Newsbusters

In the early days of the Second Trump Administration, it appeared that ABC World News Tonight had taken time to reflect and reconsider their ways, toning things down from their wild subservience to Joe Biden. Well, the time for reflection has ended. And based on the network’s hysterical coverage of all things DOGE and Elon Musk, it appears that they’re back to their old ways.

Anchor David Muir has reverted to long, overwrought introductions that may as well be a brief of the upcoming report. In this case, the report was mostly correspondent Rachel Scott trying (but failing) to gotcha Musk on corruption and conflicts of interest. Absent actual corruption, Scott resorted to nasty yet familiar framing: BILLIONAIRE BAD (click “expand” to view transcript)!

RACHEL SCOTT: Musk, the world’s richest man, with billions of dollars in federal contracts, has been given enormous power. His Department of Government Efficiency already accessing at least 15 agencies. 

Mr. Musk, The White House says that you will identify and excuse yourself from any conflicts of interest that you may have. Does that mean that you are in effect policing yourself? What are the checks and balances that are in place to ensure there’s accountability and transparency?

ELON MUSK: Well, we actually are trying to be as transparent as possible. In fact, our actions– we post our actions to the DOGE handle on X and to the DOGE website. So all of our actions are maximally transparent. In fact, I don’t think there’s been — I don’t know of a case where an organization’s been more transparent than the DOGE organization. So — the kind of things we’re doing are, I think, are very simple and basic. These are not individual judgment decisions. These are about simply having simple checks and balances in the system itself to ensure taxpayer money is spent well. So it’s got nothing to do with, say, a contract with some company of mine, At all.

SCOTT: But if there is a conflict of interest, when it comes to you yourself, for instance, you’ve received billions of dollars in federal contracts when it comes to the Pentagon, for instance, which I know the president has directed you to look into. 

MUSK: Yeah.

SCOTT: Are you policing yourself in that? Is there any sort of accountability, check and balance in place that would provide any transparency for the American people?

The whole point of this frame is to establish Musk as the problem rather than a part of the solution. This is why both “billionaire” and “power” are uttered in the same paragraph.

This is also why Scott peppered Musk with questions about potential conflict questions. Musk addressed those concerns and explained the rationale behind the cuts and why it is so important to arrest our national debt.

Before closing out her interview with another nasty frame, Scott maliciously characterized Musk’s quick corrections to flawed communication as spreading “misinformation”:

SCOTT: As Musk’s team tears through government agencies, Musk today acknowledging he has sometimes posted misinformation about their findings.

MUSK: Well, first of all, some of the things that I say will be incorrect and should be corrected, so, nobody’s going to bat 1,000. I mean, any- we will make mistakes, but we’ll act quickly to correct any mistakes.

Expect more such Musk-deranged hysteria as DOGE continues to spread across the whole of government.

Click “expand” to view the full transcript of the aforementioned report as aired on ABC World News Tonight on Tuesday, February 11th, 2025:

DAVID MUIR: We turn now to that remarkable scene at The White House just a short time ago. Elon Musk standing in the Oval Office. President Trump sitting behind the Resolute Desk and it was Elon Musk who held court for more than half an hour. How Musk describes what it is the Trump White House is doing, defending his access to at least 15 government agencies and counting. Elon Musk was asked if he’s being transparent, if he’s policing himself, and if there’s a conflict of interest, given Musk’s own company has contracts with the Pentagon. Our Rachel Scott asking many of the questions.

RACHEL SCOTT: Tonight, an extraordinary scene playing out in the Oval Office. President Trump sitting at the Resolute Desk, and standing next to him, Elon Musk and his young son. Holding court for roughly a half an hour.

REPORTER: Your detractors, Mr. Musk…

ELON MUSK: My de- what?

REPORTER: …including a lot of Democrats…

MUSK: I have detractors?

REPORTER: You do, sir.

MUSK: I don’t believe it.

REPORTER: …say that you’re orchestrating a hostile takeover of government, and doing it in a nontransparent way. What’s your response to that criticism?

MUSK: Well, first of all, you couldn’t ask for a stronger mandate from the public. The public voted — we have a majority of the public vote- voting for President Trump. We won the House, we won the Senate. The people voted for major government reform. And a lot of times, you know, people, they don’t get what they voted for, but in this presidency, they are going to get what they voted for, and that’s what democracy is all about.

SCOTT: Musk, the world’s richest man, with billions of dollars in federal contracts, has been given enormous power. His Department of Government Efficiency already accessing at least 15 agencies. 

RACHEL SCOTT: Mr. Musk, The White House says that you will identify and excuse yourself from any conflicts of interest that you may have. Does that mean that you are in effect policing yourself? What are the checks and balances that are in place to ensure there’s accountability and transparency?

ELON MUSK: Well, we actually are trying to be as transparent as possible. In fact, our actions– we post our actions to the DOGE handle on X and to the DOGE website. So all of our actions are maximally transparent. In fact, I don’t think there’s been — I don’t know of a case where an organization’s been more transparent than the DOGE organization. So — the kind of things we’re doing are, I think, are very simple and basic. These are not individual judgment decisions. These are about simply having simple checks and balances in the system itself to ensure taxpayer money is spent well. So it’s got nothing to do with, say, a contract with some company of mine, At all.

SCOTT: But if there is a conflict of interest, when it comes to you yourself, for instance, you’ve received billions of dollars in federal contracts when it comes to the Pentagon, for instance, which I know the president has directed you to look into. 

MUSK: Yeah.

SCOTT: Are you policing yourself in that? Is there any sort of accountability, check and balance in place that would provide any transparency for the American people?

MUSK: Well, all of our actions are fully public. So, if you see anything, you say, like, wait a second, hey, Elon, that seems like maybe that’s, you know, there’s a conflict there, It’s not like people are going to be shy about saying that. They’ll say it immediately.

SCOTT: Including you, yourself?

MUSK: Yes. Transparency is what builds trust. Not simply somebody asserting trust. Not somebody saying they’re trustworthy, but transparency, so you can see everything that’s going on. And you can see, am I doing something that benefits one of my companies or not? It’s totally obvious.

DONALD TRUMP: And if we thought that, we would not let him do that segment, or look in that area. If we thought there was a lack of transparency or a conflict of interest.

SCOTT: But I followed up. 

You have received billions of dollars in contracts from the Pentagon, and the president’s directing you to look into the Department of Defense- is that a conflict of interest?

MUSK: Which we definitely need to do and are going to do, at the president’s request.

SCOTT: Does that present a conflict of interest for you?

MUSK: No, because you have to look at the individual contract and say- first of all, I’m not the one, you know, filing the contract. It’s people at SpaceX.

SCOTT: Musk and Trump have complained several of their plans are stalled in the courts, raising concerns the administration may defy a judge’s orders. Today, the president told me that won’t happen. 

If a judge does block one of your policies, part of your agenda, will you abide by that ruling? Will you comply with that order?

TRUMP: Well, I’ll always abide by the courts and then I’ll have to appeal it. But then, what he’s done is, he’s slowed down the momentum.

SCOTT: As Musk’s team tears through government agencies, Musk today acknowledging he has sometimes posted misinformation about their findings.

MUSK: Well, first of all, some of the things that I say will be incorrect and should be corrected, so, nobody’s going to bat 1,000. I mean, any- we will make mistakes, but we’ll act quickly to correct any mistakes.

SCOTT: And David, there in the Oval Office, it was clear just how powerful Elon Musk is in this White House. And tonight, we’re learning he’s about to be even more powerful. The president signing an executive order that directs all federal agencies to work with Musk and his team to cut staffing and limit hiring. It also gives Musk the broad authority to decide which positions in this federal workforce should or should not

MUIR: All right. Rachel Scott right there in the briefing room tonight. Rachel, thank you.

 

MSNBC’s ongoing fixation on Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has shown no signs of abating. On Monday night’s episode of The 11th Hour, a panel hosted by Stephanie Ruhle continued what seems to have become a nightly ritual of railing against Musk and DOGE, and casually alleged, without any evidence, that DOGE’s actions could cause America to default on its national debt, and touch off a global economic crisis. 

Ruhle began by mentioning a statement against DOGE’s recent actions by five former Treasury secretaries, and commented that, although all five were Democrats rather than Republicans, the views they expressed, “did not sound partisan to me at all.”

 

 

Dan Nathan of CNBC agreed: “Yeah, I think they’re focused on the- sanctity of our Treasury, right? And when we think about- what do they do? They’re issuing treasury bonds. That is the bedrock of the global financial system, right?”

According to Nathan, DOGE was possibly going to shut down payments to America’s lenders and cause America to default on the debt:

So, if you have- this organization, DOGE, which is just an appointed organization that really doesn’t know how these operations work, and they shut down payments- it could be any sort of payments- then you have folks lose confidence in the U.S. Treasury, right? And if that happens- they default on some of these payments- they could have a downgrade by the rating agencies. And what happens is that- that could- like- literally cause global financial panic, if that were to happen.

In essence, Nathan charged that DOGE was somehow threatening to make the U.S. Treasury default on its debt, with grave worldwide consequences. He did not actually cite any evidence for this allegation, just a vague, unsubstantiated blanket assertion that the organization “doesn’t know how these operations work,” whatever that was supposed to mean.

Ruhle then turned to Heather Long of The Washington Post, and expressed incredulity that even with “everything Dan just laid out,” about “everything that’s happening around DOGE- they seem- the markets are- keep on trucking.”

Long agreed, and went even further, saying that Wall Street was not taking the threat of DOGE seriously enough. “I think it’s one of the biggest- questions out there- that we haven’t seen- really- any panic yet from Wall Street,” she lamented. “I think what’s happening is- on Wall Street- it’s sort of the same with tariffs- they’re really looking line by line at what is actually coming out from the administration, versus the warnings.”

She too pushed the conspiracy theory that DOGE would lead to an American dept default:

But I would say they are severely underpricing the risk of that scenario that Dan just laid out, that some 20-something-year-old who’s fiddling around with the code suddenly prevents a payment from not going out. And we have a technical default by the United States government, that has long standing replications [sic]- to- going forward for this nation.”

So, now they had a purely hypothetical, purely conjectural, fairly elaborate and quite specific scenario by which DOGE supposedly could destroy the world’s economy, and were wondering why Wall Street was not cringing in terror at the possibility. There was one problem, though. They continued to offer no actual evidence for their dire predictions, and, to all appearances, made up this entire scenario on the spot, right out of thin air.

To read the transcript, click “expand”:

MSNBC’s The 11th Hour
02/10/2025
11:23 PM

[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: IN NYT OPED FIVE FORMER TREASURY CHIEFS SAY DOGE EFFORT UNDERMINES CONSTITUTION]

STEPHANIE RUHLE: Dan, what I just heard from Larry Summers did not sound partisan to me at all. It was a scary, stark warning, and it’s a big deal to get five treasury secretaries to sign off on something together. But none were Republicans.

DAN NATHAN (CNBC CONTRIBUTOR, RISK REVERSAL CO-FOUNDER, ON THE TAPE PODCAST HOST): Yeah, I think they’re focused on the- sanctity of our treasury, right? And when we think about- what do they do? They’re issuing treasury bonds. That is the bedrock of the global financial system, right?

So, if you have- this organization, DOGE, which is just an appointed organization that really doesn’t know how these operations work, and they shut down payments- it could be any sort of payments- then you have folks lose confidence in the U.S. Treasury, right? And if that happens- they default on some of these payments- they could have a downgrade by the rating agencies. And what happens is that- that could-like- literally cause global financial panic, if that were to happen.

It did happen once in 2011- you remember that- Global markets, stocks, currencies, everything- they went haywire for a bit, you know? So- those are the things, I think, that- you look at those five Treasury secretaries- they remember what it’s like to keep things together. That is their job, to affect- like- the president’s economic policy. But it’s a broader thing than just that coming from the executive branch. They really understand where the US economy sits and what are the most important pillars of that is.[sic]

RUHLE: Heather, everything Dan just laid out, everything the five Treasury secretaries did- how come the market doesn’t seem to be- care? The market freaked out at the thought that Donald Trump was going to impose major tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China. But this- everything that’s happening around DOGE- they seem- the markets are- keep on trucking.

[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: TRUMP IMPOSES 25 % TARIFFS ON STEEL AND ALUMINUM]

HEATHER LONG (WASHINGTON POST ECONOMICS COLUMNIST): I agree with you. I think it’s one of the biggest- questions out there- that we haven’t seen- really- any panic yet from Wall Street. I think what’s happening is- on Wall Street- it’s sort of the same with tariffs- they’re really looking line by line at what is actually coming out from the administration, versus the warnings.

But I would say they are severely underpricing the risk of that scenario that Dan just laid out, that some 20-something-year-old who’s fiddling around with the code suddenly prevents a payment from not going out. And we have a technical default by the United States government, that has long standing replications [sic]- to- going forward for this nation.

(…)

ABC’s Good Morning America and CBS Mornings Plus chose to do their part Tuesday in furthering the coordinated and wholly manufactured narrative that America’s already in or on the verge of a “frightening” “constitutional crisis” because the Trump administration has expressed opposition to the judge shopping and perpetual thwarting of nearly his entire agenda by activist, mostly far-left judges.

The great Josh Hammer astutely diagnosed this issue in his debut column for UnHerd, wondering whether we should accept the reality that “a lower court with narrow local jurisdiction” (and not the Supreme Court) has “render[ed] so-called nationwide injunctions that purport to bind every American citizen.”

This, he wrote, was something “there is good reason to believe that America’s Founding Fathers would have been baffled by such gross assertions of judicial hegemony.”

On ABC, chief legal analyst Dan Abrams first said there was a “difference between not complying at this particular moment and defying” with the latter being more troublesome. Citing a tweet from Vice President JD Vance about judges trying “to control the executive’s legitimate power,” Abrams huffed this was “a lot scarier” and asserted he meant “courts don’t have a role” in anything the White House does.

 

 

“That’s frightening. And that’s why it’s so important, what Rachel just pointed out, about Republican senators coming forward and saying that’s not the case,” Abrams added with the insinuation that congressional Republicans should rise up against Trump.

Earth to ABC: Where was this during the Biden years on, say, student loans?

Asked about consequences for this, Abrams called it “tricky” since “[i]t’s supposed to be handled in the political arena” with Trump and Vance with the court able to levy fines to individuals.

Co-host and former Clinton official George Stephanopoulos concluded with the ultimate fearmongering: “Except when it goes to the Supreme Court. If, eventually they’re gonna decide on one of these cases, and then we’re going to have the real confrontation.”

Abrams played along, saying “Vance seems to be suggesting maybe [they] don’t” have to listen to the Supreme Court.

Cue the Resistance fear porn!

CBS Mornings Plus came right out of the gate with the left’s preferred framing, courtesy of a chyron reading “The First 100 Days; Constitution Crisis?” It morphed shortly thereafter to “The First 100 Days; Testing the Limits of Presidential Power.”

 

 

Co-host Adriana Diaz didn’t waste any time joining in on the narrative created in part of whole cloth by a New York Times article, including the “constitutional crisis” buzzword (click “expand”):

The Trump administration’s flurry of executive orders in his first few weeks of office have brought about sweeping changes and we’re not talking about the federal government. Some legal experts say our country could be headed towards a constitutional crisis as the President pushes the boundaries of his power. Look at this, a federal judge in Rhode Island said the Trump administration ignored his order to unfreeze billions of dollars of federal aid and is directing Trump to restore the funds. Meanwhile, the President’s allies are challenging the role of the judicial branch with Vice President J.D. Vance recently saying, “judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.” And just this morning, Elon Musk weighed in posting, “democracy in America is being destroyed by judicial coup.”

Diaz took this to CBS News legal analyst Jessica Levinson: “[A]ren’t federal judges well within their right to review any actions that they deem to be – or that others deem to be unconstitutional?”

Levinson educated viewers with a 10,000-foot view about the three branches of government with the judiciary “hav[ing] a role to play here…when it comes to” the legality of “decisions that are made by our political branches, by the president and by Congress.”

It sounds great, but that’s not what’s happening here (as Hammer noted). Levinson showed her ideological tilt by next suggesting there’s an “assumption behind judicial review…that judges aren’t going to substitute” or impose “their own judgment” or “policy” on the other branches (click “expand”):

TONY DOKOUPIL: So, Jessica, J.D. Vance, the Vice President, who has a law degree from Yale, not for nothing, he says “judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.” It sounds like a lot rests on this question of what legitimate power is. Do I have that right?

LEVINSON: Tony, you took the words out of my mouth. I was going to say that word legitimate is doing an enormous amount of work there, as I would say to my students when we’re reading a case. Yes, I think a lot is hinging on legitimate. And, of course, the assumption is that you can only check illegitimate actions and, frankly, that’s our entire setup, right? The assumption behind judicial review is that judges aren’t going to substitute their own judgment, aren’t going to say, you know, here’s the policy I would prefer. They will say, here is what is in – within the bounds of what you can do under the Constitution. So, yes, I agree, a lot riding on that word “legitimate.”

Before her signal froze, she started to say there hasn’t ever been a time in history in which presidents have disregarded the judiciary, again playing into the left’s doomsday scenario.

In contrast to all that, NBC’s Today pumped the brakes. Asked by co-host Savannah Guthrie “what happens if they do” ignore judicial rulings beyond simply “fight[ing] them in court,” senior legal correspondent Laura Jarrett (and daughter of Obama confidante Valerie Jarrett) suggested everyone relax:

[I]t’s an open question, how a judge might enforce a contempt order in that case. The judge in Rhode Island basically giving them a warning…[W]hile the President and Vice President are saying the authorities don’t have the authority, DOJ lawyers are not in court saying anything like that. They’re saying, ‘oh, our bad, we didn’t realize the scope of the order,’ so there’s a little bit of a space there between what’s happening in practice and what’s happening in action.

To see the relevant transcripts from February 11, click here (on ABC) and here (for CBS).

The revelation that The New York Times and Politico received millions collectively in taxpayer dollars from a slew of US government agencies sparked public outrage. But a new investigation by MRC Business will make the scandal of government-funded media even worse.

MRC Business found that the Poynter Institute for Media Studies — which houses the notoriously censorial International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) — was a recipient of at least $2.4 million in obligations from the U.S. government between 2013 and 2025. Notably, the majority of the funding occurred after April 2020 and throughout the Biden administration years. This is the same IFCN whose certified fact-checkers (including Poynter’s PolitiFact) were originally employed by Meta to censor conservative viewpoints across Facebook and Instagram over those years.

This directly implicates government involvement in that Orwellian censorship enterprise before CEO Mark Zuckerberg rolled that program back. Moreover, Poynter’s IFCN was also funded by leftist billionaire and censorship fanatic George Soros to the tune of $492,000 between 2016 and 2019 alone. 

The top Poynter funders, according to USAspending.gov, included the following government agencies:

Small Business Administration ($1.67 million)
U.S. Agency for Global Media ($423,781)
State Department ($367,435)
But it gets worse!

Poynter drew massive backlash in 2019 when it tried to “blacklist” at least 29 conservative news outlets as “UnNews.” The list prominent right-leaning news sources such as Breitbart, Daily Signal, Daily Wire, Free Beacon, Judicial Watch, LifeNews, LifeSiteNews, LifeZette, LiveAction News, PJ Media, Project Veritas, Red State, The Blaze, Twitchy, and the Washington Examiner. The public outcry was so fierce that Poynter retracted its “blacklist.”

In 2023, MRC Free Speech America also revealed that Poynter’s then-associate director, Cristina Tardáguila, was on the advisory panel of the anti-conservative media, government-backed Global Disinformation Index (GDI) representing Poynter and IFCN.  And if that wasn’t bad enough, both censorship giants Google and YouTube had launched a $13.2 million partnership with the ICFN in November 2022 to launch the “Global Fact Check Fund.” 

This was after Poynter’s IFCN published an open letter earlier that year decrying YouTube’s lack of censorship on its platform. One of its recommendations involved YouTube “acting against repeat offenders that produce content that is constantly flagged as disinformation and misinformation.” They demanded YouTube give them money, “entering into a meaningful and structured collaboration taking the responsibility and systematically investing in independent fact-checking efforts around the world.”

Poynter, which ironically bills itself as the “gold standard” of journalism, also has a sordid history of pushing extreme wokeism on reporters’ stories.

Poynter published guidance for journalists in January 2022, that sought to obliterate the standard of using gendered language in reporting. In an article tagged under “Ethics & Trust” with the headline, “Why using gender-nonspecific language in reporting extends beyond the page,” author Liana DeMasi railed at how “not dismant[ling] the norm of gendered language in reporting on topics like paid family leave is to work to perpetuate and safeguard discrimination.” Poynter dubbed DeMasi a “queer, Brooklyn-based writer” with “they/she” pronouns.

DeMasi took aim at NBC’s Today show for daring to publish a November 2021, article on MSNBC anchor Katy Tur’s motherhood. The article used gendered language to talk about paid parental leave. “Tur, a straight cis-woman, calls herself a ‘mother,’ ‘mom,’ and ‘parent,’ referencing her husband several times,” DeMasi complained. “[Tur’s] usage of ‘moms’ implies that a birth-giver must always be a mother. After this distinction, Tur uses the term ‘partner,’ a gender-neutral and inclusive term, one that she could have substituted throughout her dialogue.” DeMasi pushed in her rebuke of Tur that normalizing leftist “gender-neutral” language in reporting could eventually lead to directly influencing the lawmaking process:

And guess what: the U.S. government was funneling tax dollars into Poynter’s “independent” apparatus the entire time.

Paging Elon Musk and DOGE!

Methodology: MRC Business used the search term “Poynter Institute for Media Studies” on USASpending.gov to keep the parameters as specific as possible to avoid tallying any unrelated spending. 

 

The liberal media were apparently still trying to suggest President Trump was a Russian asset during Tuesday’s edition of CNN This Morning. Anchor Jim Sciutto and senior international correspondent Fred Pleitgen’s redux of the Russia Collusion Hoax involved them juxtaposing Trump’s desire to bring the War in Ukraine to a close with an ad put out by the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR). At one point, CNN even did a crossfade putting the SVR emblem over Trump’s face (pictured in this piece).

“President Trump says he has spoken to his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, since returning to the White House,” Sciutto ominously announced at the top of the segment. “Trump says he plans to have, quote, many more conversations with Putin as he pushes for an end to the war in Ukraine.”

Adding: “In Russia, Trump seems to be getting positive reactions from people there.”

Pleitgen warned of “a very open influence operation targeting Americans” from Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, “This slick ad showcasing Soviet and U.S. troops defeating Nazi Germany together.”

As Pleitgen noted that the SVR emblem was at the end of the ad, he pivoted to Trump, with the crossfade placing the emblem right on Trump’s face (pictured above):

PLEITGEN: Urging Americans not to support further military aid for Ukraine, at the end, the symbol of Russia’s foreign intelligence service, the SVR. All this as President Trump this weekend claimed he’s already in talks with Russian leader Vladimir Putin to end the war.

TRUMP: And I want to stop it just because I hate to see all these young people being killed. The soldiers are being killed by the hundreds of thousands.

 

 

 

Pleitgen was also at a rally for Russian veterans in Moscow where he pointed to a random woman wearing a “Team Putin t-shirt” as an example of the love Trump enjoined in Russia:

Nina wears a “Team Putin” t-shirt, but also likes what she’s hearing from the new U.S. president. “Of course, I like him,” she says. “You have to be tough and have discipline in everything so people can live well without wars.”

“Do you think he can help resolve the conflict with Ukraine?” I ask. “It’s long overdue,” she says. “He promised it and we’re waiting for it. Hurry up. Don’t waste time. People are dying.”

He also spoke with a former Wagner fighter who he described as “not unhappy President Trump is in office and Biden is out.”

The tone of this part of the report was basically, ‘if they like Trump, he must be on their side.’

MSNBC’s Katy Tur erased any distinction that exists between journalism and liberal fan service on Monday when she closed out her show with a clip of an Australian senator from a minor party calling President Donald Trump “a disaster for humanity” who is pushing the U.S. towards “fascism.”

Tur introduced the clip by pretending she was just giving a global perspective on what different people think about Trump, “All right, around the world, people are reacting to Donald Trump and his first few weeks in office. Here’s one reaction from an Australian senator and member of the Australian Greens Party. His name is Nick McKim, and he issued something of a warning. Let’s listen.”

 

 

MSNBC would never find some obscure politician from a party in a foreign country that is neither the majority nor the main opposition and hype their anti-Biden diatribe or even pro-Trump speech.

Nevertheless, in the clip, McKim sounded like he was auditioning for a primetime show on MSNBC, “The United States is sliding into fascism under Donald Trump, and it is marginalized communities who are going to pay the price. Black-skinned and brown-skinned people, migrants in the U.S. Women in the U.S., transgender and queer folks in the U.S. They’re going to be persecuted, and they’re going to be demonized, blamed for all the problems of the day.”

He further doom-mongered, “And you know what else is going to pay the price? Nature is going to pay the price under his drill baby drill policies of destroying nature. Climate is going to pay the price. As we’ve already seen a withdrawal from global climate action. President Trump is a disaster for humanity. He belongs behind bars, not in the Oval Office.

Tur then closed out the show, “That is going to do it for me today. Deadline: White House starts after this quick break.”

Ultimately, the segment was a perfect encapsulation of the whole situation. McKim proved why his party is nowhere near power, and Tur proved why MSNBC is not a news network, but at least they both got a cheap dopamine hit.

Here is a transcript for the February 10 show:

MSNBC Katy Tur Reports

2/10/2025

3:55 PM ET

KATY TUR: All right, around the world, people are reacting to Donald Trump and his first few weeks in office. Here’s one reaction from an Australian senator and member of the Australian Greens Party. His name is Nick McKim, and he issued something of a warning. Let’s listen.

NICK MCKIM: The United States is sliding into fascism under Donald Trump, and it is marginalized communities who are going to pay the price. Black-skinned and brown-skinned people, migrants in the U.S. Women in the U.S., transgender and queer folks in the U.S. They’re going to be persecuted, and they’re going to be demonized, blamed for all the problems of the day.

And you know what else is going to pay the price? Nature is going to pay the price under his drill baby drill policies of destroying nature. Climate is going to pay the price. As we’ve already seen a withdrawal from global climate action. President Trump is a disaster for humanity. He belongs behind bars, not in the Oval Office.

TUR: That is going to do it for me today. Deadline: White House starts after this quick break.

The pundits may say Democrats are still “licking their wounds” from their 2024 defeats, but the recent Democrat meeting on February 1 focusing on how they must have a “non-binary” representative was underplayed by the media. Joe Klein used to be a prominent TV pundit and Newsweek columnist who loved Bill Clinton’s more moderate style. On his Substack, he lamented the party now displays a “vast cluelessness.”

[Hat tip: Gabriel Hays at FoxNews.com]

Underlining the DEI obsessions within the party, outgoing DNC chair Jamie Harrison attempted to explain there had to be a non-binary candidate for the Vice Chair position.

I can’t believe what I just listened to. The DNC Leader interrupted the party election to tell members that not enough non-binary candidates have been elected, so they MUST now vote for one.
“With the results of the previous four elections, our elected officers are currently two… pic.twitter.com/8CelMVzyE6
— George (@BehizyTweets) February 1, 2025
Later in the program, an audience member stood up to lament that there was only one at-large seat set aside for a transgender person, and called on the candidates to add another seat and for “making sure those appointments reflect the gender and ethnic diversity of the transgender community.” Only one candidate raised his hand to indicate he wouldn’t make such a commitment.

“Yes, friends, still crazy after all these years…and the encroaching dementia is not benign. Can this party be saved? I have my doubts,” Klein wrote. “The intellectual corrosion is comprehensive; it is only matched by the self-righteous arrogance. But what’s the alternative? I’ve been through Dems in Disarray syndrome multiple times in the past: in 1972, in 1980, in 1988, in 2016…but, gotta say, this is the worst I’ve ever seen it. There is a vast cluelessness abroad in the party. Its prevailing vision of an America based on identity now resides in the outhouse.”

Joe Klein can’t get on MSNBC with that take. That is not how the media treated it. Take “public” broadcasting. On February 4, NPR’s All Things Considered brought on newly elected DNC chair Ken Martin, and didn’t consider the party is too far to the left and too obsessed with DEI. Host Juana Summers mostly asked about resisting Trump. Her last question came the closest: “Defining who that party is, what it stands for, is something that has bedeviled so many people who have sat in your seat. How do you make the case to voters who want to support you that elected Democrats have their backs, given what we’ve seen in the last election cycle, where those working-class voters that you just talked about, who used to reliably vote Democratic, they’ve chosen a different path?”

On the PBS NewsHour, they waited almost a whole week before discussing the DNC meeting. That’s because PBS analyst Jonathan Capehart was an MSNBC host at the meeting. He mentioned the discussing about the ethnicity within the transgender community, and screaming climate protesters. 

CAPEHART: Faiz Shakir, a friend of PBS News Hour, was the only person the stage who did not raise his hand on the transgender question. There was also one on the question for seats for Muslim DNC members.

He said, I don`t think we should be dividing people up by identity. We should focus on people who are up for the mission and the program of the DNC and have them bring their identity to the table.

He’s absolutely right. And then with the protesters, Jason Paul said, this is the way people in the country view the Democratic Party, and that is our problem.

That’s why I say the policy isn’t the problem. Democrats have policies that address the American people’s issues. It’s the perception. And that is what Ken Martin has to do.

If this meeting created more perception problems, you can understand why it was energetically downplayed. 

The early successes of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in exposing rampant waste, fraud and abuse throughout the federal government have left the left scrambling- including their allies in the media. The resulting derangement rendered ABC News a crisis spokesperson for the beleaguered Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).

Watch as anchor David Muir and correspondent Rachel Scott build the CFPB up as perfect victims, á la USAID:

DAVID MUIR: There’s another developing headline involving President Trump at this hour. A judge extending his block on the president’s effort to get millions of federal workers to resign, to take a buyout or risk getting fired. Tonight, the vice president and Elon Musk are now openly questioning the authority of some of these judges. And now, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been halted. Workers told to stay home. Protests outside today. The Bureau, set up to protect Americans from banks becoming too big to fail, and to protect against risky mortgages, and other financial products after the banking collapse and Great Recession. So, is the Bureau’s work protecting consumers over? Here’s our Senior Political Correspondent Rachel Scott tonight.

RACHEL SCOTT: Tonight in Washington, frustrated workers at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau demanding to be let in to do their jobs.

WORKERS: Let us work!

SCOTT: After Elon Musk essentially shut down the agency, posting on X, “CFPB RIP.” The Bureau, the government’s consumer watchdog, created after the 2008 financial crisis and housing crash to protect American families from unfair and deceptive practices on everything from mortgages to credit cards to bank fees and student loans. But this morning, employees got an email from White House Budget Director Russell Vought saying they should not come into the office, and instructing them: “please do not perform work tasks.”

CFPB WORKER: You show up to work on Monday morning excited to get started on the week. I had an agenda of things I was ready to do to fight for American consumers, and to be told that I’m not supposed to do that is heartbreaking.

Won’t someone think of the poor CFPB employee, heartbroken because there won’t be any debanking today? The success of this psychological operation passing itself off as news is predicated on ABC’s ability to pass the CFPB off as a noble consumer watchdog, in contrast with its actual record as Elizabeth Warren’s constitutionally-dubious financial Stasi that is not funded through the normal federal appropriations process but through the Federal Reserve. 

Coverage of the CFPB as it gets deleted has been comparable to that of the USAID, minus the witness protection-style interviews of employees who are neither federal whistleblowers nor in actual and literal witness protection. Both have been equally hysterical. 

The focus of the rest of the story echoed the media’s grave concerns that the Trump Administration might ignore a court order. One wonders where this focus was as Joe Biden repeatedly attempted to circumvent the Supreme Court in order to impose his student loan “relief”.  

With many of these injunctions against Trump executive orders in the lower courts, watch the media’s tone as they make their way through the appellate process and on to the Supreme Court. Will they continue to defend the integrity of the courts then, or will they join the braying mobs and try to pressure the Court majority?? 

Click “expand” to view the full transcript of the aforementioned report as aired on ABC World News Tonight on Monday, February 10th, 2024:

DAVID MUIR: There’s another developing headline involving President Trump at this hour. A judge extending his block on the president’s effort to get millions of federal workers to resign, to take a buyout or risk getting fired. Tonight, the vice president and Elon Musk are now openly questioning the authority of some of these judges. And now, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been halted. Workers told to stay home. Protests outside today. The Bureau, set up to protect Americans from banks becoming too big to fail, and to protect against risky mortgages, and other financial products after the banking collapse and Great Recession. So, is the Bureau’s work protecting consumers over? Here’s our Senior Political Correspondent Rachel Scott tonight.

RACHEL SCOTT: Tonight in Washington, frustrated workers at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau demanding to be let in to do their jobs.

WORKERS: Let us work!

SCOTT: After Elon Musk essentially shut down the agency, posting on X, “CFPB RIP.” The Bureau, the government’s consumer watchdog, created after the 2008 financial crisis and housing crash to protect American families from unfair and deceptive practices on everything from mortgages to credit cards to bank fees and student loans. But this morning, employees got an email from White House Budget Director Russell Vought saying they should not come into the office, and instructing them: “please do not perform work tasks.”

CFPB WORKER: You show up to work on Monday morning excited to get started on the week. I had an agenda of things I was ready to do to fight for American consumers, and to be told that I’m not supposed to do that is heartbreaking.

SCOTT: Like 2 million other federal workers, the people here face a stark choice. Take the government’s buyout offer to get paid through September, or risk getting laid off. April Goggins, who works for the Department of Health and Human Services, wrestled with that decision.

APRIL GOGGINS: I think the last three weeks have been a little bit like, some psychological warfare, I mean, just getting tossed back and forth between do I need to worry about moving, am I going to lose my house, do I need to worry about my job? And what can I and cannot do?

SCOTT: The deadline to accept that deal was extended to today. Now a federal judge has put it on hold yet again. But April tells me her decision is made.

GOGGINS: No, I’m not resigning. I’m going to hold the line. I’m not resigning.

SCOTT: Why?

GOGGINS: Um- first of all, you’re not going to — you’re not going to bully me out of a job.

SCOTT: The judge’s decision to put the buyout offer on hold, just one in a series of legal setbacks for the new administration. And on X, Musk lashing out at the judges. Calling a New York judge who blocked his efforts to access Treasury data “a corrupt judge protecting corruption,” adding, “he needs to be impeached now”. Vice President JD Vance taking it even further, posting, “If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal. Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.” The big question, will the administration openly defy the rulings of these courts? Tonight, one federal judge determined that’s already happening, finding the administration violated his order to fully lift its pause of federal funding, calling the pause “likely unconstitutional”, and adding that “it continues to cause irreparable harm to a vast portion of this country.” Elon Musk and his team have already gained access into at least 15 federal agencies. Musk, a billionaire, is the world’s richest man. He owns the social media platform X, Tesla, and SpaceX. And tonight, there are reports that he’s making a play to buy OpenAI, a leading artificial intelligence company. The president did launch an initiative with companies including OpenAI, so this does raise questions about a possible conflict of interest for Musk, who is working with this administration and raises concerns about his growing influence, David.

MUIR: Rachel Scott there at The White House as well. Rachel, thank you.

 

Posted Monday night at the Daily Caller, our friends Amber Duke and Reagan Reese did a deep dive of nearly 2,400 words on the long, troubling history of close calls at Reagan National Airport in Arlington, Virginia across from Washington D.C. leading up to the deadly mid-air collision on January 29 that left 67 dead.

“Washington’s Reagan National Airport has suffered countless near misses between aircrafts over the last few decades, many reported by pilots themselves, an issue the FAA has done little to solve, according to a Daily Caller review of public documents,” they began.

Duke and Reese provided a terrific example of how, despite having a stranglehold on a slew of fancy awards such the Pulitzers, the liberal media are to never have exclusive claim to dogged, intrepid journalism.

They noted that, prior to the changes from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regarding the airspace post-incident, years went by in which “helicopters and airplanes have been passing within feet of each other at DCA, causing pilots to make evasive maneuvers to avoid catastrophe” and “[p]ilots have been angrily reporting these incidents to an anonymous, public database, but little was done to address the issue until the tragedy last month.”

Duke and Reese cited a number of anonymous submissions, sources, and “reviewed public reports pilots and air traffic control have filed through the Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS) between 1988 to 2025 while working at DCA.”

They further explained their parameters, including their stunning findings:

The Caller looked specifically at self-reported airborne conflicts and near misses between aircrafts near Washington Reagan National Airport and found there had been 220 such incidents from 1988 to 2025. Of those, 30 have been between helicopters and airplanes, marking an almost annual occurrence.

By comparison, nearby Dulles National Airport has had 181 self-reported airborne conflicts and near misses between aircrafts in the same time period. Just five have been between helicopters and airplanes.

“Anyone can [self] report it for any reason, but usually it’s because pilots get afraid and they said, ‘Holy shit that was too close.’ Traffic was issued too late, or I didn’t see that issue report,’” Michael Pearson, a former air traffic controller and ATC training instructor, told the Caller of the ASRS reports. 

The commercial pilot added, “Usually you are pretty pissed if you are willing to write the report and submit as an ASR. It’s not an ‘Oh, that was interesting’ moment. It’s a ‘Hey, this is a problem’ moment.”

After reiterating a dominant narrative in the crash coverage that “DCA’s airport is one of the most difficult landings for pilots in the country” consisting of “congested airspace, short runways, frequent restricted airspace and landings right along the water,” they dove into some of close calls, including this one from 2015 (click “expand”):

A report from March 2015 details an airplane and a helicopter coming just a few hundred feet apart as the aircraft lined up to land on Runway 33. The pilot notes in his report that while starting to land, they spotted a helicopter that was close in altitude and climbing. The report explains that the pilot made a decision to abort the landing ahead of getting an alert that the other aircraft was too close to the plane.

After landing on a different runway, the pilot spoke to the tower about the near miss, learning that the helicopter had climbed far beyond where it was supposed to be.

“The tower supervisor I spoke with told me a few things that explained what may have happened. Number one, he said that the helicopters operating in that area should NEVER be above 200 feet. According to him, the helicopter was at 800 feet, clearly not where he was supposed to be,” the pilot writes, noting that he had his airplane climbed to 2,000 feet to avoid a crash. 

“[The tower supervisor] also explained that ATC may have taken their eyes off the helicopter for a second because they would never expect those helicopters to do something that egregious. That seems plausible given the fact that I’ve never seen a helicopter in that area at that altitude. He suggested that it was most probably a deviation on the part of the Pilot of the helicopter, and a loss of aircraft separation that was also the fault of the helicopter pilot,” the report states.

To read their full story, follow the link above or click here.

The iconoclastic news site The Free Press had a Monday evening scoop, courtesy of an inside tipster, that taxpayer-funded news network PBS was trying to conceal its DEI program from President Trump’s executive order and Elon Musk’s cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

FP’s Josh Code reported:

Just before 5 p.m. on Monday afternoon, PBS CEO Paula Kerger sent a staff-wide email announcing the departure of the company’s two DEI executives: “To ensure that we are complying with the President’s Executive Order we have closed our DEI office, and Cecilia Loving and Gina Leow are leaving PBS. I know you join me in wishing them well in their future endeavors.”….But the timing of the announcement raised several eyebrows in our newsroom. That’s because earlier this morning, we wrote to PBS asking them about a tip we received from a high-ranking executive at the network. The tipster had told us that PBS was planning to move both Loving and Leow to the network’s station services department in order to skirt Trump’s executive order calling for the elimination of DEI-focused positions and grants from government-funded institutions.

(The station services department facilitates communication between local PBS stations and PBS HQ in Northern Virginia.)

PBS established its DEI department in 2021 with the now-departed Loving and Leow, who served, respectively, as Senior Vice President of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, and Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. The move came partly in response to woke criticism about the racial makeup of PBS’s stable of filmmakers, including the sainted liberal documentarian Ken Burns. A subhead from an August 2021 story on The Wrap: “The network had faced criticism for allotting a disproportionate amount of airtime and funding to Ken Burns programs.”

According to FP’s source: ‘Loving introduced weekly ‘meditation Mondays’ and regular ‘indigenous healing circles’ for PBS employees to ‘resolve conflict’ and ‘create a safe space for courageous conversations’….”

PBS’s inside source spilled the slides:

The high-ranking source told The Free Press that Loving spoke “’like she was at a pulpit,’ using the language of spirituality to bring a moral heft to her DEI sessions. Slide decks from Loving’s presentations encouraged leaders to ‘anoint’ employees, which would help other team members ‘view them as worthy.'”

Yikes!

PBS’s federal funding is also under scrutiny from DOGE, with Elon Musk eyeing that “$535 million a year to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting,” as he noted in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.

Code’s source emphasized: “Race is a major determining factor in decision-making” at PBS, which bragged about its legally questionable hiring practices in a February 2023 press release boasting that in 2022, “BIPOC employees comprised 48% of new hires and 35% of promotions in FY 2022.”

(For you philistines out there, “BIPOC” stands for “Black, Indigenous, and People of Color.”)

Interestingly, clicking to the promised “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion report for Fiscal Year 2022” takes one back to an internal home screen. Where did it go? That 48-page report can be found here, for now.