, I mean, it’s disgusting, and it’s straight out of the Nazi playbook. The first people the Nazis went after were the trans community because they thought they would be an easy target, and they could get people to go along with it and for MAGA, they tried going after gay people. They’re going to continue trying to go after gay people, but they’re going to use trans people as the wedge to do it, and we’ve seen this playbook before. They’re using the exact same playbook that they use to try to outlaw same-sex marriage, and so it’s up to us to recognize that playbook and to say, “No, we’re not going to allow you to do that. We’re not going to allow you to hurt innocent people who have done nothing wrong, and who just want to be free to live their lives.”

REID: What has been the reaction to your protest besides getting on this show?

KLUWE: Overwhelmingly positive. Yeah. Yeah. Right, right. It’s overwhelmingly positive on, I’m on BlueSky, which is a great place. I highly recommend BlueSky. It’s fantastic. I’m sure on Nazi Twitter they really don’t like me, but it’s the Nazi site, so I don’t really care.

Politico either advertently or inadvertently just exposed the Democrats’ grotesque hypocrisy in trying to yoke President Donald Trump to the inflation-plagued economy that his predecessor’s insane spending policies created. 

Politico State Policy reporter Liz Crampton managed to call out Democrat governors for doing an immediate switcheroo on the economy they just finished celebrating under former President Joe Biden.

“Democrats spent the last four years defending the economy. Now they’re turning it into a cudgel,” Crampton scolded in her lede paragraph. “It’s a dramatic swerve for a party that insisted for years that the economy was doing well and that Joe Biden had pulled off a soft landing on inflation.” In other words, this is a textbook case of what happens when you show your hand too early.

Perhaps Politico, which itself was adamant in October 2024 that Vice President Kamala Harris was riding, er, a “dream economy” into the 2024 presidential election, is still doing public relations penance for the scandal of taking millions in subscription payments by the U.S. government it was reporting on. Journalistic ethics be damned!

Crampton’s reporting follows a devastating admission published in Politico Magazine February 11 that “Voters Were Right About the Economy. The Data Was Wrong.” Crampton, apparently continuing the outlet’s mea culpa trend, conceded that this deceptive maneuver was political in nature: “[f]or Democrats, the turn to hammering on the economy is in part opportunistic — the luxury of governing as the party out of power in Washington.” She continued: “But it also is an acknowledgment that voters last year were far more frustrated with rising prices than many in the party anticipated.” That’s putting it mildly, to say the least.

Crampton implied that all this disingenuous economic posturing by left-wing politicos were just early attempts to kickstart their potential campaigns off for the 2028 presidential elections:

Democratic governors across the country in recent weeks have been using their state of the state addresses to empathize with Americans who say housing, groceries and child care have grown too expensive — and to blame Republicans for it one month into the president’s second term. It’s an effort by state leaders — whose class include many with 2028 presidential ambitions — to weaponize an issue that worked against Democrats in the 2024 elections.

One thing’s for sure: Despite Crampton having a red-pill moment by admitting the obvious about the left’s playbook to gaslight Americans on the disaster Bidenomics inflicted on the economy, Politico has a very long way to go before anyone takes it seriously again.

When Monica Lewinsky traveled to CBS and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on Thursday to promote her new podcast, she briefly popped the show’s liberal bubble by lamenting to the eponymous host that if what she went through in 1998 were to happen with some future Democratic president, she isn’t convinced the reaction would be any different.

Colbert wondered, “As opposed to 1998, what you went through in 1998, how do you think that would be different in 2025? If someone had that same experience, how do you think it would be different for them? Or if at all?”

 

 

Lewinsky tried to delicately dance around the political angle of the question but ultimately could not avoid it:

Yeah, it would be different in the number of ways. So, first of all, just the news cycle is shorter, but I think because of the MeToo movement, we are more aware of power dynamics now, and what I’m not 100 percent sure of is, given the, I don’t know the right way to say it, I think given certain political lanes that we live in now, I don’t know if it were a young, charismatic, very popular Democratic president, if it would be—if it would be as different as we think it would be. So, I’m not sure—

Colbert interrupted to ask, “Because it would be an opportunity for attack?”

Lewinsky agreed, “Yeah, I think so. So, I don’t know that we have seen as much of a shift in the political landscape in that, but 100 percent different. And I think that women are supported more now for sure.”

It is hard to argue with that. As recently as November 2024, Clinton himself was on The Late Show ironically lamenting the supposed decline of the rule of law, and last March, Colbert moderated a discussion between Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden as part of an expensive New York fundraiser.

Here is a transcript for the February 20-taped show:

CBS The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

2/21/2025

12:27 AM ET

STEPHEN COLBERT: As opposed to 1998, what you went through in 1998, how do you think that would be different in 2025? If someone had that same experience—

MONICA LEWINSKY: Right.

COLBERT: — how do you think it would be different for them? Or if at all?

LEWINSKY: Yeah, it would be different in the number of ways. So, first of all, just the news cycle is shorter, but I think because of the MeToo movement, we are more aware of power dynamics now, and what I’m not 100 percent sure of is, given the, I don’t know the right way to say it, I think given certain political lanes that we live in now, I don’t know if it were a young, charismatic, very popular Democratic president, if it would be — if it would be as different as we think it would be. So, I’m not sure—

COLBERT: Because it would be an opportunity for attack?

LEWINSKY: Yeah, I think so. So, I don’t know that we have seen as much of a shift in the political landscape in that, but 100 percent different. And I think that women are supported more now for sure.

The DOGE-deranged media continue to plumb new lows in their collective attempt to instill fear and pessimism in a largely optimistic American public. The latest such effort by NBC revolves around DOGE cuts at the National Park Service.

Below is the report in its entirety, as aired on the NBC Nightly News on Thursday, February 20th, 2025:

LESTER HOLT: As the Trump administration pushes to overhaul federal agencies, roughly 1,000 workers have been fired at our national parks. Our Morgan Chesky has more on the impact ahead of the summer rush.

MORGAN CHESKY: Tonight, from Half Dome to Old Faithful and as far as Gettysburg, growing concerns at national parks, after roughly 1,000 federal park employees were laid off. In Yosemite, that means less staff to handle crowds who came to see the iconic firefall during a busy holiday week.

OLEG CHIMURA: I really felt like my world was taken out from underneath me.

CHESKY: Oleg Chimura blindsided by his termination letter Friday.

CHIMURA: I spent a lot of time squeegeeing the toilets and bathroom floors out. ASo after one day of me not being there, it’s already pretty visually disgusting.

CHESKY: The abrupt dismissing of probationary park employees sending shock waves coast to coast. Stacey Ramsey lost her dream job as a ranger at Arkansas’s Buffalo National River.

STACEY RAMSEY: It was so sudden and swift. Didn’t have time to prepare myself at all for it. So that made it even more difficult.

CHESKY: Here in Yosemite, with uncertainty mounting over staffing levels, officials have already put summer reservations on pause for several popular campgrounds, putting the park’s peak summer travel season in potential jeopardy. NBC News spoke with more than a dozen current and former Park Service employees, who warn visitors should expect significant impacts due to reduced staffing. From upkeep of trails,

ALEX WILD: I’m the only person available to rescue someone, to do CPR, to carry them out from a trail if they got injured.

CHESKY: Near Yosemite, Alex Wild was the only certified EMT ranger at Devil’s Post Pile National Monument. 

If you’re no longer at the park and an emergency happens, then what?

ALEX WILD: Maybe a local county fire department or search and rescue team could respond and it would take hours. I mean, it could mean life or death for someone who is having an emergency.

CHESKY: And tonight with appeals and a potential class action lawsuit in the works by terminated park employees, the Trump administration defending their actions. Saying in part that the president will continue to protect America’s abundant natural resources, while streamlining federal agencies to better serve the American people. Lester.

HOLT: Quite a view there, Morgan. Thank you.

I have to say: Squeegee Toilet Guy might be a keeper. He has certainly shown that he provides more value to the American taxpayer than, say, Samantha Powers’ former speechwriter at USAID. Whereas she hid pride flags and subversive books from DOGE view, this guy is out there making sure vacationers don’t end up swimming in other peoples’ excrement.

The idea behind reports such as this one is to shamelessly fearmonger, and lead viewers to believe that federal job cuts will ruin every aspect of their lives. This is how we end up with Morgan Chasky hotfooting it to national parks and talking to former employees. 

Other than Squeegee Guy not being around to ensure a pristine toileting experience, we can’t determine the net negative fallout from cutting these jobs. But we do know the net fallout from the economy potentially cratering under the crush of monstrous debt and deficits- something you never hear from the DOGE-deranged media when reporting on DOGE cuts.