INVESTIGATIONS

Sorry, your stupid kid doesn’t need another doll.
Journalists: We’re even dumber than you thought.
Harris returns, Walz won’t go away.
Brian Stelter, enemy of the people.

It’s Friday, May 2, 2025

As expected, Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office have been an unprecedented success. The border is closed, markets are shaking out the last remnants of the Biden slump, and Rosie O’Donnell moved to Ireland. The arc of global trade policy is bending firmly in the direction of justice. This week we learned that Trump has personally saved 258 million lives through his efforts to crack down on fentanyl trafficking, according to Attorney General Pam Bondi. On Wednesday, the president scored a momentous victory for hardworking American families by resolving to end the scourge of spoiled little girls who torture their parents with incessant demands for more stuff. “Well, maybe the children will have 2 dolls instead of 30 dolls,” Trump told a group of childless liberal reporters at the White House. Their feeble minds couldn’t possibly understand this president’s limitless empathy or his laudable disdain for overconsumption. They think we should just give all our money to communists, or worse, the filthy Canadians. Never!

Not guilty by reason of credulity: Journalists were very agitated this week after one of their own, Alex Thompson of the New York Times, suggested the media were at fault for failing to expose the cover-up of President Joe Biden’s cognitive decline, which didn’t really need covering up because it was blatantly obvious to everyone except Democrats and journalists. Chuck Todd, the former NBC host, was shaking with rage. “This is not a media failure, this is a Democratic Party failure,” Todd fumed during a conversation with fellow journalist Chris Cillizza, formerly of CNN. “The virtue signaling that some people have done to try to say that the media missed this story. They didn’t miss this story.” (Yes, they did.)

Cillizza offered a more reasonable take. Democrats missed the story of Biden’s decline, he said, but not because they were willfully covering it up. They were simply too gullible and too blinded by partisanship to even consider that widespread concerns about Biden’s age, based on bountiful evidence, could be anything other than a nefarious right-wing conspiracy theory. Most journalists are Democrats, he noted, which means they have an “inherent and sort of unconscious bias” that made them “too willing to take the Biden team’s word for it” when the White House and other Democrats insisted the president was sharp as a tack or running circles around his younger aides. All that bullshit. “They were too credulous,” Cillizza said.

That’s the most charitable explanation, but it’s not even that charitable. Journalists aren’t the enemy of the people, see? They’re just a bunch of well-meaning and intellectually unserious hacks who are predisposed to serve as obedient mouthpieces for Democratic propaganda. They didn’t conceal the truth on purpose. They’re just incapable of distinguishing the truth from professional spin. It might be their best argument, but to believe it is to accept the fact that our cherished journalists are even dumber and more oblivious than we could’ve ever imagined.

A few of many, many examples that stand out:

Factcheck.org (July 2022): Denounced the Washington Free Beacon and other conservative outlets for sharing a video clip that showed Biden mindlessly reading the words “end of quote, repeat the line” off a teleprompter. Why? Because the clip was “misleading” and gave viewers the “false” impression that Biden “is becoming senile.” The fact-checking experts rendered their verdict based on a White House transcript, which claimed Biden had said, “Let me repeat the line,” even though he clearly hadn’t. The experts assessed that it was “not clear” if the transcript was accurate, even though it clearly wasn’t. They also cited a White House spokeswoman who said Biden’s phrasing was “intentional.” Two months later, Biden called out to congresswoman Jackie Walorski during a White House event, wondering where she was. Walorski had died in a car crash weeks earlier. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre denied that Biden had gaffed, suggesting that the dead congresswoman was “on his mind” and he wanted to acknowledge her “incredible work.”

Associated Press (June 2024): The AP fact-checked a video clip of Biden freezing up at a Hollywood fundraiser and looking bewildered as Barack Obama gently guided him offstage. The outlet spoke to Biden aides who claimed the president hadn’t frozen, he had simply “stopped to take in cheers and applause.” The AP agreed, concluding that Biden hadn’t frozen, he had simply “paused amid cheers and applause as he exited the stage.” The fact-check, published 10 days before the now infamous debate on CNN, was “part of the AP’s efforts to address widely shared false and misleading information that is circulation online.” Less than a month later, Democratic activist George Clooney confirmed that the Joe Biden he met at that Hollywood fundraiser “was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.” The doddering geezer who bragged about beating Medicare.

RIP, Meta Fact-Checkers. Don’t Let the Door Hit You on the Way Out.

What they’re saying: “When things go awry for us, shoot the Jews, it fixes everything.” That’s what one journalist, Samer Elzaenen of BBC Arabic, wrote on Facebook in 2022. He regularly appears on television to discuss his coverage of Israel’s war on Hamas “resistance fighters.” An active social media user, Elzaenen is clearly very passionate about the situation he covers. Years earlier, for example, the journalist mused whimsically: “My message to the Zionist Jews: We are going to take our land back, we love death for Allah’s sake the same way you love life. We shall burn you as Hitler did, but this time we won’t have a single one of you left.”

Would it be fair to say that all journalists love Hitler? Probably not. But it does make you wonder.

Lades and gentleman, the Democrats: The media’s favorite party is having a rough week. Kamala Harris made her long awaited return to the national spotlight this week. The failed candidate gave a paid speech to a group of Democratic activists in California, where she is widely expected to run for governor in 2026. Lurching in tone from loud, inauthentic outrage to the singsong whispers of an inebriated kindergarten teacher, Harris attacked Trump for waging war on “truth tellers” and for overlooking the fact that “courage is contagious.” She explained that since losing the election she had given much thought to a viral video of elephants at the San Diego Zoo, and consoled the attendees, who’d forked over as much as $50,000 for a ticket, with her deeply considered rhetoric. “I am not here tonight to offer all the answers, but I am here to say this: You are not alone, and we are all in this together,” she said, inspiringly.

For reasons that defy explanation, a former Harris adviser requested (and was granted by NBC News) anonymity to speak candidly about why the American people really need to hear from Kamala Harris right now. “There is a clamoring for her voice right now,” the former aide said. “No one can better prosecute the case while inspiring a call to action than the former vice president.”

Fact check: No one has ever clamored for Kamala’s voice. Almost anyone can do it better. Even most Democrats would agree. The efforts to cover up Biden’s obvious decline were motivated in no small part by party leaders who were afraid of getting stuck with Harris as the nominee. Nancy Pelosi didn’t like Harris at all, which is why she was so unnerved by Biden’s disastrous performance at the debate. Her first thought was, “Oh my God, it’s going to be her,” according to Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes in Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House. Meanwhile, Barack Obama, had “deep misgivings” about the VP and favored a “mini-primary” that would “kneecap Harris” because he was sure she would lose.

By the numbers: Trump’s popularity has a taken a hit in recent weeks, but a recent CNN poll found that he’s still beating Harris—45 percent to 43 percent—on the question of who would be doing a better job as president right now.

DEI for white dudes: For reasons that also defy explanation, Tim Walz keeps reminding people that Tim Walz exists and is very annoying. This week he touted his ability to connect with working-class white men, a group Democrats lost by double digits, during an event at Harvard, bastion of the working class. “I was on the ticket, quite honestly, you know, because I could code talk to white guys watching football, fixing their truck, doing that,” Walz said. “I could put them at ease. I was the permission structure to say, ‘Look, you can do this and vote for this.'” In addition to using terms such as “code talk” and “permission structure” while chatting with Ivy League students, Walz has inspired working-class white men by lying about his military service and by using common NFL terms such as “run a mean pick 6.”

Hogging the spotlight: David Hogg, the obnoxious Harvard grad, was elected vice chair of the DNC earlier this year despite vowing never to run for office. “We have enough straight white men in power” he wrote in 2022. “It’d be nice to see some people who actually look like our country and not privilege.” People like Kalyn Free, the Native American activist Hogg defeated in the race for vice chair. She filed a complaint alleging that the “fatally flawed election” had “discriminated against three women of color candidates” in violation of the DNC charter. The committee has agreed to consider Free’s challenge at a virtual meeting later this month. Democrats are already annoyed with Hogg over his pledge to spend $20 million against incumbents he deems insufficiently radical. A notorious history buff, Hogg has expressed admiration for “the founders of the gun violence prevention movement started centuries ago by almost entirely black, brown and indigenous lgbtq women and non binary people that never got on the news or in most history books.”

What’s next: Joe Biden will appear on The View next week for his first television interview since leaving office. His last appearance on the show was in September 2024, when Biden insisted he would have beaten Trump. He also touted his record of providing “so many opportunities for people to correct their lives [incomprehensible], get things back in shape, and, but it’s just, it’s just simply, I mean, the idea, anyway.”

Photo of the week: CNN pundit Brain Stelter looks disheveled with his shirt untucked (and excessively unbuttoned) as he waddles aboard an Amtrak train without shoes following a heavy weekend of partying to celebrate the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, aka “Nerd Prom,” courtesy of our exclusive Free Beacon report. Stelter, who has repeatedly attacked Donald Trump for breaking “rules” and violating “norms,” was in flagrant violation of Amtrak policy, which clearly states that “passengers are required to wear shoes at all times while moving around the train.” Many have argued that Stelter should be imprisoned in El Salvador for his egregious disregard for basic human decency, the sartorial equivalent of violence. At the very least, his behavior is a severe setback to media apologists who claim journalists are not the “enemy of the people.”

Related: “Pyramid of White Supremacy,” courtesy of Harvard University.

Twitter: @AndrewStilesUSA
Email: stiles@freebeacon.com

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She’s the queen of Capitol gains.

New Jersey congresswoman Mikie Sherrill (D.) has banked millions of dollars since coming to Congress in 2019, a review of her financial disclosures by the Washington Free Beacon shows.

In her 2019 financial disclosures, Sherrill reported assets totaling between $733,209 and $4,321,000. By 2024, those figures had ballooned to between $4,840,076 and $13,975,000. The wide swing of ranges comes because federal financial disclosure forms require each asset to be listed as between a range of values. That requirement means that Sherrill, in theory, could have only seen an asset increase of roughly $500,000, but that possibility is unlikely. Using the average of the two ranges would place Sherrill’s asset increase at just under $7 million.

Members of the House of Representatives make an annual salary of $174,000, and the meteoric rise of Sherrill’s net worth comes as a result of the exemplary performance of her stock portfolio.

Though it remains controversial, members of Congress are allowed to trade stocks as long as all transactions are assiduously reported within 30 days under the rules of the 2012 STOCK Act. Sherrill is one of the chamber’s more prolific traders, with hundreds listed on her reports since her election. In December, she paid a $400 fine after failing to disclose up to $350,000 in stock sales.

Most eyebrow-raising are the hundreds of trades Sherrill made during the coronavirus pandemic. As a member of Congress sitting on the House Armed Services Committee, she had access to information surrounding the unfolding pandemic not available to the general public.

In a flurry of purchases on Feb. 21, 2020, Sherrill bought into a number of funds that went on to post handsome profits, according to data from Nasdaq. That month she purchased up to $250,000 of iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF, which has risen 62.11 percent since then. Another purchase of up to $250,000 in Nuveen ESG Large-Cap Growth ETF is up 60.03 percent since Sherrill’s purchase. A third acquisition of up to $250,000 in SPDR Portfolio S&P 500 Growth ETF is up 66.2 percent. A fourth purchase of up to $250,000 to Fidelity Dividend ETF for Rising Rates is up a comparatively modest 26.8 percent.

The day before, Sherrill unloaded stock in 112 individual companies, which raised eyebrows at the time from the New Jersey Globe. Team Sherrill insisted in April 2020 that the congresswoman’s move away from individual stocks had been made before the pandemic and before receiving any briefings on it. But the buying and selling kept going throughout the year, as the pandemic raged, with dozens more trades happening on July 17, records show.

Both tranches of sales came at the end of scheduled House recesses, just before the House reconvened for voting sessions, according to a 2020 House congressional calendar.

Sherrill is married to Jason Hedberg, a top official at UBS, where he serves as Head of Americas Equity Derivatives Flow, overseeing how the bank handles complex financial contracts which are tied to the stock market.

Sherrill and Hedberg currently reside in a seven-bedroom, five-bathroom mansion in Montclair, N.J. The 19th century empire Victorian is “one of the most extraordinary homes in Montclair,” a local blog gushed in 2019. Sitting on more than an acre of land, the manse features a sports court, cathedral-style ceilings, and weeping cherry trees, among other accoutrements.

A mortgage for the estate was provided by UBS, records show.

Sherrill has cosponsored legislation that would ban members from trading individual stocks, something her office said she no longer does.

“Mikie’s life has been about public service and she has been more than clear about her commitment to transparency and accountability in government,” said her spokeswoman, Carly Jones.

House members benefiting from stock trades has long been a thorny issue, most famously among former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif). The octogenarian progressive and her husband Paul Pelosi, also a financial professional, have repeatedly profited handsomely from exquisitely timed market moves, like a $3 million sale of Google stock just weeks before the Department of Justice launched an antitrust probe.

In November, Sherrill announced plans to run for governor of New Jersey. She is currently locked in a six-way Democratic primary for the state’s top job.

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