Newsbusters

If PBS wants to combat accusations that the tax-funded news network is a haven for smug elitist politics (PBS, where even the conservatives are liberal!), Thursday night’s segment featuring former New York Times columnist and (once) respected economist Paul Krugman wasn’t the way to go about it.

Krugman really leaned into his natural unlikability in the remote interview with PBS’s resident economics reporter Paul Solman, who drew Krugman out on the stupidity of his now-former newspaper and low-income Trump voters

Reminder: Here are just a couple of past Krugman lowlights (besides his ongoing insistence in the face of evidence that Joe Biden had a good economic record):

— Krugman lied about Florida’s successful Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis record on COVID, and resenting DeSantis’s ability to balance freedom and health

— Krugman has been on a pathetic, years’-long crusade to find the killer social-media app that will finally take down Musk’s X.

First, he recounted the good old days of Clinton: 

Paul Krugman, Former Columnist, The New York Times: When I began writing the column [during the Clinton years], people were extremely optimistic. I was hired basically to talk about all the good news and maybe funny stuff that was happening in this glorious late-1990s economic boom. And it’s been a very troubled world since then.

Paul Solman: By trouble, he means, at least domestically, Donald Trump’s policies. But Americans voted for them, didn’t they?

Krugman, directly blamed stupidity on the part of voters for that oversight — even most media Democrats only do that indirectly.

Krugman: Most voters have very little idea of policy. I mean, you look at the polling, ask people, do you approve of Obamacare, and it’s still pretty negative. And you ask, do you approve of the Affordable Care Act, and it’s very positive. So that’s telling you something about what voters understand about policy.

He admitted to being frustrated by voters continuing to consider Bidenflation a problem, though of course he didn’t call it that.

Solman: Did most economists, including yourself, not appreciate how huge a factor the cost-of-living-change pre-COVID to today was–is?

Krugman grumbled in reply.

Krugman: ….I even looked at statistical analyses that said that most of the discontent over inflation, which inflation peaked in the middle of 2022 and has come way down, and I would have expected people to have largely gotten over it by now. And they haven’t.

When Solman sensibly asked why low-income voters went for Trump over Kamala Harris, Krugman responded with an overbearing, elite petulance wholly lacking in self-awareness.

Krugman: ….there’s a lot of confounding of income and education and paying attention. We know that Trump won heavily among people who pay very little attention to the news.

Solman: One great burden of a low income, besides not affording things, says Krugman–

Krugman: Is the cognitive burden it places on people. The biggest benefit once I started earning a nice income was not having to worry all the time about what things cost, whether I could afford this or that. So, asking people to have a sophisticated view on what economic policy can and can’t do is going to be correlated with income, unfortunately.

How patronizing! Krugman has been bragging about his income for decades.

The interview concluded with Krugman explaining in self-serving terms his departure from the paper, accusing his editors of “trying to tone things down.” (If a New York Times editor is telling you to tone things down….)

Krugman made one last patently paranoid prediction:

Paul Solman: And, finally, what is he most worried about at the moment with Trump now back at the helm?

Paul Krugman: Well, I’m most worried about that 2024 may have been our last real election, I mean, given that what appears to be a loyalty purge of the federal bureaucracy, what appears to be unwillingness of the Trump administration to obey court orders, maybe historians will look back and say that American democracy ended in January 2025. That’s top of the list.

Krugman has been calling out Trump’s “rigged” 2016 election for years.

This segment has been brought to you in part by Cunard.

A transcript is available, click “Expand.”

PBS News Hour
2/13/25
7:38:10 p.m. (ET)

Amna Nawaz: Let’s dig a little deeper on how the public mood and political attitudes have shifted over time, tied in no small part to economic shifts and dislocation.

Geoff Bennett: Paul Solman recently spoke with economist and columnist Paul Krugman about his career and how the combination of polarization, globalization and job loss changed the way many Americans see the economy.

Paul Solman: For just short of 25 years, Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman was a New York Times columnist. He began the column in the Clinton years. Krugman left The Times just before Donald Trump was inaugurated.

I asked him back then what has changed in 25 years.

Paul Krugman, Former Columnist, The New York Times: When I began writing the column, people were extremely optimistic. I was hired basically to talk about all the good news and maybe funny stuff that was happening in this glorious late 1990s economic boom. And it’s been a very troubled world since then.

Paul Solman: By trouble, he means, at least domestically, Donald Trump’s policies. But Americans voted for them, didn’t they?

Paul Krugman: Most voters have very little idea of policy. I mean, you look at the polling, ask people, do you approve of Obamacare, and it’s still pretty negative. And you ask, do you approve of the Affordable Care Act, and it’s very positive. So that’s telling you something about what voters understand about policy.

Paul Solman: Krugman pointed to this recent Michigan consumer confidence survey question.

Paul Krugman: Are you personally better off than you were five years ago? In October, a clear plurality of Americans said, no, we’re worse off. In November, a clear plurality of Americans said, yes, we’re better off than we were five years ago.

So, people’s assessment of their own financial situation turns out to be kind of driven by narratives that are floating out there.

Paul Solman: Krugman supported President Biden’s policy of manufacturing investment to help regions hurt by trade and China. But voters in those regions went for Donald Trump. Did they reject the policy?

Paul Krugman: Maybe, or maybe they just didn’t really attribute it to Biden or whatever, although I think we are seeing a dynamic now, which is that it’s going to be harder than some Republicans think to reverse those policies, that people may not have given Biden credit for that new battery factory in your town, but they will get really angry if the battery factory closes because we have cut off the subsidies.

Paul Solman: Did most economists, including yourself, not appreciate how huge a factor the cost of living change pre-COVID to today was, is?

Paul Krugman: I would have thought — I did think — I even looked at statistical analyses that said that most of the discontent over inflation, which inflation peaked in the middle of 2022 and has come way down, and I would have expected people to have largely gotten over it by now. And they haven’t.

Paul Solman: Do you have an explanation for it?

Paul Krugman: I think that part of it is just that the shock of this coming for the first time after decades of price stability was part of it. And then part of it is just that we are — our political discourse has become much more fragmented, much more polarized.

Paul Solman: For voters with incomes under $50,000 a year, household incomes, Donald Trump actually did better than Kamala Harris. Why do you suppose that was?

Paul Krugman: Trump promised to bring prices down, which is a promise that he immediately abandoned as soon as he won. But that — so, that would have appealed to low-income voters as a promise.

And, also, there’s a lot of confounding of income and education and paying attention. We know that Trump won heavily among people who pay very little attention to the news.

Paul Solman: One great burden of a low income, besides not affording things, says Krugman.

Paul Krugman: Is the cognitive burden it places on people. The biggest benefit once I started earning a nice income was not having to worry all the time about what things cost, whether I could afford this or that.

So, asking people to have a sophisticated view on what economic policy can and can’t do is going to be correlated with income, unfortunately.

Paul Solman: Krugman not only made a good living. He also advised various administrations on economic policy. Advice taken?

Paul Krugman: The thing that I have learned in real life is that, no matter how much you know, no matter how right you have been, your ability to actually influence policy is very, very limited.

I mean, if you ask, how many times has somebody with actual power actually taken advice that I gave them, the answer is once my whole life.

Paul Solman: What are you least proud of?

Paul Krugman: I think maybe the thing I’m least proud of is that I missed one of the important problems of globalization. I thought it was on the whole a good thing, but that it would be problematic.

But what I missed was the way that the impact would be concentrated on particular communities. So we can look and say that the China shock displaced maybe one or two million U.S. manufacturing workers. A million-and-a-half people are laid off every month, so what’s that?

But what I missed was that there would be individual towns that would be in the path of this tidal wave of imports from China that would have their reason for existence gutted.

Paul Solman: Yesterday, I caught up with him again for two final questions, first why he left The Times and moved to Substack, where more than 200,000 followers now read whatever’s on his mind.

Paul Krugman: It’s very important to me, given my sort of dual career, to be able to weigh in on ongoing discussions of economics in a way that you can’t do in an 800-word column written for a general audience. And so I had a newsletter at The Times, which was summarily canceled. They said I was writing too much.

That was when I decided I needed to leave, but also that I had always been very, very lightly edited at The Times, until the last year. And then the editing became extremely intrusive. And I felt that I was putting in an enormous amount of effort trying to undo the damage and that everything was coming out bland and colorless as a result of the fight over the editors trying to tone things down.

Paul Solman: And, finally, what is he most worried about at the moment with Trump now back at the helm?

Paul Krugman: Well, I’m most worried about that 2024 may have been our last real election, I mean, given that the — what appears to be a loyalty purge of the federal bureaucracy, what appears to be unwillingness of the Trump administration to obey court orders, maybe historians will look back and say that American democracy ended in January 2025.

That’s top of the list.

Paul Solman: Well, like his Substack, not bland, not toned down. For the “PBS News Hour,” Paul Solman working from home outside Boston.

Three days after CBS Mornings Plus shacked up with the rest of the liberal media’s manufactured narrative about the country either in the midst of or about to enter “a constitutional crisis,” CBS’s longtime Supreme Court correspondent Jan Crawford showed up on Friday’s show to burst the bubble of liberals that we are not, in fact, in a state of chaos.

Co-host Tony Dokoupil didn’t mention his own show in the open, but at least laid out both sides of the coin, starting with the left:

Depending on where you get your news, you may have started the week hearing this phrase. Constitutional crisis. There are concerns out there for some as the president continues to issue executive orders. Those orders have then faced lawsuits and those lawsuits have then faced pushback from the President and his allies. To no surprise, the perception of these battles, their legitimacy likely depends on her politics. 

After playing a clip of White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt laying waste to this on Wednesday and then citing a few of Trump’s moves to shrink government, Crawford didn’t mince words.

WATCH: CBS’s Jan Crawford delivers some bad news to the crowd who spend this week declaring America’s in a “constitutional crisis”…
“[W]e kind of have to take a breath and try to meet in the middle here. I mean, obviously there is no question that Trump is really pushing that… pic.twitter.com/0IStoTtiS9
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) February 14, 2025
Crawford explained everyone needs “to take a breath and meet the in middle” by recognizing Trump’s moves are “pushing that legal envelope” and “some of” his actions will be struck down, yet “there’s also no question that some of the judges are going a little too far in putting the brakes on actions that Trump clearly has the authority to do.”

She then dropped the kicker that there’s not, in fact, a “constitutional crisis” in our midst: 

[W]hat does this mean? I think this shows that at least here the system is working like it is supposed to. There’s no constitutional crisis right now. People are suing over these programs, these actions. Judges are blocking them. Trump is then appealing that. He is not ignoring judicial orders. He is filing court papers, saying that he has the authority. And, on some of these, he is going to win.

Co-host Adriana Diaz moved to a specific example of Trump “trying to freeze federal spending” and asked Crawford to predict how that’d shake out.

Crawford disappointed Diaz by saying “it depends” because presidents “can take a pause for some of this stuff and get stock of some of these — take stock of some of these programs” such as President Biden dragging his feet on border wall funding while it might not be legal if “there are deadlines” attached.

“I know we all love to talk about the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, but that is a problem because that law says that the President, honestly, cannot withhold these kind of funds. Trump is going to argue that is unconstitutional,” she explained.

Crawford closed with another jab at the doomsday crowd that, contrary to what some of them likely believe, the Trump administration has been “very strategic” and thought out in their executive orders and moves t  o downsize the executive branch with some likely to make it and others struck down.

.@JanCBS Crawford explains on @CBSMornings Plus that, contrary to what some liberals and Trump critics have been arguing, there has been, in fact, a lot of thought put into the Trump team’s executive orders:
“I think it’s very strategic. I mean, look, these executive orders, and… pic.twitter.com/6UPMwjHNtx
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) February 14, 2025
“[L]ook, these executive orders…were not written overnight. I mean, they — they spent months on these executive orders and they targeted unpopular political programs or issues and they also targeted areas of the law that they thought the Supreme Court may be about to head towards,” she stated, citing withholding money for government agencies and firing heads of government agencies like the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

To see the relevant CBS transcript from February 14, click here.

The confirmations of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to HHS and Tulsi Gabbard to DNI sent ABC News’s Joy Behar over the edge during Friday’s edition of The View. She became so unhinged that she cooked up an unfounded conspiracy theory that the reason so many GOP lawmakers had voted to confirm President Trump’s nominees was because he was threatening to kill their them and their families. And she was serious about it.

She kicked off their Valentines Day episode with no love lost for outgoing Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who she blamed for Trump getting elected again. “There was only one GOP senator who voted ‘no,’ the soon-to-be-retired Mitch McConnell, the man who got us into this mess,” she decried.

 

 

Her whining continued: “He stole a supreme court seat from Obama, voted to acquit Trump after the insurrection, and even endorsed him for president again. Thanks for nothing, Mitch. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”

Further in the segment, fake Republican Ana Navarro explained that McConnell was only able to oppose those nominations because he’s retiring and “has no fear of retribution from Donald Trump. Whereas, everybody else is terrified of him and toeing the line.”

But Behar had her own bonkers conspiracy theory: that Trump was threatening to kill their families.

“Somebody said they were afraid for their lives and also the lives of their children and their wives. It’s not just not being re-elected. It’s physical threats that go on,” she proclaimed without evidence.

Adding: “All I can say is get your vaccines now, America.”

At one point, pretend independent Sara Haines said the confirmation of RFK Jr. made her “really nervous.” “RFK Jr. is scary to me because a lot of things we’ve talked about, vaccinations but we’re also seeing a huge uptick of health problems,” she argued, even though he’d only been on the job for about a day.

“How do you think RFK is going to handle bird flu? Just run over the chickens and then cook them? Or what? What is he going to do?” Behar quipped. “Leave them in Central Park,” chimed in faux conservative Alyssa Farah Griffin.

On the confirmations, Sunny Hostin opined: “I don’t even know what to say, like, we in trouble. Like, this is bad.”

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

ABC’s The View
February 14, 2025
11:02:17 a.m. Eastern

JOY BEHAR: So, here’s the story. Two of Trump’s most controversial cabinet nominees were confirmed, Tulsi Gabbard is our new director of National Intelligence and RFK Jr. is the head of Health and Human Services. There was only one GOP senator who voted “no,” the soon to be retired Mitch McConnell, the man who got us into this mess.

He stole a supreme court seat from Obama, voted to acquit Trump after the insurrection, and even endorsed him for president again. Thanks for nothing, Mitch. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

[Laughter and applause]

So, ladies, what do you think of these confirmations?

SARA HAINES: I’m really nervous — about the whole kit and caboodle but RFK Jr. is scary to me because a lot of things we’ve talked about, vaccinations but we’re also seeing a huge uptick of health problems.

(…)

11:06:55 a.m. Eastern

BEHAR: How do you think RFK is going to handle bird flu? Just run over the chickens and then cook them? Or what? What is he going to do?

ALYSSA FARAH GRIFFIN: Leave them in Central Park.

SUNNY HOSTIN: I don’t even know what to say like, we in trouble.

[Laughter]

Like, this is bad. [Makes a distressed face]

[Applause]

(…)

11:08:43 a.m. Eastern

ANA NAVARRO: But you know why was Mitch McConnell able to do it now? Because now he has no fear of retribution from Donald Trump.

BEHAR: Yeah, that’s right.

NAVARRO: Whereas, everybody else is terrified of him and toeing the line.

BEHAR: Somebody said they were afraid for their lives and also the lives of their children and their wives. It’s not just not being re-elected. It’s physical threats that go on. All I can say is get your vaccines now, America.

Amazing. Just amazing. The consummate Bidenomics simp and former New York Times columnist Paul Krugman is trying to make “Trumpflation” a thing in the public discourse.

“Lies, Damned Lies and Trumpflation,” railed Krugman in his latest February 14 certifiable screed. What was hilarious was that the first five paragraphs of his piece literally had nothing to do with the economy aside from drumming up conspiracy theories about President Donald Trump’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention potentially hiding data on the next hypothetical pandemic.

Then came the kicker: “But while I’m not an epidemiologist, I do know something about inflation.” Quite bold for him to make this claim after being the same transitory apologist that blurted out March 2022 during the Bidenflation disaster that he didn’t “understand what the hell has been going on.” Well it turns out he’s not much of a serious economist either. 

“And I’m getting very worried, not so much about the next few months as about what will happen a year or two down the road,” Krugman fear-mongered. This is the same guy who proclaimed that it was “morning in Joe Biden’s America” July 2021 just as the inflation crisis brought on by Biden’s outrageous spending policies was starting to take effect. 

What’s even worse is that he used a picture of eggs as his article’s featured photo right underneath his bizarre headline on “Trumpflation,” even though the latest inflation data that showed egg prices spiking 15 percent in January were still Biden administration numbers. 

Krugman would then wind up contradicting his arguments altogether. He tried to play gotcha! on Trump’s promise to bring prices down by pointing to a FRED chart showing food prices spiking. “Beyond that, during the campaign Trump didn’t just promise to reduce inflation; he promised that he would bring prices down.” he continued: “Well, things aren’t looking good on that front.” Quite the turnaround from his December claim that “It’s hard to overstate just how good recent economic numbers have been.” Now things suck because Trump is in office, right Krugman? 

But prior to this, he had just admitted that “it’s too soon to give Trump either blame or credit” for spiking inflation. Wow, no kidding Sherlock! We’re only 25 days into Trump’s administration and Krugman is already crying “Trumpflation” while simultaneously admitting that it’s too soon to pass grades around on the president’s handling of the economy. Huh? Somebody make it make sense!

But Krugman wasn’t finished. After capping off Biden’s tumultuous term as president by claiming that Bidenomics had been vindicated, Krugman had the temerity to whine about how Trump’s policies were supposedly going to be inflationary:

And almost everything Trump is doing or threatening to do to the economy will cause higher, not lower inflation. I don’t know what if anything is going on in his mind when he asserts that tariffs will reduce prices, but tariffs are in fact sales taxes on imported goods, and does anyone think that sales taxes make stuff cheaper?

Newsflash to Krugman: Nothing Biden did made consumer prices cheaper writ large, and yet you still tried to convince everybody and their mother that his inflationary policies were the best thing since sliced bread. So excuse us if we choose to throw our heads back in laughter at your insinuation that anybody should be taking you seriously now. 

“Trumpflation?” Seriously: Take a hike.

After a few weeks of Shock and Awe, the Resistance vibe has fully returned to ABC Whirled News Tonight. A goofy item by Chief White House correspondent Mary Bruce demonstrates that the media have no playbook for Trump except the one they ran in 2017.

Here’s how the report closed: with caterwauling over the ongoing reduction of force at the federal government, and with classist whining over Elon Musk’s influence:

MARY BRUCE: 75,000 federal workers have accepted the administration’s buyout offer to get paid until September or risk being laid off. About 3% of the federal workforce. Less than the 5% to 10% the administration was hoping for. That offer now closed, and tonight, we’re learning mass layoffs for those who didn’t take the offer have begun, with thousands of people expected to be let go. The Department of Education yesterday firing 40 employees hired over the last year. In a letter, telling them: “the agency finds based on your performance, that you have not demonstrated that your further employment at the agency would be in the public interest.” Meanwhile, Musk, who also runs SpaceX, Tesla, and the social media platform X, and has billions of dollars in federal contracts, today sitting down with Indian Prime Minister Modi at Blair House, even before his visit with the president. Musk there with his young children, sitting opposite visiting Indian diplomats. The president asked, was Musk meeting Modi as a private citizen or as a member of the administration?

DONALD TRUMP: I would imagine he met possibly because, you know, he’s running a company.

REPORTER: How does Modi know whether he’s meeting with the CEO or meeting with a representative of your government?

TRUMP: Well, he’s meeting with me in a little while, so, I’m going to ask him that question.

BRUCE: Now, David, Elon Musk said that entire agencies will need to be deleted and tonight, we have learned that people at several agencies have now been told they’ve been fired as part of these mass layoffs. People that worked at the Education Department, the EPA, the Office of Personnel Management, the Small Business Administration, and other agencies tonight being told they no longer have a job. And David, thousands more are expected to be impacted.

DAVID MUIR: Mary Bruce on the breaking news, the mass firings now underway. Mary, thank you.

The report opened with a return to form for anchor David Muir: delivering a nearly minute-long lead-in to Mary Bruce that could’ve very well been its own brief. Bruce’s report opens with fearmongering on tariffs, and a specious tie-in to the recent inflation report. At 3%, the media are rushing to tie the January report to Trump despite his being in office for only 10 days last month. 

Bruce then moves to the workforce reductions, which began immediately after the buyout deadline expired. Bruce went agency by agency, as if she were reading a victims’ list of some mass casualty event. Won’t someone think of the poor, beleaguered agencies?

Bruce then moves to Elon Musk’s meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, suggesting the appearance of impropriety and sounding scoldy over the fact that some of Musk’s children were present. Bruce wraps with one more plug about the agencies before tossing back to Muir who does the same

The report was pointless except to incite an overall sense of anxiety over the Trump administration. Whether on government firings, tariffs, or Elon Musk and DOGE (which went unmentioned but hung over the entire report like a thick fog), the media really have no footing except to whine. 

Mary Bruce’s Biden apple-polishing days seem like a distant memory, deleted by DOGE. 

Click “expand” to view the full transcript of the aforementioned report as aired on ABC World News tonight on Thursday, February 13th, 2025:

DAVID MUIR: But we do begin here with the mass firings at multiple federal agencies at this hour. Sources telling ABC News tonight that the layoffs have begun, just hours after the offer from President Trump ended that offer to take a buyout or risk getting laid off. Tonight, the firings have begun. And it comes just hours after Elon Musk said at a global conference, we have to, quote, “delete entire agencies.” And tonight, 24 hours after new inflation numbers show prices on the rise here in the U.S., President Trump signing a new executive action warning that he will put tariffs on any country that places tariffs on America. The president was asked, will this raise prices even more? ABC’s Chief White House Correspondent Mary Bruce on the tariffs and the firings now underway tonight.

MARY BRUCE: After threatening tariffs on Mexico and Canada, slapping new tariffs on China, and expanding tariffs on steel and aluminum, tonight President Trump putting the whole world on notice. The president laying out a plan for sweeping new tariffs on countries who tax American goods. A move that could upend global trade and threatens to spike inflation here at home.

DONALD TRUMP: Whatever they charge us, we’re charging them, so it works out very well. It’s very — it’s a beautiful, simple system.

BRUCE: The president says it’s a matter of fairness, directing his team to come up with a system of tariffs, declaring: “whatever countries charge the United States of America, we will charge them. No more, no less. But economists warn higher tariffs on imports are paid by American companies who pass the costs along to consumers in the form of higher prices. And the president’s announcement comes just 24 hours after that new report showing inflation on the rise, now up 3%. Americans paying more for food, energy, medical bills, and car insurance. The president acknowledging prices could go up in the short-term.

TRUMP: There could be some short-term disturbance, but long-term, it’s going — it’s going to make our country a fortune

KAITLAN COLLINS: So, Americans should prepare for short-term pain?

TRUMP:  You said that, I didn’t say that.

COLLINS: Well, if the prices go up —

TRUMP: Let’s see what happens.

BRUCE: The president adamant his new policies will leave America flooded with jobs, even as he slashes the federal workforce. The effort spearheaded by Elon Musk, who told an international conference entire federal agencies will be on the chopping block.

ELON MUSK: I think we do need to delete entire agencies, as opposed to leave part of them behind, because if you leave part of them behind, it’s easy, just kind of like– if you don’t remove the roots of the weed, then it’s easy for the weed to grow back. If you remove the roots of the weed, it doesn’t ever stop weeds from growing back but it makes it harder.

BRUCE: 75,000 federal workers have accepted the administration’s buyout offer to get paid until September or risk being laid off. About 3% of the federal workforce. Less than the 5% to 10% the administration was hoping for. That offer now closed, and tonight, we’re learning mass layoffs for those who didn’t take the offer have begun, with thousands of people expected to be let go. The Department of Education yesterday firing 40 employees hired over the last year. In a letter, telling them: “the agency finds based on your performance, that you have not demonstrated that your further employment at the agency would be in the public interest.” Meanwhile, Musk, who also runs SpaceX, Tesla, and the social media platform X, and has billions of dollars in federal contracts, today sitting down with Indian Prime Minister Modi at Blair House, even before his visit with the president. Musk there with his young children, sitting opposite visiting Indian diplomats. The president asked, was Musk meeting Modi as a private citizen or as a member of the administration?

TRUMP: I would imagine he met possibly because, you know, he’s running a company.

REPORTER: How does Modi know whether he’s meeting with the CEO or meeting with a representative of your government?

TRUMP: Well, he’s meeting with me in a little while, so, I’m going to ask him that question.

BRUCE: Now, David, Elon Musk said that entire agencies will need to be deleted and tonight, we have learned that people at several agencies have now been told they’ve been fired as part of these mass layoffs. People that worked at the Education Department, the EPA, the Office of Personnel Management, the Small Business Administration, and other agencies tonight being told they no longer have a job. And David, thousands more are expected to be impacted.

MUIR: Mary Bruce on the breaking news, the mass firings now underway. Mary, thank you.

 

It was an iconic moment in the annals of the liberal media being called out to its face in real time over its transparent bias.

Kudos to Republican strategist Brad Todd for undertaking the unenviable task of tearing off fill-in host Jim Sciutto’s fig leaf and exposing him as the liberal activist he is on today’s CNN This Morning. Sciutto couldn’t just ask questions and listen patiently to the answers. He head to debate Todd.

The issue was the Trump Justice Department’s order to New York’s Southern District attorney’s office to withdraw without prejudice the indictment against New York Mayor Eric Adams.

Todd calmly explained that it’s typical for a new administration to vacate U.S. Attorneys, and Sciutto wouldn’t accept that: 

SCIUTTO: No, it’s not normal for them to resign in protest, a series of protests, right? Not just the New York Attorney assigned to the case, but then. the plan B, in effect, right? They go to the Office of Public Integrity and they say, no, we’re not going to drop this case under pressure. That’s not normal. 

TODD: No, it is absolutely normal. Appointed U.S. Attorneys retire or resign or are fired —

 SCIUTTO: It’s not.

TODD: — immediately after every presidential election. 

SCIUTTO: They didn’t do that after changing the administration. They did it in protest to this decision. I wonder, Jaime, what your view is. 

TODD: But they know they’re going to be fired.

Todd eventually had enough of Sciutto’s partisan pestering, and put it to him:

SCIUTTO: It’s a fact. It’s just a fact. It’s a fact. They resigned. Did you read the letter? Did you read the conservative New York Attorney’s letter about this case? 

TODD: Are you asking questions or are you on the panel?”

Touché!

Sciutto turned to former Biden campaign aide Hyma Moore. Said Sciutto snidely:

“Given that he [Todd] will not acknowledge the letter from the conservative New York Attorney explaining her reasons for leaving, what’s your reaction to seeing this?”

Moore, predictably, was only too happy to take Sciutto’s hint, branding the dropping of the indictment a “quid pro quo” in return for the mayor’s cooperation on immigration enforcement.

Here’s the transcript.

CNN This Morning
2/14/25
6:04 am ET

JIM SCIUTTO: Brad, I wonder, you have a very conservative New York Attorney, long history in conservative causes, alleging a quid pro quo here. President Trump campaigned saying he wanted to end weaponization, politicization, of the Justice Department here. 

So what’s your reaction to seeing a case against a mayor dropped after it seems, he says, I’ll work with you on immigration? 

BRAD TODD: Well, I think the Department of Justice and the President had been talking about the fact that they thought Eric Adams had been targeted for his criticism of Joe Biden’s immigration policies for quite some time. 

And, you know, the departures at the Southern District of New York, the firings, this is normal. Every time a new president’s elected, the U.S. Attorneys are removed from their jobs if they don’t remove. 

SCIUTTO: No, it’s not normal for them to resign in protest, a series of protests, right? Not just the New York Aattorney assigned to the case, but then. the plan B, in effect, right? They go to the Office of Public Integrity and they say, no, we’re not going to drop this case under pressure. That’s not normal. 

TODD: No, it is absolutely normal. Appointed U.S. Attorneys retire or resign or are fired —

 SCIUTTO: It’s not.

TODD: — immediately after every presidential election. 

SCIUTTO: They didn’t do that after changing the administration. They did it in protest to this decision. I wonder, Jaime, what your view is. 

TODD: But they know they’re going to be fired.

SCIUTTO: I wonder, I wonder Hyma, what your view is — It’s a fact. It’s just a fact. It’s a fact. They resigned. Did you read the letter? Did you read the conservative New York Attorney’s letter about this case? 

TODD: Are you asking questions or are you on the panel? I mean, they retired because they —

SCIUTTO: I’m asking you — I’m asking merely for a recognition of the facts here as opposed to a repetition of talking points. 

TODD: Every time there’s a change of administration, the U.S. attorneys turn over. They either resign or they are fired. That’s the way it works. It’s worked that way in every presidential administration since we’ve been alive. That’s what’s happened here. 

SCIUTTO: Okay. Hyma, given that he will not acknowledge the letter from the conservative New York Attorney explaining her reasons for leaving, what’s your reaction to seeing this? 

Former White House Press Secretary and current MSNBC host Jen Psaki joined Jon Stewart on Thursday’s episode of Comedy Central’s The Weekly Show podcast to try to figure out why Democrats lost in November. On one hand, Psaki claimed the party’s focus on the potential end of democracy is partly to blame, but on the other, she couldn’t let such rhetoric go as she claimed “the threat of fascism is a huge issue” and President Donald Trump is “an aspiring dictator.”

Stewart asked Psaki to consider that what Trump is currently doing is simply what people want, “And now, by going through this real executive unitary, kind of, reordering of constitutional powers? Is he doing the people’s bidding? Is he doing this thing that will make democracy? How do you process that?”

 

 

With a questionable amount of self-awareness, Psaki replied that:

Well, one of the ways I process it is that I feel like when Democrats, and including people who are on television in a variety of ways, were saying things like, ‘authoritarianism is under threat and democracy is on the ballot,’ I think we were speaking in a manner that was so academic, an ivory tower, it wasn’t talking about a lot of the things people actually care about. So, I don’t know that people voted against democracy. I think they voted in some ways against protection of status quo and, kind of, the disconnected academic Ivory Tower elite language that is too often used by Democrats, sometimes on cable television.

It is still early in Trump’s term, but thus far, Stewart has loved having guests on The Daily Show that talk about Trump and his “oligarch” friends, but Psaki urged against such talk, “one of my takeaways after the election was ‘cross authoritarianism and oligarchy out of every script. Nobody talks this way.’”

After repeating herself that Democrats were too academic, Stewart asked, “What part in your mind was academic? I want to get—is it they were talking civics when they should have been talking something that was more directly impacting people’s lives?”

Despite everything she just said, Psaki still insisted, “Yes, so I think the threat of fascism is a huge issue. The threat of authoritarianism, huge issue. This guy is an aspiring dictator. His words, not mine. All of those are huge issues. I also think Liz Cheney is very heroic…But I don’t think closing the campaign with a message about fighting democracy with a former Republican member of Congress was the right strategy.”

Trump was clearly talking about the bipartisan tradition of a new president coming in and issuing a list of executive orders, which is what he has done, and if actual fascists were known for anything, it was definitely not their commitment to bureaucracy cutting.

Here is a transcript for the February 13 show:

Comedy Central The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart

2/13/2025

6 Minutes, 56 Seconds

JON STEWART: And now, by going through this real executive unitary, kind of, reordering of constitutional powers? Is he doing the people’s bidding? Is he doing this thing that will make democracy? How do you process that?

JEN PSAKI: Well, one of the ways I process it is that I feel like when Democrats, and including people who are on television in a variety of ways, were saying things like, “authoritarianism is under threat and democracy is on the ballot,” I think we were speaking in a manner that was so academic, an ivory tower, it wasn’t talking about a lot of the things people actually care about. So, I don’t know that people voted against democracy.

I think they voted in some ways against protection of status quo and, kind of, the disconnected academic Ivory Tower elite language that is too often used by Democrats, sometimes on cable television.

STEWART: What? How dare you.

PSAKI: I’m just being honest. I’m being honest. No, that was one of my takeaways after the election was “cross authoritarianism and oligarchy out of every script. Nobody talks this way.”

I don’t think that’s the only thing, but I do think looking back at the election, one of the outcomes, I hope people who are not thrilled by the Trump administration, which is a whole lot of people take away, is that Democrats and people running weren’t talking to a large swath of the country. They were talking to a small group of people, progressives.

They were talking to people who were primarily focused on things that were, in my view, more academic than they were real issues.

STEWART: What part in your mind was academic? I want to get—is it they were talking civics when they should have been talking something that was more directly impacting people’s lives?

PSAKI: Yeah. Yes, so I think the threat of fascism is a huge issue. The threat of authoritarianism, huge issue. This guy is an aspiring dictator. His words, not mine. All of those are huge issues. I also think Liz Cheney is very heroic.

STEWART: Wait, what? Where did that come from?

PSAKI: Here we are.

STEWART: What the?

PSAKI: Here we are. But I don’t think closing the campaign with a message about fighting democracy with a former Republican member of Congress was the right strategy. I’m not saying that’s why they lost.

STEWART: No.

PSAKI: What I’m saying is there were millions of people who didn’t turn out to vote, who, many of whom have in the past leaned toward Democratic issues, toward Democratic candidates and Trump somehow massively won on issues like the economy, even though his primary position is that he wants to lower tax cuts for corporations and the highest income Americans. That reality means maybe something isn’t going well.

One of the reasons I have long inveighed against “public” TV is its tendency to avoid authentic conservative opinion. For almost 20 years now, Exhibit A has been PBS News Hour pundit David Brooks. PBS picked up Brooks as its supposedly right-leaning Friday night opinionator in 2004, shortly after he became a New York Times columnist in 2003.

The Atlantic is pushing an article on Facebook that Brooks wrote for them, titled “Confessions of a Republican Exile.” The subhead summarized: “A longtime conservative, alienated by Trumpism, tries to come to terms with life on the moderate edge of the Democratic Party.”

One would think this was new, but it’s from last October. Brooks wrote: “So these days I find myself rooting for the Democrats about 70 percent of the time. I’ve taken up residence on what I like to call the rightward edge of the leftward tendency, and I think of myself as a moderate or conservative Democrat.”

This is what PBS would like us to believe is a serious difference of opinion: someone who roots for the Democrats 70 percent of the time vs. someone who roots for the Democrats 100 percent of the time (his pundit partner Jonathan Capehart). It’s a “moderate or conservative Democrat” vs. a leftist DEI-touting MSNBC weekend host.

Brooks shouldn’t be tagged as a “longtime conservative.” He was trashing George W. Bush in his campaign against Brooks hero John McCain in 2000. In his Atlantic piece, Brooks claimed “over time I’ve become gradually more repulsed by the GOP—first by Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay, then by the Tea Party and the Freedom Caucus, and now, of course, by Donald Trump.”

He’s been adrift from the conservative movement for about 30 years now.  Brooks sided more with the liberal media than the conservatives in 2000: “The movement consciousness is based on the idea that we are a band of brave, beleaguered souls under perpetual assault from the liberal mainstream media. These people detest McCain because liberals don’t hate him.”

Within this Atlantic article, Brooks contradicts himself. He indicts the insularity of the progressive elites: “If you go to the right private school, the right elite college, and live in the right urban neighborhood, you might never encounter anyone who challenges your worldview. To assure that this insularity is complete, progressives have done a very good job of purging Republicans from the sectors they dominate, like the media and the academy.”

That’s correct. PBS purged itself of Republicans (his predecessor Paul Gigot) and hired David Brooks instead.

Later on, though, he claims “Blue World” is more amenable to debate. “But today the Republican relationship to truth and knowledge has gone to hell. MAGA is a fever swamp of lies, conspiracy theories, and scorn for expertise. The Blue World, in contrast, is a place more amenable to disagreement, debate, and the energetic pursuit of truth.”

That’s not true at all if you consider how Capehart sputters and scribbles on the PBS set on those rare occasions when Brooks disagrees with him on something.

Brooks concluded: “Blue World is where the better angels of our nature seem lately to have migrated, and where the best hope for the future of the country now lies.”

“Blue World” and taxpayer-funded PBS are synonymous. Since its launch in the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, PBS has proven itself incapable of allowing conservatives an equal share in its political programming. They routinely ignore the Act’s demand for “strict adherence to objectivity and balance in all programs or series of programs of a controversial nature.”

Our colleague Curtis Houck’s earlier writeup of the new but not improved CBS Evening News suggests that the ongoing turmoil is driven by the newscast’s new format, editorial choices, and anchor delivery. Tonight’s report on efforts to end the war in Ukraine confirms that thesis.

Watch as anchors John Dickerson and Maurice DeBois open the newscast with an introduction to the Ukraine story:

CBS EVENING NEWS

2/13/25

6:30 PM

JOHN DICKERSON: President Trump is pressing ahead with his plan for trying to end the nearly 3-year old war in Ukraine. At The White House today, he said U.S. and Russian officials will be meeting tomorrow in Munich, and Ukraine is invited to join them.

MAURICE DUBOIS: But a spokesperson for President Zelenskyy said Ukraine does not expect to hold any talks with Russia, not right now. He said the United States, Europe, and Ukraine must all first agree on a common position.

DICKERSON: The Ukraine war will be the main topic at the opening of the 61st Munich Security Conference held in a city synonymous with Europe’s appeasement of Hitler at a conference in 1938 in the run-up to World War II. History some critics are raising to describe President Trump’s dealings with Russian President Putin over Ukraine.

DUBOIS: We begin tonight with Imtiaz Tyab, who has been covering the Ukraine war from the start.

The report is your standard pro-Ukraine fare, tailored to reflect current events. Correspondent Imtiaz Tyab showed flashback video from his time in the front. The bias in the story is towards Ukraine and Zelenskyy, and away from Trump and Putin. 

The most grotesque part of that bias comes from Dickerson’s own framing of the story. Dickerson compared an as of yet indeterminate peace deal with Neville Chamberlain’s 1938 handover of the Sudetenland in order to appease Hitler. The “critics say” rhetorical dodge isn’t enough because Dickerson has displayed a penchant for this kind of editorializing.

“Why can’t John read the news?”, posited the quotation cited in the earlier item on CBS. With each passing episode of the revamped newscast it becomes clear that, simply, John doesn’t want to. 

Click “expand” to view the full transcript of the aforementioned report as aired on Thursday, February 13th, 2025:

JOHN DICKERSON: President Trump is pressing ahead with his plan for trying to end the nearly 3-year old war in Ukraine. At The White House today, he said U.S. and Russian officials will be meeting tomorrow in Munich, and Ukraine is invited to join them.

MAURICE DUBOIS: But a spokesperson for President Zelenskyy said Ukraine does not expect to hold any talks with Russia, not right now. He said the United States, Europe, and Ukraine must all first agree on a common position.

DICKERSON: The Ukraine war will be the main topic at the opening of the 61st Munich Security Conference held in a city synonymous with Europe’s appeasement of Hitler at a conference in 1938 in the run-up to World War II. History some critics are raising to describe President Trump’s dealings with Russian President Putin over Ukraine.

DUBOIS: We begin tonight with Imtiaz Tyab, who has been covering the Ukraine war from the start.

IMTIAZ TYAB: For Ukraine, this has always been a war of survival. Nearly three years after Russia’s full-scale invasion, there have been hundreds of thousands of casualties, and Russian forces occupy around 20% of the country’s territory. It’s a war we have covered from the very beginning. 

(TYAB, IN A FIELD): We just had some incoming Russian shelling. 

TYAB: In May 2022, we came under heavy Russian fire in the Kherson region. With so much still at stake, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy is now in a diplomatic battle over who will negotiate the conflict’s end. “I articulate this very clearly to our partners,” he said. “Any bilateral talks about Ukraine that is without us, we will not accept.” His comments followed U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s pointed remarks at the NATO headquarters in Brussels about Kyiv potentially having to make major concessions to Moscow, where Hegseth was asked if the U.S. was abandoning Ukraine.

PETE HEGSETH: There is no betrayal there. There is a recognition that the whole world and the United States is invested and interested in peace. A negotiated peace. As President Trump has said, stopping the killing.

TYAB: Ukrainian and European leaders were also worried President Trump’s decision to host a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin has also left them out of any potential peace talks. German defense minister Boris Pistorius warned, “The Trump administration has already made public concessions to Putin before negotiations have even begun.” In Moscow, the mood was decidedly different. Evening news shows were almost gleeful as they praised Presidents Trump and Putin for having agreed to hold the talks. All this, while in Ukraine the war raged on. Earlier today, the eastern city of Kramatorsk was targeted by Russian fighter jets. At least one person was killed and five injured, according to first responders.

DICKERSON: And Imtiaz Tyab joins us now. Imtiaz, the Secretary of Defense says this is not a betrayal of the Ukrainians. How are the Ukrainians seeing it?

TYAB: Well, betrayal is a very strong word, but that really does seem to be what Ukrainians are feeling tonight. You know, we were actually on the ground in Kyiv when President Trump won reelection back in November, and the people we spoke to then said they believed him when he said that he would end the war, but they also believed that it would be Russia that would be ordered to make concessions and not Ukraine, and so the fear now is that at best that the front lines will be frozen, which means the fighting will stop and Russia will keep the territories already taken, but at worst, that this is simply a chance for Putin to take a pause, reload, and then restart his war on Ukraine.

DUBOIS: Imtiaz, you have reported from Ukraine many times before the war and during the war. What are your observations on how the Ukrainians have been evolving throughout all of this?

TYAB: Look, it’s an understatement to say that Ukraine is a country forever changed. So many of their best and brightest have been killed the fighting, and as you saw in our report, we ourselves have come very close to those front lines, which has seen entire cities razed to the ground, and Ukrainians tell us that they know they can rebuild. They know they can heal from the physical wounds, but the enormous toll Vladimir Putin’s war has had on them and their families, well, those internal wounds will be much, much harder to recover from.

DICKERSON: Imtiaz Tyab in London.

 

Independent journalist Matt Taibbi warned the House Judiciary Committee that a key player in the deep state censorship cartel could continue its nefarious activities in government.

Taibbi, known for his work on The Twitter Files, testified at a House Judiciary Committee hearing on “The Censorship-Industrial Complex” Wednesday. During the hearing, Rep. Scott Fitzgerald (R-WI) asked Taibbi about the current status of the infamous Global Engagement Center (GEC), a State Department Program responsible for pushing for censorship on social media and giving $100,000 to the anti-free speech Global Disinformation Index (GDI). Taibbi made clear that State Department bureaucrats were trying to continue the GEC’s work after losing funding.

[Story Continues on MRC Free Speech America]